with painstaking care and took a couple of pictures of the room with my little camera, which I had brought with me. I also examined the ground outside the window, but it appeared to have been so heavily trampled that I judged it was useless to waste time over it. Now I had seen all that Hunter’s Lodge had to show me. I must go back to Elmer’s Dale and get into touch with Japp. Accordingly I took leave of the Haverings, and was driven off in the car that had brought us up from the station.

Japp I found at the Matlock Arms, and he took me forthwith to see the body. Harrington Pace was a small, spare, cleanshaven man, typically American in appearance. He had been shot through the back of the head, and the revolver had been discharged at close quarters.

“Turned away for a moment,” remarked Japp, “and the other fellow snatched up a revolver and shot him. The one Mrs. Havering handed over to us was fully loaded, and I suppose the other one was also. Curious what darn fool things people do. Fancy keeping two loaded revolvers hanging up on your wall!”

“What do you think of the case?” I asked as we left the gruesome chamber behind us.

“Well, I’d got my eye on Havering to begin with.... Oh, yes,”—noting my exclamation of astonishment,—“Havering has one or two shady incidents in his past. When he was a boy at Oxford, there was some funny business about the signature on one of his father’s checks. All hushed up, of course. Then he’s pretty heavily in debt now, and they’re the kind of debts he wouldn’t like to go to his uncle about; whereas you may be sure the uncle’s will would be in his favor. Yes, I’d got my eye on him, and that’s why I wanted to speak to him before he saw his wife; but their statements dovetail all right, and I’ve been to the station, and there’s no doubt whatever that he left by the six-fifteen. That gets up to London about ten-thirty. He went straight to his club, he says, and if that’s confirmed all right—why, he couldn’t have been shooting his uncle here at nine o’clock in a black beard!”

“Ah, yes—I was going to ask you what you thought about that beard?”

Japp winked.

“I think it grew pretty fast—grew in the five miles from Elmer’s Dale to Hunter’s Lodge. Americans that I’ve met are mostly clean shaven. I questioned the housekeeper first, and then her mistress, and their stories agree all right; but I’m sorry Mrs. Havering didn’t get a look at the fellow. She’s a smart woman, and she might have noticed 

 Prev. P 7/12 next