A gravel walk, winding. Grey pigeons that waddled suspiciously under elms. Shaven lawns, and the shadows of birds under the sun. The tall, bluff house of mellowed red brick, with white facings and a white cupola surmounted by a gilt weather-vane, growing old gracefully since the days when Anne was queen. Bees somewhere, droning, and a sweet smell of hay in the air.
Rampole had not seen it thus the night before. It had been raining when the rector's Ford drew up here then, and he and Saunders had carried the light, stiffening body up those steps. Before him had opened the mellow hallway, as though he had been suddenly thrust on a lighted stage with that dripping burden, before a thousand people. As he walked up the drive with his companions now, he shrank from meeting Her again. That was how it had been: thrust upon a stage, without lines, dazed and futile; unclothed, the way you feel in dreams sometimes. She hadn't been in the hall then. There had been only that butler, what was his name? — stooping slightly forward, his hands clasped together. He had prepared a couch in the drawing-room.
She had come out of the library, presently. Her red eyes showed that she had been crying desperately, in one of those horrible paroxysms; but she was steady and blank-faced then, squeezing a handkerchief. He hadn't said anything. What the devil was there to say? A word, a motion, anything would have seemed crude and clumsy; he didn't know why; it just would have seemed so. He had merely stood wretchedly by the door, in his soaked flannels and tennis shoes, and left as soon as he could. He remembered leaving: it had just stopped raining a moment before, and the grandfather clock was striking one. Through his wretchedness he remembered fastening foolishly on a small point: the rain stopped at one o'clock. The rain stopped at one o'clock. Got to remember that. Why? well, anyway
It wasn't as though he could feel any sorrow at the death of Martin Starberth. He hadn't even liked Martin Starberth. It was something he stood for; something lost and damned in the girl's face when she walked in to look at her dead; a squeeze of a flimsy handkerchief, a brief contortion of a face, as at pain too great to be borne. The immaculate Martin looked queer in death: he wore an ancient pair of grey flannels and a torn tweed coat…. And how would Dorothy feel now? He saw the closed shutters and the crape on the door, and winced.
Budge opened the door to them now, looking relieved when he saw the chief-constable.
"Yes, sir," he said. "Shall I call Miss Dorothy?"
Sir Benjamin pulled at his lower lip. He was uneasy. "No. Not for the moment, anyhow. Where is she?" "Upstairs, sir."
"And Mr. Starberth?"
"Upstairs also, sir. The undertaking people are here." "Anybody else here?"
"I believe Mr. Payne is on his way, sir. Dr. Markley was to call; he told me that he wished to see you, sir, as soon as he had finished his morning round."
"Ah yes. I see. By the way, Budge… those undertakers: I shall want to see the clothes Mr. Starberth wore last night, and the contents of his pockets, you know."
Budge inclined his flattish head towards Dr. Fell. "Yes, sir. Dr. Fell mentioned that possibility last night. I took the liberty of preserving them without removing anything from the pockets."
"Good man. Get them and bring them to the library now…. And I say, Budge — " "Yes, sir?"
"If you should happen to see Miss Starberth," said Sir Benjamin, fidgeting, "just — er-convey my deepest… you, know? Yes." He hesitated, this honest police official, growing slightly red in the face at what he apparently considered deception on friends. "And I should like to see Mr. Herbert Starberth as soon as is convenient."
Budge was impassive. "Mr. Herbert has not yet returned, sir."
"Oh, ah! I see. Well, get me those clothes."
They went into a darkened library. It is women who are most efficient in a house of death, where emotionalism runs high; men, like these four, are tongue-tied and helpless. Saunders was the only one who showed any degree of calmness; he was getting back his smooth manners, and seemed as unctuous as though he were opening a Prayer-book to read.
"If you'll excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "I think I had better see whether Miss Starberth will receive me. It's a trying time, you know; a trying time; and if I can be of any assistance…."
"Quite," said the chief constable, gruffly. When the rector had gone, he began to pace up and down. "Of course it's a trying time. But why the devil talk about it? I don't like this."
Rampole thoroughly agreed with him. They all fidgeted in the big old room, and Sir Benjamin opened some shutters. Silver chimes rang with fluid grace from the great clock in the hall, sounding as though they were striking through the vault of a cathedral. In this library everything looked old and solid and conventional; there was a globe-map which nobody ever spun, rows of accepted authors which nobody ever read, and above the mantelpiece a large mounted swordfish which (you were convinced) nobody had ever caught. A glass ball was hung up in one window, as a charm against witches.
Budge returned presently, carrying a laundry-bag.
"Everything is here, sir," he announced, "with the exception of the underclothing. Nothing has been removed from the pockets."
"Thank you. Stay here, Budge; I shall want to ask you some questions."
Dr. Fell and Rampole came over to watch as Sir Benjamin put the bag on the centre table and began taking things out. A grey jacket, stiff with mud, the lining frayed and torn, and several buttons missing.
"Here we are," the chief constable muttered, feeling in the pockets. "Cigarette-case-handsome one, too. Full of… these look like American cigarettes. Yes. Lucky Strike. Box of matches. Pocket flask, brandy, a third gone. That's the lot.”
He rummaged again.
"Old shirt, nothing in the pocket. Socks. Here are the trousers, also in disrepair. He knew it would be a dusty job, poking about that prison. Here's his wallet, in the hip pocket." Sir Benjamin paused. "I suppose I'd better look inside. H'm. Ten-shilling note, two pound notes, and a fiver. Letters, all sent to him in America, American postmark. `Martin Starberth, Esq., 470 West 24th St., N. Y.' Look here, you don't suppose some enemy might have followed him from America…?"
"I doubt it," said Dr. Fell. "But you might put them aside."
"Notebook of some sort, full of figures. "A. & S.,' 25, `Good Roysterers,' 10, 'Roaring Caravans,' 3, `Oedipus Rises'; 'Bloomingdales,' 25 'Good-' What's all this?"
"Probably salesman's orders," said Rampole. "He told me he was in the publishing business. Anything else?"
"A number of cards. 'The Freedom Club, 65 West 51st St.' All clubs of some sort; dozens of them. 'Valhalla Cordial Shop, We Deliver, 342 Bleecker-' “
"That's all right," said Rampole. "I understand."
"That finishes the wallet, and the clothes, too. Wait! By Jove! here's his watch in his watch-pocket. And still running. His body broke the force of the fall, and the watch-''
"Let me look at that," Dr. Fell interposed, suddenly. He tamed over the thin gold watch, whose ticking was loud in the quiet room. "In the stories," he added, "the dead man's watch is always very conveniently smashed, thus enabling the detectives to fix the wrong time of death because the murderer has set the hands at a different hour. Behold an exception from life."
"So I see," replied the chief constable. "But why are you so interested? In this case, the time of death isn't at all important."
"Oh, yes it is!" said Dr. Fell. "More important than you think. Er — at present this watch says five-and-twenty minutes past ten." He peered up at the clock on the mantelpiece. "That clock also says five-and-twenty minutes past ten, to the second…. Budge, do you happen to know whether that clock is right?"
Budge inclined his head. "Yes, sir. It is right. I can answer positively about that score, sir."
The doctor hesitated, peering sharply at the butler, and then put the watch down.
"You look confoundedly earnest, man," he said. "Why are you so positive?"
"Because an unusual thing happened last night, sir. The grandfather clock in the hall was ten minutes fast. I — er — happened to notice it by comparing it with the clock in here. Then I went round to look at all the other clocks in the house. We generally set our watches by the grandfather clock, sir, and I fancied―"
"You did?" demanded Dr. Fell. "You looked at the others, did you?"
"Why — yes, sir," said Budge, slightly shocked.
"Well? Were they all right?"
"That, if I may say so, sir, is the curious part of it. They were. All of them except the grandfather. I can't imagine how it came to be wrong, sir. Somebody must have set it that way. In the hurry and rush, I have not had an opportunity to enquire.. '
"What's this all about?" asked the chief constable. "According to what you've told me, young Starberth arrived at the Governor's Room on the tick of eleven — his watch is right — everything is right…."
"Yes," said Dr. Fell. "Yes. That's what makes it wrong, you see. Just one more question, Budge. Is there a clock in Mr. Martin's room?"
"Yes, sir. A large one on the wall."
Dr. Fell nodded his head several times, in communication with himself. Then he went to a chair and lowered himself into it with a sigh.
"Carry on, old man. I may seem to ask a number of foolish questions at odd times, and I shall probably be doing it all day, to every one of your witnesses. Bear with me, will you? — But, Budge! When Sir Benjamin has finished talking to you, I wish you'd try to dig up the person who changed that clock in the hall. It's rather important."
The chief constable was tapping his fingers impatiently on the table. "You're sure you're quite through?" he asked. "If not — "
"Well, I might point out," said the doctor, raising one cane to point, "that the murderer has certainly pinched something out of those clothes. What? — Why, his keys, man! All the keys he had to have! You didn't find 'em, did you?"
Sir Benjamin remained silent, nodding to himself; then he made a gesture and turned resolutely to Budge. Again they were to go over the same bare ground as last night.
Rampole did not want to hear it. He already knew Budge's bare story, as the doctor had elicited it; and he wanted to see Dorothy Starbeth. The rector would be up there with her now, shovelling out platitudes like a pious stoker, with the idea that in quantity there was consolation. He could imagine Saunders saying the conventional things in just the smooth, unthinking fashion which makes women murmur, "Such a help, you know!" — and remarking how beautifully he behaved.
Why weren't people silent in the presence of death? Why, from everybody, this invariable ghoulish murmuring of, "So — natural — looking, isn't-he?" and all the comments which only started the women to weeping afresh? No matter. What he disliked was the idea of Saunders being so kind and big-brotherly (Saunders would enjoy that role, too) up there with Her. Budge's professionally serene visage was an annoyance, too; and Budge's carefully fashioned sentences where the h's were automatically clipped on, like caps upon bottles, as the words issued from the machine. Bad form or not, he couldn't sit here. Whatever the rest of them thought, he was somehow going to get closer to her. He slipped from the room.
But where would he go? Obviously not upstairs; that would be a little too much. But he couldn't prowl about the hall, as though he were looking for the gas-meter or something. Did they have gas-meters in England? Oh, well! Wandering towards the back of the dusky hall, he saw a door partly open near the stairs. A figure blocked the light and Dorothy Starberth was beckoning to him….
He met her in the shadow of the stairs, clasping her — hands hard, and he could feel her trembling. At first he was afraid to look at her face, because he was afraid, in the thickness of his throat, that he might blurt out, "I've failed you, and I shouldn't have failed you," and to say that — no! Or he might say, "I love you," here in the shadow, beneath the mellow ticking of the great clock; and the thought of what he might have said struck deep, with a barbed and shaking hurt.
But there were no words, and only the clock murmured in this quiet cathedral, and something sang within him, crying: Great God, why must there be all this nonsense about the glory of strength and self-reliance in such as she? I would not wish her so. This small body, which I might hold in my arms now for a moment, I would shield and guard; and the whisper she might give me would be as a war-cry in the night; and against this shield, as I held her forever, even the gates of hell should not prevail. But he knew that this ache in the blood must be stifled now. He was only thinking crazy things; laugh-provoking things, so they said; and through the muddle of dreams he could be only his clumsy self, and say:
"I know…."
A foolish whisper, as he patted her hand. Then somehow they were inside the door, in a small office with drawn blinds.
"I heard you come in," she said, in a low voice, "and I heard Mr. Saunders coming upstairs, and I couldn't talk to him; so I let Mrs. Bundle stop him — she'll talk his ears off — and came down the back stairs."
She sat down on an old horsehair sofa, her chin propped in the palm of her hand, her eyes heavy and dull. A silence. The closed, darkened room was thick with heat: When she started to speak again, with a little spasmodic movement of her hand, he touched her shoulder.
"If you'd rather not talk…"
"I've got to talk. It seems days since I've slept. And I must go in there, in a moment, and go over the whole thing again with Them."
His fingers tightened. She raised her head.
"You needn't look like that," she said, softly. "Would you — would you believe that I was never tremendously fond of Martin? It isn't that so much — his dying, I mean. He was never very close to any of us, you know. I ought to feel worse about it than I do."
"Well, then…"
"Either one of the two is just as bad!" she cried, her voice rising. "It's either — We can't help ourselves; we're haunted; we're damned, all of us, in the blood; retribution; I never believed it, I won't believe it; or else―"
"Steady! You've got to snap out of this."
"Or else-maybe it's both. How do we know what's in a person's blood? Yours or mine or anybody's? There may be a murderer's blood just as well as a ghost; more so. Is that door shut?"
"Yes."
"Any of us. Why" — her voice grew vague, and she put her hands together as though she were uncertain of their position, "I might kill you. I might take the gun out of that desk drawer, just because I couldn't help myself, and all of a sudden…" She shuddered. "Why, if all those old people weren't damned to suicide, or being thrown off the balcony by destiny — ghosts — I don't know — then somebody was damned to kill them — in the family…."
"You've got to stop this! Look here! Listen-!"
She nodded gently, touched her eyelids with her finger tips, and looked up. "Do you think Herbert killed Martin?"
"No! No, of course not. And it wasn't any foolery about ghosts, either. And-you know your cousin couldn't have killed Martin. He admired him; he was solid and dependable―"
"He talked to himself," the girl said, blankly. "I remember now; he talked to himself. It's the quiet people I'm afraid of. They're the ones who go mad, if it's tainted blood to begin with…. He had big red hands. His hair wouldn't stay down, no matter how much he slicked it. He was built delicately, like Martin, but his hands were too big. He tried to look like Martin. I wonder if he hated Martin?”
A pause, while she plucked at the edges of the sofa.
"And he was always trying to invent something that never worked. A new churn. He thought he was an inventor. Martin used to laugh at him… "
The dim room was full of personalities. Rampole saw two figures standing in the middle of a white road at dusk, so like in appearance and yet so vitally unlike. Martin, drunk, a cigarette hanging from his lips. Herbert gawky and blunt-featured, with a badly fitting hat set exactly high and straight on his head. You felt that if Herbert smoked a cigarette, too, it would protrude from the exact centre of his mouth, and waggle awkwardly.
"Somebody opened the wall safe in the library last night," said Dorothy Starberth. "That was something I didn't tell Dr. Fell last night. I didn't tell him so much that was important. I didn't tell him that at dinner Herbert was more flustered than Martin… It was Herbert who opened that library safe."
"But―"
"Martin didn't know the combination. He's been away two years, and he never had occasion to. The only ones who knew it were myself and Mr. Payne-and Herbert. I saw it standing open last night."
"Something was taken?"
"I don't think so. There was never anything valuable left in there. When father built this office here, he stopped using it. I'm sure he hadn't opened it for years, and none of the rest of us ever did. It was just full of some old papers for years back… It wasn't that anything had been taken; at least, anything I know of. It was something I found."
He wondered whether she were becoming hysterical. She rose from the sofa, opened a secretary-desk with a key hung round her neck, and took out a yellowed piece of paper. As she handed it to him, he fought down a desire to take her in his arms.
"Read it!" she said, breathlessly. "I trust you. I won't tell the others. I must tell somebody…. Read it."
He glanced down, puzzled. It was headed, "Feb. 3, 1895. My copy of the verses — Timothy Starberth," in faded ink. It read:
How called the dwellers of Lyn-dun?
Great Homer's tale of Troy,
Or country of the midnight sun
What loth all men Destroy?
Against it man hath dashed his foot;
This angel bears a spear!
In garden-glade where Lord Christ prayed
What spawns dark stars and fear?
This place the white Diana rose,
Of this, Dido bereft;
Where on four leaves good fortune grows
East, west, south-what is left?
The Corsican was vanquished there,
Oh, mother of all sin!
Find green the same as shiretown's name,
Find Newgate Gaol, and win!
"Well," said Rampole, muttering over the lines, "it's very bad doggerel, and it doesn't make the slightest sense so far as I can see; but that's true of a lot of verse I've read…. What is it?"
She looked at him steadily. "Do you see the date? February 3 was father's birthday. He was born in 1870, so in 1895 he would have been―"
"Twenty-five years old," interposed Rampole, suddenly.
They were both silent, Rampole staring at the enigmatic words with a slow comprehension. All the wild surmises which he and Sir Benjamin had been making, and which Dr. Fell had so violently ridiculed, seemed to grow substantial before him.
"Now let me lead you on," he suggested. "If that's true, then the original of this paper — it says `my copy' — was in the vault in the Governor's Room. So?"
"It must be what the eldest sons were intended to see." She took the paper out of his hands as though she felt a rage against it, and would have crumpled it in her hand but that he shook his head. "I've thought about it, and thought about it, and that's the only explanation I can see. I hope it's true. I had fancied so many ghastly things that might be there. And yet this is just as bad. People still die."
He sat down on the sofa.
"If there was an original," he said, "it isn't there now."
Slowly, omitting nothing, he told her of their visit to the Governor's Room. "And that thing," he added, "is a cryptogram of some sort. It's got to be. Could anybody have killed Martin just to get at this?"
There was a discreet knock at the door, and they both started like conspirators. Putting her finger on her lips, Dorothy hastily locked the paper in the desk.
"Come in," she said.
Budge's smooth countenance floated in at the opening of the door. If he were surprised to find Rampole here, there was no sign of it.
"Excuse me, Miss Dorothy," he said. "Mr. Payne has just arrived. Sir Benjamin would like to see you in the library, if you please."