Detective White & Furneaux: 5 Novels in One Volume. Louis Tracy
from a distance."
Furneaux measured an imaginary line drawn from Doris's bedroom to the edge of the cliff, and prolonged it.
"Nor can you see the river or foot of the lawn from your room," he commented.
"No. In winter I can just make out the edge of the lawn. When the trees are in leaf, all the lower part is hidden."
"You had actually retired to rest about eleven, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"So if Mr. Grant came out again you would not know?" Doris blushed furiously, but her reply was unfaltering.
"I would have known during the next half-hour, at least," she said. "An inclined mirror hangs in my room. I use it sometimes for adjusting a hat. The square of light from Mr. Grant's room is reflected in it, and any sudden increase in the illumination caused by opening the window or pulling the curtains aside would certainly have caught my eye."
"You have an unshakable witness in Miss Martin," said Furneaux, stabbing a finger at Grant. "Now, I'll hurry off. You and I, Mr. Grant, meet at Philippi, otherwise known as the crowner's quest."
Any benevolent intent he may have had in leaving these young people together was, however, frustrated by Doris, whose composure seemed to have fled since her statement about the mirror. She resolutely accompanied the detective, and Grant had to follow. All three passed into the post office, Doris using the private door. Mr. Martin looked up from his desk when they appeared, and requested his daughter to check a bundle of postal orders. The pretext was painfully obvious, but Grant was not so wishful now to clear up matters with Doris's father, as the girl herself might be trusted to pass on an accurate account of the affair from beginning to end.
He was about to reach the street quick on Furneaux's heels when the little man turned suddenly.
"By the way, don't you want a shilling's worth of stamps?" he said.
Grant smiled comprehension, and went back to the counter, where Doris herself served him. She did not try to avoid his glance, but rather met it with a baffling serenity oddly at variance with her momentary loss of self-possession in the garden.
When he entered the street the detective had vanished.
He walked down the hill at a rapid pace, disregarding the eyes peeping at him through open doorways, over narrow window-curtains, and covertly staring when people passed in the roadway. The sensitive side of his temperament shrank from this thinly-veiled hostility. He was by way of being popular in Steynholme, yet not a soul spoke to him. Before he reached the bridge, the other side of him, the man of action, of cool resource in an emergency, rose in rebellion against the league of silly clodhoppers. Back he strode to the post office and dashed off a telegram. It ran:
"Walter Hart, Savage Club, Adelphi, London. Come here and help to lay a ghost."
He signed it in full, name and address. Doris was gone, but her father received it, and read the text in a bewildered way.
"I find myself deserted by my Steynholme friends so I am trying to import one stanch one," said Grant, almost vindictively.
Martin murmured the cost, and Grant stormed out again. This time, passing the Hare and Hounds, he looked at door and windows. He caught a face scowling at him over a brown wire blind bearing the words "Wines and Spirits" on it in letters of dull gold. It was a commonplace type of face, small-featured, ginger-moustached, and crowned by a billy-cock hat set at a rakish angle. Its most marked characteristic was the positive hatred which glowed in the sharp, pale-blue eyes. Grant wondered who this highly censorious young man might be. At any rate, he meant to ascertain whether or not the critic was susceptible of satire at his own expense. He walked up to the window, elevated his eyebrows at the frowning person within, pretended to read the words on the screen, looked again at the man inside, and shook his head gravely in the manner of one who has accurately determined cause and effect.
Fred Elkin was quick-witted enough to appreciate Grant's unspoken comment. He was also unmannerly enough to put out his tongue. Then Grant laughed, and turned on his heel.
Mr. Siddle, quietly observant of recent comings and goings, was standing at the door of the shop, and missed no item of this dumb show. He raised both hands in silent condemnation of Elkin's childishness, whereupon the horse-dealer jerked a thumb toward Grant's retreating figure, and went through a rapid pantomime of the hanging process. His crony disapproved again, and went in. Now, both those men were on the jury panel, so, to all appearance, Grant would be judged by at least one deadly enemy, whose animosity might or might not be fairly balanced by the chemist's impartial mind.
The tenant of The Hollies actually dreaded the loneliness of his dwelling now, though it was that very quality which had drawn him to Steynholme a year earlier. Work or reading was equally out of the question that day. He sought the industrious Bates, who was trenching celery in the kitchen garden.
"Have 'ee made out owt about un, sir?" inquired that hardy individual, pausing to spit on the handle of his spade.
"No," said Grant. "The thing is a greater mystery than ever."
"I'm thinkin' her mun ha' bin killed by a loony," announced Bates.
"Something of the kind, no doubt. But why are the little less dangerous loonies of Steynholme united in the belief that I am the guilty one?"
"Ax me another," growled Bates.
"Who is spreading this rumor? Robinson?"
"'E dussen't, sir. 'E looks fierce, but 'e'll 'old 'is tongue. T'super will see to that."
"Someone is talking. That is quite certain."
"There's a chap in the 'Are an' 'Ounds—kem 'ere last night."
"Ingerman?"
"Ay, sir, that's the name. 'E's makin' a song of it, I hear."
"Anybody else?"
"Fred Elkin is gassin' about. Do 'ee know un? Breeds 'osses at Mount Farm, a mile that-a-way," and Bates pointed to the west.
Grant hazarded a guess, and described the face of condemnation seen at the inn. Bates nodded.
"That's un," he said. Then he drove the spade into the rich loam. "They do say," he added, apparently as an after-thought, "as Fred Elkin is mighty sweet on Doris, but her'll 'ave nowt to do wi' un."
Grant whistled softly. This explanation threw light on a dark place.
"The plot thickens," he said. "Mr. Elkin becomes more interesting than he looks. Are there other disappointed swains in the offing?"
"What's that, sir?"
"Has Miss Martin any other suitors?"
"Lots of 'em 'ud be after her like wasps round a plum-tree if she'd give 'em 'alf a chance. But you put a stopper on 'em."
Bates was blunt of speech, though a philosopher withal.
"Elkin is my only serious rival, then?" laughed Grant, passing off as a joke a thrust which was shrewder than the gardener knew.
"'E 'as plenty of brass, but I reckon nowt on 'im," was the contemptuous answer.
"Well, he is not a likely person to kill a woman he had never before seen. Miss Martin will marry whom she chooses, no doubt. The present problem is to find out who murdered Miss Melhuish. Now, had I been the victim you would be thinking hard, Bates."
"I tell 'ee, sir, it wur a loony."
Nor was Bates to be moved from that opinion. He held to it, through thick and thin, for many days.
Grant wandered into the front garden. His eyes rose involuntarily to the distant post office, and he noticed at once that the dormer window was closed. Yet Doris shared his own love of fresh air, and that window had always been open till that very hour. Somehow, this simple thing seemed to shut him out of her life. He walked to the river, and gazed at the spot where the body was drawn ashore. In the absence of rain the water ran clear as gin, and the marks made by the feet of Adelaide Melhuish's