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

generous window-space in two walls. A broad table stood in the middle. As one entered by the window the roll-top desk stood just to the left of it against the wall. The inner door was in the wall to the left, at the farther end of the room; and was faced by a broad window divided into openings of the casement type. A beautifully carved old corner-cupboard rose high against the wall beyond the door, and another cupboard filled a recess beside the fireplace. Some coloured prints of Harunobu, with which Trent promised himself a better acquaintance, hung on what little wall-space was unoccupied by books. These had a very uninspiring appearance of having been bought by the yard and never taken from their shelves. Bound with a sober luxury, the great English novelists, essayists, historians, and poets stood ranged like an army struck dead in its ranks. There were a few chairs made, like the cupboard and table, of old carved oak; a modern armchair and a swivel office-chair before the desk. The room looked costly but very bare. Almost the only portable objects were a great porcelain bowl of a wonderful blue on the table, a clock and some cigar boxes on the mantelshelf, and a movable telephone standard on the top of the desk.

“Seen the body?” enquired the inspector.

Trent nodded. “And the place where it lay,” he said.

“First impressions of this case rather puzzle me,” said the inspector. “From what I heard at Halvey I guessed it might be common robbery and murder by some tramp, though such a thing is very far from common in these parts. But as soon as I began my enquiries I came on some curious points, which by this time I dare say you’ve noted for yourself. The man is shot in his own grounds, quite near the house, to begin with. Yet there’s not the slightest trace of any attempt at burglary. And the body wasn’t robbed. In fact, it would be as plain a case of suicide as you could wish to see, if it wasn’t for certain facts. Here’s another thing: for a month or so past, they tell me, Manderson had been in a queer state of mind. I expect you know already that he and his wife had some trouble between them. The servants had noticed a change in his manner to her for a long time, and for the past week he had scarcely spoken to her. They say he was a changed man, moody and silent—whether on account of that or something else. The lady’s maid says he looked as if something was going to arrive. It’s always easy to remember that people looked like that, after something has happened to them. Still, that’s what they say. There you are again, then: suicide! Now, why wasn’t it suicide, Mr. Trent?”

“The facts so far as I know them are really all against it,” Trent replied, sitting on the threshold of the window and clasping his knees. “First, of course, no weapon is to be found. I’ve searched, and you’ve searched, and there’s no trace of any firearm anywhere within a stone’s throw of where the body lay. Second, the marks on the wrists, fresh scratches and bruises, which we can only assume to have been done in a struggle with somebody. Third, who ever heard of anybody shooting himself in the eye? Then I heard from the manager of the hotel here another fact, which strikes me as the most curious detail in this affair. Manderson had dressed himself fully before going out there, but he forgot his false teeth. Now how could a suicide who dressed himself to make a decent appearance as a corpse forget his teeth?”

“That last argument hadn’t struck me,” admitted Mr. Murch. “There’s something in it. But on the strength of the other points, which had occurred to me, I am not considering suicide. I have been looking about for ideas in this house, this morning. I expect you were thinking of doing the same.”

“That is so. It is a case for ideas, it seems to me. Come, Murch, let us make an effort; let us bend our spirits to a temper of general suspicion. Let us suspect everybody in the house, to begin with. Listen: I will tell you whom I suspect. I suspect Mrs. Manderson, of course. I also suspect both the secretaries—I hear there are two, and I hardly know which of them I regard as more thoroughly open to suspicion. I suspect the butler and the lady’s maid. I suspect the other domestics, and especially do I suspect the boot-boy. By the way, what domestics are there? I have more than enough suspicion to go round, whatever the size of the establishment; but as a matter of curiosity I should like to know.”

“All very well to laugh,” replied the inspector, “but at the first stage of affairs it’s the only safe principle, and you know that as well as I do, Mr. Trent. However, I’ve seen enough of the people here, last night and today, to put a few of them out of my mind for the present at least. You will form your own conclusions. As for the establishment, there’s the butler and lady’s maid, cook, and three other maids, one a young girl. One chauffeur, who’s away with a broken wrist. No boy.”

“What about the gardener? You say nothing about that shadowy and sinister figure, the gardener. You are keeping him in the background, Murch. Play the game. Out with him—or I report you to the Rules Committee.”

“The garden is attended to by a man in the village, who comes twice a week. I’ve talked to him. He was here last on Friday.”

“Then I suspect him all the more,” said Trent. “And now as to the house itself. What I propose to do, to begin with, is to sniff about a little in this room, where I am told Manderson spent a great deal of his time, and in his bedroom; especially the bedroom. But since we’re in this room, let’s start here. You seem to be at the same stage of the inquiry. Perhaps you’ve done the bedrooms already?”

The inspector nodded. “I’ve been over Manderson’s and his wife’s. Nothing to be got there, I think. His room is very simple and bare, no signs of any sort—that I could see. Seems to have insisted on the simple life, does Manderson. Never employed a valet. The room’s almost like a cell, except for the clothes and shoes. You’ll find it all exactly as I found it; and they tell me that’s exactly as Manderson left it, at we don’t know what o’clock yesterday morning. Opens into Mrs. Manderson’s bedroom—not much of the cell about that, I can tell you. I should say the lady was as fond of pretty things as most. But she cleared out of it on the morning of the discovery—told the maid she could never sleep in a room opening into her murdered husband’s room. Very natural feeling in a woman, Mr. Trent. She’s camping out, so to say, in one of the spare bedrooms now.”

“Come, my friend,” Trent was saying to himself, as he made a few notes in his little book. “Have you got your eye on Mrs. Manderson? Or haven’t you? I know that colourless tone of the inspectorial voice. I wish I had seen her. Either you’ve got something against her and you don’t want me to get hold of it; or else you’ve made up your mind she’s innocent, but have no objection to my wasting my time over her. Well, it’s all in the game; which begins to look extremely interesting as we go on.” To Mr. Murch he said aloud: “Well, I’ll draw the bedroom later on. What about this?”

“They call it the library,” said the inspector. “Manderson used to do his writing and that in here; passed most of the time he spent indoors here. Since he and his wife ceased to hit it off together, he had taken to spending his evenings alone, and when at this house he always spent ’em in here. He was last seen alive, as far as the servants are concerned, in this room.”

Trent rose and glanced again through the papers set out on the table. “Business letters and documents, mostly,” said Mr. Murch. “Reports, prospectuses, and that. A few letters on private matters, nothing in them that I can see. The American secretary—Bunner his name is, and a queerer card I never saw turned—he’s been through this desk with me this morning. He had got it into his head that Manderson had been receiving threatening letters, and that the murder was the outcome of that. But there’s no trace of any such thing; and we looked at every blessed paper. The only unusual things we found were some packets of banknotes to a considerable amount, and a couple of little bags of unset diamonds. I asked Mr. Bunner to put them in a safer place. It appears that Manderson had begun buying diamonds lately as a speculation—it was a new game to him, the secretary said, and it seemed to amuse him.”

“What about these secretaries?” Trent enquired. “I met one called Marlowe just now outside; a nice-looking chap with singular eyes, unquestionably English. The other, it seems, is an American. What did Manderson want with an English secretary?”

“Mr. Marlowe explained to me how that was. The American was his right-hand business man, one of his office staff, who never left him. Mr. Marlowe had nothing to do with Manderson’s business as a financier, knew nothing of it. His job was to look after Manderson’s horses and motors and yacht and sporting arrangements and that—make himself generally useful, as you might say. He had the spending of a lot of money, I should think. The other was confined entirely to the office affairs, and I dare say he had his hands full. As for his being English, it was just a fad of Manderson’s to have an English secretary. He’d had several before Mr. Marlowe.”

“He showed his taste,” observed Trent. “It might be more than interesting, don’t you think, to be minister to the pleasures of a modern plutocrat with a large P. Only they say that Manderson’s were exclusively of an innocent kind. Certainly Marlowe gives me the impression that he would be weak in the part of Petronius. But to return to the matter in hand.” He looked at his notes. “You said just now that he was last seen alive here, ‘so far as the servants were concerned’. That meant—?”

“He had a conversation with his wife on going to bed. But for that, the manservant, Martin by name, last saw him in this room. I had his story last night, and very glad he was to tell it. An affair like this is meat and drink to the servants of the house.”

Trent considered for some moments, gazing through the open window over the sun-flooded slopes. “Would it bore you to hear what he has to say again?” he asked at length. For reply, Mr. Murch rang the bell. A spare, clean-shaven, middle-aged man, having the servant’s manner in its most distinguished form, answered it.

“This is Mr. Trent, who is authorized by Mrs. Manderson to go over the house and make enquiries,” explained the detective. “He would like to hear your story.” Martin bowed distantly. He recognized Trent for a gentleman. Time would show whether he was what Martin called a gentleman in every sense of the word.

“I observed you approaching the house, sir,” said Martin with impassive courtesy. He spoke with a slow and measured utterance. “My instructions are to assist you in every possible way. Should you wish me to recall the circumstances of Sunday night?”

“Please,” said Trent with ponderous gravity. Martin’s style was making clamorous appeal to his sense of comedy. He banished with an effort all vivacity of expression from his face.

“I last saw Mr. Manderson—”

“No, not that yet,” Trent checked him quietly. “Tell me all you saw of him that evening—after dinner, say. Try to recollect every little detail.”

“After dinner, sir?—yes. I remember that after dinner Mr. Manderson and Mr. Marlowe walked up and down the path through the orchard, talking. If you ask me for details, it struck me they were talking about something important, because I heard Mr. Manderson say something when they came in through the back entrance. He said, as near as I can remember, ‘If Harris is there, every minute is of importance. You want to start right away. And not a word to a soul.’ Mr. Marlowe answered, ‘Very well. I will just change out of these clothes and then I am ready’—or words to that effect. I heard this plainly as they passed the window of my pantry. Then Mr. Marlowe went up to his bedroom,