Collected works of j s f.., p.472
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 472
“I saw such a man entering the Cathedral, a while ago,” answered Ransford. “A stranger, certainly. Come along, then.”
He had fully recovered his self-possession by that time, and he led the way from the surgery and across the Close as if he were going on an ordinary professional visit. He kept silence as they walked rapidly towards Paradise, and Bryce was silent, too. He had studied Ransford a good deal during their two years’ acquaintanceship, and he knew Ransford’s power of repressing and commanding his feelings and concealing his thoughts. And now he decided that the look and start which he had at first taken to be of the nature of genuine astonishment were cunningly assumed, and he was not surprised when, having reached the group of men gathered around the body, Ransford showed nothing but professional interest.
“Have you done anything towards finding out who this unfortunate man is?” asked Ransford, after a brief examination, as he turned to Mitchington. “Evidently a stranger — but he probably has papers on him.”
“There’s nothing on him — except a purse, with plenty of money in it,” answered Mitchington. “I’ve been through his pockets myself: there isn’t a scrap of paper — not even as much as an old letter. But he’s evidently a tourist, or something of the sort, and so he’ll probably have stayed in the city all night, and I’m going to inquire at the hotels.”
“There’ll be an inquest, of course,” remarked Ransford mechanically. “Well — we can do nothing, Mitchington. You’d better have the body removed to the mortuary.” He turned and looked up the broken stairway at the foot of which they were standing. “You say he fell down that?” he asked. “Whatever was he doing up there?”
Mitchington looked at Bryce.
“Haven’t you told Dr. Ransford how it was?” he asked.
“No,” answered Bryce. He glanced at Ransford, indicating Varner, who had come back with the constable and was standing by. “He didn’t fall,” he went on, watching Ransford narrowly. “He was violently flung out of that doorway. Varner here saw it.”
Ransford’s cheek flushed, and he was unable to repress a slight start. He looked at the mason.
“You actually saw it!” he exclaimed. “Why, what did you see?”
“Him!” answered Varner, nodding at the dead man. “Flung, head and heels, clean through that doorway up there. Hadn’t a chance to save himself, he hadn’t! Just grabbed at — nothing! — and came down. Give a year’s wages if I hadn’t seen it — and heard him scream.”
Ransford was watching Varner with a set, concentrated look.
“Who — flung him?” he asked suddenly. “You say you saw!”
“Aye, sir, but not as much as all that!” replied the mason. “I just saw a hand — and that was all. But,” he added, turning to the police with a knowing look, “there’s one thing I can swear to — it was a gentleman’s hand! I saw the white shirt cuff and a bit of a black sleeve!”
Ransford turned away. But he just as suddenly turned back to the inspector.
“You’ll have to let the Cathedral authorities know, Mitchington,” he said. “Better get the body removed, though, first — do it now before the morning service is over. And — let me hear what you find out about his identity, if you can discover anything in the city.”
He went away then, without another word or a further glance at the dead man. But Bryce had already assured himself of what he was certain was a fact — that a look of unmistakable relief had swept across Ransford’s face for the fraction of a second when he knew that there were no papers on the dead man. He himself waited after Ransford had gone; waited until the police had fetched a stretcher, when he personally superintended the removal of the body to the mortuary outside the Close. And there a constable who had come over from the police-station gave a faint hint as to further investigation.
“I saw that poor gentleman last night, sir,” he said to the inspector. “He was standing at the door of the Mitre, talking to another gentleman — a tallish man.”
“Then I’ll go across there,” said Mitchington. “Come with me, if you like, Dr. Bryce.”
This was precisely what Bryce desired — he was already anxious to acquire all the information he could get. And he walked over the way with the inspector, to the quaint old-world inn which filled almost one side of the little square known as Monday Market, and in at the courtyard, where, looking out of the bow window which had served as an outer bar in the coaching days, they found the landlady of the Mitre, Mrs. Partingley. Bryce saw at once that she had heard the news.
“What’s this, Mr. Mitchington?” she demanded as they drew near across the cobble-paved yard. “Somebody’s been in to say there’s been an accident to a gentleman, a stranger — I hope it isn’t one of the two we’ve got in the house?”
“I should say it is, ma’am,” answered the inspector. “He was seen outside here last night by one of our men, anyway.”
The landlady uttered an expression of distress, and opening a side-door, motioned them to step into her parlour.
“Which of them is it?” she asked anxiously. “There’s two — came together last night, they did — a tall one and a short one. Dear, dear me! — is it a bad accident, now, inspector?”
“The man’s dead, ma’am,” replied Mitchington grimly. “And we want to know who he is. Have you got his name — and the other gentleman’s?”
Mrs. Partingley uttered another exclamation of distress and astonishment, lifting her plump hands in horror. But her business faculties remained alive, and she made haste to produce a big visitors’ book and to spread it open before her callers.
“There it is!” she said, pointing to the two last entries. “That’s the short gentleman’s name — Mr. John Braden, London. And that’s the tall one’s — Mr. Christopher Dellingham — also London. Tourists, of course — we’ve never seen either of them before.”
“Came together, you say, Mrs. Partingley?” asked Mitchington. “When was that, now?”
“Just before dinner, last night,” answered the landlady. “They’d evidently come in by the London train — that gets in at six-forty, as you know. They came here together, and they’d dinner together, and spent the evening together. Of course, we took them for friends. But they didn’t go out together this morning, though they’d breakfast together. After breakfast, Mr. Dellingham asked me the way to the old Manor Mill, and he went off there, so I concluded. Mr. Braden, he hung about a bit, studying a local directory I’d lent him, and after a while he asked me if he could hire a trap to take him out to Saxonsteade this afternoon. Of course, I said he could, and he arranged for it to be ready at two-thirty. Then he went out, and across the market towards the Cathedral. And that,” concluded Mrs. Partingley, “is about all I know, gentlemen.”
“Saxonsteade, eh?” remarked Mitchington. “Did he say anything about his reasons for going there?”
“Well, yes, he did,” replied the landlady. “For he asked me if I thought he’d be likely to find the Duke at home at that time of day. I said I knew his Grace was at Saxonsteade just now, and that I should think the middle of the afternoon would be a good time.”
“He didn’t tell you his business with the Duke?” asked Mitchington.
“Not a word!” said the landlady. “Oh, no! — just that, and no more. But — here’s Mr. Dellingham.”
Bryce turned to see a tall, broad-shouldered, bearded man pass the window — the door opened and he walked in, to glance inquisitively at the inspector. He turned at once to Mrs. Partingley.
“I hear there’s been an accident to that gentleman I came in with last night?” he said. “Is it anything serious? Your ostler says—”
“These gentlemen have just come about it, sir,” answered the landlady. She glanced at Mitchington. “Perhaps you’ll tell—” she began.
“Was he a friend of yours, sir?” asked Mitchington. “A personal friend?”
“Never saw him in my life before last night!” replied the tall man. “We just chanced to meet in the train coming down from London, got talking, and discovered we were both coming to the same place — Wrychester. So — we came to this house together. No — no friend of mine — not even an acquaintance — previous, of course, to last night. Is — is it anything serious?”
“He’s dead, sir,” replied Mitchington. “And now we want to know who he is.”
“God bless my soul! Dead? You don’t say so!” exclaimed Mr. Dellingham. “Dear, dear! Well, I can’t help you — don’t know him from Adam. Pleasant, well-informed man — seemed to have travelled a great deal in foreign countries. I can tell you this much, though,” he went on, as if a sudden recollection had come to him; “I gathered that he’d only just arrived in England — in fact, now I come to think of it, he said as much. Made some remark in the train about the pleasantness of the English landscape, don’t you know? — I got an idea that he’d recently come from some country where trees and hedges and green fields aren’t much in evidence. But — if you want to know who he is, officer, why don’t you search him? He’s sure to have papers, cards, and so on about him.”
“We have searched him,” answered Mitchington. “There isn’t a paper, a letter, or even a visiting card on him.”
Mr. Dellingham looked at the landlady.
“Bless me!” he said. “Remarkable! But he’d a suit-case, or something of the sort — something light — which he carried up from the railway station himself. Perhaps in that—”
“I should like to see whatever he had,” said Mitchington. “We’d better examine his room, Mrs. Partingley.”
Bryce presently followed the landlady and the inspector upstairs — Mr. Dellingham followed him. All four went into a bedroom which looked out on Monday Market. And there, on a side-table, lay a small leather suit-case, one which could easily be carried, with its upper half thrown open and back against the wall behind.
The landlady, Mr. Dellingham and Bryce stood silently by while the inspector examined the contents of this the only piece of luggage in the room. There was very little to see — what toilet articles the visitor brought were spread out on the dressing-table — brushes, combs, a case of razors, and the like. And Mitchington nodded side-wise at them as he began to take the articles out of the suit-case.
“There’s one thing strikes me at once,” he said. “I dare say you gentlemen notice it. All these things are new! This suit-case hasn’t been in use very long — see, the leather’s almost unworn — and those things on the dressing-table are new. And what there is here looks new, too. There’s not much, you see — he evidently had no intention of a long stop. An extra pair of trousers — some shirts — socks — collars — neckties — slippers — handkerchiefs — that’s about all. And the first thing to do is to see if the linen’s marked with name or initials.”
He deftly examined the various articles as he took them out, and in the end shook his head.
“No name — no initials,” he said. “But look here — do you see, gentlemen, where these collars were bought? Half a dozen of them, in a box. Paris! There you are — the seller’s name, inside the collar, just as in England. Aristide Pujol, 82, Rue des Capucines. And — judging by the look of ’em — I should say these shirts were bought there, too — and the handkerchiefs — and the neckwear — they all have a foreign look. There may be a clue in that — we might trace him in France if we can’t in England. Perhaps he is a Frenchman.”
“I’ll take my oath he isn’t!” exclaimed Mr. Dellingham. “However long he’d been out of England he hadn’t lost a North-Country accent! He was some sort of a North-Countryman — Yorkshire or Lancashire, I’ll go bail. No Frenchman, officer — not he!”
“Well, there’s no papers here, anyway,” said Mitchington, who had now emptied the suit-case. “Nothing to show who he was. Nothing here, you see, in the way of paper but this old book — what is it — History of Barthorpe.”
“He showed me that in the train,” remarked Mr. Dellingham. “I’m interested in antiquities and archaeology, and anybody who’s long in my society finds it out. We got talking of such things, and he pulled out that book, and told me with great pride, that he’d picked it up from a book-barrow in the street, somewhere in London, for one-and-six. I think,” he added musingly, “that what attracted him in it was the old calf binding and the steel frontispiece — I’m sure he’d no great knowledge of antiquities.”
Mitchington laid the book down, and Bryce picked it up, examined the title-page, and made a mental note of the fact that Barthorpe was a market-town in the Midlands. And it was on the tip of his tongue to say that if the dead man had no particular interest in antiquities and archaeology, it was somewhat strange that he should have bought a book which was mainly antiquarian, and that it might be that he had so bought it because of a connection between Barthorpe and himself. But he remembered that it was his own policy to keep pertinent facts for his own private consideration, so he said nothing. And Mitchington presently remarking that there was no more to be done there, and ascertaining from Mr. Dellingham that it was his intention to remain in Wrychester for at any rate a few days, they went downstairs again, and Bryce and the inspector crossed over to the police-station.
The news had spread through the heart of the city, and at the police-station doors a crowd had gathered. Just inside two or three principal citizens were talking to the Superintendent — amongst them was Mr. Stephen Folliot, the stepfather of young Bonham — a big, heavy-faced man who had been a resident in the Close for some years, was known to be of great wealth, and had a reputation as a grower of rare roses. He was telling the Superintendent something — and the Superintendent beckoned to Mitchington.
“Mr. Folliot says he saw this gentleman in the Cathedral,” he said. “Can’t have been so very long before the accident happened, Mr. Folliot, from what you say.”
“As near as I can reckon, it would be five minutes to ten,” answered Mr. Folliot. “I put it at that because I’d gone in for the morning service, which is at ten. I saw him go up the inside stair to the clerestory gallery — he was looking about him. Five minutes to ten — and it must have happened immediately afterwards.”
Bryce heard this and turned away, making a calculation for himself. It had been on the stroke of ten when he saw Ransford hurrying out of the west porch. There was a stairway from the gallery down to that west porch. What, then, was the inference? But for the moment he drew none — instead, he went home to his rooms in Friary Lane, and shutting himself up, drew from his pocket the scrap of paper he had taken from the dead man.
CHAPTER V. THE SCRAP OF PAPER
WHEN BRYCE, IN his locked room, drew that bit of paper from his pocket, it was with the conviction that in it he held a clue to the secret of the morning’s adventure. He had only taken a mere glance at it as he withdrew it from the dead man’s purse, but he had seen enough of what was written on it to make him certain that it was a document — if such a mere fragment could be called a document — of no ordinary importance. And now he unfolded and laid it flat on his table and looked at it carefully, asking himself what was the real meaning of what he saw.
There was not much to see. The scrap of paper itself was evidently a quarter of a leaf of old-fashioned, stoutish notepaper, somewhat yellow with age, and bearing evidence of having been folded and kept flat in the dead man’s purse for some time — the creases were well-defined, the edges were worn and slightly stained by long rubbing against the leather. And in its centre were a few words, or, rather abbreviations of words, in Latin, and some figures:
In Para. Wrycestr. juxt. tumb.
Ric. Jenk. ex cap. xxiii. xv.
Bryce at first sight took them to be a copy of some inscription but his knowledge of Latin told him, a moment later, that instead of being an inscription, it was a direction. And a very plain direction, too! — he read it easily. In Paradise, at Wrychester, next to, or near, the tomb of Richard Jenkins, or, possibly, Jenkinson, from, or behind, the head, twenty-three, fifteen — inches, most likely. There was no doubt that there was the meaning of the words. What, now, was it that lay behind the tomb of Richard Jenkins, or Jenkinson, in Wrychester Paradise? — in all probability twenty-three inches from the head-stone, and fifteen inches beneath the surface. That was a question which Bryce immediately resolved to find a satisfactory answer to; in the meantime there were other questions which he set down in order on his mental tablets. They were these:
1. Who, really, was the man who had registered at the
Mitre under the name of John Braden?
2. Why did he wish to make a personal call on the
Duke of Saxonsteade?
3. Was he some man who had known Ransford in time
past — and whom Ransford had no desire to meet again?
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.
He had fully recovered his self-possession by that time, and he led the way from the surgery and across the Close as if he were going on an ordinary professional visit. He kept silence as they walked rapidly towards Paradise, and Bryce was silent, too. He had studied Ransford a good deal during their two years’ acquaintanceship, and he knew Ransford’s power of repressing and commanding his feelings and concealing his thoughts. And now he decided that the look and start which he had at first taken to be of the nature of genuine astonishment were cunningly assumed, and he was not surprised when, having reached the group of men gathered around the body, Ransford showed nothing but professional interest.
“Have you done anything towards finding out who this unfortunate man is?” asked Ransford, after a brief examination, as he turned to Mitchington. “Evidently a stranger — but he probably has papers on him.”
“There’s nothing on him — except a purse, with plenty of money in it,” answered Mitchington. “I’ve been through his pockets myself: there isn’t a scrap of paper — not even as much as an old letter. But he’s evidently a tourist, or something of the sort, and so he’ll probably have stayed in the city all night, and I’m going to inquire at the hotels.”
“There’ll be an inquest, of course,” remarked Ransford mechanically. “Well — we can do nothing, Mitchington. You’d better have the body removed to the mortuary.” He turned and looked up the broken stairway at the foot of which they were standing. “You say he fell down that?” he asked. “Whatever was he doing up there?”
Mitchington looked at Bryce.
“Haven’t you told Dr. Ransford how it was?” he asked.
“No,” answered Bryce. He glanced at Ransford, indicating Varner, who had come back with the constable and was standing by. “He didn’t fall,” he went on, watching Ransford narrowly. “He was violently flung out of that doorway. Varner here saw it.”
Ransford’s cheek flushed, and he was unable to repress a slight start. He looked at the mason.
“You actually saw it!” he exclaimed. “Why, what did you see?”
“Him!” answered Varner, nodding at the dead man. “Flung, head and heels, clean through that doorway up there. Hadn’t a chance to save himself, he hadn’t! Just grabbed at — nothing! — and came down. Give a year’s wages if I hadn’t seen it — and heard him scream.”
Ransford was watching Varner with a set, concentrated look.
“Who — flung him?” he asked suddenly. “You say you saw!”
“Aye, sir, but not as much as all that!” replied the mason. “I just saw a hand — and that was all. But,” he added, turning to the police with a knowing look, “there’s one thing I can swear to — it was a gentleman’s hand! I saw the white shirt cuff and a bit of a black sleeve!”
Ransford turned away. But he just as suddenly turned back to the inspector.
“You’ll have to let the Cathedral authorities know, Mitchington,” he said. “Better get the body removed, though, first — do it now before the morning service is over. And — let me hear what you find out about his identity, if you can discover anything in the city.”
He went away then, without another word or a further glance at the dead man. But Bryce had already assured himself of what he was certain was a fact — that a look of unmistakable relief had swept across Ransford’s face for the fraction of a second when he knew that there were no papers on the dead man. He himself waited after Ransford had gone; waited until the police had fetched a stretcher, when he personally superintended the removal of the body to the mortuary outside the Close. And there a constable who had come over from the police-station gave a faint hint as to further investigation.
“I saw that poor gentleman last night, sir,” he said to the inspector. “He was standing at the door of the Mitre, talking to another gentleman — a tallish man.”
“Then I’ll go across there,” said Mitchington. “Come with me, if you like, Dr. Bryce.”
This was precisely what Bryce desired — he was already anxious to acquire all the information he could get. And he walked over the way with the inspector, to the quaint old-world inn which filled almost one side of the little square known as Monday Market, and in at the courtyard, where, looking out of the bow window which had served as an outer bar in the coaching days, they found the landlady of the Mitre, Mrs. Partingley. Bryce saw at once that she had heard the news.
“What’s this, Mr. Mitchington?” she demanded as they drew near across the cobble-paved yard. “Somebody’s been in to say there’s been an accident to a gentleman, a stranger — I hope it isn’t one of the two we’ve got in the house?”
“I should say it is, ma’am,” answered the inspector. “He was seen outside here last night by one of our men, anyway.”
The landlady uttered an expression of distress, and opening a side-door, motioned them to step into her parlour.
“Which of them is it?” she asked anxiously. “There’s two — came together last night, they did — a tall one and a short one. Dear, dear me! — is it a bad accident, now, inspector?”
“The man’s dead, ma’am,” replied Mitchington grimly. “And we want to know who he is. Have you got his name — and the other gentleman’s?”
Mrs. Partingley uttered another exclamation of distress and astonishment, lifting her plump hands in horror. But her business faculties remained alive, and she made haste to produce a big visitors’ book and to spread it open before her callers.
“There it is!” she said, pointing to the two last entries. “That’s the short gentleman’s name — Mr. John Braden, London. And that’s the tall one’s — Mr. Christopher Dellingham — also London. Tourists, of course — we’ve never seen either of them before.”
“Came together, you say, Mrs. Partingley?” asked Mitchington. “When was that, now?”
“Just before dinner, last night,” answered the landlady. “They’d evidently come in by the London train — that gets in at six-forty, as you know. They came here together, and they’d dinner together, and spent the evening together. Of course, we took them for friends. But they didn’t go out together this morning, though they’d breakfast together. After breakfast, Mr. Dellingham asked me the way to the old Manor Mill, and he went off there, so I concluded. Mr. Braden, he hung about a bit, studying a local directory I’d lent him, and after a while he asked me if he could hire a trap to take him out to Saxonsteade this afternoon. Of course, I said he could, and he arranged for it to be ready at two-thirty. Then he went out, and across the market towards the Cathedral. And that,” concluded Mrs. Partingley, “is about all I know, gentlemen.”
“Saxonsteade, eh?” remarked Mitchington. “Did he say anything about his reasons for going there?”
“Well, yes, he did,” replied the landlady. “For he asked me if I thought he’d be likely to find the Duke at home at that time of day. I said I knew his Grace was at Saxonsteade just now, and that I should think the middle of the afternoon would be a good time.”
“He didn’t tell you his business with the Duke?” asked Mitchington.
“Not a word!” said the landlady. “Oh, no! — just that, and no more. But — here’s Mr. Dellingham.”
Bryce turned to see a tall, broad-shouldered, bearded man pass the window — the door opened and he walked in, to glance inquisitively at the inspector. He turned at once to Mrs. Partingley.
“I hear there’s been an accident to that gentleman I came in with last night?” he said. “Is it anything serious? Your ostler says—”
“These gentlemen have just come about it, sir,” answered the landlady. She glanced at Mitchington. “Perhaps you’ll tell—” she began.
“Was he a friend of yours, sir?” asked Mitchington. “A personal friend?”
“Never saw him in my life before last night!” replied the tall man. “We just chanced to meet in the train coming down from London, got talking, and discovered we were both coming to the same place — Wrychester. So — we came to this house together. No — no friend of mine — not even an acquaintance — previous, of course, to last night. Is — is it anything serious?”
“He’s dead, sir,” replied Mitchington. “And now we want to know who he is.”
“God bless my soul! Dead? You don’t say so!” exclaimed Mr. Dellingham. “Dear, dear! Well, I can’t help you — don’t know him from Adam. Pleasant, well-informed man — seemed to have travelled a great deal in foreign countries. I can tell you this much, though,” he went on, as if a sudden recollection had come to him; “I gathered that he’d only just arrived in England — in fact, now I come to think of it, he said as much. Made some remark in the train about the pleasantness of the English landscape, don’t you know? — I got an idea that he’d recently come from some country where trees and hedges and green fields aren’t much in evidence. But — if you want to know who he is, officer, why don’t you search him? He’s sure to have papers, cards, and so on about him.”
“We have searched him,” answered Mitchington. “There isn’t a paper, a letter, or even a visiting card on him.”
Mr. Dellingham looked at the landlady.
“Bless me!” he said. “Remarkable! But he’d a suit-case, or something of the sort — something light — which he carried up from the railway station himself. Perhaps in that—”
“I should like to see whatever he had,” said Mitchington. “We’d better examine his room, Mrs. Partingley.”
Bryce presently followed the landlady and the inspector upstairs — Mr. Dellingham followed him. All four went into a bedroom which looked out on Monday Market. And there, on a side-table, lay a small leather suit-case, one which could easily be carried, with its upper half thrown open and back against the wall behind.
The landlady, Mr. Dellingham and Bryce stood silently by while the inspector examined the contents of this the only piece of luggage in the room. There was very little to see — what toilet articles the visitor brought were spread out on the dressing-table — brushes, combs, a case of razors, and the like. And Mitchington nodded side-wise at them as he began to take the articles out of the suit-case.
“There’s one thing strikes me at once,” he said. “I dare say you gentlemen notice it. All these things are new! This suit-case hasn’t been in use very long — see, the leather’s almost unworn — and those things on the dressing-table are new. And what there is here looks new, too. There’s not much, you see — he evidently had no intention of a long stop. An extra pair of trousers — some shirts — socks — collars — neckties — slippers — handkerchiefs — that’s about all. And the first thing to do is to see if the linen’s marked with name or initials.”
He deftly examined the various articles as he took them out, and in the end shook his head.
“No name — no initials,” he said. “But look here — do you see, gentlemen, where these collars were bought? Half a dozen of them, in a box. Paris! There you are — the seller’s name, inside the collar, just as in England. Aristide Pujol, 82, Rue des Capucines. And — judging by the look of ’em — I should say these shirts were bought there, too — and the handkerchiefs — and the neckwear — they all have a foreign look. There may be a clue in that — we might trace him in France if we can’t in England. Perhaps he is a Frenchman.”
“I’ll take my oath he isn’t!” exclaimed Mr. Dellingham. “However long he’d been out of England he hadn’t lost a North-Country accent! He was some sort of a North-Countryman — Yorkshire or Lancashire, I’ll go bail. No Frenchman, officer — not he!”
“Well, there’s no papers here, anyway,” said Mitchington, who had now emptied the suit-case. “Nothing to show who he was. Nothing here, you see, in the way of paper but this old book — what is it — History of Barthorpe.”
“He showed me that in the train,” remarked Mr. Dellingham. “I’m interested in antiquities and archaeology, and anybody who’s long in my society finds it out. We got talking of such things, and he pulled out that book, and told me with great pride, that he’d picked it up from a book-barrow in the street, somewhere in London, for one-and-six. I think,” he added musingly, “that what attracted him in it was the old calf binding and the steel frontispiece — I’m sure he’d no great knowledge of antiquities.”
Mitchington laid the book down, and Bryce picked it up, examined the title-page, and made a mental note of the fact that Barthorpe was a market-town in the Midlands. And it was on the tip of his tongue to say that if the dead man had no particular interest in antiquities and archaeology, it was somewhat strange that he should have bought a book which was mainly antiquarian, and that it might be that he had so bought it because of a connection between Barthorpe and himself. But he remembered that it was his own policy to keep pertinent facts for his own private consideration, so he said nothing. And Mitchington presently remarking that there was no more to be done there, and ascertaining from Mr. Dellingham that it was his intention to remain in Wrychester for at any rate a few days, they went downstairs again, and Bryce and the inspector crossed over to the police-station.
The news had spread through the heart of the city, and at the police-station doors a crowd had gathered. Just inside two or three principal citizens were talking to the Superintendent — amongst them was Mr. Stephen Folliot, the stepfather of young Bonham — a big, heavy-faced man who had been a resident in the Close for some years, was known to be of great wealth, and had a reputation as a grower of rare roses. He was telling the Superintendent something — and the Superintendent beckoned to Mitchington.
“Mr. Folliot says he saw this gentleman in the Cathedral,” he said. “Can’t have been so very long before the accident happened, Mr. Folliot, from what you say.”
“As near as I can reckon, it would be five minutes to ten,” answered Mr. Folliot. “I put it at that because I’d gone in for the morning service, which is at ten. I saw him go up the inside stair to the clerestory gallery — he was looking about him. Five minutes to ten — and it must have happened immediately afterwards.”
Bryce heard this and turned away, making a calculation for himself. It had been on the stroke of ten when he saw Ransford hurrying out of the west porch. There was a stairway from the gallery down to that west porch. What, then, was the inference? But for the moment he drew none — instead, he went home to his rooms in Friary Lane, and shutting himself up, drew from his pocket the scrap of paper he had taken from the dead man.
CHAPTER V. THE SCRAP OF PAPER
WHEN BRYCE, IN his locked room, drew that bit of paper from his pocket, it was with the conviction that in it he held a clue to the secret of the morning’s adventure. He had only taken a mere glance at it as he withdrew it from the dead man’s purse, but he had seen enough of what was written on it to make him certain that it was a document — if such a mere fragment could be called a document — of no ordinary importance. And now he unfolded and laid it flat on his table and looked at it carefully, asking himself what was the real meaning of what he saw.
There was not much to see. The scrap of paper itself was evidently a quarter of a leaf of old-fashioned, stoutish notepaper, somewhat yellow with age, and bearing evidence of having been folded and kept flat in the dead man’s purse for some time — the creases were well-defined, the edges were worn and slightly stained by long rubbing against the leather. And in its centre were a few words, or, rather abbreviations of words, in Latin, and some figures:
In Para. Wrycestr. juxt. tumb.
Ric. Jenk. ex cap. xxiii. xv.
Bryce at first sight took them to be a copy of some inscription but his knowledge of Latin told him, a moment later, that instead of being an inscription, it was a direction. And a very plain direction, too! — he read it easily. In Paradise, at Wrychester, next to, or near, the tomb of Richard Jenkins, or, possibly, Jenkinson, from, or behind, the head, twenty-three, fifteen — inches, most likely. There was no doubt that there was the meaning of the words. What, now, was it that lay behind the tomb of Richard Jenkins, or Jenkinson, in Wrychester Paradise? — in all probability twenty-three inches from the head-stone, and fifteen inches beneath the surface. That was a question which Bryce immediately resolved to find a satisfactory answer to; in the meantime there were other questions which he set down in order on his mental tablets. They were these:
1. Who, really, was the man who had registered at the
Mitre under the name of John Braden?
2. Why did he wish to make a personal call on the
Duke of Saxonsteade?
3. Was he some man who had known Ransford in time
past — and whom Ransford had no desire to meet again?
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.
