The old dining-hall rapidly cleared. Spectators, witnesses, officials began to unpack themselves out of nooks and corners and to drift away in groups and knots, discussing the events and revelations of the morning. Mrs. Tretheroe went off with her two guests; Harry Markenmore and his sister left the room in company with Harborough; the jurymen filed away in twos and threes. But in the centre of the temporary Court, around the big table at which the lawyers and officials had sat, with books and papers before them, several men gathered, and began to discuss matters informally—the Chief Constable; Blick; the barrister who had represented the authorities; Chilford; Walkinshaw, and Mr. Fransemmery, who, in spite of the Coroner’s admonition, felt himself justified in hearing whatever there was to hear.
“What I feel about it,” Chilford was saying as Mr. Fransemmery joined the group, “is just this—and I say it as solicitor to the Markenmore family—there must be a searching investigation into Guy Markenmore’s business affairs and his private life in London! This affair was not originated here, nor engineered here! If Detective-Sergeant Blick wants to get at the bottom of things he ought to begin in London—where Guy Markenmore has lived for some years past.”
“You think he was followed down here?” suggested the barrister, who, business being over, had lighted a cigarette, and sitting on the edge of the table, was comfortably smoking. “You think this was a job put up in London?”
“I think there’s every probability that all and everything that we’ve heard this morning has practically nothing whatever to do with the real truth about the murder of Guy Markenmore!” answered Chilford. “I’m quite certain—in my own mind—that John Harborough is as innocent as I am, and I’m not much less certain that the two men who were with Guy at the Sceptre are also innocent. The probability is that those men will be heard of—they’ll come forward. You’ll find that the meeting at the Sceptre—an odd one, if you like!—was nothing but a business meeting. No—we’ve got nowhere yet! As I say, if Blick there wants to do some ferret-work, he’s got to go back and start in London. How do we know what Guy Markenmore’s affairs were? Or his secrets? For all we know, somebody or other may have had good reason for getting rid of him.”
“What puzzles me considerably,” observed the Chief Constable, “is—how did those two men who were with Guy Markenmore at the Sceptre come into and get out of the district unobserved? My men have already made the most exhaustive enquiries at every railroad station in the neighbourhood, and we’ve got hold of—nothing!”
“Strangers, too!” said Walkinshaw.
“How do we know that?” demanded Chilford. “There are a tidy lot of men within an area of twenty miles who might have business dealings with Guy Markenmore. His business here that night might have been just as much with those two men as with his brother and sister. Probably it was.”
“Grimsdale asserts that the first man was an American,” remarked Walkinshaw. “We haven’t a plenitude of Americans in residence about here. I could count them on my fingers.”
“That’s so,” said the Chief Constable. “If the man was an American—and Grimsdale says he’s met a good many in his time, so he ought to know—he came from somewhere outside our neighbourhood. But what beats me is—how did he and the other man get away, unobserved, on Tuesday morning?”
Mr. Fransemmery, who, like Blick, had listened attentively, but silently, to these exchanges of opinion and idea, coughed gently, as if deprecating any idea that he wished to interfere.