A Case in Camera
Simultaneously two grinning fellow-members thrust into his hand that
morning's issue of the _Roundabout_. The _Roundabout_, I should say, is
the _Circus's_ (much inferior) rival.
It contained a photograph of Esdaile's house, with the spot where the
parachute had descended marked with a cross.
It was, of course, a thousand pities. No man likes the house he lives in
held up to the idle public gaze. Had the annoying thing been submitted
to my own paper I could have stopped it. Had it been a big thing I might
even have stopped its appearance in the _Roundabout_, for, while we cut
one another's throats in detail, we have our understandings in larger
matters. Hurriedly I scanned the rest of the paper to see whether any
letterpress went with the picture. None did. There was simply the
photograph, with a couple of quite innocent descriptive lines
underneath.
"Seems to me rather a stumer," I said to Willett. "Is Hodgson losing his
grip a bit?"
"Haven't noticed it," Willett replied. "Sound man Hodgson. Doesn't often
do things without a reason. I think we might go a bit slower on
actresses and mannequins. This is the crash we were talking about the
other morning, isn't it?"
"Yes. A wash-out I should have said."
"Perhaps he's playing the local-interest card. He's doing that just now.
I don't see why we shouldn't do more of it."
"I think we'll wait for a better story than that anyway," I replied.
"Well, let's get to work----"
But all that afternoon the thing worried me. It was a trifle, perhaps,
but it was a trifle on the wrong side. More, unlike some other trifles,
I already saw how dangerously capable of further development it was. I
have told you what the attitude of the Press was to this question of
civil flying. It was one of simply awaiting events. But all the time
events were fermenting, so to speak. High over our heads Olympian minds
were shaping and re-shaping policies and plans, and Argus eyes were
tirelessly watching for indications of the receptivity of the popular
mind. Had Hodgson heard something that we had not? As you sometimes see
an insignificant person's affairs, of no interest in themselves,
solemnly weighed by the Lords of Appeal because of some novel and
far-reaching point they raise, was something in the nature of a Test
Case now being sought? Had we on the _Circus_ been wrong in assuming
that the idea was simply to catch and make an example of the careless
joy-rider and the idiot who stunted over towns? Was some more important
point to be raised, and had Hodgson had wind of it?
I was inclined to think not, and for the reason I have just given. Make
a thing big enough, and we hang fairly well together; but take the whips
off, so to speak, and we go as we please. If it had been as important as
all that we should have heard of it. Willett, who is a youngster of
parts, was in all probability right. Hodgson was merely catering for the
local interest.
But still I was uneasy, and my uneasiness had nothing to do with the
annoyance the publication of the photograph of the house in Lennox
Street must cause Esdaile. I was thinking of far graver possible
consequences. Even the lightest measure of Publicity is not a thing
to be trifled with. Here I know what I am talking about. The merry
fellows of the Chelsea Arts Club might pull Esdaile's leg about his
haunted house, and want to know whether the White Lady dropped any
hairpins as she passed, or if the horrible shrouded figure with the
crimson-dripping hands would make a good film; but we journalists have
to take these things a good deal more seriously than that. Publicity,
sometimes of the most incredibly silly kind, is our meat and drink and
hourly breath. All day and every day our brains are on the stretch in
our endeavors to secure it. We bring our heaviest guns to bear on the
elusive thing, are sure we can't possibly miss it this time, let fly,
and lo! we have missed after all. Like a pithball on a fountain, it is
still dancing there untouched, and any penny peashooter may bring it
down when all our trained intelligence has failed.
And what would be the effects on our Case if it came down?
Well, you can see that for yourself. In obscurity lay our hope that the
thing might remain what on the face of it it appeared to be. Switch the
arc-lamps of the great papers on to it, with the whole power-house of
dynamic government behind them, and all was over. Not an aspect of the
Case would go unprobed to the very bottom, and the hungry newspapers
would find themselves, not with a mere aeroplane crash that could be
dismissed in a couple of lines, but with a really fine fat, first-class
Murder Case that would keep them merrily going for weeks.
And I can assure you that we all wanted very badly indeed just such a
Case. We wanted it for more reasons than one. We wanted it, as we always
do, in the ordinary way of our business, but much more we wanted it to
take people's minds off other matters. We wanted it for the same reason
that made us resolutely print those pictures of girls bathing during the
blackest days of the War. We wanted it because the Man in the
Public-house was restless and showed a disposition to pry into affairs
in which his interference is only wanted when a General Election draws
near. Bathing girls were very well in their way; a really high-class
line in Divorce Cases would have outstripped them easily, if I may be
permitted the unintentional expression; but the man who could have given
us on the _Circus_ the first Assassination in the Air could have named
his own price for it.
III
The flat in which I live with the old housekeeper who looks after me is
not in Chelsea at all, but a quarter of an hour's walk away, just round
the corner from Queen's Gate. It is exceedingly comfortable (as indeed
it should be considering the rent I am made to pay for it), I have my
own furniture, and on the whole I don't ask for a much better place to
work in. For, quite apart from my paper, I do work, and I don't want to
give you the impression that the whole of my leisure time is given over
to the investigation of what happens to my Chelsea friends.
I was, as a matter of fact, particularly busy just about that time. Day
after day I was getting up at half-past six in the morning, breakfasting
at my table as I worked, and continuing without interruption till it was
time for luncheon and the office. Since you are probably not in the
white-elephant line of business, I won't tell you which of my novels I
was at work on. I will only say that I at any rate was interested in it,
and, severe as was the strain of writing from seven o'clock in the
morning till midday, I sometimes hated to break off. Mrs. Jardine had
orders not to admit anybody whomsoever between those hours, and obeyed
them to the letter.
You may judge then of my surprise when there walked into my study at
nine o'clock in the morning, and not over Mrs. Jardine's dead body,
Billy Mackwith.
"Don't scold the old lady," he began without preface. "I suppose she
hadn't any barbed wire except that on her chin--it is rather like one of
the gooseberries we used to make on the old wiring-course. I had to see
you."
"Had breakfast? Have a cup of coffee?" I asked him.
"Nothing, thanks. Well, I think I saved friend Philip a certain amount
of trouble yesterday," he said, putting down his hat, stick and gloves.
I don't think Mackwith buys a glossy new silk topper every time he goes
out, but I do honestly believe he buys a new pair of lemon-colored
gloves.
"Oh? How was that?"
"At the inquest on that fellow," he replied. "And by the way, I saw the
_Roundabout_ too. I suppose it has its humorous side, but it's very
annoying too. I should go for 'em for libel. A house can be libeled, you
know. Anyway, it's a good job he's out of town."
I was on the point of saying, "A good job he's what?" when I checked
myself. If you remember, I had last seen William Mackwith, K.C., when I
had left him at Sloane Square Station an hour or two after that
confounded aeroplane accident. He and Hubbard had gone off to keep their
respective appointments, while I myself had followed our check-coated
friend Westbury into a public-house. Whether either Esdaile or Hubbard
had seen him since I didn't know. I now gathered that Billy at any rate
hadn't seen Esdaile.
"Yes?" I said. "What trouble have you been saving him?"
"Well, I told you--I saved him the bother of stopping for the inquest."
I had of course known that there must be an inquest, but I suppose I had
been busy and had forgotten it again. This began to be interesting.
"Tell me about the inquest," I said.
He took a cigarette from his case and offered me one. Then he continued
between puffs.
"Well, as a matter of fact there wasn't very much trouble. One man
seemed inclined to be cantankerous, but we brought it in Misadventure
all right. We----"
I imagine that at this point he caught sight of the expression on my
face, for he stopped suddenly.
"Esdaile did go out of town, didn't he?" he asked.
"I'll tell you about Esdaile in a moment. Go on about the inquest."
He seemed puzzled, but went on.
"Of course, that was my idea in speaking to that Inspector that morning.
It would have been a pity to upset the Esdailes' plans. So I explained
this to the Inspector and gave him my card--said I hadn't seen very
much, but as much as anybody else--result, I was made foreman of the
jury."
Here I had a little flash of illumination as regards Inspector Webster
too. Esdaile, if you remember, had said to him, "Yes, that was Mr.
Mackwith, the King's Counsel; didn't you know?" and Webster had
answered, "Was he indeed, sir?" My respect for the Inspector's powers
of giving nothing away went up several hundreds per cent. Apparently it
was the Inspector who had seen to it that Billy had been put on the
jury.
"Well, you were made foreman. You said one man gave trouble. Who, and
why?"
"Oh, some fellow or other--Westcott or Westmacott I think his name
was--I forget. Insisted on viewing the body. Wanted his money's worth I
suppose. He was sorry he did though."
This was more and more interesting. I asked what sort of a man this
Westmacott was.
"The sort of fellow who would be down in the cellar before his wife and
children when there was an air-raid on, I should say," Billy replied.
"Awful nuisance of a man. But he got his all right. He'll probably be
taking solid food again this day week."
"Then you did see the body?"
"Had to, if only to keep this fellow quiet. He stuck out right to the
finish too, but we got our dozen without him. Prima facie case, of
course. Death by burning, and what wasn't that was general smash-up."
"Was a doctor called?"
"The divisional surgeon was there, but he quite agreed, and I saw to the
rest in my capacity as foreman. There was only one man who wasn't
satisfied, and he was busy----" Billy twinkled wickedly.
You may imagine how I was beginning to relish all this. The Chelsea Arts
with its rags about haunted houses and White Ladies who dropped hairpins
was well enough in its way, but its humor could not compare for a moment
with the spectacle of a rising King's Counsel who practically forced
himself on to a jury-panel, got himself made foreman, and then burked
inquiry by shutting up the only juryman who had as much as a suspicion
of the dangerous truth--and all this in the whitest innocence and purest
good faith! I could have laughed aloud. Had he been a willing instrument
in the affair he could not have done his work more efficiently and
completely.
"Is the poor fellow buried yet?" I asked in a suppressed voice.
"Yesterday," said Billy.
"And he can't be dug up again?"
Mackwith gave me a sharp look. "What do you mean?" he asked quickly.