XXXI
THE LETTER AGAIN
On the morning after Sir Malcolm's fleeting visit to the Kings Arms, the manageress was informed by her friend Mr. Carrington that he would like a car immediately after breakfast.
"I really must be a little more energetic, or I'll never find anything to suit me," he smiled in his most leisurely manner. "I am thinking of running out to Keldale to have another look at the place. It might be worth taking if they'd let it."
"But you've been to Keldale already, Mr. Carrington!" said Miss Peterkin. "I wonder you don't have a look at one of the other places."
"I'm one of those fellows who make up their minds slowly," he explained. "But when we cautious fellows do make up our minds, well, something generally happens!"
Circumstances, however, prevented this enthusiastic sportsman from making any further enquiry as to the letting of the Keldale shootings. When Bisset appeared at the front door consternation was in his face. It was veiled under a restrained professional manner, but not sufficiently to escape his visitor's eye.
"What's up?" he asked at once.
Bisset looked for a moment into his sympathetic face, and then in grave whisper said:
"Step in, sir, and I'll tell ye."
He led him into a small morning room, carefully closed the door, and announced,
"Miss Farmond has gone, sir!"
"Gone. When and how?"
"Run away, sir, on her bicycle yesterday afternoon and deil a sign of her since!"
"Any luggage?"
"Just a wee suit case."
"No message left, or anything of that kind?"
"Not a word or a line, sir."
"The devil!" murmured Carrington.
"That's just exac'ly it, sir!"
"No known cause? No difficulty with Lady Cromarty or anything?"
"Nothing that's come to my ears, sir."
Carrington stared blankly into space and remained silent for several minutes. Bisset watched his assistant with growing anxiety.
"Surely, sir," he burst forth at last, "you're not thinking this goes to indicate any deductions or datas showing she's guilty?"
"I'm dashed if I know what to think," murmured Carrington still lost in thought.
Suddenly he turned his eyeglass on the other.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "the day before yesterday I passed that girl riding on a bicycle towards Keldale House after dark! Do you know where she had been?"
"Into the town, sir. I knew she was out, of course, and she just mentioned afterwards where she had been."
"Have you any idea whom she saw or what she did?"
Bisset shook his head.
"I have no datas, sir, that's the plain fac'."
"But you can't think of any likely errand to take her in so late in the afternoon?"
"No, sir. In fact, I mind thinking it was funny like her riding about alone in the dark like yon, for she's feared of being out by hersel' in the dark; I know that."
Carrington reflected for a few moments longer and then seemed to dismiss the subject.
"By the way," he asked, "can you remember if, by any chance, Sir Reginald had any difficulty or trouble or row of any kind with anyone whatever during, say, the month previous to his death? I mean with any of the tenants, or his tradesmen—or his lawyer? Take your time and think carefully."
•••••••
Carrington dismissed his car at Mr. Rattar's office. When he was shown into the lawyer's room, he exhibited a greater air of keenness than usual.
"Well, Mr. Rattar," said he, "you'll be interested to hear that I've got rather a new point of view with regard to this case."
"Indeed?" said Simon, and his lips twitched a little as he spoke. There was no doubt that he was not looking so well as usual. His face had seemed drawn and worried last time Carrington had seen him; now it might almost be termed haggard.
"I find," continued Carrington, "that Sir Reginald displayed a curious and unaccountable irritability before his death. I hear, for instance, that a letter from you had upset him quite unduly."
Carrington paused for an instant, and his monocle was full on Simon all the time, and yet he did not seem to notice the very slight but distinct start which the lawyer gave, for he continued with exactly the same confidential air.
"These seem to me very suggestive symptoms, Mr. Rattar, and I am wondering very seriously whether the true solution of his mysterious death is not—" he paused for an instant and then in a low and earnest voice said, "suicide!"
There was no mistake about the lawyer's start this time, or about the curious fact that the strain seemed suddenly to relax, and a look of relief to take its place. And yet Carrington seemed quite oblivious to anything beyond his own striking new theory.
"That's rather a suggestive idea, isn't it?" said he.
"Very!" replied Simon with the air of one listening to a revelation.
"How he managed to inflict precisely those injuries on himself is at present a little obscure," continued Carrington, "but no doubt a really expert medical opinion will be able to suggest an explanation. The theory fits all the other facts remarkably, doesn't it?"
"Remarkably," agreed Simon.
"This letter of yours, for instance, was a very ordinary business communication, I understand."
"Very ordinary," said Simon.
"Of course, you have a copy of it in your letter book—and also Sir Reginald's reply?"
There was a moment's pause and then Simon's grunt seemed to be forced out of himself. But he followed the grunt with a more assured, "Certainly."
"May I see them?"
"You—you think they are important?"
"As bearing on Sir Reginald's state of mind only."
Simon rang his bell and ordered the letter book to be brought in. While Carrington was examining it, his eyes never left his visitor's face, but they would have had to be singularly penetrating to discover a trace of any emotion there. Throughout his inspection, Carrington's air remained as imperturbable as though he were reading the morning paper.
"According to these letters," he observed, "there seems to have been a trifling but rather curious misunderstanding. In accordance with written instructions of a fortnight previously, you had arranged to let a certain farm to a certain man, and Sir Reginald then complained that you had overlooked a conversation between those dates in which he had cancelled these instructions. He writes with a warmth that clearly indicates his own impression that this conversation had been perfectly explicit and that your forgetfulness or neglect of it was unaccountable, and he proposes to go into this and one or two other matters in the course of a conversation with you which should have taken place that afternoon. You then reply that you are too busy to come out so soon, but will call on the following morning. In the meantime Sir Reginald is murdered, and so the conversation never takes place and no explanation passes between you. Those are the facts, aren't they?"
He looked up from the letter book as he spoke and there was no doubt he noticed something now. Indeed, the haggard look on Simon's face and a bead of perspiration on his forehead were so striking, and so singular in the case of such a tough customer, that the least observant—or the most circumspect—must have stared. Carrington's stare lasted only for the fraction of a second, and then he was polishing his eyeglass with his handkerchief in the most indifferent way.
A second or two passed before Simon answered, and then he said abruptly:
"Sir Reginald was mistaken. No such conversation."
"Do you mean to tell me literally that no such conversation took place? Was it a mere delusion?"
"Er—practically. Yes, a delusion."
"Suicide!" declared Carrington with an air of profound conviction. "Yes, Mr. Rattar, that is evidently the solution. The unfortunate man had clearly not been himself, probably for some little time previously. Well, I'll make a few more enquiries, but I fancy my work is nearly at an end. Good-morning."
He rose and was half way across the room, when he stopped and asked, as if the idea had suddenly occurred to him:
"By the way, I hear that Miss Farmond was in seeing you a couple of days ago."
Again Simon seemed to start a little, and again he hesitated for an instant and then replied with a grunt.
"Had she any news?" asked the other.
Simon grunted again and shook his head, and Carrington threw him a friendly nod and went out.
He maintained the same air till he had turned down a bye street and was alone, and only then he gave vent to his feelings.
"I'm dashed!" he muttered, "absolutely jiggered!"
All the while he shook his head and slashed with his walking stick through the air. There was no doubt that Mr. Carrington was thoroughly and genuinely puzzled.