‘No, I don’t think that, sir – though I don’t doubt he thinks he can baffle us. I’ve got a strong suspicion it’s the old story of a man getting away with one murder, and believing that because he’s fooled the police once he can do it again.’
The Colonel sat up with a jerk. ‘What? Good God, are you suggesting – ?’
‘I want to know just what happened when Walter Plenmeller was supposed to have committed suicide,’ said Hemingway.
Eighteen
For perhaps half a minute the Colonel sat staring at him, an expression of mingled incredulity and dismay in his face. Then he said, rather explosively: ‘Have you any reason for making such a suggestion?’
‘Yes, sir, that!’ said Hemingway, laying Walter Plenmeller’s letter on the desk. ‘It was found amongst Warrenby’s papers – and I should like to know why he took it out of the file, and kept it locked up in a tin-box.’
‘Took it out of the file? But that is the most irregular – Good heavens!’
‘Highly irregular,’ agreed Hemingway. ‘It’s safe to assume he had a good reason for doing it. I’m bound to say I don’t see what it was, but I’ve got a hunch that letter contains the clue I’m looking for.’
The Colonel had picked the letter up, and was reading it. ‘I remember it well,’ he said. ‘I hold no brief for Gavin, but in my opinion this is a damnable letter to have written! I thought so at the time. In fact, I was extraordinarily sorry for Gavin.’
‘It seems to show that his brother hated him pretty bitterly, and I suppose he wouldn’t have done that without cause.’
‘That’s nonsense!’ the Colonel said. ‘Walter didn’t hate him at all! What you’ve got to understand is that Walter was always an uncertain-tempered man, and after he got shot up in the War he used to fly off the handle at the smallest provocation. How much he actually suffered I don’t know, and I doubt if anyone did, but he was a real case of nerves shot to pieces. He certainly used to get appalling migraines, and he was always complaining of insomnia. The London specialist he went to prescribed tablets for that. It was established that he took one on the night of his death.’
‘He didn’t by any chance take a lethal dose?’
‘No. Apart from what the post-mortem revealed, the housekeeper – she’s there still, by the way – testified that when she dusted his room the morning before, she noticed that only one tablet was left in the bottle he kept on the bedside-table. Another bottle, unopened, was found in his medicine-chest.’
There was a very alert look in the Chief Inspector’s face. ‘So that although he had the means to his hand to commit suicide in the easiest and most pleasant way possible, he chose to gas himself? That seems to me quite an interesting point, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘You mean it’s a point we should have gone into?’
‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but it does rather strike one, doesn’t it?’ said Hemingway apologetically.
‘It didn’t. And in justice to Inspector Thropton, who was in charge of the case, I must say that there was no reason why it should have. It’s quite possible that Walter didn’t know what the lethal dose was, or what its immediate effect might be. I don’t think it’s surprising that he should have preferred to take his usual dose, to send him to sleep, and turned on the gas. Surely that was as pleasant a way of killing himself as any other?’
‘I should think it would be,’ agreed Hemingway, ‘if the tablet sent him to sleep in a matter of a minute or so. But if it was like any sleeping-draught I ever heard of, and took about half an hour to act – well, then I don’t think it was such a pleasant way of dying. And, what’s more, I don’t see what he took it for at all.’
The Colonel laid his pipe down. ‘Damn you, Hemingway!’ he said, with an uncertain laugh. ‘You’re beginning to make me feel uncomfortable! I suppose we ought to have considered that – but there didn’t seem to be the smallest reason to suspect that there had been foul play! It’s true that Gavin was his half-brother’s heir, but Plenmeller wasn’t a rich man! There’s the house, and what’s left of the estate, but I can tell you with certainty that Plenmeller found it hard to make both ends meet. Would Gavin have murdered his brother just to possess himself of a dwindling income, and a house he can’t afford to run as it should be run?’
‘Well, sir, I take it that would depend on what the state of his own finances were,’ said Hemingway. ‘Judging by that letter, they weren’t any too healthy. “You only want to come here for what you can get out of me,” seems to show that he was trying to get money out of Walter. Did anything come out about that at the inquest?’
‘No. I don’t think anything much was said about it. It was so obvious – it seemed so obvious that things had got to be too much for Walter. It wasn’t as though he’d never had such an idea, you know. He’d often said that he was tempted to put an end to himself. No one thought he meant it – it sounds an unkind thing to say, but he was so wrapped up in his ailments that he was sometimes quite maudlin about himself, and damned boring, too! – but it turned out that he had meant it. Or so we believed.’
‘Yes, I see, sir. But you said a minute or two ago that he didn’t hate his brother. This letter looks to me as though he did.’
‘Yes, but you didn’t know him,’ the Colonel said. ‘To me, this reads like Walter in one of his rages – Dr Warcop called ’em nerve-storms. I can’t tell you the number of flaming rows he had with people. He flew out at me once, in the Club, over something quite trivial. I didn’t pay any heed, and it soon blew over. He was like that with Gavin, but I’m quite sure that he was fond of him, in his way. He was a good bit older, you know, and in the days before his own health was wrecked he was always very sorry for Gavin. He was proud of him, too. Used to talk a lot about his books, and how clever he was. There was nothing he liked better than hearing Gavin scoring off people. Only, of course, sooner or later, Gavin would score off him, and then the fat was in the fire again. It’s fair to say that no one could amuse him more or infuriate him more. I can’t tell you the number of times he’s sworn he’d never have Gavin in his house again, and blackguarded him to anyone he could get to listen to his grievances. But it always ended in smoke. As soon as he’d cooled off, he used to start missing him, I think. You can imagine that he hadn’t many real friends. People naturally shied off, and it’s my belief he was lonely. Anyway, I can assure you that this sort of wild diatribe –’ he flicked the letter with one finger – ‘didn’t make much impression on those of us who’d known for years just how much his furies were worth. Why, it can’t have been more than three weeks before he died that he had some sort of a row with Gavin, and bored everyone in the smoking-room one afternoon by talking in exactly the style of this letter, and swearing that this time he meant what he said, and that he wasn’t going to see Gavin again, much less allow him to come down to Thornden House. Well, I can only tell you that about three days before his death he was here in Bellingham, to meet Gavin at the station, and to take him out to Thornden in a hired car, and as pleased as possible about it!’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Hemingway. ‘And what did Gavin do, in three days, to drive his brother into committing suicide?’
‘It does sound extraordinary, of course,’ the Colonel admitted. ‘Dr Warcop – yes, I know what you feel about him, but, after all, he was Walter’s medical attendant, and he must have known a good deal about him! – Dr Warcop, as I say, considered that the balance of his mind was disturbed at the time. How much Gavin may have had to do with that, no one can tell. He certainly thought that Walter exaggerated his ailments, and the letter Walter wrote indicates clearly that he didn’t scruple to say so. He himself said at the inquest that Walter had complained of migraine on that last day. He described him as “more than ordinarily on edge”. I remember that he was asked if there had been any quarrel between them, and he replied quite frankly that he had become so impatient with his brother for indulging in what he called “querulous self-pity”, t
hat he had spoken his mind on the subject. Dr Warcop’s opinion, which he expressed privately to me, was that this might well have been enough, in the mood Walter was then in, to have pushed him right over the edge. You can say, morally speaking, that Gavin was at least partly responsible for his brother’s death. There’s no doubt he behaved quite heartlessly to him. Whether he hoped to goad him into committing suicide is a question which, thank God, lay beyond our province! In fairness to him, I should tell you, perhaps, that his subsequent conduct was meticulously correct.’
‘I expect he made a good witness,’ said Hemingway thoughtfully.
‘A very good witness, under extremely trying circumstances,’ said the Colonel. ‘One could scarcely have blamed him had he destroyed that letter, but he did no such thing. He put it immediately into Inspector Thropton’s hands. Of course, it’s true that it was the housekeeper who first saw the letter, and gave it to him, but she gave me the impression of being fonder of Gavin than of Walter, and it’s my private opinion that she might have been coaxed or bribed to say nothing about it. It’s to Gavin’s credit that he made no attempt to conceal it from us.’
An odd little smile flickered in Hemingway’s eyes. ‘Very proper, sir, I’m sure.’
‘Now, what’s in your mind?’ demanded the Colonel suspiciously.
‘Well, sir, it was the letter which made you all take it for granted the unfortunate gentleman had committed suicide, wasn’t it?’ suggested Hemingway.
A buzzer sounded in the room; the Colonel picked up one of the two telephones on his desk, listened, and said shortly:
‘Send him in!’ He then laid the instrument down and said:
‘Harbottle, wanting you.’
‘Good!’ said Hemingway. ‘I sent him round to Warrenby’s office to pick up the file of that inquest. He must have found Coupland still there.’
‘I think you’d better read the transcript of the proceedings before I say anything more,’ said the Colonel.
‘I will, sir.’ Hemingway picked up Walter Plenmeller’s letter, and looked meditatively at it. ‘When you first read this, it strikes you like any other suicide-letter, doesn’t it? It’s only when you come to think about it that you get the idea that there’s something not quite right about it.’
‘In what way?’
Hemingway cocked his head a little to one side, dubiously surveying the letter. ‘“This is the last letter you’ll ever receive from me, and I don’t propose ever to set eyes on you again,”’ he read aloud. ‘Well, I suppose that’s one way of saying you mean to do yourself in, but it doesn’t seem to me a natural way to put it. “You only want to come here for what you can get out of me, and to goad me into losing my temper with your damned tongue, and to be maddened by you on top of all I have to suffer is too much.”’ He lowered the paper. ‘You know, sir, the more I think about that, the less I like it. Sounds to me more as if he was telling his brother he wouldn’t have him about the place any more than that he meant to kill himself.’
‘What about “I’ve reached the end of my tether”?’ countered the Colonel. ‘Then, that bit about the place being Gavin’s sooner than he expected?’
‘“…and when you step into my shoes you can congratulate yourself on having done your bit towards finishing me off,”’ read Hemingway. He rubbed the tip of his nose reflectively. ‘Doesn’t say Gavin had driven him to commit suicide, does he? More like a general strafe against him for plaguing him when his health wasn’t good enough to stand any worry.’ He saw the scepticism in the Colonel’s face, and added: ‘Take it this way, sir! Supposing he hadn’t committed suicide, and Gavin had happened to show you that letter: would you have thought that was what he’d had in mind?’
The door opened to admit Inspector Harbottle. The Colonel grunted a greeting, and took the letter out of Hemingway’s hand, and read it through once more. ‘No,’ he said, having considered it for a minute or two. ‘I don’t know that I should. I should probably have thought it was written in one of his fits of temper. But he did commit suicide!’
Hemingway turned to Harbottle, and received from him a sheaf of papers, saying briefly: ‘Thanks, Horace! Mind if I go through this lot now, sir?’
‘No, I should prefer you to. Sit down, Inspector!’
Harbottle pulled up a chair to his Chief’s elbow, and together they read the report of the inquest, while the Colonel, after watching Hemingway’s face for a few minutes, chose a fresh pipe from the rack on his desk, filled and lit it, and sat smoking, and staring out of the window. For some time nothing broke the silence but the crackle of the sheets as they were turned over, and, once, a request from Harbottle, not so swift a reader as his Chief, that a page should not be turned for a moment. A frown gathered on Hemingway’s brow as he read, and several times he flicked the pages back to refer to something which had gone before. When he finally laid the sheaf down there was a very intent look in his eyes, and he did not immediately speak.
The Colonel glanced at him. ‘Well? Quite straightforward, isn’t it?’
‘Wonderfully,’ said Hemingway. ‘Just as if all the wheels had been oiled – which I don’t doubt they had been.’
The Colonel flushed. ‘You believe that we missed something?’
‘Sorry, sir! I do. Mind you, I’m not surprised! You’d none of you any reason to suspect Walter’s letter wasn’t what it seemed to be. I daresay I wouldn’t have started to smell a rat, if I hadn’t come upon it amongst Warrenby’s own papers, where it had no business to be. It was that which set me thinking.’
‘But, good heavens, Hemingway, are you suggesting that Warrenby, acting as Coroner, suspected all along that the letter was a fake?’ exclaimed the Colonel, in horrified accents.
‘Not all along, no,’ replied Hemingway. ‘I should say it was only when he got to thinking about it more particularly that he began to have his doubts, same like me. Probably after Gavin took up his residence in Thornden, and showed clearly what sort of a neighbour he was going to be. Silly of him to have made an enemy of Warrenby. That was his conceit, of course, thinking he could run rings round anyone he chose. Well, I’ve got plenty of evidence to lead me to suppose that Warrenby’s reaction to the sort of contemptuous way Gavin probably treated him would have been to see if he couldn’t get some kind of a hold over him. He’d be bound to think over Walter Plenmeller’s death. It was easy for him to go over the inquest again, at his leisure. He may have felt as I do about the letter, or there may be something in it, which I haven’t spotted, that struck him as fishy. You can take it he didn’t remove it from the file because he wanted a bit of bedtime literature.’
‘Do you believe it to be a forgery? I don’t set up to be a handwriting expert, but I’d swear to it as Walter’s handwriting.’
Hemingway nodded. ‘Oh, yes, I wasn’t questioning that, sir! Do you know if the envelope was preserved?’
‘I can’t remember that I ever saw an envelope, but if Carsethorn’s in the station, we’ll soon find out. He was on that case with Thropton,’ replied the Colonel, picking up the house-telephone.
‘He is, sir,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’ve just been having a word with him.’
The Sergeant came quickly in answer to the summons. Upon the question being put to him, his eyes narrowed, as though he were bringing a distant view into focus. After a moment’s exercise of memory, he said positively: ‘No, sir. We never saw the envelope. Mr Plenmeller handed the letter to Inspector Thropton, spread open, like it is now. He said something about supposing he’d got to give it to the police, though his instinct – no, his baser self was what he said – made him a sight more inclined to put it on the fire.’
‘Sounds lifelike,’ commented Hemingway. ‘If you ask me, it was his baser self that made him hand you the letter. I wish I could see the envelope, though I don’t suppose there was ever a chance that anyone would have been allowed to.’
‘The housekeeper saw it,’ said the Sergeant. ‘I remember she told us how she was the one who saw the lett
er first. On the bedside-table it was. She said it had the one word, Gavin, written on it.’
‘It had, had it? Well, it can’t be helped: it’s a safe bet the housekeeper wouldn’t know whether it was Walter’s writing, or only a copy of it.’
‘What are you getting at?’ demanded the Colonel. ‘Why do you think the envelope may have been significant?’
‘Just an idea I’ve got at the back of my mind, sir,’ replied Hemingway, stretching out his hand to pick up the letter. ‘A little while ago, you were telling me that only three weeks before Walter’s death he was saying that he wouldn’t have Gavin in the house again, or even see him.’
‘But he did have him in the house again. Whatever the quarrel may have been, it was made up.’
‘Yes, sir. But it occurs to me that that’s exactly what he says in this letter.’ Hemingway raised his eyes from the letter, one brow lifting quizzically, but no one spoke. All three men were watching him closely, and in the Colonel’s face was an expression of dawning comprehension. ‘Well,’ Hemingway continued, ‘I’ve now studied this letter till I’m sick of the sight of it, and, apart from the points I’ve already mentioned, there’s only one thing about it which looks to me a little suspicious. Walter had a sprawling sort of writing, and a trick of joining one word to the next through not bothering to take his pen off the paper. Will you take a look at the date at the top of the page, sir, and tell me what you think?’
He laid the letter down before the Colonel, and, with one accord, Harbottle and Carsethorn moved round the table to obtain a view of it. The Colonel looked closely at it, and then across the desk at Hemingway. ‘The figure 2 seems rather close to the 5,’ he said slowly.
‘Look where the light, upward stroke from the Y of May reaches it!’ said Hemingway. ‘It joins the 2 at the bottom of the figure, not, as you’d expect, at the loop at the top. How he made a 2, starting from the bottom of the diagonal line, I can’t imagine. But if you carry that faint line from the Y on, in your mind’s eye, the way it’s going, I think you’ll find it would join the 5 exactly where it should, supposing Walter had dated his letter May 5th, and not May 25th.’