“ ‘Good heavens, sergeant!’ I said angrily, ‘what the devil is the man talking about? He surely doesn’t suppose that Mr. Fairfax had anything to do with it?’
“But the mischief was done. The sergeant formally told off his indiscreet subordinate, but it was obvious that it was merely an official rebuke. In a village like that everybody knows everybody else’s private affairs, and the strained relations between the dead man and Jack Fairfax were common property. I could see at a glance that the sergeant regarded the matter as solved already.
“ ‘Would you recognise this man again, sir?’ he demanded, and Lenham gave him the same guarded reply as he had already given to me. He might—but he wouldn’t swear to it. It was impossible to be too careful in such a case, he repeated, and it was practically dark when he had passed the man.
“It was all duly noted down, and then we adjourned to the room of the tragedy. The constable—a ruddy-faced young man—turned pale when he saw the body; then he pulled himself together and assisted the sergeant in his formal examination. I didn’t blame him—we were all feeling the strain, somewhat naturally. Lenham seemed the least concerned, but it wasn’t a personal matter with him as it was with us, especially with me. All the time I was fidgeting round the room, subconsciously watching the stolid sergeant making notes, but with only one thought dominating my brain—how best to help Jack. Not that I had definitely made up my mind that he’d done it, but even at that stage of the proceedings I realised that appearances were against him. And Joan’s words were ringing in my head—‘For God’s sake—do something.’
“After a while I crossed the room to a small table on which a tantalus of whisky and two glasses were standing. I looked at the tray with unseeing eyes—an Indian silver one, which old Marley had been very proud of. And then mechanically I picked up the glasses. I don’t know why I did so; the action was, as I say, mechanical. They had been used—both of them: they had been used for whisky—one could tell that by the smell. And when I put the glasses down again on the tray, the sergeant was approaching with his note-book.”
The sandy-haired man paused, with a reminiscent smile.
“Ever noticed how extraordinarily dense you can be at times, even with a plain fact staring you straight in the face? There was one staring at me for ten minutes that night before my grey matter began to stir.”
“Just hold on a minute,” interrupted the Barrister. “Is this plain fact staring us in the face now?”
“No, it isn’t,” conceded the narrator. “At the moment you are in the position of the other people in that room. Mind you, I’ve left out nothing in order to mystify you; the story, as I have given it to you, is a plain unvarnished account of what took place. But I’m out to disprove your half-brick theory, lawyer-man, and to do so with such little story-telling ability as I happen to possess.
“Now, I won’t weary you with what happened during the next week, beyond saying that an inquest and a burglary took place. And the latter, at any rate, was very successful. The former moved along obvious lines, and resulted in Jack Fairfax being arrested for the wilful murder of his guardian, Roger Marley. The evidence was purely circumstantial, but it was about as damning as it could be. Jack admitted to having had an interview with Marley that night; he admitted that they had had an appalling quarrel. What was even worse was that he admitted to having struck the old man in a furious fit of rage, but beyond that he denied everything. He absolutely swore that the blow he struck Marley could not have killed him; further, that he had never handled the poker. And then, a finger-print expert proved that he had. That was the worst shock of the lot, and his explanation given afterwards that, now he came to think of it, he had picked up the poker to ram the tobacco down in his pipe convinced no one. He indignantly denied that his action in going up to London by the last train was in any sense running away; he had intended all along to go up by that train. And his reason for leaving the house after the interview without attempting to see his fiancée was that he was in such a rage with her father that he couldn’t trust himself to speak to her for fear of what he might say.