Christopher Quarles: College Professor and Master Detective

by Percy James Brebner

"Had he enemies?"

"I have no reason to think so."

"No money worries?"

"He never said anything to suggest such a thing. Had there been any lack of money, I should have expected to see a certain pinching process in the house."

There was no sign of this. The arrangements for the patients were on the side of luxury, and there was ample evidence of the kindest and most considerate treatment. I judged that Mrs. Smith was a capable manager. When I first saw her she had got over her excitement, and was able to talk of her husband quite calmly. She admitted that he was eccentric, and she believed an eccentric action had cost him his life. She had some reason for this belief.

Dr. Smith had a small boat of five or six tons, old and shabby, but perfectly seaworthy. This he kept moored in one of the small coves to the east of Riversmouth. This boat had gone.

I examined these coves carefully. They were protected by a spur of rock which ran out to sea. Many of them were only caves eaten out of the cliffs, the depth of water in them varying considerably. At low tide some of them were almost dry, while others, even at the greatest ebb, still had deep water in them. They were great holes, in fact, which the sea constantly replenished. That a boat had been moored in one of them was evident, and there was some doubt at first whether it had not been beached for the winter, as had been done in previous years; but no one knew anything about it, and the boat was not to be found.

Until quite the end of September the weather had been perfect; there was no reason why the boat should not have been used with safety and pleasure, and on the night of Dr. Smith's disappearance the sea was perfectly calm. As a matter of fact, however, the doctor was never known to use the boat. The Riversmouth people declared that they only knew Smith by the occasional glimpse they had of him in his garden when they passed; that they never met him either in the town or on the way to the coves; and, indeed, the only person who had any knowledge of him at all was Mr. Ferguson, a solicitor. On two occasions he had seen him at his house on small matters of business, and once he had met him in London to introduce him to an insurance company. Whether a policy had been taken out or not he did not know, as Dr. Smith had arranged to take the commission himself if he completed the policy.

Evans was not prepared to say that the doctor never used the boat. It was true that he seldom went beyond the garden, but this was not to say that he never did. People might have met him and not recognized who he was. Once or twice during the summer Evans had been out in the boat himself, at the doctor's suggestion. It was a good little boat, and quite easy for one person to manage.

Mrs. Smith did not believe that her husband ever used the boat, and had never understood why he kept it. He had bought it for practically nothing, and she could only suppose that the fact of making a bargain had appealed to him.