“Soon after that, Inez got me to go and see Sir Horace Spavage—the doctor—about father’s health. I couldn’t understand much of what he said—it was rather technical—so I got him to write it down. It amounted to a pretty poor ‘life,’ as the insurance people say. I was taking the note back to Inez when it occurred to me that I might use it as security for raising the money. Most of the money-lenders wouldn’t look at me—I’d borrowed all over the place and they knew that father wouldn’t pay up any more—but that fellow Silence will always go one further than the rest—at a price—and I took the note to him. He advanced me the £15,000 on that—for three months—at a terrific rate of interest. It was a gamble. That’s the awful part about it; I didn’t properly realize it at the time, but of course directly he was dead I did—I was gambling with my father’s life.”
Ryland stopped and sat, with haggard face, staring at the cup in front of him. Inez gently squeezed his hand, the others sat in awkward silence. Poole was the first to break it.
“Good of you to tell me that, sir,” he said. “I appreciate your telling me—I shouldn’t have asked. Well, it’s your turn now, Miss Fratten.” He looked at his watch. “I can give you ten minutes—I’ve got to catch a train.”
“Oh, but I’ve got thousands of questions,” exclaimed Inez. “I want to know about Mr. Hessel—did you know he was in it? I couldn’t make out from the inquest.”
“I didn’t know he was Lessingham, if that’s what you mean, Miss Fratten. But I had a very strong suspicion that he was in the plot to kill your father. Not at first—he completely deceived me; but as the actual facts of the murder came out—how it was done and how closely the Wrailes’ alibis fitted to the actual time of the attack—it seemed to me that it couldn’t possibly be a chance that your father and Hessel had walked into the trap at the one and only time that would fit in with the alibis that the Wrailes had arranged beforehand—Captain Wraile, remember, had asked someone to visit him at the club at seven, and Mrs. Wraile had to be back in time to see the hall-porter before he went off duty at seven—and couldn’t get away till appreciably after six. No—Sir Garth must have been led at the exactly right moment, into the trap—led by Hessel. I remember now that the first time I interviewed Hessel he told me that your father always walked home across the Park in the evening. That, no doubt, was to make me think that his walk was well known by other people—and on that they based their plan—but the exactness of the time couldn’t have been counted on—it must have been manufactured.
“Then there were the ‘Ethiopian and General’ papers—they were missing from Sir Garth’s carefully collected wrapper on the ‘Victory Finance Company.’ They must have been stolen. The opportunities of stealing them were very slight—Hessel called Mr. Mangane within a few minutes of Sir Garth’s body being carried upstairs out of here, and had the study doors locked—took the keys. He carefully did not come back here till days afterwards, and then only went into the room with Menticle and Mr. Mangane as witnesses—to create the impression that nobody had a chance of touching anything—that nothing had been touched. Actually, there was a possibility that they might have been taken before he and Mangane locked the study. It was hardly likely that they were moved before the body was brought back—though not impossible. While the body was in here, Golpin was in the hall and swears nobody entered the study. Mangane might have gone in from his room—nobody else could have because he was there all the time. But I didn’t think he had—I knew him personally. There remained the possibility that Hessel had gone in himself in those two or three minutes after the body was moved and before he sent for Mangane. There was no earthly reason why he shouldn’t have—I came to the conclusion that he did.
“I should say that there’s no doubt that your father had begun to smell trouble about the Ethiopian and General, Miss Fratten, and that his notes made that pretty clear. No doubt that was why he seemed to you to be worried—he was unhappy at finding a friend—Sir Hunter—mixed up in a shady business. That’s why Hessel only took the ‘Ethiopian and General’ papers. Why he left the other notes—the details about the Nem Nem Sohar and South Wales Pulverization and the queries about all three, which attracted our attention to the Ethiopian and General,—I don’t know. Probably he lost his head—or tried to be too clever—it’s generally one of those alternatives that hangs a murderer.
“Of course I only came to this point quite late—the last developments came with a rush and I couldn’t do everything at once—I had no time to question him again, though I tried to once—he was away. But we should definitely have linked him up in a day or two. Now, Miss Fratten, I’ve taken rather longer than I meant over that—I haven’t time to answer more questions—because I’ve got something to tell you.
“It’s what I really came here for—to read you a letter. My chief—Sir Leward Marradine—told me to come and show it to you—reading will be simplest.
“It’s a letter from Captain Wraile—postmark ‘Liverpool,’ date yesterday—no other indication. This is what he says: