Читать книгу The Grays Manor Mystery - Aidan de Brune - Страница 5

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FOR a moment Dening hesitated. He would have liked to pursue the man, but he had not a hope of overtaking him in the evening gloom. With a shrug he turned into Fern Court and made for his chambers. As he felt for his key the door was opened, Mick Regan welcoming him with a broad grin on his wrinkled old face.

Mick Regan was well known in the Temple. At one time valet to Sir Vincent Dening, Richard's father, the young man had brought him to he Temple on his father's death. Now, to Dening the old valet was more than friend and valet; he was an integral part of the business of the chambers.

"Gentleman to see you, Master Richard." Mick relieved Dening of hat and stick; then without question picked up a brush and carefully removed all signs of the barrister's fall on the road.

"A Mr. Reuben Gray. Said he knew you, Master Richard, and wanted your advice."

"Reuben Gray!" Dening was surprised. He turned to the study. As he entered the room he saw the young man standing at one of the windows. Hearing the door open, Gray turned and advanced to meet the barrister.

"Your man said you wouldn't be long, Dening." Gray spoke easily. "I thought you would not mind me waiting."

"Haven't been waiting long, I trust?" Dening motioned to a comfortable chair. "Hope Mick looked after you? Ah, I see he did." He nodded at the tray on the corner if the desk.

"Mighty good man, that of yours!" the young man laughed. "Wish I could pick up one like him. The men one gets nowadays—" A shrug completed the sentence.

"Cigarette?" Dening, passed a box. He waited while Gray obtained a light. "Mick said you wanted to consult me?"

"About this afternoon, yes." A frown came on the young man's fair face. "Fact is, Dening, I—we are in a devil of a hole. I didn't like what Sir John said this afternoon—so thought I'd have a word with you on the quiet. Of course, I've got to tail it with the rest of the crowd, but—"

"Rather a secretive lot." The barrister spoke carelessly.

"We've got to be." Gray paused embarrassedly. "You see, while what we're after isn't quite illegal—if it got known—" He hesitated. "—well, it's damned profitable."

"So profitable that Matthew Ashcombe thought his silence worth sixty thousand pounds?" suggested-Dening.

"Seventy—" Gray paused and stared. "Oh, I understand. You're still sticking to that theory of yours?"

"That one of the seven men around that table this afternoon was, or is, Matthew Ashcombe—yes." The barrister waited a moment, then added: "I believe there are others who have a like opinion. Shall I say you, for instance?"

Gray nodded. "Can't get away from it."

"Especially when the address given by Matthew Ashcombe is 'Grays Manor?'"

"What do you mean by that?" the young man asked sharply.

"Very little," the barrister laughed. "Others might think that a place as old as Grays Manor might hold secrets, shall we say—not known to the present proprietor?"

Again there was silence; Dening knew that he had made a point. Gray well knew that among his associates, certain suspicions pointed strongly in his direction.

"Of course there are others of your associates open to suspicion," the barrister continued easily. "Sir John for one. He has lived at Grays for over twenty years, he told me. A rich man, naturally he commands-much influence in the neighbourhood."

"You believe that someone at Grays really received the registered packets and signed for them?" the young man asked eagerly.

"Naturally. But remember, I am at present merely voicing general suspicions. We have no real evidence yet. To consider a third point—can you suggest how those marked notes came at the 'Blue Heaven' nightclub?"

"Kedwell thinks they were paid in by some visitor."

"How many of the marked notes were found?"

"Nine." Gray hesitated, then continued: "I think I see what you are aiming at, Dening."

"They were bank-notes—not Treasury notes?"

"Yes."

"Then the lowest possible value of the nine notes must be forty-five pounds. Surely if one visitor continually changed 'fivers' during the evening he would create comment. The waiters would notice him particularly; possibly become suspicious of the genuineness of the notes."

The young man did not reply.

"Taking my assumptions as correct, then we must conclude that no waiter at the night club noticed a customer repeatedly change bank notes. In that case the notes did not enter the club by the usual channel. We must then conclude they were passed into the club's treasury by someone who knew they were marked and who exchanged them for unidentifiable notes." Dening paused, then added: "Mr. Kedwell stated that he was not at the club that-night."

"You are suspecting him?" A quick light showed for a second in the young man's eyes.

"I am suspecting quite a number of people," the barrister answered promptly. "At present, suspicion points against you, Sir John McNiven and Kedwell—and so far the inquiry has not advanced a single step. Later, others may come under suspicion." He paused. "I don't think, Gray, that you came here tonight to suggest possible identities for Matthew Ashcombe. You mentioned that you were not satisfied with Sir John's statement of the case this afternoon?"

"Were you?"

"I believe much was omitted that would help the inquiry."

"Sir John omitted to mention Symonds' inquiry." Gray spoke after a pause. "That is what I came to see you about. I'd like you to have a talk with Symonds."

"For what reason? I gathered that Sir John preferred that I made my own investigations unbiased by conclusions drawn from any previous inquiry."

"Yet Symonds did a lot of really good spade work."

"You were with him while he made his inquiries?"

"I went with him to Grays." Gray spoke confidently. "We thought that my knowledge of the locality might be of assistance to him."

"Yet your knowledge of Grays, and the manor is twenty years old. Would not Sir John have a better grasp of present-day local details?"

"Sir John suggested that I accompanied Symonds. I drove him down in my car."

"Symonds searched Grays Manor?"

"He went over the ruins very thoroughly."

"He made the usual inquiries at the post office; he examined every official who might possibly have handled either of the registered packets?"

"He talked with every official at the post offices at Grays and Ewell." The young man spoke emphatically. "He put both the delivery men at Grays through what was a very close resemblance to the third degree. They both swore they had never seen a registered packet addressed to Grays Manor. They laughed at the idea that they would even take a packet so addressed from the post-office."

"And the staffs at the post-offices?"

"Not one of them would acknowledge ever seeing such a package."

"Well?"

"Then Symonds came back to London. He made inquiries here—"

"At which offices?"

"The East Strand post office. Sir John posted the money there."

"Sir John posted it at the East Strand post-office!" The barrister spoke thoughtfully. "Has he a receipt—but of course he has one."

Gray nodded. "That's all in order," he stated. "We had it on the table when the matter first came up. The receipt is in order, I can swear to that."

"And—the officials at the post-office?"

"That's the strangest, part of the affair. There's the regular counterpart of the receipt in the post-office books; yet every official in the office swears that he never issued it."

"Symonds never let the matter rest there," Dening declared after a pause. "What of the handwriting on the receipt?"

"He went into that." A puzzled frown came on the young man's brows. "In some manner he obtained specimens of all the officials' handwritings. He found a man whose handwriting was exactly similar to that on the receipt, but—"

"Well?" Dening queried.

"That man proved that he was on holidays—over a hundred miles from London—on the date the receipt was issued."

Silence followed, lasting some minutes. Dening was becoming more and more perplexed at the answers to his questions. So far, Gray strongly Incriminated Sir John with the mysterious Matthew Ashcombe. But, Sir John McNiven was a very wealthy man. Twice five thousand pounds would not be sufficient recompense for the loss of his reputation, unless—

Dening well knew that in the City of London many men, accounted wealthy, had at times remarkable difficulties in laying their hands on comparatively small sums of money. Once a reputed millionaire had borrowed a sovereign from him to pay for his lunch, confessing with a laugh that he had not more than a couple of shillings in actual coinage in his possession. But—if Sir John had perpetrated the fraud, how had he worked it?

"What is your opinion of the affair, Gray?" Dening asked at length.

The young man shrugged. "I don't suspect Sir John."

"Yet he knew that he was addressing a valuable packet to an uninhabitable ruin?"

"He drew our attention to that fact, immediately we received Matthew Ashcombe's letter. That is the reason we engaged Symonds. Sir John suggested that we sent the money in the manner Matthew Ashcombe instructed, and then tried to trace him on the receipt of the registered packet. I can't understand how we failed."

"Have you anything to explain personally regarding the affair, Gray?" Dening put the question, very seriously. "Remember, you and Sir John are the only two members of your group, who have any knowledge of Grays Manor. You exonerate Sir John—"

"And myself, so far as I am able," Gray laughed. "Of course, that leaves only Kedwell and—"

"And—Kedwell?" the barrister asked, when the young man paused.

"Kedwell is—"

"Kedwell states that he was not at the club the night the money was passed in," reminded Dening.

"He said that—and he will not say where he was." Gray spoke with reluctance. "Look here Dening, it isn't fair to keep you in the dark. I was at the club that night and—and I saw Kedwell there."

"With whom?" A note of excitement came in the barrister's voice.

"With Mrs. Ashford-Lynne." Gray's reluctance to speak showed more plainly. "They were in one of the curtained recesses. They were sitting well back in the shadows and I—and I don't think anyone could have seen them very well. It happened that as I passed the alcove Kedwell lit a cigarette and I saw his face plainly. He—"

A knock came at the door. In response to Dening's impatient permission, Mick entered.

"Excuse me. Master Richard. Chief Inspector Lorrimer would like to have a word with you."

"Lorrimer?" Dening glanced at his companion, who nodded. "Show him in, Mick."

"The Chief Inspector is down in the court, Master Richard." There was excitement in the old man's voice. "He wants you to go down there to him."

"Down in the court? What on earth is he waiting there for?"

"I think, there's been an accident or something, Master Richard. He asks that you will go down to him at once."