The Mystery At Lover's Cave

Roger handed the letter back with a little smile. “How can I explain this by my theory? Well, obviously enough, surely. ‘Colin’ must be Mr. Russell.”

“Ah, but is he? Somehow I feel pretty sure he isn’t. Anyhow, that’s a point we can soon settle. I bought a directory of the neighbourhood yesterday—always do when I’m working on a case in the country. I’ll run down and get it.”

“In the meantime,” said Roger, as the inspector’s heavy footsteps echoed down the stairs, “we might as well get on with our lunch. I wish I’d taken on a small bet with him about the identity of friend Colin.”

“I shouldn’t have said there was much doubt about it,” observed Anthony, helping himself largely to salad. “It all fits in, doesn’t it?”

Two minutes later the inspector returned, an open book in his hand. He laid it down on the table-cloth beside Roger and indicated an entry in it with a large thumb.

“There you are, sir,” he said, with a commendable absence of triumph. “ ‘Russell, John Henry, Rose Cottage.’ That’s your gentleman.”

“Humph!” said Roger, a little disconcerted. “But look here,” he added, brightening, “Colin might have been a pet-name, or something like that.”

The inspector took his place at the table. “It isn’t likely,” he said, shaking out his napkin. “If it had been signed Tootles, or Fuzzy-wuzzy, it might have been a pet-name all right. But Colin! No, that doesn’t sound like a pet-name to me.”

“Then this appears to complicate matters pretty considerably,” Roger remarked with some asperity.

“On the contrary, sir,” retorted the inspector cheerfully, applying himself to his cold beef with every sign of satisfaction, “perhaps it’s going to simplify them a lot.”

Roger knew that the inspector was confidently expecting to be asked to explain this dark observation; he therefore went on with his meal in silence. Somewhat to his surprise the inspector volunteered no explanation of his own accord, his attention appearing to be entirely divided between his plate and the directory, down the columns of which he continued to run a careful thumb.

“There are two Colins in this neighbourhood,” he announced at last. “Smith, Colin, plumber, East Row, Ludmouth, and Seaford, Colin James, architect, 4 Burnt Oak Lane, Milbourne (that’s a village a couple of miles inland). Neither of them looks like our man. But I hardly expected to find him in here.”

“Why not?” asked Anthony.

“Because he’s probably a young man, living with his parents (isn’t that a young man’s note, Mr. Sheringham, eh?); in which case of course, he wouldn’t be mentioned. No, I shall have to spend the afternoon making enquiries. In the meantime, I’d be much obliged if you two gentlemen would not say anything about this. I stretched a point in showing you what was on that paper, and I want you to reciprocate by keeping quiet about it. I don’t want anybody told, you understand,” he added, with a significant look at Anthony; “male or female! You can promise me that, can’t you?”

“Naturally,” Roger said with a slight smile.

“Of course,” Anthony said stiffly.

“Then that’s all right,” observed the inspector with great heartiness. “I shan’t be able to do anything until my man comes down with the original document, of course; but he ought to be here any time now. And by the way,” he added to Roger, “it may interest you to hear that I’m officially in charge of the case now. I got my authorisation from headquarters this morning.”

Roger picked up his cue. “I’ll mention that in my report to-night, Inspector.”

“Well, you can if you want to, sir, of course,” said the inspector with an air of innocent surprise.

As if by tacit agreement, the talk for the rest of the meal turned upon general topics.

As soon as his pipe was alight the inspector rose to go. Roger waited until he had left the room, then rose from his chair and darted in his wake, closing the sitting-room door behind him.

“Inspector,” he said in a low voice, as he caught him up on the landing, “there’s one question I must ask you. Are you intending to arrest Miss Cross?”

The inspector looked at him quizzically. “Are you speaking as a newspaper-man or as a friend of the lady’s, sir?”

“Neither. As Roger Sheringham, private and inquisitive citizen.”

“Well,” the inspector said slowly, “to a newspaper-man I should answer, ‘Don’t ask me leading questions’; to a friend of the lady’s, ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about’; and to Mr. Sheringham, private citizen and personal friend of my own, if I may say so, ‘No, I’m not!’ ”

“Ah!”

“For one thing, you see,” the inspector added with a smile, “the evidence against her isn’t quite complete yet.”

“But look here, you don’t mean to say you still think that she may have⸺”

The inspector waved aside the awkward question with a large hand. “I’m not going to say what I think about that, even to you, Mr. Sheringham. But one word of warning I will give you, to pass on to your cousin or not as you think fit—things aren’t always what they seem.”

“Ah!” Roger observed. “In other words, I suppose, ladies strongly under suspicion on circumstantial evidence aren’t necessarily guilty after all. Is that what you mean?”

“Well, sir,” replied the inspector, who seemed not a little pleased with his conundrum, “that’s all I’ve got to say. What I mean, you must decide for yourself.”

“Inspector, you’re hopeless!” Roger laughed, turning back to the sitting-room.

Anthony was brooding darkly over his empty cheese-plate.

“I say, Roger,” he said at once, looking up, “does that damned inspector still think that Margaret had anything to do with it?”

“No, I don’t imagine so, really. He may, but I’m more inclined to think that he’s pulling our legs about her—yours especially. And you are a bit of a trout over Margaret, aren’t you, Anthony? You rise to any fly that he dangles over you.”

Anthony made a non-committal growling sound, but said nothing. Roger began to pace the little room with restless steps.

“Dash that infernal letter!” he burst out a few minutes later. “There’s no doubt that it does complicate matters most awkwardly. Though it doesn’t rule out my bright solution of before lunch by any means. The inspector ought to have seen that. What she was doing with friend Colin doesn’t affect in the slightest degree the bad blood between her and Mrs. Russell. We mustn’t get confused by issues that lie outside the main chance.”

There was another pause.

“I must see Margaret!” Roger announced suddenly, stopping short in his stride. “You muttered something this morning about having arranged a meeting. For when?”

“Well, we didn’t actually arrange anything,” Anthony replied with preternatural innocence. “She happened to say that she’d probably be going out to that ledge this afternoon about three o’clock with a book, and I just mentioned that⸺”

“Cease your puling!” Roger interrupted rudely. “It’s a quarter to three now. Get your hat and come along.”

Five minutes later they were walking briskly up the rise from the road to the top of the cliffs, the wind blowing coolly about their heads. It is perhaps not uninteresting to note in passing that Anthony wore a hat and Roger did not. And one might go on to add at the same time that Anthony’s grey flannel trousers were faultlessly creased, while in Roger’s not a vestige of a crease could be seen. From this sort of thing the keen psychologist draws any number of interesting deductions.

“I say, you don’t mind me coming along, Anthony, do you?” Roger was asking with an appearance of great anxiety.

“Of course I don’t. Why should I?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t there some old saying about the difference between a couple and a trio in connection with company? I mean⸺”

“Oh, dry up, for Heaven’s sake! You’re not funny, Roger.”

“That,” Roger maintained firmly, “is a matter of opinion. Well, let us talk very seriously about gulls. There are no less than seven hundred and forty distinct species of gulls known to the entomologist, of which one hundred and eighty-two may be found by the intrepid explorer around the rocky coasts of these Islands. Perhaps the most common variety is the Patum Perperium, or Black-hearted Wombat, which may be distinguished by⸺”

“What are you talking about?” demanded his bewildered listener.

“Gulls, Anthony,” replied Roger, and went on doing so with singular ardour right up to the ledge itself.

“Hullo, Margaret,” he greeted its occupant pleasantly. “Anthony and I have been talking about gulls. Do you think you could invite us to tea this afternoon with you?”

“To tea? Whatever for?”

“Well, it’s such a long way back to our own. Yours is so much easier.”

“Don’t take any notice of him, Margaret,” Anthony advised. “He’s only being funny. He’s been funny ever since we left the Crown.”

“Yes, and about gulls, too,” Roger added with pride. “Extraordinarily difficult things to be funny about, as you’ll readily understand. But I’m quite serious about tea, Margaret. I want to have a chance of studying the occupants of your household at close quarters.”

“Oh, I see. But why?”

“No particular reason, except that I ought to have as close a view as possible of everybody mixed up with the case. And I must confess that I’m rather interested to have a look at this doctor-man of yours; he sounds interesting. Can it be done?”