It was on his own initiative, therefore, that Thomas went to see both Winter and Morgan, and received from them a repetition of what they had told the police. From them he learnt nothing new. But from one of the maid-servants he picked up a fact which had escaped Inspector Blaikie’s attention. A few days before the murders the butler, Winter, had quarrelled violently with John Prinsep, and, in the heat of the quarrel, Prinsep had practically given the man notice to leave. The notice had not been quite definite, and the maid had heard Winter confide to Morgan that he intended to hang on and see what happened, and to get the matter cleared up with Prinsep the one way or the other before the month expired. She did not know what the quarrel had been about; and Thomas did not think it politic to push his inquiries further, or to ask either Morgan or Winter himself for an explanation. He, therefore, cautioned the girl against telling any one at all that there had been a quarrel. “It would only make further trouble,” he said; “and we have trouble enough on our hands already.”
Thomas had thus found the first essential for building up a case on suspicion against Winter—an actual quarrel and therefore a possible motive for murder. But he recognised that the argument was very thin, and that he must, if possible, get something more definite. Inquiries, however, failed to give him anything at all that could be used to defame either Winter’s or Morgan’s character. They appeared to be persons of unblemished respectability, and Winter’s long service in the Brooklyn household seemed never to have been marred before by such an incident as his quarrel with Prinsep. The position did not look promising for Thomas’s client; but he determined to persist.
His persistence was at length rewarded. He discovered what had been the cause of the quarrel between Winter and Prinsep. And it was Morgan who told him, quite unconscious that he was providing a link in the chain which Thomas was attempting to forge. Thomas had turned his attention to a further study of the character and circumstances of the murdered men, and had gone to Morgan for light on the ways of his late master. It was easy to see that Morgan had disliked Prinsep, though he had always behaved to him in life as a perfectly suave and well-drilled servant knows how to behave—with a deadly politeness that conceals all human feeling behind an impenetrable mask. But, now that Prinsep was dead, Morgan no longer concealed his opinion of him. He had neither prospect nor intention of remaining with the Brooklyns, and he did not care whether they liked or disliked what he said. Accordingly, he told Thomas without any hesitation that, shortly before his death, Prinsep had been engaged in a peculiarly unpleasant intrigue with a girl down at Sir Vernon’s country place at Fittleworth, in Sussex—the daughter, in fact, of Sir Vernon’s head gardener there—and what made it worse was that the girl was engaged to be married at the time to a decent fellow who had only found out at the last moment how things were going. He would marry her all the same; but that did not make Prinsep’s part in the affair less dishonourable.
It did not take Thomas long to extract the information that the “decent fellow” whom Prinsep had wronged was actually no other than this very man, Winter, against whom he had been trying to build up a case. Winter was twenty years older than the girl; but he seemed to be very much in love with her, and naturally enraged by Prinsep’s misuse of her. Here at last were all the elements of a crime of passion, and Thomas began to see his way clear to throw upon Winter quite enough suspicion to make it very difficult for a jury to convict Walter Brooklyn. Indeed, might he not even have stumbled accidentally on the truth, or a part of it? Perhaps after all Walter Brooklyn was not the murderer, although he knew all about it. But, on the whole, he was still inclined to believe that his client was guilty, and that nevertheless fortune had presented him with an excellent chance of shifting the suspicion elsewhere. Certainly he would say not a word of his discoveries to any one until the time came to adopt an actual line of defence at the coming trial.
Chapter XIX.
The Police Have Their Doubts
While the representatives of the defence—official and unofficial—were pursuing their separate lines of investigation, the police had not been altogether idle. Inspector Blaikie had not been long in finding out that Thomas had been making inquiries among the servants at Liskeard House, or in drawing the conclusion that the defence would make an attempt to shift some part at least of the suspicion to other shoulders with the object of creating enough doubt to make it difficult for a jury to convict their client. He was not surprised at this, and it did not at all alarm him; for, among other things, he regarded it as sure proof that the lawyer held his own case to be weak. The inspector was quite unable to take seriously the idea that Winter was in any way implicated in the murders; and Morgan’s complicity, owing to the position of their bedrooms, was practically impossible without Winter’s. Blaikie therefore treated Thomas’s moves as being merely the necessary preparation for an attempt to throw dust into the eyes of the jury, and not in the least an endeavour to find the real murderer. There could be no doubt about it—Thomas’s tactics were, from the inspector’s standpoint, the final and conclusive proof—Walter Brooklyn had murdered Prinsep, and either he or Prinsep had murdered George Brooklyn. They had the right man under lock and key.
But it is one thing to be sure that you have the right man in custody, and quite another to be sure of getting him convicted by a jury. The inspector admitted that the case against Walter Brooklyn was not conclusive. His complicity was practically proved; but there was no direct evidence that he had actually struck the blows. The evidence was circumstantial; and, in these circumstances, the inspector did not disguise from himself the fact that any attempt to shift the suspicion might at least create enough doubt to make a conviction improbable. Accordingly, while Joan and Ellery were doing their best to prove Walter Brooklyn’s innocence, Inspector Blaikie was searching, with equal vigour, for further proofs of his guilt.
But he found nothing that was of material importance, so far as he could see. The sole addition to his case was the evidence of a taxi-driver, who, from his accustomed post on the rank outside the Piccadilly Theatre, had seen Walter Brooklyn pass at somewhere about half-past eleven or so; but the man could not be sure to a few minutes. This was all very well in its way, the inspector thought; but as Walter Brooklyn’s presence inside Liskeard House at about 11.30 was proved already, it could not be of much importance to prove his presence just outside at about the same time. There was, however, this to be said for the new piece of evidence. Walter Brooklyn denied the telephone message, and maintained that he had not been at Liskeard House at all. Direct evidence that he had been at the time in question within a minute’s walk of the house was certainly better than nothing.
Nothing further had come to light when, on Saturday morning, Inspector Blaikie went to Superintendent Wilson with his daily report on the case, telling him first about the taxi-man’s evidence. The superintendent seemed to attach some importance to this. “Where you have to rely on circumstantial evidence,” he said, “the accumulation of details is all-important. Every little helps. Your taxi-driver may yet be an important link in the chain.”
The inspector confided to his superior that the result of his reflections on the case was to make him far more doubtful than he had been of securing a conviction.