Читать книгу Found Dead - Fred M. White - Страница 6

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Mortmain stood contemplating his aged retainer as if he were seeing him for the first time. It seemed so strange that the quiet and retiring Farthing should speak so emphatically.

"What makes you think that?" he asked. "My dear man, you are surely not suggesting that a melodrama has been staged during the dead of night in this aristocratic old library?"

"I don't know nothing about that, Sir John," Farthing said stubbornly. "But I do know as that poor chap was murdered. You have only got to look at him to see that."

"Well, at any rate, he is dead," Mortmain went on. "How he got here and what happened is at present a mystery. But I can't admit that he was the victim of violence under my roof."

"It isn't for me to say, Sir John," Farthing replied, in the same rather obstinate tone. "But I do know this—I was in the room after everybody had gone to bed last night, and I am prepared to swear that both these windows were fastened up. And now, here is one of them open wide enough to admit a man. And, of course, Sir John, if it is wide enough to admit one man, it is wide enough to admit two. If my opinion is worth having, I should say that a couple of burglars got into the house by forcing that window, and that they had a quarrel when they got inside. The one who got away knocked the other down and accidentally killed him. The poor chap fell with his head on the mosaic tiles and fractured his skull. And then the other man, seeing what he had done, made off, and, no doubt, by this time is far enough away. That is how I see it, Sir John, if I may make so bold."

"Well, up to a certain point, you may be right," Mortmain conceded. "But you are wrong in your particulars. In the first place, what is the library ladder doing where it is now?"

Farthing scratched his head thoughtfully.

"Well, I hadn't thought of that, sir. I am prepared to swear that, when I went round the house last night after everybody had gone to bed, the ladder was lying at length on the floor under the window facing the sea."

"Where it always lies, in fact."

"That's right, Sir John. I am as certain of it as I am that I am speaking to you now."

"And yet here is the ladder on the other side of the room altogether. Lying on its side on the floor, by that body. And, more than that, there is a book on the edge of the carpet."

Mortmain bent down and took the volume from the floor. It was a rare early edition of Boccaccio's "Decameron," beautifully bound in vellum and tooled in gold, perhaps one of the rarest books in all the treasures the library contained. As he lifted the volume, Mortmain glanced at one of the top shelves.

"Ah, there you are," he exclaimed. "You can see the space on the top shelf left when somebody—never mind who it was—took it down with the aid of the ladder. Now, I suppose that that book is worth anything up to a thousand pounds. There are other books here of almost equal value. My theory is that there were two thieves, and that they came here to rifle my library."

"Very likely, sir," Farthing conceded. "But I don't see as how they could do much good with those books when they had got them. I mean you can't sell stuff like that."

"Ah, there, my dear old friend, you are absolutely wrong," Mortmain smiled. "There is nobody on the face of the earth who is more unmoral than your hardened bibliophile. He would steal a classic manuscript as soon as look at it—especially your American collector. Nor would he hesitate for a moment to buy that Decameron at any price the thief liked to ask for it, and ask no questions. It is the sort of thing that has happened over and over again, even in the case of historic pictures. Now, what I think is this. These thieves knew all about my treasures; in fact, there is a list of them in the Free Library Museum at Instaple. They have only to have a look at that, and they would know exactly what to come for."

To all of which Farthing listened respectfully enough. Of course, he had not known that in the Free Library at Instaple, the big town some twenty miles away, such a list was on record. But Sir John had said so, and there was an end to the matter.

"So there you are," Mortmain went on. "Those chaps came here in the middle of the night and forced the catch of the centre window, which would not be a very difficult job to men who were familiar with that sort of work. And the first thing they did was to erect the ladder and lay their hands upon, perhaps, the most valuable book in the library. What happened afterwards can only be a matter of conjecture. And mind you, we are not bound to argue that the thieves even had a quarrel. Suppose the ladder had slipped just as one of the thieves was about to descend with this Decameron in his hand. He might have come crashing backwards, or turned over as he fell, and even from the height of ten feet it would be no extraordinary matter if he sustained that fracture, which even my inexperienced eyes can detect. And this leads us to another theory. Supposing the thief had been alone, and I cannot see any reason why he should not have been. He comes by himself and he meets with an accident. You find him dead when you come down this morning and, not unnaturally, arrive at certain conclusions. I am not saying you are wrong, Farthing, nor am I saying that my one-man theory is correct. That will be for the police to ascertain later on. Anyhow, the unfortunate individual is dead, and there is an end of it."

Mortmain spoke as if the conversation was finished, so far as he was concerned; and bent down to examine the body. It was that of a man of some forty years of age, clean-shaven and round-faced, and by no means ill-looking. The head was crowned with short, curly hair of a reddish hue, and the unfortunate individual seemed to have fallen backwards and then turned over on his face with one of his arms doubled behind him. Even to the lay eye, the cause of death was plain enough for there was a deep indentation at the base of the skull, and on the soft collar which the man was wearing a mass of blood had congealed.

For some little time both men stood contemplating that rather sinister sight with no word spoken between them. It was Farthing who, at length, broke the silence.

"What are we going to do about it, sir?" he asked.

"Do about it?" Mortmain echoed. "Oh, I see what you mean. Call in the police and all that sort of thing. Yes, you are quite right. We had better lock the door of this room and leave everything just as we found it. Then you go into Watersmouth village and fetch the local constable whilst I telephone to Instaple and call up the superintendent there. Yes, Farthing, at the same time it would not be a bad thing if you dropped on your way and asked Dr. Hartley Deacon to give me a call. As a matter of fact, we ought to send for him first."

Farthing departed on his errand, and some quarter of an hour later the local doctor arrived at Mortmains in his car. He was a small, dry-looking man, brown faced and wiry, with every suggestion of the athlete about him. As a matter of fact, he had been a famous county cricketer in his time, before he had settled down to a country practice, where he could get a decent living and follow his scientific pursuits in quietness and comfort. Hartley Deacon was a man whose name was known and respected far beyond the borders of the county of Devon.

"Hello, Mortmain," he cried. "What's all this story that Farthing has been telling me. The old chap was so incoherent that I could hardly make head or tail of the yarn. Something about a murdered man that he found in the library."

"Come and see for yourself," Mortmain said briefly.

"Yes, a fractured skull, all right," Deacon said, after making a close examination. "Now let us hear what you have to say about it . . . . yes, I shouldn't wonder if you were right. There are certain circumstances about the case which present themselves to me pretty plainly, as they would to any scientific man. But I don't want to go into them until the police have taken a hand in the game. Of course, there will have to be an inquest."

Whilst Mortmain and Deacon were still discussing all the bearing on the tragedy, the inspector from Instaple put in an appearance. He listened gravely to all that the others had to say before making any statement of his own.

"Well, Doctor," he said. "I am inclined to agree with you that we cannot do any more for the moment. No doubt it will transpire that that man was killed in the act of committing a burglary, thought I am not going to rule a violent death out altogether until we have exhausted the evidence. If you don't mind, Sir John, I should like to ask your servants a few questions."

"Yes, I rather expected you to say that," Mortmain replied. "Of course, you are at liberty to do as you like. For the moment, at any rate, you can regard Mortmains as your own."

"In the servants," Inspector James Gore said, "I must ask you how many servants you keep."

Mortmain went over the whole list. Butler, housekeeper, two footmen, four indoor domestics, excluding the cook and kitchen maid. In addition to those, were three gardeners, who however, did not live on the estate and the aged lodge keeper and his wife. But a close cross-examination of all these served to throw no ray of light upon the remarkable tragedy. There was no questioning the fact that the whole of the domestic staff had been in bed the night before quite early and, indeed, Farthing testified to the fact that it was so light when he went to bed himself that he had no occasion to switch on the electric light, nor had anybody heard the slightest sound during the night, except that one of the dogs in the kennels had barked.

"Well, I must leave it at that for the moment," Gore said. "I will get back and see the coroner."

"And when will the inquest be?" Mortmain asked.

"I can't quite tell you that," the inspector explained. "But I should say not before the day after to-morrow. If you don't mind I will take the key of the library away with me."