Trent's Last Case, E. C. Bentley [parable of the sower read online .txt] 📗

broke in sharply. Célestine’s tirade had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush. “En voilà une scène! C’est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ça, mademoiselle. Du reste, c’est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! Have some common sense! If the inspector downstairs heard you saying that kind of thing, you would get into trouble. And don’t wave your fists about so much; you might hit something. You seem,” he went on more pleasantly, as Célestine grew calmer under his authoritative eye, “to be even more glad than other people that Mr. Manderson is out of the way. I could almost suspect, Célestine, that Mr. Manderson did not take as much notice of you as you thought necessary and right.”

“A peine s’il m’avait regardé!” Célestine answered simply.

“Ça, c’est un comble!” observed Trent. “You are a nice young woman for a small tea-party, I don’t think. A star upon your birthday burned, whose fierce, serene, red, pulseless planet never yearned in heaven, Célestine. Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are a beauty!”

Célestine took this as a scarcely expected compliment. The surprise restored her balance. With a sudden flash of her eyes and teeth at Trent over her shoulder, the lady’s maid opened the door and swiftly disappeared.

Trent, left alone in the little bedroom, relieved his mind with two forcible descriptive terms in Célestine’s language, and turned to his problem. He took the pair of shoes which he had already examined, and placed them on one of the two chairs in the room, then seated himself on the other opposite to this. With his hands in his pockets he sat with eyes fixed upon those two dumb witnesses. Now and then he whistled, almost inaudibly, a few bars. It was very still in the room. A subdued twittering came from the trees through the open window. From time to time a breeze rustled in the leaves of the thick creeper about the sill. But the man in the room, his face grown hard and sombre now with his thoughts, never moved.

So he sat for the space of half an hour. Then he rose quickly to his feet. He replaced the shoes on their shelf with care, and stepped out upon the landing.

Two bedroom doors faced him on the other side of the passage. He opened that which was immediately opposite, and entered a bedroom by no means austerely tidy. Some sticks and fishing-rods stood confusedly in one corner, a pile of books in another. The housemaid’s hand had failed to give a look of order to the jumble of heterogeneous objects left on the dressing-table and on the mantelshelf—pipes, penknives, pencils, keys, golf-balls, old letters, photographs, small boxes, tins, and bottles. Two fine etchings and some water-colour sketches hung on the walls; leaning against the end of the wardrobe, unhung, were a few framed engravings. A row of shoes and boots was ranged beneath the window. Trent crossed the room and studied them intently; then he measured some of them with his tape, whistling very softly. This done, he sat on the side of the bed, and his eyes roamed gloomily about the room.

The photographs on the mantelshelf attracted him presently. He rose and examined one representing Marlowe and Manderson on horseback. Two others were views of famous peaks in the Alps. There was a faded print of three youths—one of them unmistakably his acquaintance of the haggard blue eyes—clothed in tatterdemalion soldier’s gear of the sixteenth century. Another was a portrait of a majestic old lady, slightly resembling Marlowe. Trent, mechanically taking a cigarette from an open box on the mantel-shelf, lit it and stared at the photographs. Next he turned his attention to a flat leathern case that lay by the cigarette-box.

It opened easily. A small and light revolver, of beautiful workmanship, was disclosed, with a score or so of loose cartridges. On the stock were engraved the initials “J. M.”

A step was heard on the stairs, and as Trent opened the breech and peered into the barrel of the weapon, Inspector Murch appeared at the open door of the room. “I was wondering—” he began; then stopped as he saw what the other was about. His intelligent eyes opened slightly. “Whose is the revolver, Mr. Trent?” he asked in a conversational tone.

“Evidently it belongs to the occupant of the room, Mr. Marlowe,” replied Trent with similar lightness, pointing to the initials. “I found this lying about on the mantelpiece. It seems a handy little pistol to me, and it has been very carefully cleaned, I should say, since the last time it was used. But I know little about firearms.”

“Well, I know a good deal,” rejoined the inspector quietly, taking the revolver from Trent’s outstretched hand. “It’s a bit of a speciality with me, is firearms, as I think you know, Mr. Trent. But it don’t require an expert to tell one thing.” He replaced the revolver in its case on the mantel-shelf, took out one of the cartridges, and laid it on the spacious palm of one hand; then, taking a small object from his waistcoat pocket, he laid it beside the cartridge. It was a little leaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose, and having upon it some bright new scratches.

“Is that the one?” Trent murmured as he bent over the inspector’s hand.

“That’s him,” replied Mr. Murch. “Lodged in the bone at the back of the skull. Dr Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to the local officer, who has just sent it on to me. These bright scratches you see were made by the doctor’s instruments. These other marks were made by the rifling of the barrel—a barrel like this one.” He tapped the revolver. “Same make, same calibre. There is no other that marks the bullet just like this.”

With the pistol in its case between them, Trent and the inspector looked into each other’s eyes for some moments. Trent was the first to speak. “This mystery is all wrong,” he observed. “It is insanity. The symptoms of mania are very marked. Let us see how we stand. We were not in any doubt, I believe, about Manderson having dispatched Marlowe in the car to Southampton, or about Marlowe having gone, returning late last night, many hours after the murder was committed.”

“There is no doubt whatever about all that,” said Mr. Murch, with a slight emphasis on the verb.

“And now,” pursued Trent, “we are invited by this polished and insinuating firearm to believe the following line of propositions: that Marlowe never went to Southampton; that he returned to the house in the night; that he somehow, without waking Mrs. Manderson or anybody else, got Manderson to get up, dress himself, and go out into the grounds; that he then and there shot the said Manderson with his incriminating pistol; that he carefully cleaned the said pistol, returned to the house and, again without disturbing any one, replaced it in its case in a favourable position to be found by the officers of the law; that he then withdrew and spent the rest of the day in hiding—with a large motor car; and that he turned up, feigning ignorance of the whole affair, at—what time was it?”

“A little after 9 p.m.” The inspector still stared moodily at Trent. “As you say, Mr. Trent, that is the first theory suggested by this find, and it seems wild enough—at least it would do if it didn’t fall to pieces at the very start. When the murder was done Marlowe must have been fifty to a hundred miles away. He did go to Southampton.”

“How do you know?”

“I questioned him last night, and took down his story. He arrived in Southampton about 6.30 on the Monday morning.”

“Come off” exclaimed Trent bitterly. “What do I care about his story? What do you care about his story? I want to know how you know he went to Southampton.”

Mr. Murch chuckled. “I thought I should take a rise out of you, Mr. Trent,” he said. “Well, there’s no harm in telling you. After I arrived yesterday evening, as soon as I had got the outlines of the story from Mrs. Manderson and the servants, the first thing I did was to go to the telegraph office and wire to our people in Southampton. Manderson had told his wife when he went to bed that he had changed his mind, and sent Marlowe to Southampton to get some important information from some one who was crossing by the next day’s boat. It seemed right enough, but, you see, Marlowe was the only one of the household who wasn’t under my hand, so to speak. He didn’t return in the car until later in the evening; so before thinking the matter out any further, I wired to Southampton making certain enquiries. Early this morning I got this reply.” He handed a series of telegraph slips to Trent, who read:

Person answering description in motor answering description arrived Bedford Hotel here 6.30 this morning gave name Marlowe left car hotel garage told attendant car belonged Manderson had bath and breakfast went out heard of later at docks inquiring for passenger name Harris on Havre boat inquired repeatedly until boat left at noon next heard of at hotel where he lunched about 1.15 left soon afterwards in car company’s agents inform berth was booked name Harris last week but Harris did not travel by boat Burke Inspector.

“Simple and satisfactory,” observed Mr. Murch as Trent, after twice reading the message, returned it to him. “His own story corroborated in every particular. He told me he hung about the dock for half an hour or so on the chance of Harris turning up late, then strolled back, lunched, and decided to return at once. He sent a wire to Manderson—‘Harris not turned up missed boat returning Marlowe,’ which was duly delivered here in the afternoon, and placed among the dead man’s letters. He motored back at a good rate, and arrived dog-tired. When he heard of Manderson’s death from Martin, he nearly fainted. What with that and the being without sleep for so long, he was rather a wreck when I came to interview him last night; but he was perfectly coherent.”

Trent picked up the revolver and twirled the cylinder idly for a few moments. “It was unlucky for Manderson that Marlowe left his pistol and cartridges about so carelessly,” he remarked at length, as he put it back in the case. “It was throwing temptation in somebody’s way, don’t you think?”

Mr. Murch shook his head. “There isn’t really much to lay hold of about the revolver, when you come to think. That particular make of revolver is common enough in England. It was introduced from the States. Half the people who buy a revolver today for self-defence or mischief provide themselves with that make, of that calibre. It is very reliable, and easily carried in the hip-pocket. There must be thousands of them in the possession of crooks and honest men. For instance,” continued the inspector with an air of unconcern, “Manderson himself had one, the double of this. I found it in one of the top drawers of the desk downstairs, and it’s in my overcoat pocket now.”

“Aha! so you were going to keep that little detail to yourself.”

“I was,” said the inspector; “but as you’ve found one revolver, you may as well know about the other. As I say, neither of them may do us any good. The people in the house—”

Both men started, and the inspector checked his speech abruptly, as the half-closed door of the bedroom was slowly pushed open, and a man stood in the doorway. His eyes turned from the pistol in its open case to the faces of Trent and the inspector. They, who had not heard a sound to herald this entrance, simultaneously looked at his long, narrow feet. He wore rubber-soled tennis shoes.

“You must be Mr. Bunner,” said Trent.