Silent Nights (6 page)

“Yes,” Kenneth answered. “I follow that. But there is such a thing as picking a lock, you know.”

“The makers guarantee that it can't be done to this one,” Churt answered, “and the key has always been in my possession, so he couldn't have had a duplicate made, even if there had been any time.”

Norah interposed in a voice that trembled with indignation. “In short, Lord Churt, you think the evidence conclusive against the only other person, except Sir James Winslade, who was in the house. I have only my word to give against it.”

“It is worth all the evidence in the world,” Kenneth cried, and she thanked her champion with a bright glance.

“Lady Churt is quite right,” Kenneth went on. “I'd stake my life it was that sneaking Gornay. Have him in here now, and see if his face doesn't show his guilt when I call him a thief.”

“Not for the world!” Churt exclaimed, aghast. “We should have a most painful scene. This is no case for rash precipitancy.” He assumed the air of judicial solemnity with which, from the local bench, he would fine a rascal five shillings who ought to have gone down for six months. “I entirely refuse to entertain any suspicion of anybody under this roof, guests, servants, or anyone else. It will probably turn out that some odd little accident has occurred, that will seem simple enough when it is explained. On the other hand, it is just conceivable that some evil-disposed person from outside should have got into the house, though I confess I can't understand the motive of their action if they did. In any case, I feel it my duty, for the credit of my household, to have the matter cleared up by the proper authority.”

“What do you mean by the proper authority?” Lady Churt asked. “I didn't think the local police were very clever that time when poor Kelpie got stolen.”

The Aberdeen terrier at her feet looked up at the sound of his name, and Churt continued: “I shall telephone to Scotland Yard. If Shapland is there, I am sure he would come down at once in his car. He could be here in less than two hours. Until he, or somebody else, arrives I beg that none of you say a word about this affair to anyone who is not now present in this room.”

“Quite the most proper course,” Aunt Blaxter observed. “It is only right that guilt should be brought home to the proper person,
whoever
that person may be.”

With a tact of which Kenneth had hardly thought him capable, Churt turned to Norah. “I have no doubt Shapland will clear up the mystery for us satisfactorily. Meantime, my dear girl, you and I find ourselves in the same boat, for there is only my word for it that I ever put the note into the Red Cross envelope at all.”

The kindness of his manner brought the tears to her eyes, and Kenneth took her away to the library.

“Fancy their thinking I was a thief—a thief, Ken—a common mean
thief
!”

“Nonsense, my darling girl,” he said. “Nobody could believe any such rubbish.”

“That odious Aunt Blaxter does, at any rate. She as good as said so.” She sat down in a chair, and began to grow calmer, while he paced about the room, angry but thoughtful.

“I was glad I had you to stick up for me, Ken, and Lord Churt is an old dear.”

“He's a silly old dear, all the same,” he answered. “He has more money than he knows what to do with, but fancy fluttering a thousand-pound note through the Christmas post, to get lost among all the robins and good wishes!”

They were interrupted at this point by the entry of Gornay.

“I am not going to stay,” he said, in answer to their not very welcoming expressions. “I have only come to ask a quite small favour. I am having a great argument with Sir James about character-reading from handwriting, and I want specimens from people we both know. Any little scrap will do.”

Kenneth took up a sheet of note-paper from a writing table and wrote, “All is not gold that glitters”, and Norah added below, “Birds of a feather flock together”. It seemed the quickest way to get rid of him.

Gornay looked at the sheet with a not quite satisfied air. “I would
rather
have had something not written specially. Nobody ever writes quite naturally when they know that it is for this sort of purpose. You haven't got an old envelope, or something like that?”

Neither could supply what he wanted, and he went off, looking a little disappointed.

“I wonder whether that was really what he wanted the writing for,” Kenneth remarked, suspiciously. “He's a quick-witted knave. Look how sharp he was to see the right move in that game of chess. It wasn't very obvious.”

The chess-board was lying open on the table, where Churt had left it before tea. He glanced at it, casually at first, and then with growing interest. He took up one of the pieces to examine it, then replaced it, to do the same with others, his manner showing all the time an increasing excitement.

“What is it, Ken?” Norah asked.

“Just a glimmer of something.” He dropped into a chair. “I want to think—to think harder than ever in my life.”

He leant forward, with his head resting on his hands, and she waited in silence till, after some minutes, he looked up.

“Yes, I begin to see light—more than a glimmer. He's a subtle customer, is Mr Gornay, oh, very subtle!” He smiled, partly with the pleasure of finding one thread of a tangled web, partly with admiration for the cleverness that had woven it. “Would you like to know what he was really after when he came in here just now?”

“Very much,” she answered. “But do you mean that he never had any argument with Sir James?”

“Oh, I daresay he had the argument all right—got it up for the occasion; but what he really wanted was this.” He took out of his pocket the envelope in which the bank-note had been discovered. “The character-reading rot was not a bad shot at getting hold of it, and probably his only chance. But no, friend Gornay, you are not going to have that envelope—not for the thousand pounds you placed in it!”

“Do explain, Ken,” Norah begged.

“I will presently,” he answered, “but I want to piece the whole jigsaw together. There is still the other difficulty.”

He dropped his eyes to the hearthrug again, and began to do his thinking aloud for her benefit. “Churt's reasoning is that Gornay must have been in here, watching the game, at the only time when the letters could have been tampered with, because he knew afterwards the move that was played just at the beginning of that time, and the move that was played just at the end. But why might not Winslade have told him about those two moves while Churt was letting me in at the front door? That would solve the riddle. I should have thought Winslade would have been too punctilious to talk about the game while his opponent was out of the room, but I'll go and ask him. I needn't tell him the reason why I want to know.”

He came back almost immediately. “No, there was no conversation about the game while Churt was out of the room. Very well. Try the thing the other way round. Assume—as I think I can prove—that Gornay
did
tamper with the letters, the question is how could he tell that those two moves had been played?”

He took up the chess-board again and looked at it so intently and so long that, at last, Norah grew impatient.

“My dear boy, what
can
you be doing, poring all this time over the chess?”

“I have a curious sort of chess problem to solve before the Sherlock Holmes man turns up from Scotland Yard. Follow this a moment. If there was any way by which Gornay could find out that the two important moves had been played, without being present at the time and without being told, then Churt's argument goes for nothing, doesn't it?”

“Clearly; but what other way was there? Did he look in through the window?”

“I think we shall find it was something much cleverer than that. I think I shall be able to show that he could infer that those two moves had been played, without any other help, from the position of the pieces as they stood at the end of the game; as they stand on the board now.” He again bent down over the board. “White plays queen to queen's knight's sixth, not taking anything, and Black takes the queen with the rook's pawn; those are the two moves.”

For nearly another half-hour Norah waited in loyal silence, watching the alternations of his face as it brightened with the light of comprehension and clouded again with fresh perplexity.

At last he shut up the board and put it down, looking profoundly puzzled.

“Can it not be proved that the queen must have been taken at that particular square?” Norah inquired.

“No,” he answered. “It might equally have been a rook. I can't make the matter out. So many of the jigsaw bits fit in that I know I must be right, and yet there is just one little bit that I can't find. By Jove!” he added, suddenly starting up, “I wonder if Churt could supply it?”

He was just going off to find out when a servant entered the room with a message that Lord Churt requested their presence in his study.

The conclave assembled in the study consisted of the same persons who, in the drawing-room, had witnessed the discovery of the bank-note, with the addition of Shapland, the detective from Scotland Yard. Lord Churt presided, sitting at the table, and Shapland sat by his side, with a face that might have seemed almost unintelligent in its lack of expression but for the roving eyes, that scrutinized in turn the other faces present.

Norah and Kenneth took the two chairs that were left vacant, and, as soon as the door was shut, Kenneth asked Churt a question.

“When you played your game of chess with Sir James Winslade this afternoon, did he give you the odds of the queen's rook?”

Everyone, except Norah and the sphinx-like detective, whose face gave no clue to his thoughts, looked surprised at the triviality of the question.

“I should hardly have thought this was a fitting occasion to discuss such a frivolous matter as a game of chess,” Aunt Blaxter remarked sourly.

“I confess I don't understand the relevance of your question,” Churt answered. “As a matter of fact, he did give me those odds.”

“Thank God!” Kenneth exclaimed, with an earnestness that provoked a momentary sign of interest from Shapland.

“I should like to hear what Mr Dale has to say about this matter,” he remarked. “Lord Churt has put me in possession of the circumstances.”

“I have an accusation to make against Lord Churt's private secretary, Mr Gornay. Perhaps he had better be present to hear it.”

“Quite unnecessary, quite unnecessary,” Churt interposed. “We will not have any unpleasant scenes if we can help it.”

“Very well,” Kenneth continued. “I only thought it might be fairer. I accuse Gornay of stealing the thousand-pound bank-note out of the envelope addressed to the Red Cross and putting it into a letter addressed to me.
I accuse him of using colourless ink, of a kind that would become visible after a few hours, to cross out my address and substitute another
, the address of a confederate, no doubt.”

“You must be aware, Mr Dale,” Shapland observed, “that you are making a very serious allegation in the presence of witnesses. I presume you have some evidence to support it?”

Kenneth opened the chess-board. “Look at the stains on those chess pieces. They were not there when the game was finished. They were there, not so distinctly as now, about an hour ago. Precisely those pieces, and only those, are stained that Gornay touched in showing that Lord Churt might have won the game. If they are not stains of invisible ink, why should they grow more distinct? If they are invisible ink, how did it get there, unless from Gornay's guilty fingers?”

He took out of his pocket the envelope of Norah's letter, and a glance at it brought a look of triumph to his face. He handed it to Shapland. “The ink is beginning to show there, too. It seems to act more slowly on the paper than on the polish of the chessmen.”

“It is a difference of exposure to the air,” Shapland corrected. “The envelope has been in your pocket. If we leave it there on the table, we shall see presently whether your deduction is sound. Meanwhile, if Mr Gornay was the guilty person, how can you account for his presence in the library at the only time when a crime could have been committed?”

“By denying it,” Kenneth answered. “What proof have we that he was there at that particular time?”

“How else could he know the moves that were played at that time?” Shapland asked.

Kenneth pointed again to the chess-board. “From the position of the pieces at the end of the game. Here it is. I can prove, from the position of those pieces alone,
provided the game was played at the odds of queen's rook
, that White must, in the course of the game, have played his queen to queen's knight's sixth, not making a capture, and that Black must have taken it with the rook's pawn. If I can draw those inferences from the position, so could Gornay. We know how quickly he can think out a combination from the way in which he showed that Lord Churt could have won the game, when it looked so hopeless that he resigned.”

The detective, fortunately, had an elementary knowledge of chess sufficient to enable him to follow Kenneth's demonstration.

“I don't suggest,” Kenneth added, when the accuracy of the demonstration was admitted, “that he planned this
alibi
beforehand. It was a happy afterthought, that occurred to his quick mind when he saw that the position at the end of the game made it possible. What he relied on was the invisible ink trick, and that would have succeeded by itself, if I hadn't happened to turn up unexpectedly in time to intercept my letter from Norah.”

While Kenneth was giving this last bit of explanation, Shapland had taken up the envelope again. As he had foretold, exposure to the air had brought out the invisible writing so that, although still faint, it was already legible. Only the middle line of the address, the number and name of the street, had been struck out with a single stroke, and another number and name substituted. The detective handed it to Churt. “Do you recognize the second handwriting, my lord?”