A Case in Camera
"Has Dadley come?" Philip asked again.
"Yes. He's been waiting for you for ten minutes in the studio," Monty
replied.
"Bon. I don't suppose I shall be more than ten minutes, but don't wait
for tea. I've had a cup as a matter of fact."
"Can't say I think much of old Daddy as a framer----" Monty was
beginning; but Esdaile was already at the studio door, which he closed
carefully behind him.
You may remember the name of old William Dadley. It was he who, when Mr.
Harry Westbury had held forth in the Saloon Bar about the danger to
property from the air, had ventured to suggest that lives too had their
value. His shop was the little one in the King's Road with the alleged
Old Master in the window, one half of it black with ancient grime, the
other pitilessly restored; and, as Monty had said, artists who were in
any hurry to see their pictures back again seldom took their framing to
old Daddy. Unless they went farther afield, they were more likely to
patronize the up-to-date establishment across the road, kept by the two
pushing young men in the Sinn Fein hats and black satin bows and little
side-whiskers and hair bobbed like girls'.
And now for the discussion on picture-framing that took place between
Philip Esdaile and William Dadley, behind the closed studio door.
VI
"Was he drunk?" Esdaile asked. He was walking about, head down,
frowning.
The old man stroked his grizzled beard.
"Well, I won't say he hadn't had a few. I saw him have two or three
liqueur brandies. And he's a crossish sort of man when he's at home,
especially when it's wearing off a bit, but he isn't easily bowled over,
isn't Harry. Well, as I was telling you. He gets home about tea-time
that day, and the first thing he sees is one of the children playing
with something or other in his mouth. He was popping it in and out. You
know what children are, Mr. Esdaile--everything goes straight into their
mouths. So Westbury asked the child how much oftener he wants telling
about putting things into his mouth, and takes it away from him. And
what do you think it was, Mr. Esdaile? It was a bullet!"
"A bullet?" said Esdaile with a show of astonishment.
"A bullet. And it had been fired, because it was all out of shape. Well,
you don't find bullets everywhere, like leaves off the trees, do you?"
"Where on earth did the child get it?" Esdaile asked.
"Ah, that's what Harry wants to know!" The gray old head was wagged a
few times. "Shouts for his missis, and there's a bit of a scene. The
child says he found the bullet in the bedroom. How did it get there?
Harry wants to know. It seems the window was wide open to air the room a
bit. Then Harry asks what the child was doing in the bedroom, and what
time he went up, and what time he came down again, and I don't know what
else. Then he has a bit of a sleep and a cup of tea and a wash and goes
off out again. I believe he went straight to Inspector Webster with the
bullet, but he won't say either Yes or No. He's very mysterious about
it. A man told me, though, that he'll be an important witness when the
Case comes on."
"What Case?" Esdaile asked.
"Well, Westbury he looks at it like this, Mr. Esdaile: If that bullet
came in at his window it might have hit somebody, he says, and he's
great on the window being just opposite this house of yours. And he's
worked it out, from the time it was when his wife cleaned the bedroom
and where the children were and all that, that the bullet must have come
in at the same time that accident was."
"But what's a flying accident got to do with a bullet?"
"Ah, that I can't tell you; but he's very mysterious. And I know he's
written a letter to the papers about dangerous flying, because I heard
him reciting bits of it. He says he'll make a Case of it or his name
isn't Harry Westbury."
"What paper has he written to?"
"I can't remember the name just for the moment, but it's one of the
papers. And I heard him reciting one bit about three million pounds'
damage. I don't suppose he's written to the papers about the bullet;
that's the tit-bit, that is, and he's keeping that to himself, except
for Inspector Webster. Westbury's a difficult sort of man once he gets
started on a thing. Stares you down like. You say you don't know him by
sight? It was him brought that ladder into your garden--he was there
when Mr. Rooke went up on the roof----"
And that (to pass on) was the gist of the discussion on the framing of
Esdaile's _fêtes-champêtre_.
VII
A few minutes' reflection would have shown Esdaile that there was no
immediate reason why he should have hesitated to have that wardrobe
carried down into his cellar. He himself admits this. But it is easy to
think of these things afterwards, and he was caught off his guard. He
did allow reluctance to appear.
"Why not move this desk and let it stand here?" he said, pointing to the
writing-table with the mignonette-shaded lamp on it. "It's not a
bad-looking piece at all. Pity to hide it. What is it--Jacobean?"
It was either genuine Jacobean or else a passable copy, but, placed
where Philip proposed to place it it would have been a little in the way
of anybody passing to the French window. Mrs. Cunningham pointed this
out.
"Do you think so? Let's measure it," Esdaile replied.
Measurement of the piece confirmed Mrs. Cunningham's view, and Philip
next suggested that it should go into the large studio.
"Why not have it where you can get at it and use it?" he said. "I
thought women complained they could never get hanging-space enough. Or
what about upstairs in Mollie's room?"
But Audrey Cunningham's frocks, which she made quite wonderfully
herself out of almost nothing at all, were few, and Mollie had left her
plenty of room for them. Besides, there were the dress-baskets. These
would hardly add to the beauty either of the annexe or the studio. For
the baskets at any rate the most convenient place was certainly the
cellar. And it was at this point that Philip, recognizing that further
objection would look rather like obstinacy, yielded.
He confesses that he felt awkward about the whole situation. Either he
had lent his house or he had not. If the former, Monty and his fiancée
should have had the complete freedom of it; if the latter, or if for any
reason he regretted his generosity, the position was even more obscure.
To say that until the marriage he had lent it to Monty only and not to
Mrs. Cunningham was mere quibbling; he had made the offer in entire good
faith, and had not made a lawyer's matter of it, with clauses and
reservations about this, that and the other.
Yet here he not only was, but here very much master of the house whether
he wished it or not. Audrey Cunningham would of course be very nice
about it, but he could see very plainly how it must strike her. He did
not even pretend to be working. He was merely hanging on, for a reason
unexplained and unexplainable to her. Monty knew his reason, of course;
but the reason she supposed to be the truth (for she had been told that
one of the men who had crashed was their friend and Joan Merrow's more
than friend) by no means accounted for everything. It did not account
for a quarter of his eccentricities; it did not even account for his
latest inadvertence, of proposing any place in the house except the
cellar for the bestowal of that nuisance of a wardrobe. What an ass he
had been about that! The cellar could be made _perfectly safe_ at an
instant's warning; as a matter of fact it was _perfectly safe_ at that
moment. There was no reason whatever why Audrey Cunningham should not go
down there.
But things would get worse as time went on. Presently Audrey would be
living here, as Monty's wife, and it would be difficult for Philip to
delay his departure after that. A honeymoon is a honeymoon even when it
is spent in a borrowed studio, and newly-married couples don't commonly
take in fussy and fretful lodgers. Within a week or so he or they would
most certainly have to clear out.
Philip could have stated what had actually happened in one short
sentence. He had offered them one house, but was now called upon to hand
over to them the possession of quite a different one.
But this was impossible to explain without dragging in the thing of all
things that he wished to keep from Audrey, from Mollie, and above all
from Joan--that beastly episode of the pistol, with all it involved.
And here at any rate he was quite firm. Chance what might, that must be
kept the men's affair only. As far as the women were concerned at
present the accident was a pure accident. Well, an accident it must
remain.
But what about that Police Inspector who had appeared so suddenly in our
midst the night before, and for all Philip knew might be round again at
any moment? Audrey Cunningham had been told nothing about that. She
might have many opinions about Philip's delayed departure, but about a
series of domiciliary visits by the police she could have one only,
namely, that the loan of a studio wasn't worth it. In suppressing this
piece of information Philip was actually doing his best to keep her in
Lennox Street. To have informed her would have been much the same thing
as asking her to leave.
And what exactly had passed when Philip's tenor voice, interrupting the
Inspector's deep one, had said, "Well, perhaps you'd better come in"?
VIII
Of the four of us sitting there I alone had instantly realized what must
have happened. Our Nosey Parker of a Westbury had been at work already.
I remembered the dull insistence of the man and how he had said in my
hearing that he and Inspector Webster "would be having a bit of a talk
that evening." I recalled also the stupid but dangerous cunning with
which he had repeated over and over again that Rooke had been the first
on the scene of the accident. Well, he hadn't lost very much time. The
Inspector had stood there in the doorway, and neither Esdaile, Hubbard
nor Rooke had had the least idea why.
Now there are a good many of the commonly-accepted views on physiognomy
that I for one don't share. One of these is about rather narrowly-set
eyes. Webster, who was a very big red-and-black man, had these eyes
under a sort of bison-front of close-curling hair, but I did not
associate them with meanness and slyness at all. On the contrary, they
had rather a kindly glint, and they reminded me of the infinitesimal
slight cast that at certain moments makes some women irresistible. No, I
did not set Inspector Webster down as a bad sort. At the same time there
was no nonsense about him, and I should have thought twice before
trying any tricks with him.
I was more thankful than I can tell you that Philip also, in spite of
the emotional gamut he had run that day, still had resilience enough to
sum the Inspector up very much as I did. There was no bland "Well,
Inspector, and to what are we indebted for the pleasure of this visit?"
nor anything of that kind. Perhaps that dangerous pistol, X-raying
itself so plainly in our minds through the top of the escritoire, had
forbidden any such attitude. I now know, as a matter of fact, the
life-line on to which he had immediately and instinctively laid hold.
Inspector Webster, whatever he had come for, was to be treated exactly
as the women were to be treated, and the accident-theory was to hold the
field.
So this is what had happened:--
The Inspector, after a few conventional remarks about being sorry to
trouble us gentlemen for the second time that day and so on, had come
down like a hammer straight upon our weakest point. This was the part
that Monty Rooke had played in that morning's events. First of all he