J. S. Fletcher - The Collected Works of J. S. Fletcher - 17 Novels & 28 Short Stories (Illustrated Edition)

“I should say it is, ma’am,” answered the inspector. “He was seen outside here last night by one of our men, anyway.”

The landlady uttered an expression of distress, and opening a side-door, motioned them to step into her parlour.

“Which of them is it?” she asked anxiously. “There’s two—came together last night, they did—a tall one and a short one. Dear, dear me!—is it a bad accident, now, inspector?”

“The man’s dead, ma’am,” replied Mitchington grimly. “And we want to know who he is. Have you got his name—and the other gentleman’s?”

Mrs. Partingley uttered another exclamation of distress and astonishment, lifting her plump hands in horror. But her business faculties remained alive, and she made haste to produce a big visitors’ book and to spread it open before her callers.

“There it is!” she said, pointing to the two last entries. “That’s the short gentleman’s name—Mr. John Braden, London. And that’s the tall one’s—Mr. Christopher Dellingham—also London. Tourists, of course—we’ve never seen either of them before.”

“Came together, you say, Mrs. Partingley?” asked Mitchington. “When was that, now?”

“Just before dinner, last night,” answered the landlady. “They’d evidently come in by the London train—that gets in at six-forty, as you know. They came here together, and they’d dinner together, and spent the evening together. Of course, we took them for friends. But they didn’t go out together this morning, though they’d breakfast together. After breakfast, Mr. Dellingham asked me the way to the old Manor Mill, and he went off there, so I concluded. Mr. Braden, he hung about a bit, studying a local directory I’d lent him, and after a while he asked me if he could hire a trap to take him out to Saxonsteade this afternoon. Of course, I said he could, and he arranged for it to be ready at two-thirty. Then he went out, and across the market towards the Cathedral. And that,” concluded Mrs. Partingley, “is about all I know, gentlemen.”

“Saxonsteade, eh?” remarked Mitchington. “Did he say anything about his reasons for going there?”

“Well, yes, he did,” replied the landlady. “For he asked me if I thought he’d be likely to find the Duke at home at that time of day. I said I knew his Grace was at Saxonsteade just now, and that I should think the middle of the afternoon would be a good time.”

“He didn’t tell you his business with the Duke?” asked Mitchington.

“Not a word!” said the landlady. “Oh, no!—just that, and no more. But—here’s Mr. Dellingham.”

Bryce turned to see a tall, broad-shouldered, bearded man pass the window—the door opened and he walked in, to glance inquisitively at the inspector. He turned at once to Mrs. Partingley.

“I hear there’s been an accident to that gentleman I came in with last night?” he said. “Is it anything serious? Your ostler says—”

“These gentlemen have just come about it, sir,” answered the landlady. She glanced at Mitchington. “Perhaps you’ll tell—” she began.

“Was he a friend of yours, sir?” asked Mitchington. “A personal friend?”

“Never saw him in my life before last night!” replied the tall man. “We just chanced to meet in the train coming down from London, got talking, and discovered we were both coming to the same place—Wrychester. So—we came to this house together. No—no friend of mine—not even an acquaintance—previous, of course, to last night. Is—is it anything serious?”

“He’s dead, sir,” replied Mitchington. “And now we want to know who he is.”

“God bless my soul! Dead? You don’t say so!” exclaimed Mr. Dellingham. “Dear, dear! Well, I can’t help you—don’t know him from Adam. Pleasant, well-informed man—seemed to have travelled a great deal in foreign countries. I can tell you this much, though,” he went on, as if a sudden recollection had come to him; “I gathered that he’d only just arrived in England—in fact, now I come to think of it, he said as much. Made some remark in the train about the pleasantness of the English landscape, don’t you know?—I got an idea that he’d recently come from some country where trees and hedges and green fields aren’t much in evidence. But—if you want to know who he is, officer, why don’t you search him? He’s sure to have papers, cards, and so on about him.”

“We have searched him,” answered Mitchington. “There isn’t a paper, a letter, or even a visiting card on him.”

Mr. Dellingham looked at the landlady.

“Bless me!” he said. “Remarkable! But he’d a suit-case, or something of the sort—something light—which he carried up from the railway station himself. Perhaps in that—”

“I should like to see whatever he had,” said Mitchington. “We’d better examine his room, Mrs. Partingley.”

Bryce presently followed the landlady and the inspector upstairs—Mr. Dellingham followed him. All four went into a bedroom which looked out on Monday Market. And there, on a side-table, lay a small leather suit-case, one which could easily be carried, with its upper half thrown open and back against the wall behind.

The landlady, Mr. Dellingham and Bryce stood silently by while the inspector examined the contents of this the only piece of luggage in the room. There was very little to see—what toilet articles the visitor brought were spread out on the dressing-table—brushes, combs, a case of razors, and the like. And Mitchington nodded side-wise at them as he began to take the articles out of the suit-case.

“There’s one thing strikes me at once,” he said. “I dare say you gentlemen notice it. All these things are new! This suit-case hasn’t been in use very long—see, the leather’s almost unworn—and those things on the dressing-table are new. And what there is here looks new, too. There’s not much, you see—he evidently had no intention of a long stop. An extra pair of trousers—some shirts—socks—collars—neckties—slippers—handkerchiefs—that’s about all. And the first thing to do is to see if the linen’s marked with name or initials.”

He deftly examined the various articles as he took them out, and in the end shook his head.

“No name—no initials,” he said. “But look here—do you see, gentlemen, where these collars were bought? Half a dozen of them, in a box. Paris! There you are—the seller’s name, inside the collar, just as in England. Aristide Pujol, 82, Rue des Capucines. And—judging by the look of ‘em—I should say these shirts were bought there, too—and the handkerchiefs—and the neckwear—they all have a foreign look. There may be a clue in that—we might trace him in France if we can’t in England. Perhaps he is a Frenchman.”

“I’ll take my oath he isn’t!” exclaimed Mr. Dellingham. “However long he’d been out of England he hadn’t lost a North-Country accent! He was some sort of a North-Countryman—Yorkshire or Lancashire, I’ll go bail. No Frenchman, officer—not he!”

“Well, there’s no papers here, anyway,” said Mitchington, who had now emptied the suit-case. “Nothing to show who he was. Nothing here, you see, in the way of paper but this old book—what is it—History of Barthorpe.”

“He showed me that in the train,” remarked Mr. Dellingham. “I’m interested in antiquities and archaeology, and anybody who’s long in my society finds it out. We got talking of such things, and he pulled out that book, and told me with great pride, that he’d picked it up from a book-barrow in the street, somewhere in London, for one-and-six. I think,” he added musingly, “that what attracted him in it was the old calf binding and the steel frontispiece—I’m sure he’d no great knowledge of antiquities.”