CHAPTER VI.Four People Behave RemarkablyAlec started, and his broad, good-humoured face paled a little.“Good Lord!” he ejaculated in startled tones. “What on earth do you mean?”“Simply what I say,” returned Roger. “Why did Stanworth go out of his way to shoot himself in such a remarkably difficult manner? Don’t you see what I mean? It isn’t natural.”Alec was staring up the drive. “Isn’t it? But he did it all right, didn’t he?”“Oh, of course he did it,” said Roger in a voice that was curiously lacking in conviction. “But what I can’t understand is this. Why, when he could have done it so easily, did he go about it in such a roundabout way? I mean, a revolver isn’t such an easy thing to manipulate unhandily; and the attitude he used must have twisted his wrist most uncomfortably. Just try pointing your forefinger in a straight line at the middle of your forehead, and you’ll see what I mean.”He suited his action to his words, and there was no doubt about the constraint of his attitude. Alec looked at him attentively.“Yes, it does look awkward,” he commented.“It is. Infernally awkward. And you saw where the doctor took the bullet from. Almost at the very back. That means the revolver must have been nearly in a dead straight line. You try and see how difficult it is. It almost dislocates your elbow.”Alec copied the action. “You’re quite right,” he said with interest. “It is uncomfortable.”“I should call it more than that. It’s so unnatural as to be highly improbable. Yet there’s the fact.”“Can’t get away from facts, you know,” observed Alec sagely.“No, but you can explain them. And I’m dashed if I can see the explanation for this one.”“Well, what’s the idea?” Alec asked curiously. “You’re being infernally mysterious.”“Me? I like that. It isn’t I who am being mysterious. It’s everything else. Facts and people and everything. Look here, we won’t go in for a moment. Let’s find a seat somewhere and try and get a grip on things. I’m getting out of my depth, and I don’t like it.”He led the way to where a few garden chairs were scattered beneath a big cedar at one of the corners of the lawn, and threw himself into one of them. Alec followed suit, somewhat more cautiously. Alec was a big person, and he had met garden chairs before.“Proceed,” he said, fishing for his pipe. “You interest me strangely.”Nothing loth, Roger took up his tale.“Well, then, in the first place let’s consider the human side of things. Hasn’t it struck you that there are four separate and distinct people here whose conduct during the last few hours has been, to say the least of it, remarkable?”“No,” said Alec candidly, “it hasn’t. Two have, I know. Who are the other two?”“Well, the butler is one. He didn’t seem particularly cut up over Stanworth’s death, did he? Not that you look for a tremendous display of emotion from a great hulking brute like that, true. But you do look for some.”“He wasn’t vastly upset,” Alec admitted.“And then there is his position in the household. Why should an ex-prize-fighter turn butler? The two professions don’t seem to harmonise somehow. And why should Stanworth want to employ an ex-prize-fighting butler for that matter? It’s not what you’d expect from him. He always seemed to me particularly meticulous over points of etiquette. I wouldn’t have called him a snob exactly; he was too nice and jolly for that. But he did like to be taken for a gentleman. And gentlemen don’t employ prize-fighting butlers, do they?”“I’ve never heard of it being done before,” Alec conceded cautiously.“Precisely. My point exactly. Alec, you’re positively sparkling this morning.”“Thanks,” Alec growled, lighting his pipe. “But apparently not enough so to make out who the fourth of your suspicious people is. Get on with it.”“After you with that match. Why, didn’t it strike you that somebody else took the news of Stanworth’s death with remarkable fortitude? And that after it had been broken to her with a bluntness that verged on brutality.”Alec paused in the act of applying a second match to his refractory pipe. “By Jove! You mean Lady Stanworth?”“I do,” said Roger complacently.“Yes, I did notice that,” Alec remarked, staring over his pipe at his companion. “But I don’t think there was much love lost between those two, was there?”“You’re right. There wasn’t. I shouldn’t mind going farther than that and saying that she absolutely hated old Stanworth. I noticed it lots of times these last three days, and it puzzled me even then. Now——” He paused and sucked at his pipe once or twice. “Now it puzzles me a good deal more,” he concluded softly, almost as if speaking to himself.“Go on,” Alec prompted interestedly.“Well, that’s four people; two whose behaviour has not been quite what you’d expect under the circumstances, and two who are downright suspicious. Anyhow, you can say four curious people.”Alec nodded in silence. He was thinking of a fifth person whose conduct early that morning had been something more than curious. With an effort he thrust the thought from him abruptly. At any rate, Roger was going to know nothing about that.“And now we come to facts, and the Lord knows these are curious enough, too. First of all, we’ve got the place of the wound and the extreme unlikelihood (as one would have said if one hadn’t actually seen it) of anyone committing suicide by shooting himself in that particular way. About that I’m not going to say any more for the moment. But there are plenty of things to talk about without that.”“There would be, with you anywhere about,” Alec murmured irreverently.“You wait. This is serious. Now according to what they say, people went to bed in pretty decent time, last night, didn’t they? Mrs. Plant after meeting Stanworth in the hall; Barbara and her mother soon after you came in from the garden; and Jefferson and you after you’d finished playing billiards?”“That’s right,” Alec nodded. “Eleven thirtyish.”“Well,” said Roger triumphantly. “Somebody’s lying! I was working in my room till past one, and I heard footsteps in the corridor not once but two or three times between midnight and then—the last time just as I was knocking off! Of course I didn’t pay any particular attention to them at the time; but I know I’m not mistaken. So if everyone says that they were in their rooms by eleven-thirty (except Stanworth, who was presumably locked in the library), then I repeat—somebody’s lying! Now what do you make of that?”“Heaven only knows,” said Alec helplessly, puffing vigorously at his pipe. “What do you?”“Beyond the bare fact that somebody’s lying, nothing—yet! But that’s quite enough for the present. Then there’s another thing. You remember where those keys were? In the waistcoat pocket above the one in which he usually kept them. The inspector just remarked that he must have put them in the wrong pocket. Now, do you think that’s likely?”“Might be done. I don’t see anything wildly improbable in it.”“Oh, no; not wildly improbable. But improbable enough, for all that. Have you ever done it, for instance?”“Put a thing in the wrong pocket? Lord, yes; heaps of times.”“No, you idiot. Not just in any wrong pocket. In the upper pocket of a waistcoat instead of the lower.”Alec considered. “I don’t know. Haven’t I!”“Probably not. Once again, it’s an unnatural mistake. One doesn’t use the upper pockets of a waistcoat much. They’re not easy to get at. But consider this. When you want to slip a thing into the lower pocket of a waistcoat that’s hanging on a chair, it’s the easiest thing in the world to put it in the upper pocket by mistake. Done it myself hundreds of times.”Alec whistled softly. “I see what you’re getting at. You mean——”“Absolutely! A waistcoat worn by somebody else is in the same category as a waistcoat hanging on a chair. If we’re to go by probabilities, then the most likely thing is that somebody else put those keys in that pocket. Not Stanworth himself at all.”“But who on earth do you imagine did it? Jefferson?”“Jefferson!” Roger repeated scornfully. “Of course not Jefferson! That’s the whole point. Jefferson was looking for those keys; and it’s just because they were in the wrong pocket and he didn’t know it, that he couldn’t find them. That’s plain enough.”“Sorry!” Alec apologised.“Well, this is all wrong, don’t you see? It complicates things still more. Here’s a fifth mysterious person to be added to our list of suspicious characters.”“Then you don’t think it was Mrs. Plant?” Alec said tentatively.“Iknowit wasn’t Mrs. Plant. She was playing about with the knob of the safe; she hadn’t got the keys. And in any case, even if she had, there was no possibility of her getting them back again. No, we’ve got to look elsewhere. Now let’s see, when was that library left empty?” He paused for reflection. “Jefferson was there alone while I was in the dining room (I should like to know why Mrs. Plant fainted, by the way; but we’ve got to wait for that till the safe’s opened); but he didn’t find the keys. Then we both went into the garden. Then I met you, and we caught Mrs. Plant almost immediately afterwards. How long was I with Jefferson? Not more than ten minutes or so. Then the keys must have been disturbed in that ten minutes before Mrs. Plant went into the library (there was no opportunity later; you remember we kept the library under inspection after that till the police arrived). Either then, or——” He hesitated and was silent.“Yes?” said Alec curiously. “Or when else?”“Nothing!—Well, anyhow, there’s plenty of food for thought there, isn’t there?”“It does give one something to think about,” Alec agreed, puffing vigorously.“Oh, and one other thing; possibly of no importance whatever. There was a slight scratch on Stanworth’s right wrist.”“Rose bush!” replied Alec promptly. “He was always playing about with them, wasn’t he?”“Ye-es,” Roger replied doubtfully. “That occurred to me, of course. But somehow I don’t think it was a scratch from a rose. It was fairly broad, for instance; not a thin, deep line like a rose’s scratch. However, that’s neither here nor there; probably it’s got nothing to do with anything. Well, that’s the lot. Now—what do you make of it all?”“If you want my candid opinion,” said Alec carefully, after a little pause, “I think that you’re making mountains out of molehills. In other words, attaching too much importance to trifles. After all, when you come to think of it there’s nothing particularly serious in any of the things you mentioned, is there? And you can’t tell; there may be a perfectly innocent explanation even for Jefferson and Mrs. Plant.”Roger smoked thoughtfully for a minute or two.“There may be, of course,” he said at length; “in fact, I hope to goodness there is. But as for the rest, I agree with you that they’re only molehills in themselves; but don’t forget that if you pile sufficient molehills on top of each other you get a mountain. And that’s what I can’t help thinking is the case here. Separately these little facts are nothing; but collectively they make me wonder rather furiously.”Alec shrugged his shoulders. “Curiosity killed the cat,” he remarked pointedly.“Possibly,” Roger laughed. “But I’m not a cat, and I thrive on it. Anyway, my mind’s made up on one point. I’m going to nose round and just see whether there isn’t any more to be found out. I liked old Stanworth, and as long as it seems to me that there’s the least possibility of his having been——” He checked himself abruptly. “Of all not being quite as it should,” he resumed after a momentary pause. “Well, I’m going to make it my business to look into it. Now, what I want to ask you is—will you help me?”Alec regarded his friend silently for a minute or two, his hand cradling the bowl of the pipe he was smoking.“Yes,” he announced at length; “on one condition. That whatever you may find out, you won’t take any important steps without telling me. You see, I don’t know that I consider this absolutely playing the game in a way; and I want——”“You can make yourself easy on that score,” Roger smiled. “If we go into it, we go in together; and I won’t do anything, not only without telling you, but even without your consent. That’s only fair.”“And you’ll let me know anything you may find out as you go along?” asked Alec suspiciously. “Not keep things up your sleeve, like Holmes did to old Watson?”“Of course not, my dear chap! If it comes to that, I don’t suppose I could if I wanted to. I must have somebody to confide in.”“You’ll make a rotten detective, Roger,” Alec grinned. “You gas too much. The best detectives are thin-lipped, hatchet-faced devils who creep about the place not saying a word to anybody.”“In the story-books. You bet they don’t in real life. I expect they talk their heads off to their seconds-in-command. It’s so jolly helpful. Holmes must have missed an awful lot by not letting himself go to Watson. For one thing, the very act of talking helps one to clarify one’s own ideas and suggests further ones.”“Your ideas ought to be pretty clear then,” said Alec rudely.“And besides,” Roger went on unperturbed, “I’d bet anything that Watson was jolly useful to Holmes. Those absurd theories of the poor old chap’s that Holmes always ridiculed so mercilessly (I wish Watson had been allowed to hit on the truth just once; it would have pleased him so tremendously)—why, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if they didn’t suggest the right idea to Holmes time and time again; but of course, he would never have acknowledged it. Anyhow, the moral is, you talk away for all you’re worth and I’ll do the same. And if we don’t manage to find something out between us, you can write me down an ass. And yourself, too, Alexander!”
Alec started, and his broad, good-humoured face paled a little.
“Good Lord!” he ejaculated in startled tones. “What on earth do you mean?”
“Simply what I say,” returned Roger. “Why did Stanworth go out of his way to shoot himself in such a remarkably difficult manner? Don’t you see what I mean? It isn’t natural.”
Alec was staring up the drive. “Isn’t it? But he did it all right, didn’t he?”
“Oh, of course he did it,” said Roger in a voice that was curiously lacking in conviction. “But what I can’t understand is this. Why, when he could have done it so easily, did he go about it in such a roundabout way? I mean, a revolver isn’t such an easy thing to manipulate unhandily; and the attitude he used must have twisted his wrist most uncomfortably. Just try pointing your forefinger in a straight line at the middle of your forehead, and you’ll see what I mean.”
He suited his action to his words, and there was no doubt about the constraint of his attitude. Alec looked at him attentively.
“Yes, it does look awkward,” he commented.
“It is. Infernally awkward. And you saw where the doctor took the bullet from. Almost at the very back. That means the revolver must have been nearly in a dead straight line. You try and see how difficult it is. It almost dislocates your elbow.”
Alec copied the action. “You’re quite right,” he said with interest. “It is uncomfortable.”
“I should call it more than that. It’s so unnatural as to be highly improbable. Yet there’s the fact.”
“Can’t get away from facts, you know,” observed Alec sagely.
“No, but you can explain them. And I’m dashed if I can see the explanation for this one.”
“Well, what’s the idea?” Alec asked curiously. “You’re being infernally mysterious.”
“Me? I like that. It isn’t I who am being mysterious. It’s everything else. Facts and people and everything. Look here, we won’t go in for a moment. Let’s find a seat somewhere and try and get a grip on things. I’m getting out of my depth, and I don’t like it.”
He led the way to where a few garden chairs were scattered beneath a big cedar at one of the corners of the lawn, and threw himself into one of them. Alec followed suit, somewhat more cautiously. Alec was a big person, and he had met garden chairs before.
“Proceed,” he said, fishing for his pipe. “You interest me strangely.”
Nothing loth, Roger took up his tale.
“Well, then, in the first place let’s consider the human side of things. Hasn’t it struck you that there are four separate and distinct people here whose conduct during the last few hours has been, to say the least of it, remarkable?”
“No,” said Alec candidly, “it hasn’t. Two have, I know. Who are the other two?”
“Well, the butler is one. He didn’t seem particularly cut up over Stanworth’s death, did he? Not that you look for a tremendous display of emotion from a great hulking brute like that, true. But you do look for some.”
“He wasn’t vastly upset,” Alec admitted.
“And then there is his position in the household. Why should an ex-prize-fighter turn butler? The two professions don’t seem to harmonise somehow. And why should Stanworth want to employ an ex-prize-fighting butler for that matter? It’s not what you’d expect from him. He always seemed to me particularly meticulous over points of etiquette. I wouldn’t have called him a snob exactly; he was too nice and jolly for that. But he did like to be taken for a gentleman. And gentlemen don’t employ prize-fighting butlers, do they?”
“I’ve never heard of it being done before,” Alec conceded cautiously.
“Precisely. My point exactly. Alec, you’re positively sparkling this morning.”
“Thanks,” Alec growled, lighting his pipe. “But apparently not enough so to make out who the fourth of your suspicious people is. Get on with it.”
“After you with that match. Why, didn’t it strike you that somebody else took the news of Stanworth’s death with remarkable fortitude? And that after it had been broken to her with a bluntness that verged on brutality.”
Alec paused in the act of applying a second match to his refractory pipe. “By Jove! You mean Lady Stanworth?”
“I do,” said Roger complacently.
“Yes, I did notice that,” Alec remarked, staring over his pipe at his companion. “But I don’t think there was much love lost between those two, was there?”
“You’re right. There wasn’t. I shouldn’t mind going farther than that and saying that she absolutely hated old Stanworth. I noticed it lots of times these last three days, and it puzzled me even then. Now——” He paused and sucked at his pipe once or twice. “Now it puzzles me a good deal more,” he concluded softly, almost as if speaking to himself.
“Go on,” Alec prompted interestedly.
“Well, that’s four people; two whose behaviour has not been quite what you’d expect under the circumstances, and two who are downright suspicious. Anyhow, you can say four curious people.”
Alec nodded in silence. He was thinking of a fifth person whose conduct early that morning had been something more than curious. With an effort he thrust the thought from him abruptly. At any rate, Roger was going to know nothing about that.
“And now we come to facts, and the Lord knows these are curious enough, too. First of all, we’ve got the place of the wound and the extreme unlikelihood (as one would have said if one hadn’t actually seen it) of anyone committing suicide by shooting himself in that particular way. About that I’m not going to say any more for the moment. But there are plenty of things to talk about without that.”
“There would be, with you anywhere about,” Alec murmured irreverently.
“You wait. This is serious. Now according to what they say, people went to bed in pretty decent time, last night, didn’t they? Mrs. Plant after meeting Stanworth in the hall; Barbara and her mother soon after you came in from the garden; and Jefferson and you after you’d finished playing billiards?”
“That’s right,” Alec nodded. “Eleven thirtyish.”
“Well,” said Roger triumphantly. “Somebody’s lying! I was working in my room till past one, and I heard footsteps in the corridor not once but two or three times between midnight and then—the last time just as I was knocking off! Of course I didn’t pay any particular attention to them at the time; but I know I’m not mistaken. So if everyone says that they were in their rooms by eleven-thirty (except Stanworth, who was presumably locked in the library), then I repeat—somebody’s lying! Now what do you make of that?”
“Heaven only knows,” said Alec helplessly, puffing vigorously at his pipe. “What do you?”
“Beyond the bare fact that somebody’s lying, nothing—yet! But that’s quite enough for the present. Then there’s another thing. You remember where those keys were? In the waistcoat pocket above the one in which he usually kept them. The inspector just remarked that he must have put them in the wrong pocket. Now, do you think that’s likely?”
“Might be done. I don’t see anything wildly improbable in it.”
“Oh, no; not wildly improbable. But improbable enough, for all that. Have you ever done it, for instance?”
“Put a thing in the wrong pocket? Lord, yes; heaps of times.”
“No, you idiot. Not just in any wrong pocket. In the upper pocket of a waistcoat instead of the lower.”
Alec considered. “I don’t know. Haven’t I!”
“Probably not. Once again, it’s an unnatural mistake. One doesn’t use the upper pockets of a waistcoat much. They’re not easy to get at. But consider this. When you want to slip a thing into the lower pocket of a waistcoat that’s hanging on a chair, it’s the easiest thing in the world to put it in the upper pocket by mistake. Done it myself hundreds of times.”
Alec whistled softly. “I see what you’re getting at. You mean——”
“Absolutely! A waistcoat worn by somebody else is in the same category as a waistcoat hanging on a chair. If we’re to go by probabilities, then the most likely thing is that somebody else put those keys in that pocket. Not Stanworth himself at all.”
“But who on earth do you imagine did it? Jefferson?”
“Jefferson!” Roger repeated scornfully. “Of course not Jefferson! That’s the whole point. Jefferson was looking for those keys; and it’s just because they were in the wrong pocket and he didn’t know it, that he couldn’t find them. That’s plain enough.”
“Sorry!” Alec apologised.
“Well, this is all wrong, don’t you see? It complicates things still more. Here’s a fifth mysterious person to be added to our list of suspicious characters.”
“Then you don’t think it was Mrs. Plant?” Alec said tentatively.
“Iknowit wasn’t Mrs. Plant. She was playing about with the knob of the safe; she hadn’t got the keys. And in any case, even if she had, there was no possibility of her getting them back again. No, we’ve got to look elsewhere. Now let’s see, when was that library left empty?” He paused for reflection. “Jefferson was there alone while I was in the dining room (I should like to know why Mrs. Plant fainted, by the way; but we’ve got to wait for that till the safe’s opened); but he didn’t find the keys. Then we both went into the garden. Then I met you, and we caught Mrs. Plant almost immediately afterwards. How long was I with Jefferson? Not more than ten minutes or so. Then the keys must have been disturbed in that ten minutes before Mrs. Plant went into the library (there was no opportunity later; you remember we kept the library under inspection after that till the police arrived). Either then, or——” He hesitated and was silent.
“Yes?” said Alec curiously. “Or when else?”
“Nothing!—Well, anyhow, there’s plenty of food for thought there, isn’t there?”
“It does give one something to think about,” Alec agreed, puffing vigorously.
“Oh, and one other thing; possibly of no importance whatever. There was a slight scratch on Stanworth’s right wrist.”
“Rose bush!” replied Alec promptly. “He was always playing about with them, wasn’t he?”
“Ye-es,” Roger replied doubtfully. “That occurred to me, of course. But somehow I don’t think it was a scratch from a rose. It was fairly broad, for instance; not a thin, deep line like a rose’s scratch. However, that’s neither here nor there; probably it’s got nothing to do with anything. Well, that’s the lot. Now—what do you make of it all?”
“If you want my candid opinion,” said Alec carefully, after a little pause, “I think that you’re making mountains out of molehills. In other words, attaching too much importance to trifles. After all, when you come to think of it there’s nothing particularly serious in any of the things you mentioned, is there? And you can’t tell; there may be a perfectly innocent explanation even for Jefferson and Mrs. Plant.”
Roger smoked thoughtfully for a minute or two.
“There may be, of course,” he said at length; “in fact, I hope to goodness there is. But as for the rest, I agree with you that they’re only molehills in themselves; but don’t forget that if you pile sufficient molehills on top of each other you get a mountain. And that’s what I can’t help thinking is the case here. Separately these little facts are nothing; but collectively they make me wonder rather furiously.”
Alec shrugged his shoulders. “Curiosity killed the cat,” he remarked pointedly.
“Possibly,” Roger laughed. “But I’m not a cat, and I thrive on it. Anyway, my mind’s made up on one point. I’m going to nose round and just see whether there isn’t any more to be found out. I liked old Stanworth, and as long as it seems to me that there’s the least possibility of his having been——” He checked himself abruptly. “Of all not being quite as it should,” he resumed after a momentary pause. “Well, I’m going to make it my business to look into it. Now, what I want to ask you is—will you help me?”
Alec regarded his friend silently for a minute or two, his hand cradling the bowl of the pipe he was smoking.
“Yes,” he announced at length; “on one condition. That whatever you may find out, you won’t take any important steps without telling me. You see, I don’t know that I consider this absolutely playing the game in a way; and I want——”
“You can make yourself easy on that score,” Roger smiled. “If we go into it, we go in together; and I won’t do anything, not only without telling you, but even without your consent. That’s only fair.”
“And you’ll let me know anything you may find out as you go along?” asked Alec suspiciously. “Not keep things up your sleeve, like Holmes did to old Watson?”
“Of course not, my dear chap! If it comes to that, I don’t suppose I could if I wanted to. I must have somebody to confide in.”
“You’ll make a rotten detective, Roger,” Alec grinned. “You gas too much. The best detectives are thin-lipped, hatchet-faced devils who creep about the place not saying a word to anybody.”
“In the story-books. You bet they don’t in real life. I expect they talk their heads off to their seconds-in-command. It’s so jolly helpful. Holmes must have missed an awful lot by not letting himself go to Watson. For one thing, the very act of talking helps one to clarify one’s own ideas and suggests further ones.”
“Your ideas ought to be pretty clear then,” said Alec rudely.
“And besides,” Roger went on unperturbed, “I’d bet anything that Watson was jolly useful to Holmes. Those absurd theories of the poor old chap’s that Holmes always ridiculed so mercilessly (I wish Watson had been allowed to hit on the truth just once; it would have pleased him so tremendously)—why, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if they didn’t suggest the right idea to Holmes time and time again; but of course, he would never have acknowledged it. Anyhow, the moral is, you talk away for all you’re worth and I’ll do the same. And if we don’t manage to find something out between us, you can write me down an ass. And yourself, too, Alexander!”