Kitabı oku: «The Herapath Property», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XIII
ADJOURNED
Ever since Triffitt had made his lucky scoop in connection with the Herapath Mystery he had lived in a state of temporary glory, with strong hopes of making it a permanent one. Up to the morning of the event, which gave him a whole column of the Argus (big type, extra leaded), Triffitt, as a junior reporter, had never accomplished anything notable. As he was fond of remarking, he never got a chance. Police-court cases—county-court cases—fires—coroners’ inquests—street accidents—they were all exciting enough, no doubt, to the people actively concerned in them, but you never got more than twenty or thirty lines out of their details. However, the chance did come that morning, and Triffitt made the most of it, and the news editor (a highly exacting and particular person) blessed him moderately, and told him, moreover, that he could call the Herapath case his own. Thenceforth Triffitt ate, drank, smoked, and slept with the case; it was the only thing he ever thought of. But at half-past one on the afternoon of the third day after what one may call the actual start of the affair, Triffitt sat in a dark corner of a tea-shop in Kensington High Street, munching ham sandwiches, sipping coffee, and thinking lugubriously, if not despairingly. He had spent two and a half hours in the adjacent Coroner’s Court, listening to all that was said in evidence about the death of Jacob Herapath, and he had heard absolutely nothing that was not quite well known to him when the Coroner took his seat, inspected his jurymen, and opened the inquiry. Two and a half hours, at the end of which the court adjourned for lunch—and the affair was just as mysterious as ever, and not a single witness had said a new thing, not a single fresh fact had been brought forward out of which a fellow could make good, rousing copy!
“Rotten!” mumbled Triffitt into his cup. “Extra rotten! Somebody’s keeping something back—that’s about it!”
Just then another young gentleman came into the alcove in which Triffitt sat disconsolate—a pink-cheeked young gentleman, who affected a tweed suit of loud checks and a sporting coat, and wore a bit of feather in the band of his rakish billycock. Triffitt recognized him as a fellow-scribe, one of the youthful bloods of an opposition journal, whom he sometimes met on the cricket-field; he also remembered that he had caught a glimpse of him in the Coroner’s Court, and he hastened to make room for him.
“Hullo!” said Triffitt.
“What-ho!” responded the pink young gentleman. He beckoned knowingly to a waitress, and looked at her narrowly when she came. “Got such a thing as a muffin?” he asked.
“Muffins, sir—yes, sir,” replied the waitress, “Fresh muffins.”
“Pick me out a nice, plump, newly killed muffin” commanded Triffitt’s companion. “Leave it in its natural state—that is to say, cold—split it in half put between the halves a thick, generous slice of that cold ham I see on your counter, and produce it with a pot of fresh—and very hot—China tea. That’s all.”
“Plenty too, I should think!” muttered Triffitt. “Fond of indigestion, Carver?”
“I don’t think you’ve ever been in Yorkshire, have you, Triffitt?” asked Mr. Carver, settling himself comfortably. “You haven’t had that pleasure?—well, if you’d ever gone to a football match on a Saturday afternoon in a Yorkshire factory district, you’d have seen men selling muffin-and-ham sandwiches—fact! And I give you my word that if you want something to fill you up during the day, something to tide over the weary wait between breakfast and dinner, a fat muffin with a thick slice of ham is the best thing I know.”
“I don’t want anything to fill me up,” grunted Triffitt. “I want something cheering—at present. I’ve been listening with all my ears for something new in that blessed Herapath case all the morning, and, as you know, there’s been nothing!”
“Think so?” said Carver. “Um—I should have said there was a good deal, now.”
“Nothing that I didn’t know, anyway,” remarked Triffitt. “I got all that first thing; I was on the spot first.”
“Oh, it was you, was it?” said Carver, with professional indifference. “Lucky man! So you’ve only been hearing–”
“A repetition of what I’d heard before,” answered Triffitt. “I knew all that evidence before I went into court. Caretaker—police—folks from Portman Square—doctor—all the lot! And I guess there’ll be nothing this afternoon—the thing’ll be adjourned.”
“Oh, that’s of course,” assented Carver, attacking his muffin sandwich. “There’ll be more than one adjournment of this particular inquest, Triffitt. But aren’t you struck by one or two points?”
“I’m struck by this,” replied Triffitt. “If what the police-surgeon says—and you noticed how positive he was about it—if what he says is true, that old Herapath was shot, and died, at, or just before (certainly not after, he positively asserted), twelve o’clock midnight, it was not he who went to Portman Square!”
“That, of course, is obvious,” said Carver. “And it’s just as obvious that whoever went to Portman Square returned from Portman Square to that office. Eh?”
“That hasn’t quite struck me,” replied Triffitt. “How is it just as obvious?”
“Because whoever went to Portman Square went in old Herapath’s fur-trimmed coat and his slouch hat, and the fur trimmed coat and slouch hat were found in the office,” answered Carver. “It’s absolutely plain, that. I put it like this. The murderer, having settled his man, put on his victim’s coat and hat, took his keys, went to Portman Square, did something there, went back to the office, left the coat and hat, and hooked it. That, my son, is a dead certainty. There’s been little—if anything—made of all that before the Coroner, and it’s my impression, Triffitt, that somebody—somebody official, mind you—is keeping something back. Now,” continued Carver, dropping his voice to a confidential whisper, “I’m only doing a plain report of this affair for our organ of light and leading, but I’ve read it up pretty well, and there are two things I want to know, and I’ll tell you what, Triffitt, if you like to go in with me at finding them out—two can always work better than one—I’m game!”
“What are the two things?” asked Triffitt, cautiously. “Perhaps I’ve got ’em in mind also.”
“The first’s this,” replied Carver. “Somebody—some taxi-cab driver or somebody of that sort—must have brought the man who personated old Jacob Herapath back to, or to the neighbourhood of, the office that morning. How is it that somebody hasn’t been discovered? You made a point of asking for him in the Argus. Do you know what I think? I think he has been discovered, and he’s being kept out of the way. That’s point one.”
“Good!” muttered Triffitt. “And point two?”
“Point two is—where is the man who came out of the House of Commons with Jacob Herapath that night, the man that the coachman Mountain described? In my opinion,” asserted Carver, “I believe that man’s been found, too, and he’s being kept back.”
“Good again!” said Triffitt. “It’s likely. Well, I’ve a point. You heard the evidence about old Herapath’s keys? Yes—well, where’s the key of that safe that he rented at the Safe Deposit place. That young secretary, Selwood, swore that it was on the little bunch the day of the murder, that he saw it at three o’clock in the afternoon. What did Jacob Herapath do with it between then and the time of the murder?”
“Yes—that’s a great point,” asserted Carver. “We may hear something of that this afternoon—perhaps of all these points.”
But when they went back to the densely crowded court it was only to find that they—and an expectant public—were going to hear nothing more for that time. As soon as the court re-assembled, there was some putting together of heads on the part of the legal gentlemen and the Coroner; there were whisperings and consultations and noddings and veiled hints, palpable enough to everybody with half an eye; then the Coroner announced that no further evidence would be taken that day, and adjourned the inquest for a fortnight. Such of the public as had contrived to squeeze into the court went out murmuring, and Triffitt and Carver went out too and exchanged meaning glances.
“Just what I expected!” said Carver. “I reckon the police are at the bottom of all that. A fortnight today we’ll be hearing something good—something sensational.”
“I don’t want to wait until a fortnight today,” growled Triffitt. “I want some good, hot stuff—now!”
“Then you’ll have to find it for yourself, very soon,” remarked Carver. “Take my tip—you’ll get nothing from the police.”
Triffitt was well aware of that. He had talked to two or three police officials and detectives that morning, and had found them singularly elusive and uncommunicative. One of them was the police-inspector who had been called to the Herapath Estate Office on the discovery of the murder; another was the detective who had accompanied him. Since the murder Triffitt had kept in touch with these two, and had found them affable and ready to talk; now, however, they had suddenly curled up into a dry taciturnity, and there was nothing to be got out of them.
“Tell you what it is,” he said suddenly. “We’ll have to go for the police!”
“How go for the police?” asked Carver doubtfully.
“Throw out some careful hints that the police know more than they’ll tell at present,” answered Triffitt, importantly. “That’s what I shall do, anyhow—I’ve got carte blanche on our rag, and I’ll make the public ear itch and twitch by breakfast-time tomorrow morning! And after that, my boy, you and I’ll put our heads together, as you suggest, and see if we can’t do a bit of detective work of our own. See you tomorrow at the usual in Fleet Street.”
Then Triffitt went along to the Argus office, and spent the rest of the afternoon in writing up a breezy and brilliant column about the scene at the inquest, intended to preface the ordinary detailed report. He wound it up with an artfully concocted paragraph in which he threw out many thinly veiled hints and innuendoes to the effect that the police were in possession of strange and sensational information and that ere long such a dramatic turn would be given to this Herapath Mystery that the whole town would seethe with excitement. He preened his feathers gaily over this accomplishment, and woke earlier than usual next morning on purpose to go out before breakfast and buy the Argus. But when he opened that enterprising journal he found that his column had been woefully cut down, and that the paragraph over which he had so exercised his brains was omitted altogether. Triffitt had small appetite for breakfast that morning, and he went early to the office and made haste to put himself in the way of the news editor, who grinned at sight of him.
“Look here, Master Triffitt,” said the news editor, “there’s such a thing as being too smart—and too previous. I was a bit doubtful about your prognostications last night, and I rang up the C.I.D. about ’em. Don’t do it again, my son!—you mean well, but the police know their job better than you do. If they want to keep quiet for a while in this matter, they’ve good reasons for it. So—no more hints. See?”
“So they do know something?” muttered Triffitt sourly. “Then I was right, after all!”
“You’ll be wrong, after all, if you stick your nose where it isn’t wanted,” said the news editor. “Just chuck the inspired prophet game for a while, will you? Keep to mere facts; you’ll be alarming the wrong people, if you don’t. Off you go now! and do old Herapath’s funeral—it’s at noon, at Kensal Green. There’ll be some of his fellow M.P.’s there, and so on. Get their names—make a nice, respectable thing of it on conventional lines. And no fireworks! This thing’s to lie low at present.”
Triffitt went off to Kensal Green, scowling and cogitating. Of course the police knew something! But—what? What they knew would doubtless come out in time, but Triffitt had a strong desire to be beforehand with them. In spite of the douche of cold water which the news editor had just administered, Triffitt knew his Argus. If he could fathom the Herapath Mystery in such a fashion as to make a real great, smashing, all-absorbing feature of a sensational discovery, the Argus would throw police precaution and official entreaties to the first wind that swept down Fleet Street. No!—he, Triffitt, was not to be balked. He would do his duty—he would go and see Jacob Herapath buried, but he would also continue his attempt to find out how it was that that burial came to be. And as he turned into the cemetery and stared at its weird collection of Christian and pagan monuments he breathed a fervent prayer to the Goddesses of Chance and Fortune to give him what he called “another look-in.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE SCOTTISH VERDICT
If Triffitt had only known it, the Goddesses of Chance and Fortune were already close at hand, hovering lovingly and benignly above the crown of his own Trilby hat. Triffitt, of course, did not see them, nor dream that they were near; he was too busily occupied in taking stock of the black-garmented men who paid the last tribute of respect (a conventional phrase which he felt obliged to use) to Jacob Herapath. These men were many in number; some of them were known to Triffitt, some were not. He knew Mr. Fox-Crawford, an Under-Secretary of State, who represented the Government; he knew Mr. Dayweather and Mr. Encilmore, and Mr. Camford and Mr. Wallburn; they were all well-known members of Parliament. Also, he knew Mr. Barthorpe Herapath, walking at the head of the procession of mourners. Very soon he had quite a lengthy list of names; some others, if necessary, he could get from Selwood, whom he recognized as the cortège passed him by. So for the time being he closed his note-book and drew back beneath the shade of a cypress-tree, respectfully watching. In the tail-end of the procession he knew nobody; it was made up, he guessed, of Jacob Herapath’s numerous clerks from the estate offices, and–
But suddenly Triffitt saw a face in that procession. The owner of that face was not looking at Triffitt; he was staring quietly ahead, with the blank, grave demeanour which people affect when they go to funerals. And it was as well that he was not looking at Triffitt, for Triffitt, seeing that face, literally started and even jumped a little, feeling as if the earth beneath him suddenly quaked.
“Gad!” exclaimed Triffitt under his breath. “It is! It can’t be! Gad, but I’m certain it is! Can’t be mistaken—not likely I should ever forget him!”
Then he took off the Trilby hat, which he had resumed after the coffin had passed, and he rubbed his head as men do when they are exceedingly bewildered or puzzled. After which he unobtrusively followed the procession, hovered about its fringes around the grave until the last rites were over, and eventually edged himself up to Selwood as the gathering was dispersing. He quietly touched Selwood’s sleeve.
“Mr. Selwood!” he whispered. “Just a word. I know a lot of these gentlemen—the M.P.’s and so on—but there are some I don’t know. Will you oblige me, now?—I want to get a full list. Who are the two elderly gentlemen with Mr. Barthorpe Herapath—relatives, eh?”
“No—old personal friends,” answered Selwood, good-naturedly turning aside with the little reporter. “One is Mr. Tertius—Mr. J. C. Tertius—a very old friend of the late Mr. Herapath’s; the other is Mr. Benjamin Halfpenny, the solicitor, also an old friend.”
“Oh, I know of his firm,” said Triffitt, busily scribbling. “Halfpenny and Farthing, of course—odd combination, isn’t it? And that burly gentleman behind them, now—who’s he?”
“That’s Professor Cox-Raythwaite, the famous scientist,” answered Selwood. “He’s also an old friend. The gentleman he’s speaking to is Sir Cornelius Debenham, chairman of the World Alliance Association, with which Mr. Herapath was connected, you know.”
“I know—I know,” answered Triffitt, still busy. “Those two behind him, now—middle-aged parties?”
“One’s Mr. Frankton, the manager, and the other’s Mr. Charlwood, the cashier, at the estate office,” replied Selwood.
“They’ll go down in staff and employees,” said Triffitt. “Um—I’ve got a good list. By the by, who’s the gentleman across there—just going up to the grave—the gentleman who looks like an actor? Is he an actor?”
“That? Oh!” answered Selwood. “No—that’s Mr. Frank Burchill, who used to be Mr. Herapath’s secretary—my predecessor.”
“Oh!” responded Triffitt. He had caught sight of Carver a few yards off, and he hurried his notebook into his pocket, and bustled off. “Much obliged to you, Mr. Selwood,” he said with a grin. “Even we with all our experience, don’t know everybody, you know—many thanks.” He hastened over to Carver who was also busy pencilling, and drew him away into the shelter of a particularly large and ugly monument. “I say!” he whispered. “Here’s something! Shove that book away now—I’ve got all the names—and attend to me a minute. Don’t look too obtrusively—but do you see that chap—looks like an actor—who is just coming away from the graveside—tall, well-dressed chap?”
Carver looked across. His face lighted up.
“I know that man,” he said. “I’ve seen him at the club—he’s been in once or twice, though he’s not a member. He does theatre stuff for the Magnet. His name’s Burchill.”
Triffitt dropped his friend’s arm.
“Oh!” he said. “So you know him—by sight, anyhow? And his name’s Burchill, eh? Very good. Let’s get.”
He walked Carver out of the cemetery, down the Harrow Road, and turned into the saloon bar of the first tavern that presented itself.
“I’m going to have some ale and some bread and cheese,” he observed, “and if you’ll follow suit, Carver, we’ll sit in that corner, and I’ll tell you something that’ll make your hair curl. Two nice plates of bread and cheese, and two large tankards of your best bitter ale, if you please,” he continued, approaching the bar and ringing a half-crown on it. “Yes, Carver, my son—that will curl your hair for you. And,” he went on, when they had carried their simple provender over to a quiet corner, “about that chap now known as Burchill—Burchill. Mr.—Frank—Burchill; late secretary to the respected gentleman whose mortal remains have just been laid to rest. Ah!”
“What’s the mystery?” asked Carver, setting down his tankard. “Seems to be one, anyway. What about Burchill?”
“Speak his name softly,” answered Triffitt. “Well, my son, I suddenly saw—him—this morning, and I just as suddenly remembered that I’d seen him before!”
“You had, eh?” said Carver. “Where?”
Triffitt sank his voice to a still lower whisper.
“Where?” he said. “Where? In the dock!”
Carver arrested the progress of a lump of bread and cheese and turned in astonishment.
“In the dock?” he exclaimed. “That chap? Good heavens! When—where?”
“It’s a longish story,” answered Triffitt. “But you’ve got to hear it if we’re going into this thing—as we are. Know, then, that I have an aunt—Eliza. My aunt—maternal aunt—Eliza is married to a highly respectable Scotsman named Kierley, who runs a flour-mill in the ancient town of Jedburgh, which is in the county of Roxburgh, just over the Border. And it’s just about nine years (I can tell the exact date to a day if I look at an old diary) that Mr. and Mrs. Kierley were good enough to invite me to spend a few weeks in Bonnie Scotland. And the first night of my arrival Kierley told me that I was in luck, for within a day or two there was going to be a grand trial before the Lords Justiciar—Anglicé, judges. A trial of a man for murder!”
“Great Scott!” said Carver. “Murder, eh? And”—he nodded his head in the direction of the adjacent cemetery. “Him?”
“Let me explain a few legal matters,” said Triffitt, disregarding the question. “Then you’ll get the proper hang of things. In Scotland, law’s different in procedure to ours. The High Court of Justiciary is fixed permanently at Edinburgh, but its judges go on circuit so many times a year to some of the principal towns, where they hold something like our own assizes. Usually, only one judge sits, but in cases of special importance there are two, and two came to Jedburgh, this being a case of very special importance, and one that was arousing a mighty amount of interest. It was locally known as the Kelpies’ Glen Case, and by that name it got into all the papers—we could find it, of course, in our own files.”
“I’ll turn it up,” observed Carver.
“By all means,” agreed Triffitt; “but I’ll give you an outline of it just now. Briefly, it was this. About eleven years ago, there was near the town of Jedburgh a man named Ferguson, who kept an old-established school for boys. He was an oldish chap, married to a woman a good deal younger than himself, and she had a bit of a reputation for being overfond of the wine of the country. According to what the Kierleys told me, old Ferguson used to use the tawse on her sometimes, and they led a sort of cat-and-dog life. Well, about the time I’m talking about, Ferguson got a new undermaster; he only kept one. This chap was an Englishman—name of Bentham—Francis Bentham, to give him his full patronymic, but I don’t know where he came from—I don’t think anybody did.”
“F. B., eh?” muttered Carver. “Same initials as–”
“Precisely,” said Triffitt, “and—to anticipate—same man. But to proceed in due order. Old Ferguson died rather suddenly—but in quite an above-board and natural fashion, about six months after this Bentham came to him. The widow kept on the school, and retained Bentham’s services. And within half a year of the demise of her first husband, she took Bentham for her second.”
“Quick work!” remarked Carver.
“And productive of much wagging of tongues, you may bet!” said Triffitt. “Many things were said—not all of them charitable. Well, this marriage didn’t mend the lady’s manners. She still continued, now and then, to take her drops in too generous measure. Rumour had it that the successor to Ferguson followed his predecessor’s example and corrected his wife in the good, old-fashioned way. It was said that the old cat-and-dog life was started again by these two. However, before they’d been married a year, the lady ended that episode by quitting life for good. She was found one night lying at the foot of the cliff in the Kelpies’ Glen—with a broken neck.”
“Ah!” said Carver. “I begin to see.”
“Now, that Kelpies’ Glen,” continued Triffitt, “was a sort of ravine which lay between the town of Jedburgh and the school. It was traversed by a rough path which lay along the top of one side of it, amongst trees and crags. At one point, this path was on the very edge of a precipitous cliff; from that edge there was a sheer drop of some seventy or eighty feet to a bed of rocks down below, on the edge of a brawling stream. It was on these rocks that Mrs. Bentham’s body was found. She was dead enough when she was discovered, and the theory was that she had come along the path above in a drunken condition, had fallen over the low railings which fenced it in, and so had come to her death.”
“Precisely,” assented Carver, nodding his head with wise appreciation. “Her alcoholic tendencies were certainly useful factors in the case.”
“Just so—you take my meaning,” agreed Triffitt. “Well, at first nobody saw any reason to doubt this theory, for the lady had been seen staggering along that path more than once. But she had a brother, a canny Scot who was not over well pleased when he found that his sister—who had come into everything that old Ferguson left, which was a comfortable bit—had made a will not very long before her death in which she left absolutely everything to her new husband, Francis Bentham. The brother began to inquire and to investigate—and to cut the story short, within a fortnight of his wife’s death, Bentham was arrested and charged with her murder.”
“On what evidence?” asked Carver.
“Precious little!” answered Triffitt. “Indeed next to none. Still, there was some. It was proved that he was absent from the house for half an hour or so about the time that she would be coming along that path; it was also proved that certain footprints in the clay of the path were his. He contended that he had been to look for her; he proved that he had often been to look for her in that way; moreover, as to the footprints, he, like everybody in the house, constantly used that path in going to the town.”
“Aye, to be sure,” said Carver. “He’d a good case, I’m thinking.”
“He had—and so I thought at the time,” continued Triffitt. “And so a good many folks thought—and they, and I, also thought something else, I can tell you. I know what the verdict of the crowded court would have been!”
“What?” asked Carver.
“Guilty!” exclaimed Triffitt. “And so far as I’m concerned, I haven’t a doubt that the fellow pushed her over the cliff. But opinion’s neither here nor there. The only thing that mattered, my son, was the jury’s verdict!”
“And the jury’s verdict was—what?” demanded Carver.
Triffitt winked into his empty tankard and set it down with a bang.
“The jury’s verdict, my boy,” he answered, “was one that you can only get across the Border. It was ‘Not Proven’!”
