“So I gathered from your card. It seems a very sad case. Sergeant Pengowan’s report has just reached me. Anything I can do for you—” Inspector Dawfield pretended to occupy himself in cutting open an official envelope with scrupulous care.
“Sergeant Pengowan regards it as a case of suicide, does he not?” asked Mrs. Pendleton rigidly.
“Well, yes, I believe he does,” replied Inspector Dawfield. “There is no doubt on that point, is there? Your brother’s revolver was lying near him, and the door was locked on the inside.”
“There is the greatest doubt in my mind,” returned Mrs. Pendleton vehemently. “I do not—I cannot believe that my brother has taken his own life. In fact, I am sure he did not.”
On hearing these words Inspector Dawfield looked at his visitor again, with something more than surprise in his eyes, then he pulled a document from a pigeonhole and hastily scanned it.
“Pengowan’s report states quite definitely that it is suicide,” he said as he replaced it. “In the face of that, do you think—”
“I think my brother has been murdered,” she said in a decided voice.
“This is a very grave statement to make, Mrs. Pendleton. Have you anything to support it? Anything which has not been brought to light, I mean?”
Mrs. Pendleton proceeded to give her reasons. She had thought over what she was going to say as she came along, and she spoke with growing conviction, intensified by the sight of the earnest attentive face before her. The incident of the person she had detected looking through the door took on a new significance as she related it. By her constant association of the eyes with the disliked face of her brother’s servant, she had unconsciously reached the conclusion that she had all along recognized the eavesdropper as Thalassa.
“You say your brother was talking about some family matters at the time?” asked Inspector Dawfield, as she related that part of her story.
“Yes,” responded Mrs. Pendleton. She had repressed all mention of her brother’s announcement of his daughter’s illegitimacy, but afterwards she tried to persuade herself that it slipped her memory at the time.
“It’s common enough for servants to listen at doors,” remarked Inspector Dawfield. “In this case it may seem to have a sinister interpretation because of what happened afterwards. How long has this man been in your brother’s employ?”
“A number of years, I believe,” replied Mrs. Pendleton. “But he has a wicked face,” she added hastily, as though that fact cancelled a record of lengthy service. “I took a dislike to him as soon as I saw him.”
Inspector Dawfield veiled a slight smile with a sheet of foolscap. “Have you any other reason for suspecting him?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t like to say that I suspect Thalassa, or anybody else.” Mrs. Pendleton was prompt with this assurance. “But there are certain things which seem to me to need further investigation. There’s the question of the door being locked on the inside. It seems to me that the door might have been locked on the outside, and the key dropped in there afterwards. The door had to be smashed before we could get in, and the key wasn’t in the door then, you know.”
Dawfield nodded thoughtfully. “Who has charge of the keys in your brother’s house? This servant with the strange name—Thalassa, is it?”
“Yes, and he was upstairs in my brother’s room last night, after we came down. And when we got there he was ready to go out, with his hat and coat on. It all seems very strange.”
Again the courteous inspector hid a slight smile. His lady visitor might disclaim suspecting anybody, but her inferences carried her to the same point.
“What do you wish me to do?” he asked.
“I feel there should be further inquiries. Sergeant Pengowan does not strike me as the kind of man capable of bringing to light any mystery which may be hidden behind my brother’s supposed suicide. He does not look at all intelligent. I thought of sending a telegram to Scotland Yard, but I decided to see you first.”
The hint was not lost on Inspector Dawfield, but it was unnecessary. It was his duty to look into her complaint and make further inquiries into the case.
“Your statement shall certainly be investigated,” he said emphatically. “I am rather short of men just now, but I’ll see if I can get Bodmin to send over a man. I will inquire immediately, if you will excuse me.”
He retired into a curtained recess in a corner of the room, where Mrs. Pendleton could see him holding a colloquy over the telephone. After rather a lengthy conversation he returned to announce that a detective was coming over by the next train to investigate the case.
“The Bodmin office is sending over Detective Barrant, of Scotland Yard,” he explained. “He happens to be in Cornwall on another case, and was just on the point of returning to London. I was able to speak to him personally and relate the facts of your brother’s death. He decided to telephone to Scotland Yard, and come over here at once. He will arrive soon after lunch. I will take him to Flint House myself. He may wish to see you later on. Will you be at your hotel?”
“If not, I will leave word where I can be found,” replied Mrs. Pendleton, rising as she spoke. “Good morning, and thank you.”
She left the police station feeling that she had accomplished an excellent morning’s work, and hurried back to the hotel with visions of letters to be written and telegrams to be sent before lunch. But she was destined to do neither. As she entered the lounge, her eye fell upon its solitary occupant, a male figure in a grey lounge suit sitting in her favourite corner by the window. It was her brother Austin.
CHAPTER XI
He rose from his seat as he saw her, but waited for her to approach. Her eyes, dwelling on his face, noted that it was not so angry as she had last seen it, but smoothed into the semblance of sorrow and regret, with, however, something of the characteristic glance of irony which habitually distinguished him, though that may have been partly due to the pince-nez which glittered over his keen eyes. There was something of an art in Austin Turold’s manner of wearing glasses; they tilted, superiorly, at the world in general at an acute angle on the high bridge of a supercilious nose, the eyes glancing through them downwards, as though from a great height, at a remote procession of humanity crawling far beneath.
At that moment, however, there was nothing superior in his bearing. It was so unwontedly subdued, so insistently meek, that it was to be understood that his mission was both conciliatory and propitiatory. That, at least, was the impression Mrs. Pendleton gathered as her brother informed her that he had been waiting nearly an hour to see her.
She reflected that he must have arrived shortly after she left the hotel to go to the police station, and she wondered what had induced her brother to rise at an hour so uncommonly early for him, in order to pay her a morning visit.
“I was up betimes,” said Austin, as though reading her thought. “Sleep, of course, was impossible. Poor Robert!”
Mrs. Pendleton waited impatiently for him to disclose the real reason of an appearance which had more behind it, she felt sure, than to express condolences about their common bereavement. Of Robert she had always stood a little in awe, but she understood her younger brother better. As a boy she had seen through him and his pretensions, and he did not seem to her much changed since those days.
“I have been upset by our difference last night, Constance,” he pursued. “It seems deplorable for us to have quarrelled—yes, actually quarrelled—over our poor brother’s death.”
His