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Bobby was left to his own thoughts.
He finished his tea. Then he went over in his mind the possibilities of Frankie’s amazing theory, and ended by deciding reluctantly against it. He then cast about for other distractions.
His eye was caught by the vases of lilies. Frightfully sweet of Frankie to bring him all these flowers, and of course they were lovely, but he wished it had occurred to her to bring him a few detective stories instead. He cast his eye over the table beside him. There was a novel of Ouida’s and a copy of John Halifax, Gentleman and last week’s Marchbolt Weekly Times. He picked up John Halifax, Gentleman.
After five minutes he put it down. To a mind nourished on The Third Bloodstain, The Case of the Murdered Archduke and The Strange Adventure of the Florentine Dagger, John Halifax, Gentleman, lacked pep.
With a sigh he picked up last week’s Marchbolt Weekly Times.
A moment or two later he was pressing the bell beneath his pillow with a vigour which brought a nurse into the room at a run.
‘Whatever’s the matter, Mr Jones? Are you taken bad?’
‘Ring up the Castle,’ cried Bobby. ‘Tell Lady Frances she must come back here at once.’
‘Oh, Mr Jones. You can’t send a message like that.’
‘Can’t I?’ said Bobby. ‘If I were allowed to get up from this blasted bed you’d soon see whether I could or couldn’t. As it is, you’ve got to do it for me.’
‘But she’ll hardly be back.’
‘You don’t know that Bentley.’
‘She won’t have had her tea.’
‘Now look here, my dear girl,’ said Bobby, ‘don’t stand there arguing with me. Ring up as I tell you. Tell her she’s got to come here at once because I’ve got something very important to say to her.’
Overborne, but unwilling, the nurse went. She took some liberties with Bobby’s message.
If it was no inconvenience to Lady Frances, Mr Jones wondered if she would mind coming as he had something he would like to say to her, but, of course, Lady Frances was not to put herself out in any way.
Lady Frances replied curtly that she would come at once.
‘Depend upon it,’ said the nurse to her colleagues, ‘she’s sweet on him! That’s what it is.’
Frankie arrived all agog.
‘What’s this desperate summons?’ she demanded.
Bobby was sitting up in bed, a bright red spot in each cheek. In his hand he waved the copy of the Marchbolt Weekly Times.
‘Look at this, Frankie.’
Frankie looked.
‘Well,’ she demanded.
‘This is the picture you meant when you said it was touched up but quite like the Cayman woman.’
Bobby’s finger pointed to a somewhat blurred reproduction of a photograph. Underneath it were the words: ‘PORTRAIT FOUND ON THE DEAD MAN AND BY WHICH HE WAS IDENTIFIED. MRS AMELIA CAYMAN, THE DEAD MAN’S SISTER.’
‘That’s what I said, and it’s true, too. I can’t see anything to rave over in it.’
‘No more than I.’
‘But you said –’
‘I know I said. But you see, Frankie’ – Bobby’s voice became very impressive – ‘this isn’t the photograph that I put back in the dead man’s pocket …’
They looked at each other.
‘Then in that case,’ began Frankie slowly.
‘Either there must have been two photographs –’
‘– Which isn’t likely –’
‘Or else –’
They paused.
‘That man – what’s his name?’ said Frankie.
‘Bassington-ffrench!’ said Bobby.
‘I’m quite sure!’
Chapter 8 Riddle of a Photograph
They stared at each other as they tried to adjust themselves to the altered situation.
‘It couldn’t be anyone else,’ said Bobby. ‘He was the only person who had the chance.’
‘Unless, as we said, there were two photographs.’
‘We agreed that that wasn’t likely. If there had been two photographs they’d have tried to identify him by means of both of them – not only one.’
‘Anyway, that’s easily found out,’ said Frankie. ‘We can ask the police. We’ll assume for the moment that there was just the one photograph, the one you saw that you put back again in his pocket. It was there when you left him, and it wasn’t there when the police came, therefore the only person who could have taken it away and put the other one in its place was this man Bassington-ffrench. What was he like, Bobby?’
Bobby frowned in the effort of remembrance.
‘A sort of nondescript fellow. Pleasant voice. A gentleman and all that. I really didn’t notice him particularly. He said that he was a stranger down here – and something about looking for a house.’
‘We can verify that, anyway,’ said Frankie. ‘Wheeler & Owen are the only house agents.’ Suddenly she gave a shiver. ‘Bobby, have you thought? If Pritchard was pushed over – Bassington-ffrench must be the man who did it …’
‘That’s pretty grim,’ said Bobby. ‘He seemed such a nice pleasant sort of fellow. But you know, Frankie, we can’t be sure he really was pushed over.’
‘You have been all along.’
‘No, I just wanted it to be that way because it made things more exciting. But now it’s more or less proved. If it was murder everything fits in. Your unexpected appearance which upsets the murderer’s plans. Your discovery of the photograph and, in consequence, the need to put you out of the way.’
‘There’s a flaw there,’ said Bobby.
‘Why?’ You were the only person who saw that photograph. As soon as Bassington-ffrench was left alone with the body he changed the photograph which only you had seen.’
But Bobby continued to shake his head.
‘No, that won’t do. Let’s grant for the moment that that photograph was so important that I had to be “got out of the way”, as you put it. Sounds absurd but I suppose it’s just possible. Well, then, whatever was going to be done would have to be done at once. The fact that I went to London and never saw the Marchbolt Weekly Times or the other papers with the photograph in it was just pure chance – a thing nobody could count on. The probability was that I should say at once, “That isn’t the photograph I saw.” Why wait till after the inquest when everything was nicely settled?’
‘There’s something in that,’ admitted Frankie.
‘And there’s another point. I can’t be absolutely sure, of course, but I could almost swear that when I put the photograph back in the dead man’s pocket Bassington-ffrench wasn’t there. He didn’t arrive till about five or ten minutes later.’
‘He might have been watching you all the time,’ argued Frankie.
‘I don’t see very well how he could,’ said Bobby slowly. ‘There’s really only one place where you can see down to exactly the spot we were. Farther round, the cliff bulges and then recedes underneath, so that you can’t see over. There’s just the one place and when Bassington-ffrench did arrive there I heard him at once. Footsteps echo down below. He may have been near at hand, but he wasn’t looking over till then – I’ll swear.’
‘Then you think that he didn’t know about your seeing the photograph?’
‘I don’t see how he could have known.’
‘And he can’t have been afraid you’d seen him doing it – the murder, I mean – because, as you say, that’s absurd. You’d never have held your tongue about it. It looks as though it must have been something else altogether.’
‘Only I don’t see what it could have been.’
‘Something they didn’t know about till after the inquest. I don’t know why I say “they”.’
‘Why not? After all, the Caymans must have been in it, too. It’s probably a gang. I like gangs.’
‘That’s a low taste,’ said Frankie absently. ‘A single-handed murder is much higher class. Bobby!’
‘Yes?’
‘What was it Pritchard said – just before he died? You know, you told me about it that day on the links. That funny question?’
‘“Why didn’t they ask Evans?”’
‘Yes. Suppose that was it?’
‘But that’s ridiculous.’
‘It sounds so, but it might be important, really. Bobby, I’m sure it’s that. Oh, no, I’m being an idiot – you never told the Caymans about it?’
‘I did, as a matter of fact,’ said Bobby slowly.
‘You did?’
‘Yes. I wrote to them that evening. Saying, of course, that it was probably quite unimportant.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Cayman wrote back, politely agreeing, of course, that there was nothing in it, but thanking me for taking the trouble. I felt rather snubbed.’
‘And two days later you got this letter from a strange firm bribing you to go to South America?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well,’ said Frankie, ‘I don’t know what more you want. They try that first; you turn it down, and the next thing is that they follow you round and seize a good moment to empty a lot of morphia into your bottle of beer.’
‘Then the Caymans are in it?’
‘Of course the Caymans are in it!’
‘Yes,’ said Bobby thoughtfully. ‘If your reconstruction is correct, they must be in it. According to our present theory, it goes like this. Dead man X is deliberately pushed over cliff – presumably by BF (pardon these initials). It is important that X should not be correctly identified, so portrait of Mrs C is put in his pocket and portrait of fair unknown removed. (Who was she, I wonder?)’
‘Keep to the point,’ said Frankie sternly.
‘Mrs C waits for photographs to appear and turns up as grief-stricken sister and identifies X as her brother from foreign parts.’
‘You don’t believe he could really have been her brother?’
‘Not for a moment! You know, it puzzled me all along. The Caymans were a different class altogether. The dead man was – well, it sounds a most awful thing to say and just like some deadly old retired Anglo-Indian, but the dead man was a pukka sahib.’
‘And the Caymans most emphatically weren’t?’
‘Most emphatically.’
‘And then, just when everything has gone off well from the Caymans’ point of view – body successfully identified, verdict of accidental death, everything in the garden lovely – you come along and mess things up,’ mused Frankie.
‘“Why didn’t they ask Evans?”’ Bobby repeated the phrase thoughtfully. ‘You know, I can’t see what on earth there can be in that to put the wind up anybody.’
‘Ah! that’s because you don’t know. It’s like making crossword puzzles. You write down a clue and you think it’s too idiotically simple and that everyone will guess it straight off, and you’re frightfully surprised when they simply can’t get it in the least. “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” must have been a most frightfully significant phrase to them, and they couldn’t realize that it meant nothing at all to you.’
‘More fools they.’
‘Oh, quite so. But it’s just possible they thought that if Pritchard said that, he might have said something more which would also recur to you in due time. Anyway, they weren’t going to take chances. You were safer out of the way.’
‘They took a lot of risk. Why didn’t they engineer another “accident”?’
‘No, no. That would have been stupid. Two accidents within a week of each other? It might have suggested a connection between the two, and then people would have begun inquiring into the first one. No, I think there’s a kind of bald simplicity about their method which is really rather clever.’
‘And yet you said just now that morphia wasn’t easy to get hold of.’
‘No more it isn’t. You have to sign poison books and things. Oh! of course, that’s a clue. Whoever did it had easy access to supplies of morphia.’
‘A doctor, a hospital nurse, or a chemist,’ suggested Bobby.
‘Well, I was thinking more of illicitly imported drugs.’
‘You can’t mix up too many different sorts of crime,’ said Bobby.
‘You see, the strong point would be the absence of motive. Your death doesn’t benefit anyone. So what will the police think?’
‘A lunatic,’ said Bobby. ‘And that’s what they do think.’
‘You see? It’s awfully simple, really.’
Bobby began to laugh suddenly.
‘What’s amusing you?’
‘Just the thought of how sick-making it must be for them! All that morphia – enough to kill five or six people – and here I am still alive and kicking.’
‘One of Life’s little ironies that one can’t foresee,’ agreed Frankie.
‘The question is – what do we do next?’ said Bobby practically.
‘Oh! lots of things,’ said Frankie promptly.
‘Such as … ?’
‘Well – finding out about the photograph – that there was only one, not two. And about Bassington-ffrench’s house hunting.’
‘That will probably be quite all right and above board.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Look here, Frankie, think a minute. Bassington-ffrench must be above suspicion. He must be all clear and above board. Not only must there be nothing to connect him in any way with the dead man, but he must have a proper reason for being down here. He may have invented house hunting on the spur of the moment, but I bet he carried out something of the kind. There must be no suggestion of a “mysterious stranger seen in the neighbourhood of the accident”. I fancy that Bassington-ffrench is his own name and that he’s the sort of person who would be quite above suspicion.’
‘Yes,’ said Frankie thoughtfully. ‘That’s a very good deduction. There will be nothing whatever to connect Bassington-ffrench with Alex Pritchard. Now, if we knew who the dead man really was –’
‘Ah, then it might be different.’
‘So it was very important that the body should not be recognized – hence all the Cayman camouflage. And yet it was taking a big risk.’
‘You forget that Mrs Cayman identified him as soon as was humanly possible. After that, even if there had been pictures of him in the papers (you know how blurry these things are) people would only say: “Curious, this man Pritchard, who fell over a cliff, is really extraordinarily like Mr X.”’
‘There must be more to it than that,’ said Frankie shrewdly. ‘X must have been a man who wouldn’t easily be missed. I mean, he couldn’t have been the sort of family man whose wife or relations would go to the police at once and report him missing.’
‘Good for you, Frankie. No, he must have been just going abroad or perhaps just come back (he was marvellously tanned – like a big-game hunter – he looked that sort of person) and he can’t have had any very near relations who knew all about his movements.’
‘We’re deducing beautifully,’ said Frankie. ‘I hope we’re not deducing all wrong.’
‘Very likely,’ said Bobby. ‘But I think what we’ve said so far is fairly sound sense – granted, that is, the wild improbability of the whole thing.’
Frankie waved away the wild improbability with an airy gesture.
‘The thing is – what to do next,’ she said. ‘It seems to me we’ve got three angles of attack.’
‘Go on, Sherlock.’
‘The first is you. They’ve made one attempt on your life. They’ll probably try again. This time we might get what they call “a line” on them. Using you as a decoy, I mean.’
‘No thank you, Frankie,’ said Bobby with feeling. ‘I’ve been very lucky this time, but I mightn’t be so lucky again if they changed the attack to a blunt instrument. I was thinking of taking a great deal of care of myself in the future. The decoy idea can be washed out.’
‘I was afraid you’d say that,’ said Frankie with a sigh. ‘Young men are sadly degenerate nowadays. Father says so. They don’t enjoy being uncomfortable and doing dangerous and unpleasant things any longer. It’s a pity.’
‘A great pity,’ said Bobby, but he spoke with firmness. ‘What’s the second plan of campaign?’
‘Working from the “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” clue,’ said Frankie. ‘Presumably the dead man came down here to see Evans, whoever he was. Now, if we could find Evans –’
‘How many Evanses,’ Bobby interrupted, ‘do you think there are in Marchbolt?’
‘Seven hundred, I should think,’ admitted Frankie.
‘At least! We might do something that way, but I’m rather doubtful.’
‘We could list all the Evanses and visit the likely ones.’
‘And ask them – what?’
‘That’s the difficulty,’ said Frankie.
‘We need to know a little more,’ said Bobby. ‘Then that idea of yours might come in useful. What’s No. 3?’
‘This man Bassington-ffrench. There we have got something tangible to go upon. It’s an uncommon name. I’ll ask Father. He knows all these county family names and their various branches.’
‘Yes,’ said Bobby. ‘We might do something that way.’
‘At any rate, we are going to do something?’
‘Of course we are. Do you think I’m going to be given eight grains of morphia and do nothing about it?’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Frankie.
‘And besides that,’ said Bobby, ‘there’s the indignity of the stomach pump to be washed out.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Frankie. ‘You’ll be getting morbid and indecent again if I don’t stop you.’
‘You have no true womanly sympathy,’ said Bobby.
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