“But do you not discern the motive?” cried Sainsbury. “Rodwell has risen to a position of great affluence and notoriety. He is a bosom friend of Cabinet Ministers, and to him many secrets of State are confided. He, and his friend Sir Boyle Huntley, play golf with Ministers, and the name of Lewin Rodwell is everywhere to-day one to conjure with. He has, since the war, risen to be one of the most patriotic Englishmen—a man whose unselfish efforts are praised and admired from one end of Great Britain to another. Surely he would have become desperate if he had the least suspicion that Jerome Jerrold had discovered the truth, and intended to unmask him—as he had openly declared to you.”
“Yes, yes, I see,” Sir Houston replied dubiously. “If there were any traces of foul play I should at once be of the same opinion. But you see they do not exist.”
“Whether there are traces, or whether there are none, nothing will shake my firm opinion, and that is that poor Jerome has been assassinated, and the motive of the crime is what I have already suggested.”
“Very well; we shall clear it up at the post-mortem,” was the doctor’s reply, while at that moment Thomasson re-entered, followed by a police-officer in plain clothes and two constables in uniform.
On their entry, Sainsbury introduced Sir Houston Bird, and told them his own name and that of his dead friend.
Then the officer of the local branch of the Criminal Investigation Department sat down at the dead man’s writing-table and began to write in his note-book the story of the strange affair, as dictated by Jack.
Sir Houston also made a statement, this being followed by the man Thomasson, who detailed his master’s movements prior to his death—as far as he knew them.
His master, he declared, had seemed in excellent spirits all day. He had seen patients in the morning, had lunched frugally at home, and had gone down to Guy’s in the car to see the wounded, as was his daily round. At six he had returned, dressed, and gone forth in a taxi to meet his friend, Mr Trustram of the Admiralty. They having dined together returned, and afterwards Mr Trustram had left and the doctor, smoking his pipe, had retired to his room to write. Nothing further was heard, Thomasson said, till the arrival of Mr Sainsbury, when the door of the room was found locked.
“You heard no one enter the house—no sounds whatever?” asked the detective inspector, Rees by name, a tall, clean-shaven, fresh-complexioned man, with rather curly hair.
“I didn’t hear a sound,” was the servant’s reply. “The others were all out, and, as a matter of fact, I was in the waiting-room, just inside the door, looking at the newspapers on the table. So I should have heard anyone go up or down the stairs.”