Max Carrados, Ernest Bramah [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

spoken of your brother.”

“I have two. Bob, the younger, is in Mexico,” she explained; “and Willie in Canada with an engineering firm. They did not get on very well with papa and they went away.”

It did not require preternatural observation to deduce that the late William Whitmarsh had been “a little difficult.”

“When Uncle Frank died, less than six months ago, Frank came back to High Barn from South Africa. He had been away about two years.”

“Possibly he did not get on well with his father?”

Madeline smiled sadly.

“I am afraid that no two Whitmarsh men ever did get on well together,” she admitted.

“Your father and young Frank, for instance?”

“Their lands adjoin; there were always quarrels and disputes,” she replied. “Then Frank had his father’s grievance over again.”

“He wished to mine?”

“Yes. He told me that he had had experience of coal in Natal.”

“There was no absolute ostracism between you then? You were to some extent friends?”

“Scarcely.” She appeared to reflect. “Acquaintances.... We met occasionally, of course, at people’s houses.”

“You did not visit High Barn?”

“Oh no.”

“But there was no particular reason why you should not?”

“Why do you ask me that?” she demanded quickly, and in a tone that was quite incompatible with the simple inquiry. Then, recognizing the fact, she added, with shamefaced penitence: “I beg your pardon, Mr Carrados. I am afraid that my nerves have gone to pieces since Thursday. The most ordinary things affect me inexplicably.”

“That is a common experience in such circumstances,” said Carrados reassuringly. “Where were you at the time of the tragedy?”

“I was in my bedroom, which is rather high up, changing. I had driven down to the village, to give an order, and had just returned. Mrs Lawrence told me that she had been afraid there might be quarrelling, but no one would ever have dreamed of this, and then came a loud shot and then, after a few seconds, another not so loud, and we rushed to the door—she and Mary first—and everything was absolutely still.”

“A loud shot and then another not so loud?”

“Yes; I noticed that even at the time. I happened to speak to Mrs Lawrence of it afterwards and then she also remembered that it had been like that.”

Afterwards Carrados often recalled with grim pleasantry that the two absolutely vital points in the fabric of circumstantial evidence that was to exonerate her father and fasten the guilt upon another had dropped from the girl’s lips utterly by chance. But at the moment the facts themselves monopolized his attention.

“You are not disappointed that I can tell you so little?” she asked timidly.

“Scarcely,” he replied. “A suicide who could not have had the weapon he dies by, a victim who is miraculously preserved by an opportune watch, and two shots from the same pistol that differ materially in volume, all taken together do not admit of disappointment.”

“I am very stupid,” she said. “I do not seem able to follow things. But you will come and clear my father’s name?”

“I will come,” he replied. “Beyond that who shall prophesy?”

It had been arranged between them that the girl should return at once, while Carrados would travel down to Great Tilling late that same afternoon and put up at the local fishing inn. In the evening he would call at Barony, where Madeline would accept him as a distant connexion of the family. The arrangement was only for the benefit of the domestics and any casual visitor who might be present, for there was no possibility of a near relation being in attendance. Nor was there any appreciable danger of either his name or person being recognized in those parts, a consideration that seemed to have some weight with the girl, for, more than once, she entreated him not to disclose to anyone his real business there until he had arrived at a definite conclusion.

It was nine o’clock, but still just light enough to distinguish the prominent features of the landscape, when Carrados, accompanied by Parkinson, reached Barony. The house, as described by the man-servant, was a substantial grey stone building, very plain, very square, very exposed to the four winds. It had not even a porch to break the flat surface, and here and there in the line of its three solid storeys a window had been built up by some frugal, tax-evading Whitmarsh of a hundred years ago.

“Sombre enough,” commented Carrados, “but the connexion between environment and crime is not yet capable of analysis. We get murders in brand-new suburban villas and the virtues, light-heartedness and good-fellowship, in moated granges. What should you say about it, eh, Parkinson?”

“I should say it was damp, sir,” observed Parkinson, with his wisest air.

Madeline Whitmarsh herself opened the door. She took them down the long flagged hall to the dining-room, a cheerful enough apartment whatever its exterior might forebode.

“I am glad you have come now, Mr Carrados,” she said hurriedly, when the door was closed. “Sergeant Brewster is here from Stinbridge police station to make some arrangements for the inquest. It is to be held at the schools here on Monday. He says that he must take the revolver with him to produce. Do you want to see it before he goes?”

“I should like to,” replied Carrados.

“Will you come into papa’s room then? He is there.”

The sergeant was at the table, making notes in his pocket-book, when they entered. An old-fashioned revolver lay before him.

“This gentleman has come a long way on hearing about poor papa,” said the girl. “He would like to see the revolver before you take it, Mr Brewster.”

“Good-evening, sir,” said Brewster. “It’s a bad business that brings us here.”

Carrados “looked” round the room and returned the policeman’s greeting. Madeline hesitated for a moment, and then, picking up the weapon, put it into the blind man’s hand.

“A bit out of date, sir,” remarked Brewster, with a nod. “But in good order yet, I find.”

“An early French make, I should say; one of Lefaucheux’s probably,” said Carrados. “You have removed the cartridges?”

“Why, yes,” admitted the sergeant, producing a matchbox from his pocket. “They’re pin-fire, you see, and I’m not too fond of carrying a thing like that loaded in my pocket as I’m riding a young horse.”

“Quite so,” agreed Carrados, fingering the cartridges. “I wonder if you happened to mark the order of these in the chambers?”

“That was scarcely necessary, sir. Two, together, had been fired; the other four had not.”

“I once knew a case—possibly I read of it—where a pack of cards lay on the floor. It was a murder case and the guilt or innocence of an accused man depended on the relative positions of the fifty-first and fifty-second cards.”

“I think you must have read of that, sir,” replied Brewster, endeavouring to implicate first Miss Whitmarsh and then Parkinson in his meaning smile. “However, this is straightforward enough.”

“Then, of course, you have not thought it worth while to look for anything else?”

“I have noted all the facts that have any bearing on the case. Were you referring to any particular point, sir?”

“I was only wondering,” suggested Carrados, with apologetic mildness, “whether you, or anyone, had happened to find a wad lying about anywhere.”

The sergeant stroked his well-kept moustache to hide the smile that insisted, however, on escaping through his eyes.

“Scarcely, sir,” he replied, with fine irony. “Bulleted revolver cartridges contain no wad. You are thinking of a shot-gun, sir.”

“Oh,” said Carrados, bending over the spent cartridge he was examining, “that settles it, of course.”

“I think so, sir,” assented the sergeant, courteously but with a quiet enjoyment of the situation. “Well, miss, I’ll be getting back now. I think I have everything I want.”

“You will excuse me a few minutes?” said Miss Whitmarsh, and the two callers were left alone.

“Parkinson,” said Carrados softly, as the door closed, “look round on the floor. There is no wad lying within sight?”

“No, sir.”

“Then take the lamp and look behind things. But if you find one don’t disturb it.”

For a minute strange and gigantic shadows chased one another across the ceiling as Parkinson moved the table-lamp to and fro behind the furniture. The man to whom blazing sunlight and the deepest shade were as one sat with his eyes fixed tranquilly on the unseen wall before him.

“There is a little pellet of paper here behind the couch, sir,” announced Parkinson.

“Then put the lamp back.”

Together they drew the cumbrous old piece of furniture from the wall and Carrados went behind. On hands and knees, with his face almost to the floor, he appeared to be studying even the dust that lay there. Then with a light, unerring touch he carefully picked up the thing that Parkinson had found. Very gently he unrolled it, using his long, delicate fingers so skilfully that even at the end the particles of dust still clung here and there to the surface of the paper.

“What do you make of it, Parkinson?”

Parkinson submitted it to the judgment of a single sense.

“A cigarette-paper to all appearance, sir. I can’t say it’s a kind that I’ve had experience of. It doesn’t seem to have any distinct watermark but there is a half-inch of glossy paper along one edge.”

“Amber-tipped. Yes?”

“Another edge is a little uneven; it appears to have been cut.”

“This edge opposite the mouthpiece. Yes, yes.”

“Patches are blackened, and little holes—like pinpricks—burned through. In places it is scorched brown.”

“Anything else?”

“I hope there is nothing I have failed to observe, sir,” said Parkinson, after a pause.

Carrados’s reply was a strangely irrelevant question.

“What is the ceiling made of?” he demanded.

“Oak boards, sir, with a heavy cross-beam.”

“Are there any plaster figures about the room?”

“No, sir.”

“Or anything at all that is whitewashed?”

“Nothing, sir.”

Carrados raised the scrap of tissue paper to his nose again, and for the second time he touched it with his tongue.

“Very interesting, Parkinson,” he remarked, and Parkinson’s responsive “Yes, sir” was a model of discreet acquiescence.

“I am sorry that I had to leave you,” said Miss Whitmarsh, returning, “but Mrs Lawrence is out and my father made a practice of offering everyone refreshment.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Carrados. “We have not been idle. I came from London to pick up a scrap of paper, lying on the floor of this room. Well, here it is.” He rolled the tissue into a pellet again and held it before her eyes.

“The wad!” she exclaimed eagerly. “Oh, that proves that I was right?”

“Scarcely ‘proves,’ Miss Whitmarsh.”

“But it shows that one of the shots was a blank charge, as you suggested this morning might have been the case.”

“Hardly even that.”

“What then?” she demanded, with her large dark eyes fixed in a curious fascination on his inscrutable face.

“That behind the couch we have found this scrap of powder-singed paper.”

There was a moment’s silence. The girl turned away her head.

“I am afraid that I am a little disappointed,” she murmured.

“Perhaps better now than later. I wished to warn you that we must prove every inch of ground. Does your cousin Frank smoke cigarettes?”

“I cannot say, Mr Carrados. You see ... I knew so little of him.”

“Quite so; there was just the chance. And your father?”

“He never did. He despised them.”

“That is all I need ask you now. What time to-morrow shall I find you in, Miss Whitmarsh? It is Sunday, you remember.”

“At any time. The curiosity I inspire doesn’t tempt me to encounter my friends, I can assure you,” she replied, her face hardening at the recollection. “But ... Mr Carrados——”

“Yes?”

“The inquest is on Monday afternoon.... I had a sort of desperate faith that you would be able to vindicate papa.”

“By the time of the inquest, you mean?”

“Yes. Otherwise——”

“The verdict of a coroner’s jury means nothing, Miss Whitmarsh. It is the merest formality.”

“It means a very great deal to me. It haunts and oppresses me. If they say—if it goes out—that papa is guilty of the attempt of murder, and of suicide, I shall never raise my head again.”

Carrados had no desire to prolong a futile discussion.

“Good-night,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Good-night, Mr Carrados.” She detained him a moment, her voice vibrant with quiet feeling. “I already owe you more than I can ever hope to express. Your wonderful kindness——”

“A strange case,” moralized Carrados, as they walked out of the quadrangular yard into the silent lane. “Instructive, but I more than half wish I’d never heard of it.”

“The young lady seems grateful, sir,” Parkinson ventured to suggest.

“The young lady is the case, Parkinson,” replied his master rather grimly.

A few score yards farther on a swing gate gave access to a field-path, cutting off the corner that the high road made with the narrow lane. This was their way, but instead of following the brown line of trodden earth Carrados turned to the left and indicated the line of buildings that formed the back of one side of the quadrangle they had passed through.

“We will investigate here,” he said. “Can you see a way in?”

Most of the buildings opened on to the yard, but at one end of the range Parkinson discovered a door, secured only by a wooden latch. The place beyond was impenetrably dark, but the sweet, dusty smell of hay, and, from beyond, the