“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 letter 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.