barthorpe takes charge

The man who strode into the room as the policeman threw the door open for him immediately made two distinct impressions on the inspector and the doctor, neither of whom had ever seen him before. The first was that he instantly conveyed a sense of alert coolness and self-possession; the second that, allowing for differences of age, he was singularly like the dead man who lay in their midst. Both were tall, well-made men; both were clean-shaven; both were much alike as to feature and appearance. Apart from the fact that Jacob Herapath was a man of sixty and grey-haired, and his nephew one of thirty to thirty-five and dark-haired, they were very much alike—the same mould of nose, mouth, and chin, the same strength of form. The doctor noted this resemblance particularly, and he involuntarily glanced from the living to the dead.

Barthorpe Herapath bent over his dead uncle for no more than a minute. His face was impassive, almost stern as he turned to the others. He nodded slightly to Mr. Tertius and to Selwood; then he gave his attention to the officials.

“Yes?” he said inquiringly and yet with a certain tone of command. “Now tell me all you know of this.”

He stood listening silently, with concentrated attention, as the inspector put him in possession of the facts already known. He made no comment, asked no questions, until the inspector had finished; then he turned to Selwood, almost pointedly ignoring Mr. Tertius.

“What is known of this in Portman Square, Mr. Selwood?” he inquired. “Tell me, briefly.”

Selwood, who had only met Barthorpe Herapath once or twice, and who had formed an instinctive and peculiar dislike to him, for which he could not account, accepted the invitation to be brief. In a few words he told exactly what had happened at Jacob Herapath’s house.

“My cousin is here, then?” exclaimed Barthorpe.

“Miss Wynne is in the larger waiting-room down the corridor,” replied Selwood.

“I will go to her in a minute,” said Barthorpe. “Now, inspector, there are certain things to be done at once. There will, of course, have to be an inquest—your people must give immediate notice to the coroner. Then—the body—that must be properly attended to—that, too, you will see about. Before you go away yourself, I want you to join me in collecting all the evidence we can get on the spot. You have one of your detective staff here?—good. Now, have you searched—him?”

The inspector drew open a drawer in the front desk which occupied the centre of the room, and pointed to some articles which lay within.

“Everything that we found upon him is in there,” he answered. “You see there is not much—watch and chain, pocket articles, a purse, some loose money, a pocket-book, a cigar-case—that’s all. One matter I should have expected to find, we didn’t find.”

“What’s that?” asked Barthorpe quickly.

“Keys,” answered the inspector. “We found no keys on him—not even a latch-key. Yet he must have let himself in here, and I understand from the caretaker that he must have unlocked this door after he’d entered by the outer one.”

Barthorpe made no immediate answer beyond a murmur of perplexity.

“Strange,” he said after a pause, during which he bent over the open drawer. “However, that’s one of the things to be gone into. Close that drawer, lock it up, and for the present keep the key yourself—you and I will examine the contents later. Now for these immediate inquiries. Mr. Selwood, will you please telephone at once to Portman Square and tell Kitteridge to send Mountain, the coachman, here—instantly. Tell Kitteridge to come with him. Inspector, will you see to this arrangement we spoke of, and also tell the caretaker that we shall want him presently? Now I will go to my cousin.”

He strode off, still alert, composed, almost bustling in his demeanour, to the waiting-room in which they had left Peggie—a moment later, Selwood, following him down the corridor, saw him enter and close the door. And Selwood cursed himself for a fool for hating to think that these two should be closeted together, for disliking the notion that Barthorpe Herapath was Peggie Wynne’s cousin—and now, probably, her guardian protector. For during those three weeks in which he had been Jacob Herapath’s secretary, Selwood had seen a good deal of his employer’s niece, and he was already well over the verge of falling in love with her, and was furious with himself for daring to think of a girl who was surely one of the richest heiresses in London. He was angry with himself, too, for disliking Barthorpe, for he was inclined to cultivate common-sense, and common-sense coldly reminded him that he did not know Barthorpe Herapath well enough to either like or dislike him.

Half an hour passed—affairs suggestive of the tragedy of the night went on in the Herapath Estate Office. Two women in the garb of professional nurses came quietly, and passed into the room where Herapath lay dead. A man arrayed in dismal black came after them, summoned by the police who were busy at the telephone as soon as Selwood had finished with it. Selwood himself, having summoned Kitteridge and Mountain, hung about, waiting. He heard the police talking in undertones of clues and theories, and of a coroner’s inquest, and the like; now and then he looked curiously at Mr. Tertius, who had taken a seat in the hall and was apparently wrapped in meditation. And still Barthorpe Herapath remained closeted with Peggie Wynne.

A taxi drove up and deposited the butler and the coachman at the door. Selwood motioned them inside.

“Mr. Barthorpe Herapath wants both of you,” he said curtly. “I suppose he will ask for you presently.”

Kitteridge let out an anxious inquiry.

“The master, sir?” he exclaimed. “Is——”

“Good heavens!” muttered Selwood. “I—of course, you don’t know. Mr. Herapath is dead.”

The two servants started and stared at each other. Before either could speak Barthorpe Herapath suddenly emerged from the waiting-room and looked round the hall. He beckoned to the inspector, who was talking in low tones with the detective, at a little distance.

“Now, inspector,” he said, “will you and your officer come in? And the caretaker—and you, Kitteridge, and you, Mountain. Mr. Selwood, will you come in, too?”

He stood at the door while those he had invited inside passed into the room where Peggie still sat. And as he stood there, and Selwood wound up the little procession, Mr. Tertius rose and also made as if to join the others. Barthorpe stopped him by intruding himself between him and the door.

“This is a private inquiry of my own, Mr. Tertius,” he said, with a meaning look.

Selwood, turning in sheer surprise at this announcement, so pointed and so unmistakable, saw a faint tinge of colour mount to the elder man’s usually pale cheeks. Mr. Tertius stopped sharply and looked at Barthorpe in genuine surprise.

“You do not wish me to enter—to be present?” he faltered.

“Frankly, I don’t,” said Barthorpe, with aggressive plainness. “There will be a public inquiry—I can’t stop you from attending that.”

Mr. Tertius drew back. He stood for a moment staring hard at Barthorpe; then, with a slight, scarcely perceivable bow, he turned away, crossed the hall, and went out of the front door. And Barthorpe Herapath laughed—a low, sneering laugh—and following the other men into the waiting-room, locked the door upon those assembled there. As if he and they were assembled on some cut-and-dried business matter, he waved them all to chairs, and himself dropped into one at the head of the table, close to that in which Peggie was sitting.

“Now, inspector,” he began, “you and I must get what we may as well call first information about this matter. There will be a vast amount of special and particular investigation later on, but I want us, at the very outset, while facts are fresh in the mind, to get certain happenings clearly before us. And for this reason—I understand that the police-surgeon is of opinion that my uncle committed suicide. With all respect to him—I’m sorry he’s gone before I could talk to him—that theory cannot be held for an instant! My cousin, Miss Wynne, and I knew our uncle far too well to believe that theory for a single moment, and we shall combat it by every means in our power when the inquest is held. No—my uncle was murdered! Now I want to know all I can get to know of his movements last night. And first I think we’ll hear what the caretaker can tell us. Hancock,” he continued, turning to an elderly man who looked like an ex-soldier, “I understand you found my uncle’s body?”

The caretaker, obviously much upset by the affairs of the morning, pulled himself up to attention.

“I did, sir,” he replied.

“What time was that?”

“Just eight o’clock, sir—that’s my usual time for opening the office.”

“Tell us exactly how you found him, Hancock.”

“I opened the door of Mr. Herapath’s private room, sir, to pull up the blinds and open the window. When I walked in I saw him lying across the hearth-rug. Then I noticed the—the revolver.”

“And of course that gave you a turn. What did you do? Go into the room?”

“No, sir! I shut the door again, went straight to the telephone and rang up the police-station. Then I waited at the front door till the inspector there came along.”

“Was the front door fastened as usual when you went to it at that time?”

“It was fastened as it always is, sir, by the latch. It was Mr. Herapath’s particular orders that it never should be fastened any other way at night, because he sometimes came in at night, with his latch-key.”

“Just so. Now these offices are quite apart and distinct from the rest of the building—mark that, inspector! There’s no way out of them into the building, nor any way out of the building into them. In fact, the only entrance into these offices is by the front door. Isn’t that so, Hancock?”

“That’s quite so, sir—only that one door.”

“No area entrance or side-door?”

“None, sir—nothing but that.”

“And the only tenants in here—these offices—at night are you and your wife, Hancock?”

“That’s all, sir.”

“Now, where are your rooms?”

“We’ve two rooms in the basement, sir—living-room and kitchen—and two rooms on the top floor—a bedroom and a bathroom.”

“On the top-floor. How many floors are there?”

“Well, sir, there’s the basement—then there’s this—then there’s two floors that’s used by the clerks—then there’s ours.”

“That’s to say there are two floors between your bedroom and this ground floor?”

“Yes, sir—two.”

“Very well. Now, about last night. What time did you and your wife go to bed?”

“Eleven o’clock, sir—half an hour later than usual.”

“You’d previously looked round, I suppose?”

“Been all round, sir—I always look into every room in the place last thing at night—thoroughly.”

“Are you and your wife sound sleepers?”

“Yes, sir—both of us. Good sleepers.”

“You heard no sound after you got to bed?”

“Nothing, sir—neither of us.”

“No recollection of hearing a revolver shot?—not even as if it were a long way off?”

“No, sir—we never heard anything—nothing unusual, at any rate.”

“You heard no sound of doors opening or being shut, nor of any conveyance coming to the door?”

“No, sir, nothing at all.”

“Well, one or two more questions, Hancock. You didn’t go into the room after first catching sight of the body? Just so—but you’d notice things, even in a hurried glance. Did you notice any sign of a struggle—overturned chair or anything?”

“No, sir. I did notice that Mr. Herapath’s elbow chair, that he always sat in at his desk, was pushed back a bit, and was a bit on one side as it were. That was all.”

“And the light—the electric light? Was that on?”

“No, sir.”

“Then all you can tell us comes to this—that you never heard anything, and had no notion of what was happening, or had happened, until you came down in the morning?”

“Just so, sir. If I’d known what was going on, or had gone on, I should have been down at once.”

Barthorpe nodded and turned to the coachman.

“Now, Mountain,” he said. “We want to hear your story. Be careful about your facts—what you can tell us is probably of the utmost importance.”

Table of Contents