In the Mayor's Parlour Part 29

Bunning is of supreme importance--there is no doubt whatever that there was easy means of access to the Mayor's Parlour during that half hour wherein the Mayor met his death. The mystery of the whole affair has deepened considerably during to-day's proceedings, and instead of bringing this inquiry to a definite conclusion I feel that I must wait for more evidence. I adjourn this inquest for a month from to-day."

The court cleared; the spectators filtered out into the market-place in various moods, and under different degrees of excitement. Some were openly disappointed that the jury had not been allowed to return a verdict; some were vehement in declaring that the jury never would return a verdict; here and there were men who wagged their heads sagely and remarked with sinister smiles that they knew what they thought about it. But, within the rapidly emptying court Brent, Tansley and Hawthwaite were grouped around Meeking--the barrister was indulging in some private remarks upon the morning's proceedings, chiefly addressed to the police superintendent.

"There's no doubt about it, you know," he was saying. "The evidence of the Bunning woman, supplemented by what Krevin Crood said--which was a mere, formal, crystallizing of common knowledge--has altered the whole thing. Here's the back entrance to the Moot Hall left absolutely unprotected, unguarded, unwatched--whatever you like to call it--for half an hour, the critical half hour. Of course the murderer got up to the Mayor's Parlour that way and got away by the same means. You're as far off as ever, Hawthwaite, and it's a pity you wasted time on that jealousy business. I watched Wellesley closely, and I believe that he spoke the truth when he said that whatever there might have been there was no jealousy about Mrs. Saumarez between him and Wallingford at the end. My own impression is that Wellesley was clear off with Mrs.

Saumarez."

Hawthwaite, essentially a man of fixed ideas, looked sullen.

"Well, it isn't mine, then," he growled. "From all I've learnt--and I've chances and opportunities that most folks haven't--my impression is that both men were after her, right up to the time Wallingford was murdered.

I can tell you this--and I could have put it in evidence if I'd thought it worth while--Wellesley used to go and see her, of an evening, constantly, up to a very recent date, though she was supposed to have broken off with him and to be on with the Mayor. Now then!"

"Do you know that for a fact, Hawthwaite?" asked Tansley.

"I know it for a fact! He used to go there late at night, and stop late.

If you want to know where I got it from, it was from a young woman that used to be housemaid at the Abbey House, Mrs. Saumarez's place. She's told me a lot; both Wallingford and Wellesley used to visit there a good deal, but as I say, Wellesley used to go there very late of an evening.

This young woman says that she knows for a fact that he was often with her mistress till close on midnight. I don't care twopence what Wellesley said; I believe he was, and is, after her, and of course he'd be jealous enough about her being so friendly with Wallingford. There's a deal more in all this than's come out yet--let me tell you that!"

"I don't think anybody will contradict you, Hawthwaite," observed the barrister dryly. "But the pertinent fact is what I tell you--the fact of access! Somebody got to the Mayor's Parlour by way of the back staircase, through Bunning's rooms, that evening. Who was it? That's what you've got to find out. If you'd only found out, before now, that Mrs. Bunning took half an hour to fetch the supper beer that night we should have been spared a lot of talk this morning. As things are, we're as wise as ever."

Then Meeking, with a cynical laugh, picked up his papers and went off, and Brent, leaving Tansley talking to the superintendent, who was inclined to be huffy, strolled out of the Moot Hall, and went round to the back, with the idea of seeing for himself the narrow street which Krevin Crood had formally described. He saw at once that Krevin was an admirable exponent of the art of description: everything in St. Lawrence Lane was as the ex-official had said: there was the door into the Bunnings' rooms, and there, facing it, the ancient church and its equally ancient churchyard. It was to the churchyard that Brent gave most attention; he immediately realized that Krevin Crood was quite right in speaking of it as a place wherein anybody could conveniently hide--a dark, gloomy, sheltered, high-walled place, filled with thick shrubbery, out of which, here and there, grew sombre yew-trees, some of them of an antiquity as venerable as that of the church itself. It would be a very easy thing indeed, Brent decided, for any designing person to hide amongst these trees and shrubs, watch the Bunnings' door until Mrs.

Bunning left it, jug in hand, and then to slip across the gra.s.s-grown, cobble-paved lane, silent and lonely enough, and up to the Mayor's Parlour. But all that presupposed knowledge of the place and of its people and their movements.

He went back to the market-place and towards the _Chancellor_.

Peppermore came hurrying out of the hotel as Brent turned into it. He carried a folded paper in his hand, and he waved it at Brent as, at sight of him, he came to a sudden halt.

"Just been looking for you, Mr. Brent!" he said mysteriously. "Come into some quiet spot, sir, and glance at this. Here we are, sir, corner of the hall."

He drew Brent into an alcove that opened close by them, and affecting a mysterious air began to unfold his paper, a sheet of news-print which, Brent's professional eye was quick to see, had just been pulled as a proof.

"All that affair to-day, Mr. Brent," he whispered, "most unsatisfactory, sir, most unsatisfactory--unconvincing, inconclusive, Mr. Brent! The thing's getting no farther, sir, no farther, except, of course, for the very pertinent fact about Mrs. Bunning's absence from her quarters that fateful evening. My own impression, sir, is that Hawthwaite and all the rest of 'em don't know the right way of going about this business. But the _Monitor's_ going to wade in, sir--the _Monitor_ is coming to the rescue! Look here, sir, we're going to publish a special edition to-night, with a full account of to-day's proceedings at the inquest, and with it we're going to give away, as a gratis supplement--what do you think, sir? This, produced at great cost, sir, in the interest of Justice! Look at it!"

Therewith Peppermore, first convincing himself that he and his companion were secure from observation, spread out before Brent a square sheet of very damp paper, strongly redolent of printers' ink, at the head of which appeared, in big, bold, black characters, the question:

WHO TYPED THIS LETTER?

Beneath it, excellently reproduced, was a facsimile of the typewritten letter which Wallingford had shown to Epplewhite and afterwards left in his keeping. And beneath that was a note in large italics inviting anyone who could give any information as to the origin of the doc.u.ment to communicate with the Editor of the _Monitor_, at once.

"What d'ye think of that for a _coup_, Mr. Brent?" demanded Peppermore proudly. "Up to Fleet Street form that, sir, ain't it? I borrowed the original, sir, had it carefully reproduced in facsimile, and persuaded my proprietor to go to the expense of having sufficient copies struck off on this specially prepared paper to give one away with every copy of the _Monitor_ that we shall print to-night. Five thousand copies, Mr.

Brent! That facsimile, sir, will be all over Hathelsborough by supper time!"

"Smart!" observed Brent. "Top-hole idea, Peppermore. And you hope----?"

"There aren't so many typewriters in Hathelsborough as all that,"

replied Peppermore. "I hope that somebody'll come forward who can tell something. Do you notice, sir, that this has been done--the original, I mean--on an old-fashioned machine, and that the lettering is considerably worn, sir? I hope the _Monitor's_ efforts will solve the mystery!"

"Much obliged to you," said Brent. "There's a lot of spade-work to do--yet."

He was thinking over the best methods of further attempts on that spade-work, when, late that evening, he received a note from Queenie Crood. It was confined to one line:

To-morrow usual place three urgent--Q.

CHAPTER XVI

THE CASTLE WALL

Brent went to bed that night wondering what it was that Queenie Crood wanted. Since their first meeting in the Castle grounds they had met frequently. He was getting interested in Queenie: she developed on acquaintance. Instead of being the meek and mild mouse of Simon Crood's domestic hearth that Brent had fancied her to be on his visit to the Tannery, he was discovering possibilities in her that he had not suspected. She had spirit and imagination and a continually rebellious desire to get out of Simon Crood's cage and spread her wings in flight--anywhere, so long as Hathelsborough was left behind. She had told Brent plainly that she thought him foolish for buying property in the town; what was there in that rotten old borough, said Queenie, to keep any man of spirit and enterprise there? Brent argued the point in his downright way: it was his job, he conceived, to take up his cousin's work where it had been laid down; he was going to regenerate Hathelsborough.

"And that you'll never do!" affirmed Queenie. "You might as well try to blow up the Castle keep with a halfpenny cracker! Hathelsborough people are like the man in the Bible--they're joined to their idols. You can try and try, and you'll only break your heart, or your back, in the effort, just as Wallingford would have done. If Wallingford had been a wise man he'd have let Hathelsborough go to the devil in its own way; then he'd have been alive now."

"Well, I'm going to try," declared Brent. "I said I would, and I will!

You wait till I'm elected to that Town Council! Then we'll see."

"It's fighting a den of wild beasts," said Queenie. "You won't have a rag left on you when they're through with you."

She used to tell him at these meetings of the machinations of Simon Crood and Coppinger and Mallett against his chances of success in the Castle Ward election: according to her they were moving heaven and earth to prevent him from succeeding Wallingford. Evidently believing Queenie to be a tame bird that carried no tales, they were given to talking freely before her during their nightly conclaves. Brent heard a good deal about the underhand methods in which munic.i.p.al elections are carried on in small country towns, and was almost as much amused as amazed at the unblushing corruption and chicanery of which Queenie told him. And now he fancied that she had some special news of a similar sort to give him: the election was close at hand, and he knew that Simon and his gang were desperately anxious to defeat him. Although Simon had been elected to the Mayoralty, his party in the Town Council was in a parlous position--at present it had a majority of one; if Brent were elected, that majority would disappear, and there were signs that at the annual elections in the coming November it would be transformed into a minority. Moreover, the opponent whom Brent had to face in this by-election was a strong man, a well-known, highly respected ratepayer, who, though an adherent of the Old Party, was a fair-minded and moderate politician, and likely to secure the suffrages of the non-party electors. It was going to be a stiff fight, and Brent was thankful for the occasional insights into the opposition's plans of campaign which Queenie was able to give him.

But there were other things than this to think about, and he thought much as he lay wakeful in bed that night and as he dressed next morning.

The proceedings at the adjourned inquest had puzzled him; left him doubtful and uncertain. He was not sure about the jealousy theory. He was not sure about Mrs. Saumarez, from what he had seen of her personally and from what he had heard of her. He was inclined to believe that she was not only a dabbler in politics with a liking for influencing men who were concerned in them but that she was also the sort of woman who likes to have more than one man in leash. He was now disposed to think that there had been love-pa.s.sages between her and Wallingford, and not only between her and Wallingford but between her and Wellesley--there might, after all, be something in the jealousy idea. But then came in the curious episode of Mrs. Mallett, and the mystery attaching to it--as things presented themselves at present there seemed to be no chance whatever that either Mrs. Mallett or Wellesley would lift the veil on what was evidently a secret between them. The only satisfactory and straightforward feature about yesterday's proceedings, he thought, was the testimony of Mrs. Bunning as to her unguarded door. Now, at any rate, it was a sure thing that there had been ready means of access to the Mayor's Parlour that evening; what was necessary was to discover who it was that had taken advantage of them.

After breakfast Brent went round to see Hawthwaite. Hawthwaite gave him a chair and eyed him expectantly.

"We don't seem to be going very fast ahead," remarked Brent.

"Mr. Brent," exclaimed Hawthwaite, "I a.s.sure you we're doing all we can!

But did you ever know a more puzzling case? Between you and me, I'm not at all convinced about either Dr. Wellesley or Mrs. Mallett--there's a mystery there which I can't make out. They may have said truth, and they mayn't, and----"

"Cut them out," interrupted Brent. "For the time being anyway. We got some direct evidence yesterday--for the first time."

"As--how?" questioned Hawthwaite.

"That door into Bunning's room," replied Brent. "That's where the murderer slipped in."

"Ay; but did he?" said Hawthwaite. "If one could be certain----"

"Look here!" a.s.serted Brent. "There is one thing that is certain--dead certain. That handkerchief!"

"Well?" asked Hawthwaite.

"That should be followed up, more," continued Brent. "There's no doubt whatever that that handkerchief, which Wellesley admits is his, got sent by mistake to one or other of Mrs. Marriner's other customers. That's flat! Now, you can trace it."

"How?" exclaimed Hawthwaite. "A small article like that!"

"It can be done, with patience," said Brent. "It's got to be done. That handkerchief got into somebody's hands. That somebody is probably the murderer. As to how it can be traced--well, I suggest this. As far as I'm conversant with laundry matters, families, such as Mrs. Marriner says she works for, have laundry books. These books are checked, I believe, when the washing's sent home. If there's an article missing, the person who does the checking notes it; if a wrong article's enclosed, that, too, is noted, and returned to the laundry."

"If Wellesley's handkerchief got to the wrong place, why wasn't it returned?" demanded Hawthwaite.