Behind him a chair was suddenly pushed back and knocked against a table.
“Oh, not so much of a coincidence, Mrs. Quintash. When I was a younger man I did a good deal of mountain climbing in odd corners of the world, and I’ve always taken a great interest in the proceedings of the great Society. Last night was not one to be missed. You were there, weren’t you? At the end of the third row.”
For a quarter of a minute he waited, and then the answer came, quiet and even and controlled.
“Yes. I was there, of course. And I was at the end of the third row.”
“Then perhaps you may have noticed what I noticed.”
It had been the night of the season. The big lecture theatre had been crowded. Anthony Quintash had broken silence for the first time since his return and had told a moving story of his long search; the hopes and fears, the elations and disheartenments which had attended it; the discovery of the earthquake-riven, empty city hidden in the foothills of the Andes; the gradual diminution by fever and snake-bite and attack of his company; the death of his young partner and friend, Julian Devenish, by the upsetting of a canoe in a rapid. The photography had been marvellous; the diction of the lecture enthralling; the subsequent presentation of the Society’s gold medal had been the opportunity for a demonstration of quite unusual enthusiasm.
“But through it all I seemed to hear,” Graham Buckland continued, “a quite tragic note of disillusionment. Do you remember when he threw the portrait of Julian Devenish on the screen, that young, eager friend with the fine face marred by the deep scar from the corner of the eye to the jaw — do you remember his words? ‘Was it worth while? What have we done? Added a footnote to “The Golden Bough,” perhaps. Was that worth the loss of so loyal and ardent a spirit as Julian Devenish? I wonder.’ On that note of depression he ended, Mrs. Quintash, and my one little doubt is whether Quintash’s iron nerve had not at last given way. He was forty-two — young as the world goes now — yes. But he had lived a dozen lives; he carried, as I know now, the scars of a dozen hairbreadth escapes. And I just wonder — you, of course, will know, where I only wonder — whether something had cracked within him, whether” — and here the surgeon’s voice hesitated— “whether in a moment of revulsion after his great triumph, he suddenly took his own life last night.”
He heard a gasp and turned round. Mrs. Quintash was gazing at him with parted lips and a flush of colour in her face. Her great eyes were wide open and curiously bright.
“I never thought of that,” she cried, and she added: “I am sure that Tony never did.”
The surgeon inclined his head.
“It is for you to say.”
“I say ‘No.’”
Inspector Grant had been turning over the pages of his report a trifle impatiently. He was against speculations in the air. He liked facts on the ground.
“There’s one final point, Mrs. Quintash,” he said. “You and your husband had supper here when you returned.”
“Yes. We dined early before the lecture and I gave orders that something cold should be left for us.”
“Martha didn’t stay up for you?”
“Oh, no. We didn’t get back until after eleven. Martha had gone to bed.”
“Quite, quite,” said Inspector Grant. “But the dining-room is still as you left it; and though there are two plates used, there are three glasses used.”
Mrs. Quintash turned her face to the inspector, and the enigmatic trifle of a smile shone for the fraction of a second in the sideways glance of her eyes and the curl at the corners of her lips.
“A friend of ours took me to the lecture and drove us both back home after it. He came in. He wouldn’t stay for supper, but he had a glass of champagne” — the surgeon felt that that was all wrong; it should have been a glass of Chianti— “before he went away.”
“And the name of this friend?” continued Inspector Grant, moistening the tip of his pencil with his tongue.
Dona Quintash moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.
“Mr. Cleveland Hill,” she answered. “But he is just a friend of ours. He can tell you nothing more.”
“I am sure,” replied the inspector. “But I’ve got to make a report. If I could see him for a moment, and write down that I’ve seen him, you get rid of us then altogether, Mrs. Quintash.”
The inspector smiled invitingly and waited.
“He lives in Mount Street,” Doria Quintash answered. “I have his telephone number somewhere,” and she half-rose from her chair.
But Grant was already on his feet.
“He will be in the book, no doubt. You haven’t an extension here? No. We’ll go down and get on to him from the hall. This is a distressing business for you, Mrs. Quintash.”
“But we’ll spare you all we can,” the surgeon added, tucking the parcel under his arm.
The two men went downstairs. The telephone was fixed on the wall of the passage to the front door, with the directory on a sloping shelf beneath it. The inspector went straight to it. Graham Buckland opened a door upon the right hand. It led into a dining-room at the front of the house. On the threshold he stopped, looking about the room. On the white tablecloth stood the two plates with the remnants of the cold supper upon them. Quintash had sat at the end of the table and carved the ham. There was the gold medal open in its case beside his plate. At the side here Mrs. Quintash had sat — there was the fragment of lace from her gown caught in the joint of her chair — as if, perhaps, she had risen in a hurry. Her plate was pushed forward and the salt-cellar was upset. Graham Buckland drew the plate back to its natural position and suddenly stooped over the tablecloth. He remained in that position and then suddenly stood erect and with his face upturned towards the ceiling. At once he moved back into the passage. He heard the inspector speaking into the mouthpiece.
“It will be better if you heard it all here, sir. Yes, sir, it’s serious...No, Mrs. Quintash is quite well...No, she can’t come for the moment to the telephone...” and Graham Buckland tapped him on the shoulder. “Just a moment, sir.”
He covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and Buckland asked in a low voice:
“You left all the doors of the bedroom locked?”
“Yes. I’ve got the keys.”
Grant pulled them out of his pocket and the surgeon glanced at them disparagingly.
“Any sort of door key I should think would open those locks,” he said. “However—”
He shrugged his shoulders, and whilst Inspector Grant continued to assure Mr. Cleveland Hill that there was nothing the matter with Mrs. Quintash and that the sooner he threw on his clothes and came to Queen’s Gate the quicker he would know what was up, he returned into the dining-room and carefully replaced the plate which he had touched on the spot where he had found it. There was the empty champagne bottle — yes — a glass at the side of each chair — yes, and the third glass at the end of the table where Mr. Cleveland Hill had stood. The surgeon drifted out of the room.
The inspector was hanging up the receiver at last.
“Fairly frantic, that young man, Mr. Buckland. There’s one, I reckon, who won’t grieve very deeply over the loss to science of Mr. Anthony Quintash.”
“That room behind the dining-room is Quintash’s study, I suppose—” said Buckland.
“Yes, but there’s nothing there, Mr. Buckland. I had a look round when you were making your examination upstairs.” Nevertheless, Buckland drifted along the passage and went into the study. Very methodically he looked round the room, taking it by portions. Grant followed him.
“Nothing to see here, Mr. Buckland. This is where that stiletto lay, as a rule, according to Martha. On this big table under the window, on the right of the blotting-pad...” and suddenly the telephone-bell rang. Grant ran out of the room, crying aloud so that he could be heard at once in the kitchen below and in the drawing-room upstairs. “All right, all right. I’ll answer it.” And the moment he had gone Graham Buckland very quickly and very silently cl
osed the study door, shutting himself in alone.
Outside in the hall, William Grant listened and replied:
“No, sir, this isn’t Mrs. Quintash...No, sir, I can’t disturb her now. No, no, no, she’s really quite well. But it would be very much better if you came here at the quickest...It’s impossible to explain over the telephone...Oh, you’re dressing. Then we’ll expect you in a few minutes...Good!...Oh, very well, sir, if you insist...yes, we are the police.”
Inspector Grant was a little exasperated. “That lad doesn’t sound too bright to me,” he grumbled. “You only hurt yourself if you go off the deep end over the telephone. The telephone’s no spring-board.”
He turned round to share his dissatisfaction with the surgeon and saw him coming out of the study, dusting his fingers.
“Mr. Buckland, you’ve left that parcel behind in the study.”
“No, I put it on the sideboard in the dining-room. I want to have a look at it now.”
But he seemed in no hurry, once he was back in the dining-room. He stood with his nose up in the air as if he could smell some secret.
“I wonder what happened in this room last night,” he said, slowly and seriously; and Inspector Grant was startled.
But he knew the surgeon for an astute and reasonable man. Graham Buckland did not go off the deep end, either at a telephone or away from it.
“This young man can tell us if anything happened here,” said Grant.
“Can he? I wonder,” Buckland answered.
He took his parcel then and opened it.
“Here’s the stiletto.” It was wrapped in a piece of medical gauze, and he handed it to Grant. “You had better take charge of it — but carefully, for it’s as sharp as a razor. It’ll have to go to the laboratory, of course, but it’s the book which interests me. Have a look at it. Grant.”
He had the book wrapped up too, but he sat himself down in a chair by the window, and turned back the gauze. It was a biggish book of quarto size with a paper cover and thick leaves, and it was written in French. Whilst Grant stooped down, Buckland set the book on his knees.
“Travels in the Sus Country — that’s the title, and — look at the date at the bottom of the title-page — it was published seven years ago.”
He turned the title-page and came to the fly-leaf.
“And Anthony Quintash bought it seven years ago. There’s his name and the date written, and, as you see, half of the pages uncut. Doesn’t it seem a little odd to you that he didn’t read it when he bought it?”
Inspector Grant pushed out a lower lip and thought the question over.
“No,” he said at length. “I think a lot of people buy books which they think they’ll read one day and set ’em up on their shelves and never look at ’em again.”
Buckland caught him up at once.
“But Quintash did look at this book again, and last night. I’m not sure that that isn’t more curious still. You see, when this book was written very little was known about the Sus Country. Long after Lyautey had Morocco well in hand, this strip in the South beyond the Atlas was dangerous and unexplored. But it’s better known now. There are more recent, more knowledgeable books about the Sus Country than this. Isn’t it odd that Quintash should have taken up to bed to read for the first time a book already quite out of date?”
But William Grant dug his toes in. He distrusted finely drawn speculations in police work. They led you astray for one thing. Juries made short work of them for another.
“No,” he said stubbornly. “Perhaps that book’s literature.”
The surgeon laughed.
“You’ve got an answer for everything, Grant,” he said.
“But you’ve got a hunch, Mr. Buckland,” Grant returned uncomfortably. “And I don’t like it. For I’ve known your hunches to be better than my answers.”
“Let’s hope it isn’t so in this case!” said the surgeon. “But here’s Mr. Cleveland Hill, I take it, and he may have something to tell us.”
A powerful two-seater sports car swung round the corner from Knightsbridge and stopped with a smooth precipitation in front of the door. A young man, tanned on the golf-links and trained to the prize-fighter’s ounce, burst from it like a bullet and hammered with the knocker until the house shook. Inspector Grant opened the door, and at the sight of his uniform the young man staggered back against the rail.
“Good God, what has happened?” he cried.
“If you want the street to hear, I can tell you now, Mr. Cleveland Hill,” said the inspector. “But I should prefer you to come in.”
Mr. Hill pushed into the hall with an apology:
“I beg your pardon. I’m a fool.”
The inspector shut the door and ushered the young man into the dining-room.
“Our surgeon, Mr. Graham Buckland.”
“Surgeon?”
“Yes, Mr. Hill. Will you sit down, please!” The inspector turned to his note-book. “At eight o’clock this morning, as per usual, Martha Green, house-parlourmaid, took a cup of tea into Mr. Quintash’s bedroom,” and he continued to read until the simple facts of the explorer’s death were complete. At the end of the story Cleveland Hill sprang to his feet.
“Where’s Doria?” he cried. “I mean, Mrs. Quintash.”
“She is upstairs, sir.”
“Alone?”
“For the moment.”
“I’ll go up to her,” and he turned towards the door, but Inspector Grant was in the way.
“One moment, sir.”
Mr. Cleveland Hill stared at the big officer as if he were the obtusest thing in the world.
“But you can’t let her stay up there alone. It’s inhuman.” He turned to the surgeon. “You’ve seen Mrs. Quintash? I had a picture upon the wall of my nursery with just her sensitive face and just her hint of a smile.”
“An oleograph of the Mona Lisa, I expect,” said Mr. Buckland with a nod.
“That’s it. Well, you can see. I’ve known her all my life. She’s got to have sympathy...”
“We only want to ask you a question or two,” the surgeon interrupted. “For instance, you drank out of that glass last night?”
The young man controlled himself with an effort.
“Yes, I did. I drove Quintash and Doria home here and came in with them, and I had a glass of champagne.”
“But you didn’t stay for supper.”
“No.” Mr. Cleveland Hill’s face fell. He was a very open young man. “They didn’t ask me,” he explained, and then corrected himself. “At least, Doria did, but Quintash was against it. You know Quintash was a very queer fellow. Running away to Brazil and places like that when you have a wife like Mrs. Quintash, eh? But last night he made quite a little speech, kind, you know, and warm-hearted. It was to be the greatest night of his life — that sort of thing. He had been presented with his Society’s gold medal and he wanted to complete the evening with a private little presentation to his wife.”
“What!”
And suddenly the surgeon was on his feet with the strangest expression upon his face.
“Yes. Queer, wasn’t it? Doria couldn’t make head or tail of it. I don’t think she half liked it, you know. It wasn’t after all very civil to me, was it? He had only got to say good evening and I should have gone away without any of that play-acting.”
“I see. You think he was just staging an excuse to get rid of you.”
“Well, it looked a bit like it, didn’t it?” said Mr. Cleveland Hill. “Is that all?”
“As far as I am concerned,” said Buckland.
“The same here,” the inspector added pleasantly. “We had to make sure with an accident of this kind that everything was normal, of course.”
He held open the door and Mr. Cleveland Hill was half-way up the stairs in a flash. The police-surgeon shot a queer glance at the inspector. “So you think that everything’s quite normal. We’ll just wait a second until the gentleman upstairs is deep in his oleographic Italy — floating betwee
n high black houses on a canal of Venice, or gazing at the moon in a dark garden of Florence. Mona Lisa! She is uncommon like the Gioconda, but I don’t think the Gioconda could have put up with the drawing-room furniture.”
All the while he was talking, Graham Buckland was wrapping up the travel book in its gauze.
“I am going to borrow this from you for a day. You can trust it to me.”
He went to the door and listened. “It’s all right, I think. Let me have the key of the bedroom door again. Right! Swiss guides used to have an idea that if you made a noise on a dangerous snow slope, you might bring an avalanche down. Just see what a good climber I was.”
The surgeon slipped up the stairs like a shadow. He heard a murmur of voices in the drawing-room and went up to the next floor. He was more careful than ever, and the voices were still murmuring in the drawing-room when he got down again to the ground floor.
“All right,” he said, and he handed the key of Anthony Quintash’s bedroom back to Inspector Grant. “You can leave all the doors open now, for all that I have to say. Quintash, of course — the usual proper dignities. He needn’t be moved from his room. I shall see the coroner this morning, but I’ll tell you something.” He drew the inspector into the dining-room and closed the door.
“The coroner will not give a certificate. You can take that from me.”
The inspector was disappointed.
“There will have to be a public inquest?” he asked.
“There will, and it won’t end with the inquest,” Buckland said grimly. He picked up the book which Anthony Quintash had been reading and tucked it under his arm. “Can I find you late tonight if I want you? At your house, eh? I’ve got the address. You’re unhappy? Yes. You hoped it was just an accident? Normal was your word. Well, you may be right. But I think we are up against as grim and strange a crime as you and I have ever known;” and with that the surgeon let himself out into the respectable area of Queen’s Gate.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 826