‘That was a somewhat mystifying feature,’ Dr. Morelle said. ‘And that was why I decided that a visit to the individual who had lent her the revolver might prove fruitful.’
‘But why, if you already knew she hadn’t done it?’
‘Merely to make assurance doubly sure,’ Dr. Morelle said, ‘and because I dislike loose strings lying untidily about.’
‘And what Tracy Wright told you tied it all up for you?’
Dr. Morelle nodded and took a deep drag at his Le Sphinx. ‘Precisely,’ he said.
A baffled look was settling over Miss Frayle’s face as she tried to remember anything that Tracy Wright might have said which had so impressed Dr. Morelle, to the extent that he was completely reassured that what Thelma Grayson had told him was one hundred per cent true. She thought in vain, and gave it up as Dr. Morelle went on to say: ‘It was not so much what he said, but what I saw.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’ Miss Frayle said, ‘only a lot of old guns. Although it was a beautiful flat, of course, with that nice manservant and everything. Oh, and there was that photograph of Thelma Grayson.’
She glanced at Dr. Morelle but he failed to look as she had anticipated. ‘You did not look,’ he said. ‘He admitted that he had lent her the gun, for the reason she gave us. He confirmed that it was a Smith and Wesson Centennial, which fitted in with her description of the firearm.’
‘And you never told him she’d lost it,’ Miss Frayle said.
‘That wasn’t what seemed important to me,’ Dr. Morelle said.
‘He’s certainly got plenty more.’
‘What did interest me,’ Dr. Morelle said, with an air of someone exercising great patience, ‘was the box of cartridges he produced, three rounds of which he had given Thelma Grayson in the revolver.’
‘I didn’t bother to look at them,’ Miss Frayle said. ‘What was there interesting about them, anyway?’
Dr. Morelle contemplated her for a moment through a cloud of cigarette-smoke. ‘Merely this,’ he said, ‘that they were blanks.’
Chapter Nineteen
The day previously Phil Stone had caught a late afternoon train from Waterloo. As he found a third-class smoker to himself and pushed his battered leather suitcase on the rack he was irresistibly recalling the occasion when he had made his first journey to Little Tiplow.
Was it only a bare nine days ago when he had sat back in the corner of a railway-compartment as he was doing now, and filled his pipe from his worn tobacco-pouch? It seemed a lifetime. A lifetime in which it seemed to him that what had transpired had happened not to him but someone else. He had lived in a nightmare.
There came the shrill whistle of the guard, the slamming of carriage-doors, and the train began to move. Phil shifted in his seat and he could feel his wallet in his inside pocket, the wallet in which he knew was the photograph of the girl he had journeyed so far to see. This time he did not take the photograph out to look at it. This time he did not want to be reminded of the girl he loved, but who was dead.
About an hour-and-a-half it would take him to Hatford, he recollected, and then the wait for the local that would carry him to Little Tiplow.
He picked up the early edition of the evening newspaper he had bought at the station bookstall, and tried to concentrate his thoughts on the headlines and print as the train began to speed through the suburbs which lay beneath the bright sky of September’s closing days.
Phil Stone had called at Thelma Grayson’s flat that afternoon, after he had phoned her earlier in the day and she had asked him to come and see her. The sheer need to talk to somebody he knew about Julie had driven him along to see Thelma. She had greeted him warmly, but as he sat in the small flat, he watched her curiously. She was jumpy and restless, and it was obvious she was still in a state of nervous tension.
‘I’m sorry, Phil,’ she said noticing his attention on her. ‘I shan’t really be settled until all this is finished.’
He had stared at her. ‘But it is finished. Nothing could be more finished and done with. Not only Julie, but the man who drove her to her death as well. It’s all tied up, it couldn’t have ended more satisfactorily all round.’
She heard the bitterness in his voice, saw it in his face and breathed a silent prayer of thankfulness that he had been too concerned with his own grief to seize upon the slip she had made.
‘I know, it’s been dreadful for you,’ she said, swiftly, recovering herself and taking advantage of his reaction to what she had told him.
His eyes were still shadowed as he said: ‘Best thing for me is to get back to sea again, that’ll help me forget.’ He paused and then went on, forcing a lightness into his tone: ‘I’m afraid I’m being dreadfully selfish, going on about how I feel. It hasn’t been so clever for you, either.’
She nodded absently. She wondered what he would say if he knew just how terrible it had been, if he knew that she herself had nursed murder in her heart. Her thoughts went back to her visit to Harley Street last night, and her heart filled with gratitude towards Dr. Morelle for the way he had given her hope and courage. She longed to know what further news he would have for her.
‘The strange thing is,’ Thelma heard Phil saying, ‘I’ve got a feeling I ought to go to Little Tiplow again. Something seems to be drawing me there. Perhaps it would be painful — but I can’t hold myself back.’
Thelma’s eyes clouded. ‘I know how you feel,’ she said softly. ‘I think you should go, if you want to, Phil. After all, if you’re leaving England again —’
She left the remark unfinished. No need to tell him that this might be his last farewell to Julie.
There was the same hollow-sounding bridge which he had to cross to another platform when he got out at Hatford, grabbing his suitcase. The same fussy little local arrived in due course to take him to Little Tiplow, two or three coaches, no more, rattling into the station. An empty carriage for him again, and he was leaning back in a corner, lighting his pipe, and then the train chugging out.
Last time, Phil remembered, the train to Little Tiplow had been considerably delayed, while he had paced the platform with a watchful eye at the lowering sky. Now, as he glanced out of the window at the passing fields, the sky was clear, with a hint of the approaching evening.
Once more the train rattled into the halt and Phil got out and stood alone on the tiny platform. The same gangling porter bobbed out of the ticket-office, took his ticket, looked at him with a faint smile of recognition, a look which turned to one of curiosity as Phil passed through the gate and set out for the village.
This time there was no storm, no howling wind and driving rain, as Phil Stone went along the village street, serene under the slanting rays of some pale evening sunshine, and there was no sign of life except a prowling dog, which sniffed at his heels, one or two old people who gave Phil a casual glance, and a group of children who smiled at him.
The affair at Lilac Cottage might have been only a momentary sensation in the long and serene life of Little Tiplow.
The landlord of the Half Moon Inn, where he was going to stay, greeted him with a slow smile.
‘Nice to see you again, Mr. Stone.’ And only a brief silence during which remembering went on, then a word about the weather and Phil was finding his way up the crooked stairs to his low-ceilinged, comfortable bedroom, which overlooked the triangular village-green. He had occupied this room before.
It was good to be among quiet-living people, Phil thought, as he quickly unpacked his suitcase, after the side of life he had touched in recent days.
Half an hour later Phil went out of the inn. He walked down the village street, turning off near the end of the winding, tree-shadowed lane that led in the direction of the cemetery.
Presently, he came to the beginning of the cart-track with the wire-fencing on either side, and went along it, remembering the last time he had been this way on the afternoon of the funeral. He recalled the ostentatious wreath of red roses which Ray Mercury had sent. He was re
membering again how he’d wanted to tear the wreath apart, and had been stopped from doing so by Thelma.
And now Ray Mercury was lying in his own grave.
He went on past the houses on either side of the track, lights were beginning to glimmer in the windows. He came to where the track forked and he took the left-hand fork along which he proceeded for about fifty yards. Then it opened out into a small space, and he went over to the low gate, beyond which he could see the white gravestones.
The cemetery appeared empty as he made his way along the path towards Julie’s grave. There was no sound but the cawing of rooks, quarrelling among some high elms which overlooked a long field from which the harvest had been gathered, leaving it bare to the evening sky.
He came to the corner where the grave was, and stood looking down at the simple headstone and thoughts crowded in on him, pictures of the happy times he had spent with Julie when she was alive. Emotion caught at his throat, as he recalled how he had found her not so very long ago, dead.
No longer did he feel the anger that had raged through him at the thought of the man who had caused her death.
With a few murmured words, he turned away, knowing that he might never come back again to Julie’s last resting-place. Hard though it would be for him, he must draw a curtain on this part of his life. There lay ahead the sea and ships and forgetfulness.
Like a man in a dream he went out of the gate, noticing from the corner of his eye shadowy figures. But no one approached him, or spoke to him. He went some way up the track and then turned through another gate on to a field-path. He knew this led to Lilac Cottage, for he had come back from the cemetery that way with Thelma on the day of the funeral.
Skirting fields and coppices, his mind busy with his thoughts, he made towards the lonely cottage, standing isolated from the village.
He walked faster now, for the shadows were lengthening and soon he stood outside the gate, facing the empty lifeless cottage, white and low-built, its beams showing black in the faint dusk, the porch shadowed a little, the blank windows on either side, the lilac-tree in the corner of the small, hedged garden.
Phil shivered slightly. He had no wish to go in. The place affected him with its air of brooding, and he would not have trusted his emotions if he had been able to step through the door and into the room where Julie had died.
‘What are you doing here?’ a voice behind him said.
Phil spun round with a slight start. He had heard no sound of footsteps. His eyes narrowed at the man who stood there. Wiry, with a long, swarthy face and dark side-whiskers which reached well below his ears. The cap on the back of his head showed lank black hair, and he wore gumboots over old flannel trousers. His long check jacket, of heavy material, was wide-skirted, and Phil suspected that it hid large pockets. There was bright intelligence in his dark eyes, with their yellowish whites.
‘I might ask you the same thing,’ Phil said to him with a grin.
The stranger smiled, showing surprisingly white teeth.
‘I often passes here, on me way home,’ he said coolly.
‘You live around here, then?’
The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Down there in the woods.’ He jerked a thumb again, this time at Lilac Cottage. ‘I’ve often helped them with eggs, or a chicken when they wanted one. What’s going to happen to the place? I mean, after that business — the poor girl — will the other sister stay on, or is it up for sale?’
As Phil gave him a non-committal shrug, the other suddenly said: ‘Truth to tell, I thought you was that other feller come back.’
‘Other fellow?’
‘Chap who was here on the night of the storm,’ the man said, looking up at Phil, with his bright, curious eyes.
For a moment Phil thought the man must be making a mistake, confusing him with someone else. Then he felt a sense of growing excitement, a feeling that he had stumbled on something strange and secret. He could not explain it, except that he seemed on the verge of a shattering discovery.
‘Here on the night of the storm? Are you sure?’
‘It was that night, all right. I’d been out in the woods, see.’ He gave a cough and winked knowingly at Phil, then he went on, ‘I was hurrying home, the storm was coming up fast. It was in the lane at the back there,’ again a jerk of that dirty expressive thumb, ‘not this one going down to the road, but the one what cuts across the cottage at the back.’
Phil eyed him narrowly. His second reaction after the excitement engendered by what the man had said at first, was that the person he’d seen must have been none other than the chap from the post-office who’d delivered the telegram on that fatal night. It occurred to him, however, that he would have used the front-gate and left by it, there was no reason for him to use the lane at the back of Lilac Cottage.
‘You saw him come from the cottage?’ he said.
‘Where else?’
This might be important, he thought, what was a strange man doing here in the storm, just about the time of Julie’s death? ‘Did you see him properly, could you tell what he looked like?’
‘I see him in a lightning flash. Who’d bring a big car like that up there, anyway?’
Phil clenched his fists to control his mounting excitement.
‘Car? What sort of car?’
‘At the end of the lane, just before it turns into the road. Far as I could see it was like one of them big American cars, I couldn’t be sure, but I think it was blue. It took up pretty near all the lane, and that’s a fact.’
Phil thought desperately. A big American car, with a blue body, whom did he know of who possessed a car like that? He shook his head slowly. There was nobody he could recall.
‘This man you saw,’ he said, ‘what did he look like?’
‘I seen him, all right, a feller with a thin face and a moustache. Never saw me, I reckon.’
Phil’s brain raced. On the night of the storm, before he had arrived, another man had almost certainly been in the vicinity of the cottage, that seemed certain. Again his thoughts grappled with the mental picture of a large, blue car. Where had he seen a car like that? And a man whose description tallied with that given by the poacher? What would it mean if another man had been at Lilac Cottage round about the time that Julie had died. He glanced at the dark little man, frowning.
‘But why didn’t you say something about this before?’ he said.
‘The village copper and me, we don’t exactly quarrel,’ the man said, ‘but I don’t go out of my way to get in his way, if you see what I mean. I steers clear of the police and don’t get into no trouble.’
‘I see.’ It was a satisfactory explanation, and Phil was more than ever convinced that the other was telling the truth.
Quite by some miraculous chance he had stumbled on a vital piece of information concerning some stranger lurking round Lilac Cottage, whose existence had never been thought of until this dark stranger had happened to mention it to him now.
‘Besides,’ the man was saying, his hands deep in his pockets, ‘they said it was suicide, didn’t they?’
Phil nodded abstractedly. ‘That’s what they said it was,’ he said.
‘And I only seen this chap in the flash,’ the other went on, ‘I couldn’t prove anything. What he was doing here, or who he was. All I could say was a blue car, and the chap had a thin white face, and a moustache.’
Phil said nothing. His gaze had turned upon the cottage, there in the gathering dusk, pale and shadows creeping round it. Empty and deserted. He was still trying to think, trying to sort out the implications of this new information that had come from this chance meeting. He was also trying to remember. Surely he had seen a man like that, who answered to the description he had been given, somewhere?
‘You couldn’t have known that it was anything important,’ Phil said.
The man stood watching him while Phil remained silent for some moments. Could it possibly have been Mercury who had come to Lilac Cottage that night? No, he decided
. He did not fit the description. Besides hadn’t Thelma said quite definitely that Mercury had been in the Club at the time. Who else, then? For a flash of a second a thought poised like a dagger over his mind. Had Thelma been lying? Had she some reason for saying Mercury was at the Black Moth, when all the time he wasn’t? All the time he was somewhere else. At Lilac Cottage with Julie. He dismissed the idea with a feeling of horror against himself for having harboured it.
His mind seized upon Ray Mercury and with vivid clarity recalled the scene outside the Coroner’s court at Hatford. A big blue American car, flashy, large as a tank. It had been there, he’d seen it as he left the building. He’d seen Mercury himself, cool and soft-featured and — he gave an involuntary hiss of indrawn breath — a pale man with a thin black moustache who had leaned back in the driving-seat of the car.
Mercury’s driver. A pale-faced man, with a black moustache, just as the poacher had described him.
Phil Stone was filled with a mounting anger and excitement, and the desire for revenge against a man unknown to him as yet, a man who was only a face seen and remembered in a flash of lightning on a night of storm and death.
Chapter Twenty
It was next morning and at about the time when the train from Hatford to Waterloo was pulling into London, Thelma Grayson was in a taxi heading for Harley Street. Phil Stone was on the train and though he had looked casually at a morning paper bought at Hatford, it was not such a late edition as the copy which Thelma clutched in her hand, glancing every now and then at the story in the Stop Press.
‘4 a.m. Late News. new turn in night club death,’ she read. ‘Understood Scotland Yard not altogether satisfied with the results of earlier inquiries into death of Black Moth night-club owner Ray Mercury, found shot in his office three nights’ ago. As a result of certain information received, further investigations being made into circumstances surrounding tragedy.’
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