CHAPTER VIII.
AMBLER JEVONS IS INQUISITIVE.
People were about me the whole time. Hence I had no opportunity ofre-examining the little object I had picked up from the spot where themurderer must have stood.
When morning dawned two detectives from Scotland Yard arrived, madenotes of the circumstances, examined the open window in theconservatory, hazarded a few wise remarks, and closely scrutinised thedagger in the hall.
Ethelwynn had taken her sister to a friend in the vicinity,accompanied by the nurse and the cook. The house was now in thepossession of the police, and it had already become known in theneighbourhood that old Mr. Courtenay was dead. In all probabilityearly passers-by, men on their way to work, had noticed a constable inuniform enter or leave, and that had excited public curiosity. I hopedthat Ambler Jevons would not delay, for I intended that he should befirst in the field. If ever he had had a good mystery before him thiscertainly was one. I knew how keen was his scent for clues, and howcarefully and ingeniously he worked when assisting the police to getat the bottom of any such affair.
He came a little after nine in hot haste, having driven fromHammersmith in a hansom. I was upstairs when I heard his deep cheeryvoice crying to the inspector from Scotland Yard:
"Hulloa, Thorpe. What's occurred? My friend Doctor Boyd has just wiredto me."
"Murder," responded the inspector. "You'll find the doctor somewhereabout. He'll explain it all to you. Queer case--very queer case, sir,it seems."
"Is that you, Ambler?" I called over the banisters. "Come up here."
He came up breathlessly, two steps at a time, and gripping my hand,asked:
"Who's been murdered?"
"Old Mr. Courtenay."
"The devil!" he ejaculated.
"A most mysterious affair," I went on. "They called me soon afterthree, and I came down here, only to find the poor old gentleman stonedead--stabbed to the heart."
"Let me see him," my friend said in a sharp business-like tone, whichshowed that he intended to lose no time in sifting the matter. He hadhis own peculiar methods of getting at the bottom of a mystery. Heworked independently, and although he assisted the police and wastherefore always welcomed by them, his efforts were always apart, andgenerally marked by cunning ingenuity and swift logical reasoning thatwere alike remarkable and marvellous.
I gave him a brief terse outline of the tragedy, and then, unlockingthe door of the room where the dead man still lay in the same positionas when discovered, allowed him in.
The place was in darkness, so I drew up the Venetian blinds, lettingin the grey depressing light of the wintry morning.
He advanced to the bed, stood in the exact spot where I had stood, andwhere without doubt the murderer had stood, and folding his arms gazedstraight and long upon the dead man's features.
Then he gave vent to a kind of dissatisfied grunt, and turned down thecoverlet in order to examine the wound, while I stood by his side insilence.
Suddenly he swung round on his heel, and measured the paces betweenthe bed and the door. Then he went to the window and looked out;afterwards making a tour of the room slowly, his dark eyes searchingeverywhere. He did not open his lips in the presence of the dead. Heonly examined everything, swiftly and yet carefully, opening the doorslowly and closing it just as slowly, in order to see whether itcreaked or not.
It creaked when closed very slowly. The creaking was evidently whatthe under-housemaid had heard and believed to be the creaking ofboots. The murderer, finding that it creaked, had probably closed itby degrees; hence it gave a series of creaks, which to the girl hadsounded in the silence of the night like those of new boots.
Ambler Jevons had, almost at the opening of his inquiry, cleared upone point which had puzzled us.
When he had concluded his examination of the room and re-covered thedead face with the sheet, we emerged into the corridor. Then I toldhim of the servant's statement.
"Boots!" he echoed in a tone of impatience. "Would a murderer wearcreaking boots? It was the door, of course. It opens noiselessly, butwhen closed quietly it creaks. Curious, however, that he should haverisked the creaking and the awakening of the household in order toclose it. He had some strong motive in doing so."
"He evidently had a motive in the crime," I remarked. "If we couldonly discover it, we might perhaps fix upon the assassin."
"Yes," he exclaimed, thoughtfully. "But to tell the truth, Ralph, oldchap, the fact which is puzzling me most of all at this moment is thatextraordinary foreboding of evil which you confessed to me the daybefore yesterday. You had your suspicions aroused, somehow. Cudgelyour brains, and think what induced that very curious presage ofevil."
"I've tried and tried over again, but I can fix on nothing. Onlyyesterday afternoon, when Sir Bernard incidentally mentioned old Mr.Courtenay, it suddenly occurred to me that the curious excitementwithin me had some connection with him. Of course he was a patient,and I may have studied his case and given a lot of thought to it, butthat wouldn't account for such an oppression as that from which I'vebeen suffering."
"You certainly did have the blues badly the night before last," hesaid frankly. "And by some unaccountable manner your curious feelingwas an intuition of this tragic occurrence. Very odd and mysterious,to say the least."
"Uncanny, I call it," I declared.
"Yes, I agree with you," he answered. "It is an uncanny affairaltogether. Tell me about the ladies. Where are they?"
I explained how Mrs. Courtenay had been absent, and how she had beenprostrated by the news of his death.
He stroked his moustache slowly, deeply reflecting.
"Then at present she doesn't know that he's been murdered? She thinksthat he was taken ill, and expired suddenly?"
"Exactly."
And I went on to describe the wild scene which followed my admissionthat her husband was dead. I explained it to him in detail, for I sawthat his thoughts were following in the same channel as my own. Weboth pitied the unfortunate woman. My friend knew her well, for he hadoften accompanied me there and had spent the evening with us.Ethelwynn liked him for his careless Bohemianism, and for the fund ofstories always at his command. Sometimes he used to entertain us forhours together, relating details of mysteries upon which he had at onetime or another been engaged. Women are always fond of mysteries, andhe often held both of them breathless by his vivid narratives.
Thorpe, the detective from Scotland Yard, a big, sturdily-built,middle-aged man, whose hair was tinged with grey, and whose round,rosy face made him appear the picture of good health, joined us amoment later. In a low, mysterious tone he explained to my friend thecircumstance of Short having admitted possession of the knife hangingin the hall.
In it Ambler Jevons at once scented a clue.
"I never liked that fellow!" he exclaimed, turning to me. "Myimpression has always been that he was a sneak, and told old Courtenayeverything that went on, either in drawing-room or kitchen."
Thorpe, continuing, explained how the back door had been foundunfastened, and how Short had admitted unfastening it in order to goforth to seek the assassin.
"A ridiculous story--utterly absurd!" declared Jevons. "A man doesn'trush out to shed blood for blood like that!"
"Of course not," agreed the detective. "To my mind appearances areentirely against this fellow. Yet, we have one fact to bear in mind,namely, that being sent to town twice he was afforded everyopportunity for escape."
"He was artful," I remarked. "He knew that his safest plan was toremain and face it. If, as seems very probable, the crime was planned,it was certainly carried out at a most propitious moment."
"It certainly was," observed my friend, carefully scrutinising theknife, which Thorpe had brought to him. "This," he said, "must beexamined microscopically. You can do that, Boyd. It will be easy tosee if there are any traces of blood upon it. To all appearances ithas been recently cleaned and oiled."
"Short admits cleaning it, but he says he did so three days ago," Iexclaimed.
He gave vent to another low grunt, from which I knew that theexplanation was unsatisfactory, and replaced the knife in its fadedvelvet sheath.
Save for the man upon whom suspicion had thus fallen, the servants hadall gone to the house where their mistress was lodged, after beingcautioned by the police to say nothing of the matter, and to keeptheir mouths closed to all the reporters who would no doubt very soonbe swarming into the district eager for every scrap of information.Their evidence would be required at the inquest, and the policeforbade them, until then, to make any comment, or to give anyexplanation of the mysterious affair. The tongues of domestics wagquickly and wildly in such cases, and have many times been the meansof defeating the ends of justice by giving away important clues to thePress.
Ambler Jevons, however, was a practised hand at mysteries. He sat downin the library, and with his crabbed handwriting covered two sheets ofpaper with notes upon the case. I watched as his pencil went swiftlyto work, and when he had finished I saw him underline certain words hehad written.
"Thorpe appears to suspect that fellow Short," he remarked, when I methim again in the library a quarter of an hour later. "I've just beenchatting with him, and to me his demeanour is not that of a guiltyman. He's actually been upstairs with the coroner's officer in thedead man's room. A murderer generally excuses himself from enteringthe presence of his victim."
"Well," I exclaimed, after a pause, "you know the whole circumstancesnow. Can you see any clue which may throw light on the affair?"
He slowly twisted his moustache again; then twisted his plain goldring slowly round the little finger on the left hand--a habit of hiswhen perplexed.
"No, Ralph, old chap; can't say I do," he answered. "There's anunfathomable mystery somewhere, but in what direction I'm utterly at aloss to distinguish."
"But do you think that the assassin is a member of the household? Thatseems to me our first point to clear up."
"That's just where we're perplexed. Thorpe suspects Short; but thepolice so often rush to conclusions on a single suspicion. Beforecondemning him it is necessary to watch him narrowly, and note hisdemeanour and his movements. If he is guilty he'll betray himselfsooner or later. Thorpe was foolish to take down that knife a secondtime. The fellow might have seen him and had his suspicions arousedthereby. That's the worst of police inquiries. They display so littleingenuity. It is all method--method--method. Everything must be doneby rule. They appear to overlook the fact that a window in theconservatory was undoubtedly left open," he added.
"Well?" I asked, noticing that he was gazing at me strangely, full inthe face.
"Well, has it not occurred to you that that window might have beenpurposely left open?"
"You mean that the assassin entered and left by that window?"
"I mean to suggest that the murder might have been connived at by oneof the household, if the man we suspect were not the actual assassinhimself."
The theory was a curious one, but I saw that there were considerablegrounds for it. As in many suburban houses, the conservatory joinedthe drawing-room, an unlocked glass door being between them. Thewindow that had been left unfastened was situated at the further end,and being low down was in such a position that any intruder mighteasily have entered and left. Therefore the suggestion appeared asound one--more especially so because the cook had most solemnlydeclared that she had fastened it securely before going up to bed.
In that case someone must have crept down and unfastened it after thewoman had retired, and done so with the object of assisting theassassin.
But Ambler Jevons was not a man to remain idle for a single momentwhen once he became interested in a mystery. To his keen perceptionand calm logical reasoning had been due the solution of "TheMornington Crescent Mystery," which, as all readers of this narrativewill remember, for six months utterly perplexed Scotland Yard; whilein a dozen other notable cases his discoveries had placed the policeon the scent of the guilty person. Somehow he seemed to possess apeculiar facility in the solving of enigmas. At ordinary times hestruck one as a rather careless, easy-going man, who drifted onthrough life, tasting and dealing in tea, with regular attendance atMark Lane each day. Sometimes he wore a pair of cheap pince-nez, theframes of which were rusty, but these he seldom assumed unless he waswhat he termed "at work." He was at work now, and therefore had stuckthe pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, giving him a keener andrather more intelligent appearance.
"Excuse me," he exclaimed, suddenly twisting his ring again round hisfinger. "I've just thought of something else. I won't be a moment,"and he rushed from the library and ran upstairs to the floor above.
His absence gave me an opportunity to re-examine the little objectwhich I had picked up from the floor at the earlier stages of theinquiry; and advancing to the window I took it from my pocket andlooked again at it, utterly confounded.
Its appearance presented nothing extraordinary, for it was merely asoft piece of hard-knotted cream-coloured chenille about half-an-inchlong. But sight of it lying in the palm of my hand held me spellboundin horror.
It told me the awful truth. It was nothing less than a portion of thefringe of the cream shawl which my love had been wearing, and just aschenille fringes will come to pieces, it had become detached andfallen where she had stood at that spot beside the victim's bed.
There was a smear of blood upon it.
I recollected her strangely nervous manner, her anxiety to ascertainwhat clue we had discovered and to know the opinion of the police.Yes, if guilt were ever written upon a woman's face, it was upon hers.
Should I show the tiny fragment to my friend? Should I put it into hishands and tell him the bitter truth--the truth that I believed my loveto be a murderess?