“Well, doctor, you’ll be wanting to get along now, I suppose,” the inspector broke in on this dilemma. “And Mr. Sheringham, I’m afraid I shall have to turn you out of here. This room’s got to be kept locked from now on, and nobody allowed in except under orders from me.”
“Right-ho, Inspector,” Roger acquiesced. “And of course all these breakfast things and so on will have to be analysed, if they do find poison in the body, won’t they? By the way, there’s his pipe on the floor there; he may have been smoking it just before he died.—Well, doctor, if we’re to be turned out, I’ll stroll along part of the way with you.”
The doctor managed to conceal his joy at the prospect.
Inspector Moresby watched them go with his twinkle in full action. His obvious surmise was not amiss. Roger obtained some excellent exercise, but nothing else. For half-a-mile he walked by the doctor’s side, pumping busily; but either the well of his companion’s information had run dry or else the pumping machinery was out of gear. In either case, truth remained coyly in her fastness and none of Roger’s strenuous efforts succeeded in bringing her to the surface.
Returning disconsolate to the inn, however, he had a pleasant surprise in finding Anthony unexpectedly in attendance. For the next hour or two he was able to discourse, on the farthest unsubmerged rock, to a thrilled audience of one to his heart’s content.
Chapter XX.
Poisons and Pipes
Roger did not see the inspector again that day till supper, when he was obviously tired out and disinclined to talk. He referred in terms of gentle sarcasm to Roger’s breach of trust, though quite without heat, his attitude being one rather of disillusionment than anger; one gathered that the person he really blamed for the business was himself, for being such a consummate idiot as to trust a journalist. He listened to Roger’s explanation and apologies and accepted the latter, but retaliated, as the culprit had foreseen, by refusing to utter a single word about the case.
The inquest was duly opened the following morning, but though Roger attended in a spirit of pious hope nothing of the least importance transpired. Twelve solemn rustics viewed the body and then sat perspiring in the village schoolroom, and that was practically all that happened. Almost the only witness was the stout landlady, who was able to give evidence of identity and who also had been the last person to see the deceased alive. She agreed, in the time-hallowed formula, that he had then seemed in his usual health and spirits, and added, with more originality, that had he been there when she heard of his death the Coroner could have knocked her down with a feather. She was going on to add a good deal more, but was held with a testy hand.
Inspector Moresby deposed to finding the body, and Roger, somewhat to his surprise, was called to give corroborative evidence. As to who the dead man really was, the inspector preserved a strict silence; and whether the Coroner had been taken into the secret or not, the court was apparently content to accept the Rev. Meadows as a chance visitor to Ludmouth on a prolonged stay and made no inquiry into his antecedents. The whole proceedings had not lasted more than a quarter-of-an-hour when, Dr. Young being called and stating his inability to give the cause of death, the enquiry was adjourned for this to be ascertained and the Coroner formally ordered a post-mortem to be made.
Naturally the news of this second death increased the public interest in the Ludmouth Mystery, as it was now generally called, and in spite of Inspector Moresby’s careful reticence popular imagination was not slow to link the two tragedies together. Newspapers which had hitherto paid little attention to the affair made haste to send down their own representatives, and Roger had cause half-a-dozen times a day to congratulate himself on his foresight in preventing all other intruders from finding foothold in the Crown. To all enquirers the landlord, that mountainous man, presented an ox-like front of stolid imperturbability: they couldn’t have a room, for why? there wasn’t one, that was why. Even offers of double or treble the market-price failed to move him. He seemed to have conceived a bovine affection for Roger (opposites, it has already been said, do sometimes make for a male friendship), and followed out his guest’s wishes to the letter, bewildered but faithful. By way of some return Roger felt compelled to drink as much beer as he could possibly contain.