“I didn't say so,” replied Giles, his gaze resting for a moment on a meerschaum pipe lying on the mantelpiece.
“It fits together all right,” argued the Sergeant. “He knew we were on his track; guessed, maybe, we should break that alibi of his; lost his nerve; and put a bullet through his head. It fits; you can't say it doesn't, sir.”
“No, it fits beautifully,” said Giles.
“And still you don't like it. Would it be family feeling, sir, if I may make so bold as to ask?”
Giles shook his head. By this time the body had been taken out on a stretcher, and Superintendent Hannasyde, having got rid of the Inspector, was looking thoughtfully at the desk. He turned after a moment and said briskly: “Well, what about it - Mr Holmes? I'm not going to waste any time commiserating with you on the death of your cousin, because I know enough of your family by now to be sure not one of you will feel the slightest regret. What do you make of this?”
“Obviously suicide,” drawled Giles.
“Hmm! I don't think much of you as a detective. Nothing strike you as being a little unusual?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Or does it, and are you hoping it doesn't strike me?”
Giles smiled. “Three things - at first glance.”
“Three?” Hannasyde looked round the room. “Now, I only spotted two. This is interesting. There is first the glass of whisky-and-soda on the desk. I can readily imagine Roger Vereker drinking that prior to shooting himself. What I can't imagine is him pouring it out and leaving it untouched. Secondly — though I don't know that it signifies much - is his position. It struck me so forcibly that I had that photograph taken. He was turned away from his desk. Take a look at the angle of the chair. Why had he shifted it? If he sat at his desk, presumably he had been writing. But he could not have written at it seated almost sideways.”
“That's right,” agreed the Sergeant. “You mean he pulled the chair round a bit to talk to someone else in the room?”
“I think he might have done so.” Hannasyde took out his handkerchief, and with it opened the leather blotter on the desk. A sheet of notepaper lay in it. He picked it up, read it, and handed it to Giles. “Well?” he said.
The letter, written in Roger's untidy scrawl, was dated the day before, and was unfinished.
“Dear Sirs,” it began. “Enclosed please find cheque for £15 6s 3d in payment of your account herewith. I should be glad if you would send me -”
There the brief note ended.
“Does that seem odd to you, or not?” inquired Hannasyde.
“It does,” said Giles. “Roger in the act of paying a bill seems more than odd to me.”
“In some ways you are very like your cousins,” said Hannasyde tartly.
“Interrupted,” said the Sergeant, in his turn reading the note. “Stands to reason he wouldn't want anything sent him if he meant to commit suicide. Something might have happened to make him do it after the interruption, of course. You can't tell. But certainly he was interrupted. Say there's a ring at the door-bell, Super. He slips the letter into his blotter - or no! he has the blotter open, writing in it. All he does is to close it while he goes to see who's at the door. Sort of instinctive movement, if you follow me.”
“Yes, something like that,” Hannasyde said. “But we haven't heard Mr Carrington's third point yet.”
Giles, whose good-humoured countenance had grown rather grim, said:
“Are you a pistol-shot, Hannasyde?”
“No, I can't say I am.”
“So I should suppose. Your expert won't like that.” He pointed to the ground at his feet, where, half-hidden in the shaggy hearth-rug, a cartridge-case gleamed.
Both men looked down. “Yes, I'd already seen it,” Hannasyde said. “It's in the wrong place? Is that it?”
“That's it,” nodded Giles. “If Roger Vereker, seated in that chair, put the pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger, the empty cartridge-case ought to be somewhere between the desk and the window, not here by the fire.” He lit a cigarette, and flicked the dead match behind him, into the grate. His eyes measured the distance between himself and the chair by the desk. “I think, when the autopsy takes place, you will find that the pistol was not held quite so close to the head,” he remarked.
“Thanks,” Hannasyde said, glancing curiously at him. “I seem to have been doing you a certain amount of injustice. I suspected you of being more anxious to impede than to assist - on this particular case.”
“One murder I can stomach,” replied Giles shortly. “I find my gorge turns a bit at two of them. Moreover - bad lot though he was - Roger was utterly inoffensive. There might be several pardonable reasons for killing Arnold: only one reason for killing Roger, and that one not pardonable. No, definitely not pardonable.”
“Quite,” said Hannasyde. His eyes narrowed suddenly, looking at something beyond Giles. “Was your cousin a pipe-smoker?”
“I don't think so.”
Hannasyde stepped forward and looked more closely at the pipe on the mantelpiece. “A meerschaum, coloured more on one side than the other,” he said. “I fancy I have seen it before.”
“Possibly,” said Giles. “It belongs to Kenneth. But I shouldn't build on it as a clue. Kenneth was one of a party held at this flat three - four evenings ago.”
“Wouldn't he miss his pipe?” inquired the Sergeant. “I'd miss a pipe of mine quick enough. The dottle's in it still, what's more. You'd expect Roger Vereker to have seen it and knocked it out, and sent the pipe back to his brother.”
“On the contrary,” said Giles, “I shouldn't expect Roger to do anything so energetic.”
“You are possibly right,” said Hannasyde, “but a little of the ash has fallen out of the pipe, as you see. Would you not expect the housemaid who cleans this flat to have dusted that away?”
“It depends on the housemaid,” answered Giles.
Hannasyde picked up the pipe, and slipped it into his pocket. “I'll see the hall-porter, Hemingway,” he said. “Ask him to come up, will you?”
Giles smiled. “I take it you'd like me to stay? - to be sure that I don't get to Chelsea ahead of you?”
“Quite right, I would,” answered Hannasyde. “Not that I think you'd do that, but at this stage I'm taking no risks. Would you have said that Roger Vereker was likely to commit suicide?”
“No, I shouldn't,” said Giles. “He certainly complained that it got on his nerves to have detectives cropping up at every turn, but he didn't appear to me to be particularly alarmed. However, I didn't see very much of him, so I may be wrong.”
“I don't think you are wrong,” Hannasyde said slowly. “Do you remember the day he told me that preposterous story of how he went to Monte Carlo? I have a vivid recollection of him saying: "Do I look the kind of man who'd shoot himself. Of course I don't."”
“Yes, I remember that,” Giles replied. “But you never know with a man who drinks as much as he did. That cartridge-case is more to the point, and I think it argues an unaccustomed hand. Had I done this, for instance, I should have looked carefully for that case after firing the shot.”
“People don't always keep their heads under such circumstances. If they did there would be more unsolved mysteries.”
“True, but didn't we decide some time ago that the murderer in this case must have been a very cool customer?”
“Assuming the murderer of Arnold Vereker and the murderer of Roger Vereker to have been one and the same person?” said Hannasyde a little ruefully. “I haven't much doubt of that myself, but whether I shall ever prove it is another matter. Where, by the way, were you last night?”
“I thought that was coming,” remarked Giles. “From seven o'clock, when I called for her at the studio, until about a quarter to twelve, when I took her back to the studio, I was with Miss Vereker. We dined at Favoli's, and went on afterwards to Wyndham's. After I left Miss Vereker I drove back to the Temple in a taxi - the same taxi that took us home from the Theatre. That ought to be easy to trace. When I reached the Temple I went to bed. I'm afraid my man was asleep by that time, so I can't offer you any proof that I stayed in bed till this morning. How long did the police-surgeon think my cousin had been dead?”