A Case in Camera Page 6

  "Oh, shut up!" said Philip rudely; and happily the dangerous theory wasnot pressed.

  But Monty had used the awkward word "murder."

  And if Monty was amusing, the state of mind of the other two was nowfascinatingly interesting. For you see their predicament. To put itquite plainly, they were trying to screw up their courage. Esdaile inparticular was almost visibly hardening his heart. That was thefascinating part--to see exactly how much and how little homage theywould pay to the decencies before they thought themselves free to goahead.

  The stages of the comedy were rapid. The first of them came when Esdailewondered whether he oughtn't to go to the telephone, not to communicatewith the police, but to ask for the latest news of Chummy's progress.

  "Seems funny to think of Chummy being laid out six months after theWar's all over," he said. "Remember the Jazz Band in the Mess, Cecil?"

  "Red Pepper Two-Step on the Birds, eh?" said Hubbard.

  (I am aware that this needs elucidation. The Helmsea Mess Jazz Band hadbeen a noteworthy improvisation, and the Birds had been Chummy Smith'sspecial department. They were stuffed Birds, set in cases round thewalls, and the glass fronts of the cases had formed Smith's tympani.With drumming fingertips and softly-pounding wrists I learned that hehad got great variety out of his instruments.)

  "And the cock-fight between the razorbills?" Esdaile continued.

  I could also make a guess at the kind of rag that had been.

  "And the night old Pike's motor-bike broke down?"

  And though this reminiscence passed over my head, it was plain that theywere getting on. Very soon I might expect to be told outright thatChummy Smith was Chummy Smith and a pal, and they would be damned ifthey would see him in the cart till things were much clearer than theywere. So I simply leaned back and amused myself with mental pictures.They were jumbled pictures, but I knew I was sharing them with the othertwo. I seemed to see their East Coast Base, with planes homing in theevening and the M.L.'s suddenly appearing out of the mists and droppinganchor in the tideway. I seemed to see the rubber-coated andwhite-mufflered figures striding up the jetty to that Mess they spoke ofand loudly demanding drinks and food and hot baths. I imagined themechanics filling up the tanks and the Duty Officer swearing at the snowand slush as he stamped up and down the 'drome. And, faint andineffectual as my pictures were, they still had a little of the magic ofthat life in which gayety and tragedy came so close and the chances oflife and death were so intertwined.

  I also guessed what a purist in the matter of picking up pistols mightfind himself up against if he pushed his purism inconveniently far.

  Esdaile took the plunge even more quickly than I expected. I saw thelittle effort with which he pulled himself together.

  "Well, it's no good beating about the bush," he said. "We all know howthings are. The question is what's to be done."

  I don't think he realized, as he pulled out his pipe, that that was nowhardly the question at all. Already the question was, not what was to bedone, but exactly how it was to be done.

  XII

  For, if he had realized, he could hardly have overlooked the immenselyimportant point he did overlook. It was left to me to draw his attentionto this point.

  For when one man kills another, it necessarily follows that one man hasbeen, killed _by_ another. And it further follows that, if you decide toshield the killer because he is your friend, you are inevitably forcedinto an unfriendly attitude towards the victim. What about the victimand his rights in the matter?

  You may believe it or not, but until this moment I don't think thisaspect of the affair had occurred either to Hubbard or Esdaile. All hadbeen Chummy. More than this: so exclusively had Chummy occupied theirthoughts that they had forgotten the ordinary physical fact that abullet fired into a man's body makes a hole--the same ugly kind of holewhether the person who makes it is your friend or not. Loyalty tofriendship in the teeth of the Law is not always the simple thing itsounds. Among the various facts that faced us was one inescapable one,namely, that a man called Maxwell was at that moment lying in a mortuaryawaiting a post-mortem examination.

  Esdaile was frowning and clawing his jaw. The realization was sinking innow all right.

  "What had you thought of doing with the pistol anyway?" I asked.

  "To tell you the truth I hadn't thought," he admitted. "I should say thebottom of the river's the best place for it. But as you say, you can'tdrop that poor devil's bullet-hole into the river. Does nobody knowanything about him?"

  Nobody did. Maxwell might have been Chummy's best friend or worst enemy,a good fellow, a rotter, any one kind of all the kinds of men there are.

  "Chummy was in Gallipoli. Anybody ever hear of a Maxwell with himthere?"

  Nobody had.

  Then Esdaile took another line. For a moment it seemed quite a hopefulone.

  "Well, look at it this way." He tried to evade the inevitable. "It's allvery well for Monty to talk out of his hat about there not being murdersenough, but what earthly right have we to assume that this was a murderat all? None, I say. Far more likely to have been an accident. Accidentsdo happen. Chummy wasn't the kind of man to deliberately do anotherfellow in. It must have been an accident."

  But at this moment I remembered Philip's own words that morning in thestudio: "Anybody would say it was an accident, wouldn't they? It lookedlike an accident, I mean? It wouldn't occur to anybody who saw it thatit wasn't?" Those were rather remarkable words. They had meant, if theyhad meant anything at all, that even then Philip had had his reasonsfor supposing it had _not_ been an accident. Now that a thunderclap hadrevealed that one of the men who had come down on the roof was Chummy,he apparently wanted it to be an accident again.

  And by the way, how, at that particular moment, had Philip come to be inpossession of an opinion on the matter at all? This was the point I havementioned as being on Rooke's mind also. So far, in telling his story,Esdaile had taken as his starting-point the moment when he had gotpossession of the pistol from Monty; but what about the antecedentmystery? How in the first place had he discovered that Monty had thepistol? Why had he walked practically straight to Monty the moment hehad ascended from the cellar? The whole series of incidents, from firstto last, had passed while he had been still down in the cellar; how thencould he know anything whatever about them?

  Then I remembered that only a series of diversions had turned Hubbardaway from his express purpose in coming to Lennox Street thatevening--the purpose of seeing Esdaile's cellar. First had come theshock of learning that one of the men was Chummy Smith; then JoanMerrow's implication in the affair had sidetracked us; and then had comethe pistol and Monty. These things were all very well, but they broughtus no nearer to the solution of the first puzzle of all. Why had Esdailebehaved as he had behaved when he had rejoined us with a jar of curacaoin one hand and a lighted candle in the other?

  But for all this we had to wait. My speculations were suddenly cutshort. There was another ring at the door, and Esdaile rose. But beforegoing to see who it was this time he took the precaution of once moreputting Monty's pistol away in the escritoire drawer.

  It was well for our Case, as a Case, that he did so. We heard voices inthe passage, Esdaile's own tenor and a deeper voice. Then I heard himsay, "Well, perhaps you'd better come in."

  The next moment he stood holding the door open for a Police Inspector topass.

  PART III

  WHAT THE WOMEN DID

  I

  For a great number of years past, innumerable reviewers have been sokind as to class me as "one of the younger novelists," and with thepassing of time I have acquired a certain affection for the status. ButI have to confess myself unlike my brethren in this--I don't know allabout women. Indeed, twenty Philip Esdailes poking about twenty cellarsare clearer to me than some of the mental processes of such a person as(say) Miss Joan Merrow. For instance, she once to
ld me that she would beterrified to go up in a machine. She told me this (as I subsequentlylearned) within a very few hours of a side-slip at a few hundred feetthat had fairly "put the wind up" Chummy Smith, her companion in this(by Philip) strictly forbidden adventure. Some chance remark of her ownrevealed all this to me weeks later, and our eyes met, mine sternlyaccusing, hers of limpid periwinkle blue. Then she had the effrontery totake me aside, to put her arm inside mine, and to whisper that she knewshe could "trust" me!

  "Trust," indeed!

  So, as far as Miss Merrow is my informant for the part of our Case I amnow coming to, you are warned what to expect.

  II

  Since it was I who discovered Philip Esdaile's painting-cottage for himI think I may claim that I know the Santon country fairly well. It is avast and skyey upland east of the Wolds, and its edge drops in fourhundred feet of glorious white cliff sheer to the sea. Everything thereis on the amplest and most bountiful scale, from the enormous stretchesof wheat and barley to the giant barns and huge horses and the verypoultry of its farmyards. The only tiny thing about it is its church,and this stands in the middle of a daisied field, not by any means oneof the largest, but that can hardly be less than a hundred acres. Thereis a shop-post-office, a short street mostly laithes as big asairship hangars, an opaque horse-pond, and a single telegraph wire theposts of which can be seen for miles diminishing away over the Wolds.The few trees are mostly thorn, all blown one way by the wind and asstiff and compact as wire mattresses.

  And Joan herself fitted into all this Caldecott spaciousness as if shehad been bred and born there. Half a mile away across the young corn yousaw her white sweater at the cliff's edge, and it seemed part of thewhiteness of the screaming seabirds, of the whiteness of the awfulglimpses of chalk where the turf suddenly ended in air, of the crawlingwhiteness of the waves far below. And on the shore--but any young girlis a Nausicaa on any shore. Esdaile has drawn and painted her a score oftimes--young neck, fair thick yellow hair, the none-too-small white feetwith the sand disappearing from them as she waded into the anemoniedpools. Sometimes it was no more than a cryptic pencil-line, that, asyou looked at it, suddenly became her uplifted arm and flank, or thebalance of back and hips as she moved across the unsteady white stones.Sometimes the jotting was more abbreviated still, just a dab or two ofcolor that placed her against fawn-colored sand or ribbon-grassed water.But always it was Joan romping as it were her last between the littleAlan and Jimmy she mothered and those other dream-stuff children thatdid not call her mother yet.

  I feel fairly certain that it was not in the very least on PhilipEsdaile's account that she had given instructions at the Chelseapost-office for the readdressing of letters. Neither was it, as she hadfalsely said, "to save Mr. Rooke the trouble." Both Philip's stupidletters and Monty's convenience were very minor matters. The reallyimportant thing was her own letters. Some little delay her change ofaddress was bound to entail; but if, after "1," "2," and "3" there mustbe a short pause, "4," "5" and the rest would arrive all in one blissfulbag. And, pending her receipt of them, there was no reason why sheshould cease to write letters.

  So, accompanied by the letter-case with the new lock on it, down to theshore she took the children on the first two mornings (which issomething of a journey, by the way), and back in the afternoon she cameto high tea at half-past four. On the first day she did not even troubleto walk on to the little post-office-shop. But on the second day shedid, returning empty-handed to boiled fowl and white sauce, tall pilesof Santon bread and Santon butter and Santon jam, pints of hot tea fromthe luster pot under the haystack cosy, and the children's clamor:--

  "I saw a jellyfish as big as a cart-wheel!"

  "'N Jimmy found seven starfishes!"

  "I found _eight_ starfishes!"

  "'N I waded out till the water came right up to here!"

  "'N I saw a polar bear----"

  "Oh, Jimmy, what a story! You've just made that up this minute!"

  This last in bell-voiced reproof from Joan. At twenty she stillcorrected and disputed with them as a rather larger equal.

  III

  They had arrived at Santon at half-past eight on a Thursday night,and after tea on the Saturday Joan walked up to the littlecoastguard-station on the hill. Aeroplanes were not unknown on that wideuplifted promontory, and it would not in the least surprise her ifpresently, say in another week or so, Chummy, finding himself within amere fifty miles, were to drop in unannounced. He had in fact said so,in the last letter but four. He had not been able to see her off at thestation because he had had a new machine to take up with a fellow shedidn't know. On Friday he was chasing off to the Midlands, where hemight have to stay the night, and he did not expect to be back in Londontill Saturday afternoon. So he would not be within fifty miles, and evenif a plane did happen to pass over it could not possibly be his.

  As a matter of fact a plane did happen to pass over, and she pretendedthat it was his. She stood watching, eyes shaded with her hand, lipssmiling and parted, and the young throat long as the flower-trumpet atthe pit of which lies the nectar. Though she had been in a plane (and"trusted" me not to tell), I don't think that in her heart she regardedaeroplanes as apparatus at all. They were not things of wood and steeland oil and petrol that carried a load as a motor-car might have carrieda load. All was the particular skill and daring and unaided clevernessof that Chummy of hers. I suppose he simply thought of her and flew....But her little pretense ended in a light sigh when the plane did notcircle, but with unfeeling purposefulness followed the telegraph wireover the Wolds and was lost to her sight. The young chauffeur of theair, whoever he was, knew nothing of the kiss that went after him. Shereturned to the cottage and the letter-case and began "7."

  She knew nothing of the letter that Mollie Esdaile had already receivedfrom Philip, fortunately during her absence with the children. Nor didshe know that Mollie, still in her absence, had run immediately to theshop-post-office and had telegraphed "_Wire fullest particularsimmediately most anxious_." Chummy (Philip had written) had had a slightaccident, nothing serious, but enough to keep him in bed for a few days.It would be better (his letter had continued) if this could be kept fromJoan until she, Mollie, heard further from him. If Mollie could alsoglance through the newspapers before Joan got hold of them, that alsoPhilip recommended. For the rest, he had said nothing whatever aboutwhen he himself might be expected at Santon, and Mollie further wonderedwhether it was to create a reassuring impression that he had passed onto tell her how he was having old Dadley round about somepicture-framing, and ended with similar trivial matters. That letter hadcome on the Friday afternoon. Saturday had brought neither letter norreply to her telegram. She was glad that there was a Sunday delivery atSanton, which usually awaited them on their return from Church.

  (I may say now, by the way, that Philip's caution about the newspaperswas needless. The paper that found its way to Santon about midday was aLondon paper, but a Northern edition. Minor accidents in Chelsea areseen in perspective from the North, and no account of that Chelseaaccident ever did appear.)

  Only Joan and the children went to Church on that Sunday morning. Molliemade some excuse about helping the village girl to prepare the middaymeal. Perhaps she preferred not to read letters and have her own faceread by Joan at the same time.

  In the summer, when the door of that diminutive Church usually standswide open all through the service, you can see from the back pews thepostman pass on his way to Newsome's, the farthest farm. So there inChurch Joan sat, watching the bees that droned in and out of the opendoor, the butterflies that hovered, the cattle that tried to crop insidethe little wire fence. The whiteness of the daisies was faintly shed upamong the old rafters, and the curate's singsong rose and fellpeacefully. The postman passed with the Newsome letters, and repassedwith his empty bag. Then the sluggish old harmonium droned forth thelast hymn, they knelt for the Benediction, and Joan and her charges werethe first to hurry fo
rth out into the sunshine again.

  And this time there was a letter for her.

  But her brows were already contracted even before she opened it. Shestood, in the white frock and buttercupped hat, against the musk andgeraniums of the sunny window, already wondering what the quite strangehandwriting of the envelope meant, already half afraid to ascertain.

  "Is this all----?" she began.

  Then with a nervous jerk she tore open the envelope, and a cry brokefrom her. The blue eyes were wide frightened rounds.

  For if the handwriting on the envelope was strange, that of the shakypenciled scrawl inside was not quite familiar either. Yet it wasChummy's. He had had a bit of a spill, he said, but nothing to hurt.Rather shaken, but nothing broken. She was not to come up, as he wouldbe out and up again before she could get there.

  And that was all. There was no address at the head of the letter, and hedid not say who had addressed the envelope for him, nor why.

  "Oh, Mollie, he's hurt!" broke agitatedly from Joan.

  Mollie was writing a letter at the little round table where theworkbasket stood. Quietly she rose and passed her arm about the girl.

  "Yes, darling, but he's quite all right," she calmed her.

  "Have you heard from Philip, then? What is it? What does he say?" thewords came with a rush.

  Mollie had not heard from Philip that morning. That was why she waswriting her letter. But she said she had heard from him. She meant theletter she had received on Friday afternoon.

  "And somebody's had to write the address for him!" Joan's voice becamemore unsteady still. "Oh, that means he's badly hurt! I must go atonce!"