CHAPTER XX
THE SOLUTION OF THE MYSTERY
“I WAS just coming to see you, Mr. Herriard, from Sir Henry Ferrars.”
He handed his card, “Detective Inspector Quickjohn, New Scotland Yard.”
“Ah, come in,” Herriard said, leading the way back to his room, and closing the door. “Have you any news for me, Inspector?”
Inspector Quickjohn took the indicated seat and pulled out a large note-book, the orthodox preliminary to police communications. He was a rather smartly dressed man with a curious absence of any professional stamp upon him: he had an unobtrusive manner, quiet almost to dulness, only relieved by the alert, uncompromising eyes and a general suggestion of unflinching power.
“Well, Mr. Herriard,” he answered, with legal deliberation, as he ran through the leaves of his note-book, “I have certain information which the Chief Commissioner has instructed me to give you.”
“Ah, yes?” Herriard leaned forward with eager attention.
But Inspector Quickjohn was an important man, and, withal, a smart, acute officer, who, with his twenty years’ training, was incapable of blurting out anything. If he had discovered another Gunpowder Plot he would not have imparted the information without a due amount of witness-box preliminaries and professional garnishing.
“You see, sir,” he preambled, in the logical method of a Scotch sermon, “the Chief Commissioner some time back placed the Vaux House case in my hands, and I have made a specially careful study of it.”
Herriard nodded.
“You will understand, sir,” Mr. Quickjohn went on, holding his note-book half-closed, with his thumb in the place to which he would in his own good time refer, “it is a very difficult, intricate case; one of the most baffling I remember.”
“No doubt. But you have found out something?” Herriard suggested.
Mr. Quickjohn was not to be bustled. He raised his hand in a deferential appeal for patience.
“The question as to who the person was at whose hands the late Captain Martindale met his death has given me a rare lot of trouble. You see, Mr. Herriard, it was so long ago, and there was, if I may say so, such a crowd to choose from.”
“Just so,” Herriard put in, forcing back the expression of his growing impatience.
“Primâ facie,” continued the Inspector reflectively, “primâ facie, I should not have troubled to look beyond the Countess Alexia von Rohnburg.”
The declaration brought a great relief to Herriard. Somehow there had been in his mind a vague dread that the detective might have found some plausible reason for bringing the matter home to Alexia.
“No, no,” he said quickly and with decision. “The Countess knew nothing of the affair.”
Mr. Quickjohn felt called upon to justify his former attitude.
“There was a good colourable primâ facie case,” he maintained, with a manner which claimed that his long and eventful experience entitled to respect any theory to which he thought proper to commit himself. “You must recollect, Mr. Herriard, the lady in question was the last person known to have been with the deceased before his death was discovered; then there was the finding of the little dagger with which the crime must have been committed, and the evidence of the maid, Gibson, that the Countess had worn it as an ornament in her hair that evening. Then——”
It was more than Herriard could stand. “Yes, yes, Mr. Quickjohn,” he interrupted impatiently, “we know all about that. I admit there was ground for a primâ facie suspicion. But I and, presumably, you, know now that the Countess was not cognizable of Captain Martindale’s death. However, you have not come to tell me that? You have found the man——”
Mr. Quickjohn raised his thick hand in protest. He liked to give his evidence in his own way, and judged leading questions unnecessary and a mistake. He was perhaps rather surprised that a counsel of Herriard’s standing should not know better than to try and hurry him. “I have,” he replied, with marked deliberation and a suggestion of touched dignity, “I have, after careful sifting of the materials at my disposal, made a discovery and, I think, arrived at a satisfactory settlement of the question as to the identity of the person at whose hands the Captain met his death.”
Herriard, seeing his mistake, now merely nodded him on.
“You see, sir,” Quickjohn proceeded, in his more business-like, witness-box manner, “the difficulty has been in searching for a person answering the description among the whole list of the Duchess of Lancashire’s guests. There were four hundred and forty-two noblemen and gentlemen invited to Vaux House that night, and no record available of those who attended, those who were absent, or those who may have been there uninvited.”
“Yes,” Herriard commented, “you had a difficult task.”
“Yes, and no mistake,” Quickjohn agreed, “and I am prepared to admit that if it had not been through a mere chance, I should never have been able to put my finger on the right individual.”
“Ah!”
“The clue came through the deceased man Campion, who was to have given evidence in the late trial. An unfortunate occurrence, Mr. Herriard, Campion’s fatal accident,” Quickjohn observed, in a tone of parenthetical regret; “more particularly as it was occasioned by an absolutely mistaken act on his part.”
“How so? What do you mean?” Herriard asked, in some surprise.
“Well, sir, my meaning is this,” Quickjohn answered deliberately, with the superiority of one who is sure of his facts; “it will be within your recollection that the deceased man, Campion, deposed before he died that the accident happened as he was running in pursuit of a hansom in which was a man whom he asserted he had recognized as the party he had seen leaving Vaux House under suspicious circumstances on the night of Captain Martindale’s alleged murder.”
“Yes?”
“Well, Mr. Herriard,” pursued Quickjohn, with an air of infinite witness-box wisdom, “the late Campion was quite mistaken in thinking he had recognized his man in that hansom. He could not possibly have done so, seeing that the party whom Campion had seen escaping from Vaux House on the night in question has been dead some years.”
“You know that?” Herriard asked mechanically, uncertain whether to be relieved or disappointed.
Quickjohn nodded. “Met his death shortly after the Vaux House affair. So it stands to reason that he could not have been the party whom Campion saw in the hansom.”
“Naturally. And who,” Herriard asked, with intense curiosity, “was the man we have been in search of, and who, you say, is dead?”
Mr. Quickjohn liked to tell his stories in his own way, and considered he had earned the privilege of doing so. “Well, sir,” he responded, with irritating deliberation, “it is very curious how, as every detective knows, the merest accident will often put one on the right scent. And what I have to tell you now, sir, is the result of a chance remark which fell from the late Campion. It was this way. When we heard at the Yard that he had appeared on the scene, and we knew something of what his evidence was to be, I, having charge of the case, which, on the discovery of the little weapon at Vaux House, had been placed in my hands, thought it well to have a private interview with Campion on my own account. You see, Mr. Herriard, if the Countess was innocent it was our business to find the guilty party. So I got hold of Campion and asked him to come up to my place one evening and talk the matter over quietly. He comes over to Brixton and I got from him everything that could be of the slightest use in working-up the case. You see, Mr. Herriard,” he diverged again tantalizingly, “the questions we should put are very different from those the solicitors ask; we look at the case from a working point of view. It was my object to get an idea whether the man Campion saw leaving by the window was a gentleman, likely to have been a guest, or a flash operator working the function for what he could pinch in the way of jewellery, plate, etc.”
“I see.”
“I’ve known such cases,” Mr. Quickjohn resumed, with a dangerous approach to reminiscence which happily passed off. “However, I was pretty satisfied, after putting a number of searching questions, that the party I had to look for was not one of the criminal classes, but in all probability, a bona fide guest. Now, a curious thing happened, Mr. Herriard, which I didn’t think much of at the time, though it occurred to me afterwards to follow up the clue. We were sitting there in my parlour over a cigar and a glass of grog, and I was drawing Campion out, trying him backwards and forwards to get everything he could tell me of the man’s appearance and manner. Well, we were sitting, as I say, in my parlour, and I’ve a lot of photos put about there, portraits of Judges and well-known counsel that I’ve come in contact with in various cases,—I’ve a framed sketch of yourself, Mr. Herriard, done in Court by a friend of mine clever with his pencil—well, I was worrying Campion about the very minutest details of this man’s appearance, when suddenly he caught sight of a photo on the wall, and he says, ‘There,’ he says, ‘the chap I saw had a face just like that, and if that isn’t the man——’ I jumped round in my chair and looked to where he was pointing. ‘That,’ I said, ‘that’s not exactly our man, my friend, although, it is curious, I’ve never seen another face like that. That is the late Mr. Paul Gastineau, K.C., M.P.’”
Herriard sprang up from his chair as though shot. “Gastineau!”
Mr. Quickjohn nodded several times with a suggestion of infinite sagacity and astuteness. “That’s the party, sir: although I laughed at the idea at first.”
“Gastineau!”
Herriard’s excitement surpassed any effect Mr. Quickjohn had anticipated. It was altogether more than he could account for in a member of an even-blooded profession. “Strange discoveries we light upon sometimes,” he remarked sententiously. “To think that a man in the position of Mr. Paul Gastineau could be the party wanted. I can well understand, sir, you can’t believe it at the first blush. Let me tell you how I arrived at my conclusions.”
Herriard did believe it. Somehow he felt he wanted no proof. The charge, monstrous till suggested, seemed to fit exactly: nothing now could disprove it.
“Yes, tell me,” he said, recovering himself by an effort as he sank down to his chair and turned his strained face toward his visitor.
In characteristic matter-of-fact fashion Mr. Quickjohn accepted the invitation and proceeded.
“As I say, I had no idea of putting two and two together at first. My only conclusion was that if the party wanted had a singular face, anything like the late Mr. Gastineau’s, he would be easily recognized—if I could only come across him. Of course I made a note of the similarity, and Campion soon after left me. Well, sir, I didn’t see much chance of running across Mr. Gastineau’s double, for such Campion declared his man was; however, I pegged away at the case and, after a lot of trouble, got a full list of the gentlemen guests invited to Vaux House on the occasion in question. Dukes and duchesses are not the easiest people in the world to deal with, as you may be aware, Mr. Herriard. They seem to think their position puts them above taking reasonable trouble or interest in anything. They want things done by magic and won’t see that our methods at the Yard are not exactly those of the Arabian Nights. Well, I did get the list, and, on looking down it and wondering how long it would take me to find out which of four hundred and forty odd noblemen and gentlemen most closely resembled Mr. Gastineau, K.C., M.P., what should I come to but that very same gentleman’s name. As I read it, the idea seemed to strike me in a flash, not merely why mightn’t he have done it after all, but that he had done it. Merely a conjecture, true, but I set to work on it.”
“Yes, that conjecture would be a long way from the proof,” Herriard observed, with certainty already in his mind.
“Naturally,” assented Mr. Quickjohn, “and moral proof is often far from legal evidence. However, I may say I have succeeded, after a lot of work, in obtaining corroborative evidence which brings home the crime, circumstantially at least, to the late Mr. Gastineau.”
“Ah, yes? Tell me.”
“The affair took place a long time ago,” Quickjohn proceeded, “and it is, as you know, sir, difficult to get men to carry their memories back over several years to remember circumstances important enough to us, trivial to them. However, I have succeeded in tracing a man, one of the Duke’s extra footmen he was, who distinctly recollects a gentleman answering to Mr. Gastineau’s description coming into the house without a hat or overcoat. The time of night would fit in with that of Captain Martindale’s death. The man I speak of took Mr. Gastineau for a late arrival, and wondered where he had come from without a hat. His coat he might have left in his carriage or even come without one, as it was a warm night. That fixed him in the man’s mind, but on these occasions there is too much bustle to give attention long to anything, and he thought no more about it.”
“It is a good piece of evidence,” Herriard remarked mechanically.
“Yes,” Mr. Quickjohn agreed, with a touch of self-satisfaction. “But I go farther, sir. I have also established the fact that Mr. Gastineau left Vaux House shortly afterwards, having obtained his hat and overcoat from the cloak-room, the overcoat being a grey colour, such as the late Campion deposed to as worn by the man he saw the second time. Now, Mr. Herriard,” the Inspector with a click put the elastic band round his note-book, which, by the way, he had not referred to, “that’s as far as I have got at present, but it seems to me pretty conclusive evidence as far as it goes, and the Chief Commissioner thought you might like to know it.”
“Yes, indeed; thank you, Inspector,” Herriard responded, indulging the thought of how little the astute officer guessed of the real import to him.
“Of course,” said that officer, pocketing his book, “the case is not complete, not nicely rounded off, as I hope to have it before it’s done with. There is a link missing in the chain, as no doubt you perceive, sir.”
Herriard did indeed know it, and that he could, if he would, supply it.
“The motive?” he suggested casually.
“That’s it, sir,” said Quickjohn. “If I can only discover that Mr. Gastineau and Captain Martindale had not been on the best of terms, had had a difference, say about a lady, that would make the case against the late Gastineau perfect.”
“Have you any chance of finding that?”
Mr. Quickjohn looked inscrutably wise. “I am in hopes of doing so. But that will mean setting to work in quite a fresh direction.”
“You have no clue as yet?”
Mr. Quickjohn rose. As an artist he cared to show only his finished work, and this was scarcely more than blocked in.
“I have several sources of information to tap,” he replied vaguely, “but nothing to report as yet. Well, I’ll say good evening, Mr. Herriard. I thought you might be interested to hear I had put my finger on the party, if one may say so of a deceased man. I’m only sorry the party is not alive,” he went on, with a suspicion of jocularity. “It would have been a big sensational case and would have made my fortune in the profession. There’s all the difference between a big crime in the upper classes and the same in the lower as there is between, you may say, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden and a nigger with a banjo outside a public-house. Still I hope what I have so far cleared up will be satisfactory to you and your late client. Good evening, sir.”