Trent’s Own Case

‘Did he say “loony-doctors”?’ Mr Bligh cut in.

The valet hesitated. ‘He did not, sir; but he used some expression which the meaning of it was obviously that. And he said that the worst of them was that when they often got a bee in their bonnets themselves—that he did say, I’ll swear to it.’

The inspector smiled another wintry smile. ‘I said you were not hard of hearing,’ he commented. ‘Did anything more about this Dr Fairman come to your ears?’

‘Nothing that I can recall, sir.’

Mr Bligh sighed gently. At this hour the much-wanted Fairman, if he had caught the night-boat, as appearances suggested, might still be at his destination in Dieppe. On the other hand, his true destination was more than likely to be elsewhere, and he might be receding each moment farther beyond the reach of the English law’s long arm. The inspector strode to the sitting-room telephone, and soon was in touch with the same official to whom he had spoken before. He repeated briefly, for transmission to Dieppe, Raught’s description of the suspect, and asked that inquiries about him should be made immediately at the Randolph Mental Hospital at Claypoole, where he was one of the medical staff.

‘Now then,’ he resumed, turning to the valet who stood uneasily awaiting his attention, ‘before you went out, you left your master’s evening clothes ready for him?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did you put out his razor?’

‘No, sir. I never knew him need to shave in the evening. I had left the razor on the shelf in the bathroom, with the other shaving things.’

‘Was there a blade in the razor?’

‘I had put in a new blade ready for next morning, sir. Mr Randolph liked to have a new one every day.’

‘And when you found his body, did you see the razor lying on the dressing-table?’

‘No, sir. I was too much upset to notice anything of that sort.’

‘You didn’t even see that there was a lot of brown paper and string on the floor?’

Raught dropped his eyes. ‘Now you mention it, sir, I did notice that—an untidy mess lying under the window, as if someone had been opening parcels. It slipped my memory sir—truly it did. And I never touched it.’

The inspector grunted. He had the impression that the valet was meeting all these inquiries with as much frankness as was in his nature. ‘Do you know,’ he asked, ‘if your master kept any valuables in his bedroom?’

The man hesitated. ‘None, sir, to my knowledge, except studs and links and that. But I—I fancy he had a safe set in the wall by the window.’

Mr Bligh’s face hardened. ‘Yah!’ he said ungracefully. ‘You fancy! Don’t you know?’

‘Well, sir,’ Raught said unhappily, ‘I have seen a keyhole.’

‘Of course you have,’ the inspector said brutally. ‘And the edges of the door too. The question is whether you know what was behind it.’

‘That I don’t indeed, sir,’ the valet protested. ‘And it was never opened in my presence.’

Mr Bligh still surveyed him with a disparaging eye. ‘Now, Raught,’ he said, ‘what can you tell me about this?’ He indicated the engagement-block standing on the Chinese cabinet. ‘Is that the usual place for it?’

The valet appeared genuinely startled. ‘It certainly is not, sir,’ he declared with emphasis. ‘That thing—I never remember seeing it there before. I have seen it often enough, and anyone could tell what it was for, sir, of course. Mr Randolph would often jot down an appointment on it when I was about. But he wasn’t ever communicative-like about his engagements—not that they were any business of mine. And this block, sir, was always treated like something specially private-like. He would always lock it away in a drawer of the writing-table—never once have I seen it left standing about like this. Most peculiar it is, to anyone knowing Mr Randolph’s ways.’ He shook his head portentously.

‘Well, that’s that,’ the inspector remarked after a moment’s rubbing of his chin. ‘Now come upstairs,’ he directed curtly. Raught’s leaden complexion became visibly less healthy as he was shepherded into the room where the body still lay.

‘Now, here’s another peculiar thing I want your opinion about.’ Mr Bligh pointed to the small heap of articles on the dressing-table. ‘Did Mr Randolph usually put the contents of his pockets here?’

‘Yes, sir. He always dressed here. There is no separate dressing-room.’

‘And have you ever seen anything of this sort among his personal effects?’ The inspector, watching the man’s face, indicated the champagne cork. ‘Can you think of any reason why he should have carried it about with him?’

Raught looked blankly at his questioner. ‘In the five years I have been with Mr Randolph, sir, I have never seen a cork among his things. It’s funny it should be that kind of a cork, too. He didn’t seem ever to care for sparkling wines. At home—at the place in Yorkshire, that is—he never touched them, though he kept champagne for his guests.’

‘Well,’ the inspector said sharply, ‘he might have had someone to lunch or dinner here, and given ’em champagne or something of the sort. You’d have known about that, I suppose.’

The valet shook his head decisively. ‘He never had lunch or dinner here, sir; let alone entertaining. When in London, he would have his meals mostly at the Lansdowne Club—that was where I had to ring him up in case of anything pressing. An egg and a bit of toast and a cup of tea in the morning—that is all the food I have ever known him take here. It wasn’t a ’ome, sir, not in any sense of the word. I had to cater for myself, that being allowed for in the wages—generous too. As for yesterday and the day before, he was out to lunch and dinner as usual. It’s true I wasn’t here at dinner-time being out for the evening; but I can answer for it there wasn’t enough in the place for what you might call a proper meal. And the only drink ever kept here was some brandy and bottles of seltzer, which Mr Randolph would sometimes have a drop of before going to bed. Besides,’ Raught went on after a brief pause, ‘he certainly intended dining out last night, sir—the Tabarders’ Company dinner it was to be—and he never missed anything to do with the Tabarders’.’

Mr Bligh looked interested. ‘Didn’t he?’ he said. ‘And why was that?’

‘Why, you see, sir,’ Raught explained, ‘Mr Randolph was a very large contributor to the Company’s charities—very munificent indeed, sir, I have heard; and he naturally liked the position it used to give him at their public occasions.’

Mr Bligh nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Anybody would. And so,’ he added quickly, ‘you knew all about it being the Tabarders’ dinner-night, though you never saw what was written on the block, and Mr Randolph was never, I think you said, communicative-like about his engagements. Not only that; you knew all about how he felt on the subject of the Tabarders’ dinner. You seem to know a lot more than you pretend, Raught.’

The valet’s tottering self-control gave way at this. He wrung his hand together, and it was with a sobbing voice that he broke out in a suddenly degenerated speech: ‘That’s it! That’s the way! Leading of a man on till you get ’im in a corner, and set ’im up against himself. I ain’t told you nothing but what’s gospel, and you come making me out a liar. Why shouldn’t I know it was the Tabarders’ dinner-night? I got ears, ain’t I? Even if he didn’t say nothing to me, I ’eard him talking about it to Mr Verney ’alf a dozen times, if you want to know; and as for ’im likin’ to be made a fuss of, and to be told ’e was a-runnin’ over with the milk of ’uman kindness—ain’t we got a reg’lar staff of servants down at Brinton, and don’t they talk over the guvnor and his little ways? Not ’alf!’ Raught exclaimed with lachrymose fervour. ‘Crool, that’s what it is, a-badgerin’ a man what ain’t done nothing but his dooty about this ’ere business—sendin’ for the pleece as I did, and a-dealin’ with ’em honest and truthful. A chap what’s once gone wrong ain’t ever give a chance.’ Here the valet’s emotion overcame him, and he mopped his eyes in wordless misery.

‘There, that’s enough of that,’ Mr Bligh said heartlessly. ‘You’ve told me a lot more, my lad, than I’d have got out of you if I’d been soft with you. Now about this safe.’ He took up the key-case, and held out its contents in silence.

‘This ’ere’s the key of the street door downstairs,’ whimpered Raught. ‘I know that because I’ve got one that’s the same. I don’t know nothing about any of the others, I wish I may—’

‘That’ll do,’ the inspector snapped. He picked out without hesitation the key to fit the lock in the wall, and soon the interior of a small and shallow safe was exposed—completely empty. His eyes travelled to the small pile of wrappings still lying almost beneath the safe, and again his fingers caressed his hairless scalp.

CHAPTER V

TRENT IS TAKEN ABACK

TRENT stood at the sitting-room window of his small house in St John’s Wood, gazing at the sky and meditating on the enviable life lived by such men as old Blinky Fisher, in such lovely and well-tended retreats as the Cathedral Close at Glasminster. It was the evening of the day after his leave-taking of Aunt Judith at Victoria. He had driven down to Glasminster with his friend Patmore that morning, had surveyed the spectacle of Julian Pickett—looking rather more unnerved than a big-game hunter should—being married to a young woman who did not seem at all formidable; had foregathered with a number of old friends at the house of Canon Fisher, and had returned as he had gone.

The effect on his spirit had been, as he had known it would be, to discontent him with any way of life but that of the ‘mild, monastic faces, in quiet collegiate cloisters.’ Being not particularly pious, far from learned, and delighting in the society of his fellow men, Trent never came in contact with the life of piety, erudition and seclusion without yearning to be a part of it. It was, as he put it to himself in a familiar phrase of godliness and scholarship, too damned silly for words.

‘What a wonderful sunset, Mrs McOmish!’ Trent said.

His housekeeper, who was laying the table for his solitary dinner, glanced briefly at the flaming sky. ‘I’ve seen waur,’ she said. She was a person whose words, thought usually of the driest, were as usually highly charged with unspoken significance. In this case, Mrs McOmish contrived to convey the strongly held opinion that nothing was to be gained by encouraging either this sunset, or sunsets as a class.

Trent shook his head. ‘Sophisticated!’ he said sadly. ‘To you, Mrs McOmish, all nature is old, outmoded stuff, I suppose. The sublime, unapproachable self-sufficiency of art—that is your whole creed.’

‘No the whole,’ Mrs McOmish replied guardedly. ‘I dinna ken what a’ that means aboot airt, and it may be pairt of the confession of the United Presbyterian Kirk, but there’s a guid deal else forbye, I assure ye.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ Trent said absently. ‘But a truce to theology, Mrs McOmish. We were talking animatedly about the sunset, and you were just going to recall to me those moving lines in which Sir Walter Scott describes a similar phenomenon in the neighbourhood of the Trossachs. But what says another poet, Mrs McOmish; the one who uttered nothing base, though occasionally something silly? It is, he observed, a beauteous evening, calm and free—’

‘Weel, we a’ ken there’s nae chairge for it,’ Mrs McOmish admitted.

‘The holy time is quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration—’

‘It’s a peety,’ Mrs McOmish commented with some severity, ‘he couldna appreciate the weather without being popish aboot it. There’s a gentleman turning in at the gate, Mr Trent. Is it a friend of yours? Is it like he’ll be staying to dinner?’

Trent looked at the tall, quietly dressed young man who was approaching the house. ‘I know who it is,’ he said, ‘though he is a good deal changed in his looks. He doesn’t give me the idea that dinner would agree with him just now—had some kind of a shock, I should think. Now,’—Trent went nearer to the window—‘what on earth can it be that he’s picking up from the path?’

Mrs McOmish, an elbow clasped in either hand, also came to overlook the proceedings of the visitor. ‘It might be a wee piece of coal,’ she opined, with more display of interest than she usually permitted herself. ‘We had the new coal in three days syne. It’s terrible good luck to pick up a wee piece of coal—or what is better still, an auld rusty nail. Only the nail maun be crookit, ye ken. Oh ay, it’s a nail; he’s putting it in his inside pouch. Twenty years, and mair, I’ve keepit a rusty nail I found just by the Tammas Coats statue in Dunn Square—Oh preserve us! What a loup he gave, Mr Trent, seeing ye at the window!’

‘His nerves must be in a shocking state,’ Trent said. ‘There’s never been anything frightening about me, has there, Mrs McOmish? The beasts that roam over the plain my form with indifference see; let alone the private secretaries of Congregationalist millionaires. Well, if he wants to see me, will you show him into the studio? It isn’t so maddeningly tidy in there.’ And Trent walked to the door communicating with that scene of his labours.

‘I wouldna wonder!’ the housekeeper said grimly. ‘Ye’ve been in it a full half hoor since ye came back.’ She went out to admit the visitor.

‘Mr Verney to see you, sir,’ Mrs McOmish soon announced in what she would have described as an English voice.

Mr Verney, whose age might have been guessed at twenty-seven or thereabouts, was a person of somewhat damaged aspect, for he looked harassed and distraught to the last degree. But there was nothing weak in the essence of his appearance. His frame was spare and athletic, his carriage erect, and in his fresh-coloured eagle-featured face there was a pair of restless bright-blue eyes that did not give an impression of spiritual sloth.

It was he who spoke the first words as his hand met Trent’s in a rather perfunctory salutation.

‘What do you think,’ he said earnestly, ‘of this terrible news?’

‘What do you mean?’ Trent said. ‘I haven’t heard of any terrible news, believe me, my dear fellow. I only hope it’s not too bad—for you.’

Verney stared at him intensely. ‘How can you have missed it?’ he demanded, with a puzzled look in his very expressive eyes. ‘It’s been in all the early afternoon papers—it’s all over the town. Or do you mean that old James Randolph’s death doesn’t distress you at all?’

Trent was thoroughly taken aback, and for the best of reasons. Himself, at a little after six o’clock the evening before, he had left the same James Randolph not only alive but in a furiously bad temper, a picture of choleric vitality. ‘Randolph dead!’ he said blankly. ‘Why, did he have a stroke or something?’

‘A bullet was what killed him, Trent,’ Verney said coldly. ‘I can’t conceive—’

‘Oh! he was shot!’ A light broke over Trent’s mind. ‘Now I understand. You see, Verney, I drove down to Glasminster to a wedding this morning, and I’ve only just got back after all the merrymaking. If anyone had heard of it down there, it wasn’t mentioned in my hearing. But the early editions! They all had it, of course—I see that now. But you know how they like to keep you guessing. On the way back, I should think I saw a score of bills saying that a well-known millionaire had been found shot. I didn’t care if fifty millionaires, each more well-known than the last, had been found shot. It never occurred to me that it was Randolph. My dear fellow, what a shocking thing! It must have been a bad blow for you, being what you were to him. Tell me what happened.’

‘That’s just what I can’t tell you,’ Verney said in a dull tone. He sat with hands clasped between his knees, and stared at the floor. ‘All I know is he was shot by someone last night in his bedroom at Newbury Place, when nobody else was there—it’s the evening his manservant always had free every week. The man found his master lying dead when he came home, and at once sent for the police. You cannot imagine the shock the news was to me—I didn’t even know Randolph was in London. The first I heard of it was when a C.I.D. man called on me early this morning, to see if I knew anything that could give them a line. All I could say was that the old man hadn’t an enemy in the world, as far as I knew. And I said the last I had seen of Randolph had been last week, when I was staying at Brinton Lodge, having various matters to talk over with him; and that then he had seemed quite at ease and free from any anxiety. Since I heard the news I’ve been living in a sort of bad dream. I had a very real feeling for the old man; more like veneration than anything else. And this means more of a chaotic smashup than you can very well imagine. At last I took to walking aimlessly about the streets, just to take the edge off my nerves; and when I found myself near your place, I thought I would look in for a talk. I suppose you had not seen Randolph lately?’

Trent looked at his visitor consideringly. What he had just been told by Verney made one thing clear: he, Trent, must have been one of the last persons to see Randolph before his being murdered. And he had strong reasons for wishing that interview of his with the old man to remain a private affair. It had concerned the reputation of a woman for whom he had a deep regard; and it had been of a decidedly unpleasant, not to say scandalous, nature. The less said about it the better, in Trent’s judgment; above all, to those with whom Randolph had left an honourable memory. As for the police, of course they must be told; for one thing, the information would set a limit in one direction on the time during which the murder had been committed. But Trent saw no reason for taking Verney into his confidence.

‘It is some time since I saw him,’ Trent therefore replied, with more truth than candour. ‘It’s no use offering you a drink, is it?’ he asked; and Verney shook his head. ‘Very often a cigarette helps you to pull yourself together,’ Trent went on. ‘You look all to pieces. Try one of these.’

Verney looked up gratefully. ‘Thanks, I will,’ he said, extending a shaking hand towards the box held out to him, ‘I know all about tobacco and what it can do to you, though it’s long enough since I smoked any.’ He lit a Virginia cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘You see, the first year at Oxford I used to smoke a lot too much, as so many freshers do. Then, when I began to have dreams of a Blue, I dropped it altogether.’

‘And you got your reward, I dare say.’

Verney smiled, in momentary forgetfulness of the day’s bad news. ‘Do you take an interest in that sort of thing? Yes: three-mile; also cross-country running, since we are on the subject.’

‘No, I know nothing about it,’ Trent said; ‘but as soon as you spoke of dreaming of a Blue, I could see that your dream had probably come true. You look like a Blue. When Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats, you know, it often marks him for life.’

Verney’s dejection again took possession of him. ‘Well, it came in useful when I began working for Randolph,’ he said. ‘The boys’ club part of the job was what always appealed to me most. You know about the Randolph Institute, I dare say. Nothing sectarian; just educational and social and athletic. I love it—in fact, I spend most of my time there, because there’s a room I use as a sort of general office for all Randolph’s charitable affairs. And of course, having a bit of a record in athletics gave me more influence with the lads than almost anything else could have done. Then my being a non-smoker was a good thing too, you see. You can hardly imagine the state that many of these young fellows get their respiratory tracts into with eternally smoking cheap fags. And as for running, there’s simply nothing like it for our sort of lads, so long as they’re sound physically—hard exercise in the open air, easy to fit in after the day’s work, and costs next to nothing.’

‘It’s good for you,’ Trent said. ‘You get all the exercise you need, I expect.’

‘All I need—yes. But to tell you the truth,’ Verney said, rather in the manner of one confessing to a secret vice, ‘since I began playing golf about five years ago, I prefer a round of that to any other open-air sport I know—and I have had a pretty good experience. Whenever I can manage it, I go off for a game to Matcham. It’s not a good course, and you often can’t get a caddy, but then I never want one; and it is the cheapest golf I know this side of London, which is what I have to consider. How I wish—but it is no use talking about that. As far as keeping fit goes, I have every opportunity, as you say. There’s nothing like running, above all, for that.’

‘There’s a good deal, no doubt,’ Trent said, ‘in having that sort of thing managed by someone who knows all about it.’

‘Yes,’ Verney said simply, ‘there is, of course. The boys have their committee; but they leave the whole show to me really, and I’m rather proud of the way our fellows have come forward since I took over. Last January the Randolph Athletic Club was runner-up in the Middlesex cross-country team championship, and challenged Southgate Harriers pretty closely. We provided the first two men home in that event, and we won the junior race easily. And now, I suppose’—he tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire—‘the Kilburn Institute’s all over and done with.’

Trent felt a moment of keen sympathy, for Verney’s whole manner was that of a heartbroken man.

‘Do you mean that his death really means the end of all that work?’ he asked. ‘Wasn’t there any endowment? Or surely there would be some provision in his will for the keeping-up of the various organizations he had started—what was that phrase he was so fond of using?—for the benefit of the community. I should think, from what I’ve heard, that the shutting-up of that Institute would pretty well amount to a social disaster for that part of London. It ought not to be possible.’

‘Well, it is,’ Verney said, as he accepted another cigarette. ‘You see, Trent, old Randolph had a rather strange side to his character as a public benefactor. He made a great fortune fairly early in life, and he devoted almost the whole of his income to charities and public objects. He continued to heap up more money; but I think it was because he could hardly help it. The real hobby of his life was to attend personally to all his enormous expenditure on charities and public objects. Sometimes he would give a great sum for some special purpose; but when he did that, it was always in the way of capital expenditure. He would build and equip a sanatorium, say, for some town or some big charitable institution; but he would never settle anything on it. He might, and usually did, put his name down year by year for a contribution to its upkeep; but he used to say he started a place like that as an opportunity for charity on the part of other people.’

Trent nodded. ‘That’s not unusual, I know,’ he said. ‘But how about places like the Institute? I always understood that was entirely his own private show, maintained by him exclusively. He surely can’t have left it high and dry, so to speak.’

‘That is just what I was coming to,’ Verney said. ‘The position of the Institute was just as you say—he held it in his own hands entirely, financing it as if it were a part of his own household. And he had other establishments on just the same footing, like the Randolph Infant Orphanage at Bishopsbridge, or the Randolph Mental Hospital at Claypoole. He was very proud of them, too, and saw to their being the best run places of their kind in the country. They cost him something, Trent; I’m telling you, and I know. But they never had a penny of funds of their own; and whatever Randolph parted with in any sort of way, he always would know what happened to it. He couldn’t seem to bear the idea of anyone else controlling wealth that he had amassed—that was at the bottom of it. And I don’t see that you could find fault with that, seeing that he did devote all those vast sums to other people, and put himself to a vast amount of trouble in looking after the spending of the money. But the unfortunate consequence is that now—’ he raised a hand, palm-downwards, and brought it down sharply on the arm of his chair.

Trent stared at him. ‘You don’t mean to say he’s made no bequests to these places that he created, and lavished money on, and that made up a large part of his reputation?’