ERNEST BRAMAH Ultimate Collection: 20+ Novels & Short Stories in One Volume. Bramah Ernest
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“I should say it was damp, sir,” observed Parkinson, with his wisest air.
Madeline Whitmarsh herself opened the door. She took them down the long flagged hall to the dining-room, a cheerful enough apartment whatever its exterior might forebode.
“I am glad you have come now, Mr Carrados,” she said hurriedly, when the door was closed. “Sergeant Brewster is here from Stinbridge police station to make some arrangements for the inquest. It is to be held at the schools here on Monday. He says that he must take the revolver with him to produce. Do you want to see it before he goes?”
“I should like to,” replied Carrados.
“Will you come into papa’s room then? He is there.”
The sergeant was at the table, making notes in his pocket-book, when they entered. An old-fashioned revolver lay before him.
“This gentleman has come a long way on hearing about poor papa,” said the girl. “He would like to see the revolver before you take it, Mr Brewster.”
“Good-evening, sir,” said Brewster. “It’s a bad business that brings us here.”
Carrados “looked” round the room and returned the policeman’s greeting. Madeline hesitated for a moment, and then, picking up the weapon, put it into the blind man’s hand.
“A bit out of date, sir,” remarked Brewster, with a nod. “But in good order yet, I find.”
“An early French make, I should say; one of Lefaucheux’s probably,” said Carrados. “You have removed the cartridges?”
“Why, yes,” admitted the sergeant, producing a matchbox from his pocket. “They’re pin-fire, you see, and I’m not too fond of carrying a thing like that loaded in my pocket as I’m riding a young horse.”
“Quite so,” agreed Carrados, fingering the cartridges. “I wonder if you happened to mark the order of these in the chambers?”
“That was scarcely necessary, sir. Two, together, had been fired; the other four had not.”
“I once knew a case—possibly I read of it—where a pack of cards lay on the floor. It was a murder case and the guilt or innocence of an accused man depended on the relative positions of the fifty-first and fifty-second cards.”
“I think you must have read of that, sir,” replied Brewster, endeavouring to implicate first Miss Whitmarsh and then Parkinson in his meaning smile. “However, this is straightforward enough.”
“Then, of course, you have not thought it worth while to look for anything else?”
“I have noted all the facts that have any bearing on the case. Were you referring to any particular point, sir?”
“I was only wondering,” suggested Carrados, with apologetic mildness, “whether you, or anyone, had happened to find a wad lying about anywhere.”
The sergeant stroked his well-kept moustache to hide the smile that insisted, however, on escaping through his eyes.
“Scarcely, sir,” he replied, with fine irony. “Bulleted revolver cartridges contain no wad. You are thinking of a shot-gun, sir.”
“Oh,” said Carrados, bending over the spent cartridge he was examining, “that settles it, of course.”
“I think so, sir,” assented the sergeant, courteously but with a quiet enjoyment of the situation. “Well, miss, I’ll be getting back now. I think I have everything I want.”
“You will excuse me a few minutes?” said Miss Whitmarsh, and the two callers were left alone.
“Parkinson,” said Carrados softly, as the door closed, “look round on the floor. There is no wad lying within sight?”
“No, sir.”
“Then take the lamp and look behind things. But if you find one don’t disturb it.”
For a minute strange and gigantic shadows chased one another across the ceiling as Parkinson moved the table-lamp to and fro behind the furniture. The man to whom blazing sunlight and the deepest shade were as one sat with his eyes fixed tranquilly on the unseen wall before him.
“There is a little pellet of paper here behind the couch, sir,” announced Parkinson.
“Then put the lamp back.”
Together they drew the cumbrous old piece of furniture from the wall and Carrados went behind. On hands and knees, with his face almost to the floor, he appeared to be studying even the dust that lay there. Then with a light, unerring touch he carefully picked up the thing that Parkinson had found. Very gently he unrolled it, using his long, delicate fingers so skilfully that even at the end the particles of dust still clung here and there to the surface of the paper.
“What do you make of it, Parkinson?”
Parkinson submitted it to the judgment of a single sense.
“A cigarette-paper to all appearance, sir. I can’t say it’s a kind that I’ve had experience of. It doesn’t seem to have any distinct watermark but there is a half-inch of glossy paper along one edge.”
“Amber-tipped. Yes?”
“Another edge is a little uneven; it appears to have been cut.”
“This edge opposite the mouthpiece. Yes, yes.”
“Patches are blackened, and little holes—like pinpricks—burned through. In places it is scorched brown.”
“Anything else?”
“I hope there is nothing I have failed to observe, sir,” said Parkinson, after a pause.
Carrados’s reply was a strangely irrelevant question.
“What is the ceiling made of?” he demanded.
“Oak boards, sir, with a heavy cross-beam.”
“Are there any plaster figures about the room?”
“No, sir.”
“Or anything at all that is whitewashed?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Carrados raised the scrap of tissue paper to his nose again, and for the second time he touched it with his tongue.
“Very interesting, Parkinson,” he remarked, and Parkinson’s responsive “Yes, sir” was a model of discreet acquiescence.
“I am sorry that I had to leave you,” said Miss Whitmarsh, returning, “but Mrs Lawrence is out and my father made a practice of offering everyone refreshment.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Carrados. “We have not been idle. I came from London to pick up a scrap of paper, lying on the floor of this room. Well, here it is.” He rolled the tissue into a pellet again and held it before her eyes.
“The wad!” she exclaimed eagerly. “Oh, that proves that I was right?”
“Scarcely ‘proves,’ Miss Whitmarsh.”
“But it shows that one of the shots was a blank charge, as you suggested this morning might have been the case.”
“Hardly even that.”
“What then?” she demanded, with her large dark eyes fixed in a curious fascination on his inscrutable face.
“That behind the couch we have found this scrap of powder-singed paper.”
There was a moment’s silence. The girl turned away her head.
“I am afraid that I am a little disappointed,” she murmured.
“Perhaps better now than later. I wished to warn you that we must prove every