Finger of Fate Page 6

  “I don’t know that I should have called Trent particularly neat with his fingers,” I said.

  “That makes it even stranger,” he remarked. “People who are not neat with their fingers – men especially – generally dislike sewing.”

  For a moment or two I stared at him blankly, but his face was expressionless.

  “What on earth?” I began.

  “Though of course,” he continued, “occupation of some sort is a great help if one is upset. But sewing a button on a coat is hardly one I should have expected a man to select. You didn’t notice that? Well – it’s not surprising. Like the majority of people you see – but you don’t observe. Now on Mr Trent’s desk was a reel of black cotton and a needle – a sufficiently unusual thing to find on a man’s desk to make one wonder why it was there. When one further notices that the bottom leather button of his shooting coat is sewn on very crudely with black cotton the connection becomes obvious.”

  I confess I found myself disliking the man intensely. Within a few hours of his brother’s death, that he should callously discuss little deductions and inferences struck me as absolutely indecent.

  “Of course I may be wrong,” I said coldly. “But the death of a boy who was almost like a son to me, seems of more importance to my mind than the sewing on of fifty buttons.”

  He turned to me with a sudden very charming smile – a smile that brought back Jack irresistibly.

  “Forgive me, Mr Mercer,” he said. “Believe me, I am not as callous as you think.”

  And with that he relapsed into a silence that continued till we reached the Boar’s Head.

  3

  The inquest revealed nothing that we did not know already. The jury returned a verdict of Accidental Death, tendered their sympathy to the deceased man’s family, and added a rider to the effect that steps should be taken immediately to erect a suitable fence round the top of Draxton Quarry. Trent gave his evidence with considerable emotion – as the jury well knew he and Tennant had been friends – and true to what we had arranged he said nothing about the black monk. It was therefore with some surprise that when I went into the Boar’s Head for luncheon I was at once tackled on the subject by the landlord.

  “It’s all over the place, Mr Mercer,” he said. “Not as how I holds with that sort of stuff, but you know what folks be round here.”

  I made some non-committal reply and sought out Tennant.

  “Are you surprised?” he said quietly, “I’m not.”

  “But who started it?” I cried. “You say you’ve said nothing, and it wasn’t me.”

  “Which narrows the field somewhat – doesn’t it?”

  And at that moment Trent came in, and I tackled him.

  “Good Heavens!” he muttered, “it’s spread as quick as that, has it? It was my gross carelessness. Like a fool last night, I forgot to take the papers out of the pocket of my coat when I changed for dinner. And my man must have seen it. Damn the fellow! I’ll sack him.”

  He went out fuming angrily, and I turned a little curiously to Tennant.

  “Why did you say you weren’t surprised?” I said.

  He smiled enigmatically.

  “Those sort of things have a way of coming out,” he remarked. “Shall we lunch together?”

  And, as we were going in, a page brought him a telegram. He opened it and gave a grunt of satisfaction as he read the contents. Then he turned to me.

  “Would you be good enough to ask me to dinner tonight? And a friend of mine too – a lady.”

  I stared at him blankly.

  “I am aware it sounds a little strange, and my next request will sound stranger still. Does Trent know your family intimately? Your relations, I mean.”

  “Far from it,” I said.

  “So you could quite easily invent a niece, shall we say, without him suspecting anything.”

  “What the devil are you driving at, Tennant?” I cried.

  “Because I would like this friend of mine to be your niece. And I shall meet her for the first time at your house. And so will Trent, who I want you to ask to dinner also. Incidentally here he is. Ask him now, please” – his voice was low and urgent – “and mention your niece.”

  There was something compelling about the man, and I found myself doing as he said.

  “Dine,” said Trent. “Thanks, Mercer, I’d like to. Eight, I suppose.”

  “There will be a niece of mine there,” I remarked. “I don’t think you’ve ever met her. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come, Tennant.”

  “Will it be quite quiet?” he said doubtfully.

  “Just us,” I answered. “And my niece.”

  “Thanks very much,” he said, “I’ll come.”

  At that moment I happened to glance at Trent, and it seemed to me that he gave a tiny frown. It was gone in an instant, but the impression that he wasn’t too well pleased at my inviting Tennant, lingered in my mind. And it was still there when Tennant and the lady arrived at a quarter to eight. All the afternoon I’d been racking my brains trying to think what all the mystery was about, and the instant they came I turned eagerly to Tennant.

  He cut short my questions immediately.

  “Listen, Mr Mercer,” he said curtly, “we haven’t got too much time. This is Miss Greyson. You will call her Monica. You are her uncle: so she will call you uncle – what?”

  “Most people call me Bill,” I said.

  “Very good. She will call you Uncle Bill. She is staying in the house: but that fact must not be alluded to in front of the servants, or they may give it away.”

  “But,” I cried, “what is it all about?”

  “With luck you’ll know before the evening is out,” he said gravely. “Take your cues from us, and if it’s urgent – for God’s sake jump to it, or it may be too late.”

  “What may be too late?” I said blankly.

  “Monica is taking her life in her hands tonight,” was his astounding reply. “Perhaps we all are. Above all – don’t forget – not a word to Trent.”

  And at that moment Trent was announced. In a sort of dream I heard a voice introducing him to Miss Greyson – and realised the voice was my own. In a sort of dream I went in to dinner, and found myself eating what was put in front of me mechanically. Taking her life in her hands. Was I mad – or was he?

  After a while I pulled myself together – as host I had to make some pretence at talking – and found they were discussing the photograph.

  “If I were you, Trent,” Tennant was saying, “I would send that photograph to the Society for Psychical Research.”

  “Dash it, man,” answered Trent, “I couldn’t. I’ve cursed my man’s head off for speaking about it at all, and I don’t want any more publicity. I mean Mary is in the photo too, as well as poor old Jack. It’s incredible how it’s spread all over the place so quickly.”

  “It is without exception the most wonderful spirit photograph I have ever seen,” said Tennant. “And it’s a thing I’m extremely interested in.”

  “Are you?” said Trent in surprise. “Somehow I should never have thought it of you.”

  “Only, of course, as an amateur.” He glanced across at the girl. “Forgive the impertinence, Miss Greyson, but surely you are clairvoyante?”

  She looked at me with a smile.

  “I don’t know what Uncle Bill will say about it,” she said, “but you’re quite right, Mr Tennant. Only I don’t want it talked about in the family, Uncle Bill.”

  “My dear, I’ll say nothing,” I said.

  “How did you know?” asked Trent curiously.

  “My dear fellow,” said Tennant, “when you’ve dabbled in it even as little as I have, you’ll recognise it at a glance. There is something in the face – something indefinable and yet quite obvious. I should imagine that Miss Greyson was possessed of remarkable powers.”

  The girl laughed.

  “That, I’m afraid, I don’t know. I’ve not done much of it, and, of course, when one is in a trance
one knows nothing.”

  “It would be interesting to try tonight,” said Tennant. “That is to say if Miss Greyson doesn’t mind.”

  Trent fidgeted in his chair.

  “I don’t know that I’m particularly keen,” he muttered. “The black monk is enough for me – at any rate for the present.”

  And then for one moment, Tennant stared straight at me, and the unspoken message might have been shouted aloud, so clear was it.

  “I think it might be quite amusing,” I said. “But of course Monica must decide.”

  “I don’t mind,” cried the girl. “If Mr Trent would sooner not…”

  “Oh! I don’t mind,” he said sullenly.

  “I can’t guarantee anything,” went on the girl. “Sometimes I’m told I simply talk gibberish.”

  “Naturally,” said Tennant quietly. “No medium can ever be certain of getting results.”

  For a while we stopped on at the dinner table, but the atmosphere was not congenial. Trent sat in moody silence, looking every now and then from under his eyebrows at the girl. And at length Tennant gave me an almost imperceptible movement of the head.

  “Shall we go into the other room?” I said. “And then Monica shall take charge.”

  “Mind you,” she repeated with a smile, “I don’t guarantee anything.”

  “I suppose we put out the lights?” I said.

  “It’s always better,” she answered. “Now if you three just sit down, anywhere you like, and keep quite still I’ll see what I can do.”

  And the last thing I noticed as I switched off the lights was Trent’s sullen, scowling face. For a while we sat in silence, and I know that my nerves were far from being as steady as I would have liked. That one remark of Tennant’s kept ringing in my head – taking her life in her hands. But how? And why the secrecy over Trent?

  Suddenly a long shuddering sigh came from the girl, and I sat up tensely.

  “She’s under,” said Tennant in a low voice. “Be careful.”

  Again silence – and then a man’s loud voice – “Peter.”

  “Good God!” I muttered, “it’s Jack.”

  I could hear Trent’s breath come in a quick hiss.

  “Peter! Peter!”

  “Is that you, Jack?” said Tennant quietly.

  “Peter! The button. Proof from the button.”

  “What button, Jack?”

  “Proof. Proof.” The voice was far away. “He came down to get it.”

  “Jack, come back, Jack. How are you, old chap?”

  “Proof. Peter – no accident. That devil – that devil…”

  “Who, Jack – who. Did someone murder you?”

  “That devil – that devil – Laurence…”

  There came a shrill piercing scream, and a dreadful worrying noise.

  “Lights,” roared Tennant, and I dashed for the switch. In the room behind, a voice I didn’t recognise was muttering harshly again and again: “Yes – damn you, I did it. I did it, you swine.” On her back, on the floor was Monica Greyson and kneeling over her with his hands clutching her throat was Trent. His face was distorted with fury: there was murder in every line of it. And even as I watched, fascinated with horror, Tennant and another man hurled themselves on him.

  “Sand-bag him, Simpson,” shouted Tennant. “He’ll kill her.”

  And the next instant Trent lay still, and Tennant with his arms round the girl was calling for brandy.

  “Good enough, Simpson, I think,” he said curtly, and the other nodded. “By the way, Mercer – this is Inspector Simpson of Scotland Yard.”

  “But what does it all mean,” I said feebly.

  “That that devil murdered Jack in cold blood,” he said grimly. “And he’s going to swing for it.”

  Trent, handcuffed by now, had come to, and lay glaring at the speaker.

  “You wouldn’t have got me but for that cursed girl,” he snarled. “A man can’t compete against that.”

  And Tennant laughed.

  “It may interest you to know, Laurence Trent, that the whole thing tonight has been a fake from beginning to end. Just as your photograph of the black monk was a fake.”

  4

  “Has it ever occurred to you, Mercer, that by far the best way of stopping people talking about a thing, is to present them with a ready-made solution which accounts for that thing? If in addition that solution can be substantiated by an unbiased witness its value is greatly increased.”

  Trent had gone in the custody of Inspector Simpson, and Tennant and I and the girl – little the worse now for her rough handling – were sitting in my study.

  “There is nothing so fatal,” he continued calmly, “to arriving at the truth as to start with a preconceived theory. And a ready-made solution in nine cases out of ten causes just such a start. If a man is perfectly satisfied with his solution he has no incentive to try and find another.

  “The preconceived theory in this case was that Jack had met his death accidentally. I was perfectly prepared to believe it: at the same time I was equally prepared to disbelieve it. And when I arrived here, I endeavoured to make my mind a blank except for three facts, none of which were conclusive and all of which were perfectly consistent with the accident theory.

  “The first was that it was strange that Jack should have been standing so near the edge. Not impossible – but strange.

  “The second was that it was Laurence Trent who found him.

  “And the third was – that if it wasn’t an accident – Trent is, as far as I know, the only man who had any motive for killing Jack – namely Mary.

  “That was my state of mind when I first saw Trent. I had no proof whatever that it wasn’t an accident: but I had no proof that it was. And then I noticed the button. To you it conveyed nothing: to me it was a most significant thing. To a man who was in the condition of agitation that he was in to set to work to sew a button on his coat struck me as most peculiar. Unless he was afraid of such a thing as finger-marks: unless, perhaps – it was still only perhaps – there had been a struggle, a button had been wrenched off his coat, and he had decided to sew it on to prevent questions.

  “Then you started the black monk question. Well, Mercer, I frankly admit I’m sceptical. But I am old enough now to realise that just because I don’t happen to believe in a thing, that that is no proof of its falseness. Men of brains, men of intellect have assured me that they have indisputable proof that spirit photographs have been taken. And when Trent showed me his copy I was still prepared to believe in the possibility of its being genuine. Until you showed me yours. Did you ever see the two prints side by side?”

  “Never,” I said.

  “And Trent never intended that anyone should. It was his one great mistake. In your copy the outstretched arm of the black monk just reached a corner of the priory behind it: in his copy there was at least the sixteenth of an inch overlap. Which proved instantly that it was merely an ordinary fake done by superimposing one film on another. It also proved instantly that we were dealing with a singularly dangerous man – and a singularly clever one.”

  “For the life of me I don’t quite see the object,” I said.

  “You go to the theatre, don’t you, Mercer? And you know the effect of concentrating the limelight on one figure. The audience doesn’t worry about the others. Now if you were to walk into any public house within a radius of five miles at this moment, you would find that the black monk is the sole topic of conversation. The sceptical ones will say it’s coincidence, and the superstitious that it’s fate. But it would have served its purpose with both parties – and that was to occupy the front of the stage leaving the rest in darkness.

  “You were there to give an air of truth to the whole thing. Why – you believed it yourself: you vouched for his agitation when he took the photo.”

  “I can hardly believe that the man had planned the whole thing then,” I said. “It seems too monstrous.”

  Tennant shrugged his shoulders.

&nbs
p; “Who knows? Perhaps it was a whim of the moment: perhaps he really did think some trick of the light was the black monk. And then the idea grew until it obsessed him. He was committed to nothing: all he had to do was to wait his chance. But the point is that when I left with you in the car I knew Trent had murdered Jack. Which is a totally different thing to proving it. He had destroyed the main evidence by tipping the ink over it: and even if the police arrested him – which was most unlikely – there wasn’t a hope of his being convicted on the evidence I had.”

  He mixed himself a drink.

  “Theatrical, perhaps. And yet I don’t know. On the face of it it seemed so theatrical that it must be true. Wherein lay his cleverness. However, Monica proved tonight that other people could act too.”

  And then came the strangest thing of that strange night.

  “I suppose you realise, Peter, don’t you,” she said quietly, “that I was completely off?”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “You were what?” he stammered. “You say you were – off. Good God!”

  THE HIDDEN WITNESS

  I don’t know exactly when it was that I first realised that Miles Standish was in love with Mary Somerville. As a general rule men are very unobservant on such matters, and I suppose I was no exception. All I know is that when I mentioned the matter guardedly to Phyllis Dankerton she observed brightly that the next great discovery I should make was that the earth was round. So I suppose it must have been fairly obvious.

  Anyway it doesn’t much matter, except that I’d like to get it accurate. The house party was all there when I arrived. To take them in order there were, first of all, our host and hostess – John Somerville and his wife. He was a wealthy man – something in cotton – who had reached such a position of affluence at a comparatively early age that he could, had he wanted to, have given up business altogether. But he preferred to have something to do, and now, at the age of forty-five, he still went up to London five days a week. A smallish man, thin and spare, with shrewd thoughtful eyes that missed very little that went on around him.

  It was through Mary, his wife, that I had got to know him. She was fifteen years his junior, and if ever there was a case of wondering why two people had got married, this was it. She was one of the most lovely creatures I have ever seen – the sort of girl who could have married literally anyone she chose. And then quite suddenly five years ago she had married John.