A Case in Camera
ways and byways, and I was now beginning to think that the descent of
that parachute on Esdaile's roof had left not one single member of our
group unaffected. I must remind you again that at that time I actually
knew far less than I have already told you; but except by collation,
rearrangement and boiling down I could not have set down these facts at
all. I had, for example, seen Esdaile's shocked expression on
discovering that the stranger who had come down on his roof was none
other than his friend Chummy Smith, but up to that time I had not set
eyes on that unruffled young criminal himself. I had guessed what this
discovery must presently mean to Joan, but was unaware of that
headstrong dash of Mollie's up to London, and her lagging return to
Santon. I had heard Hubbard's fantastic speculations as to the nature of
the mysterious apparatus Esdaile kept in his cellar, but did not know
that both Rooke and Mrs. Cunningham had actually been down in the
cellar. I had enjoyed the spectacle of a rising barrister unconsciously
frustrating the aims of a coroner's jury, but had had to pump Hanson for
even the meagerest scraps of information about the subject of that
inquest. And twice or thrice I had unblushingly lied to a Chesterfield
of the Saloon Bars, but without a suspicion when I had done so that this
very person, seeing another prime actor in our Case descending a ladder,
had had the curiosity to know what made his pocket so lumpy and the
deftness of hand to ascertain.
So I had begun to look with a good deal of apprehension at our Case. The
beastly thing was like an egg, that hatched out one creeping thing after
another. And, as I paused at the end of a long concrete-floored passage
and knocked at Rooke's door, I wondered if Rooke would give me news of
still another.
VI
He did. His face did so before ever he spoke. In a moment I knew that
something had happened about that wedding--certainly that it had been
put off, possibly worse. Still without speaking he showed me in.
He was lunching, or rather making a combination meal of lunch and
breakfast in one. A single glance round the room told me a good deal
about the state of mind of its occupant. I have been hard-up myself, and
know these symptoms of negligence of body, mind and surroundings. He was
fully dressed, but he wore yesterday's collar and his boots had not been
cleaned. His bed was unmade, his furniture undusted, his floor unswept.
He seemed to have got up late, to have wondered what after all there was
to get up for, and not to care much whether he stayed up or went back to
bed. It was all extraordinary unlike his former orderliness and neatness
and precision, and I made up my mind that there were several things I
intended to say to him before I left him.
"Well, how are you?" he asked perfunctorily. "Have some cocoa. I'll wash
another cup."
"No, thanks. You carry on with your breakfast. I've just been round to
see Esdaile. Is he away?"
"Went off on Tuesday," Rooke replied.
"Where, to Yorkshire?"
"Yes. Took that fellow with him--you know--the flying fellow."
"But why aren't you at the studio?"
He answered evasively. "Oh--I chucked that idea."
"But listen to me. You were to have got married, weren't you?"
"Oh--Audrey chucked that," he replied, pushing his cup away.
"Chucked it altogether, do you mean?"
"Looks like it," he grunted. "Let's talk about something else."
But, looking round the untidy room again I wondered whether it would not
be better for him to talk about precisely that. Even an active smart was
preferable to sloth and helplessness of that kind, and there is
something very lovable about Monty at his best.
"No, no," I said. "Much better get it off your chest. And look here, my
friend, you haven't shaved this morning. That sort of thing doesn't
help. Talk about something else? No, let's talk about this. Where is
Mrs. Cunningham?"
"I think Buxton this week. Haven't looked at the _Era_. She's on tour if
you must know."
"But why? Why are things--like this? Surely there's a reason?"
"Oh, she said she just couldn't stick it," he answered with an
off-handed but tremulous little laugh.
"Stick what?"
"Everything."
I knew what he meant by "everything." He meant, simply, this confounded
Case. Now, it appeared, it had power to break off an engagement and to
bring Rooke down to dirty table-cloths, unmade beds and marmalade out of
the grocer's pot.
"Look here, Monty," I began, touching his sleeve, "we've been friends
for quite a number of years now----"
"Oh, don't," he interrupted me petulantly. "Leave a fellow alone."
"No, I'm not going to leave you alone like this. I want you to tell me
why you left the studio, and why Mrs. Cunningham's gone off on tour, and
a number of other things."
Well, it took time, but bit by bit he yielded. In sullen, resentful
sentences he began to talk.
"What do I mean by everything?" he said. "Well, I mean everything.
Nothing's gone right. Nothing at all. Everybody's fed up to the back
teeth, Esdaile too. And all that stupid business last week just about
put the tin hat on it."
"Do you mean that photograph in the papers?"
"Yes, and those idiotic crowds, and all their senseless talk. Who wants
a streetful of fools gaping at his windows for two or three days on end
like that? Then they started pulling his leg at the Club. So he just
waited till this chap Smith was fit to be moved and then cleared out. I
don't blame him."
"Yes, I can understand Esdaile's being annoyed; but that's over now, and
I don't quite see why you should leave and come back here."
"Well, Audrey wasn't going there anyway," he answered. "She'd had enough
of it. Got it into her head there was something uncanny about the place,
and so there is. Too much mystery altogether. That was Esdaile. He keeps
you on the jump the whole time."
"What do you mean by keeping you on the jump?"
"All sorts of ways. There's that cellar of his for one thing; he was
never in the same mind about that for half an hour together. We were
going to take a cupboard or something down there one day; it was his own
suggestion; but he twisted and wriggled and tried to cry off till I was
about at the end of my patience. You'd have thought he wouldn't have us
down there at any price. And then suddenly he turned round and said we
could go down if we liked. Idiotic I call it."
"Did you go down?"
"Yes. And there was nothing whatever to make all that fuss about as far
as I could see. I admit I'd wondered once or twice whether there was
anything queer, but I went into every corner and there was absolutely
nothing to see."
"You're thinking of that other morning when he was down there all that
time?"
"Yes. I can't make head or tail of that yet, but I can't see it's
anything to do with the cellar. And just listen to this. After making
all that fuss he came up again and didn't even bother to take the key
out of the door. It was there when I came away. One day he nearly jumps
down your throat when you ask him for the key, and the next thing he
goes and leaves it in the door! I'm sure he did it on purpose too. It
was just like saying, 'Go and live down there if you like.' Well, I
wasn't going to be messed about like that. I'm not going nosing round
other fellows' places. I'm not a policeman. So I cleared out. Would
_you_ have stopped after that?"
Again his voice shook a little, and I could guess at the meaning behind
his words. He meant, Would I have continued in a house the offer of
which had promised so much happiness that one moment's happening had
turned to discord and misunderstanding? I cannot say that I should.
VII
In my anxiety to set him talking after his own fashion I had not yet
asked him anything about what had passed between Esdaile and Smith; but
I intended to do so. For, just as Monty himself had been the first
obstacle to Philip's letting us into the heart of his mystery straight
away, so Smith, you will remember, had since blocked the current of
disclosure. Philip had had to see Smith before taking the next step,
and, as I had pre-figured the matter, he would go to the hospital one
day as soon as Smith had sufficiently recovered, would ask for his
account of the affair, and would then take the rest of us into his
confidence or not, as the case might be. In other words, it depended on
Smith's explanation whether Philip and the rest of us continued our
efforts at suppression or--did the other thing.
But now Esdaile seemed to have taken neither course. As far as I could
gather he had calmly evaded the whole situation by carrying Smith off
into the country out of our sight and hearing. I admit that, since the
assassin was taken into the bosom of Esdaile's own family, it looked as
if he had succeeded in making out some sort of a case for himself; but I
also remembered the strong bias of friendship and the practically
instantaneous resolution both he and Hubbard had taken that their Chummy
was to be stood by till the last possible moment. That is not the most
judicial frame of mind imaginable. Loftier, if chillier heights are
conceivable. Esdaile alone of us had asserted from the beginning, and
had stuck unwaveringly to it, that as a matter of plain unvarnished fact
Smith had shot Maxwell. All along his manner had proclaimed that the
accident theory, which was good enough for the women and the police, was
vamped up and a lie. Was he now going to have the face to say to us,
"Well, I've seen him, and he admits everything, but he had his
reasons--unfortunately they meant putting a bullet into a fellow, but to
hang Chummy won't bring t'other chap back to life--better let the whole
thing drop"?
How beautifully simple!
But at the same time how very unfortunate that an outsider, laboring
under a sense of grievance, should have patted Monty's pocket as he
came down the ladder that morning!
Monty had risen, a little shamefacedly I thought. But for my call I
fancy he would have left his breakfast things as they were, washing up
the next cup when he wanted it. Now he began to stack them together for
a general washing-up. He went into the little lobby place that held his
taps and I heard the running of water into a basin; then he turned to
his tumbled bed and began to re-make it. He muttered something about my
not minding his carrying-on. I was far from minding it.
"But look here," I said as he moved about, "about Smith. You say
Philip's seen him. What did he say about it?"
"Who, Philip or Smith?"
"Well, both of them. Didn't Philip tell you?"
"He didn't say much. He wasn't gone much more than half an
hour--couldn't have had more than ten minutes with him--and then he came
back and said he was taking him away the next day but one."
"Then that was while you were still at the studio?"
"Yes. It was then I told him I'd had enough of it and was coming back
here. He told me not to be an ass, but I don't call that being an ass. I
don't mean there was a row, but I'd got my back up a bit, and I didn't
feel like asking him questions. I was sorry for him too in a way. You
see, that morning after his wife came up----"
"What!" I exclaimed in surprise. "Has his wife been up since she left
that morning?" (This, as I have told you, was the first I had heard of
it.)
"Yes. She turned up late one night. I was out--I'd gone for a walk
Roehampton way just to think things over--that was before Audrey'd told
me she----" He stopped, as if distrusting his voice.
"Yes?" I gently urged him.
"About his wife coming up. I didn't see her till next morning. I expect
she was tired out with the journey; anyway, her face was as gray as that
Michelet paper there. And Philip was done in too. That's why I didn't