4. Did Ransford meet him—in the Cathedral?
5. Was it Ransford who flung him to his death down
St. Wrytha’s Stair?
6. Was that the real reason of the agitation in which
he, Bryce, had found Ransford a few moments after
the discovery of the body?
There was plenty of time before him for the due solution of these mysteries, reflected Bryce—and for solving another problem which might possibly have some relationship to them—that of the exact connection between Ransford and his two wards. Bryce, in telling Ransford that morning of what was being said amongst the tea-table circles of the old cathedral city, had purposely only told him half a tale. He knew, and had known for months, that the society of the Close was greatly exercised over the position of the Ransford menage. Ransford, a bachelor, a well-preserved, active, alert man who was certainly of no more than middle age and did not look his years, had come to Wrychester only a few years previously, and had never shown any signs of forsaking his single state. No one had ever heard him mention his family or relations; then, suddenly, without warning, he had brought into his house Mary Bewery, a handsome young woman of nineteen, who was said to have only just left school, and her brother Richard, then a boy of sixteen, who had certainly been at a public school of repute and was entered at the famous Dean’s School of Wrychester as soon as he came to his new home. Dr. Ransford spoke of these two as his wards, without further explanation; the society of the Close was beginning to want much more explanation. Who were they—these two young people? Was Dr. Ransford their uncle, their cousin—what was he to them? In any case, in the opinion of the elderly ladies who set the tone of society in Wrychester, Miss Bewery was much too young, and far too pretty, to be left without a chaperon. But, up to then, no one had dared to say as much to Dr. Ransford—instead, everybody said it freely behind his back.
Bryce had used eyes and ears in relation to the two young people. He had been with Ransford a year when they arrived; admitted freely to their company, he had soon discovered that whatever relationship existed between them and Ransford, they had none with anybody else—that they knew of. No letters came for them from uncles, aunts, cousins, grandfathers, grandmothers. They appeared to have no memories or reminiscences of relatives, nor of father or mother; there was a curious atmosphere of isolation about them. They had plenty of talk about what might be called their present—their recent schooldays, their youthful experiences, games, pursuits—but none of what, under any circumstances, could have been a very far-distant past. Bryce’s quick and attentive ears discovered things—for instance that for many years past Ransford had been in the habit of spending his annual two months’ holiday with these two. Year after year—at any rate since the boy’s tenth year—he had taken them travelling; Bryce heard scraps of reminiscences of tours in France, and in Switzerland, and in Ireland, and in Scotland—even as far afield as the far north of Norway. It was easy to see that both boy and girl had a mighty veneration for Ransford; just as easy to see that Ransford took infinite pains to make life something more than happy and comfortable for both. And Bryce, who was one of those men who firmly believe that no man ever does anything for nothing and that self-interest is the mainspring of Life, asked himself over and over again the question which agitated the ladies of the Close: Who are these two, and what is the bond between them and this sort of fairy-godfather-guardian?
And now, as he put away the scrap of paper in a safely-locked desk, Bryce asked himself another question: Had the events of that morning anything to do with the mystery which hung around Dr. Ransford’s wards? If it had, then all the more reason why he should solve it. For Bryce had made up his mind that, by hook or by crook, he would marry Mary Bewery, and he was only too eager to lay hands on anything that would help him to achieve that ambition. If he could only get Ransford into his power—if he could get Mary Bewery herself into his power—well and good. Once he had got her, he would be good enough to her—in his way.
Having nothing to do, Bryce went out after a while and strolled round to the Wrychester Club—an exclusive institution, the members of which were drawn from the leisured, the professional, the clerical, and the military circles of the old city. And there, as he expected, he found small groups discussing the morning’s tragedy, and he joined one of them, in which was Sackville Bonham, his presumptive rival, who was busily telling three or four other young men what his stepfather, Mr. Folliot, had to say about the event.
“My stepfather says—and I tell you he saw the man,” said Sackville, who was noted in Wrychester circles as a loquacious and forward youth; “he says that whatever happened must have happened as soon as ever the old chap got up into that clerestory gallery. Look here!—it’s like this. My stepfather had gone in there for the morning service—strict old church-goer he is, you know—and he saw this stranger going up the stairway. He’s positive, Mr. Folliot, that it was then five minutes to ten. Now, then, I ask you—isn’t he right, my stepfather, when he says that it must have happened at once—immediately?
“Because that man, Varner, the mason, says he saw the man fall before ten. What?”
One of the group nodded at Bryce.
“I should think Bryce knows what time it happened as well as anybody,” he said. “You were first on the spot, Bryce, weren’t you?”
“After Varner,” answered Bryce laconically. “As to the time—I could fix it in this way—the organist was just beginning a voluntary or something of the sort.”
“That means ten o’clock—to the minute—when he was found!” exclaimed Sackville triumphantly. “Of course, he’d fallen a minute or two before that—which proves Mr. Folliot to be right. Now what does that prove? Why, that the old chap’s assailant, whoever he was, dogged him along that gallery as soon as he entered, seized him when he got to the open doorway, and flung him through! Clear as—as noonday!”
One of the group, a rather older man than the rest, who was leaning back in a tilted chair, hands in pockets, watching Sackville Bonham smilingly, shook his head and laughed a little.
“You’re taking something for granted, Sackie, my son!” he said. “You’re adopting the mason’s tale as true. But I don’t believe the poor man was thrown through that doorway at all—not I!”
Bryce turned sharply on this speaker—young Archdale, a member of a well-known firm of architects.
“You don’t?” he exclaimed. “But Varner says he saw him thrown!”
“Very likely,” answered Archdale. “But it would all happen so quickly that Varner might easily be mistaken. I’m speaking of something I know. I know every inch of the Cathedral fabric—ought to, as we’re always going over it, professionally. Just at that doorway, at the head of St. Wrytha’s Stair, the flooring of the clerestory gallery is worn so smooth that it’s like a piece of glass—and it slopes! Slopes at a very steep angle, too, to the doorway itself. A stranger walking along there might easily slip, and if the door was open, as it was, he’d be shot out and into space before he knew what was happening.”
This theory produced a moment’s silence—broken at last by Sackville Bonham.
“Varner says he saw—saw!—a man’s hand, a gentleman’s hand,” insisted Sackville. “He saw a white shirt cuff, a bit of the sleeve of a coat. You’re not going to get over that, you know. He’s certain of it!”
“Varner may be as certain of it as he likes,” answered Archdale, almost indifferently, “and still he may be mistaken. The probability is that Varner was confused by what he saw. He may have had a white shirt cuff and the sleeve of a black coat impressed upon him, as in a flash—and they were probably those of the man who was killed. If, as I suggest, the man slipped, and was shot out of that open doorway, he would execute some violent and curious movements in the effort to save himself in which his arms would play an important part. For one thing, he would certainly throw out an arm—to clutch at anything. That’s what Varner most probably saw. There’s no evidence whatever that the man was flung down.”
Bryce turned away from