“I see you are looking at our parlour-maid,” said Austin Turold, following the direction of his visitor’s glance.
“She’s a strange sort of parlour-maid,” admitted the detective. “She reminds me of—of—”
“A study in black and white,” suggested his host. “Her face is her fortune. She’s sitting to Brierly—that’s my host—for his latest effort. He’s painting her as the Madonna or Britannia—I really forget which. A new type, you know. The servants in this house are engaged for their faces. They had a villainous scoundrel of a man-servant—a returned soldier—engaged as Judas Iscariot, who bolted last week with the silver spoons. But all this is beside the point, Mr. Barrant, and I must not waste your time. You have come here for a specific purpose—to turn me inside out. What can I tell you?”
“I want to know all that you can tell me about your brother’s death,” said the other, with emphasis.
“But what can I tell you that you do not already know?” exclaimed Austin, raising his eyebrows with a helpless look. “Ask me what questions you like, and I’ll endeavour to answer them. When the famous Detective Barrant—for I understand from the newspapers that you are famous—takes an interview in hand I expect him to handle the situation in a masterly fashion, as befits his reputation. So ask your questions, my dear fellow, and I’ll do my utmost to respond.” Austin Turold took off his glasses, and posed himself in an attitude of expectation, with his eyes fixed upon the detective’s face.
Barrant eyed the elder man with a puzzled curiosity which was tolerably masked by official impassivity. Barrant had his own methods of investigation and inquiry. He brought an alert intelligence, a seeing eye, and a false geniality to bear in his work. Unversed in elaborate deduction, he flattered himself that he knew enough about human nature to strike the balance of probabilities in almost any case. His cardinal article of faith was that there was nothing like getting on good terms with those he was interviewing in order to find out things. Most people were on their guard against detectives, who too often took advantage of their position to assume offensive airs of intimidation, whereas the great thing was to disarm suspicion by a friendly manner. Barrant had cultivated pleasantness with considerable success. Some who were not good judges of physiognomy were apt to overlook the watchful eyes in his smiling affable presence, and talk freely—sometimes too freely, as they later on discovered to their cost. A chance word, a significant phrase, was sufficient to set him burrowing underground with the activity of a mole, to burst into the open later on with all his clues complete, to the confusion of the trusting person with an unguarded tongue.
He had put these tactics into execution with Austin Turold. Austin, taking tea when he called, in a bright blue room hung with pictures, had received his visitor with a charming cordiality, insisted on his taking tea with him, and then let loose a flood of small-talk, as though he were delighted with his visitor. His welcome was so perfect, his manners so gracefully unforced, that Barrant had an uneasy suspicion that he was being beaten at his own game, and was slightly out of countenance in consequence. Up to that moment he could not, for the life of him, decide whether Austin Turold’s polished self-assurance was a mask or not. It seemed too natural to be assumed.
“Your own opinion is that your brother committed suicide?” he asked again.
“No other conclusion is possible, in my mind.”
“But did he have any reason, that you know of, to commit suicide?”