The barrister possessed himself of the tobacco pipe, examined it, and passed it up to the Coroner, who in his turn looked it over before handing it to Mr. Fransemmery and his fellow jurymen. It went the round of the twelve and returned to the barrister, who held it up for Grimsdale to look at once more. “You found this—which is a briar-wood tobacco pipe, of superior manufacture, silver-mounted—on the supper-table in your parlour after the three men had gone, Grimsdale?” he asked. “Did you come to the conclusion that one of them had left it there?”
“Certain of it, sir.”
“Why, now, are you certain? I suppose you’d had other customers in that parlour, during the previous day?”
“Yes, sir. But I’d laid the supper-table myself. That pipe, sir, when I found it, was lying on a small plate—where one of the gentlemen had sat. And it had just been used, sir—the bowl was warm.”
“I congratulate you on your power of observation, Grimsdale,” said the barrister with a smile. He laid the pipe on the table before him, amongst his papers, and turned to the Coroner. “I think, sir, you spoke of adjourning at this stage?” he continued. “If I may make a suggestion, it would, I think, be best if the adjournment is of such a nature as to afford time for more searching enquiry; it seems to me that there is a good deal to go into, and——”
“We will adjourn to this day fortnight,” said the Coroner. He turned to the jury and gave them some instructions and advice as to keeping their minds open until further evidence was put before them. Then, with a murmured expression of his hope that by the time they met again the police would be able to throw more light on what was a very painful problem, he left his chair, obviously relieved that the morning’s proceedings had come to an end.
The old dining-hall rapidly cleared. Spectators, witnesses, officials began to unpack themselves out of nooks and corners and to drift away in groups and knots, discussing the events and revelations of the morning. Mrs. Tretheroe went off with her two guests; Harry Markenmore and his sister left the room in company with Harborough; the jurymen filed away in twos and threes. But in the centre of the temporary Court, around the big table at which the lawyers and officials had sat, with books and papers before them, several men gathered, and began to discuss matters informally—the Chief Constable; Blick; the barrister who had represented the authorities; Chilford; Walkinshaw, and Mr. Fransemmery, who, in spite of the Coroner’s admonition, felt himself justified in hearing whatever there was to hear.
“What I feel about it,” Chilford was saying as Mr. Fransemmery joined the group, “is just this—and I say it as solicitor to the Markenmore family—there must be a searching investigation into Guy Markenmore’s business affairs and his private life in London! This affair was not originated here, nor engineered here! If Detective-Sergeant Blick wants to get at the bottom of things he ought to begin in London—where Guy Markenmore has lived for some years past.”
“You think he was followed down here?” suggested the barrister, who, business being over, had lighted a cigarette, and sitting on the edge of the table, was comfortably smoking. “You think this was a job put up in London?”
“I think there’s every probability that all and everything that we’ve heard this morning has practically nothing whatever to do with the real truth about the murder of Guy Markenmore!” answered Chilford. “I’m quite certain—in my own mind—that John Harborough is as innocent as I am, and I’m not much less certain that the two men who were with Guy at the Sceptre are also innocent. The probability is that those men will be heard of—they’ll come forward. You’ll find that the meeting at the Sceptre—an odd one, if you like!—was nothing but a business meeting. No—we’ve got nowhere yet! As I say, if Blick there wants to do some ferret-work, he’s got to go back and start in London. How do we know what Guy Markenmore’s affairs were? Or his secrets? For all we know, somebody or other may have had good reason for getting rid of him.”
“What puzzles me considerably,” observed the Chief Constable, “is—how did those two men who were with Guy Markenmore at the Sceptre come into and get out of the district unobserved? My men have already made the most exhaustive enquiries at every railroad station in the neighbourhood, and we’ve got hold of—nothing!”
“Strangers, too!” said Walkinshaw.
“How do we know that?” demanded Chilford. “There are a tidy lot of men within an area of twenty miles who might have business dealings with Guy Markenmore. His business here that night might have been just as much with those two men as with his brother and sister. Probably it was.”
“Grimsdale asserts that the first man was an American,” remarked Walkinshaw. “We haven’t a plenitude of Americans in residence about here. I could count them on my fingers.”
“That’s so,” said the Chief Constable. “If the man was an American—and Grimsdale says he’s met a good many in his time, so he ought to know—he came from somewhere outside our neighbourhood. But what beats me is—how did he and the other man get away, unobserved, on Tuesday morning?”
Mr. Fransemmery, who, like Blick, had listened attentively, but silently, to these exchanges of opinion and idea, coughed gently, as if deprecating any idea that he wished to interfere.
“Talking of—of America,” he remarked, “it may be of no importance, and not even relative to the subject under discussion, but I may observe that a mail steamer left Southampton for New York at one o’clock on Tuesday afternoon last. Now, Markenmore is within thirty miles of Southampton by road, and if this man—the first man—was an American, it is possible that he journeyed to Southampton, caught that boat, and was away to sea before hearing of what had befallen the man whom he had entertained to supper. I know about that boat, because I mailed some antiquarian documents to a friend of mine in the United States by it.”
The Chief Constable twisted his military moustache and considered Mr. Fransemmery.
“Um!” he remarked. “Might be a good deal in that—he might certainly have taken this place in his way between London and Southampton. But—the queer thing is, we can’t hit on a trace of his coming or going!”
“Why did he never return to the Sceptre—where three pounds fourteen shillings change was due to him?” asked Walkinshaw.
“I don’t know,” said the Chief Constable. “But I’m very sure of this—whoever he was, he didn’t board the early morning train from Selcaster to London, either at Selcaster or at Mitbourne, that particular morning. There were only five passengers went aboard at Selcaster, and two at Mitbourne, and the railway folks know every man jack of ’em!”
“It’s not necessary to board a train to get into or out of a district,” observed Walkinshaw. “My own belief is that these two men came here and left here by motor-car.”
The Chief Constable looked at Walkinshaw and grunted his dissent.
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” he said. “I’ve had my men making enquiries of that sort all over the place! Every neighbouring village—every farmstead on the hill-sides! And—not one scrap of information.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, nor affect what I say,” retorted Walkinshaw. “You know as well as I do that where we are now is about the middle of what we’ll call a triangle. On each of all three sides of us lies a big main road. On every one of these three roads there’s no end of motor traffic nowadays. I ought to know, for I live on one of them. I reckon there are at least forty cars of one sort or another pass my house every hour.”
“Not first thing in the morning!” interrupted the Chief Constable sceptically.
“I’m giving you an average,” said Walkinshaw. “From five o’clock onward, anyhow. Do you think one car would be noticed out of the hundreds that come and go? Rot!”
“Where did they put their car while they came to the Sceptre?” asked the Chief Constable.
“I see nothing difficult about that,” replied Walkinshaw. “I’d engage to hide any car, however big, in one of our byways or plantations, or in a convenient spot in the hollows of the downs, for a few hours, without anybody seeing it. A lonely district like this, and at night, too! Easy enough!”
“If these two men came together in a car,” said Chilford, “why did one man present himself at Grimsdale’s at nine o’clock in the evening and the other at two o’clock in the morning?”
“For that matter—if you’re going into whys and wherefores,” retorted Walkinshaw, “where did the first man go when he walked out of the Sceptre’s door after first going there? He was away until close on eleven o’clock. Where had he been?”
“Well, we’ve gone into that, too!” said the Chief Constable, almost defiantly. “There isn’t a soul in the village who saw any stranger at all that night!”
“But no one knew of him till G............