A Case in Camera
"Dug. Past participle of the verb to dig. I mean is he buried once for
all?"
"Short of an Exhumation Order from the Home Secretary he is. I don't
understand you."
"And that's rather difficult to get, isn't it?" I continued.
"I should say the North Pole was comparatively easy," Billy replied.
At this point my laughter really became too much for me. I remember
hoping that it didn't seem too rude, but I couldn't help it. Billy let
me finish, and then asked quietly, even gravely, "Now if you're feeling
better, will you please explain?"
I suppose my laughter had been just a little hysterical. As I have
already told you, I myself stand only on the verge of this Case; but not
so my friends, and Esdaile in particular. I remembered--and deep under
that rather remarkable laughter it moved me more than a little to do
so--the extraordinary range and sweep of emotions that had shaken
Esdaile in the course of a single day. I remembered the bright strained
tension of those first minutes after he had come up out of the cellar,
the shock of that telephone message from the hospital that had told him
what had happened to a friend. I remembered that black depression when
Hubbard and I had found him waiting alone in his house for Monty. I
remembered his ache on Joan Merrow's account, our later talk with Monty,
his nascent and grim resolve that in the teeth of all the world the
accident theory should be maintained, his dismay when he had realized
what a post-mortem examination might disclose. I ran over again his
whole day, from that merry breakfast-party to the appearance of
Inspector Webster in our midst at ten o'clock at night.... Well, one
peril was now safely past. In the absence of the Exhumation Order of
which Mackwith spoke, there remained no tittle of material evidence save
a battered bit of nickel-steel in Westbury's possession or in that of
the police. If only for Esdaile's sake, I felt as if a weight had been
lifted from me.
And, on the top of all, Billy Mackwith's innocent complicity must have
moved me to that inane outburst.
"Well, for one thing, Esdaile isn't out of town at all," I said, wiping
my eyes.
"Well, I thought he was. That isn't the joke, is it?"
"Not altogether. You see----"
"Do you mean that stupid _Roundabout_ thing?"
"No.... I beg your pardon, Billy. It came over me all of a sudden. Now I
think I can tell you----"
And so another was added to our nicely-lengthening list of Principals in
the Case.
IV
While I spoke Billy had risen, and was pretending to examine the prints
on my walls. I continued to talk; talking was, in fact, my morning's
work that day. I finished, and there was a long silence. I thought my
barrister-friend would never have done looking at those prints.
Then suddenly he crossed over to my table and stood leaning lightly on
his fingertips.
"Why wasn't I told this sooner?" he asked, his eyes brightly on mine.
For a moment I thought he meant that our neglect to inform him had
landed him into this equivocal position with regard to the coroner's
jury, and was beginning to explain that, being everybody's business, it
had also apparently been nobody's. But he cut me short.
"Oh, I don't mean that. Leave the inquest out of it for the present.
What I mean is that I could have saved our friend a good deal of mental
pain if I'd known--and you too," he added, "from the way you laughed
just now."
"How?" I asked.
"In this way," he replied, sitting down on the edge of my table and
giving his striped cashmere trousers a little hitch. "Say that a shot
has been fired.... Philip, I take it, has been worrying about the
consequences to this fellow Smith, and incidentally to Miss Merrow. Now
if I'd been there to ask Rooke a few material questions I think I could
have assured him that it's a thousand to one there won't be any
consequences."
"Why not?"
"The state of the body," he replied promptly. "Rooke saw it, you say, or
at any rate quite enough of it; I saw it too; and, shot or no shot, it
wouldn't have taken me two minutes to get out of Rooke that there was no
earthly possibility of proving that a shot caused death."
"You mean there were so many other good reasons?"
"Well, I'm not a doctor, but I should say at least a dozen. No wonder
that fellow Westbury--ah, that's his name, not Westcott--had to make a
bolt for it. Unless somebody can be produced who actually saw the shot
fired there won't be the ghost of a Case, and I'm inclined to think that
even then it would reduce itself to shooting with intent to kill or
wound--which is a felony, of course, but not quite the same thing as
murder. No, I think you can take it from me that there won't be any
consequences."
I pondered this for a moment. Then I saw the flaw in it. Every man to
his trade. Here was the advocate speaking, his whole acute mind trained
to one single end--the getting of his man off. But I myself work in a
different material and saw the Case from my own angle.
"One moment," I interposed. "When you say consequences you mean legal
consequences? In other words he'd slip through your fingers simply
because nobody actually saw him do it?"
"He wouldn't even be charged. That was practically a certainty before
the inquest. It's overwhelming now the other fellow's buried."
"But legal consequences are not the only kind of consequences there are
in the world."
"Oh, I'm not speaking of moral consequences. They're quite another
matter," quoth Billy.
"Not as regards Esdaile's having a rotten time over this," I differed.
"Let's look at it from another point of view for a moment. Neither you
nor I know Smith. But Hubbard and Esdaile do, and there's this
friendship between them. And mark you, friendship too isn't always the
same thing it was before the War. There were lots of men we called
friends then very much as a matter of habit; I mean it didn't often
occur to you to ask what kind of a man your friend would be when it came
to the pinch. We've all made new friends, and there are some of the old
ones whose names we never want to hear again. You see what I mean? I
mean the bond must be pretty strong for two men like Esdaile and Hubbard
to take instantly to the thought of shielding Smith like ducks taking to
water. I watched them--it was really exciting--you could read both their
faces like books. Very well. Up to this point we're both talking the
same language. When we say consequences we mean legal consequences.
"But here's where the difference comes in. I don't know what Hubbard's
views are, as I haven't seen him since that night; but I do know what
Esdaile's are. He's shielding Smith--but only till he hears what he's
got to say for himself. He doesn't want to condemn him unheard. I admit
that in the meantime he's taken certain rather risky steps, and my own
opinion is that he won't find it very easy if he wants to retrace them
again; the river'd have to be dredged for a pistol, for example, and
Lord only knows what sort of a reason he'd give for even having
interfered at all. But my point is that he's done nothing final yet.
Smith's got to satisfy him, and if he can't--well, it can't be quite the
same between them again after that, can it?"
"You mean their friendship's broken?"
"Well, that's not quite the way I should put it. It might break, or
possibly it might not. What I mean is that a friendship with a man who's
killed other men in battle isn't the same thing as one with a man who
murders another in peace-time. It may be as good for all I know, as I
haven't done either, but obviously it isn't the same."
"No, I suppose not," Mackwith agreed. "And as for retracing his steps, I
agree with you that the best thing he can do is to keep his mouth shut.
I certainly intend to about that inquest. Life's too short to go moving
for Exhumation Orders."
"Well, next there's Joan Merrow. Exactly the same thing applies to her.
Is she going to marry a soldier or an assassin? Is Esdaile going to let
her? He's her guardian for all practical purposes, and he's got that
question to answer."
The barrister laughed. "I don't think he need worry about that. Miss
Merrow strikes me as a young woman who won't stand any nonsense from
guardians. Well," he took up his hat and stick, "I must be getting
along. I didn't expect all this when I came in, but it seems to me the
Case is over now. Barring these moral consequences of yours, it
practically ended when I gave in our verdict yesterday."
"I hope you're right," I replied. "I thought so myself a few days ago,
though, and that evening a Police Inspector marched in."
He stopped at the door and spoke over his shoulder.
"Oh? You seem doubtful. Any reason?"
"None," I replied. "Only what women call a sort of feeling about it."
Mackwith laughed.
"We'll see about that when it comes," he said. "So long----"
V
The surface indications were of course of the very slightest. So far
they consisted merely of the photograph in the _Roundabout_, my
speculations whether Hodgson had anything up his sleeve, and similar
trifles. But others were pending. The danger of the coroner's inquest
might be safely past, but at least half a dozen other rocks loomed
immediately ahead. The Aiglon Company, for example, would want to know
what had gone wrong with their machine, and the manufacturers would be
even more interested. The same with the parachute people. The Aero Club
and the Royal Aeronautical Society both have their Accidents
Investigation Committees, and it was quite likely that claims against
various Insurance Offices had already been lodged. You cannot thrust a
finger into the close web of modern life without stirring up all manner
of complexities. I suppose it was these that I had already begun to
fear.
Perhaps most immediate of all was the question of unauthorized flying.
What had that machine been doing over London at all? Military machines
come and go under orders, but not commercial planes piloted by civilian
aeronauts. Setting such things as Murder and Manslaughter entirely on
one side, was it not probable that Smith would be called to book on
this account? From our point of view it was obviously most undesirable
that he should be brought into Court on any charge at all; but what if
we couldn't prevent it? What if, in the inhuman collision of powerful
business interests behind, the lawyers were to get to work--an Insurance
Company resist a claim, say, or the Aiglon people proceed against the
manufacturers on a point of warranty? You may think I was seeing lions
in the path, but it is never safe to reckon on meeting nothing more
formidable than a sheep. And I have nothing against lawyers as a class.
I don't think Billy Mackwith would pick my pocket of a single sixpence.
But I do believe they are like the road-mender with the stone. He hit it
with his hammer ten times without breaking it, and was then asked
whether he did not think he would have a better chance of splitting it
if he turned it splitting-edge uppermost. "How do you know I want to
split it?" he replied. I suspect even Billy of not wanting to split it
sometimes.
"Willett!" I called as I entered my office after lunch that day. "Just
get me out the latest thing about Air Navigation, will you?"
"Is the new one out yet?" Willett replied, walking to the big
glass-fronted cupboard where we keep the current papers of this kind;
the others are on the library shelves downstairs. "I think they were
withdrawn. I seem to remember sending to the Stationery Office and being
told there'd been a muddle of some sort."
"There must be something in force," I said. "I want that, whatever it
is."
"Just a moment--ah, here we are!"
Willett was both right and wrong. A certain issue of Statutory Rules