Inspector Harding, of Scotland Yard, arrived at Ralton shortly before two o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, and drove straight to the police station. Here he was awaited by Superintendent Lupton and Sergeant Nethersole. The Superintendent, who was fifty years of age, with scant grey locks, a red and somewhat fierce face, and a waist measurement of fifty inches, looked forward to Inspector Harding's advent with considerable hostility. It was not that he really wanted to handle this case up at the Grange. He would not go so far as to say that he thought it beyond his powers, but he could see that it was going to mean a lot of work, awkward work too, what with the General having been a big pot in the neighbourhood, and her ladyship giving away the prizes at the Police Sports only a week ago — not that he held with all these sports, and football teams and he didn't know what beside. They hadn't had them in his young days in the Force, and nobody need think he was going to encourage the young chaps in his division to waste their time over such-like nonsense, because he wasn't. A quiet set-down in a cosy bar with a mug of beer had always been good enough for him in his off time, and still was, though naturally as you got older you needed more than one mug of beer. But that was neither here nor there, and whether he approved of sports for the police or not, it would be an awkward job handling this case, a very awkward job it would be. But that wasn't to say he wanted one of those sharp Yard chaps poking his nose into everything, and trying to teach him his business. If he saw any signs of uppishness he'd put Mr Inspector Know-All in his place pretty quick, and no mistake about it.
Sergeant Nethersole, an earnest and painstaking man of thirty-seven, awaited Inspector Harding's arrival with quite different feelings. He was a diffident person, very anxious to make his way in the Force. It had never fallen to his lot to work with the Yard till now, or, in fact, to encounter anything more exciting in his career than a few road accidents, and two cases of burglary. They offered very little scope for a man with ambition, and when he found that he had been detailed to assist Inspector Harding in his inquiries he was very much gratified, and made up his mind closely to observe the methods of detection employed by one of those clever London chaps. He was a large man, with a somewhat wooden face. His round blue eyes had a trick of staring fixedly at any handy object whenever he was thinking particularly deeply. He was slow of utterance, and slower still to wrath. No one could ever remember to have seen Sergeant Nethersole give way even to a momentary annoyance, and, unlike the Superintendent, he never bullied his subordinates.
When the Inspector arrived, and was conducted to the Superintendent's Office, the Sergeant got up out of his chair, and stared at him unwaveringly for quite two minutes. He had not the least desire to offend; he was mearly getting to know Inspector Harding. His gaze might appear bovine, but his methodical mind was absorbing a number of facts about the Inspector.
Not at all what he had expected. That was the first thing he thought. One of these public-school men, he rather fancied. You could always tell. A quiet-mannered chap, good steady pair of eyes that looked at you fair and square. I like a chap who can look you in the face, thought the Sergeant, never realising that there were few with nerves hardy enough to meet unflinchingly his own stare.
He wasn't one of these testy old-stagers, either, nor yet whipper-snapper. He'd be about his own age, he wouldn't wonder. Just the sort of chap to handle the nobs at the Grange, being, as you could see, one of the gentry himself. He didn't know how it would be, working with him, he was sure, but on the whole he was bound to say he liked the look of him.
The Inspector walked across the room and shook hands with the Superintendent. "Good afternoon, Superintendent. I hope I haven't kept you waiting," he said. Then he turned, encountering the gaze of Sergeant Nethersole, and shook hands with him too, giving back stare for stare.
Well! thought the Superintendent, that's what we're coming to, is it? Nice set-out when they take to sending down la-di-da Percies from the Yard. A fat lot of use he'd be, all stuffed up with a college education, and like as not trying to come the lord over everybody. Not but what he spoke nice enough, quite respectful and polite, but you never knew.
"Well, Inspector Harding," he said patronisingly, "so you've come down to take over the case for us!"
"Not to take it over, surely, Superintendent? I understand that you are in charge of the case."
The Superintendent's eye became a shade less frosty"That's right," he said. "Naturally, me being Superintendent of the district, it's my business to have charge of the case. But of course I'm not as young as I was, and me and the Chief Constable, we put our heads together and came to the conclusion that what we wanted was someone to lend a hand, it being a lot to ask of a man of my years to take on a case like this one single-handly. That's how it is."
"My instructions are to give you all the assistance. I can," said the Inspector. "I understand it's rather a awkward case for a local man to deal with."
Really, that was very handsomely spoken, very handsomely spoken indeed that was. "Well, that's where it is" said the Superintendent, thawing almost visibly. "It is awkward, and that's the truth. Now, what we'd better do is to get down to it right away; you and me, and Sergeant Nethersole here, whom I've detailed to work with you while you're on the case."
"Right," said the Inspector, and drew up a chair and sat down.
The tale which the Superintendent began to unfold was neither concise nor easy to be followed, but the, Inspector seemed to grasp its main outlines, and except for one or two interruptions when he asked apologetically to have some point more fully explained, he heard it more or less in silence.
The Sergeant, seated with his large hands clasped between his knees, thought: Lupton's getting beyond it, that's what. Fair rigmarole it must be to anyone not acquainted with the General and his family. What's he want to go reading bits out of all them statements for? jumping from one person to the other without making it plain who any of them are, instead of telling the Inspector, quiet-like, the facts of the case, and leaving him to read the statements for himself. Patient sort of chap he seems to be; picks up points pretty quick too.
Inspector Harding allowed the Superintendent to talk himself out. Then he said: "I see. Let's be sure that I've got the main facts right — I'm afraid the identities of the various people in the case are a bit beyond me at present. General Billington-Smith entered his study at ten minutes to twelve. At five minutes past twelve the butler went through the hall to the front door, and heard what he took to be a quarrel going on between the General and a member of the house-party."
"Mr. Halliday," nodded the Superintendent. "Unhealthy looking gentleman, he is. What I call fidgety, if you know what I mean. Very much on the jump, I thought to myself. No occupation, which is fishy, if you look at it that way. Lost his job, if you ask me."
The Inspector waited until this excursion into the realms of conjecture was over. Then he said: "And he, I think you said, admits that he did enter the study somewhere about twelve o'clock, and had a disagreement with the General, on a subject which he prefers not to disclose. He doesn't know when he left the study, but thinks he was not there more than a quarter of an hour at the most. He then went up to his room, and joined the rest of the party on the terrace about ten minutes later. So far as you know, he was the last person to see the General alive. A few minutes before one o'clock Mrs. Mrs." — he glanced down at one of the many sheets of paper laid before him — "Mrs. Twining went to fetch the General to join the party on the terrace for a cocktail According to her story she found him dead at his desk. She bent over him, saw that he had been stabbed, and that there was nothing she could do, and returned to the terrace to break the news. Have I got that right?"
"You've got it right as far as it goes," replied the Superintendent disparagingly. "But there's a lot more to it than that, I can tell you. You've left out the movement of all these visitors staying in the house for one thing."
"Until I've had time to read the statements over carefully I think I'd better confine myself to the main outline. Superintendent. May I see the doctor's reports?"
The Superintendent hunted through a sheaf of documents, and handed two typewritten sheets of foolscap across the desk. "Here you are. You'll want to have thc photographs too," he added, producing these.
"Thanks." Inspector Harding took the prints, and laid them down, without raising his eyes from the report in his hand. He read in silence for a minute or two, while the Superintendent and the Sergeant watched him. Then he looked up. "I see. He was stabbed from behind as he sat at his desk, with a Chinese dagger used by him as a paper-knife, the knife entering the neck below the right ear, and severing the carotid artery. Death, in the opinion of' — he consulted the first report — "Dr Raymond, occurring within a minute, possibly less. No finger-prints?"
The Superintendent shook his head. "No, that's just what makes it difficult for us. Nowadays people are so knowing, what with story books about murders and I don't know what besides, that they're up to all the dodges. Whoever done this murder took care to wear gloves. That's all this talk of progress leads to, putting people up to them sort of tricks," he said bitterly, and opened a drawer in the desk, and extracted from it the chinese dagger. "That's it. Exhibit No. l," he said. "Nasty looking to keep lying about, I call it."
The Inspector took the knife, which was a thin blade set in a carved ivory handle, and held it for a moment in his hand. "Very nasty," he agreed, and gave it back.
"Exhibit No. 2," proceeded the Superintendent, handing over a sheet of note-paper. "Found under the deceased's hand, like as if he might have written on it just before he died."
"That's interesting," said the Inspector.
"Well, I don't know so much about that. The Divisional Surgeon, he holds to the opinion that Sir Arthur wouldn't have had time to write anything after the blow was struck. On the other hand, Dr Raymond thinks that he could. That's what it is with doctors. What with one saying one thing, and another arguing it could have happened different, you never know where you are. And it doesn't seem to me to lead anywhere, that bit of paper. Well, I mean, look at it!"
The Inspector was looking at it. Scrawled in pencil across a half-sheet of engraved note-paper was the word "There'. There was no more; the faint pencil mark tailed off, as though the pencil had dropped suddenly from nerveless fingers.
"To my mind it doesn't lead anywhere," grumbled the Superintendent. "There what? The way I look at it is this, Supposing Sir Arthur was starting out to write something when suddenly he gets stabbed from behind? There is nothing to show he wrote it after he'd been stabbed."
"Except that the word is scrawled crookedly across the paper," suggested the Inspector. "I should like to keep this, if I may, Superintendent."
"Oh, you can have it," said the Superintendent generously. "It's about all there is to have, what's more. Not but what something may turn up, because the Chief Constable was very set on having nothing disturbed in the room where the murder took place, so there hasn't been what I call a proper search."
"I see. And about the position of the study: I under stand it is in the front of the house, facing on to the drive?"
"That's right. On the right of the front door as you go in, it is, there being what they call the morning-room behind it, then the stairs, and beyond them the drawing-room, which is a big room along the back of the house next to the billiard-room."
"The terrace, I take it, is also at the back of the house.? Then the study is at a considerable distance from it? No chance of any noise in the study reaching the ears of anyone on the terrace?"
"Oh dear me, no," said the Superintendent, with a tolerant smile for one as yet unacquainted with the dimensions of the Grange. "It's a very big house. What you might call a mansion. Very well off, Sir Arthur was. and did himself proud."
"And these windows," pursued the Inspector, consulting one of the photographs. "Were they open, or shut?"
"Wide open, the front window was. The one on the west side the General never had open, it being right opposite the door, and him not liking a draught. It was the butler shut the windows after the crime was discovered, which, properly speaking, he shouldn't have done."
"No footmarks outside?"
"No, but that doesn't mean anything either, when you come to think of it. There hasn't been any rain since I don't know when, and the ground's as hard as a rock. "It isn't as though there was a flower-bed by the window either. Well, naturally, there wouldn't be, because it's one of them French windows, as you can see for yourself. There's just a bit of grass, and then the drive, which is gravel. Whoever it was that murdered the General might have come in through the window without leaving any trace, or, on the other hand, he might have come in by the door, and no one the wiser."
"That makes it rather difficult," said the Inspector. "Is it known whether the General had any enemies?" He looked up from the photographs as he spoke, and saw that both men's faces had relaxed into broad grins. His own rather grave grey eyes smiled faintly. "Oh! Have I said something funny?"
"Well, Inspector Harding, you've pretty well hit the nail on the head, that's what you've done," said the Superintendent. "I don't suppose, if you was to search the whole county, you'd find anyone who'd got more enemies than what Sir Arthur had. I don't mind going so far as to say that if you set out to find somebody who'd got a good word to say for him you'd have a job."
"That's a fact," corroborated the Sergeant, in a slow deep voice. "You'd have a job."
It was at this moment that the Chief Constable walked into the room.
"Ah, Superintendent, I see the Inspector has — er arrived. No doubt you have put him in — er — possession of the facts. Inspector Harding, isn't it? Very glad you have got down here, Inspector."
The Inspector had risen, and turned to face the newcomer. Major Grierson, who had held out his hand looked at him extremely sharply, and said: "Dear me surely we have — er — met before? Your face is very — er — familiar, yet for the moment I cannot exactly call to er — mind where we have met Do you, by any chance — remember meeting me?"
"Yes, sir, I remember you perfectly," answered the Inspector, shaking hands. "We met in Bailleul."
"Why, of course, of course!" exclaimed the Major. "Harding! Dear me! Yes! You were attached to Colonel — er — Mason! Yes, yes! Well, this is a surprise! But what are you doing in the Police Force? You were — wait. I have it! You were reading law at — er — Oxford!"
"The War rather knocked that on the head, sir, so I joined the Police Force instead."
"Well, well, well!" said Major Grierson.
The Inspector moved to the desk, and put down the photograph he was still holding in his left hand. "Superintendent Lupton has just been giving me all the facts of this case, sir," he said. "It looks like being a bit of a teaser."
The Major's face clouded over. "Very bad business. Nasty — er — case, Harding. I felt at once it was — er -a matter for Scotland Yard. Too many people in it. Have you read the — er — statements?"
"Not yet, sir. I was going to suggest to the Superintendant that he should let me take them away with me now, so that I can study them before I go up to the Grange."
"By all means! Certainly! A very good — er — plan, Superintendent. Don't you — er — agree?"
The Superintendent, who had viewed with disfavour the meeting between the Major and.Inspector Harding said that he had no objection, but that in his opinion the sooner the Inspector went up to the Grange the better it would be.
The Inspector looked at his wrist-watch. "Then shall we say in an hour's time? That will make it half past three."
"Yes, yes, do just as you —- er — think best, Harding," said the Major. "Where are you — er — putting up?"
"At the Crown, sir, if they have a room," replied the Inspector.
"You could not do better," approved the Major. "I'll put you on your — er — way."
Outside the police station he button-holed the Inspector in a confidential manner, and warned him that the Superintendent was rather a difficult man to deal with. "Between ourselves — er — Harding, not quite the man for this — er — business. Naturally — quite realise you must have — er —- a free hand. But if you could manage to er — keep on the right side of him, as it were — But I've no doubt you — er — will do your best."
"I will," promised the Inspector.
"And when we've — er — finished with this case you must come out and — er — dine with me, and we'll have a yarn. I shan't keep you now. You've got a tough — er- job there. Most unpleasant — er — affair." He dabbed at his nose. "Most unpleasant!" he repeated with conviction.