“In a hurry?” Emmy asked. She was propped up against the pillows reading her morning newspaper.
“Yes. I think I’m on to something.”
“Because of your phone call?”
“No, no. Because of Aunt Dora.”
“I give up,” said Emmy. “When shall I see you?”
“For lunch here,” said Henry, “that is, as far as I know. I really can’t say. I just hope I’m not too late.”
“For what?” Emmy asked, but he had gone.
Henry’s first call was on Dr. Thompson, who was in the middle of his morning office hours and made no secret of the fact that visitors were not welcome. However, he answered the questions which Henry posed and agreed to take certain actions. Henry thanked him, sent his best wishes to Mrs. Thompson, and proceeded on his way to his next port of call.
Cregwell Lodge looked even more hostile than the Doctor’s office. The curtains were tightly drawn and the doors bolted. However, in response to Henry’s prolonged pealing on the front doorbell, Frank Mason finally appeared, unshaven and yawning in a camel’s hair dressing gown, and obviously suffering from a bad cold.
“Wha’d’yar want?” he asked, ungraciously, and proceeded to have a fit of coughing.
“A look around the Lodge,” said Henry.
“Gotta warrant?”
“No. But I can get one.”
“Thought you’d been through the place with a fine-tooth comb already,” grumbled Frank, but he led the way into the study. “Like a cuppa coffee?”
“Thanks, I’d love one,” said Henry.
“Back in a tic,” said Mason. He blew his nose loudly, and shambled off toward the kitchen.
The study was, at first glance, exactly as it had been when Henry inspected it two days before; but, as he started to look more closely, it became clear that there was a difference. Somebody had made a thorough investigation of the room.
Henry went first to the bookshelves. The leather-bound volumes had clearly been taken down from the shelves, for they were out of order and some of them were upside down. It was as though somebody had pulled them wholesale out of the shelves, perhaps searching for something behind them, and had then made a not-very-successful attempt to put them back in their right order.
The desk, too, showed signs of a hasty search, and the small diary which had interested Henry on his last visit was nowhere to be seen. Henry did not waste any more time on the room itself, but went and sat down in an armchair. He had his pipe going nicely when Frank Mason came back with two cups of coffee on a tray.
Henry said, ‘Well, did you find it?”
Frank started so that some of the coffee spilled into the saucers. He did not answer, but put the tray down carefully and disappeared into the kitchen again. A few seconds later he came back with a box of crackers and a cloth with which he wiped up the spilled coffee. Then he handed a cup to Henry and said, “Cracker?”
“No, thanks.”
“They’re not bad. Sugar?”
“No, thanks.”
Frank Mason helped himself to sugar, took a cracker, coughed raucously, sat down opposite Henry, and drank some coffee. Then he said, “Find what?”
Henry indicated the desk and bookcase with the merest twitch of his eyebrows. “Whatever you were looking for.”
“I wasn’t looking for anything.”
“Really? Then who was?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Henry. “Somebody has been searching this room for something, and I don’t imagine you’d allow an outsider to do that without your permission.”
“You mean, somebody has been searching here?” Mason’s tone of shocked surprise was almost entirely convincing.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?”
“Noticed what?”
“The books, for one thing,” said Henry. He took a drink of coffee. “Somebody has had most of them out of their shelves.”
“What on earth for?”
Henry looked quizzically at Mason’s apparently innocent young face. “Don’t you know?”
Deliberately or not, Mason dodged this question. Instead, his expression began to take on its normal look of explosive anger, and he said, “There’s only one person who’d want to come poking around in here, and that’s the person who killed my father!”
“Or so it would appear,” said Henry. “And what about the gun?”
Frank Mason flushed a dark, angry red, “What gun?”
“The gun in the attic,” said Henry patiently. “Major Manciple’s gun. Is it still there?”
There was a moment of baffled silence. Then Mason said, “That’s like asking a man whether he’s stopped beating his wife. Whatever I answer is going to be wrong.”
“You knew it was there, of course?”
Mason said nothing.
“You probably found it when you were looking for something else,” said Henry persuasively. “Quite by accident, I mean.”
In the silence that followed, Henry could almost hear Frank Mason’s brain working, calculating the most suitable reply. At last he said, “All right. I found it there yesterday. By accident, like you said. I couldn’t know you’d already seen it. I knew it couldn’t have any connection with my father’s death, because the police had told me that they were holding the gun that shot him. So I — I removed the other gun. I thought it might be embarrassing if…”
“What did you do with it?”
Mason blew his nose. He seemed more at ease as he said, “No mystery about that. It’s here in the desk drawer. I was going to…
“To do what?”
“To take it back to Major Manciple. It’s his, after all.”
“I see. When were you proposing to give it back?”
“Well — I’d thought of going up there today. I thought I might…” Again he paused.
Henry grinned and said, “You thought you might find Miss Maud Manciple at home?”
The flush came back into Frank’s face. “You leave her out of this!”
“Very well,” said Henry. “But you’ll have to find some other excuse for visiting the Grange. I’m taking the gun away with me now.”
“Just as you like, Inspector. Here you are. It’s…” Frank opened the desk drawer with somewhat of a flourish. It was the drawer in which Henry had originally found the diary, and it was, as he knew, quite empty.
This time Mason’s astonishment was even more convincing. “But — I put it there yesterday. It must be…”
Henry stood up “You put it there yesterday,” he said, “and now it’s gone. Unfortunate, but not altogether surprising. I dare say the Homer’s Iliad is also missing.”
“Homer’s Iliad?”
“That’s right. Book Six.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m delighted to hear it,” said Henry. “Nevertheless, I think we’ll have difficulty in locating that particular book. Perhaps you could help me look for it.”
Augustus Manciple’s handsomely-bound edition of Homer consisted of a set of six volumes. All bore the Manciple crest on their finely-tooled leather spines; all were bound in pale beige calf and freely embellished with gold. The first volume contained the Odyssey in Greek, with copious and learned notes, while the second was an English translation of the work, again richly annotated. The remaining four volumes comprised the Iliad, in Greek and in English. But of these six tomes, only five were to be found, for all Henry’s searching. The missing book was the first volume of the Iliad in Greek — Vol. III of the set — which had apparently contained Books One to Twelve in Greek, for Vol. IV started at Book Thirteen.
“And you’ve no idea where it is?” Henry said at last.
Frank Mason ran a hand through his red hair, making it even more unruly than usual. “I tell you, I don’t know what it’s all about. I can’t read Greek. I never knew my father had all these books — I suppose he bought them by the yard for snob effect. I’m bloody sure he never read them. If you’re trying to tell me that one of them was so valuable that somebody killed him to get hold of it…”