The Wrong Visitor
Storer, who had been waiting patiently with his nose inclined, frowned at this beginning. He said: "I beg your pardon, sir?"
"Were these windows open when you found the body this morning?"
"Yes, sir" replied Storer, after inspecting each one.
The doctor removed his shovel hat; and, on the sudden realization, everybody else did the same; though the doctor's action had been prompted less out of veneration for the dead than to mop his moist forehead with a gaudy bandana. And, as though that action had broken a sort of spell, everybody moved into the room.
"H'm, yes. The floor over here is half an inch deep in water, and all the curtains are soaked… About this storm last night: What time did it commence?"
"About eleven o'clock, sir."
Dr. Fell seemed to be talking to himself. "Then why didn't Depping close his windows? Why leave all five of them open, with a thunderstorm blowing in? It's wrong; it's illogical; it's… What were you saying?"
Storer's eyes had grown sharp with a memory; his cheeks puffed slightly, and for a moment he looked less disillusioned.
"Go on, man," said Dr. Fell testily. "The storm begins at eleven. Depping is alone then. His visitor arrives shortly afterwards — the visitor goes upstairs, and is entertained — and all this time the storm is coming full blast through five open windows. That's wrong somewhere… What were you thinking of?"
"Something Achille said, sir." The valet looked at Depping, and seemed puzzled. "I forgot it, and so did Achille, when the other police officer was speaking to us. That's Achille Georges — the cook, you know…"
"Well?"
Storer stood on his dignity, and would not be hurried. "After the storm had begun, and that American went upstairs to see Mr. Depping, you see, sir. I sent Achille out to see what had gone wrong with the electric wires. They put the lights out, you see —"
"We know all that."
"Yes, sir. While Achille was out in the rain, he saw Mr. Depping and the American up here going about and raising all the windows. He said they seemed to be waving the curtains too."
Dr. Fell blinked at him. "Raising all the windows? Waving the curtains? — Didn't that seem at least a trifle odd?"
Again the valet contemplated the follies of the world and was not surprised. "Mr. Depping, sir" he answered stolidly, "was a man of moods."
The doctor said, "Bah!" And the bishop of Mappleham, who had recovered himself by this time, moved into first place with stately serenity.
"We can go into all that presently," he suggested. "Ah, might I inquire — Inspector Murch went over this room, I presume, for fingerprints? We shall not be disturbing anything if we investigate?"
"No, sir. There were no fingerprints," said Storer in a rather approving manner. He regarded the body as though he appreciated a workmanlike job, and then stared out of the windows.
"First," observed the bishop, "a look round…" He approached the desk, his son following, moved round it, and inspected the dead man's face. Death had been instantaneous. There was even a rather complacent expression on Depping's face, which was smirking out towards the windows with its cheek against the blotter. It was a long, dry, nondescript countenance, which might have borne any expression in life. The eyes were half open, the forehead bony, the mouth furrowed; and a rimless pince-nez still clung to his high-bridged nose.
From under his fingers the bishop drew the card. It was of white glazed cardboard, neatly cut out from a sheet such as you buy at any stationer's. Eight tiny broadswords drawn in India ink, their hilts painted black and their blades gray with water color, were arranged in a sort of asterisk along a blue painted line which was evidently meant to represent water. "If," said the bishop, as though offhand to his son, "Dr. Fell really has some notion as to what this means…"
Dr. Fell did not reply. He was lifting the white cloth over the dishes on the side table. After fingering the card impatiently, the bishop circled the desk, peering, and opened the right-hand drawer. From it he took out a thirty-eight calibre Smith & Wesson revolver with an ivory handle. He sniffed at the barrel, and then broke it open as though he had been handling firearms all his life. Then he replaced it, and closed the drawer with a bang. He seemed more at a loss than Hugh had ever seen him.
Two shots," he said, "and no other bullet found here…"
"No, sir" said the valet complacently. "The police officer and Mr. Morgan allowed me to stay here while they made their examination, sir. They even conceived an idea that it might have gone out one of the windows, and they sighted lines from all parts of the room to see if they could find its direction. But Mr. Morgan, sir-Mr. Morgan pointed out it would be most unusual if a bullet went out there without touching any of the bars. They are not more than half an inch apart, any of them. He said it would be freakish, sir," amplified Storer, testing the word with a little tilt of his nose, and finding it good; "freakish. If you'll excuse me."
"A very clever young man," said the other coldly. "But what we want are facts. Let us proceed to the facts." He stood heavy and sharp-jawed against his light, flapping his hands behind him, and his hypnotic eye fixed the valet. "How long have you been with Mr. Depping?"
"Five years, sir. Ever since he came to live here." "How did he come to employ you?" "Through a London agency, sir. This is not," replied Storer with a touch of austerity, "my part of the country"
"Do you know anything of his past life — before he employed you?"
"No, sir. I assured the police officer of that this morning."
He went over his story in a patient fashion. Mr. Depping had been a man of moods; touchy, irritated by trifles, apt to go into a rage with the cook if his meals were not shaded exactly to his fastidious palate, fond of quoting Brillat-Savarin. Very learned, no doubt, but not a gentleman. Storer appeared to base his sad deductions to this effect on the statements that (a) Mr. Depping tended to call the servants by their first names when he was drunk, and to mention his business affairs, (b) he used American expressions, and (c) he was freely and often — said Storer — vulgarly generous with his money. At one time (while devoted to his whisky drinking) he had said that the only reason why he employed Storer was because the valet looked so bloody respectable: and the only reason why he employed Achille Georges was because the world considered a taste for fine foods and wines to be the mark of a cultured man.
"That's what he said, sir," affirmed Storer, with an expression which on any less dismal face would have been sly. His nose sang on: " The world is so full of fools, Charley,'—which is not my name, sir—'the world is so full of fools,' he said to me, "that anybody who can get emotional over an omelette, or tell you the vintage of a wine, is considered a very superior sort of person.' Then he would glare over those half-glasses of his, and grip the whisky bottle as though he meant to throw it."
The valet's eyes wheeled round his narrow nose as though he appreciated this too. "But I must say, sir, in all justice, that he said he would have kept Achille anyway, because of the soups he could make. They were good soups," agreed Storer, judicially. "Mr. Depping was very fond—"
"My good man," interposed the bishop testily, "I am not at all concerned with his tastes in food—"
Tarn," said Dr. Fell suddenly. He had wheeled round as the valet's narrative went on. "Was he fond of crawfish soup, by any chance?"
"He was sir," replied Storer imperturbably. "It was his favorite. Achille had been preparing it frequendy of late."
Dr. Fell removed the cloth again from the dinner dishes of last night, and nodded towards them. "Then it's damned funny," he said. "Here's crawfish soup, nearly untasted. On the other hand, he seems to have been especially rough on a kind of pineapple salad. He's eaten most of his dinner except the soup… Never mind. Carry on."
The bishop of Mappleham, who had paid no attention to this, fixed on an idea which had been growing in his son's mind for some time.
"One thing is evident," he declared. "Every bit of evidence we have heard points towards it. I do not wish to defame the memory of the dead, but this man Depping was not what he seemed. His past life — his unaccountable past life — his actions, and contradictions, are all those of a man who is playing a part… "
"Yes," said Dr. Fell, with a sort of obstinacy; "that's too evident to mention. But who's been eating his dinner?"
"Confound his dinner!" roared the bishop, letting off steam for the first time. "You know it, Storer. I believe you know it too, Morley…"
He swung round to young Standish, who had remained near the door with his hands jammed into his pockets. Morley lifted his eyes. Morley said equably:
"Sorry, sir. I don't know anything of the kind."
"It does not surprise me," pursued His Reverence, "that Depping should have been consorting with criminals. In all likelihood he has been a criminal himself in the past, and he has been living here to assume a guise of respectability. He knew Louis Spinelli. Louis Spinelli tracked him down for the purpose of blackmailing him… Depping's 'business.' What was his business? Does anybody know anything about it?"
"Excuse me, sir," observed the valet. "He had — he informed me — a large financial interest in the publishing firm of Standish & Burke. But, as I told the police officer this morning, he was trying to get rid of that interest. You see, he told me all about it when he was — indisposed the last time."
"I meant his business previous to five years ago. He never mentioned that to you, I dare say?… I thought not."
His Reverence was regaining his self-confidence. He moved one hand up and down the lapel of his ponderous black coat. "Now, let us reconstruct what happened last night, if we can. Shortly after the storm began, around eleven o'clock, this stranger — I mean the American, whose name we know to be Spinelli — rang the doorbell and asked to see Mr. Depping. That is correct, Storer? Thank you… Now, as a matter of form I must ask you to identify him; I have two photographs here" — he produced them from his inside pocket and handed them to the valet. That is the man who called on Mr. Depping, is it not?"
Storer looked at the snapshots with care. He handed them back.
‘No, sir" he said apologetically.
With a feeling that somebody had gone mad, Hugh Donovan peered into the man's face. There was a silence, during which they could hear Dr. Fell unconcernedly poking with his stick in the fireplace behind the dead man's chair. Behind this chair Dr. Fell rose to the surface like a red-faced walrus, wrinkled his moustache with a beaming air, and sank down again. The bishop only stared, blankly.
"But this…" he said, and swallowed hard. He assumed a persuasive air. "Gome, come, now! This is absurd. Utterly absurd, you know. This must be the man. Come look again."
"No, sir, it isn't the same man," Storer answered with an air of regret. "I only had a brief look at him, I know, and the candle didn't give a great deal of light. Perhaps, sir, I might not even be able to identify him positively if I saw him again… But — excuse me — this is not the same man. The whole face is different, except for the moustache. This man's face is very broad and low, and has heavy eyebrows. It doesn't look anything like the man I saw. And, besides, the man I saw had projecting ears, noticeably projecting, sir."
The bishop looked at Dr. Fell. The doctor was stirring a mass of heavy black ash in the fireplace, and one eye caught the ecclesiastical appeal.
"Yes," he said, "yes, I was afraid of that."
Somebody brushed past Donovan. Morley Standish had come up to the desk.
"This man's lying," he said heavily. "He's either lying, or else, he's working with Spinelli. It must have been Spinelli. The bishop is right. There's nobody else—"
"Tut, tut," said Dr. Fell, rather irritably. "Calm yourselves a moment, while I ask just one question, and then I may be able to tell you something. I say, Storer, it's rather an important question, so try not to make any mistake."
He indicated the door to the balcony. "It's about that door. Was it usually locked or unlocked?"
"The door… why, always locked, sir. Invariably. It was never used."
Dr. Fell nodded. "And the lock," he said musingly, "isn't a spring-lock. It's the old-fashioned kind, d'ye see. Where's the key for it?"
The other reflected for some time. "I believe, sir, that it's hanging up on a hook in the pantry, along with some other keys for rooms that aren't used."
"Cut along then, and see if you can find it. Ill give you odds it isn't there, but have a look anyway."
He watched owlishly until the valet had left the room.
"Let's pass over for the moment," he went on, "the identity of the man who came to see Depping last night. Let's only assume that somebody came here for the purpose of killing Depping, not blackmailing him, and go on from there. Come here a moment, will you?"
They followed him uncertainly as he went over to the bridge lamp near the front windows.
The electric fittings in this place" he continued, "are of a rather old-fashioned variety. You see that socket along the baseboard of the wall? This plug," — he picked up a length of wire from the lamp—"this plug, which is loose now, is screwed into that socket. In the modern ones the plug has only two prongs, which fit into the socket, and the live part isn't exposed for somebody to touch accidentally and get the devil of a shock. But the live part is exposed there; you see?"
"Certainly," said the bishop. "What about it?"
"Well, I've found the buttonhook."
"What?"
Dr. Fell raised his hand for silence as Storer hurried back into the room. "The. key isn't there, sir," he reported.
"Mmf, yes. Now, then, just let me get one or two points corroborated, and then you may go. Last night the storm began just before eleven o'clock. You didn't speak to Mr. Depping then, or he to you. You went downstairs to shut the windows, and you were down there when the lights went out. You rummaged after candles down here, which took — how long, should you think?"
"Well, sir, say five minutes."
"Good. Then you started upstairs, and were going up to see whether your employer needed any candles when the knock came at the door, and you saw the mysterious man with the American accent. He wouldn't give any name, but pointed to the speaking tube and said to ask Mr. Depping whether he couldn't go upstairs. Which you did, and the visitor went up. Is
all that correct, as we heard it?" "Yes, sir."
"That's all. And be sure you go downstairs now, please." Pushing out his cloak, Dr. Fell lowered himself into an easy-chair near the lamp. He regarded his audience with an argumentative stare, and said: "I wanted to be sure of that, genthemen. It struck me, when I heard it this morning, that the story had a distinctly fishy sound. Look here. Put yourselves in Depping's place for a moment.
"You're sitting here in this room one evening, reading or what not, and all of a sudden — without the slightest warning — every light in the house goes out. What would you do?"
"Do?" repeated the bishop. He frowned. "Why, I suppose I should go out and find out why—"
"Precisely!" rumbled Dr. Fell, and struck his stick against the floor. "It's the normal, inevitable thing. You'd be furious; people always are when that sort of thing happens. You'd go out and bawl over the bannisters as to what the thus-and-so was going on in that place. Depping, a man who was annoyed more than anything by trifles, assuredly would. But that's the point. He didn't. He didn't even call downstairs to inquire what was wrong.
"To the contrary, he evinced a singular lack of interest in those lights. He was willing to entertain a man — who wouldn't give his name — with only a candle or two for illumination. He even, you recall, instructed Storer not to bother about seeing that they were repaired. Now, that isn't reasonable. And, actually, what was wrong? Something had blown out the fuses. I thought it might be interesting to inquire into causes. Here is the cause."
From the floor beside the chair Dr. Fell took up a long steel buttonhook, now corroded and blackened. He turned it over in his palm, musingly.
"You see that live socket? Eh? Well, this buttonhook was deliberately thrust into it, in order to short-circuit the lights. You have only to look at the buttonhook to see that. I found it lying near the open socket. In other words, the lights were put out from this room… What do you make of it?"