A Case in Camera
wanted (with our permission) to put a few words to Mr. Rooke. I think he
used the word "permission" in good faith, and not as any kind of a
veiled threat.
I saw Monty moisten his lips. He has since explained the swiftness with
which he also was able to come into line and to play up so really nobly
as he did. Philip, if you remember, had forbidden him pretty gruffly to
say one word about all this to Audrey Cunningham; it is no light matter
to dictate to another man what he shall say and what he shall not say to
his fiancée; and this it was that saved the situation. If Monty was to
be ordered to keep his mouth shut before his fiancée he was jolly well
not going to be pumped by an outsider, Police Inspector or no Police
Inspector. On such hairs do our actions hang sometimes.
"Fire away," he had said.
"Well, sir, to begin with, would you be so kind as to tell me in your
own words exactly what you saw on the roof this morning?"
"Certainly," Monty had replied.
And he had launched out.
From the point of view of the things he omitted I can only describe his
performance as brilliant. Camouflage was certainly Monty's war-job. Not
one single word was there about bullet-holes, cartridge-cases or
pistols. Had there been a polar bear or a pterodactyl on the roof it
might have been worth mentioning, but a pistol--no.
My only fear was lest he should be so pleased with his own performance
as to undo it again out of sheer satisfaction presently.
"Thank you very much indeed, sir," said the Inspector. "I asked you for
your own words and you've given them. Now I wonder if I might be allowed
to ask you one or two questions?"
"Fire away," said Monty again.
But here the Inspector himself had seemed to be in some slight
difficulty. Apparently for some reason he wasn't very anxious to speak
of pistols either. Polar bears or pterodactyls, yes; but not pistols. I
have since thought that, as a man of some penetration, he also might
have had his private opinion about Mr. Harry Westbury, and thought it
best to act on anything Westbury said with caution.
Nevertheless, the series of questions that had followed had all been in
the very close neighborhood of pistols, so to speak. I itemize what
struck me as being their real, if unuttered trend.
"About this man that's dead, Mr. Rooke. You saw his face, of course?"
(_Item: Had Maxwell been shot through the head?_)
Yes, Monty had seen his face, but so, he ventured to remind the
Inspector, had he himself.
"Well, say I had other things to attend to and didn't particularly
notice. You'd say he was--pretty bad?"
(_Item: So bad that there might have been a little hole on one side of
his head and a big one on the other without your noticing it?_)
"Rotten," said Monty with an unaffected shiver.
"Bleeding much?"
(_Item: Or anything else scattered about?_)
"No."
"Clothes singed?"
(_Item: If not through the head, perhaps through the body?_)
"Yes. Badly. Bits of the parachute too."
"From where you were on the roof lots of people could see you?"
(_Item: If you'd done anything you'd no business to do, for instance?_)
"Any number of people I should say," Monty had replied rather faintly.
"But I don't see what you're getting at. You were up there too. What is
it all about?"
And here Philip had seen fit to intervene, rather quickly.
"Yes, that's what I'm wondering, Inspector. Is it a proper question to
ask? And is it proper to ask you if you'd like a glass of whisky, by the
way?"
The narrow eyes had twinkled. "Not supposed to, sir----"
"Right. Say when----"
And so our healths had been drunk.
"You see," Philip had resumed presently, "I understood from Mr. Mackwith
this morning--you knew that was Mr. Mackwith, K.C., you were talking to,
didn't you--the tall man in morning-coat and spats?"
"Was he indeed, sir?"
"Yes, that was Mr. Mackwith, and I understood from him that you had said
you had all the evidence you wanted?"
The Inspector had been sitting with his cap on his knees and the glass
of whisky inside it like a flowerpot in a vase. He had ruminated.
"Well," he had said suddenly, "the fact is that that was this morning,
gentlemen. Since then a certain piece of information's been laid in
connection with this affair. I'm not at liberty to say what this
information is, nor whether we shall act on it or not, but the Law's for
the protection of us all, gentlemen, and I take it all of us wants to do
our best to maintain it. Even if it meant the inconvenience," he added
deliberately, "of a warrant for the search of these premises."
Here the sorely-tried Philip had given a wild laugh.
"Search these premises! Search 'em now if you like. But in God's name
what for?"
"Accidents aren't always what they seem, sir," Inspector Webster had
replied.
IX
And now (to come out of this winding of the story into the open again)
here was Audrey Cunningham with dress-baskets and a wardrobe for which
the most suitable place was certainly the cellar.
"All right," Esdaile said suddenly. "Let's do it now. Monty and I can
manage it if you'll hold a candle for us."
And he lighted and put into Audrey's hand the same candle he had himself
used when he had gone down into the cellar to fetch the orange curaçao.
He was still kicking himself that he had made such a fuss. Now at last
he saw that, although only a trifle stood between revelation and perfect
concealment, this trifle was as firm as the rocks of which the mountains
are built. A short flight of steepish stone steps, with a rather awkward
right-angled bend half-way down, descended ten feet or so, and there was
no cellar door. You stepped from the bottom step, which was a little
worn and concave, and there you were, with nothing more to do but to put
the wardrobe and the dress-baskets inside and to come out again.
The wardrobe was at the turn of the stairs. Mrs. Cunningham stood just
above it, holding the candle for the two men to see.
"Gently--don't knock it," muttered Philip, "and mind the edge of the
steps--they're pretty old----"
The wardrobe cleared the bend, and Audrey Cunningham followed it into
the cellar.
It was only natural that she should look with some curiosity at the
place in which Philip Esdaile had spent that unaccounted-for half hour
on the morning of the day before. I did the same thing myself at a
later stage. But all that she saw was the most ordinary of cellars.
Hubbard himself, who seemed to have cellar-on-the-brain, would have
found nothing remarkable in it. This is all that was to be seen:--
A roomy, gloomy, clammy place, with old plastered walls, and neither
door nor window of any kind nor other means of entry than that they had
just used. Its air hit skin and nostrils like that of a grave. The light
of the single candle seemed lost in its obscurity. When Audrey held the
candle up above her head a couple of heavy beams could be seen,
necessary for the support of the largish area of the studio floor; when
she held it to one side it showed in a corner a couple of gas-meters
with the usual pipes, and underneath them the improvised rack in which
Esdaile kept his modest stock of wine. When she held it to the other
side its light hardly reached the farther wall, but wavered over the dim
objects that half-filled the floor-space. These were merely the
furniture for which Esdaile had no present use, and consisted of a large
couch covered with a dingy dust-sheet, a few oddments of chairs, a
number of packing-cases, and in fact the usual miscellaneous collection
of household lumber that one day seems hardly worth keeping and the next
looks just too good to throw away. Nearest to hand on the wine-rack
stood the bottle of curaçao, just where Esdaile himself had replaced it.
And that was all.
"Well, where will you have it, Audrey?" said Philip. "What about over by
the sofa there?"
Mrs. Cunningham was once more holding the candle over her head. Any
young woman's face by candlelight always seems singularly attractive to
me, especially if she is a dark-eyed woman, and she was a slight and
graceful thing to have endured so much. Had Joan been holding that
candle up she would have given you the impression of a statue, but Mrs.
Cunningham was just the opposite--all warm and fleeting and impermanent
charm, a creature depending on the varying accidents of color, even when
that color was only the sooty black of her home-made dress, the
candlelight on her face and the tiny reflections in her large and
lustrous eyes.
Suddenly she gave a shiver and a nervous laugh.
"I don't think I should like to be shut in here alone," she said.
"Why not?" Philip asked.
But the "why not" hardly needed saying, with that same candlestick in
her hand and, as she once more moved it, that same jar of curaçao
seeming to advance a little out of the shadows. These things brought the
shock and dread of that other morning all too plainly before her again.
It was within these chill sweating walls that Philip Esdaile had done
the "wool gathering" he had spoken of. What wool? She saw none. Then
why, up to that very moment almost, had he shuffled so? Why had he
seemed so anxious that the wardrobe should be placed anywhere rather
than in the place where they now stood? Here she was. She could not
imagine any kind of cellar, however earthy and tomblike, that so changed
its nature or properties that at one moment it must be jealously guarded
and the next thrown open for her to look as much as she pleased. She was
free to look. Monty also was wandering about in the farther corner
there, as greedy for knowledge as she. The only check on her freedom was
that she felt that Philip at the same time was covertly watching her.
Then all at once something seemed to give way in her. She put the candle
down on one end of the sheeted sofa and turned to Philip. Her hands were
clasped at her breast, the honeysuckle fingers interworking.
"Oh, please tell me!" she begged. "What is it makes this place so queer?
There's something--I can feel it--like eyes on me--I've a being-watched
sort of feeling, as if something was wrong----"
Philip took up the candle. "Then let's go upstairs," he said promptly.
But something almost like hysteria seemed to take her. Her voice rose.
"No, I want to know! I don't feel I can come to this house unless I
know! I don't want to come here if it's going to be like this! You don't
want to tell me--I know you could if you wanted! Oh, I wish Mollie was
here!"
"Come upstairs," Philip repeated gently. "Bring her up, Monty."
But she went on with even less and less control.
"Oh, I think it's cruel! You're all cruel! You never think of us! Joan's
to go on being told nothing, and Mollie's kept in the dark--oh, I know
she is--and I'm made to feel that I'm not wanted here.... I want to go
back to Oakley Street, Monty. I can't stop here. I won't. Everything's
been wrong ever since that accident. It's horrible. I'm going away. I
dare say they'll let me keep my room on; if they won't I must find
somewhere else. Please take me away."
Upstairs, she became a little calmer, but she still wanted to be taken
away. Monty was soothing her where she sat on the little Empire sofa,
and Philip's face was distressed as he walked up and down. Then, though
there was little heart in his attempt, he tried gently to laugh her out
of it.
"But of course you'll go back to Oakley Street," he said. "You're there
for three days yet, aren't you? It will be all right by that time. It's
just a little bit of a complication we're in. It won't be long now. Then
you'll get married and come along here, of course. Pull yourself
together, my dear. It's all right. There, you're feeling better now,
aren't you?"