“I don’t think—ah, yes, now I seem to remember. You’re the gentleman who had a nasty fall or something. Well now, do you mind tellin’ me how you happened to get here, and if you know anything about this case?”
I suppose that I was able to tell him more than anyone else. I decided then to give my information without stint, since it was not the sort of thing that could possibly benefit mankind by concealment, and it might even speed Salt on the track of his theory. I recounted every incident I have here set down: the search for St. Tarw’s devotional site, the bull, the gorilla-man, the menagerie-keeper, the winking window, his Lordship in the armoury, and whatever else did not merely coincide with other evidence. I did not, however, allude to this diary. Salt, by the way, did me the great honour of hearkening without gasp or demur to my story of the tall, bulgy man with the Paul Pry-Schubert umbrella.
In the end he reverted to the matter of the saint’s oratory. “This ruin or something you were lookin’ for, now. Maybe I could give you a feeler for findin’ it.”
I said that he was very kind, that when I set forth from London the task had seemed dubious, and now the death of Cosgrove had driven my hobby well-nigh out of my mind.
“You’ll soon get over that, I expect,” he encouraged heartily. “Now, I’m none of your experts on old stones or old codgers, of course, and I never did hear of the party you mention, but when I was a boy I had a good share of climbin’—aye, and of fallin’—in Aidenn Forest. I can mind once runnin’ across something that sounds like your whatnot. By gummy, sir, if I don’t think I could guide you there yet!”
And forthwith he gave me a series of directions, which he insisted I take down. However interested I should have been in these two days ago, now among grimmer things the project of finding the oratory seems trivial, seems superfluous. But I jotted down what he told me, thanked him, and returned to the conservatory.
The spark of speech had been fanned into life during my absence. They were talking of the events of the day before—what else could they?—but they had happened upon a particular and engrossing phase. No longer, as all last evening, did they repeat to each other what they themselves had done; they had been over that so many times, all to no purpose. When, like me, each had given his account of the afternoon, it was evident that none of them could possibly have been concerned in the death of Cosgrove, or even could have seen the manner of it.
Where, as a fact, had they been after the moment of the Irishman’s disappearance through the shrubs among which Paula Lebetwood had fled? Well, no one had remained long in the House. The Pendletons and the Belvoirs, together with Mrs. Bartholomew, had formed a party for a walk and had gone south. Avoiding the road, they had made their way through park-like portions of the estate all the way to the bridge, to marvel at the volume of Aidenn Water there. Far in the distance beyond the bridge, they had seen the road-mender working his long hours. Ludlow and Miss Mertoun had struck off for a stroll where Aidenn Water makes considerable of a bend beneath the western hills. Bob Cullen, feeling wretched after his dismissal by Lib, had gone alone the opposite way, kicking a disgusted trail in the turf past the stables and on beyond to where the steeply-wooded slope of Whimble Hill commenced. After her departure in dudgeon from the armoury (and from Doctor Aire and me) Lib had gone outside to look vainly about the grounds for Bob, then had come in to find Miss Lebetwood, but had encountered me on the stairs instead. Dr. Aire, having washed his hands free of gardener’s loam, immediately went out, chanced upon Maryvale in the tiny grove of cypress trees, and sauntered up the Vale with him. The men turned off the path to approach the eighteenth-century summer-house, upon whose rotting steps they sat for a half an hour. Incidentally, they saw me wandering toward the deserted farm of the sisters Delambre, and saw me returning therefrom.
Oxford had spent the most peaceful afternoon of all: seating himself in the shade of the gate-house to smoke a cigarette, he had gone to sleep in good earnest. Awakened by a sound, he discovered Miss Mertoun, Ludlow, and Belvoir amusing themselves by turning the winch of the drawbridge. Belvoir, having left his wife and the others below for a brisk walk back along the stream, had met Miss Mertoun and his Lordship, and had suggested the pastime. By now Bob Cullen had made a broad circuit of the House, and stood aloof somewhat churlishly, refusing to be beguiled by the action of the drawbridge.
My report of my own doings, told at breakfast, and including as it needs must the impossible bone, had met a polite but agnostic reception. The table had lapsed into nervous silence. Ludlow, tapping his pince-nez on one knee crossed over the other, stared out the eastern window with a crinkly smile.