The Mystery At Lover's Cave

“Miss Cross!” exclaimed Roger.

The inspector continued to address himself to Anthony. “You must be ready for a bit of a shock, I’m afraid. It’s Miss Cross that Mr. Woodthorpe has been engaged to all the time. She’s been just amusing herself with you. She’s⸺”

“I think I shall go to bed,” observed Anthony abruptly, and rose from his chair. “It’s pretty late. Good-night, you two.”

He went.

The inspector watched the door close, then dropped into his seat. “It’s a nasty smack for him,” he said sympathetically. “But he’s young. He’ll get over it.”

Roger found his tongue. “But—but that is almost incredible, Inspector!”

The inspector looked at him quizzically. “Is it, sir?”

“I can’t believe it of her. Are you sure you’re not making a mistake?”

“Perfectly. I’ve known it for some time as a matter of fact, but I couldn’t very well drop a hint to your cousin.”

“Of course,” Roger said slowly, readjusting his ideas in the light of this startling development, “of course this makes Woodthorpe’s confession a good deal more understandable.”

“Oh, yes, I knew what he was getting at.”

“She must have shown him she was frightened,” Roger pursued, thinking rapidly. “But the last time I saw her she seemed quite all right. Something must have happened since then. Inspector—you’re looking guilty! Out with it!”

“I had a long interview with her this morning,” the inspector admitted. “Perhaps I did press her pretty closely. I knew she was concealing her engagement from me, you see, so she might have been concealing other things as well. Yes, I certainly did press her pretty closely.”

“What you really did, I suppose, was to convey to her quite obviously that you still suspected her after all and that if she couldn’t produce a better explanation of certain matters, she’d be finding herself very shortly in distinctly hot water?”

“We have to do these things, you know, sir,” confessed the inspector almost apologetically.

“Well, thank goodness I’m not a policeman,” retorted Roger, making no effort to conceal his distaste. “No wonder you frightened the poor girl out of her wits. I suppose you practically told her you were going to apply for a warrant against her. The rest was inevitable, of course. So what do you suppose is going to happen now?”

“Perhaps when she finds there isn’t a warrant out against her, Mr. Woodthorpe will bring her back the same way as he took her away.”

“Oh, so you’re not going to apply for a warrant after all?” said Roger sarcastically.

“No, sir, I’m not.”

“Very nice for the girl’s reputation, I must say, to be careering about the Continent with a young man for goodness knows how long.”

“She’s engaged to him,” the inspector pointed out mildly. “It is possible for them to get married abroad, you know.”

Roger snorted.

There was a little silence.

“You seem very put out on her behalf,” the inspector ventured, curiosity overcoming discretion. “Considering how she’s been treating your cousin, I mean.”

“She was a minx, I admit,” Roger said, with a little laugh. “I also admit that she took me in properly; I really thought she was quite fond of Anthony. But after all, I suppose she had some justification. If she was engaged to friend Colin all the time, the position must have been a very difficult one for her, both before Mrs. Vane’s death and afterward, whether she knew anything about her fiancé’s intrigue with that lady or not. She couldn’t admit the engagement while she was under that cloud, you see, and all her energies must have been concentrated on clearing her name. I don’t say she behaved very nicely, but that must be the explanation. Having had it forcibly impressed on her that not only public opinion but the official police as well were dead against her, she deliberately set out to attach Anthony to her in order to make sure of getting him and me on her side and enlisting our energies on her behalf. Don’t you think that’s the truth of the matter?”

“Not a doubt of it, sir,” agreed the inspector heartily. “That’s the truth of that all right.”

“And very well she succeeded,” added Roger modestly. “Well, now that the whole thing’s at an end, so to speak, Inspector, what about a little bed?”

The inspector’s answer was not a direct one. “So you think the whole thing’s at an end, do you, Mr. Sheringham?” he said, with a return to his quizzical expression.

“I do, yes,” said Roger, surprised. “Don’t you?”

“I’m very much afraid it is,” the inspector agreed.

Roger looked at him. “What are you driving at, Inspector? Have you still got a card or two up your sleeve? You surely don’t mean to say you don’t accept my solution of the mystery?”

The inspector puffed once or twice at his pipe. “If you’d asked me that question before, when Mr. Walton was still here,” he said slowly, “I should have said that I did accept it. But as we’re alone—well, no! I certainly don’t accept it.”

“But—but why ever not?” Roger asked in astonishment.

“Because I happen to know it isn’t correct, sir,” returned the inspector placidly.

Roger stared at him through the blue haze of tobacco-smoke. “Isn’t correct? But—but—well, dash it, man, it must be correct!”

The inspector shook his head. “Oh, no, sir, if you’ll pardon me. It isn’t correct at all. You see, my trouble hasn’t been to find out the truth; I’ve known that all along. My trouble has been to prove it. To prove it, I mean, definitely enough to satisfy a court of law. And that I haven’t been able to do, and I’m afraid, never shall. The truth’s plain enough, but there’s too many gaps in the chain of legal proof. It’s a great pity.” The inspector shook his head again, this time expressing gentle regret.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Roger cried. “Truth obvious all the time? What do you mean? I haven’t found the truth obvious all the time!”

Once more the inspector shook his head, now conveying the disappointed reproof of the master at the too easy failure of a fairly gifted pupil. “And yet it was staring at you in the face all the time, sir,” he said in tones of reproach. “The trouble was you wouldn’t look at it.” He drew again at his pipe for a moment or two, as if collecting in his mind what he wanted to say. Roger watched him in frank amazement.

“Yes, that was your trouble, sir,” resumed the inspector, in a slightly didactic voice. “All the time you’ve been refusing to look the facts in the face. This was a simple case, so far as just finding out the truth went; as simple as ever I’ve come across. But that wouldn’t do for you. Oh, dear, no! You must go and make a complicated business out of it. As simple a little murder as ever was, but you want to run about and raise all sorts of irrelevant issues that had nothing to do with the case at all.”

“Who did murder Mrs. Vane, then?” demanded Rogers, disregarding these strictures. “If Meadows didn’t, as you seem to be meaning, who the devil did?”

“That’s the trouble with you people with too much imagination,” pursued the inspector. “A simple murder’s never enough for you. You can’t believe a murder can be simple. You’ve got to waste your time ferreting out a lot of stuff to try to make it look less simple than it really is. No good detective ought to have too much imagination. He doesn’t need it. When all⸺”

“Oh, cut the cackle for the time being!” interrupted Roger rudely. “Who did murder Mrs. Vane?”

“When all the evidence points to one person, and motive and opportunity and everything else as well, the real detective doesn’t waste his time saying, ‘Ah, yes! I know a thing or two worth that. When all the evidence and the rest of it points to one person, then the odds are that that person is innocent and someone else has made it look like that. That’s how I should commit a murder, by Jove! I’d fake all the evidence to point to somebody else. That’s what must have been done in this case. So whoever may be guilty, we know one person at any rate who isn’t, and that’s the one that the foolish inspector from Scotland Yard, who hasn’t got a nice big imagination like me, is going to go and suspect. Haw, haw!’ ” The mincing accent with which the inspector strove to represent the speech of this superior person with imagination was offensive in the extreme.

“Who murdered Mrs. Vane, Inspector?” asked Roger coldly.

“Why ask me, Mr. Sheringham?” retorted the inspector, still more offensively. “I’m only the man from Scotland Yard, without any imagination. Don’t ask yourself either, though, because the answer’s staring you in the face; so of course you’d never be able to see it. Go and ask any child of ten in the village. He’d know. He’s known all the time, for the matter of that.”

“Good God!” Roger exclaimed, genuinely shocked. “You don’t seriously mean that⸺” He paused.

“Of course I do!” returned the inspector more genially. “Good gracious, sir, I can’t think how you can have persuaded yourself she didn’t. Everything was against her—every single thing! There wasn’t a loophole, so far as commonsense went (I’m not talking about legal proof, mind you). Of course she did it!” He lay back in his chair and roared with callous laughter at Roger’s unmistakable discomfiture. It was the inspector’s hour, and he was evidently going to enjoy every minute of it.

“But—but I can’t believe it!” Roger stammered. “Margaret Cross! Good Lord!”

“Well, perhaps I ought not to laugh at you, sir,” the inspector went on, continuing nevertheless to do so with the utmost heartiness. “After all, you’re not the first one to be taken in by a pretty face and a nice, innocent, appealing sort of manner, are you? Why, there’s mugs in London being taken in by ’em every day!”