This House to Let. Le Queux William
cool and explicit, and instead of answering the caretaker’s questions, he preferred to put a few of his own.
“Nice sort of caretaker you are,” he said in a contemptuous voice. “You’re paid to look after this house, aren’t you? Where were you all last night I should like to know? You can see what has happened. Somebody has got in through the back, either to commit suicide, or with a companion who brought him here to murder him. That’s got to be found out before the Coroner.”
Miles pulled himself together. He was by no means a fool when sober, and in sight of this ghastly object the fumes of last night’s intoxication had absolutely cleared.
“I can show an alibi right enough,” he said doggedly.
The younger and readier-witted of the two constables looked up and spoke sharply. “So far, my friend, we have not accused you, but you may as well tell us the details of your alibi.”
Miles’s explanation, delivered in the somewhat halting way of his class, bore the ring of truth. An old acquaintance of his, whose name and address he gave, had looked him up the day before and asked him to spend a day with him at Shepperton, where the said acquaintance kept a small shop. Miles had succumbed to the temptation.
“It drives a man fair off his blooming chump to be tied by the leg in a hole like this,” he interpolated in the midst of his narrative, “waiting for would-be tenants who never call. I daresay you chaps do your eight or ten hours a day, but you’re out in the open air, not looking on four walls. You see a bit of life, I don’t.”
Constable Brown cut across his narrative swiftly.
“Never mind your grievances, Miles. If you could get a better job, I guess you would take it. Where did you spend the night?”
“At the same old show, down at Shepperton,” replied the unabashed Miles. “My old pal’s a sport, I can tell you. When he shut up his shop, he plied me with some of the best. I wasn’t backward, I admit. I missed the last train back, and slept on the sofa in the back room. When I woke, I remembered things a bit, and got an early train home. Here I am. My old pal Jack will tell you I’m speaking gospel truth.”
Neither of the two men listening to him had any doubt that his narrative was a true one. He was a poor, weak, bibulous creature, but by no stretch of the imagination could he be an accessory to the gruesome happenings at Number 10.
Even had he been at his post, as he should have been on this particular night, he would have been sunk in a stertorous sleep, and have heard nothing.
But to make everything sure, Constable Brown pulled him along and forced him to look at the dead man.
“You have never seen him before, Miles? I mean he has not called to look over the house or anything?”
“No.” Miles, looking shudderingly at the ghastly sight, was ready to swear he had never seen him before.
He turned his frightened gaze away: “It will be all over the town to-night,” he said ruefully. “We shall never let the house after this.”
“It will still be a soft job for you, Miles,” retorted Brown, a little spitefully. “You won’t have to play up the damp and the beetles. You are here for life, old man.”
“I know,” said Miles in a gloomy tone. “But I shall see him staring at me every minute of the day and night.”
The body was removed to the mortuary. The evening newspapers had flaring headlines: “Gruesome Discovery in Number 1 °Cathcart Square.” An enterprising journalist had got hold of Miles, and speedily discovering his weakness, had taken him to the nearest public-house, and plied him plentifully with liquor, with a view to a sensational article.
The enterprising reporter made the best of his material, but it did not amount to much. The caretaker knew nothing about the dead man, he was armed at all points with his alibi. As regards the house itself, invested with so much tragedy, the present tenant was a Mr Washington, a man of considerable means, now abroad. Mr Washington was prepared to let it furnished. The furniture was very valuable.
To a public greedily anxious for the smallest details, the astute journalist served up a nice little article, describing the expensive furniture, and adding a short life-history of Mr Washington, as supplied by the reminiscent Miles. The public swallowed this article eagerly and awaited further developments.
These came with the inquest, and there was a somewhat tame ending to what had promised to be a very sensational case.
Some three months previously, a certain man named Reginald Davis had been suspected of committing a murder while driving a motor-car in Cornwall. The evidence, although circumstantial, had been very convincing. The police had been on his track, but not quickly enough. The man had eluded their vigilance, and rim to earth somewhere.
On the body of the dead man in Cathcart Square, the two constables had found three letters addressed to Reginald Davis. Also a letter, signed Reginald Davis, addressed to the Coroner in which he avowed his intention of committing suicide at the earliest opportunity.
It was fairly evident from this that the wretched man, hunted by the police, and recognising that capture was imminent in the course of a few days, had resolved upon the fatal step, had effected his entrance into the lonely house in Cathcart Square, had found it even more deserted than he imagined, and in that little dressing-room cheated the law.
But, in addition to this overpowering evidence, there was added the fact of identification.
A tall, handsome young woman, giving the name of Caroline Masters, had been to the mortuary, and identified the body as that of her brother, Reginald Davis.
She gave her evidence before the Coroner with commendable composure, broken now and again with a little natural grief. Her disclosures were briefly as follows.
Reginald had always been the black sheep of the family, not naturally vicious, but impetuous, fiery-tempered and ungovernable. If he was guilty of the murder in Cornwall, it had been due to no natural criminal instinct, but to a fit of unbridled passion. Her theory was that remorse had weighed upon him for this unpremeditated crime, and that, through remorse and the fear of justice overtaking him, he had crept into this lonely house and passed sentence on himself.
She made a very great impression on the Court by the calm and dignified way in which she gave her evidence. The Coroner put to her a few questions. She was quite certain that the body was that of her brother, Reginald Davis? Were there any other members of the family who could support her in her identification?
No, there were no other members of the family alive. There was another brother dead, and a sister of whose whereabouts she knew nothing. Her father had been a strange man, he had quarrelled with all the members of his family, and she had never known one of them. Her mother had died some years ago. Her voice broke a little as she related these touching circumstances of her domestic life, more especially when she added she was a widow, her husband having been killed in the Great War.
There seemed but one possible verdict. The dead man, it was clearly established, was Reginald Davis, first by the letters found upon him, secondly by his sister’s identification.
It was also clear that Reginald Davis, hunted by the police, and knowing that it was only a question of days or weeks before he would be rim to earth, had considered the two alternatives of self-destruction or the extreme penalty of the law – and that he had chosen the former.
The verdict was recorded. Mrs Masters was complimented on the way in which she had given her evidence. The Coroner assured her that the sympathy of the Court was with her. The tears welled into her eyes as she listened to the Coroner’s well-chosen phrases. She bowed her grateful thanks.
Constable Brown was waiting in the corridor as she came out. Beside him stood the younger policeman who had assisted him on that very well-remembered night in Cathcart Square.
Brown touched his helmet. “A very trying time for you, ma’am,” he said, “a very trying time. You went through it bravely.”
She smiled wanly. “My poor brother! He had so many good points. But it is better as it is. I shudder to think of what might have been, if