We made our way to the table.
“Mr. Roderic Harwell?” asked Pons.
“That infernal clerk has given me away again!” cried Harwell, but with such a jovial smile that it was clear he did not mind. “What can I do for you?”
“Sir, you were kind enough to recommend me to Mrs. Margaret Ashcroft.”
“Ah, it’s Solar Pons, is it? I thought you looked familiar. Sit down, sit down.”
His companion hastily rose and excused himself.
“Pray do not leave, Doctor,” said Pons. “This matter is not of such a nature that you need to disturb your meeting.”
Harwell introduced us all around. His companion was Dr. Horace Weston, an old friend he was in the habit of meeting at the Green Horse at the end of the day. We sat between them.
“Now, then,” said Harwell when we had made ourselves comfortable. “What’ll you have to drink? Some ale? Bitters?”
“Nothing at all, if you please,” said Pons.
“As you like. You’ve been to see Mrs. Ashcroft and heard her story?”
“We have just come from there.”
“Well, Mr. Pons, I never knew of anything wrong with the house,” said Harwell. “We sold some land in the country for Captain Brensham when he began selling off his property so that he could live as he was accustomed to live. He was a bibliophile of a sort — books about the sea were his specialty — and he lived well. But a recluse in his last years. He timed his life right — died just about the time his funds ran out.”
“And Howard Brensham?” asked Pons.
“Different sort of fellow altogether. Quiet, too, but you’d find him in the pubs, and at the cinema sometimes watching a stage show. He gambled a little, but carefully. I gather he surprised his uncle by turning out well. He bad done a turn in Borstal as a boy. And I suppose he was just as surprised when his uncle asked him to live with him his last years and left everything to him, including the generous insurance he carried.”
“I wasn’t sure, from what Mrs. Ashcroft said, when Howard Brensham died.”
Harwell flashed a glance at his companion. “About seven weeks ago or so, eh?” To Pons, he added, “Dr. Weston was called.”
“He had a cerebral thrombosis on the street, Mr. Pons,” explained Dr. Weston. “Died in three hours. Very fast. Only forty-seven, and no previous history. But then, Captain Brensham died of a heart attack.”
“Ah, you attended the Captain, too?”
“Well, not exactly. I had attended him for some bronchial ailments. He took good care of his voice. He liked to sing. But when he had his heart attack and died I was in France on holiday. I had a young locum in and he was called.”
“Mrs. Ashcroft’s ghost sang,” said Harwell thoughtfully. “Something about a ‘dead man’.”
“I would not be surprised if it were an old sea chantey,” said Pons.
“You don’t mean you think it may actually be the Captain’s ghost, Mr. Pons?”
“Say, rather, we may be meant to think it is,” answered Pons. “How old was he when he died?”
“Sixty-eight or sixty-seven — something like that,” said Dr. Weston.
“How long ago?”
“Oh, only two years.”
“His nephew hadn’t lived with him very long, then, before the old man died?”
“No. Only a year or so,” said Harwell. His sudden grin gave him a Dickensian look. “But it was long enough to give him at least one of his uncle’s enthusiasms — the sea. He’s kept up all the Captain’s newspapers and magazines, and was still buying books about the lea when he died. Like his uncle, he read very little else. I suppose a turn he had done as a seaman bent him that way. But they were a sea-faring family. The Captain’s father had been a seaman, too, and Richard — the brother in Rhodesia who inherited the property and sold it through us to Mrs. Ashcroft — had served six years in the India trade.”
Pons sat for a few minutes in thoughtful silence. Then he said, “The property has little value.”
Harwell looked suddenly unhappy. “Mr. Pons, we tried to dissuade Mrs. Ashcroft. But these Colonials have sentimental impulses no one can curb. Home to Mrs. Ashcroft meant not London, not England, but Sydenham. What could we do? The house was the best we could obtain for her in Sydenham. But it’s in a declining neighborhood, and no matter how she refurbishes it, its value is bound to go down.”
Pons came abruptly to his feet. “Thank you, Mr. Harwell. And you, Dr. Weston.”
We bade them good-bye and went out to find a cab.
Back in our quarters, Pons ignored the supper Mrs. Johnson had laid for us, and went directly to the corner where he kept his chemical apparatus. There he emptied his pockets of the envelope he had filled in Mrs. Ashcroft’s library, tossed his deerstalker to the top of the bookcase nearby, and began to subject his findings to chemical analysis. I ate supper by myself, knowing that it would be fruitless to urge Pons to join me. After supper I had a patient to look in on. I doubt that Pons heard me leave the room.
On my return in mid-evening, Pons was just finishing.
“Ah, Parker,” he greeted me, “I see by the sour expression you’re wearing you’ve been out calling on your crochety Mr. Barnes.”
“While you, I suppose, have been tracking down the identity of Mrs. Ashcroft’s ghost?”
“I have turned up indisputable evidence that her visitant is from the nethermost regions,” he said triumphantly, and laid before me a tiny fragment of cinder. “Do you suppose we dare conclude that coal is burned in Hell?”
I gazed at him in open-mouthed astonishment. His eyes were dancing merrily. He was expecting an outburst of protest from me. I choked it back deliberately; I was becoming familiar indeed with all the little games he played. I said, “Have you determined his identity and his motive?”
“Oh, there’s not much mystery in that,” he said almost contemptuously. “It’s the background in which I am interested.”
“Not much mystery in it!” I cried.
“No, no,” he answered testily. “The trappings may be a trifle bizarre, but don’t let them blind you to the facts, all the essentials of which have been laid before us.”
I sat down, determined to expose his trickery. “Pons, it is either a ghost or it is not a ghost.”
“I can see no way of disputing that position.”
“Then it is nor a ghost.”
“On what grounds do you say so?”
“Because there is no such thing as a ghost.”
“Proof?”
“Proof to the contrary?”
“The premise is yours, not mine. But let us accept it for the nonce. Pray go on.”
“Therefore it is a sentient being.”
“Ah, that is certainly being cagey,” he said, smiling provocatively. “Have you decided what his motive might be?”
“To frighten Mrs. Ashcroft from the house.”
“Why? We’ve been told it’s not worth much and will decline in value with every year to come.”
“Very well, then. To get his hands on something valuable concealed in the house. Mrs. Ashcroft took it furnished — as it was, you’ll remember.”
“I remember it very well. I am also aware that the house stood empty for some weeks and anyone who wanted to lay hands on something in it would have had far more opportunity to do so then than he would after tenancy was resumed.”
I threw up my hands. “I give up.”
“Come, come, Parker. You are looking too deep. Think on it soberly for a while and the facts will rearrange themselves so as to make for but one, and only one, correct solution.”
So saying, he turned to the telephone and rang up Inspector Jamison at his home to request him to make a discreet application for exhumation of the remains of Captain Jason Brensham and the examination of those remains by Bernard Spilsbury.