The Postmaster's Daughter Page 6

  CHAPTER VI

  SCOTLAND YARD TAKES A HAND

  It was a singular greeting, to say the least, and the person who utteredit was quite as remarkable as his queer method of expressing himselfseemed to indicate.

  Grant, though in a fume of hot anger, had the good sense to choke backthe first impetuous reprimand trembling on his lips. In fact, wrathquickly subsided into blank incredulity. He saw before him, not theconventional detective who might be described as a superior Robinson--noteven the sinewy, sharp-eyed, and well-spoken type of man whom he had onceheard giving evidence in a famous jewel-robbery case--but rather one whomhe would have expected to meet in the bar of a certain well-knownrestaurant in Maiden Lane, a corner of old London where literally all theworld's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

  During his theatrical experiences he had come across scores of such men,dapper little fellows, wizened of face yet curiously youthful in manner;but they, each and all, were labeled "low comedian." Certainly, a rareintelligence gleamed from this man's eyes, but that is an attribute notoften lacking in humorists who command high salaries because of theirfacility in laughter-making. This man, too, had the wide, thin-lipped,mobile mouth of the actor. His ivory-white, wrinkled forehead and cheeks,the bluish tint on jaws and chin, his voice, his perky air, the very tiltof his straw hat, were eloquent of the footlights. Even his openingwords, bizarre and cheerfully impertinent, smacked of "comic relief."

  "I figure prominently in this particular 'piece,'" snapped Grant. "May Iask your name, sir?"

  "A wise precaution with suspicious characters," rejoined the other,smiling. Grant was suddenly reminded of a Japanese grinning at a joke,but he bent over a card which the stranger had whisked out of a waistcoatpocket. He read:

  MR. CHARLES F. FUENEAUX,

  _Criminal Investigation Department_,

  NEW SCOTLAND YARD, S.W.

  He could not control himself. He gazed at Mr. Charles F. Furneaux with asurprise that was not altogether flattering.

  "Did the Commissioner of Police send _you_ in response to mytelegram?" he said.

  "That is what lawyers call a leading question," came the prompt retort."And I hate lawyers. They darken understanding, and set honest men atloggerheads."

  "But it happens to be very much to the point at this moment."

  "Well, Mr. Grant, if you really press for an answer, it is 'Yes' and'No.' The Commissioner received a certain telegram, but he may have actedon other grounds. Even Commissioners can be creatures of impulse, orexpediency, just as the situation demands.

  "You are here, at any rate."

  "That is what legal jargon terms an admitted fact."

  "Then you had better begin by assuming that I am no villain."

  "It is assumed. It couldn't well be otherwise after the excellentcharacter you have been given by this young lady."

  "She, at least, will speak well of me, I do believe," said Grant, with astrange bitterness, for his heart was sore because of the seemingdefection of his friend, the postmaster. "What I actually had in mind wasthe stupidity of the local policeman, who is convinced that I am both acriminal and a fool."

  "The two are often synonymous," said Furneaux dryly. "But I acquitted youon both counts, Mr. Grant, on hearing, and even seeing, how you spentMonday evening."

  Grant, who had cooled down considerably, found a hint of badinage inthis comment.

  "You have evidently been told that Miss Martin and I were star-gazing inthe garden of my house," he said. "It happens to be true."

  "Oh, yes. There was a very fine cluster of small stars in Canis Major,south of Sirius, that night."

  "You know something about the constellations, then?" was theastonished query.

  "Enough for the purposes of Scotland Yard," smirked Furneaux, who hadchecked P.C. Robinson's one-sided story by referring to Whitaker'sAlmanack. "It may relieve your mind if I tell you that I have never seena real live astronomer in the dock. Venus and Mars are often in trouble,but their devoted observers seldom, if ever."

  Grant warmed to this strange species of detective, though, if pressed foran instant decision, he would vastly have preferred that one of moreorthodox style had been intrusted with an inquiry so vital to his ownhappiness and good repute. Eager, however, to pour forth his worries intoany official ear, he brought back the talk to a definite channel.

  "Will you come to my place?" he asked. "I have much to say. Let me assureyou now, in Miss Martin's presence, that she is no more concerned in thisghastly business than any other young lady in the village."

  "But she is interested. And _you_ are. And I am. Why not discuss mattershere, for the present, I mean? We have a glorious view of your house andgrounds. We can see without being seen. None can overhear. I advise bothof you to go thoroughly into this matter here and now."

  Furneaux spoke emphatically. Even Doris put in a timid plea.

  "Perhaps that would be the best thing to do," she said. "Mr. Furneaux hasbeen most sympathetic. I am sure he understands things already in a waythat is quite wonderful to me."

  The very sound of her voice was comforting. Grant might have argued withthe detective, but could not resist Doris. Without further demur he wentthrough the whole story, giving precise details of events on the Mondaynight. Then the recital widened out into a history of his relations withAdelaide Melhuish. He omitted nothing. Doris gasped when she heardSuperintendent Fowler's version of the view a coroner's jury might takeof her presence in the garden of The Hollies at a late hour. But Grantdid not spare her. He reasoned that she ought to be prepared for anordeal which could not be avoided. He was governed by the astute beliefthat his very outspokenness in this respect would weaken the inferenceswhich the police might otherwise draw from it.

  Furneaux uttered never a word. He was a first-rate listener, though hisbehavior was most undetective-like, since he hardly looked at Grant orthe girl, but seemed to devote his attention almost exclusively to thescenic panorama in front.

  However, when Grant came to the somewhat strenuous passage-at-arms ofthe previous night between Ingerman and himself, the little man brokein at once.

  "Isidor G. Ingerman?" he cried. "Is he a tall, lanky, cadaverous,rather crooked person, with black hair turning gray, and an absurdlymelodious voice?"

  "You have described him without an unnecessary word," said Grant.

  Furneaux clicked his tongue in a peculiar fashion.

  "Go on!" he said. "It's a regular romance--quite in your line, Mr. Grant,of course, but none the less enthralling because, as you so happilyphrased Miss Martin's lesson in astronomy, it happens to be true."

  Grant was scrupulously fair to Ingerman. He admitted the "financier's"adroitness of speech, and made clear the fact that if the visit had thelevying of blackmail for its object such a possible outcome was onlyhinted at vaguely. Being a novelist, one whose temperament sought forsunshine rather than gloom in life, he wound up in lighter vein. The rusewhich tricked P.C. Robinson into a breathless scamper of nearly a mile ona hot day in June was described with gusto. Doris, who knew the villageconstable well, laughed outright, while Furneaux cackled shrilly. Nonewho might be watching the little group in that delightful garden, withits scent of old-world flowers and drone of bees, could have guessed thata grewsome tragedy formed their major theme.

  The girl was the first to realize that even harmless merriment was in illaccord with the presence of death, for the body of Adelaide Melhuish laywithin forty yards of the place where they stood.

  "May I leave you now?" she inquired. "Father may be wanting help inthe office."

  "I shan't detain you more than a few seconds," said Furneaux briskly. "OnMonday evening you two young people parted at half past ten. How do youfix the time?"

  Doris answered without hesitation:

  "The large window of Mr. Grant's study was open, and we both heard aclock in the hall chime the half-hour. I said, 'Goodness me, is that halfpast ten?' and started for home at once. Mr. Grant came with me as far asthe bridge. When I
reached my room, in exactly five minutes after leavingThe Hollies, I stood at the open window--that window"--and she pointed toa dormer casement above the sitting-room--"and looked out. It was aparticularly fine night, mild, but not very clear, as a slight mist oftenrises from the river after a hot day in summer. I may have been thereabout ten minutes, no longer, when I saw the study window of The Holliesthrown open, and Mr. Grant's figure was silhouetted by the lamp behindhim. He seemed to be listening for something, so I, who must have heardany unusual sound, listened too. There was nothing. I could hear theripple of the river beneath the bridge, so everything was very still.After a minute, or two, perhaps--no longer--Mr. Grant went in, and closedthe window. Then I went to bed."

  "Did Mr. Grant draw any blind or curtains?"

  "There are muslin curtains attached to each side of the window. Onecannot see into the room from a distance."

  Furneaux measured an imaginary line drawn from Doris's bedroom to theedge of the cliff, and prolonged it.

  "Nor can you see the river or foot of the lawn from your room," hecommented.

  "No. In winter I can just make out the edge of the lawn. When the treesare in leaf, all the lower part is hidden."

  "You had actually retired to rest about eleven, I suppose?"

  "Yes."

  "So if Mr. Grant came out again you would not know?" Doris blushedfuriously, but her reply was unfaltering.

  "I would have known during the next half-hour, at least," she said. "Aninclined mirror hangs in my room. I use it sometimes for adjusting a hat.The square of light from Mr. Grant's room is reflected in it, and anysudden increase in the illumination caused by opening the window orpulling the curtains aside would certainly have caught my eye."

  "You have an unshakable witness in Miss Martin," said Furneaux, stabbinga finger at Grant. "Now, I'll hurry off. You and I, Mr. Grant, meet atPhilippi, otherwise known as the crowner's quest."

  Any benevolent intent he may have had in leaving these young peopletogether was, however, frustrated by Doris, whose composure seemed tohave fled since her statement about the mirror. She resolutelyaccompanied the detective, and Grant had to follow. All three passed intothe post office, Doris using the private door. Mr. Martin looked up fromhis desk when they appeared, and requested his daughter to check a bundleof postal orders. The pretext was painfully obvious, but Grant was not sowishful now to clear up matters with Doris's father, as the girl herselfmight be trusted to pass on an accurate account of the affair frombeginning to end.

  He was about to reach the street quick on Furneaux's heels when thelittle man turned suddenly.

  "By the way, don't you want a shilling's worth of stamps?" he said.

  Grant smiled comprehension, and went back to the counter, where Dorisherself served him. She did not try to avoid his glance, but rather metit with a baffling serenity oddly at variance with her momentary loss ofself-possession in the garden.

  When he entered the street the detective had vanished.

  He walked down the hill at a rapid pace, disregarding the eyes peepingat him through open doorways, over narrow window-curtains, and covertlystaring when people passed in the roadway. The sensitive side of histemperament shrank from this thinly-veiled hostility. He was by way ofbeing popular in Steynholme, yet not a soul spoke to him. Before hereached the bridge, the other side of him, the man of action, of coolresource in an emergency, rose in rebellion against the league of sillyclodhoppers. Back he strode to the post office and dashed off atelegram. It ran:

  "Walter Hart, Savage Club, Adelphi, London. Come here and help tolay a ghost."

  He signed it in full, name and address. Doris was gone, but her fatherreceived it, and read the text in a bewildered way.

  "I find myself deserted by my Steynholme friends so I am trying to importone stanch one," said Grant, almost vindictively.

  Martin murmured the cost, and Grant stormed out again. This time, passingthe Hare and Hounds, he looked at door and windows. He caught a facescowling at him over a brown wire blind bearing the words "Wines andSpirits" on it in letters of dull gold. It was a commonplace type offace, small-featured, ginger-moustached, and crowned by a billy-cock hatset at a rakish angle. Its most marked characteristic was the positivehatred which glowed in the sharp, pale-blue eyes. Grant wondered who thishighly censorious young man might be. At any rate, he meant to ascertainwhether or not the critic was susceptible of satire at his own expense.He walked up to the window, elevated his eyebrows at the frowning personwithin, pretended to read the words on the screen, looked again at theman inside, and shook his head gravely in the manner of one who hasaccurately determined cause and effect.

  Fred Elkin was quick-witted enough to appreciate Grant's unspokencomment. He was also unmannerly enough to put out his tongue. Then Grantlaughed, and turned on his heel.

  Mr. Siddle, quietly observant of recent comings and goings, was standingat the door of the shop, and missed no item of this dumb show. He raisedboth hands in silent condemnation of Elkin's childishness, whereupon thehorse-dealer jerked a thumb toward Grant's retreating figure, and wentthrough a rapid pantomime of the hanging process. His crony disapprovedagain, and went in. Now, both those men were on the jury panel, so, toall appearance, Grant would be judged by at least one deadly enemy, whoseanimosity might or might not be fairly balanced by the chemist'simpartial mind.

  The tenant of The Hollies actually dreaded the loneliness of hisdwelling now, though it was that very quality which had drawn him toSteynholme a year earlier. Work or reading was equally out of thequestion that day. He sought the industrious Bates, who was trenchingcelery in the kitchen garden.

  "Have 'ee made out owt about un, sir?" inquired that hardy individual,pausing to spit on the handle of his spade.

  "No," said Grant. "The thing is a greater mystery than ever."

  "I'm thinkin' her mun ha' bin killed by a loony," announced Bates.

  "Something of the kind, no doubt. But why are the little less dangerousloonies of Steynholme united in the belief that I am the guilty one?"

  "Ax me another," growled Bates.

  "Who is spreading this rumor? Robinson?"

  "'E dussen't, sir. 'E looks fierce, but 'e'll 'old 'is tongue. T'superwill see to that."

  "Someone is talking. That is quite certain."

  "There's a chap in the 'Are an' 'Ounds--kem 'ere last night."

  "Ingerman?"

  "Ay, sir, that's the name. 'E's makin' a song of it, I hear."

  "Anybody else?"

  "Fred Elkin is gassin' about. Do 'ee know un? Breeds 'osses at MountFarm, a mile that-a-way," and Bates pointed to the west.

  Grant hazarded a guess, and described the face of condemnation seen atthe inn. Bates nodded.

  "That's un," he said. Then he drove the spade into the rich loam. "Theydo say," he added, apparently as an after-thought, "as Fred Elkin ismighty sweet on Doris, but her'll 'ave nowt to do wi' un."

  Grant whistled softly. This explanation threw light on a dark place.

  "The plot thickens," he said. "Mr. Elkin becomes more interesting than helooks. Are there other disappointed swains in the offing?"

  "What's that, sir?"

  "Has Miss Martin any other suitors?"

  "Lots of 'em 'ud be after her like wasps round a plum-tree if she'd give'em 'alf a chance. But _you_ put a stopper on 'em."

  Bates was blunt of speech, though a philosopher withal.

  "Elkin is my only serious rival, then?" laughed Grant, passing off as ajoke a thrust which was shrewder than the gardener knew.

  "'E 'as plenty of brass, but I reckon nowt on 'im," was thecontemptuous answer.

  "Well, he is not a likely person to kill a woman he had never beforeseen. Miss Martin will marry whom she chooses, no doubt. The presentproblem is to find out who murdered Miss Melhuish. Now, had _I_ been thevictim you would be thinking hard, Bates."

  "I tell 'ee, sir, it wur a loony."

  Nor was Bates to be moved from that opinion. He held to it, through thickand thin, for many da
ys.

  Grant wandered into the front garden. His eyes rose involuntarily to thedistant post office, and he noticed at once that the dormer window wasclosed. Yet Doris shared his own love of fresh air, and that window hadalways been open till that very hour. Somehow, this simple thing seemedto shut him out of her life. He walked to the river, and gazed at thespot where the body was drawn ashore. In the absence of rain the waterran clear as gin, and the marks made by the feet of Adelaide Melhuish'smurderer were still perceptible. If only those misshapen blotches couldreveal their secret! If only some Heaven-sent ray of intuition wouldenable him to put the police on the track of the criminal! Theoretically,a novelist and essayist should be a first-rate detective, yet, broughtface to face with an actual felony, here was one who perforce remainedblind and dumb.

  Yet he was not blameworthy for failing to solve a mystery which wasrapidly establishing a record for bewildering elements. Wherein he diderr most lamentably was in his reading of a woman's heart.

  No answering telegram came from his friend in London. The day woreslowly till it was time to attend the inquest. He found a crowd gatheredin front of the Hare and Hounds. Superintendent Fowler was there, andquite a number of policemen, whose presence was explained when a buzz ofexcitement heralded Grant's arrival. He decided not to stand this sort ofpersecution a moment longer.

  Before the superintendent could interfere, he leaped on to a set of stonemounting-steps which stood opposite the door. Instantly, seeing that hewas about to speak, the angry murmuring of the mob was hushed. He lookedinto a hundred stolid faces, and stretched out his right hand.

  "I cannot help feeling," he said, in slow, incisive accents which carriedfar, "that a set of peculiar circumstances has led you Steynholme folk tosuspect me of being responsible, in some way, for the death of the ladywhose body was found in the river near my house. Now, I want to tell youthat I am not only an innocent but a much-maligned man. The law of theland will establish both facts in due season. But I want to warn some ofyou, too, I shall not trouble to issue writs for libel. If any blackguardamong you dares to insult me openly, I shall smash his face."

  He knew when to stop. Superintendent Fowler's nudge was not calledfor, as the orator simply met the scrutiny of all those eyes withoutanother word.

  Curiously enough, the sense of justice is inherent in every haphazardgathering of the public. Grant's soldierly bearing, his calm defiance ofhostile opinion, the outspoken threat which he so plainly meant, woninstant favor. Someone shouted, "Hear, hear!" and the crowd applauded.From that moment he had little to complain of in the attitude of thecommunity as a whole. There were subtle and dangerous enemies to befought and conquered, but Steynholme looked on, keen to learn of any newsensation, of course, but placidly content that the final verdict shouldbe left in the hands of the authorities.