Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (16 page)

“How can he have been?” demanded his cousin.

It was after breakfast on the following morning. On the plea that business was business and that if he was to be any use in this affair at all Anthony must temporarily divest himself of the rôle of interesting young lover and assume that of the idiot friend, Roger had managed to restrain his cousin from making a hopeful beeline, immediately his last mouthful had been swallowed, along the top of the cliffs in the direction of a certain small grassy ledge just below their summit. With tactlessly patent reluctance Anthony had been persuaded to bring his after-breakfast pipe down to the sea level, where Roger had insisted upon scrambling out to the very farthest rock which remained unsubmerged in order, as he carefully explained, to obtain the necessary privacy for airing his theories. There he had immediately removed his shoes and socks and proceeded to paddle.

Making the best of a bad business, Anthony had watched with a cold eye his cousin’s undignified behaviour and unhesitatingly refused to follow such infantile deportment.

“How can Woodthorpe have been telling the truth?” he repeated, as Roger showed signs of being less interested in his question than in a limpet which was sturdily countering all his efforts to dislodge it from its native rock. “That copy of
London Opinion
clinches that. If the inspector’s got any sense at all, he’ll draw the same deduction from it as we did and arrest the fellow right away, before he bolts.”

Roger abandoned the limpet with a slight sigh. “But supposing, Anthony, that it wasn’t Woodthorpe who left it there at all?” he said patiently. “Hadn’t that occurred to you?”

“No, it hadn’t,” Anthony returned, not without scorn. “It’s so dashed likely, isn’t it? You said yourself that it couldn’t have been Mrs Vane. Who else could it have been?”

“Ah!” said Roger thoughtfully. “Who, indeed?” He withdrew his feet from the water and, hunching his knees, clasped his hands around them and stared out to sea. “Now just let’s see, for the sake of argument, what we can deduce from the copy of
London Opinion
, shall we? Forgetting for the moment all about Woodthorpe, I mean, and our slight complex about his veracity. Shall we do that, Anthony?”

“Fire ahead, then,” replied his cousin resignedly.

“Well, in the first place, and confining ourselves to bare probabilities, with every likelihood of error, who constitute the majority of
London Opinion
’s public, would you say? Men. That’s why I advanced the unlikelihood of Mrs Vane having left it there; it doesn’t sound to me at all the type of paper that we might expect to find Mrs Vane reading.

Besides, she’s much more likely to have brought a novel. Do you agree, so far?”

Anthony grunted.

“Very well, then; in all probability that paper was left there sometime since last Saturday morning, by a man. Now what
type
of man reads
London Opinion
? Not the upper classes; they read
Punch
. Not the lower classes either. The middle classes – upper, middle and lower middle classes. Our man, therefore, was probably an upper, middle or lower middle-class man. Now that doesn’t sound very much like the son of Sir Henry Woodthorpe, does it?”

“Are you trying to make out that just because a chap’s father is a baronet, he never reads
London Opinion
?” enquired Anthony with some sarcasm.

“No, Anthony, I am not. You tend to miss my point. What I am very brilliantly endeavouring to convey to your moss-covered intelligence is that if Mr Colin Woodthorpe, son of Sir Henry Woodthorpe, Bart., wanted to take a piece of literature with which to amuse himself while waiting for the other half of an appointment he’d probably take the
Sporting Life, Punch,
or a detective novel. That he might very nearly as well have taken
London Opinion
I readily admit, but only very nearly. What I’m considering, in fact, is the balance of probabilities. Now are you there?”

“But how do you know that the chap, whoever he was, did take it to amuse himself with while waiting for an appointment? How do you know there was an appointment at all?”

“I don’t, bandicoot,” Roger returned with exemplary patience. “But do you imagine (a) that he took it to read
during
the appointment, fearing lest he should be bored by the lady’s idle prattle; or (b) that he went down to that ledge all alone and crept into that cave for the sole purpose of reading
London Opinion
in the dark?”

“He might just as well have simply happened to have it with him, and chucked it away because he couldn’t be bothered to carry it home again.”

“He might,” Roger agreed at once; “but it isn’t nearly so likely. No, on the balance of probabilities I think we may assume that this man, probably not Woodthorpe, probably took
London Opinion
with him to read on the ledge while waiting for the other half of a probable appointment in that cave. He might have thrown it away then and there as soon as she turned up, but with that instinctive inhibition which most of us have against throwing something away with which we have not completely finished, he took it with him into the cave when the lady arrived and then, as you say, left it there because he couldn’t be bothered to take it home again – psychologically speaking, there is a large difference between throwing a thing away and leaving it behind. And we know the lady
did
turn up, dear little Anthony, because otherwise he wouldn’t have gone into the cave at all, but would have continued to sit outside where he could see to read. Are you with me?”

“Humph!” said Anthony.

“Now who was the other half of this man’s appointment?” Roger continued in argumentative tones. “Personally, I’m putting my money on Mrs Vane. As far as friend Colin knew nobody but himself and Mrs Vane had any inkling about the cave. He discovered it himself, he told us, about a year ago, and was at once struck with its suitability for the purpose to which he afterward put it. He was quite positive that he, at any rate, had told nobody else of its existence. To sum up then – if Colin is telling the truth all through, Mrs Vane herself arranged an appointment with an unknown man belonging to the middle classes for some time since last Saturday morning, to discuss business of an obvious secret and confidential nature. And to stretch a point, we’ll add that that appointment resulted in her death, and that the unknown middle-class man is her murderer – and how is all that,” Roger concluded with legitimate pride, “out of just finding a copy of
London Opinion
in that little cave, eh?”

“So now I think you’d better go off and talk it all over with Moresby,” said Anthony hopefully.

“Anthony, you disgust me. Do you or do you not want to help me save your young woman from the gallows? No, don’t trouble to reply to that question; it’s a rhetorical one. You do. Very well, then. Continue, if you please, to sustain the part of idiot friend which you play so admirably.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” Anthony asked uncomfortably.

“Listen to me while I clarify my own ideas, somewhat nebulous at the moment, by putting them into speech. Let me go on examining possibilities. Though by the way, since embarking on this one-sided discussion I find I appear to have converted myself on one point. I do not believe it was Colin Woodthorpe who left that copy of
London Opinion
in the cave. What have you got to say about that?”

“You made out a pretty useful case against it,” Anthony was forced to admit.

“Yes; I did. On grounds of pure reason I reject Colin as our unknown man, but I can easily find that out for certain; I’ve got a little test in mind for him, which I propose to apply as soon as I leave you. Well, now, assuming Colin is out of it, can we find anybody else to take his place? Think hard.”

“Wait a minute, though,” Anthony said after a little pause. “Aren’t you forgetting those footprints? You’ve been saying all the time that it must have been a woman with Mrs Vane, not a man. How does that square in with this idea?”

“No, I’m not forgetting them. They can be worked into this theory all right. If we assume, you see, that the murder was a premeditated one, as I think it certainly was, we can assume also that the murderer took a few elementary precautions to throw the police off his track if ever anything turned up to make them suspect about the accident theory. Well, supposing that Mrs Vane arrived alone, as we now think she must have done, what would be easier for the man than to put on a pair of female shoes he’d brought with him for the purpose, to go a little way along the ledge and then walk back again besides Mrs Vane’s tracks, carefully making prints wherever he could and modifying his stride to suit her smaller steps? That’s perfectly feasible. Footprints and how to fake them are about the first thing to which your amateur murderer would turn his attention.”

“Cunning,” commented Anthony.

“Oh, yes; but perfectly intelligible. Well now, having disposed of that point, let’s get back to where we were before. Can you think of anyone else to take young Woodthorpe’s place as the villain of the piece?”

Anthony ruminated. “The only other men in any way mixed up in the show seem to be Dr Vane and Russell.”

“Ye-es. And that doesn’t help us much, does it? Dr Vane we can wash out right away; there’s no conceivable reason why a wife should want to make an appointment in an out-of-the-way and thoroughly uncomfortable place with her own husband when she can much better interview him from her own drawing-room sofa. But Russell –! What does Russell give us?”

“If she
had
been carrying out an intrigue with him as well as Woodthorpe,” Anthony murmured.

Roger shifted his position so that he could plunge both his legs in the water up to their knees. “Ah, that’s better. You’re missing a lot, Anthony, if you only knew it, by being so proud and superior; superior people always do. Yes, that’s perfectly true. Russell would then have almost exactly the same motive for getting rid of her as Colin had, wouldn’t he? Jealous wife instead of jealous unknown fiancée (I wonder who friend Colin
is
meditating an engagement with, by the way, if Moresby’s right. It ought to be easy enough to find out),
plus
fear of jealous husband’s righteous wrath possibly into the bargain, if she’d been trying the same bluff on with him too. But that does make the lady a little – how shall I put it? – 
promiscuous
, doesn’t it?”

“I shouldn’t think she’d stick at that,” said Anthony sagely.

“Oh, nor should I. Not for a moment. Especially if she’d got a little game on with both of them, to her own ultimate advantage. But if that were the case, I can’t help thinking it somewhat imprudent to meet them both in the same very compromising spot.
That
doesn’t sound at all like Mrs Vane to me.”

“But she
did
meet the second man in the same place for all that,” Anthony pointed out, “whether it was Russell or not.”

“Yes, that’s true enough. Of course, this may have been an isolated assignation, made with the knowledge that Colin would be busy at that time elsewhere. But Colin hasn’t an alibi for the time of Mrs Vane’s death, we discovered, whereas the inspector says that Russell himself has, a cast-iron one. No, it’s a pure guess of mine, Anthony, but I feel instinctively that this mysterious man is somebody who hasn’t cropped up in the case at all yet.”

“Oh! That’s rather vague. And you haven’t the slightest notion who it could be?”

“Yes, I have,” Roger replied thoughtfully. “Just the slightest notion. It’s my opinion that the man will prove to be somebody out of Mrs Vane’s murky past. Quite possibly her real husband.”

“By Jove, that’s an idea,” Anthony concurred with enthusiasm. “Good for you, Roger!”

“Thank you, Anthony,” Roger returned gratefully.

They discussed this interesting possibility for a short time, and then Roger began to put on his shoes and socks.

“I think that’s really all there is to go into at present,” he said, “so you can have leave of absence for the rest of the morning. You can tell Margaret about our discovery last night and this new visitor Mrs Vane may have had recently. With any luck she ought to be able to give us a pointer to the gent.”

Anthony rose to his feet. “If I happen to see her, I will,” he said a little stiffly.

‘ “If I happen to see her, I will!’” Roger scoffed. “Oh, very good, Anthony; very good indeed. I must try you with the butter test at lunch. If half a pound of butter, placed in the patient’s mouth, shows no sign of melting within –”

“What are
you
going to do?” Anthony asked hurriedly.

“Me? Oh, I’ve got to be busy. I’ve got to lay my trap for young Colin first of all; then I want to have a word with Moresby and hear exactly what he’s made of that
London Opinion
, if anything (he’s probably concealing it from me in his breast pocket at this very moment); and lastly I want to tackle this business of the mysterious stranger from the other end. I’m going to cross-examine every inhabitant of the place within a square mile of that ledge and try and find someone who was within sight of it early on Tuesday afternoon. I’m convinced I’m on the right track; if Margaret can’t help us, I’m going to exhaust the possibilities of that line of information if it takes me a month.”

“But I thought everybody had been questioned about that already?”

“Not so,” Roger replied cunningly. “They were questioned before about seeing Mrs Vane. There was no word mentioned about seeing a strange man.”

“I see,” said Anthony, balancing irresolutely on each foot in turn. “Yes, that’s a sound scheme. Well, I’ll be strolling along now, I think, if you don’t want me anymore.”

Roger waved a paternal farewell with an Oxford brogue.

After Anthony had departed Roger did not follow him immediately. For quite a long time he sat on his rock, oblivious of the fact that other and even tempting ones were being uncovered by the receding tide straight in front of him. This talk with Anthony certainly had clarified his ideas very considerably – had, indeed, presented him with some highly interesting brand new ones. The case had suddenly taken on an entirely different aspect. From being merely complex it had become downright complicated. He wondered what Inspector Moresby, with his very much more conventional methods, would have to say about his deduction from that copy of
London Opinion
, a piece of constructive reasoning which Roger had not the slightest hesitation in characterising in his own mind as brilliant.