Chapter XXXVII

“At last!” Michael said, as Wilson entered their sitting-room at the Old Malting House very late for dinner next day. “We were just going to begin without you. Any news?” He was sitting with Edna Loring and Mark Warden, who had been invited to celebrate Wilson’s last evening in Essex.

“Potts has decided to confess,” Wilson replied. “That’s what kept me. But that, coupled with Kershaw’s statement, gives the Crown a very easy job.”

“Then may we hear what really happened?” Warden begged. “There are so many red herrings flying about, that one doesn’t know what to believe.”

“Oh, Mark!” Edna reproached him. “Do let Mr. Wilson get something to eat first. He looks absolutely worn out. And besides--I want to know how he did it.”

“Beer,” said Wilson. “Lots of beer. Then I’ll tell you.”

It was not, however, until the meal was finished, and they were leaning back comfortably in their chairs, that he began his story.

“The real trouble about this case was that it was not one, but two--the misappropriation of your funds, Warden, and the murder of Meston. Kershaw was the only link between them, and he was practically an accidental link--except that his moral habits and the financial difficulties which in part arose out of them no doubt helped him to fall an easier prey to Loring.

“At first sight, Hanborough, I’ll admit, appeared to me much the likeliest culprit, after my first meeting with you, Warden. It was too much to believe that the senior partner had not been able to find out in several months who was tampering with his funds, and it was pretty clear that all his efforts had been directed to keeping you and Meston off the trail. The obvious conclusion was that Meston had found out more than he should, and had to be killed. But then--how did Kershaw come in? From the moment we discovered the cause of death, and still more from the date of the inquest, it became clear that Kershaw _could not_ conceivably be innocent--no innocent man could have been so careless. And the murderer, further, seemed to require an accomplice. But what had Kershaw to do with Hanborough? I could find no connection--nor any motive for Kershaw to act on his own.

“I hadn’t, naturally, lost sight of the other possible motive--which, of the two, was most likely, on the face of it, to lead to murder, since nothing but Meston’s death would suffice to set his wife free. The difficulty there was that there seemed to be such an embarrassment of persons to choose from, and, until we heard of John Loring’s return, no reason to pick one rather than another. There was for a start, Burden, Mackenzie, Leslie Buckton--and Godfrey Loring.”

“What? You suspected Godfrey--then!” The question came from Edna.

“No; I certainly couldn’t say that,” said Wilson, searching for phrases in which to clothe his opinions of Godfrey without too much hurting Godfrey’s sister. “I had merely noticed him when he came to pick up Mrs. Meston, and again at the inquest, and had observed that he was obviously in love with her, and that he would be a dangerous man to cross. I wondered for how long his affections had been directed to that quarter--whether possibly it was before his brother departed for China----”

“I think it was,” Edna said. “I wondered once or twice--but I wasn’t paying much attention. And Godfrey never said a word. But do you mean--did you think he would have killed John?”

“No. I only thought that possibly he might have had something to do with his sudden flight, which appeared to have taken every one by surprise. And I also thought it odd that in all this hive of gossip nobody seemed to have coupled his name with Mrs. Meston’s. This seemed to suggest he was keeping his feelings very dark, which, with a man of his type, is apt to lead to an explosion. That was all.

“Then came Machin’s story, Mrs. Meston’s flight, and all the other evidence against John Loring. Mrs. Meston, of course, had clearly run away either to avoid questioning or to warn her lover--both, as it turned out; and it looked as though things were going to arrange themselves very blackly for him. You will remember that it was on the same day that we discovered--or thought we discovered,” he smiled at Edna, “that Hanborough had an alibi for the critical period.

“Well, it began to work out very neatly, for a time. But somehow I didn’t quite trust it. The crime, you see, was so premeditated that it was rather difficult to fit John Loring, from what people said of him, into the part, even with Kershaw to help him. I couldn’t convince myself; and, when I actually saw the young man, I was less convinced than ever. I saw, not the callous, clever young desperado who would have been necessary, but a hot-headed, indiscreet youth who was obviously in despair of the world, but who was yet determined to keep silence on some vital point. I deduced a final quarrel with his young woman and a determination to keep her name out of it; and eventually Sylvia Meston kindly told me I was right. But it didn’t add up to a murderer.

“Then I began to notice one or two other things. I noticed, first, that Godfrey Loring had been very anxious to inform the police of his brother’s whereabouts; then--from his correspondence with Kershaw--that he had some close and unpleasant connection with the latter. When Mrs. Meston turned up again, she further informed me that Godfrey was very anxious to ‘protect’ her, and--which was more important--that he had deliberately advised her to leave the place, to write a very stupid, incriminating letter to Brandreth, and sent her very carefully to an address where he knew John Loring could not possibly be. Of course, at this stage I’d nothing like proof against him, and really very little general grounds of suspicion.

“Then came something more concrete. Lockwood, you know, was in the habit of discussing the case regularly with the Squire as chairman of the bench, and one of my great difficulties at that stage was that I dared not breathe a whisper of my suspicions to the Chief Constable. In one of these conversations, Lockwood let out that I was unsatisfied with the evidence against John, chiefly because there was nothing, at the place where he met Mrs. Meston, to indicate that it was the scene of the crime. At this point, I fear, we must say definitely that Godfrey Loring had decided to fix the crime on his brother--whose return, of course, had made Meston’s murder quite useless to him. He then hit on the idea of a duplicate rope, which Potts was instructed to ‘find’ and bring in. We have the name of the man who sold Potts the rope. Potts, however, who acted throughout with a loyalty worthy of a better cause, unfortunately chose to hide the rope in a spot which I happened to have actually searched myself; so that, as soon as I came to think things over, I realised that whether or not the rope were the rope we were looking for, its finding by the alder stump was a plant. This, of course, implicated Potts, and probably Potts’s master, and I began to ask myself, as I ought to have done long ago, why, if the murder had been committed up at the boathouse, nobody had noticed the body on its way down-stream. At this point, I was able to evolve a fair idea of how the crime might have been committed, though I could not get anything in the way of proof until I found it in the loft.”

“And how was it committed?” Michael asked.

“Pretty much as I suggested yesterday. According to Potts, the plot was laid as soon as it was known that Meston had taken up his quarters at the Old Malting House. Potts was brought in, by the way, because he was known to have himself a deep-seated private grievance against Meston, who had interfered a long time before in one of his village amours.”

“Meston’s crusades on behalf of public morals seem to have served him singularly ill,” Michael observed. “Didn’t he win Kershaw’s ill-will by somewhat the same means?”

“He did. He was one of those unfortunate people, poor fellow, who gain nothing but unpopularity for themselves. And Potts never forgot--he has that patient vindictiveness which is so often the other side of animal loyalty.

“Well, the pulley was purchased and got into place some days beforehand, and the date of the murder fixed to coincide with that of the party, when it was hoped that nobody’s absence for an hour or two would be noticed. Some time between midnight and one o’clock, the murderers got into the inn, and Potts woke up Meston with the story that his wife was injured at the Grange and asking for him. Meston (who must have packed his bag over-night, though where he was going we shall never know) got up and dressed; and when they thought they’d given him long enough, they let down that chestnut which puzzled you so, Michael, and tapped on his window with it. He looked out; they called him from above; and Loring, who is a good hand with a lasso, dropped the rope over his head. When he was dead they tied the trunk to him, and let him down, as they thought, to everlasting oblivion in the river. But they forgot the pier.”

“And _Godfrey_--_Godfrey_ did all this? And then tried to get John hanged for it!” Edna whispered.

“I’m afraid,” said Wilson, with deeper sympathy in his tone than in his words, “that he did. You must remember that one crime is almost bound to lead to another, by the mere efforts of the criminal to extricate himself. And I feel, though I don’t know the facts, that the Squire’s past cannot but have led up directly to his attack on Meston.”

“Yes, I--I think it did,” Edna said, very low. It was obvious that she had had few illusions about her brother, though their sudden final shattering could not but have been a heavy blow. Warden put his arm round her without speaking, and Michael, to ease the tension, asked, “But how about Kershaw? How did he come in?”

“He was the witness. That is to say, he was coming from his house to Billings’s cottage, along the tow-path, when he looked up at Meston’s lighted window, and saw the owner looking out. Then he saw the lasso come down, and catch the man and draw him up--in fact, he saw the whole thing, though, of course, it was too dark to recognise the actors. He went round to the Old Malting House, intending, possibly, to give the alarm, and on the way met Warden. No wonder he was looking shaken when you saw him, Warden, after assisting at such a show! But when he got to the inn, he saw Potts and the Squire creeping out by the side-door, and it was pretty obvious they’d been up to something. So he tackled Loring at once, and Loring, not having had any idea, of course, that he had been observed, was for once in his life at a loss. Eventually he offered Kershaw five hundred pounds to hold his tongue--I can’t tell you at the moment which side that suggestion came from, and quite possibly we shall never know. He had Kershaw half under his thumb already, you see, because of that incident of which John Loring told us.

“The blackmail was duly paid, and Kershaw began to think himself in clover. He knew how wealthy Godfrey Loring was, and he had visions of milking him until he had not merely cleared his debts, but made enough to set him on his feet somewhere else. Then, however, came the news of the finding of the body by the Old Malting House. Kershaw was in a panic, knowing perfectly well that Loring, if brought to trial, would not hesitate a moment to give him away. And when he got to the river, and found an inquisitive fellow-practitioner fiddling about with the corpse, he absolutely lost his head, and faked a blow, trusting to Lockwood’s obtuseness to enable him to carry it through. Then, on the strength of having made assurance doubly sure, he tried to get more money out of Loring, who obligingly pointed out that he had merely put his own head also in the noose. The rest I think you know.”

“Then my partner had nothing to do with it?” Warden asked.

“Nothing whatever, beyond acting as a red herring.”

“Will they catch him?”

“Personally, I doubt it. Your partner’s a very clever man, Warden--clever, I mean, not merely ingenious. He all but succeeded in putting your firm on its feet again, and he must have had plans all ready laid to disappear in case of necessity. Inspector Bille delayed his blow just twenty-four hours too long. I’m afraid that’s very hard on you.”

“Not quite as bad as I expected,” Warden said. “You see, as a matter of fact, Nick _had_ put some things right before he went. It wasn’t the funds, but finding out that people were on his trail about the other thing, that made him levant. He was really going to have straightened up, I’m sure--and some of it had been straightened already. And, since it all came out, people have been frightfully decent--I’m sure I don’t know why. Coxwell, for instance, is giving me another chance, and so on. You know, I suppose it’s awfully wrong of me, but I can’t help hoping Nick won’t be caught. I’m afraid I liked him--there’s something sporting about him, and I should just hate to have to go and give evidence against him.”

“But surely,” Michael said hastily, to avoid a discussion on the ethics of this view, “you’ll be a bit put to it for cash, won’t you?”

“Well, as to that,” Warden looked at Edna and blushed very pink, “I am marrying what they call an heiress, aren’t I, darling? And John, who’ll--who’ll come into a lot more money--is being frightfully generous. Of course, I should be quite in the soup if it wasn’t for them.”

“It’s a mercy the money will be some use to somebody at last,” said Edna. “It never has been yet. And if it hadn’t been for Mr. Wilson, it wouldn’t be now. I do think you’re perfectly marvellous, Mr. Wilson. I can’t imagine how you did it.”

“I very nearly didn’t do it, Miss Loring,” Wilson said. “Another hour or so, and I should have been too late. And there’s one thing that riles me still.”

“What’s that?” Michael asked curiously.

“Brandreth! I never got even with that old devil. He had the laugh right up to the end.”

“Do you think he was mixed up in it?” Warden asked.

“In the murder--no. But he was a fairly close friend of your Hanborough’s, and I’m pretty certain he knew a lot more than he ever told about his affairs. I shouldn’t be really surprised, you know, if he had actually assisted in concealing Hanborough--perhaps on that occasion when he bolted from you, Michael, to keep a caller out of his house. But that’s all guesswork. There’s not a thing on him; and unless Hanborough is caught and explains fully--two very unlikely contingencies--there isn’t going to be. I’m afraid Brandreth has given us best.”

“Well,” said Michael, “each to his trade. You’ve got the glory, and he’s had his joke. What more do you want?”

“Immediately,” said Wilson, stretching himself, “a whisky. Then, I think, another holiday. But not with you, Michael. Holidays with you are too much like work.”

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious punctuation errors have been silently corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences in this work. Some hyphens in words have been silently removed and some silently added when a predominant preference was found in the original work. Except for those changes noted below, original spellings in the text and inconsistent or archaic usage have been retained.

Page 14: “tell Doctor Kershaw’s” replaced by “tell Doctor Kershaw”.

Page 238: “clientele hearabouts” replaced by “clientele hereabouts”.

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.