The Postmaster's Daughter Part 12

"You are here, at any rate."

"That is what legal jargon terms an admitted fact."

"Then you had better begin by a.s.suming that I am no villain."

"It is a.s.sumed. It couldn't well be otherwise after the excellent character you have been given by this young lady."

"She, at least, will speak well of me, I do believe," said Grant, with a strange bitterness, for his heart was sore because of the seeming defection of his friend, the postmaster. "What I actually had in mind was the stupidity of the local policeman, who is convinced that I am both a criminal and a fool."

"The two are often synonymous," said Furneaux dryly. "But I acquitted you on both counts, Mr. Grant, on hearing, and even seeing, how you spent Monday evening."

Grant, who had cooled down considerably, found a hint of badinage in this comment.

"You have evidently been told that Miss Martin and I were star-gazing in the garden of my house," he said. "It happens to be true."

"Oh, yes. There was a very fine cl.u.s.ter of small stars in Canis Major, south of Sirius, that night."

"You know something about the constellations, then?" was the astonished query.

"Enough for the purposes of Scotland Yard," smirked Furneaux, who had checked P.C. Robinson's one-sided story by referring to Whitaker's Almanack. "It may relieve your mind if I tell you that I have never seen a real live astronomer in the dock. Venus and Mars are often in trouble, but their devoted observers seldom, if ever."

Grant warmed to this strange species of detective, though, if pressed for an instant decision, he would vastly have preferred that one of more orthodox style had been intrusted with an inquiry so vital to his own happiness and good repute. Eager, however, to pour forth his worries into any official ear, he brought back the talk to a definite channel.

"Will you come to my place?" he asked. "I have much to say. Let me a.s.sure you now, in Miss Martin's presence, that she is no more concerned in this ghastly business than any other young lady in the village."

"But she is interested. And _you_ are. And I am. Why not discuss matters here, for the present, I mean? We have a glorious view of your house and grounds. We can see without being seen. None can overhear. I advise both of you to go thoroughly into this matter here and now."

Furneaux spoke emphatically. Even Doris put in a timid plea.

"Perhaps that would be the best thing to do," she said. "Mr. Furneaux has been most sympathetic. I am sure he understands things already in a way that is quite wonderful to me."

The very sound of her voice was comforting. Grant might have argued with the detective, but could not resist Doris. Without further demur he went through the whole story, giving precise details of events on the Monday night. Then the recital widened out into a history of his relations with Adelaide Melhuish. He omitted nothing. Doris gasped when she heard Superintendent Fowler's version of the view a coroner's jury might take of her presence in the garden of The Hollies at a late hour. But Grant did not spare her. He reasoned that she ought to be prepared for an ordeal which could not be avoided. He was governed by the astute belief that his very outspokenness in this respect would weaken the inferences which the police might otherwise draw from it.

Furneaux uttered never a word. He was a first-rate listener, though his behavior was most undetective-like, since he hardly looked at Grant or the girl, but seemed to devote his attention almost exclusively to the scenic panorama in front.

However, when Grant came to the somewhat strenuous pa.s.sage-at-arms of the previous night between Ingerman and himself, the little man broke in at once.

"Isidor G. Ingerman?" he cried. "Is he a tall, lanky, cadaverous, rather crooked person, with black hair turning gray, and an absurdly melodious voice?"

"You have described him without an unnecessary word," said Grant.

Furneaux clicked his tongue in a peculiar fashion.

"Go on!" he said. "It's a regular romance--quite in your line, Mr. Grant, of course, but none the less enthralling because, as you so happily phrased Miss Martin's lesson in astronomy, it happens to be true."

Grant was scrupulously fair to Ingerman. He admitted the "financier's"

adroitness of speech, and made clear the fact that if the visit had the levying of blackmail for its object such a possible outcome was only hinted at vaguely. Being a novelist, one whose temperament sought for sunshine rather than gloom in life, he wound up in lighter vein. The ruse which tricked P.C. Robinson into a breathless scamper of nearly a mile on a hot day in June was described with gusto. Doris, who knew the village constable well, laughed outright, while Furneaux cackled shrilly. None who might be watching the little group in that delightful garden, with its scent of old-world flowers and drone of bees, could have guessed that a grewsome tragedy formed their major theme.

The girl was the first to realize that even harmless merriment was in ill accord with the presence of death, for the body of Adelaide Melhuish lay within forty yards of the place where they stood.

"May I leave you now?" she inquired. "Father may be wanting help in the office."

"I shan't detain you more than a few seconds," said Furneaux briskly. "On Monday evening you two young people parted at half past ten. How do you fix the time?"

Doris answered without hesitation:

"The large window of Mr. Grant's study was open, and we both heard a clock in the hall chime the half-hour. I said, 'Goodness me, is that half past ten?' and started for home at once. Mr. Grant came with me as far as the bridge. When I reached my room, in exactly five minutes after leaving The Hollies, I stood at the open window--that window"--and she pointed to a dormer cas.e.m.e.nt above the sitting-room--"and looked out. It was a particularly fine night, mild, but not very clear, as a slight mist often rises from the river after a hot day in summer. I may have been there about ten minutes, no longer, when I saw the study window of The Hollies thrown open, and Mr. Grant's figure was silhouetted by the lamp behind him. He seemed to be listening for something, so I, who must have heard any unusual sound, listened too. There was nothing. I could hear the ripple of the river beneath the bridge, so everything was very still.

After a minute, or two, perhaps--no longer--Mr. Grant went in, and closed the window. Then I went to bed."

"Did Mr. Grant draw any blind or curtains?"

"There are muslin curtains attached to each side of the window. One cannot see into the room from a distance."

Furneaux measured an imaginary line drawn from Doris's bedroom to the edge of the cliff, and prolonged it.

"Nor can you see the river or foot of the lawn from your room," he commented.

"No. In winter I can just make out the edge of the lawn. When the trees are in leaf, all the lower part is hidden."

"You had actually retired to rest about eleven, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"So if Mr. Grant came out again you would not know?" Doris blushed furiously, but her reply was unfaltering.

"I would have known during the next half-hour, at least," she said. "An inclined mirror hangs in my room. I use it sometimes for adjusting a hat.

The square of light from Mr. Grant's room is reflected in it, and any sudden increase in the illumination caused by opening the window or pulling the curtains aside would certainly have caught my eye."

"You have an unshakable witness in Miss Martin," said Furneaux, stabbing a finger at Grant. "Now, I'll hurry off. You and I, Mr. Grant, meet at Philippi, otherwise known as the crowner's quest."

Any benevolent intent he may have had in leaving these young people together was, however, frustrated by Doris, whose composure seemed to have fled since her statement about the mirror. She resolutely accompanied the detective, and Grant had to follow. All three pa.s.sed into the post office, Doris using the private door. Mr. Martin looked up from his desk when they appeared, and requested his daughter to check a bundle of postal orders. The pretext was painfully obvious, but Grant was not so wishful now to clear up matters with Doris's father, as the girl herself might be trusted to pa.s.s on an accurate account of the affair from beginning to end.

He was about to reach the street quick on Furneaux's heels when the little man turned suddenly.

"By the way, don't you want a shilling's worth of stamps?" he said.

Grant smiled comprehension, and went back to the counter, where Doris herself served him. She did not try to avoid his glance, but rather met it with a baffling serenity oddly at variance with her momentary loss of self-possession in the garden.

When he entered the street the detective had vanished.

He walked down the hill at a rapid pace, disregarding the eyes peeping at him through open doorways, over narrow window-curtains, and covertly staring when people pa.s.sed in the roadway. The sensitive side of his temperament shrank from this thinly-veiled hostility. He was by way of being popular in Steynholme, yet not a soul spoke to him. Before he reached the bridge, the other side of him, the man of action, of cool resource in an emergency, rose in rebellion against the league of silly clodhoppers. Back he strode to the post office and dashed off a telegram. It ran:

"Walter Hart, Savage Club, Adelphi, London. Come here and help to lay a ghost."

He signed it in full, name and address. Doris was gone, but her father received it, and read the text in a bewildered way.

"I find myself deserted by my Steynholme friends so I am trying to import one stanch one," said Grant, almost vindictively.

Martin murmured the cost, and Grant stormed out again. This time, pa.s.sing the Hare and Hounds, he looked at door and windows. He caught a face scowling at him over a brown wire blind bearing the words "Wines and Spirits" on it in letters of dull gold. It was a commonplace type of face, small-featured, ginger-moustached, and crowned by a billy-c.o.c.k hat set at a rakish angle. Its most marked characteristic was the positive hatred which glowed in the sharp, pale-blue eyes. Grant wondered who this highly censorious young man might be. At any rate, he meant to ascertain whether or not the critic was susceptible of satire at his own expense.