The two listeners behind the curtains glanced at each other. Ransford’s glance showed that he was already chafing at the unpleasantness of his position—but Mary’s only betokened apprehension. And suddenly, as if she feared that Ransford would throw the curtains aside and walk into the front room, she laid a hand on his arm and motioned him to be patient—and silent.
“Oh?” said Bryce. “More in the air? About that business?”
“Just so,” assented Mitchington. “To start with, that man Varner, the mason, has never ceased talking. They say he’s always at it—to the effect that the verdict of the jury at the inquest was all wrong, and that his evidence was put clean aside. He persists that he did see—what he swore he saw.”
“He’ll persist in that to his dying day,” said Bryce carelessly. “If that’s all there is—”
“It isn’t,” interrupted the inspector. “Not by a long chalk! But Varner’s is a direct affirmation—the other matter’s a sort of ugly hint. There’s a man named Collishaw, a townsman, who’s been employed as a mason’s labourer about the Cathedral of late. This Collishaw, it seems, was at work somewhere up in the galleries, ambulatories, or whatever they call those upper regions, on the very morning of the affair. And the other night, being somewhat under the influence of drink, and talking the matter over with his mates at a tavern, he let out some dark hints that he could tell something if he liked. Of course, he was pressed to tell them—and wouldn’t. Then—so my informant tells me—he was dared to tell, and became surlily silent. That, of course, spread, and got to my ears. I’ve seen Collishaw.”
“Well?” asked Bryce.
“I believe the man does know something,” answered Mitchington. “That’s the impression I carried away, anyhow. But—he won’t speak. I charged him straight out with knowing something—but it was no good. I told him of what I’d heard. All he would say was that whatever he might have said when he’d got a glass of beer or so too much, he wasn’t going to say anything now neither for me nor for anybody!”
“Just so!” remarked Bryce. “But—he’ll be getting a glass too much again, some day, and then—then, perhaps he’ll add to what he said before. And—you’ll be sure to hear of it.”
“I’m not certain of that,” answered Mitchington. “I made some inquiry and I find that Collishaw is usually a very sober and retiring sort of chap—he’d been lured on to drink when he let out what he did. Besides, whether I’m right or wrong, I got the idea into my head that he’d already been—squared!”
“Squared!” exclaimed Bryce. “Why, then, if that affair was really murder, he’d be liable to being charged as an accessory after the fact!”
“I warned him of that,” replied Mitchington. “Yes, I warned him solemnly.”
“With no effect?” asked Bryce.
“He’s a surly sort of man,” said Mitchington. “The sort that takes refuge in silence. He made no answer beyond a growl.”
“You really think he knows something?” suggested Bryce. “Well—if there is anything, it’ll come out—in time.”
“Oh, it’ll come out!” assented Mitchington. “I’m by no means satisfied with that verdict of the coroner’s inquiry. I believe there was foul play—of some sort. I’m still following things up—quietly. And—I’ll tell you something—between ourselves—I’ve made an important discovery. It’s this. On the evening of Braden’s arrival at the Mitre he was out, somewhere, for a whole two hours—by himself.”
“I thought we learned from Mrs. Partingley that he and the other man, Dellingham, spent the evening together?” said Bryce.
“So we did—but that was not quite so,” replied Mitchington. “Braden went out of the Mitre just before nine o’clock and he didn’t return until a few minutes after eleven. Now, then, where did he go?”
“I suppose you’re trying to find that out?” asked Bryce, after a pause, during which the listeners heard the caller rise and make for the door.
“Of course!” replied Mitchington, with a confident laugh. “And—I shall! Keep it to yourself, doctor.”
When Bryce had let the inspector out and returned to his sitting-room, Ransford and Mary had come from behind the curtains. He looked at them and shook his head.
“You heard—a good deal, you see,” he observed.
“Look here!” said Ransford peremptorily. “You put that man off about the call at my surgery. You didn’t tell him the truth.”
“Quite right,” assented Bryce. “I didn’t. Why should I?”
“What did Braden ask you?” demanded Ransford. “Come, now?”
“Merely if Dr. Ransford was in,” answered Bryce, “remarking that he had once known a Dr. Ransford. That was—literally—all. I replied that you were not in.”
Ransford stood silently thinking for a moment or two. Then he moved towards the door.
“I don’t see that any good will come of more talk about this,” he said. “We three, at any rate, know this—I never saw Braden when he came to my house.”
Then he motioned Mary to follow him, and they went away, and Bryce, having watched them out of sight, smiled at himself in his mirror—with full satisfaction.
Chapter XII. Murder of the Mason’s Labourer
It was towards noon of the very next day that Bryce made a forward step in the matter of solving the problem of Richard Jenkins and his tomb in Paradise. Ever since his return from Barthorpe he had been making attempts to get at the true meaning of this mystery. He had paid so many visits to the Cathedral Library that Ambrose Campany had asked him jestingly if he was going in for archaeology; Bryce had replied that having nothing to do just then he saw no reason why he shouldn’t improve his knowledge of the antiquities of Wrychester. But he was scrupulously careful not to let the librarian know the real object of his prying and peeping into the old books and documents. Campany, as Bryce was very well aware, was a walking encyclopaedia of information about Wrychester Cathedral: he was, in fact, at that time, engaged in completing a history of it. And it was through that history that Bryce accidentally got his precious information. For on the day following the interview with Mary Bewery and Ransford, Bryce being in the library was treated by Campany to an inspection of certain drawings which the librarian had made for illustrating his work-drawings, most of them, of old brasses, coats of arms, and the like,—And at the foot of one of these, a drawing of a shield on which was sculptured three crows, Bryce saw the name Richard Jenkins, armiger. It was all he could do to repress a start and to check his tongue. But Campany, knowing nothing, quickly gave him the information he wanted.
“All these drawings,” he said, “are of old things in and about the Cathedral. Some of them, like that, for instance, that Jenkins shield, are of ornamentations on tombs which are so old that the inscriptions have completely disappeared—tombs in the Cloisters, and in Paradise. Some of those tombs can only be identified by these sculptures and ornaments.”
“How do you know, for instance, that any particular tomb or monument is, we’ll say, Jenkins’s?” asked Bryce, feeling that he was on safe ground. “Must be a matter of doubt if there’s no inscription left, isn’t it?”
“No!” replied Campany. “No doubt at all. In that particular case, there’s no doubt that a certain tomb out there in the corner of Paradise, near the east wall of the south porch, is that of one Richard Jenkins, because it bears his coat-of-arms, which, as you see, bore these