14: The Note

LATER, on Thursday evening, after an excellent dinner, Doctor Pendrill and the Vicar sat talking in the latter’s study. It was the first real opportunity they had had to discuss in detail the mystery which surrounded Julius Tregarthan’s death. Although the Doctor was sanguine as to the police’s chance of making an early arrest, the Vicar was far less optimistic. If Inspector Bigswell was still following up his previous lines of investigation, with his suspicions centring on Ronald and Ruth, he felt that the police were barking up the wrong tree. Of Cowper’s unspectacular entry into the arena he, of course, knew nothing. He knew the money had been stolen, but as the Inspector had not granted him another interview since Tuesday evening he had no idea that Bigswell had more or less driven home the theft of the notes to the gardener. He assumed, therefore, that Ronald Hardy was still the central figure in the Inspector’s reconstructed picture of the crime. Pendrill, too, was under a similar impression.

“It’s curious,” said the Doctor, “that Hardy should draw attention to himself by disappearing. You’d think that any intelligent man would see the fallacy in an action of that sort. To my mind, Dodd, it’s the strongest indication of his innocence. If he had murdered Tregarthan with malice aforethought, as the Inspector seems to suggest, then he would have carried on in a perfectly normal way. I’m sure of it. Hardy’s got a first-class mind. He’d be incapable of such a piece of crass stupidity.”

The Vicar in a mellifluous voice, born of perfect gastronomic harmony, agreed.

“Quite. Quite. I’ve never doubted his innocence for one moment. Whatever the cause of Ronald’s sudden disappearance, I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the murder of poor Tregarthan. Doubly sure, as a matter of fact, since the inquest this afternoon.”

“On account of the failure of Mrs. Mullion’s evidence? A ridiculous show, Dodd!”

“No, nothing to do with that. It was something I learnt after the inquest.”

The Vicar, it appeared, had walked home from the “Ship” along the Vicarage road. There Tom Prattle had hailed him and asked him the time. They fell into conversation. Tom, bursting with pride at his discovery, had soon narrated the complete history of the rust-stained revolver; assuring the Vicar that, although the police chaps thought he wasn’t listening, he had overheard one of them say that it belonged to Mr. Hardy. He spoke of the initials scratched on the butt. For himself, of course, he knew it wasn’t Mr. Hardy’s revolver. It was a German revolver hidden “in the trench” by a “ruddy German spy.”

The Vicar guessed that for all Tom’s idiosyncrasies he was telling the truth. A man of his mental calibre would be incapable of enlivening a barefaced lie with so many matter-of-fact details. Certainly he garnished his story with a strong Teutonic flavour, but the essence of the story was obviously based on facts.

“What I want to know,” concluded the Vicar, “is why Ronald, who had ample time and opportunity to get rid of his revolver later on, threw it into a ditch a few hundred yards from the scene of the crime. You see, Pendrill---it’s absurd! The more I look into the Inspector’s theory the more flaws I see in it. What had Ronald to gain by murdering Ruth’s uncle? Why didn’t we find his footprints on the cliff-path? How was it that a man standing about twenty feet from the window put three shots into the room at such widely scattered points? Does that argue a man with war service? A man who knew how to use a revolver? Ronald, for example?”

“I know,” said Pendrill, scratching his chin with the stem of his pipe, “that last point has puzzled me from the start. It might suggest a woman in the case. But somehow I don’t think it does.”

“Ruth? Mrs. Mullion?” enquired the Vicar. “We can dismiss them completely. We know they didn’t have a hand in the crime. Our intuitions tell us that. Then who, in the name of Heaven, Pendrill, did murder Tregarthan? I wondered last night, when I was turning things over in bed, if there had been a struggle on the cliff-path. That would account for the widely scattered shots. But did we see any sign of a struggle on the path? We didn’t. In my opinion, the fact that the three shots entered the window at such diverse points is of far greater importance than we first supposed. I couldn’t stop thinking about this curious factor in the case. Why, Pendrill, at twenty feet even I could put three successive shots through the door of a french window without hitting the side windows. I could almost do it with my eyes shut. Perhaps it would not be stretching the truth too far to say that a child could do it. But the fact remains, the three shots were scattered, and I believe than when we have found an explanation for this peculiarity we shall be a long way toward solving the problem of Tregarthan’s death.”

Pendrill’s interest quickened.

“You’ve got a theory---is that it, Dodd?”

The Vicar hesitated before answering this question; then he said slowly:

“Let’s say I have the glimmering of an idea which if followed up may put us on the road toward elucidating the identity of the criminal.” Whereupon, diving into his waistcoat pocket, he produced a little square of paper. This he handed to the Doctor. “Read it,” he suggested.

The Doctor did so.

I’m not wanting your money. I shall hold my tongue not for your sake but for his. I’ve no wish to hear further about this. M.L.

“Well,” asked the Vicar. “What do you make of it?”

“Nothing,” said Pendrill, handing back the paper. “What the devil is it?”

The Vicar explained how he had come across the note in Tregarthan’s desk and how he had handed the original to the Inspector.

“I kept a copy of the note,” he explained. “It interested me. It rather looks as if poor Tregarthan was bribing somebody for the sake of their silence, doesn’t it?”

Pendrill agreed.

“Probably a woman,” he said, with the superior attitude of the confirmed bachelor toward the world feminine. “In a matter of this kind there’s nearly always a woman at the bottom of it, Dodd.”

“For once,” said the Vicar with a twinkle, “I believe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right,” growled Pendrill. “I see it like this. Tregarthan had been having an affair with a married woman. Things had turned out awkwardly---the inevitable illegitimate, I suppose---and fearing the woman would let the cat out of the bag and tell her husband, our friend J. T. tried to square her with a good big wad of notes. How’s that for a brilliant piece of deduction, eh, Dodd?”

“Oh, not bad. Not at all bad!” acknowledged the Vicar, leaning forward and patting Pendrill on the knee. “Have another drink?”

“Thanks,” said Pendrill. “I’ll mix it myself, Dodd, if you’ve no objection. I know your teetotal prejudices. I’ve always suspected that you’ve got a tidy packet of shares in a soda-water company!”

And with a look of stubborn severity he mixed a good stiff whisky and soda, held it up to the light and blandly drew the Vicar’s attention to its deep, amber translucence.

“A layman’s drink,” he observed as he shovelled himself into the depths of his arm-chair. “Now, Dodd, to return to this note---who is M.L.?”

“Ah, there you’ve got me! I’ve been puzzling over those initials myself. It may or it may not be somebody in the parish. If, as you suggest, Tregarthan was having an affair with a married woman I’m inclined to think that it was outside the village. A scandal of that sort would scarcely pass unnoticed in a small place like Boscawen. Then, according to your theory, there was the child. What about the child, Pendrill? How was the woman to hush up the affair when the child was born?”

“Well that’s simple enough,” said Pendrill expansively. “Passed it off as her husband’s child, of course! Heavens, man! that sort of thing is done every day of the year and nobody a penny the wiser.”

“But if the husband knew nothing about it, then this note has no connection whatsoever with the murder of Tregarthan.”

“Who suggests that it has?”

“I do,” said the Vicar promptly. “I have an idea that the note supplies us with a motive for the crime. Pure supposition, of course---but then, all theories spring at first from pure suppositions. Suppose the woman was unable to conceal the secret any longer. Suppose the thought of what she had done so preyed on her mind that she confessed to her husband. What then? Mightn’t the husband, through motives of revenge, blinded by jealousy perhaps, decide to put an end to Tregarthan’s life? It’s a feasible supposition, isn’t it?”

“Oh, quite,” said Pendrill in sarcastic tones. “It explains away the scattered shots; the foot-prints, or rather the lack of them, on the cliff-path; the theft of the money from Tregarthan’s person after he was killed. It explains everything, in fact!”

The Vicar, quite unruffled by the Doctor’s criticism, went on in a quiet voice.

“No---wait a bit, my dear chap. Perhaps I’ve not been fair with you. I’m not hoping to explain away the mystery by solving the problem of the note alone. The note is just a little piece of the puzzle, that’s all. But suppose we solve the problem of the note and the problem of the scattered shots and find that the answers to these two problems bear some relationship to each other. And further---suppose I have another little bit of the puzzle in my hand and I place this bit next to the other two bits, and then find that the three bits dovetail flawlessly, one into the other---what then? Aren’t we perhaps on the way to seeing the identity of the murderer take shape?”

“And this third bit you speak of?”

“No! No! Don’t ask me yet, Pendrill. Give me time to build up my theory a little more securely. At the moment it’s shaky. It may fall to the ground at the first breath of criticism. I’m groping in the dark. But I do believe, Pendrill, that provided I can add a few more pieces to the three central bits of my puzzle---the picture of the murderer may, in the long run, emerge.”

“And what exactly do you need now,” asked Pendrill with sweet sarcasm, “to help you in your marvellous deductions?”

“A big ball of string,” said the Vicar in a solemn voice.

Doctor Pendrill looked at his old friend with glum commiseration.

“You need a long holiday, Dodd. The shock of Tregarthan’s murder has been too much for you.”

“Drink up your whisky!” retorted the Reverend Dodd, as he threw a couple of logs on to the already roaring fire and settled deeper into his chair. “It’s time all good Christians were in bed!”