ERNEST BRAMAH Ultimate Collection: 20+ Novels & Short Stories in One Volume. Bramah Ernest

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “He wished to mine?”

      “Yes. He told me that he had had experience of coal in Natal.”

      “There was no absolute ostracism between you then? You were to some extent friends?”

      “Scarcely.” She appeared to reflect. “Acquaintances…. We met occasionally, of course, at people’s houses.”

      “You did not visit High Barn?”

      “Oh no.”

      “But there was no particular reason why you should not?”

      “Why do you ask me that?” she demanded quickly, and in a tone that was quite incompatible with the simple inquiry. Then, recognizing the fact, she added, with shamefaced penitence: “I beg your pardon, Mr Carrados. I am afraid that my nerves have gone to pieces since Thursday. The most ordinary things affect me inexplicably.”

      “That is a common experience in such circumstances,” said Carrados reassuringly. “Where were you at the time of the tragedy?”

      “I was in my bedroom, which is rather high up, changing. I had driven down to the village, to give an order, and had just returned. Mrs Lawrence told me that she had been afraid there might be quarrelling, but no one would ever have dreamed of this, and then came a loud shot and then, after a few seconds, another not so loud, and we rushed to the door—she and Mary first—and everything was absolutely still.”

      “A loud shot and then another not so loud?”

      “Yes; I noticed that even at the time. I happened to speak to Mrs Lawrence of it afterwards and then she also remembered that it had been like that.”

      Afterwards Carrados often recalled with grim pleasantry that the two absolutely vital points in the fabric of circumstantial evidence that was to exonerate her father and fasten the guilt upon another had dropped from the girl’s lips utterly by chance. But at the moment the facts themselves monopolized his attention.

      “You are not disappointed that I can tell you so little?” she asked timidly.

      “Scarcely,” he replied. “A suicide who could not have had the weapon he dies by, a victim who is miraculously preserved by an opportune watch, and two shots from the same pistol that differ materially in volume, all taken together do not admit of disappointment.”

      “I am very stupid,” she said. “I do not seem able to follow things. But you will come and clear my father’s name?”

      “I will come,” he replied. “Beyond that who shall prophesy?”

      It had been arranged between them that the girl should return at once, while Carrados would travel down to Great Tilling late that same afternoon and put up at the local fishing inn. In the evening he would call at Barony, where Madeline would accept him as a distant connexion of the family. The arrangement was only for the benefit of the domestics and any casual visitor who might be present, for there was no possibility of a near relation being in attendance. Nor was there any appreciable danger of either his name or person being recognized in those parts, a consideration that seemed to have some weight with the girl, for, more than once, she entreated him not to disclose to anyone his real business there until he had arrived at a definite conclusion.

      It was nine o’clock, but still just light enough to distinguish the prominent features of the landscape, when Carrados, accompanied by Parkinson, reached Barony. The house, as described by the man-servant, was a substantial grey stone building, very plain, very square, very exposed to the four winds. It had not even a porch to break the flat surface, and here and there in the line of its three solid storeys a window had been built up by some frugal, tax-evading Whitmarsh of a hundred years ago.

      “Sombre enough,” commented Carrados, “but the connexion between environment and crime is not yet capable of analysis. We get murders in brand-new suburban villas and the virtues, light-heartedness and good-fellowship, in moated granges. What should you say about it, eh, Parkinson?”

      “I should say it was damp, sir,” observed Parkinson, with his wisest air.

      Madeline Whitmarsh herself opened the door. She took them down the long flagged hall to the dining-room, a cheerful enough apartment whatever its exterior might forebode.

      “I am glad you have come now, Mr Carrados,” she said hurriedly, when the door was closed. “Sergeant Brewster is here from Stinbridge police station to make some arrangements for the inquest. It is to be held at the schools here on Monday. He says that he must take the revolver with him to produce. Do you want to see it before he goes?”

      “I should like to,” replied Carrados.

      “Will you come into papa’s room then? He is there.”

      The sergeant was at the table, making notes in his pocket-book, when they entered. An old-fashioned revolver lay before him.

      “This gentleman has come a long way on hearing about poor papa,” said the girl. “He would like to see the revolver before you take it, Mr Brewster.”

      “Good-evening, sir,” said Brewster. “It’s a bad business that brings us here.”

      Carrados “looked” round the room and returned the policeman’s greeting. Madeline hesitated for a moment, and then, picking up the weapon, put it into the blind man’s hand.

      “A bit out of date, sir,” remarked Brewster, with a nod. “But in good order yet, I find.”

      “An early French make, I should say; one of Lefaucheux’s probably,” said Carrados. “You have removed the cartridges?”

      “Why, yes,” admitted the sergeant, producing a matchbox from his pocket. “They’re pin-fire, you see, and I’m not too fond of carrying a thing like that loaded in my pocket as I’m riding a young horse.”

      “Quite so,” agreed Carrados, fingering the cartridges. “I wonder if you happened to mark the order of these in the chambers?”

      “That was scarcely necessary, sir. Two, together, had been fired; the other four had not.”

      “I once knew a case—possibly I read of it—where a pack of cards lay on the floor. It was a murder case and the guilt or innocence of an accused man depended on the relative positions of the fifty-first and fifty-second cards.”

      “I think you must have read of that, sir,” replied Brewster, endeavouring to implicate first Miss Whitmarsh and then Parkinson in his meaning smile. “However, this is straightforward enough.”

      “Then, of course, you have not thought it worth while to look for anything else?”

      “I have noted all the facts that have any bearing on the case. Were you referring to any particular point, sir?”

      “I was only wondering,” suggested Carrados, with apologetic mildness, “whether you, or anyone, had happened to find a wad lying about anywhere.”

      The sergeant stroked his well-kept moustache to hide the smile that insisted, however, on escaping through his eyes.

      “Scarcely, sir,” СКАЧАТЬ