Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (21 page)

“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Roger blankly.

The inspector turned his eyes back to the motionless form in the chair and continued to tug his moustache. “Hell!” he observed simply. As an epitaph for the Rev. Samuel the remark was perhaps not inapposite.

“This appears to have torn it,” Roger said, closing the door behind him and advancing gingerly.

“It does indeed,” the inspector agreed, and his tone was one of profound regret. Roger gathered that the inspector was feeling balked.

Together they gazed at the occupant of the chair.

“Well, what’s the next move?” Roger asked, after a full minute’s silence.

The inspector seemed to recall himself with an effort from some meditation of his own. “The next move?” he repeated vaguely. “Well, we shall have to get a doctor in at once, of course. And as you’re here, sir,” he went on in brisker tones, “I wish you’d be good enough to get him for me, will you? By rights I ought to stay here and see that nothing’s disturbed and the body left untouched; and I shall want a word with the landlady too.”

“Of course I will,” Roger assented at once. “Any particular doctor?”

“Well, there probably won’t be more than one in a place this size. The landlady can tell us his name and address. It’s early yet, so you ought to be able to catch him before he goes out. And on your way back you might see if you can get hold of the local constable (he lives quite near here, I know) and send him along too. I don’t want to let the body out of my sight for more than a second at a time till he comes, and that’ll leave me a bit freer.”

“Yes, rather,” Roger said, opening the door, “I’ll go at once.”

They made their way out into the passage and the inspector sent a stentorian voice flying upstairs in search of the landlady. She appeared at the top of the stairs, wiping her hands on a floorcloth.

“Mr Meadows is ill,” said the inspector abruptly. “What’s the name and address of the nearest doctor?”

“Ill, is he?” said the stout landlady, much concerned. “Well, that’s funny. Poor gentleman! He seemed quite all right when I took his breakfast into him. Not serious, I do hope? ‘Good-morning, Mrs Harper,’ he said, just the same as usual. ‘What’ve you got for breakfast today?’ he said. And I –”

Firmly the inspector cut short the flow of the volubility and extracted the desired information. Roger set out, leaving him to break the news to her of her lodger’s untimely death. It was strange, he reflected, that although in the past few people could have ardently desired for the Rev. Samuel, under any of his pseudonyms, a long lease of life, yet his death was a matter of deep regret for everybody in Ludmouth who had had anything to do with him.

The doctor’s house was over half a mile distant, and with the help of an intermittent jogtrot Roger managed to cover the ground to it in less than five minutes. As the inspector had predicted, the doctor had not yet started out on his rounds and, his surgery being just over, Roger was able to see him at once. Somewhat breathlessly he stated his business; the doctor, a tall, angular man with pince-nez on a pointed nose, asked a few pertinent questions and hastily stuffed some things into a small leather bag, and they set off together on foot, Dr Young apologising briefly for not being able to offer a seat in his car, which was not yet ready for its morning’s work.

They walked briskly, in spite of the growing heat of the day, but not too briskly for Roger to volunteer the answers to various questions which the doctor might have asked but didn’t.

Fortunately their route took them past the house of the local constable, which Dr Young was able to point out, and the latter waited while Roger routed out its occupant and told him to get into tunic and helmet and follow on as quickly as he could. The constable’s large red jaw dropped ludicrously as he assimilated Roger’s terse communication.

Let into the house by the now white-faced and speechless landlady, they hurried down the passage and into the sitting-room. With a nod to the inspector the doctor stood for a moment, allowing his trained eye to take in and photograph on his brain every detail of the dead man’s attitude. Then he approached to make a closer and more detailed examination, scrutinising the surface of the skin and tilting back the head to obtain a clear view of the face.

“No distortion,” he murmured, half to himself and half to the inspector. “No convulsions before death.” He lifted an eyelid with his thumb and peered into the eye. “Pupils not contracted,” he announced, and went on with methodical care to examine the dead man’s tongue.

Roger watched the rather gruesome business with profound interest. He had already formed a tentative theory to account for the man’s death, and was anxiously awaiting some confirmation of it from the doctor’s lips. In the passage outside the constable signalled his arrival by blowing his nose importantly.

The doctor straightened up and adjusted his pince-nez, turning to the inspector. “You’ve got the case in hand?” he remarked. “Inspector Moresby, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, sir,” said the inspector, economically answering both questions at once.

“Yes, I’ve heard about you, of course. Gossip soon travels in a place like this, and the doctor’s always one of the first to hear it. Well, it seems you’re going to have a second case to look after, Inspector.”

“Ah!” said the inspector.

The doctor indicated the body with a careless gesture. “Know anything about him?”

“Very little,” the inspector replied untruthfully. “I’d got my eye on him, though,” he admitted.

“Any reason to suspect suicide?” asked the doctor curtly.

“Well – no reason to expect it, doctor,” returned the inspector with some care. “No, certainly not.”

“Um!” The doctor removed his pince-nez and began to polish them with his handkerchief. “You were on your way to arrest him, I understand?”

“Somebody seems to have been talking,” the inspector observed, and grinned openly at Roger’s guilty blush.

“I mean,” amplified the doctor, “there may be some connection.”

“You think it’s poison, then?” enquired the inspector genially.

The doctor frowned. “I can’t possibly say that yet, till I’ve examined the body. At present I see no marks of violence. I’d like to get him onto his bed; will you give me a hand?”

Between them they carried the slight figure without difficulty upstairs and into a room which the stout landlady, fluttering round them like a corpulent hen on the landing, indicated as the dead man’s bedroom. The doctor began to undress the body, the inspector helping him, and Roger, for once feeling himself in the way, retired to the sitting-room downstairs to await their verdict.

On the floor by the chair in which the dead man had been sitting lay his pipe, fallen no doubt from his nerveless hand. Roger was about to pick it up with aimless curiosity, when he remembered that nothing should be handled except by the official police. He sat down on a hard horsehair sofa of uninviting aspect and began to think furiously.

At the first shock this unexpected death had seemed completely to upset his carefully worked out theory, the success of which had seemed last night to be a foregone conclusion; but during his hurried mission to the doctor even this had fallen into its place in the scheme. Long before the word suicide had been mentioned at all Roger had arrived at the same conclusion. This explanation, he had realised, so far from upsetting the theory, comfortably confirmed it. Meadows must have got wind of the fact that the net was being drawn round him, and had taken in desperation the only way out. And how had he thus got wind? Even though he was alone, Roger wriggled a trifle guiltily.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Roger had betrayed the inspector’s confidence. It would be no exaggeration at all to say, putting it on its mildest possible terms, that he had been indiscreet. Actually in touch over the telephone with the editor of the
Courier
(that great man) himself, he had let slip something more than the demure “important developments are expected at any minute” of his official report; he had, in fact, so far given way to his temperamental volubility as to hint that the important developments were due entirely to the
Courier
’
s
own special correspondent and his remarkable acumen, the said correspondent having unearthed in the neighbourhood, by a cunning and perspicacity far exceeding that of his official colleague and rival, the presence of a notorious criminal whose life had been discovered to be bound up with that of the deceased, who had ample motive for compassing her death, and who was actually going to be arrested, though not ostensibly on this account, the very next day – all of which had duly appeared, in a little laudatory article upon the special correspondent, as a preface to his own article that morning. It is true that Roger had imagined himself to be speaking in the strictest confidence, but he had certainly erred in overestimating a newsman’s sense of personal honour where his paper’s interests are concerned.

He glanced across at the
Courier
which had been taken from the dead man’s knees and wriggled again. Reading that little paragraph, Meadows could hardly fail to realise that his game was up; nobody else perhaps could see the personal application, but to the man concerned it must have been as clear as daylight. Roger ruefully anticipated a bad quarter of an hour with the inspector. However leniently the latter might be disposed to treat the slip and however readily he might accept Roger’s own explanation, this must mean the end of even such meagre confidences as he had been cajoled into bestowing.

Roger began to compose a letter to the editor of the
Courier
in which he purposed to acquaint that great man with the precise and unvarnished state of his feelings toward him.

He was still in the middle of its vitriolic sentences when the inspector and the doctor reappeared.

“Yes,” the former was saying, “I’ll arrange all that with the Coroner, doctor. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, the inquest (I don’t see that we can put it much earlier than that) so you’ll be able to get going by eleven.”

“Mr Simpson – the Coroner – I’m afraid you’ll find him rather a fussy little man,” said the doctor doubtfully. “Very full of his own dignity and importance.”

“Oh, I won’t tread on his toes,” the inspector laughed. “I’m used to fussy coroners, I can tell you. I promise you he’ll call the inquest for ten all right, when I’ve done with him. And you’ll get in touch with the Sandsea man right away?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, but of course the Coroner will have to confirm it.”

“I’ll see he does that,” returned the inspector confidently. “Dear me, look like having a busy day in front of me, don’t I? And then there’s all these things in here to seal up and send to Sir Henry Griffen for analysis. Bother the Rev. Samuel Meadows! What did he want to go and give me all this trouble for?”

“It is suicide, then?” eagerly put in Roger, who had been waiting with impatience during this exchange for an opportunity of learning what had been discovered. “He did take poison?”

Dr Young looked disapproving before this leading question. “Really, it’s quite impossible to say yet; we must look to the post-mortem to establish the cause of death. There are no signs of apoplexy, it’s true, but he may have had a bad heart. It’s impossible to say anything definitely yet.”

“You’ll have to wait for the adjourned inquest for all that, Mr Sheringham, sir,” said the inspector reprovingly, though his eyes twinkled. “Be careful what you say to this gentleman,” he added to the doctor. “He’s a pressman. They’re all unscrupulous, but he’s worse than most.”

“Yes,” said Roger, considerably relieved to find that the other was disposed to treat his blunder so jocularly. “Yes, I’ve got to grovel to you, Inspector, I know. I’ve got a perfectly good explanation, but I know I don’t deserve to be forgiven. Say when you’ve got a spare quarter of an hour today, and I’ll come and grovel
ad
lib
.” He turned to the doctor. “Then those are the only three possibilities – apoplexy, heart or poison?”

“So far as one can say,” agreed the doctor guardedly.

“And you’ve no idea at all what poison it is?”

“I’ve no idea that it is even poison at all.”

Roger eyed his interlocutor sadly. There was such a lot of possible information to be obtained, and apparently so little probability of obtaining it. For the life of him he did not know what to ask next.

“Well, doctor, you’ll be wanting to get along now, I suppose,” the inspector broke in on this dilemma. “And Mr Sheringham, I’m afraid I shall have to turn you out of here. This room’s got to be kept locked from now on, and nobody allowed in except under orders from me.”

“Right-ho, Inspector,” Roger acquiesced. “And of course all these breakfast things and so on will have to be analysed, if they do find poison in the body, won’t they? By the way, there’s his pipe on the floor there; he may have been smoking it just before he died. Well, doctor, if we’re to be turned out, I’ll stroll along part of the way with you.”

The doctor managed to conceal his joy at the prospect.

Inspector Moresby watched them go with his twinkle in full action. His obvious surmise was not amiss. Roger obtained some excellent exercise, but nothing else. For half a mile he walked by the doctor’s side, pumping busily; but either the well of his companion’s information had run dry or else the pumping machinery was out of gear. In either case, truth remained coyly in her fastness and none of Roger’s strenuous efforts succeeded in bringing her to the surface.

Returning disconsolate to the inn, however, he had a pleasant surprise in finding Anthony unexpectedly in attendance. For the next hour or two he was able to discourse, on the farthest unsubmerged rock, to a thrilled audience of one to his heart’s content.

Roger did not see the inspector again that day till supper, when he was obviously tired out and disinclined to talk. He referred in terms of gentle sarcasm to Roger’s breach of trust, though quite without heat, his attitude being one rather of disillusionment than anger; one gathered that the person he really blamed for the business was himself, for being such a consummate idiot as to trust a journalist. He listened to Roger’s explanation and apologies and accepted the latter, but retaliated, as the culprit had foreseen, by refusing to utter a single word about the case.