The Notched Hairpin (8 page)

“But I don't remember that I ever said the case was closed.”

This was not only pompous, but, worse, portentous. Was I once more—after having made a considerable effort to meet the old master's wishes and put the whole incident out of my mind—was I again to find everything being raveled, tangled, and confused, and maybe even our certainty of securing this place put in jeopardy? I was sufficiently upset to say unguardedly, “I don't understand!”

And got in reply, “I will explain, or rather I am going to bring the explanation to you. Believe me, it will interest you, and I need your co-operation.”

My temporary upset began to be tinged with possible interest, for I respond to any call for help.

“Will you please get up and follow me?”

I rose. The old man took out from his portfolio a fair-sized piece of folded newspaper and, leaving it on the stone table to my right, turned to the garden entrance of the arbor. He went through this and then turned sharp right. I had dutifully followed this maneuver. We now had the high, dense hedge of the arbor between us and the chair and the two tables. As the hedge was of beech, though the new leaves were still only partly unfurled, the old leaves, as is so nice with that species of tree when it is used for hedges, were still obligingly hanging on in sufficient numbers so that there was no visible thinning of the cover. I couldn't help thinking how like the faded leaves, still holding their post and discharging their duty, were to those old and, alas, practically extinct servants who, though due to retire, used to stay on to oblige until the new ones were sufficiently expert to take over without making any break in the ancient routine. The weave of the twigs themselves was also, at this level—in spite of the late occupant's reported grumbles—almost as close as basketwork. So I found, when we came to a pause and stood looking at this living arras, that though we were actually within three or four yards of where I had just been seated, you could no more catch a glimpse of the inner fittings of the arbor, or of the house that stood behind and beyond, than you could have seen through a brick wall.

“Mr. Silchester.”

Mr. M. was using the kind of tone which he only uses to me when I have no doubt that I can do him a real service. This, you may gather, is rare, but the inflection is so impressive that I know at once we are going into action, and I must own I find it exhilarating.

“Mr. Silchester, will you do me a real favor by staying here? I may not have to keep you waiting for more than ten minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour. If you will wait for that time completely silent, not even shifting your position, that is all I believe that will be needed, and much may turn on it.”

Anyone would have felt a thrill, a tension caught from the gravity of his tone. I nodded, and he slipped back into the arbor, I heard him shifting about behind the arras of leaves but could not see a thing. While I was trying to see whether I could see, I heard Jane's voice—as playwrights say, “off,” but as plumbers say of taps, full “on.”

“He's out in the garden. Such a nice gentleman. I believe they'll take the house. Of course, they couldn't help hearing, but the man who was down about it all put them quite at their ease. No use crying over spilt milk, is there? Especially when it was already a bit oversour.”

These sallies did not seem to awaken a response, though now I could hear another step accompanying Jane's.

A moment later I heard her say, “Why, here is Mr. Mycroft, waiting for you in this arbor.” And then, “Mr. Mycroft, Sir, this is Mr. Millum, dropped over, as you wished, to see if he could be of any help and tell you anything you should know about the house and all that.”

Jane was dismissed, and I heard a deep, pleasant voice say its greetings, and Mr. M. ask him to be seated, as Jane had brought a chair from the house.

“You know,” said Mr. M.'s voice, “the case which has caused this house to be unoccupied is officially closed.”

There was a small pause during which, I presume, the person questioned must have given a silent assent. If he was going just to nod and shrug or smile all his answers, then my position would not be as good as I'd hoped, the pleasant position of a person who has the right to eavesdrop. I began to peer blindly at the wall of brown and green leaves and twigs. Suddenly, when I had my nose right against them, I found my eye could see through a tiny space between a twig and a shriveled leaf, and there, through this natural peephole, I had a narrow glimpse of the scene which till then was only sound to me.

Mr. M. was seated quite magisterially in the stone chair, and near him, on his right and with his back to me, was the Mr. Millum. I was in no danger of being discovered, for even had they looked at the point from which I was looking, they would have seen nothing but leaves. As it was, Mr. Millum had his back to me and Mr. M. was in profile. The stone table with the sheet of paper on it was now to Mr. M.'s left, and, as he had his hand on it as though to hold it in place, he, too, was sufficiently swung round so that he would not spy if I was, as I suspected, going beyond his instructions. But I was indeed glad that I did exceed what I had been told to do.

For a moment all was quiet and plain sailing. Mr. M. continued in his gentle, slow voice:

“That means that unless quite new evidence should emerge, nothing more will happen. The law and its investigators are contented, and rightly, with what is held to be sufficient proof of the most probable supposition. But, you see, I am an amateur, and, in the proper sense of that much abused word, that means
a
man who loves the work for itself and not for gain or for any ulterior motive. I am interested in understanding and am thankful to say I am no paid servant of that odd and often unscientific, not to mention inhumane, instrument called the law, and, in its hardest and perhaps least open aspect, the criminal law.”

He paused, and I could see the back that was under my observation shift, and the shoulders hunch slightly.

Mr. M., perhaps to rouse his visitor, whose attention appeared to have flagged, suddenly asked at this point:

“Could you give me a cigarette?”

I was a little surprised at this request, for Mr. M. seldom smoked, and, if he did, it was an occasional and quite expensive Egyptian which he would nearly always watch smoke itself away, following its fine skein of vapor and only on occasion giving it the encouragement of a single draw.

His guest seemed relieved and at once took a package from his pocket. They were the coarse, common Virginian sort. But nevertheless Mr. M. accepted and, putting the column of weed to his mouth, asked again:

“Have you a match?”

His right hand still holding the cigarette package, the visitor with his left produced an automatic lighter, flicked open the spring cap with his thumb, and held the little flame before Mr. M., who bent his face toward it, drew on the cigarette, and then sat back. But, as I could have told him, he could not enjoy it, and, after a couple of puffs, laid aside the thing, which soon expired. Then he resumed his talk in a lighter tone.

“When a man really cares for proof just for proof's sake,” he went on, “which means caring for truth for truth's sake, then he's not content with probability—he wants certainty.”

Again there was a pause, and I thought that Mr. M. might be thinking that he was going to get an answer. If so, he was disappointed. I saw him glance away toward the roof of the arbor, as though waiting. Then, as the silence continued, he remarked casually: “Beautiful natural roofage the beech makes—a perfect cover. As Vergil long ago put it, ‘
sub tegimine fagi
.'”

I saw the other glance up quickly and evidently follow Mr. M.'s eye, turning his head also to the arbor roof, then look back at Mr. M., who still did not look at him. Finally, Mr. Millum let his head sink, and he just looked at the ground. This clearly made Mr. M. see that he'd have to go farther if he was to get any more information that this man might be able to give about his self-killed friend.

“Mr. Millum,” Mr. M.'s voice was quiet but very clear, “you knew the late master of this house well. There can be no question that he was a gloomy, depressed, self-centered, and, I think we can say, suspicious man. This is the type we do, rightly, associate with suicide. But usually there is some small occasion, some ‘trigger action' that sets alight the deep mine of despair and launches the victim out into the unknown. Could you tell me of any incident that in your opinion might have provoked Mr. Sankey to act in that final desperate way—I mean, to use the actual method that he did? Self-indulgent men are usually timid and hate pain. A stab through the heart may be acutely painful, mayn't it?”

The questioned man roused himself at that. “Not necessarily. No, not at all necessarily, there are … there are cases recorded where it was evidently painless—quite, quite!”

“Even with so unhandy an instrument as a paper knife?”

“Well, that all depends on the knack with which it was driven … driven home. I recall that Mr. Sankey frequently played with the sharp little blade that he used—an antique—and often quoted to me the ‘bare bodkin' line from Hamlet's soliloquy on suicide.”

“Did he, indeed!”

Mr. M. had swung slowly round till he was facing Mr. Millum.

“Did he?”

The phrase which had been first question-tinged with surprise had, in the second speaking, turned suddenly into challenge.

“Did he!”

It was again spoken, and this time there could be no doubt. Mr. M. meant, “You know he didn't.”

The other's reply was disquieting: “Oh, yes, he really did; he really did more than once. That's what put … I mean, he really was a wretchedly unhappy man, he was really in a very tight place, he really was at the end of his tether.”

He paused, and Mr. M. said slowly, “And so you …?”

The other recovered, “And so I was not surprised when the end came.”

“No,” said Mr. M. “No, you were not surprised, not a bit surprised. But perhaps you will understand that I am still puzzled?”

Mr. Millum rose. “Mr. Mycroft,” he said with perfect courtesy, “I am sure you had every right, on the invitation of the inspector, to act as an additional adviser, and you have every right also to view this house as a possible tenant. I would do anything in my power to aid either the official inquiry or someone who might wish to be a neighbor for the summer. But I think you will understand that I see no use in our getting your two interests confused. The first issue is, as you say, officially closed. It is a subject very painful to me. Professionally I cannot expect you to respect my feelings, nor have I any right to ask that you should, even though you describe yourself as an amateur. But when even the amateur's association with the professional is closed, then surely I have a right to ask that if you, as a possible tenant of this house, wish for my services, you do not intrude upon these a grave matter that has been closed … in the grave.”

I think Mr. M. was really rather taken aback by thus having the tables turned on him. He said nothing, but he did something. He rose. Mr. Millum rose too. They turned toward the house. But before they had taken the first step, Mr. Mycroft threw out his left arm and with the tips of his long fingers swept aside the sheet of newspaper that had been lying there on the table at his left. The paper floated to the ground. But his fingers remained pointing to the table. The other man stood pointing too, as does a pointer dog when suddenly it sees the hidden game. But with no delight. I could now partly see his face and, even if I had not, the tension of his whole body would have told me that he had suddenly confronted something that had him held at bay. But when I looked to see what basilisk was turning him to stone, I could have laughed. There was Mr. M., in an attitude rather like that in that pompous German picture of Bismarck pointing to the map of Alsace-Lorraine and claiming it from the two cowering French ministers. But what Mr. M. was pointing at, and the other was shrinking from, was, would you believe it, the paper knife, the wire stretcher, and the old sooty spring from the long-destroyed Bath chair! To which egregious collection, which he had evidently been treasuring, he had now added, as a floral finish, the large, wilted piece of pruned beech hedge with which he had brushed his boots when we first investigated this garden.

Nevertheless, the assemblage of sorry objects did have the effect he had evidently calculated. I could only think that, as an Australian witch doctor (I remember having once been told) can hypnotize a fellow aborigine with some similar bundle of rubbish—the more efficaciously, the more absurd it is to the eye of reason—so had Mr. M. suddenly sprung this magical ascendancy over his escaping interrogatee.

It was both comic and uncanny. I found myself caught in a giggling shiver—that queer state when you don't know whether you are being amused or frightened. But about one thing there was no manner of doubt: however inexplicable it must appear, it was plain as a pikestaff that Mr. Millum took the random grouping of junk as seriously, as dramatically, as did Mr. M.—indeed, with the deadly seriousness with which a man looks at a snake suddenly discovered in his path and coiled to strike.

Mr. M. was not slow to follow up his advantage, however oddly he may have gained it.

“You still say suicide?” he called, almost in the tone of a highwayman saying “Your money or your life.”

“No,” said the other, “no.”

And then, recovering his voice, which had become nothing more than a husky whisper, he said with a certain quietude that was the most uncanny and finally convincing thing about all this queer drama, “I'm glad you've cornered me. I don't think I could have gone on. It did seem right … more, it seemed inevitable. Until … until it worked out. And then I saw it was no use. It was just one more mistake. Well, you have stopped it. And if you cancel me out, then the sum is even, isn't it?”