“Would you mind telling me what all that has to do with our client?” I asked, when he had finished.
“I submit it is too fine a coincidence to dismiss that a heavily insured old man should conveniently die after he has made a will leaving everything to the nephew he has asked to come live with him,” said Pons. “There we have a concrete motive, with nothing ephemeral about it.”
“But what’s to be gained by an exhumation now? If what you suspect is true, the murderer is already dead, beyond punishment.”
Pons smiled enigmatically. “Ah, Parker, I am not so much a seeker after punishment as a seeker after truth. I want the facts. I mean to have them. I shall be spending considerable time tomorrow at the British Museum in search of them.”
“Well, you’ll find ghosts of another kind there,” I said dryly.
“Old maps and newspapers abound with them,” he answered agreeably, but said no word in that annoyingly typical fashion of his about what he sought.
I would not ask, only to be told again, “Facts!”
When I walked into our quarters early in the evening of the following Monday, I found Pons standing at the windows, his face aglow with eager anticipation.
“I was afraid you might not get here in time to help lay Mrs. Ashcroft’s ghost,” he said, without turning.
“But you weren’t watching for me,” I said, “or you wouldn’t still be standing there.”
“Ah, I am delighted to note such growth in your deductive faculty,” he replied. “I’m waiting for Jamison and Constable Meeker. We may need their help tonight if we are to trap this elusive apparition. Mrs. Ashcroft has sent word that the string across the library was broken last night. — Ah, here they come now.”
He turned. “You’ve had supper, Parker?”
“I dined at the Diogenes Club.”
“Come then. The game’s afoot.”
He led the way down the stairs and out into Praed Street, where a police car had just drawn up to the curb. The door of the car sprang open at our approach, and Constable Meeker got out. He was a fresh-faced young man whose work Pons had come to regard as very promising, and he greeted us with anticipatory pleasure, stepping aside so that we could enter the car. Inspector Seymour Jamison, a bluff, square-faced man wearing a clipped moustache, occupied the far corner of the seat.
Inspector Jamison spared no words in formal greeting. “How in the devil did you get on to Captain Brensham’s poisoning?” he asked gruffly.
“Spilsbury found poison, then?”
“Arsenic. A massive dose. Brensham couldn’t have lived much over twelve hours after taking it. How did you know?”
“I had only a very strong assumption,” said Pons.
The car was rolling forward now through streets hazed with a light mist and beginning to glow with the yellow lights of the shops, blunting the harsh realities of daylight and lending to London a kind of enchantment I loved. Meeker was at the wheel, which he handled with great skill in the often crowded streets.
Inspector Jamison was persistent. “I hope you haven’t got us out on a wild goose chase,” he went on. “I have some doubts about following your lead in such matters, Pons.”
“When I’ve misled you, they’ll be justified. Not until then. Now, another matter — if related. You’ll recall a disappearance in Dulwich two years ago? Elderly man named Ian Narth?”
Jamison sat for a few moments in silence. Then he said. “Man of seventy. Retired seaman. Indigent. No family. Last seen on a tube train near the Crystal Palace. Vanished without trace. Presumed drowned in the Thames and carried out to sea.”
“I believe I can find him for you, Jamison.”
Jamison snorted. “Now, then, Pons — give it to me short. What’s all this about?”
Pons summed up the story of our client’s haunted library, while Jamison sat in thoughtful silence.
“Laying ghosts is hardly in my line,” he said when Pons had finished.
“Can you find your way to the Sydenham entrance of the abandoned old Nunhead-Crystal Palace High Level Railway Line?” asked Pons.
“Of course.”
“If not, I have a map with me. Two, in fact. If you and Meeker will conceal yourself near that entrance, ready to arrest anyone coming out of it, we’ll meet you there in from two to three hours’ time.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Pons,” growled Jamison.
“I share that hope, Jamison.” He turned to Meeker and gave him Mrs. Ashcroft’s address. “Parker and I will leave you there, Jamison. You’ll have plenty of time to reach the tunnel entrance before we begin our exploration at the other end.”
“It’s murder then, Pons?”
“I should hardly think that anyone would willingly take so much arsenic unless he meant to commit suicide. No such intention was manifest in Captain Brensham’s life — indeed, quite the contrary. He loved the life he led, and would not willingly have given it up.”
“You’re postulating that Ian Narth knew Captain Brensham and his nephew?”
“I am convinced inquiry will prove that to be the case.”
Meeker let us out of the police car before Mrs Ashcroft’s house, which loomed with an almost forbiddingly sinister air into the gathering darkness. Light shone wanly from but one window; curtains were drawn over the rest of them at the front of the house, and the entire dwelling seemed to be waiting upon its foredoomed decay.
Mrs. Ashcroft herself answered our ring.
“Oh, Mr. Pons!” she cried at sight of us. “You did get my message.”
“Indeed, I did, Mrs. Ashcroft. Dr. Parker and I have now come to make an attempt at least to lay your ghost.”
Mrs. Ashcroft paled a little and stepped back to permit us entrance.
“You’ll want to see the broken thread, Mr. Pons,” she said after she had closed the door.
“If you please.”
She swept past us and led us to the library, where she turned up all the lights. The black thread could be seen lying on the carpet, away from the east wall, broken through about midway.
“Nothing has been disturbed, Mrs. Ashcroft?”
“Nothing. No one has come into this room but I — at my strict order. Except — of course — whoever broke the thread.” She shuddered. “It appears to have been broken by something coming out of the wall!”
“Does it not?” agreed Pons.
“No ghost could break that thread,” I said.
“There are such phenomena as poltergeists which are said to make all kinds of mischief, including the breaking of dishes,” said Pons dryly. “If we had that to deal with, the mere breaking of a thread would offer it no problem. You heard nothing, Mrs. Ashcroft?”
“Nothing.”
“No rattling of chains, no hollow groans?”
“Nothing, Mr. Pons.”
“And not even the sound of a book falling?”
“Such a sound an old house might make at any time, I suppose, Mr. Pons.”
He cocked his head suddenly; a glint came into his eyes. “And not, I suppose, a sound like that? Do you hear it?”
“Oh, Mr. Pons,” cried Mrs. Ashcroft in a low voice. “That is the sound Mrs. Jenkins heard.”
It was the sound of someone singing — singing boisterously. It seemed to come as from a great distance, out of the very books on the walls.
“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,” murmured Pons. “I can barely make out the words. Captain Brensham’s collection of sea lore is shelved along this wall, too! A coincidence.”
“Mr. Pons! What is it?” asked our client.
“Pray do not disturb yourself, Mrs. Ashcroft. That is hardly a voice from the other side. It has too much body. But we are delaying unnecessarily. Allow me.”