A Case in Camera
the studio that I had at first assumed to have been caused by the broken
mulberry branch. A pistol-bullet might have made just such a hole.
Next I remembered how Esdaile had been occupied when Hubbard and I had
followed him into the studio shortly after his return from the cellar.
He had been so engrossed in poking about the broken glass and mats on
the studio floor that he had seemed to notice little else. Had he been
looking for the bullet that had made that hole in the roof? And why had
he had the roof-blinds drawn, and broken out on Monty when he had wanted
to put them back again? This last, I admit, set me all at sea again. The
drawing of the blinds would certainly hide the bullet-hole in the pane
from anybody _in_side the house, supposing he wished to hide it; but
what about the police who had been on the roof itself at that very
moment? The drawing of the blinds inside would hide nothing from them.
Why seek to conceal from the rest of us something that if they cared to
investigate they could hardly fail to see?
One more thing. If that pistol had been fired on the premises, somewhere
there must be, not only a bullet, but a spent case also. I mentioned
this, and Esdaile gave a slight start of recollection.
"Of course!" he exclaimed. "Glad you mentioned that. I found the case in
the garden. Here it is. I'd honestly forgotten all about it."
And, as he fetched it out of his waistcoat pocket and put it down by the
side of the pistol, I as honestly believed he had.
"But there's no sign of the bullet?" I asked.
"I've looked high and low for it," Esdaile replied. "Low, I should say,
because naturally I don't want to go hunting about the roof in the
daylight. Too many eyes about. There's no trace of it."
"But it wouldn't be on the roof if it made that hole in the glass. It
would be in the studio. Or possibly," I ventured, "in the cellar."
But, as Esdaile was about to reply, a bell trilled in the kitchen, and,
with a "That's Rooke, I expect," Esdaile put the pistol and the empty
case back into the drawer, motioned us to remain where we were, and went
out.
X
Philip had described Rooke quite well when he had said that he had the
air of a naughty boy caught robbing an orchard. He had a hang-dog yet
defiant look as he entered, shepherded in by Philip as if we had been a
tribunal empaneled for his condemnation. But there was relief in his
face too--the relief of one who has got the worst over and hardly fears
the rest. And, as he threw his hat on the table and looked round in
search of a chair, he unconsciously emphasized his air of boyish guilt
by sitting down on a low stool that stood between the empty fireplace
and the escritoire.
Esdaile began immediately, as if Rooke had merely been out of the room
for a few moments.
"Well, to continue our chat, Monty," he said. "I've told these fellows
as much as you've told me. Shall we have the rest of it now?"
From the look on Monty's face I began to think that we might have some
difficulty in getting very much more out of him, for the simple reason
that, in picking up and concealing an incriminating pistol, he evidently
didn't see that he had done anything at all out of the way. He seemed to
think that was a natural thing to have done. I gathered also that there
was something further on his mind, something that had already begun to
dawn on my own and has doubtless occurred to you also. But we will come
to that presently.
So Monty merely repeated what we already knew, and then looked from one
to another of us as if to ask, "_Now_ were we satisfied?"
"Oh, we want to know a good deal more than that," Esdaile continued.
"First of all, did he speak? The man who pointed to the pistol, I mean."
"No. He'd taken too bad a toss for that," Monty replied. "He just
pointed, the way I showed you, and I thought perhaps he didn't want the
thing lying about, so I--well, I obliged him, so to speak."
"But it's been fired."
"I don't know anything about that. I didn't fire it, if that's what you
mean."
"It's been fired recently. Did you notice if it was warm?"
"No, I didn't," said Monty, ruffling up, "and it's all very well you
fellows talking, sitting down here with glasses of whisky in front of
you, but I'll bet if you'd been in my place you'd have done exactly the
same."
Here I struck in. I asked him what made him so sure of that. He turned
his earnest brown eyes to me.
"I mean you just would. If you'd seen him, I mean--seen his face. It was
the look in his eyes; I couldn't get it out of my mind for hours; I can
see it now. I tell you you missed a pretty rotten job by not having to
go up there, and here you go asking me if pistols were warm and who
fired them and all about it as if I'd been having a fortnight's holiday
up there."
I saw Monty's point. I suppose I have arrived at that stage of life when
I too trust my eyes more and more as time goes on. Men may have all
sorts of reasons for saying one thing and meaning another, but he is a
remarkable man who can control his looks with the same facility. I have
seen many eyes telling the truth while the lips beneath them have told
the practiced lie. So if Monty had taken his impulse from Chummy
Smith's anguished eyes in that moment, I for one did not feel inclined
to blame him.
"You've heard who it was, haven't you?" I said.
"No. Who?"
Philip told him. His eyes opened very wide.
"Not the fellow I've heard you talk about?"
Esdaile nodded gloomily.
"And you mean _he_ fired the pistol?"
There was an embarrassed silence. Nobody so far had ventured to express
his thought quite so nakedly. We had an obscure feeling of resentment,
as if Monty had been a little lacking in tact. He sat up on his stool
and pursed his lips into the shape of a whistle.
"I--say! _That_ makes it the dickens, doesn't it? Well, I know what his
eyes looked like, I can promise you that! Poor devil! Thank goodness you
were all too busy watching Philip when he came up from down below to
notice me much. Nobody noticed me except Audrey, and she----"
Philip sliced his words off like a guillotine.
"You haven't told her anything about this, have you?"
Monty stared at him. "No," he replied, "as a matter of fact I haven't;
but what if I had? I don't quite see----"
"Then you see you jolly well don't," Philip curtly ordered him. "Four's
quite enough. You understand?"
"Four's quite enough." Do you see what was already working in his mind,
and what a sudden jump forward our Case took when his lips uttered that
concluding word?
For he did not say "enough" for what. The What was only just dimly
beginning to appear. Perhaps I shall save time if I put what I mean into
the form of a single question:--
Why had Esdaile, who knew perfectly well that that pistol ought to be in
the custody of the police, not himself immediately handed it over?
Why indeed did he not do so now?
That is what I am getting at. He had not only _not_ handed the pistol
over, but he had drawn blinds and grubbed about floors and had sought
high and low, though so far in vain, for a stray bullet. Nay, he might
lecture Monty on the picking up of random pistols, but what else had he
himself done when he had found that little empty brass case in the
garden and had slipped it into his waistcoat pocket? He had pretended to
hold back until Monty should have told him everything. Well, Monty had
now told him everything.
There was a telephone in the hall. Ten seconds would suffice.
Yet Esdaile did nothing.
I was conscious of a curious quickening of excitement. The whole
atmosphere of our little gathering had already changed. Monty, sitting
on his stool, seemed somehow less of a culprit, Esdaile something much
more nearly in collusion with him. And above all it distinctly began to
appear--dare I say "providential"?--that Monty had picked up that
pistol.
Why?
Was it because Chummy Smith, instead of being a stranger who must be
left to take the consequences of his own acts, was Hubbard's and
Esdaile's friend?
XI
It is not for me to draw the hair-line that divides the heart's wish
from the conviction of the rightness of the act that follows it. We are
all prone to do what we want to do and to look for reasons afterwards.
That was for Esdaile and Hubbard to consider. I am merely stating the
Case. Personally you will always find me the broadest-minded and most
tolerant of men until these lofty qualities begin to react on my own
private affairs; after that I become a pattern of the narrow and the
hidebound. Whether in their place I should have done as Hubbard and
Esdaile did I have fortunately not to answer. What that was you will see
in a moment.
For it was now clear that we were looking, without very much dismay,
into the perilous face of Conspiracy. A pistol had been fired, and
humanly speaking could only have been fired by one man. If the pistol,
therefore, ought to have been handed over to the police, _a fortiori_
ought the man who had fired it.
But that appeared to be precisely the sticking-point. It was here that I
saw both Hubbard and Esdaile preparing to dig in. In a word, until they
(private individuals, mark you) knew more about it, Chummy Smith was not
to be given up.
Monty's attitude at about this stage began to be rather amusing.
Suddenly he left the stool of repentance and began to walk about. He
even swelled a little. It was he, after all, who had in a sense saved
the situation, and when the cartridge-case was produced (for Hubbard and
Esdaile had their heads together over the pistol-barrel again in search
of further minute indications) he became almost cock of the walk.
Incidentally he had one of those flashes of insight I told you he
sometimes had, or at any rate it was a flash with which I myself am not
without a certain amount of sympathy.
"Well, there isn't half enough murder in the world if you ask _me_," he
said. "Only they're the wrong people. If you could get somebody really
trustworthy to pick out the right ones no end of good would be done."
"Oh, shut up!" said Philip rudely; and happily the dangerous theory was
not pressed.
But Monty had used the awkward word "murder."
And if Monty was amusing, the state of mind of the other two was now
fascinatingly interesting. For you see their predicament. To put it
quite plainly, they were trying to screw up their courage. Esdaile in
particular was almost visibly hardening his heart. That was the
fascinating part--to see exactly how much and how little homage they
would pay to the decencies before they thought themselves free to go
ahead.
The stages of the comedy were rapid. The first of them came when Esdaile
wondered whether he oughtn't to go to the telephone, not to communicate
with the police, but to ask for the latest news of Chummy's progress.
"Seems funny to think of Chummy being laid out six months after the
War's all over," he said. "Remember the Jazz Band in the Mess, Cecil?"
"Red Pepper Two-Step on the Birds, eh?" said Hubbard.
(I am aware that this needs elucidation. The Helmsea Mess Jazz Band had
been a noteworthy improvisation, and the Birds had been Chummy Smith's
special department. They were stuffed Birds, set in cases round the
walls, and the glass fronts of the cases had formed Smith's tympani.
With drumming fingertips and softly-pounding wrists I learned that he
had got great variety out of his instruments.)
"And the cock-fight between the razorbills?" Esdaile continued.
I could also make a guess at the kind of rag that had been.
"And the night old Pike's motor-bike broke down?"
And though this reminiscence passed over my head, it was plain that they
were getting on. Very soon I might expect to be told outright that