The Bath Mysteries (18 page)

“I've thought of that, too,” Bobby confessed.

“Or very likely,” Ferris swept on, “no insurance this time – and none of that £20,000 capital either, all lost, and papers signed by Dr. Beale to show just how, and no Dr. Beale left to question papers or signature either. And if any questions asked, Detective-Sergeant Owen to be called as a witness to prove Beale himself said he wanted the money invested on a scheme of his own. It looks a cinch to me – and so, I bet, it does to them.”

“Who are ‘them'?” Bobby asked, though more to himself than to the inspector.

“Ah,” said Ferris, and left it at that. He went on: “The A.C. is all lit up about this idea of some bird prowling about the Embankment, like the one in the Bible seeking whom to devour – only that was a lion, wasn't it? He's got half a dozen special observers hanging about, trying to get track of your Mr. Smith. Of course,” admitted Ferris, “it is an odd yarn.”

“I don't see yet where the Embankment business fits in with the rest of it,” Bobby said, still half to himself.

“No, and it's going to be a tough job to get the evidence,” agreed Ferris. “We're up against it, if you ask me. We know murder's being planned – but we've no evidence. We know Beale is likely to be the next – but we don't know how to stop it. We may warn him, but we can't be too definite, and like enough the bait they'll dangle before him will be big enough to shut his eyes tight. You are to see him tomorrow, aren't you? Isn't that when he said he would be back?”

“Yes, I think so,” Bobby said.

“You are getting full instructions,” Ferris went on, "to be careful and all that, and not drop any warning hints at present. He would go off and repeat them at once, and, if our birds get to know we're on them, we shan't stand a chance. There's a report in about him from the locals – well-known gentleman, very popular and respected; been a resident three or four years; lives very quietly, but in very good style; has a local reputation for his dinners and wines, especially his wines. Married; no children; Mrs. Beale bit of an invalid – doesn't go out much, and never without her husband. Staff: man, who is the gardener and chauffeur when required – but Beale generally drives himself – and wife, housekeeper. Local help as required. Beale understood to be writing a book on philosophy, and sometimes stays a night or two in London, busy on research. You can check up on all that, but, if you ask me,” said Ferris, “a philosopher is easy mark for such as these seem to be.”

“I don't quite see why a philosopher should want to do research work,” observed Bobby, “unless it's a history of philosophy – even then the facts are all there, it's only the theories that are different.”

“Give me facts,” said Ferris, with emphasis. “There's one in about Alice Yates, by the way. Reported gone back to her old trade. Seems she was seen round by Piccadilly somewhere, talking to some of her old pals.”

“I'll check up on that,” Bobby said doubtfully, “but I think there must be a mistake – according to what her landladies say, she's never out in the evenings.”

“Well, look into it,” said Ferris; and Bobby promised, and then went on to tell of the results his own inquiries had achieved that afternoon.

Ferris listened with interest, and with a touch of annoyance as well.

“The more facts we get,” he complained, “the less they seem to hang together. The signet ring is an exhibit, isn't it? Mrs. Charles will have to have a chance to pick it out. We'll have to get hold of the bit of crockery or china Lady What's-her-name bought and see if she can pick that out as well. If she does, it's going to look bad for Mrs. Ronnie, with the report that came in this afternoon – you knew the exhumation had taken place?”

“Yes, has anything been found?” Bobby asked quickly.

“Poison,” Ferris answered. “Death was caused by that, and they think the patient must have been dead before being put in the bath. That and the boiling-water dodge were just to prevent too close an examination of the body. If you find a man dead in a bath in boiling water, you don't worry about looking round for any other reason – that one seems good enough. But now they've found poison, the other two bodies, Priestman's and Sands's, are to be exhumed, too.”

“Has it been said what poison was used?” Bobby asked.

“Some Latin name as long as my arm,” Ferris answered. “Stuff only a doctor would be likely to know about or be able to get hold of. And there's no doctor we know of in this case – none at all. Even Dr. Beale isn't a real doctor, is he?”

“Well, I suppose he's real enough,” Bobby answered, “but he's a doctor of philosophy, nothing to do with medicine.”

“What about Mrs. Ronnie?” Ferris asked. “She has no relations who are doctors, has she?”

“Her father,” Bobby answered. “He's dead now. He wanted her to take up medicine, and she began studying, but, after a year or two at one of the London hospitals, she gave it up when he died.”

Ferris whistled softly.

“She'll know something about it, then,” he said. “She'll have had opportunities for getting poisons – and poison's a woman's weapon. Looks as if we were getting warm at last.”

When Bobby received his instructions next morning, he found, as Inspector Ferris had told him would be the case, that he was very strictly enjoined to be careful of what he said to Dr. Beale. On no account was Dr. Beale to be informed of the wide scope the inquiry seemed to be taking; no hint was to be dropped of the sensational developments that were now in view. It was evidently felt that philosophers were unaccountable creatures, to be handled with care, and that anything told to any of the species would be innocently babbled to the next comer.

Dr. Beale had not, in fact, impressed Bobby as being quite so innocent in mind, quite so ignorant of the ways of the world, as these instructions seemed to assume. Still, one can never be too careful, and, since it was a fact that Beale was in actual communication with Lawrence, there was no doubt a real risk that anything said to one might soon reach the other. And the difficulties presented by the time lapse, by the verdicts recorded at the several inquests, and so on, were quite sufficient already, without adding to them unnecessarily through allowing further warnings to reach suspected persons already probably alarmed and disturbed by Bobby's earlier visit.

It was with an unusual degree of excitement and sense of anticipation that Bobby left town that morning by train for his destination. He felt the information Dr. Beale would have to give might be, almost certainly would be, of the highest importance. If in this tragedy that had happened abroad there could be traced the hand of one or more of those to whom suspicion already pointed, then certainty would be reached, whether formal proof could be secured or no. At any rate, the horrid cloud resting on those who were innocent would be cleared away, and that in itself would be a great step forward.

Through the pleasant country town where he alighted, Bobby made his way to the address given. He found the house to be a comfortable, old-fashioned dwelling, standing back by itself in a large, well-kept garden. The whole place had an air of comfort and well-being, suggesting a substantial income liberally spent.

The front door of the house was open, and, before Bobby had time to knock, there came into the hall from one of the rooms a thin, tall woman, middle-aged, fair hair and fair complexion, plainly and even carelessly dressed. Bobby had but a glimpse of her; for, at the first sight of his tall form standing there upon the threshold, she gave a little frightened squeal and bolted like a startled rabbit, so that all his memory of her was of a pale, scared face, two large pale eyes full of fear, and a scuttle of disappearing skirts. Almost at once appeared another woman, a servant seemingly, a stout and comfortable-looking person with a stolid, capable, and somewhat stupid air, as if she could do very well what she could do but nothing else. Advancing firmly towards Bobby, and without waiting for him to speak, she said, in the loud, toneless voice of the deaf, that they wanted nothing today, thank you.

Bobby produced his card.

“Is Dr. Beale in?” he asked; and, when she cupped her ear in her hand and leaned forward, he repeated the question more loudly and succeeded in making her hear. He added, still shouting into her ear: “Please say I should appreciate a few words with him. I am afraid I startled the lady I saw just now – Mrs. Beale, was it?”

“She's been ill,” the woman answered, studying him and the card with interest. “Any little thing upsets her.”

Bobby thought that that must be indeed the case if the mere sight of a stranger at the door could send her into panic-stricken flight. At a house so prosperous and well kept as this, surely callers must be frequent, but then, of course, chronic invalids – those who “enjoy bad health” – are often morbidly sensitive.

Without further comment, Bobby was ushered into a large, pleasant room on the ground floor, comfortably furnished with magnificent armchairs like those that had so impressed him in the office of the Berry, Quick Syndicate, fitted with the same self-lighting arrangement. In the middle of the apartment stood a lordly walnut writing-table, with an inkstand in onyx, a silver-mounted blotting-pad, and all around the walls were book-laden shelves. Bobby glanced at their titles. He knew the names of many of the authors. Hegel, Hume, Whitehead, Descartes, Berkeley; a whole shelf devoted to Kant. With the names of other writers he was less familiar, but the titles of their books sounded formidable:
The Philosophy of the Unconscious
,
Pleasure and Conation
,
Cognition and the World Structure
,
A Theory of Necessity
.

Much impressed, Bobby took down several while he waited, and regarded the clean unsoiled expanse of the printed pages with suitable reverence. Odd, he reflected, that all these apparently virginal pages were in fact fecund with ideas that might in time affect the life of every man, and he told himself that the woman – housekeeper or servant – who had admitted him must be both capable and tactful to succeed in keeping so neat and trim and clean the working room of a philosopher. A contrast, he thought smilingly, to the chambers of the Reader in Philosophy at his old college, where every chair had borne its pile of books, every corner been occupied by other piles, and no book ever there for more than twenty-four hours before being reduced to ruin by leaves turned back, bent covers, margins covered with scribbled comment, till even the hardest hearted must have wept to see so innocent a thing so harshly used.

He was still looking at the shelves of books when he heard the door open and turned quickly, though not so quickly but that Dr. Beale, with his strange swift ease of movement, was already in the centre of the room, standing by the writing table.

“From Scotland Yard, I see,” he said, glancing at Bobby's card he had in his hand; and then: “But I've seen you before, haven't I?”

“At the office of Messrs. Berry, Quick,” Bobby answered. “In fact, that is why I have ventured to call.”

“Oh, yes,” Beale answered. “I remember. Dear me... but do sit down. Scotland Yard? Most intriguing; one hears so much of your wonderful organization. Most useful, most necessary, and yet so aloof, so alien, from ordinary, everyday life. No wonder Mrs. Beale was a little startled.”

“I am exceedingly sorry,” Bobby said, “but surely Mrs. Beale had no idea –”

"No, no, of course not,” the doctor interrupted, “but we have so few visitors. I'm afraid,” he went on, laughing pleasantly, “1 lead a very secluded life. If one wishes to do serious work, there is hardly time for much society. Then, too, people seem to think philosophy's a dangerous trade, and are inclined to fight a little shy of any who follow it.” He laughed again, and transferred himself with one of his flashing movements to a cabinet standing against the wall. “A glass of sherry, or do you prefer a whisky and soda?” he asked.

“Oh, please, neither, if you'll excuse me,” Bobby said. “I'm sure you'll understand, but the fact is I'm on duty, and the regulations are very strict – red tape, of course, but there they are.”

“Oh, in that case I mustn't tempt you,” Beale said, and flashed back to his place at the writing table. He added abruptly: “I don't mean we are hermits, you know, but we do have few visitors, and then Mrs. Beale” – he paused, and said with great gravity: “Mrs. Beale is a genius.”

“Oh, indeed,” murmured Bobby, slightly taken aback.

"A genius,” repeated her husband, his eyes raised admiringly heavenwards. “You ought to taste the dinners she prepares. It is only in the kitchen that she really lives. There she comes to life – a genius. But perhaps you are not interested in cookery?”

“Well, sir, I always enjoy a good dinner,” Bobby said.

Dr. Beale shook a reproachful head at him.

“You mean you have a good appetite,” he said. “The young often think a good appetite is enough. It is not. What is required is study, understanding, sympathy – sympathy, above all. Out of the kitchen you would take Mrs. Beale for a most ordinary personality. In it, she is inspired, she – creates.”

“Indeed,” murmured Bobby, still somewhat at a loss.

“You aren't interested,” Beale said quickly. “At my age, you will be. Your wine, your dinner – what else counts in life? But Mrs. Beale is not strong, an invalid, almost, and her strength must be spared, just as mine must be for my work. So you see we have little time for society. One cannot work out the difficult mathematical problems involved in present-day speculations, when it seems nature is merely a problem in algebra, if one fritters away one's time socially.” He held up, as he spoke, the silver-mounted blotting-pad to show in reverse upon it row after row of figures in neat columns. “Blotting-pads reveal secrets to detectives, I've heard,” he said, laughing amiably at Bobby's wide-open eyes and expression of intent interest, “and this betrays the time I've had to spend working out the equations one has to deal with in the new theories.”