The Middle Temple Murder, J. S. Fletcher [fb2 epub reader TXT] 📗
- Author: J. S. Fletcher
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“All the same,” he said meditatively as Breton fitted a key to the latch, “he’s not there, Breton. He’s—off!”
“Good heavens, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” exclaimed Breton, opening the door and walking into the lobby. “Off! Where on earth should he be off to, when he’s made an appointment with you for eleven, and—Hullo!”
He had opened the door of the room in which Spargo had met Elphick and Miss Baylis the night before, and was walking in when he pulled himself up on the threshold with a sharp exclamation.
“Good God!” he cried. “What—what’s all this?”
Spargo quietly looked over Breton’s shoulder. It needed but one quick glance to show him that much had happened in that quiet room since he had quitted it the night before. There stood the easy-chair in which he had left Elphick; there, close by it, but pushed aside, as if by a hurried hand, was the little table with its spirit case, its syphon, its glass, in which stale liquid still stood; there was the novel, turned face downwards; there, upon the novel, was Elphick’s pipe. But the rest of the room was in dire confusion. The drawers of a bureau had been pulled open and never put back; papers of all descriptions, old legal-looking documents, old letters, littered the centre-table and the floor; in one corner of the room a black japanned box had been opened, its contents strewn about, and the lid left yawning. And in the grate, and all over the fender there were masses of burned and charred paper; it was only too evident that the occupant of the chambers, wherever he might have disappeared to, had spent some time before his disappearance in destroying a considerable heap of documents and papers, and in such haste that he had not troubled to put matters straight before he went.
Breton stared at this scene for a moment in utter consternation. Then he made one step towards an inner door, and Spargo followed him. Together they entered an inner room—a sleeping apartment. There was no one in it, but there were evidences that Elphick had just as hastily packed a bag as he had destroyed his papers. The clothes which Spargo had seen him wearing the previous evening were flung here, there, everywhere: the gorgeous smoking-jacket was tossed unceremoniously in one corner, a dress-shirt, in the bosom of which valuable studs still glistened, in another. One or two suitcases lay about, as if they had been examined and discarded in favour of something more portable; here, too, drawers, revealing stocks of linen and underclothing, had been torn open and left open; open, too, swung the door of a wardrobe, revealing a quantity of expensive clothing. And Spargo, looking around him, seemed to see all that had happened—the hasty, almost frantic search for and tearing up and burning of papers; the hurried change of clothing, of packing necessaries into a bag that could be carried, and then the flight the getting away, the——
“What on earth does all this mean?” exclaimed Breton. “What is it, Spargo?”
“I mean exactly what I told you,” answered Spargo. “He’s off! Off!”
“Off! But why off? What—my guardian!—as quiet an old gentleman as there is in the Temple—off!” cried Breton. “For what reason, eh? It isn’t—good God, Spargo, it isn’t because of anything you said to him last night!”
“I should say it is precisely because of something that I said to him last night,” replied Spargo. “I was a fool ever to let him out of my sight.”
Breton turned on his companion and gasped.
“Out—of—your—sight!” he exclaimed. “Why—why—you don’t mean to say that Mr. Elphick has anything to do with this Marbury affair? For God’s sake, Spargo——”
Spargo laid a hand on the young barrister’s shoulder.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to hear a good deal, Breton,” he said. “I was going to talk to you today in any case. You see——”
Before Spargo could say more a woman, bearing the implements which denote the charwoman’s profession, entered the room and immediately cried out at what she saw. Breton turned on her almost savagely.
“Here, you!” he said. “Have you seen anything of Mr. Elphick this morning?”
The charwoman rolled her eyes and lifted her hands.
“Me, sir! Not a sign of him, sir. Which I never comes here much before half-past eleven, sir, Mr. Elphick being then gone out to his breakfast. I see him yesterday morning, sir, which he was then in his usual state of good health, sir, if any thing’s the matter with him now. No, sir, I ain’t seen nothing of him.”
Breton let out another exclamation of impatience.
“You’d better leave all this,” he said. “Mr. Elphick’s evidently gone away in a hurry, and you mustn’t touch anything here until he comes back. I’m going to lock up the chambers: if you’ve a key of them give it to me.”
The charwoman handed over a key, gave another astonished look at the rooms, and vanished, muttering, and Breton turned to Spargo.
“What do you say?” he demanded. “I must hear—a good deal! Out with it, then, man, for Heaven’s sake.”
But Spargo shook his head.
“Not now, Breton,” he answered. “Presently, I tell you, for Miss Aylmore’s sake, and your own, the first thing to do is to get on your guardian’s track. We must—must, I say!—and at once.”
Breton stood staring at Spargo for a moment as if he could not credit his own senses. Then he suddenly motioned Spargo out of the room.
“Come on!” he said. “I know who’ll know where he is, if anybody does.”
“Who, then?” asked Spargo, as they hurried out.
“Cardlestone,” answered Breton, grimly. “Cardlestone!”
REVELATION
There was as much bright sunshine that morning in Middle Temple Lane as ever manages to get into it, and some of it was shining in the entry into which Spargo and Breton presently hurried. Full of haste as he was Breton paused at the foot of the stair. He looked down at the floor and at the wall at its side.
“Wasn’t it there?” he said in a low voice, pointing at the place he looked at. “Wasn’t it there, Spargo, just there, that Marbury, or, rather, Maitland, was found?”
“It was just there,” answered Spargo.
“You saw him?”
“I saw him.”
“Soon—afterwards?”
“Immediately after he was found. You know all that, Breton. Why do you ask now?”
Breton, who was still staring at the place on which he had fixed his eyes on walking into the entry, shook his head.
“Don’t know,” he answered. “I—but come on—let’s see if old Cardlestone can tell us anything.”
There was another charwoman, armed with pails and buckets, outside Cardlestone’s door, into which she was just fitting a key. It was evident to Spargo that she knew Breton, for she smiled at him as she opened the door.
“I don’t think Mr. Cardlestone’ll be in, sir,” she said. “He’s generally gone out to breakfast at this time—him and Mr. Elphick goes together.”
“Just see,” said Breton. “I want to see him if he is in.” The charwoman entered the chambers and immediately screamed.
“Quite so,” remarked Spargo. “That’s what I expected to hear. Cardlestone, you see, Breton, is also—off!”
Breton made no reply. He rushed after the charwoman, with Spargo in close attendance.
“Good God—another!” groaned Breton.
If the confusion in Elphick’s rooms had been bad, that in Cardlestone’s chambers was worse. Here again all the features of the previous scene were repeated—drawers had been torn open, papers thrown about; the hearth was choked with light ashes; everything was at sixes and sevens. An open door leading into an inner room showed that Cardlestone, like Elphick, had hastily packed a bag; like Elphick had changed his clothes, and had thrown his discarded garments anywhere, into any corner. Spargo began to realize what had taken place—Elphick, having made his own preparations for flight, had come to Cardlestone, and had expedited him, and they had fled together. But—why?
The charwoman sat down in the nearest chair and began to moan and sob; Breton strode forward, across the heaps of papers and miscellaneous objects tossed aside in that hurried search and clearing up, into the inner room. And Spargo, looking about him, suddenly caught sight of something lying on the floor at which he made a sharp clutch. He had just secured it and hurried it into his pocket when Breton came back.
“I don’t know what all this means, Spargo,” he said, almost wearily. “I suppose you do. Look here,” he went on, turning to the charwoman, “stop that row—that’ll do no good, you know. I suppose Mr. Cardlestone’s gone away in a hurry. You’d better—what had she better do, Spargo?”
“Leave things exactly as they are, lock up the chambers, and as you’re a friend of Mr. Cardlestone’s give you the key,” answered Spargo, with a significant glance. “Do that, now, and let’s go—I’ve something to do.”
Once outside, with the startled charwoman gone away, Spargo turned to Breton.
“I’ll tell you all I know, presently, Breton,” he said. “In the meantime, I want to find out if the lodge porter saw Mr. Elphick or Mr. Cardlestone leave. I must know where they’ve gone—if I can only find out. I don’t suppose they went on foot.”
“All right,” responded Breton, gloomily. “We’ll go and ask. But this is all beyond me. You don’t mean to say——”
“Wait a while,” answered Spargo. “One thing at once,” he continued, as they walked up Middle Temple Lane. “This is the first thing. You ask the porter if he’s seen anything of either of them—he knows you.”
The porter, duly interrogated, responded with alacrity.
“Anything of Mr. Elphick this morning, Mr. Breton?” he answered. “Certainly, sir. I got a taxi for Mr. Elphick and Mr. Cardlestone early this morning—soon after seven. Mr. Elphick said they were going to Paris, and they’d breakfast at Charing Cross before the train left.”
“Say when they’d be back?” asked Breton, with an assumption of entire carelessness.
“No, sir, Mr. Elphick didn’t,” answered the porter. “But I should say they wouldn’t be long because they’d only got small suit-cases with them—such as they’d put a day or two’s things in, sir.”
“All right,” said Breton. He turned away towards Spargo who had already moved off. “What next?” he asked. “Charing Cross, I suppose!”
Spargo smiled and shook his head.
“No,” he answered. “I’ve no use for Charing Cross. They haven’t gone to Paris. That was all a blind. For the present let’s go back to your chambers. Then I’ll talk to you.”
Once within Breton’s inner room, with the door closed upon them, Spargo dropped into an easy-chair and looked at the young barrister with earnest attention.
“Breton!” he said. “I believe we’re coming in sight of land. You want to save your prospective father-in-law, don’t you?”
“Of course!” growled Breton. “That goes without saying. But——”
“But you may have to make some sacrifices in order to do it,” said Spargo. “You see——”
“Sacrifices!” exclaimed Breton. “What——”
“You may have to sacrifice some ideas—you may find that you’ll not be able to think as well of some people in the future as you have thought of them in the past. For instance—Mr. Elphick.”
Breton’s face grew dark.
“Speak plainly, Spargo!” he said. “It’s best with me.”
“Very well,” replied Spargo. “Mr. Elphick, then, is in some way connected with this affair.”
“You mean the—murder?”
“I mean the murder. So is Cardlestone. Of that I’m now dead certain. And that’s why they’re off. I startled Elphick last night. It’s evident that he immediately communicated with Cardlestone, and that they made a rapid exit. Why?”
“Why? That’s what I’m asking you! Why? Why? Why?”
“Because they’re afraid of something coming out. And being afraid, their first instinct is to—run. They’ve run at the first alarm. Foolish—but instinctive.”
Breton, who had flung himself into the elbow-chair at his desk, jumped to his feet and thumped his blotting-pad.
“Spargo!” he exclaimed. “Are you telling me that you accuse my guardian and his friend, Mr. Cardlestone, of being—murderers?”
“Nothing of the sort. I am accusing Mr. Elphick and Mr. Cardlestone of knowing more about the murder than they care to tell or want to tell. I am also accusing them, and especially your guardian, of knowing all about Maitland, alias Marbury. I made him confess last night that he knew this dead man to be John Maitland.”
“You did!”
“I did. And now, Breton, since it’s got to come out, we’ll have the truth. Pull yourself together—get your nerves ready, for you’ll have to stand a shock or two. But I know what I’m talking about—I can prove every word I’m going to say to you. And first let me ask you a few questions. Do you know anything about your parentage?”
“Nothing—beyond what Mr. Elphick has told me.”
“And what was that?”
“That my parents were old friends of his, who died young, leaving me unprovided for, and that he took me up and looked after me.”
“And he’s never given you any documentary evidence of any sort to prove the truth of that story?”
“Never! I never questioned his statement. Why should I?”
“You never remember anything of your
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