A Case in Camera

by Oliver Onions

  "Fire away," he had said.

  "Well, sir, to begin with, would you be so kind as to tell me in yourown words exactly what you saw on the roof this morning?"

  "Certainly," Monty had replied.

  And he had launched out.

  From the point of view of the things he omitted I can only describe hisperformance as brilliant. Camouflage was certainly Monty's war-job. Notone single word was there about bullet-holes, cartridge-cases orpistols. Had there been a polar bear or a pterodactyl on the roof itmight have been worth mentioning, but a pistol--no.

  My only fear was lest he should be so pleased with his own performanceas to undo it again out of sheer satisfaction presently.

  "Thank you very much indeed, sir," said the Inspector. "I asked you foryour own words and you've given them. Now I wonder if I might be allowedto ask you one or two questions?"

  "Fire away," said Monty again.

  But here the Inspector himself had seemed to be in some slightdifficulty. Apparently for some reason he wasn't very anxious to speakof pistols either. Polar bears or pterodactyls, yes; but not pistols. Ihave since thought that, as a man of some penetration, he also mighthave had his private opinion about Mr. Harry Westbury, and thought itbest to act on anything Westbury said with caution.

  Nevertheless, the series of questions that had followed had all been inthe very close neighborhood of pistols, so to speak. I itemize whatstruck me as being their real, if unuttered trend.

  "About this man that's dead, Mr. Rooke. You saw his face, of course?"

  (_Item: Had Maxwell been shot through the head?_)

  Yes, Monty had seen his face, but so, he ventured to remind theInspector, had he himself.

  "Well, say I had other things to attend to and didn't particularlynotice. You'd say he was--pretty bad?"

  (_Item: So bad that there might have been a little hole on one side ofhis head and a big one on the other without your noticing it?_)

  "Rotten," said Monty with an unaffected shiver.

  "Bleeding much?"

  (_Item: Or anything else scattered about?_)

  "No."

  "Clothes singed?"

  (_Item: If not through the head, perhaps through the body?_)

  "Yes. Badly. Bits of the parachute too."

  "From where you were on the roof lots of people could see you?"

  (_Item: If you'd done anything you'd no business to do, for instance?_)

  "Any number of people I should say," Monty had replied rather faintly."But I don't see what you're getting at. You were up there too. What isit all about?"

  And here Philip had seen fit to intervene, rather quickly.

  "Yes, that's what I'm wondering, Inspector. Is it a proper question toask? And is it proper to ask you if you'd like a glass of whisky, by theway?"

  The narrow eyes had twinkled. "Not supposed to, sir----"

  "Right. Say when----"

  And so our healths had been drunk.

  "You see," Philip had resumed presently, "I understood from Mr. Mackwiththis morning--you knew that was Mr. Mackwith, K.C., you were talking to,didn't you--the tall man in morning-coat and spats?"

  "Was he indeed, sir?"

  "Yes, that was Mr. Mackwith, and I understood from him that you had saidyou had all the evidence you wanted?"

  The Inspector had been sitting with his cap on his knees and the glassof whisky inside it like a flowerpot in a vase. He had ruminated.

  "Well," he had said suddenly, "the fact is that that was this morning,gentlemen. Since then a certain piece of information's been laid inconnection with this affair. I'm not at liberty to say what thisinformation is, nor whether we shall act on it or not, but the Law's forthe protection of us all, gentlemen, and I take it all of us wants to doour best to maintain it. Even if it meant the inconvenience," he addeddeliberately, "of a warrant for the search of these premises."

  Here the sorely-tried Philip had given a wild laugh.

  "Search these premises! Search 'em now if you like. But in God's namewhat for?"

  "Accidents aren't always what they seem, sir," Inspector Webster hadreplied.

  IX

  And now (to come out of this winding of the story into the open again)here was Audrey Cunningham with dress-baskets and a wardrobe for whichthe most suitable place was certainly the cellar.

  "All right," Esdaile said suddenly. "Let's do it now. Monty and I canmanage it if you'll hold a candle for us."

  And he lighted and put into Audrey's hand the same candle he had himselfused when he had gone down into the cellar to fetch the orange curacao.

  He was still kicking himself that he had made such a fuss. Now at lasthe saw that, although only a trifle stood between revelation and perfectconcealment, this trifle was as firm as the rocks of which the mountainsare built. A short flight of steepish stone steps, with a rather awkwardright-angled bend half-way down, descended ten feet or so, and there wasno cellar door. You stepped from the bottom step, which was a littleworn and concave, and there you were, with nothing more to do but to putthe wardrobe and the dress-baskets inside and to come out again.

  The wardrobe was at the turn of the stairs. Mrs. Cunningham stood justabove it, holding the candle for the two men to see.

  "Gently--don't knock it," muttered Philip, "and mind the edge of thesteps--they're pretty old----"

  The wardrobe cleared the bend, and Audrey Cunningham followed it intothe cellar.

  It was only natural that she should look with some curiosity at theplace in which Philip Esdaile had spent that unaccounted-for half houron the morning of the day before. I did the same thing myself at alater stage. But all that she saw was the most ordinary of cellars.Hubbard himself, who seemed to have cellar-on-the-brain, would havefound nothing remarkable in it. This is all that was to be seen:--

  A roomy, gloomy, clammy place, with old plastered walls, and neitherdoor nor window of any kind nor other means of entry than that they hadjust used. Its air hit skin and nostrils like that of a grave. The lightof the single candle seemed lost in its obscurity. When Audrey held thecandle up above her head a couple of heavy beams could be seen,necessary for the support of the largish area of the studio floor; whenshe held it to one side it showed in a corner a couple of gas-meterswith the usual pipes, and underneath them the improvised rack in whichEsdaile kept his modest stock of wine. When she held it to the otherside its light hardly reached the farther wall, but wavered over the dimobjects that half-filled the floor-space. These were merely thefurniture for which Esdaile had no present use, and consisted of a largecouch covered with a dingy dust-sheet, a few oddments of chairs, anumber of packing-cases, and in fact the usual miscellaneous collectionof household lumber that one day seems hardly worth keeping and the nextlooks just too good to throw away. Nearest to hand on the wine-rackstood the bottle of curacao, just where Esdaile himself had replaced it.And that was all.

  "Well, where will you have it, Audrey?" said Philip. "What about over bythe sofa there?"

  Mrs. Cunningham was once more holding the candle over her head. Anyyoung woman's face by candlelight always seems singularly attractive tome, especially if she is a dark-eyed woman, and she was a slight andgraceful thing to have endured so much. Had Joan been holding thatcandle up she would have given you the impression of a statue, but Mrs.Cunningham was just the opposite--all warm and fleeting and impermanentcharm, a creature depending on the varying accidents of color, even whenthat color was only the sooty black of her home-made dress, thecandlelight on her face and the tiny reflections in her large andlustrous eyes.

  Suddenly she gave a shiver and a nervous laugh.

  "I don't think I should like to be shut in here alone," she said.

  "Why not?" Philip asked.

  But the "why not" hardly needed saying, with that same candlestick inher hand and, as she once more moved it, that same jar of curacaoseeming to advance a little out of the shadows. These things brought theshock and dread of that other morning all too plainly before
her again.It was within these chill sweating walls that Philip Esdaile had donethe "wool gathering" he had spoken of. What wool? She saw none. Thenwhy, up to that very moment almost, had he shuffled so? Why had heseemed so anxious that the wardrobe should be placed anywhere ratherthan in the place where they now stood? Here she was. She could notimagine any kind of cellar, however earthy and tomblike, that so changedits nature or properties that at one moment it must be jealously guardedand the next thrown open for her to look as much as she pleased. She wasfree to look. Monty also was wandering about in the farther cornerthere, as greedy for knowledge as she. The only check on her freedom wasthat she felt that Philip at the same time was covertly watching her.

  Then all at once something seemed to give way in her. She put the candledown on one end of the sheeted sofa and turned to Philip. Her hands wereclasped at her breast, the honeysuckle fingers interworking.

  "Oh, please tell me!" she begged. "What is it makes this place so queer?There's something--I can feel it--like eyes on me--I've a being-watchedsort of feeling, as if something was wrong----"

  Philip took up the candle. "Then let's go upstairs," he said promptly.

  But something almost like hysteria seemed to take her. Her voice rose.

  "No, I want to know! I don't feel I can come to this house unless Iknow! I don't want to come here if it's going to be like this! You don'twant to tell me--I know you could if you wanted! Oh, I wish Mollie washere!"

  "Come upstairs," Philip repeated gently. "Bring her up, Monty."

  But she went on with even less and less control.

  "Oh, I think it's cruel! You're all cruel! You never think of us! Joan'sto go on being told nothing, and Mollie's kept in the dark--oh, I knowshe is--and I'm made to feel that I'm not wanted here.... I want to goback to Oakley Street, Monty. I can't stop here. I won't. Everything'sbeen wrong ever since that accident. It's horrible. I'm going away. Idare say they'll let me keep my room on; if they won't I must findsomewhere else. Please take me away."

  Upstairs, she became a little calmer, but she still wanted to be takenaway. Monty was soothing her where she sat on the little Empire sofa,and Philip's face was distressed as he walked up and down. Then, thoughthere was little heart in his attempt, he tried gently to laugh her outof it.

  "But of course you'll go back to Oakley Street," he said. "You're therefor three days yet, aren't you? It will be all right by that time. It'sjust a little bit of a complication we're in. It won't be long now. Thenyou'll get married and come along here, of course. Pull yourselftogether, my dear. It's all right. There, you're feeling better now,aren't you?"

  He felt a perfect brute, he says, but he didn't see what else he coulddo. Even if he had had the right, he doesn't see that it would havehelped to tell her that, after tying herself up with a drunkard, she wasnow going to make a second experiment with a man who had no more sensethan to go and get himself mixed up in an affair that might bring thepolice round at any moment. He had no such right. Just as before he hadbeen unable to explain to Hubbard and myself until he had spoken toMonty, so now he couldn't take any further step till he had seen ChummySmith. It might be hard on Joan and Mrs. Cunningham, not to mention hiswife, but what other course could he take? When you set about to burkeinquiry into a capital Case the fewer people you take into yourconfidence the better. Besides, who knew yet that it was a capital Case?Suppose twenty words from Chummy should somehow explain it all? Supposesome ridiculous mistake had been made? Suppose our elaborate pretensesto ourselves were in reality no pretenses at all, and that the thingreally was what it seemed--just an aeroplane accident with nothing moreto be said about it?

  Yes, in spite of all the evidence, he would have been glad at the momentto have believed that.

  "Look here, Audrey," he said at last, "I feel absolutely rotten aboutall this. I know I'm in the way and I oughtn't to be here at all. When Iturned over this place to you I hadn't the faintest idea of stopping onlike this. I'd go straight into rooms now if I could, but that wouldn'tdo. Don't ask me why, there's a dear. For one thing I've got to seeSmith. They tell me he can be seen in a few days now. Then I'll juststop for the wedding and clear right out afterwards. Whats the matterwith that?"

  The matter with that appeared in Audrey Cunningham's next words, whichshe spoke slowly and with her eyes on the floor.

  "It isn't just you. It's Monty as well. He could tell me if he wanted,but he doesn't want. I don't think I want to get married," she said.

  X

  The letter she wrote crossed Mollie Esdaile's Sunday morning one. It waswritten on Saturday, and missed the Santon Sunday morning delivery by apost, arriving there on Monday.

  "Please don't think me ungrateful," Mollie read, "but all sorts ofthings seem to be happening, and I'm so afraid of hurting you after allyour kindness. Perhaps I'd better come to the point straight away andexplain afterwards. I don't think I can accept your offer of LennoxStreet for Monty and myself after all."

  Mollie was standing in the porch of the cottage as she read this. It wasimmediately after breakfast. The postman could be seen in the middledistance, climbing the stile on his way to Newsome's. Joan wasupstairs, getting the children ready for the shore.

  Mollie thrust the letter into her breast. If Joan knew that the postmanhad been she would come flying downstairs, and in any case Mollie didnot wish to be seen reading a letter. This from Audrey Cunningham wasall there was for her. For Joan there was nothing at all.

  Quietly she slipped into the cottage, picked up a floppy printsunbonnet, and slipped noiselessly out again. The back of the cottagehad no windows. Like a malefactor she skirted the palings of the littlefront garden and gained the security of the back. But even this was notfar enough. The path up the field led to the Coast-guard Station, and,with one furtive glance behind her, she took it. She would finishAudrey's letter there.

  Mollie Esdaile is still a young woman, but she looked every minute ofher age that morning. She had not slept. The room adjoining hers wasJoan's, and the wall between them might just as well not have existed,so little a barrier had it been to the restless mental ticking of thegirl on the other side of it. A soft and tortured toss, then thecreaking of the bed, then the sounds of Joan moving about her room; thestriking of a match, a long silence, and then the creaking of the bedagain--all night it had gone on. Mollie had not gone to her; what hadthere been to do or say? A hundred times she had promised, as if it hadlain in her power, that there should be a letter in the morning. Nonehad come. She felt a coward. She simply could not face Joan.

  There was a merry morning wind, that ruffled the fleeces on the sheep'sbacks and set the halliards of the Coast-guard's mast cracking andrattling. Mollie tied the strings of the print sunbonnet under her plumpchin and walked with her head a little averted in order to see round theprint blinker. Beyond the waving grass-heads the sea appeared, a widesilver glitter. You cannot see the shore from that hill. The sands andthe mile-long rollers lie far below that cliff's edge over which the menare let down by ropes to gather the eggs from the awful ledges.

  Then, in the little sunken way that runs down to the Rocket-house, shesat down and took out the letter again.

  "I don't think I can accept your offer of Lennox Street for Monty and myself after all. Our engagement is not definitely broken off, but I can't stand things as they are, and am back in Oakley Street again. They say I can stay on, but I may have to pay a little more. Monty is still at the studio."

  "I _knew_ it!" broke from Mollie with soft conviction. "I knew that ifPhilip stayed that wedding would be put off! I told him so----"

  Frowning, she turned to the letter again.

  "I'm trying to think it all over quite calmly," the letter went on. "Perhaps it isn't Monty after all. Perhaps it is just that men worry me. I don't know really whether I'm a man's sort of woman. Their ways seem so queer and roundabout to me. Lots of them don't seem fair. I don't want to marry and make a mess of it a second ti
me, and I don't think Monty sees this as I do. Of course, I don't want him to tell me every little thing he does and everywhere he goes or anything of that kind, but I hate being kept in the dark as I know I am being. It all seemed to start with that horrible accident. Nothing's been the same since. Of course, they've told me about Mr. Smith and poor darling Joan, but if it was only that I could understand it. I know there's something else. I'm afraid I'd rather a breakdown yesterday, when all three of us were in your cellar putting that wardrobe of mine away. There's something uncanny about that place. Monty thinks so too, but says he doesn't know what it is any more than I do. But there is something he does know and won't tell. And now it's all over Chelsea that something not quite right has happened. Mrs. Cook hinted at it this morning when she brought my milk up, and she said the milkman had told her. I really think that if the milkman knows I might be told. The fact is that just at present I don't feel much like men and marriage. You'll understand this, because I've told you heaps of things I should never dream of telling Monty----"

  Mollie's gaze wandered to the twinkling silver sea. She remembered someof those things that would never be told to Monty. It was perhaps notaltogether fair to Monty that he should have to restore the whole of thecredit of his sex that the late George Cunningham had so let down, butshe knew how Audrey felt about it. Men _were_ trials sometimes. "Queerand roundabout?" Mollie not seldom called them infants outright. Suchlittle things pleased them, such even less things caused them to digtheir hoofs into the ground and refuse to budge. Whatever Philip'stremendous reason for remaining in Chelsea might be, Mollie brushed itaside as a trifle compared with Audrey's marriage. For a moment shealmost forgot Joan's distress. Philip, with his curacao andcandle-sticks, postpone Audrey's wedding? It was nonsense--not to bethought of. Mollie wouldn't hear of it. All this mystification should beput a stop to if she had to do it herself. Audrey, to be sure, was ahighly-strung creature; lying there among the warm grasses and with thewind ruffling the silver sea, Mollie could afford not to take tooseriously Audrey's broken sentences about uncanny cellars and whisperedhints that ran all over Chelsea; but it seemed to her that there weretwo birds to be killed with one stone. If she were to go up to town shewould be able to ascertain for herself what this Audrey-Monty troublewas all about, and also why newspapers were to be kept from Joan and howit was that Joan had first heard of Chummy's crash from Chummy himself.