by Zenith Brown
Bull went over to the bed and bent over the great silent figure in striped pyjamas lying on it.
“Somebody else must have been in the room,” Mr. Pinkerton said, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder. “Maybe they went through a panel somewhere.”
Inspector Bull turned round to look at him, scowling again.
“Oh, dear,” Mr. Pinkerton thought, remembering the line about the person who protests too much.
Bull, looking up at the light again, lifted the dead man’s hand. Wound tightly about it was a worn velvet cord. The dead man’s hand itself had turned on the light, Sir Lionel Atwater thinking perhaps, Bull reflected, that it was a bell cord he had grasped. There was the possibility, in that case, that he could have seen his assailant. Bull turned back to the little man huddled ridiculously in his cheap overcoat, trying to hide his shame in the form of cyclamen-red pyjamas.
“Was he dead?”
Mr. Pinkerton moistened his lips nervously. “No. He was dying.”
“Did he speak?”
Mr. Pinkerton hesitated. The maid Kathleen’s “Poor young lady—poor Mr. Jeffrey!” dinned in his ears.
“Come now, Mr. Pinkerton,” Inspector Bull said mildly. Mr. Pinkerton knew only too well that many people, some of whom were now breaking rock at Dartmoor, had made bad mistakes—sometimes even fatal mistakes—in thinking the big man was as mild, as simple, or as ingenuous as he looked. He huddled a little deeper in his turned-up overcoat collar.
“As a matter of fact, he did,” he said meekly. “But I may have misunderstood him.”
“What did you think he said?”
“It sounded to me,” Mr. Pinkerton admitted wretchedly, “as if he said, ‘My son . . . my heir.’ But that’s Mr. Jeffrey Atwater, and I’m sure he would never have done such a thing, Inspector. I really am.”
Then Mr. Pinkerton thought, very miserably indeed, “Oh, dear, dear—there I go, making it ever so much worse.”
Inspector Bull, in his own presence, had told the Assistant Commissioner, Sir Charles Debenham, that Pinkerton was invariably valuable to him on a case: he just waited till Pinkerton was quite convinced of the innocence of somebody, arrested him, and he promptly confessed. They had laughed at that too, all of them except Mr. Pinkerton. It had none of it seemed very amusing to him then, it seemed less so now.
Bull stood chewing one end of his tawny mustache. “All right, Pinkerton,” he said placidly. “You just pop along and put on some clothes.”
Mr. Pinkerton waited anxiously. Then, as Bull had apparently finished, he ventured timidly, “May I come back, please, Inspector?”
“I’ll send along for you when I want you,” Bull said. “And don’t make any more trouble if you can help it,” he added, as the little man raised the latch on the stout oak door.
Mr. Pinkerton slipped through the room like a rabbit through the brambles, not daring to cast so much as a side-wise look at the horrified silent group huddled in front of the Tudor fireplace. As Mr. Fleetwood rose quickly to his feet, evidently thinking, until Inspector Bull’s burly figure appeared in the door also, that Mr. Pinkerton was making a getaway, the little man made a final bolt through the door and down the crooked stairs and up to his own room. There he banged the door behind him, his heart beating like an anvil.
He sat on the edge of his bed, shivering like a dead leaf in the rain. Then he slipped off his overcoat and reached for his socks. As he did there was a quick tap on the panel, and it slid open instantly. Mr. Pinkerton grabbed for the bed-clothes and held them up to his chin, his present fear of being caught again, red-handed, in his incredible nightwear, banishing the horrible imaginings of the pursuing Atwaters.
The maid Kathleen put her blue-black curly head into the room.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” she whispered. But she did not go back, or close the panel. Instead, to Mr. Pinkerton’s dismay, she came brazenly into the room and closed the panel behind her. She was fully dressed, with an old red cardigan over her brown uniform.
“Has something . . . dreadful happened, sir?” she whispered.
Mr. Pinkerton nodded, clutching the eiderdown closer about his neck and drawing his bare feet up under him like a trussed turkey.
“Sir Lionel Atwater is dead.” he stammered.
The girl’s pale frightened face underwent the most extraordinary change, as if a storm had crossed it and left only relief from some consuming fear.
“Oh,” she breathed. She sat down weakly on the oak settle by the fire, completely unconscious of the ludicrous little figure of her unwilling host clinging to his modesty.
“You see, sir, people can’t go on forever making people miserable, can they?”
Her voice went up like a little prayer on the shrine of “Somehow good will triumph over water and o’er mud.” Mr. Pinkerton’s heart lower than the proverbial under side of a snake, went lower still.
“But he . . . he was murdered!” he stammered.
The girl’s jaw dropped, her red hands resting on the oak seat clutched at it in a sudden spasm so that her knuckles stood out white and awful.
“With one of those old silver skewers from the dresser in the dining room,” Mr. Pinkerton blurted out.
She stared at him, the blood drained completely from her face, and, without the least warning, toppled over in a dead faint. Mr. Pinkerton, blinking, could hardly believe that he had not gone quite mad. He grabbed his overcoat, struggled into it, dashed to the wash-stand and the blue willow jug, splashed the icy water on the girl’s face and rubbed her hands violently. Her eyelids flickered, she struggled up.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” she whispered. “Don’t tell them, please—don’t tell them ever!”
She tottered across the room and out the door. Mr. Pinkerton, who had got most of the cold water on his own bare feet, shivered and sneezed. Then he pushed the settle against the panel and the table by the bed in front of the door and got out of his pyjamas into his clothes so fast that the cold perspiration on his brow turned perceptibly warmer. Then he sank down on the side of his bed again and wiped off the perspiration with the corner of the rough homespun sheet.
It didn’t, of course, he was thinking unhappily, take any more extraordinary clarity of mind than it does to put two and two together to make out what the matter with the girl was. Nor did it take more than Mr. Pinkerton had at the moment to realize that that idea had been struggling in his own mind for some time. Kathleen’s young man, furthermore, had had every appearance to him of being a desperate character. However, he thought suddenly, he was definitely not Sir Lionel Atwater’s son and heir. Not unless there was definitely more hanky-panky about than even Mr. Pinkerton was prepared to accept.
He got up, eventually found a kindling or two, lighted his fire again and sat huddled miserably in front of it, wondering why in the first place he had ever been born, and in the second place why, having been born, he had not died. True, Job had had more boils, but Job had not got in bed with Scotland Yard for the dozenth time . . . nor had he, friendless himself, had the awful secret of a friendless little chambermaid thrust into his unwilling hands.
Then, as the fire caught feebly, his spirits rose feebly too. All Bull had got out of him incriminated only Mr. Jeffrey Atwater, who, if Mr. Pinkerton was any judge of young men’s jaws, was quite able to take care of himself. It was Kathleen who wanted help. Mr. Pinkerton straightened his lozenge-shaped spectacles and his narrow shoulders. He had never been very young, himself; and that was why he had got a very good idea of how much more important people like Kathleen were than people like old Atwater, who, as a matter of fact, wasn’t any longer even alive.
He had just got that far when there was a sound of heavy feet on the stairs, and a sharp rap on his door. Somebody then gave it a shove. It stuck against the table.
“He’s got himself barricaded in,” a deep voice said.
“Oh, dear!” Mr. Pinkerton thought. All the high resolves ran out of his spirit like eaves-water out of a drain. He jumpe
d up, started to pull the table away from the door, dashed back and pulled the settle away from the panel, and then dashed back to the door.
“I was just dressing, and people . . .” he began, and stopped. It was not what he had meant to say at all, but the heavy-faced sandy-haired man with Bull fortunately noticed nothing. He stepped inside, his eyes fixed enquiringly on the little man. Inspector Bull followed. Then Mr. Pinkerton heard the most incredible thing.
“This is my friend Pinkerton, Inspector Kirtin,” Bull said, with his utmost imperturbability. “He’s been on a number of cases with me—unofficially, but Sir Charles has the greatest confidence in him.”
Mr. Pinkerton swallowed. He knew very well that Bull was adding to himself “. . . to make the worst possible bother at the most inconvenient time possible.” Still, he wasn’t saying it aloud.
Inspector Kirtin shook his limp hand.
“How do you happen to be here, Mr. Pinkerton?”
Mr. Pinkerton, catching his breath desperately, happened also to catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror of the shaving glass in front of the window. He was so frail, so insignificant and watery-eyed, that it startled him again to think of Inspector Bull’s magnanimity in laying himself open by such barefaced perjury.
“Just . . . on a little holiday, Inspector,” he said. “To . . . to take the sea air.”
There was no wonder, he thought as soon as he had said it, that Inspector Kirtin looked skeptical. The wind, howling about the ancient corner of the Old Angel, seemed bent on ripping his flimsy explanation to tatters.
“I don’t have much to do, in town,” he added, blinking apologetically. Though it did seem to him, hastily thinking it over, that it was rather on the disloyal side for Inspector Kirtin as an old Ryer to question anyone’s reasons for coming to the little Tudor town perched on its rock in the Marshes. Perhaps, however, he was not an old Ryer, in which case of course the question would be pertinent.
“I see,” Inspector Kirtin said, though he had not looked that way. “Inspector Bull tells me you noticed an unusual . . . let’s say, atmosphere, in the inn tonight?”
Mr. Pinkerton blinked at his large friend. He could not recall having said any such thing, at least not in those words. He cleared his throat nervously. He should have suspected that Bull’s placid attempt to save his skin would have to be bitterly paid for. Knowing Bull’s calm habit of realizing exactly what he was thinking all the time, he could not imagine why he had been deceived for a moment, not after all that he, a sheep in sheep’s clothing, had been through with this . . . Thoughts failed him entirely. Wolf in cinnamon bear’s clothing was not precisely it, but almost.
“Not . . . exactly,” he said. “Just that Mrs. Humpage said she couldn’t see why Sir Lionel Atwater didn’t settle the family differences at their own home, instead of bringing them to hers.”
“I see,” Inspector Kirtin said again. As that was more than Mr. Pinkerton had done, he looked up at the head of the Rye police with new interest. Inspector Kirtin turned to Bull.
“I expect that was about this American young lady that Mr. Jeffrey Atwater has been running down here all year to see.”
Bull nodded.
“Village gossip says the old gentleman went off the deep end about it. Disinherited him in favour of the younger son. Not the jewels, but his money.”
For a moment Mr. Pinkerton blinked. Then he remembered abruptly where he had heard of Sir Lionel Atwater. He was possessor, of course, of the famous Atwater jewels, historical precious stones of fabulous value, the envy of collectors the world over. Mr. Pinkerton’s spine tingled suddenly with excitement as he wondered what difference that might make.
“He made the money himself,” Inspector Kirtin went on, “and it wasn’t entailed. Besides being an American, the lady is divorced.”
He added that—exactly like Mrs. Humpage—as if the two together were sufficient reason for anything.
Mr. Pinkerton felt an unfamiliar and quite unreasonable heat generating under the narrow confines of his celluloid collar.
“Indeed, Inspector, she’s a very nice-appearing young woman,” he heard himself saying, to his own astonishment. Consternation, even as he saw the mild blue gaze of the man from Scotland Yard resting on him.
“Was she here?” Bull asked.
Mr. Pinkerton nodded. He had done it again, he thought unhappily.
“Lord Atwater sent for her, apparently,” he added.
Just as he glanced apologetically at Inspector Bull there was an appalling commotion from down in the lounge. Both of the policemen were out of the room in an instant. Mr. Pinkerton, standing there too surprised to move, heard their heavy boots clattering on the uneven stairs. He crept to the door and looked down. In the centre of a little knot of stolid police uniforms was the drenched disheveled figure of the deaf and dumb gentleman, his worn Bond Street tweeds looking even larger for him than they had before. His face was pale, and so completely terrified that Mr. Pinkerton, who realized exactly how he felt, felt a sudden pang of compassion for him.
“What’s the matter with him—can’t ’e talk?” the policeman who had hold of his arm demanded.
“So you won’t talk, eh?” was the way they would say it in America, Mr. Pinkerton thought; and then they would fetch out a length of rubber hose and start beating him, before they put him in a room and turned on the heat so that his heart would shrivel to one-tenth its normal size. He shuddered. Surely, in spite of the iron cage and skull of Rye’s most famous murderer that stood in the draughty stair corner of the town hall along with the town stocks, they wouldn’t do anything of the sort here. He stepped out into the narrow crooked landing. Perhaps if he shouted down that the gentleman was deaf and dumb . . . But the tow-thatched potboy Jo was ahead of him.
He tugged at Inspector Bull’s coattails. “ ’E’s a deef mute, sir,” he said.
Inspector Kirtin flashed around. “He’s what?”
“ ’E’s deef and dumb, sir.”
The policeman dropped the man’s arm. “Then what’s ’e climbin’ down the drainpipe for, I’d like to know, sir?”
The deaf and dumb gentleman stood looking on helplessly.
Inspector Kirtin nodded toward the little office. “Take him in there. Where’s Mrs. Humpage?”
“She’s up looking after ’er lydyship,” Jo said promptly.
“Get her down here.”
They ought to call Mr. McPherson, Mr. Pinkerton thought; it was he who brought the deaf and dumb gentleman. Then, for some reason he could not quite put a name to, he decided it would be far better if he minded his own business.
Along from the other wing he heard Mrs. Humpage’s solid step. He slipped back into his room and waited, one ear at the door, until she had got down into the lounge, and popped out onto the landing again.
The voice of Mrs. Humpage came up, brisk and hot.
“I’ll thank you, Tom Kirtin, not to be insulting my guests! When you’ve got the man that did in the poor gentleman caught red-handed with the weapon in his hand! . . . And you have to go hunting up mysteries, disturbing innocent people. A poor afflicted gentleman like Mr. Ross.”
Mr. Pinkerton peered down. She was standing there, hands on hips, facing them down like a lot of schoolboys. Only, Mr. Pinkerton knew well, schoolboys are not faced down so easily, not at any rate the young ruffians he had tried to teach.
“Anybody with a grain of sense could see who murdered poor Sir Lionel, pretending he’d heard him crying for help. Nobody else heard him. Her ladyship staying in the very next room! Him pretending he didn’t know who Sir Lionel was, innocent as a babe. Acting so pitiful-like. I saw through him—sneaking off to his room when Sir Lionel’s party came, slipping down to dinner and hiding his head in his food so none would notice him, hiding under the rubber plant, begrudging sixpence for coffee to cover himself up with!”
Mr. Pinkerton shrank back against the dark oak-panelled wall, struck his head against a copper warming-pan and jumped nervously.
“Who’s that, ma’am?” Inspector Kirtin asked.
“He calls himself Pinkerton,” Mrs. Humpage said skeptically.
In the sharp silence that dinned in Mr. Pinkerton’s sizzling ears he could almost see Inspector Kirtin’s dubious glance at Bull. The dreadful idea occurred to him that perhaps they would think the Inspector was an impostor too. After all, he was registered as Mr. Briscoe. Mr. Pinkerton shook his head. What if they were both put in the old grey stone tower of Ypres Castle? He had seen the leg irons there, and the tiny barred windows set in the thick lichen-stained walls overlooking the sands to the English Channel.
“This man was trying to climb down the drainpipe,” Inspector Kirtin said.
“And who wouldn’t?” Mrs. Humpage demanded. “Knowing a bloody murderer was loose in the house and the police acting like characters in a shilling shocker? The poor gentleman can’t hear or talk. He most likely thought there was a fire.”
Mr. Pinkerton leaned cautiously over the precarious stair rail. He would have liked to go down, but he didn’t quite dare, not with Mrs. Humpage standing there speaking her mind in such a determined and unrestrained fashion. Then he saw a pale little face peep out of the dining room, and Kathleen crept up behind her employer. Mrs. Humpage turned, and folded the girl in her large arms.
“There, love—don’t be frightened. It’s that man in Number Five, is what it is.”
Mr. Pinkerton saw Kathleen’s eyes turn up the stairs.
“Oh, no, madam—not him!” she cried. “He couldn’t ever. He’s a very kind gentleman.”
Mr. Pinkerton took a deep breath. There must be, he thought stoutly, and undoubtedly was, some quite proper explanation for the young man she’d let out of her garret. In the pictures there would be—and who was he to say the cinema was not true to life? If the man in “The Devil’s Daughter” had turned out to be her own father, then it was not unlikely that the young man was Kathleen’s brother. Though what her brother could be doing, going about in his stocking feet looking like a desperado of the first water, at precisely the moment after most bloody murder had been done, Mr. Pinkerton was unable to say.