Trent’s Last Case

He could see now, beyond a spacious lawn and shrubbery, the front of the two-storied house of dull-red brick, with the pair of great gables from which it had its name. He had had but a glimpse of it from the car that morning. A modern house, he saw; perhaps ten years old. The place was beautifully kept, with that air of opulent peace that clothes even the smallest houses of the well-to-do in an English countryside. Before it, beyond the road, the rich meadow-land ran down to the edge of the cliffs; behind it a woody landscape stretched away across a broad vale to the moors. That such a place could be the scene of a crime of violence seemed fantastic; it lay so quiet and well ordered, so eloquent of disciplined service and gentle living. Yet there beyond the house, and near the hedge that rose between the garden and the hot, white road, stood the gardener’s toolshed, by which the body had been found, lying tumbled against the wooden wall.

Trent walked past the gate of the drive and along the road until he was opposite this shed. Some forty yards further along the road turned sharply away from the house, to run between thick plantations; and just before the turn the grounds of the house ended, with a small white gate at the angle of the boundary hedge. He approached the gate, which was plainly for the use of gardeners and the service of the establishment. It swung easily on its hinges, and he passed slowly up a path that led towards the back of the house, between the outer hedge and a tall wall of rhododendrons. Through a gap in this wall a track led him to the little neatly built erection of wood, which stood among trees that faced a corner of the front. The body had lain on the side away from the house; a servant, he thought, looking out of the nearer windows in the earlier hours of the day before, might have glanced unseeing at the hut, as she wondered what it could be like to be as rich as the master.

He examined the place carefully and ransacked the hut within, but he could note no more than the trodden appearance of the uncut grass where the body had lain. Crouching low, with keen eyes and feeling fingers, he searched the ground minutely over a wide area; but the search was fruitless.

It was interrupted by the sound—the first he had heard from the house—of the closing of the front door. Trent unbent his long legs and stepped to the edge of the drive. A man was walking quickly away from the house in the direction of the great gate.

At the noise of a footstep on the gravel, the man wheeled with nervous swiftness and looked earnestly at Trent. The sudden sight of his face was almost terrible, so white and worn it was. Yet it was a young man’s face. There was not a wrinkle about the haggard blue eyes, for all their tale of strain and desperate fatigue. As the two approached each other, Trent noted with admiration the man’s breadth of shoulder and lithe, strong figure. In his carriage, inelastic as weariness had made it; in his handsome, regular features; in his short, smooth, yellow hair; and in his voice as he addressed Trent, the influence of a special sort of training was confessed. ‘Oxford was your playground, I think, my young friend,’ said Trent to himself.

‘If you are Mr Trent,’ said the young man pleasantly, ‘you are expected. Mr Cupples telephoned from the hotel. My name is Marlowe.’

‘You were secretary to Mr Manderson, I believe,’ said Trent. He was much inclined to like young Mr Marlowe. Though he seemed so near a physical breakdown, he gave out none the less that air of clean living and inward health that is the peculiar glory of his social type at his years. But there was something in the tired eyes that was a challenge to Trent’s penetration; an habitual expression, as he took it to be, of meditating and weighing things not present to their sight. It was a look too intelligent, too steady and purposeful, to be called dreamy. Trent thought he had seen such a look before somewhere. He went on to say: ‘It is a terrible business for all of you. I fear it has upset you completely, Mr Marlowe.’

‘A little limp, that’s all,’ replied the young man wearily. ‘I was driving the car all Sunday night and most of yesterday, and I didn’t sleep last night after hearing the news—who would? But I have an appointment now, Mr Trent, down at the doctor’s—arranging about the inquest. I expect it’ll be tomorrow. If you will go up to the house and ask for Mr Bunner, you’ll find him expecting you; he will tell you all about things and show you round. He’s the other secretary; an American, and the best of fellows; he’ll look after you. There’s a detective here, by the way—Inspector Murch, from Scotland Yard. He came yesterday.’

‘Murch!’ Trent exclaimed. ‘But he and I are old friends. How under the sun did he get here so soon?’

‘I have no idea,’ Mr Marlowe answered. ‘But he was here last evening, before I got back from Southampton, interviewing everybody, and he’s been about here since eight this morning. He’s in the library now—that’s where the open French window is that you see at the end of the house there. Perhaps you would like to step down there and talk about things.’

‘I think I will,’ said Trent. Marlowe nodded and went on his way. The thick turf of the lawn round which the drive took its circular sweep made Trent’s footsteps as noiseless as a cat’s. In a few moments he was looking in through the open leaves of the window at the southward end of the house, considering with a smile a very broad back and a bent head covered with short grizzled hair. The man within was stooping over a number of papers laid out on the table.

‘’Twas ever thus,’ said Trent in a melancholy tone, at the first sound of which the man within turned round with startling swiftness. ‘From childhood’s hour I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay. I did think I was ahead of Scotland Yard this time, and now here is the hugest officer in the entire Metropolitan force already occupying the position.’

The detective smiled grimly and came to the window. ‘I was expecting you, Mr Trent,’ he said. ‘This is the sort of case that you like.’

‘Since my tastes were being considered,’ Trent replied, stepping into the room, ‘I wish they had followed up the idea by keeping my hated rival out of the business. You have got a long start, too—I know all about it.’ His eyes began to wander round the room. ‘How did you manage it? You are a quick mover, I know; the dun deer’s hide on fleeter foot was never tied; but I don’t see how you got here in time to be at work yesterday evening. Has Scotland Yard secretly started an aviation corps? Or is it in league with the infernal powers? In either case the Home Secretary should be called upon to make a statement.’

‘It’s simpler than that,’ said Mr Murch with professional stolidity. ‘I happened to be on leave with the missus at Halvey, which is only twelve miles or so along the coast. As soon as our people there heard of the murder they told me. I wired to the Chief, and was put in charge of the case at once. I bicycled over yesterday evening, and have been at it since then.’

‘Arising out of that reply,’ said Trent inattentively, ‘how is Mrs Inspector Murch?’

‘Never better, thank you,’ answered the inspector, ‘and frequently speaks of you and the games you used to have with our kids. But you’ll excuse me saying, Mr Trent, that you needn’t trouble to talk your nonsense to me while you’re using your eyes. I know your ways by now. I understand you’ve fallen on your feet as usual, and have the lady’s permission to go over the place and make inquiries.’

‘Such is the fact,’ said Trent. ‘I am going to cut you out again, inspector. I owe you one for beating me over the Abinger case, you old fox. But if you really mean that you’re not inclined for the social amenities just now, let us leave compliments and talk business.’ He stepped to the table, glanced through the papers arranged there in order, and then turned to the open roll-top desk. He looked into the drawers swiftly. ‘I see this has been cleared out. Well now, inspector, I suppose we play the game as before.’

Trent had found himself on a number of occasions in the past thrown into the company of Inspector Murch, who stood high in the councils of the Criminal Investigation Department. He was a quiet, tactful, and very shrewd officer, a man of great courage, with a vivid history in connection with the more dangerous class of criminals. His humanity was as broad as his frame, which was large even for a policeman. Trent and he, through some obscure working of sympathy, had appreciated one another from the beginning, and had formed one of those curious friendships with which it was the younger man’s delight to adorn his experience. The inspector would talk more freely to him than to anyone, under the rose, and they would discuss details and possibilities of every case, to their mutual enlightenment. There were necessarily rules and limits. It was understood between them that Trent made no journalistic use of any point that could only have come to him from an official source. Each of them, moreover, for the honour and prestige of the institution he represented, openly reserved the right to withhold from the other any discovery or inspiration that might come to him which he considered vital to the solution of the difficulty. Trent had insisted on carefully formulating these principles of what he called detective sportsmanship. Mr Murch, who loved a contest, and who only stood to gain by his association with the keen intelligence of the other, entered very heartily into ‘the game’. In these strivings for the credit of the press and of the police, victory sometimes attended the experience and method of the officer, sometimes the quicker brain and livelier imagination of Trent, his gift of instinctively recognising the significant through all disguises.

The inspector then replied to Trent’s last words with cordial agreement. Leaning on either side of the French window, with the deep peace and hazy splendour of the summer landscape before them, they reviewed the case.

Trent had taken out a thin notebook, and as they talked he began to make, with light, secure touches, a rough sketch plan of the room. It was a thing he did habitually on such occasions, and often quite idly, but now and then the habit had served him to good purpose.

This was a large, light apartment at the corner of the house, with generous window-space in two walls. A broad table stood in the middle. As one entered by the window the roll-top desk stood just to the left of it against the wall. The inner door was in the wall to the left, at the farther end of the room; and was faced by a broad window divided into openings of the casement type. A beautifully carved old corner-cupboard rose high against the wall beyond the door, and another cupboard filled a recess beside the fireplace. Some coloured prints of Harunobu, with which Trent promised himself a better acquaintance, hung on what little wall-space was unoccupied by books. These had a very uninspiring appearance of having been bought by the yard and never taken from their shelves. Bound with a sober luxury, the great English novelists, essayists, historians, and poets stood ranged like an army struck dead in its ranks. There were a few chairs made, like the cupboard and table, of old carved oak; a modern armchair and a swivel office-chair before the desk. The room looked costly but very bare. Almost the only portable objects were a great porcelain bowl of a wonderful blue on the table, a clock and some cigar boxes on the mantelshelf, and a movable telephone standard on the top of the desk.

‘Seen the body?’ inquired the inspector.

Trent nodded. ‘And the place where it lay,’ he said.

‘First impressions of this case rather puzzle me,’ said the inspector. ‘From what I heard at Halvey I guessed it might be common robbery and murder by some tramp, though such a thing is very far from common in these parts. But as soon as I began my inquiries I came on some curious points, which by this time I dare say you’ve noted for yourself. The man is shot in his own grounds, quite near the house, to begin with. Yet there’s not the slightest trace of any attempt at burglary. And the body wasn’t robbed. In fact, it would be as plain a case of suicide as you could wish to see, if it wasn’t for certain facts. Here’s another thing: for a month or so past, they tell me, Manderson had been in a queer state of mind. I expect you know already that he and his wife had some trouble between them. The servants had noticed a change in his manner to her for a long time, and for the past week he had scarcely spoken to her. They say he was a changed man, moody and silent—whether on account of that or something else. The lady’s maid says he looked as if something was going to arrive. It’s always easy to remember that people looked like that, after something has happened to them. Still, that’s what they say. There you are again, then: suicide! Now, why wasn’t it suicide, Mr Trent?’

‘The facts so far as I know them are really all against it,’ Trent replied, sitting on the threshold of the window and clasping his knees. ‘First, of course, no weapon is to be found. I’ve searched, and you’ve searched, and there’s no trace of any firearm anywhere within a stone’s throw of where the body lay. Second, the marks on the wrists, fresh scratches and bruises, which we can only assume to have been done in a struggle with somebody. Third, who ever heard of anybody shooting himself in the eye? Then I heard from the manager of the hotel here another fact, which strikes me as the most curious detail in this affair. Manderson had dressed himself fully before going out there, but he forgot his false teeth. Now how could a suicide who dressed himself to make a decent appearance as a corpse forget his teeth?’

‘That last argument hadn’t struck me,’ admitted Mr Murch. ‘There’s something in it. But on the strength of the other points, which had occurred to me, I am not considering suicide. I have been looking about for ideas in this house, this morning. I expect you were thinking of doing the same.’

‘That is so. It is a case for ideas, it seems to me. Come, Murch, let us make an effort; let us bend our spirits to a temper of general suspicion. Let us suspect everybody in the house, to begin with. Listen: I will tell you whom I suspect. I suspect Mrs Manderson, of course. I also suspect both the secretaries—I hear there are two, and I hardly know which of them I regard as more thoroughly open to suspicion. I suspect the butler and the lady’s maid. I suspect the other domestics, and especially do I suspect the boot-boy. By the way, what domestics are there? I have more than enough suspicion to go round, whatever the size of the establishment; but as a matter of curiosity I should like to know.’

‘All very well to laugh,’ replied the inspector, ‘but at the first stage of affairs it’s the only safe principle, and you know that as well as I do, Mr Trent. However, I’ve seen enough of the people here, last night and today, to put a few of them out of my mind for the present at least. You will form your own conclusions. As for the establishment, there’s the butler and lady’s maid, cook, and three other maids, one a young girl. One chauffeur, who’s away with a broken wrist. No boy.’

‘What about the gardener? You say nothing about that shadowy and sinister figure, the gardener. You are keeping him in the background, Murch. Play the game. Out with him—or I report you to the Rules Committee.’

‘The garden is attended to by a man in the village, who comes twice a week. I’ve talked to him. He was here last on Friday.’

‘Then I suspect him all the more,’ said Trent. ‘And now as to the house itself. What I propose to do, to begin with, is to sniff about a little in this room, where I am told Manderson spent a great deal of his time, and in his bedroom; especially the bedroom. But since we’re in this room, let’s start here. You seem to be at the same stage of the inquiry. Perhaps you’ve done the bedrooms already?’

The inspector nodded. ‘I’ve been over Manderson’s and his wife’s. Nothing to be got there, I think. His room is very simple and bare, no signs of any sort—that I could see. Seems to have insisted on the simple life, does Manderson. Never employed a valet. The room’s almost like a cell, except for the clothes and shoes. You’ll find it all exactly as I found it; and they tell me that’s exactly as Manderson left it, at we don’t know what o’clock yesterday morning. Opens into Mrs Manderson’s bedroom—not much of the cell about that, I can tell you. I should say the lady was as fond of pretty things as most. But she cleared out of it on the morning of the discovery—told the maid she could never sleep in a room opening into her murdered husband’s room. Very natural feeling in a woman, Mr Trent. She’s camping out, so to say, in one of the spare bedrooms now.’

‘Come, my friend,’ Trent was saying to himself, as he made a few notes in his little book. ‘Have you got your eye on Mrs Manderson? Or haven’t you? I know that colourless tone of the inspectorial voice. I wish I had seen her. Either you’ve got something against her and you don’t want me to get hold of it; or else you’ve made up your mind she’s innocent, but have no objection to my wasting my time over her. Well, it’s all in the game; which begins to look extremely interesting as we go on.’ To Mr Murch he said aloud: ‘Well, I’ll draw the bedroom later on. What about this?’

‘They call it the library,’ said the inspector. ‘Manderson used to do his writing and that in here; passed most of the time he spent indoors here. Since he and his wife ceased to hit it off together, he had taken to spending his evenings alone, and when at this house he always spent ’em in here. He was last seen alive, as far as the servants are concerned, in this room.’

Trent rose and glanced again through the papers set out on the table. ‘Business letters and documents, mostly,’ said Mr Murch. ‘Reports, prospectuses, and that. A few letters on private matters, nothing in them that I can see. The American secretary—Bunner his name is, and a queerer card I never saw turned—he’s been through this desk with me this morning. He had got it into his head that Manderson had been receiving threatening letters, and that the murder was the outcome of that. But there’s no trace of any such thing; and we looked at every blessed paper. The only unusual things we found were some packets of banknotes to a considerable amount, and a couple of little bags of unset diamonds. I asked Mr Bunner to put them in a safer place. It appears that Manderson had begun buying diamonds lately as a speculation—it was a new game to him, the secretary said, and it seemed to amuse him.’

‘What about these secretaries?’ Trent enquired. ‘I met one called Marlowe just now outside; a nice-looking chap with singular eyes, unquestionably English. The other, it seems, is an American. What did Manderson want with an English secretary?’

‘Mr Marlowe explained to me how that was. The American was his right-hand business man, one of his office staff, who never left him. Mr Marlowe had nothing to do with Manderson’s business as a financier, knew nothing of it. His job was to look after Manderson’s horses and motors and yacht and sporting arrangements and that—make himself generally useful, as you might say. He had the spending of a lot of money, I should think. The other was confined entirely to the office affairs, and I dare say he had his hands full. As for his being English, it was just a fad of Manderson’s to have an English secretary. He’d had several before Mr Marlowe.’

‘He showed his taste,’ observed Trent. ‘It might be more than interesting, don’t you think, to be minister to the pleasures of a modern plutocrat with a large P. Only they say that Manderson’s were exclusively of an innocent kind. Certainly Marlowe gives me the impression that he would be weak in the part of Petronius. But to return to the matter in hand.’ He looked at his notes. ‘You said just now that he was last seen alive here, “so far as the servants were concerned”. That meant—?’

‘He had a conversation with his wife on going to bed. But for that, the manservant, Martin by name, last saw him in this room. I had his story last night, and very glad he was to tell it. An affair like this is meat and drink to the servants of the house.’

Trent considered for some moments, gazing through the open window over the sun-flooded slopes. ‘Would it bore you to hear what he has to say again?’ he asked at length. For reply, Mr Murch rang the bell. A spare, clean-shaven, middle-aged man, having the servant’s manner in its most distinguished form, answered it.

‘This is Mr Trent, who is authorised by Mrs Manderson to go over the house and make inquiries,’ explained the detective. ‘He would like to hear your story.’ Martin bowed distantly. He recognised Trent for a gentleman. Time would show whether he was what Martin called a gentleman in every sense of the word.

‘I observed you approaching the house, sir,’ said Martin with impassive courtesy. He spoke with a slow and measured utterance. ‘My instructions are to assist you in every possible way. Should you wish me to recall the circumstances of Sunday night?’

‘Please,’ said Trent with ponderous gravity. Martin’s style was making clamorous appeal to his sense of comedy. He banished with an effort all vivacity of expression from his face.

‘I last saw Mr Manderson—’

‘No, not that yet,’ Trent checked him quietly. ‘Tell me all you saw of him that evening—after dinner, say. Try to recollect every little detail.’

‘After dinner, sir?—yes. I remember that after dinner Mr Manderson and Mr Marlowe walked up and down the path through the orchard, talking. If you ask me for details, it struck me they were talking about something important, because I heard Mr Manderson say something when they came in through the back entrance. He said, as near as I can remember, “If Harris is there, every minute is of importance. You want to start right away. And not a word to a soul.” Mr Marlowe answered, “Very well. I will just change out of these clothes and then I am ready”—or words to that effect. I heard this plainly as they passed the window of my pantry. Then Mr Marlowe went up to his bedroom, and Mr Manderson entered the library and rang for me. He handed me some letters for the postman in the morning and directed me to sit up, as Mr Marlowe had persuaded him to go for a drive in the car by moonlight.’

‘That was curious,’ remarked Trent.

‘I thought so, sir. But I recollected what I had heard about “not a word to a soul”, and I concluded that this about a moonlight drive was intended to mislead.’

‘What time was this?’

‘It would be about ten, sir, I should say. After speaking to me, Mr Manderson waited until Mr Marlowe had come down and brought round the car. He then went into the drawing-room, where Mrs Manderson was.’

‘Did that strike you as curious?’

Martin looked down his nose. ‘If you ask me the question, sir,’ he said with reserve, ‘I had not known him enter that room since we came here this year. He preferred to sit in the library in the evenings. That evening he only remained with Mrs Manderson for a few minutes. Then he and Mr Marlowe started immediately.’

‘You saw them start?’

‘Yes, sir. They took the direction of Bishopsbridge.’

‘And you saw Mr Manderson again later?’

‘After an hour or thereabouts, sir, in the library. That would have been about a quarter past eleven, I should say; I had noticed eleven striking from the church. I may say I am peculiarly quick of hearing, sir.’

‘Mr Manderson had rung the bell for you, I suppose. Yes? And what passed when you answered it?’

‘Mr Manderson had put out the decanter of whisky and a syphon and glass, sir, from the cupboard where he kept them—’

Trent held up his hand. ‘While we are on that point, Martin, I want to ask you plainly, did Mr Manderson drink very much? You understand this is not impertinent curiosity on my part. I want you to tell me, because it may possibly help in the clearing up of this case.’

‘Perfectly, sir,’ replied Martin gravely. ‘I have no hesitation in telling you what I have already told the inspector. Mr Manderson was, considering his position in life, a remarkably abstemious man. In my four years of service with him I never knew anything of an alcoholic nature pass his lips, except a glass or two of wine at dinner, very rarely a little at luncheon, and from time to time a whisky and soda before going to bed. He never seemed to form a habit of it. Often I used to find his glass in the morning with only a little soda water in it; sometimes he would have been having whisky with it, but never much. He never was particular about his drinks; ordinary soda was what he preferred, though I had ventured to suggest some of the natural minerals, having personally acquired a taste for them in my previous service. He used to keep them in the cupboard here, because he had a great dislike of being waited on more than was necessary. It was an understood thing that I never came near him after dinner unless sent for. And when he sent for anything, he liked it brought quick, and to be left alone again at once. He hated to be asked if he required anything more. Amazingly simple in his tastes, sir, Mr Manderson was.’