The Ginger Cat Mystery (27 page)

“You couldn't have been more careful yourself. After all, Heather, I detached the lock for the same reason as prompted you to the job. Time is essential and to avoid wasting it I risked anticipating you. It's wrapped in several sheets of paper and I've carried it as gingerly as if it were an auk's egg.”

“Good, Mr. Vereker. I congratulate you. Shake on it!” said Heather.

The inspector extended his brawny fist and wrung Vereker's hand with painful heartiness. “But lunch is ready,” he added, “and I'm really thirsty for once in my life. Let's go downstairs and discuss things thoroughly. First let me put that lock carefully away and then I'll be able to do justice to the grub. It's boiled beef and carrots, of which I'm passionately fond.”

Now, Mr. Vereker,” said Heather after they had finished lunch and had lit cigars over coffee and liqueurs, which had been ordered to emphasize the importance of the occasion, “You seem to have had a hectic morning. Let's hear all about it.”

“In the first place, Heather, I saw Miss Mayo when I called at the Manor. Mrs. Cornell was having a pow-wow with Mr. David Cornell in her private sitting-room, so while I was waiting for an interview, the young lady entertained me in the drawing-room. After declaring she had no hand in the crime, Miss Mayo confessed she possessed a small automatic pistol and asked me to hand it over to you as a keepsake. Here it is,” said Vereker and passed the weapon to the inspector.

“Very kind of her. I'll be able to start a gunsmith's shop when I've finished with this case,” remarked Heather without emotion and, after a casual glance at the pistol, thrust it in his pocket. “Why did she carry it?” he asked.

“She was afraid of Miss Stella Cornell, who once in a fit of jealous temper threatened to destroy her. She discovered subsequently through Frank Cornell that Miss Cornell had been practising with an automatic in the wood beyond the Manor grounds and decided when she came on a visit to Marston to be ready for retaliation should her rival attempt to carry out her threat. To cut a long story short, she found that Miss Cornell's threat was just the idle threat that anyone might make in a fit of anger. The pistol is fully loaded, so be careful with it. Then she coughed up a really vital bit of information. Accidentally tucked away among the letters she had written to Frank Cornell during their courtship, she found this note from David Cornell to his nephew. It had evidently been put there by the dead man in mistake.”

Vereker produced the note and handed it to the inspector who read it very carefully.

“This is the goods, Mr. Vereker,” he said; “it bears out my suspicions to the letter. When I first suspected and then became almost certain what Miss Cornell's real trouble was, I naturally put her on the black list. After speaking to the girl and then to her father and hearing what the latter thought of Frank Cornell, I wrote him down as a more likely culprit. When roused he's a man of violent temper and very resolute. The great difficulty in his case was to discover how he, being blind, could have used a pistol with such deadly effect. This I overcame in the same manner as you have overcome it, but we'll discuss that point later. Anything else of importance from Miss Mayo?”

“No; our interview ended by the maid entering and saying Mrs. Cornell had finished her talk with her brother-in-law and was free to see me. I dismissed the maid and went upstairs alone. As I passed the music room door I was surprised to see it half-open. I glanced in as I was about to pass and there I saw our friend David Cornell leaning somewhat mysteriously over the settee. I couldn't imagine what he was doing and stood for a moment watching him. He left the settee, crossed the room, and passed down into the garden. Being a bit inquisitive, I followed him. Also I'd decided to ask for an appointment so that either you or I might discuss the contents of that note with him. I followed him as far as the lily pool, keeping on the grass verge so that he couldn't hear me. To my astonishment he stopped at the pool, took something from his pocket, and flung it into the water.”

“Did you see what it was?” asked Heather with puckered brow.

“No, but we can wade in this afternoon and fish it out,” replied Vereker.

“I wonder if it was his automatic pistol,” said Heather.

“I'm certain it wasn't that,” replied Vereker.

“Possibly a third set of keys to the music room. I hunted up all the locksmiths in the neighbourhood and eventually found that Cornell had ordered a third set in Bury and that Miss Cornell had called and paid for them. As a matter of fact, the young lady wanted a set for her own special use after the duplicate set had been returned to Mr. John Cornell. She managed to get a loan of No. 1 set for the purpose of getting No. 3. Mr. Frank borrowed them for her as far as I could ascertain.”

“So nobody in the Manor itself knew of the existence of a third set except the dead man?”

“Exactly, but go on with your yarn, Mr. Vereker.”

“After Cornell had passed the lily pool, I stepped on to the gravel path and followed him. He heard me at once and waited till I overtook him. I fixed up an appointment for eight o'clock this evening and hurried back to the house. Passing through the music room, it suddenly flashed across my mind to examine the settee. I wondered what Cornell had been doing at that spot. I pushed my hand into the niche between the seat and the back and found this, Heather. I'm sure you'll be interested in it,” said Vereker, producing a cardboard box and giving it to the inspector.

“Great Scott, we've got the damned thing at last!” exclaimed Heather with real emotion when he opened the box and saw the automatic pistol which Vereker had withdrawn from its hiding place in the settee. “An experiment or two will probably tell us that this is the weapon that fired the bullet I've got in my possession.”

“But before we go any farther, Heather, there's one point that worries me. Why on earth should David Cornell want to hide his pistol in the settee and fling the keys in the pool? Why not fling both into the pool together? There seems something fishy about this to me.”

“Both the music room and the pool have been most thoroughly searched and are therefore the safest places in the world to hide dangerous articles in,” commented Heather. “The odds were a million to one against our searching them again. We had done the job thoroughly and the local police had done it fairly comprehensively before us. As for hiding the pistol in the music room and the keys in the pool, the explanation is obvious. Cornell didn't want to lose the pistol altogether. He could recover it easily enough after the trouble had blown over. The keys he evidently wanted to get rid of for good and all.”

“A neat piece of reasoning, Heather. I didn't think of it and hand you the biscuit. To return to the bullet that was extracted from the dead man's skull, I presume you'll fire another shot from Cornell's pistol and have the two bullets examined under a comparison microscope?”

“That'll be one of the tests, Mr. Vereker, but there'll be several others. Fortunately the weapon hasn't been cleaned and if there are minute particles of metal in the barrel, they'll agree in chemical composition with that of the bullet. But now we come to that conspicuous groove on the bullet. You've an idea what caused that groove?”

“Yes, Heather, it was not caused by coming in contact with, say, the orbital bone of the dead man; the bullet, as we know, didn't touch the bone surrounding his eye. I thought a lot about that, and when I hit on a theory showing how a blind man might hit his mark with such deadly effect, the point was at once as clear as day. It finally flashed on me that one way a blind man could shoot and hit his mark in the eye was through a keyhole. At first the idea seemed a bit far-fetched, but on closer examination it began to fit all the facts of the case with remarkable appropriateness. The old-fashioned lock of the music room door has a large keyhole. I thrust my pencil through it on my first visit to the Manor and found that the pencil passed quite comfortably through the circular portion of the aperture. As you remarked earlier in our investigation, an ordinary lead pencil is a quarter of an inch in diameter and therefore a .22-calibre bullet could pass through the circular hole of the aperture if the pistol barrel was in good alignment. In our case the barrel wasn't held in quite dead alignment, and the metal of the lock tore a small groove out of the bullet during the latter's passage.”

“Astonishingly good, Mr. Vereker. We agree in our findings all along the line. The reason I was anxious about your being careful in detaching the lock was that I didn't want to lose the particles or metal torn from the bullet in its journey through the keyhole. There will also be particles of unconsumed cordite in the lock if a shot was fired through it. Once we're definitely satisfied that a shot was fired through the keyhole of the music room door, we'll both be convinced, I think, that Mr. David Cornell fired the shot. I'll run up to London this afternoon with that lock and put it in the hands of our expert microscopist and he'll settle the point once and for all. If things are as we expect them to be, it'll be high time to think of handcuffs.”

“If David Cornell fired the shot, Heather, I wonder exactly how he managed to induce Frank Cornell on the other side of the door to put his eye to the keyhole?” asked Vereker reflectively.

“That point has occupied my mind, too,” replied Heather. “There must have been some secret arrangement between Miss Stella Cornell and her lover to show she had arrived at the trysting place. They would obviously avoid creating noise from fear of waking a light sleeper on the corridor above or rousing the attention of anyone who might be awake. Still, it would be almost instinctive for Frank Cornell to peep through the keyhole to see if he could see, say, a human silhouette against the window opposite the door. Miss Cornell would doubtless put her father up to any secret arrangement. The blind man's very acute hearing would tell him quite definitely that Frank Cornell on the other side of the door had stooped to look through. In any case, it's a minor point and might be achieved in a dozen ways. We'll possibly hit on the method employed later on.”

“What made you first suspect David Cornell, Inspector?” asked Vereker.

“I felt I was on the scent after my first interview with him, and when you related the points of your conversation with him that had struck you as strange, I began to have a livelier suspicion. Though he had apparently not visited the Manor after the murder, he had an almost uncanny knowledge of every detail of its execution, say, as you or I would figure it out after close observation. He made a disastrous slip when he mentioned to you an automatic pistol as the weapon used when only you and I and Doctor Redgrave knew that fact from the bullet that had been extracted. He tried to cover his slip neatly, but it was obvious he was covering up. Then he had a theory that the body had been dragged upstairs, based on the assumption that the murderer was trying to hide the place of execution. This was a ruse on the murderer's part to conceal the manner of entrance so as to hide the possession of missing keys. All this knowledge, Mr. Vereker, is not acquired by mere thinking; it can only be acquired by someone with long experience, a trained observation, and natural aptitude—ahem—like ourselves. I at once put it down as the astute criminal's usual bluff. I've met that kind of gent before and know him when he turns up again. From that moment I put him down as my chief suspect and though I was always open to change my mind, events only began to confirm me in my opinion. The method of firing the shot baffled me for a long while and then I remembered a very sordid case some years ago in which a young woman who lived in a west-end boarding house blinded one of the male lodgers by thrusting a knitting needle through the keyhole in her bedroom door. The young man was evidently a descendant of Peeping Tom and the girl had discovered his nasty habit of looking at her when he didn't oughter. This suggested to me that even a blind man could hit his mark if there was something to guide his pistol. The keyhole was the next deduction, and I was about to go and take that lock off the music room door to-day, when I found you'd struck the same solution. I must say you've had all the fat bits in this case; Redgrave's information about Miss Cornell; Miss Mayo's discovery of that damning note; and, finally, David Cornell's own pistol which you practically saw him stow away in the music room settee.”

“I think it's the first time we've arrived at the same solution by the same line of reasoning, Heather. It all sounds so jolly convincing that I fear a snag somewhere,” remarked Vereker with a smile.

“Yes, it's the first time we've solved a mystery on the same lines. Of course you've improved out of all recognition under my hand, but this time you've been masterly, Mr. Vereker. We must celebrate our success on our return to London. Again, it's the first time we've worked so closely together, which means you were almost bound to adopt the right course from the start. But there's something worrying you, laddie. Tell me what it is and I'll put you right.”

“The clue of the ginger tabby doesn't quite fit in with all our beautiful deductions and intuitions, Heather. Cornell had nothing to do with Lister's cat. How did the hair get on the settee?”

“In a thousand different ways, Mr. Vereker. One of the men employed by the Vacuum Cleaning Company probably breeds ginger tabbies for profit, but I refuse to discuss any kind of cat at this hour. I must get a move on. With furious driving I can get to London with that lock, do my business, and be back here by, say, eight or nine o'clock to-night.”

“Good. I'll await your return with impatience. I've got an appointment with Cornell at eight and if things turn out as we expect them to, I daresay you'll also call at the bungalow on getting back to Marston.”

“If you're not here when I turn up, I'll follow on, Mr. Vereker. What are you going to do in the meantime?”