by Richard Hull
“I see. Rather elaborate precautions, weren’t they?”
“You didn’t know Mr. Cargate. They proved to have been necessary.”
“They did, did they?”
“They did. I didn’t have to worry much for the rest of the afternoon because Mr. Cargate himself was in the library all afternoon. I did go in to show in a man called Macpherson, I think, a stamp dealer. He was fetched up after lunch from Larkingfield by Miss Knox Forster and it was while she was putting the car away in the garage, by the way, sir, that the first signs of something going wrong with it appeared—and so I had no occasion to go to the library until I took in the tea.”
“Just a minute.” Fenby scribbled down a note to remind himself that he had not asked Miss Knox Forster what she had done with herself all the afternoon. It was probably of no importance as Cargate himself had been in the library all afternoon, he understood. As yet he had not heard of the short interval during which Macpherson had been left alone by himself. “You took in the tea. Yes, and what happened then?”
“There was, sir, rather a painful scene.”
“Oh, there was, was there? Your expectations were justified then?”
“Yes, sir. But not in the exact manner that I expected. Mr. Cargate started by telling me that it was an extraordinary thing but that everybody was trying to steal his property that day in some way or another. That of course was the line which I had expected that he would take. When he went on to say that Mr. Yockleton had tried to filch the emerald, I was not surprised. That was just the way that things did take him, nor did it astonish me when he began to describe what he termed a plot by this Macpherson to ruin his stamp collection, but then he went on to say that Miss Knox Forster and I were jointly in league with him. That, sir, would have been impossible. Miss Knox Forster, though she happens to be a lady, or very nearly one, and at any rate has always been treated as such, really only ranks as a governess or as a typist in an office, and is not the sort of person with whom I would associate. Besides, so far as Mr. Cargate’s household was concerned, she was a comparative new-comer who did not really understand him at all.”
The view was not one with which Fenby entirely concurred, but he saw no reason to argue about it.
“Then I may take it, that there was nothing in Mr. Cargate’s suggestion of this league against him?”
“Naturally not, sir.”
“Did he offer any evidence in support of his idea?”
“I regret to say that he did, sir.” During the pause while Raikes was collecting his thoughts, Fenby had time to wonder exactly where the butler placed him in the social scale. Did he too rank as a governess, as something really inferior to the upper servants? Very likely he did and he must not set too much store by the occasional ‘sir’ and the outward deference paid to him, for as much or more had been given to Miss Knox Forster without there being any real respect.
“You regret to say?” he prompted, abandoning the point as immaterial, but finding that Raikes was slow to go on.
“Yes, sir. It led up to that point of the interview which proved to be painful. Mr. Cargate first of all stated that everything in his room kept on being moved about. The place in the book which he had been reading had been lost; the letter which he had in his hand when Mr. Yockleton had arrived and which he had put down by the side of the bottle containing the poison for the wasps’ nest, when he returned from seeing the vicar, was somewhere else, and the bottle which had been on the table was on the window-sill with the word ‘Poison’ staring at him. He said that it annoyed him and he turned it round. Then he accused Macpherson of tampering with his stamp album and of turning the snuffbox the other way round, so that the initials were upside down. He said, and that was certainly true, that untidiness of that sort irritated him. He never could bear seeing anything the wrong way up. How much truth there was in all that, I do not know. Probably none, because there was nothing in what he said next.”
“Which was?”
“That I had been in the room between midday when he went out into the garden and the end of lunch. He said that there was a stink—I am sorry, sir, but that was the word he used, and that the snuffbox had again been moved.”
“Did he say what kind of stink?”
“No, sir. Nor did I ask. Nor again did I enquire in what way I was supposed to have moved the box. I am afraid, sir, that I immediately denied the insinuation, and I went on to tell him that I could prove that I had not been in the room. On that he, of course, asked how I could do that and I told him, though more briefly, exactly what I have told you as to my movements. It was, you see, exactly what I had been expecting in a sense and so I had it all ready for him and incidentally for you. But, unfortunately, it had a very deplorable effect on Mr. Cargate, very deplorable indeed. He seemed to think that it reflected on his character, as in a way I suppose it did” (the truth of the idea seemed only just to have occurred to Raikes) “and he resented it very strongly. He said that I was a smug, suspicious, self-righteous Paul Pry and other things which I would not like to repeat, and that he would have no one in his service who held the views about him that my actions seem to suggest, that he hadn’t an honest or a decent friend in the world, and then he got into a state of mind in which in all my long experience of him I have never seen him get before. He began to cry.”
“Self-pity, I suppose,” Fenby suggested.
“I imagine so, and very painful it was, very. To see a gentleman for whom with all his faults I had always had a considerable respect behaving like that was not a thing that I cared for at all. Of course he ended by saying that he could not bear to have me about any more and finally gave me the sack. That was better—it was behaving more like a man, or at least it would have been if he had done it in anger. But he didn’t, he did it in sorrow, saying that he had had one honest man about him and now he had got to lose him. Considering how free he had been with his accusations in the past and what he had obviously just been going to say, it was pretty silly, but I tried to forgive him. In fact all that evening I tried to bring myself to overlook it and carry on.”
“But it was he was giving you the sack.”
“That didn’t mean a thing. He had done that half a dozen times before and neither of us took any notice of it. The question was whether I should give him notice. I was just trying to make up my mind when he left to go up to London, and I’d very nearly decided,” Raikes’s voice broke, “that I never could imagine things being the same as they had been before, when the news came through that he was dead. Then I felt that I had been in a way disloyal to him and that it was too late to do anything about it. That really was the reason I couldn’t bring myself to help to carry him into the house.”
“I see.”
There were many little details that Fenby wanted to fill in but for the moment he decided that he would prefer first to digest what he had obtained and to compare Raikes’s statements with what he had been told by Miss Knox Forster. Also there was Mrs. Perriman to interview, and the gardener, and the vicar. For the moment therefore he finished with Raikes.
It was a constant complaint of Inspector Fenby’s that he had to spend a great part of his time examining some subject which proved in the end to be irrelevant. He was always on the look-out for the danger and he tried hard to avoid entangling himself in such things. But you could never be sure. There were frequent traps. Certainly the actions of those concerned during the long central period of Thursday, July 12th were a good example of such a state of affairs.
On the whole Mr. Blayton summed the matter up accurately.
“We now come, my lord and members of the jury, to the long period in the day to which I have previously referred. You will remember that I said that it lasted from 12.0 noon until 1.45 p.m., but that there was an important exception to that period. That exception is, broadly speaking, that for nearly all of that hour and three quarters, the library almost certainly was not en
tered by anyone. Indeed from noon until the gong was rung for lunch by Raikes, it is improbable that anyone could have entered from outside without being seen by Mr. Cargate himself as well as Miss Knox Forster, and Mr. Cargate was, as you will hear, in a very suspicious state that day.
“During that time, that is roughly from noon until one, the indoor servants were together in the servants’ hall partaking of their dinner. You will have the unimpeachable testimony of Mrs. Perriman, the cook, and of Dolly Jones the kitchen-maid, that they were all together for that period. It may then nearly, but not quite, be dismissed from your minds. Further, from one until one-forty-five peculiar precautions were taken at the instigation of Raikes, which resulted in the library door being locked from the time that Mr. Cargate sat down to lunch until just before he finished, and during that time there is no doubt but that the key was in Mrs. Perriman’s pocket, nor is there any evidence to show that any attempt to enter by the window was made. Indeed such a thing would have been difficult to carry out without leaving traces on the window, or the window-sill, or on the flower-bed, not that which contained the crimson roses, but a narrower bed immediately adjoining the side of the house, and though very careful investigations were made, no such traces were found.
“At first glance, therefore, you might think that this whole period might be dismissed from our reckoning owing to the doubts which Raikes conceived and the precautions which he took as a result of those fears. But, members of the jury, when you have heard the whole story, you will be too astute to assume so much without further consideration, and you will be right. For there were at least two periods during that time, each of only a few moments, when the library might have been entered. The first begins at the moment when Mr. Cargate and Miss Knox Forster left the garden, and lasts, not only until they are seated in the dining-room, but even really until Mrs. Perriman has turned the key in the door of the library. Similarly there is a gap after the door is unlocked until in fact Mr. Cargate leaves the dining-room, for Mrs. Perriman must be back in her own part of the house before Mr. Cargate finishes his coffee and she has to make an estimate of when that will be.
“It will be part of my case that one of those periods was of material importance, namely, the few minutes that elapsed while Mr. Cargate…”
But it was a long while before Fenby had reached that point. At first he had not shown the astuteness which Blayton attributed to the jury so glibly and probably so unwisely since it irritated the foreman at least. At first he had considered that when Mrs. Perriman and Dolly Jones fully bore out all Raikes’s statement, that the whole hour and three quarters might be dismissed from the scope of his investigations and he had gone on to see Hardy Hall, the gardener.
There had been a slight break there because Ley had at length arrived. Fenby had been in the garden when his car drew up at the front door and he had wondered whether the solicitor would remember that they were not supposed to have met before. His doubts were however immediately dispelled by hearing Ley ask who he was and then, seeing him, bustle across to him.
“So you are looking into things for the Coroner, are you? Excellent, excellent. Nothing to enquire into of course, but always a good thing to do.” Like all amateurs Ley began to overact sadly. In addition it seemed to occur to him that had Fenby been in doubt in reality as to whether there was anything which needed investigation, perhaps the remark would not have been completely soothing to his feelings. At any rate he fussily covered it over with an offer to provide any assistance that lay within his power and, still apparently finding the going treacherous, turned aside with assumed heartiness to compliment Hardy Hall upon his roses.
“Very fine they are. Very fine indeed. Of course this heavy soil of yours—Still, I must try to grow some of those myself. I like that semi-double loose petal variety. What are they? K. of K.? Yes, yes, I’ll make a note of it. A very fine second bloom. Not much smell though.” He fussed off having broken the train of Fenby’s thought completely.
Hardy Hall too had viewed him with contempt.
“Roses wouldn’t grow for such as him,” was his comment. “You want patient people who understand. Second bloom indeed! This is July and you don’t get the second bloom till September! Why, not one of these has been picked this year.”
Fenby raised his eyebrows slightly and returned to the question of wasps’ nests, a subject which, as Hardy was a man of few words, was soon exhausted. It was not very long before he was down at the rectory contemplating the vicar’s bald head and broad blue eyes. There was something very likeable about the Reverend Mr. Yockleton, he decided, or at least there would be if he was not so anxious to show it. Perhaps too it would have been better if he had not been so patently desirous of being regarded as a broad-minded man, capable of much more than just looking after mothers’ meetings, but rather as one really able to rule and direct men and the affairs of much bigger places than the village of Scotney End. Fenby could easily see what Raikes had meant when he referred to him as “interfering”. Yes, it might be of interest to study the vicar’s character, and it had better be done by discussing the matter in hand. He threw out a question and began to receive more information as to the vicar’s state of mind than as to the events that had occurred, for Yockleton was still worried and anxious to justify his conscience as to the indecent joy that he still felt, that Cargate was no longer the Squire of Scotney End.
It was, therefore, a very detailed account that Fenby received of the local feeling and prejudice—he had to hear for instance all about Scottish Hardy’s adventures, which to Fenby’s mind were beside the point, and about the checks to the vicar’s authority. Once more Fenby found himself up against the old difficulty of separating what was material from what was not, and patiently he absorbed it all in case there should be some detail which would illuminate the whole. Then he turned the current of the vicar’s narrative on to the subject of what had passed between him and Cargate two days before. Yockleton, he found, was still angry, and if possible even more anxious to inveigh against Cargate’s preposterous allegation that he had contemplated stealing the emerald.
“Though really why I should worry to defend myself, I don’t know,” he ended, changing his tone to some extent. “Everyone knows that I am the last person who is likely to do such a thing.”
Fenby agreed politely, although he could not help thinking that “everyone” did not in fact include himself. He knew really very little about Yockleton and he was not quite sure how he was going to find out more. Probably the best plan would be to go into the village inn and try to discover what the parishioners of Scotney End thought.
But for the moment that must wait, and he turned back again to the question of the position of the snuffbox and the bottle. On these points Yockleton was quite definite. The snuffbox had been on the left-hand side of the table and the bottle had been quite close to it. In each case, so Yockleton averred, Cargate himself had mentioned their position. Fenby listened with interest to the categorical statements. The trouble about them was that they were so very cut-and-dried. It was Fenby’s experience that it was not always those who were most unequivocal in their assertions who were always the most accurate.
By the time that he left the vicarage, he was really only sure of two things; in the first place that undoubtedly there had been a time when Yockleton had been alone with the poison and the snuff, and secondly that it was now Saturday evening, and that it was unlikely he would be able to get back to London that night. On the whole his best plan seemed to be to return on Sunday and pay a call on the stamp dealer, Macpherson, on the Monday. After that it would depend on circumstances, but probably he would have to return again to Scotney End. So far he did not feel that he had any clear idea of what had happened and yet he felt that when he had digested everything that he had been told, that somewhere in the mass of information he had obtained, were the few facts that really mattered.
Meanwhile the village inn was inviting from the po
int of view of pleasure and of duty. Nor did it prove difficult to find out what Scotney End thought of Yockleton. They liked him though some of them did entertain the opinion that it was unnecessary for him to try to arrange all their lives for them. Raikes they considered to be unnecessarily stand-offish. As to Miss Knox Forster they had not made up their mind, but none of them, though they did not say so in so many words, were sorry that Cargate was no longer at the Hall.
Finally, refreshed both in body and mind, Fenby went back to see Ley. The solicitor, he found, had also decided to stay the night at Scotney End. He had not had much difficulty in inventing an excuse to Miss Knox Forster to justify his lingering there—there were plenty of papers to be looked through—but it was fairly clear that he really hoped to get something from Fenby with which to satisfy his own curiosity. But in this he was doomed to disappointment, for Fenby was never communicative and certainly was not yet ready, even if he were ever willing, to talk the situation over with anyone.
Nevertheless Ley tried. He and Miss Knox Forster happened to be in the hall when Fenby came back, and he at once started the conversation by saying that they had found out what was wrong with Cargate’s car.
“Something,” he said, “had got stuck in the exhaust.”
“What was it?” Miss Knox Forster put in. “I wish I had thought of that. It started to go wrong when I fetched Mr. Macpherson from Larkingfield and I only just got back from taking him to the station. It nearly died on me on the drive. I spent most of the afternoon trying to put it right, but I never thought of looking at the exhaust.”
It sounded unimportant to Fenby, but it did answer the question of how she had spent that afternoon. Yet it was unusual, and by long habit Fenby never overlooked any departure from the common routine. Consequently he listened while Ley babbled on.