It was a quarter to four by the morning-room clock, all pink enamel and gilt amoretti, before he got away and went upstairs. By that time Frank Abbott and the police sergeant were on the top floor, engaged in searching his room. It is on record that he went to the door of Jerome Pilgrim’s room but did not get speech of him. After which he went up into the attic from which Roger Pilgrim had fallen just under forty-eight hours before.
At between ten minutes and five minutes to four he fell from the same window, and to the same death.
chapter 32
Frank Abbott and the police sergeant from Ledlington heard a cry, and immediately on that the shock and sound of the fall. They had the drawers out of the chest in Robbins’ room, and they had them stacked one over the other between them and the window. The sergeant barked his shin and brought the top drawer down. They had to shift them before they could get to the window, and then they had to get the two leaves of the casement open.
By the time they had done all this Judy Elliot was looking out of a window on the floor below, staring down at the body of Alfred Robbins, which lay on the flags where Roger Pilgrim’s body had lain. Pell was stooping over it and saying, “He’s dead, certain sure.”
Abbott called out, “Don’t touch him-don’t touch anything! We’ll be down.” And with that he drew back and made for the door.
But the door was locked. Frank stared at it, and the sergeant stared at him. There was no key on the inside.
The Ledlington sergeant stooped down and looked through the keyhole.
“It’s there, on the other side. That’s a queer start. It was this side all right when we came in-I’d swear to that.”
Frank nodded.
“I thought so too, but I don’t know about swearing. You didn’t hear the door open, did you?”
The sergeant stood up.
“We shouldn’t-not if it was when we were shifting those papers.”
The contents of the bottom drawer lay out across the floor-piles of old papers, newspaper cuttings yellow with age-the Pioneer, the Civil and Military-Indian papers, dusty with thirty-year-old news of the last war-nothing later than 1918-the whole making an uneasy bed for the dead man’s shirts. And, dropped down across them where it had fallen from Frank Abbott’s hand, a brown leather wallet.
He turned for it as the sergeant stepped back for a kick at the door. The crack of the breaking lock came as he stooped to pick it up, taking it gingerly by the edges with the handkerchief he had let fall beside it. If it was what he thought it was, there wasn’t any mystery about Alfred Robbins’ death. Most men would prefer a drop from a window to a drop at the end of a rope.
He knotted the corners of the handkerchief and followed the sergeant down the crooked stair.
Pell had been perfectly right-Robbins was dead. But the death must be certified, reported, put on record. Police procedure must take its course. At the Pilgrim’s Rest end of the telephone the police sergeant called up its ordered activities. His voice could be heard from the study by anyone standing in the passage or at that end of the hall-a good firm voice with a rasp in it, but matter-of-fact, as if what he had to report was mere routine.
“Superintendent there?… Yes, get him on the line… Smith speaking, sir. There’s been another death… Yes, the butler, Robbins-suicide… Yes, the same window as Major Pilgrim… No, nothing’s been touched. Sergeant Abbott and I were next door when it happened… You’ll be out? Very good, sir.”
In this twentieth century, murder holds as exact a state as a medieval monarch. The exists and entrances are all laid down. Surgeon, photographer, fingerprint expert make their bow and play an appointed part.
Randall March played his. Once more he sat at the study table to hear statements and put questions. The two sergeants first with their report, Smith leading off.
“We’d finished in Captain Pilgrim’s room. Nothing there. Then we went up to this attic bedroom, which is where we should have begun by rights, only Captain Pilgrim asked us to do his room first so that he could get back to it-and being an invalid, that seemed reasonable.”
March said, “How long were you up there before the fall?”
The sergeant looked at Frank Abbott and said,
“Ten minutes?”
Frank nodded.
“About that.”
Smith went on.
“We’d got the drawers out of the chest. Bottom drawer full of old newspapers and cuttings, which would account for us not hearing when he locked us in.”
March exclaimed.
“Locked you in!”
“That’s right, sir. We’re both quite sure the key was on the inside when we got there. He must have come along, opened the door without making any noise, seen what we were up to, and reached round the edge of the door for the key. Then he pulled it to, locked us in, went through to the next room and chucked himself out. He knew his number was up all right, but he’d a nerve opening the door and getting the key the way he did.”
Frank Abbott said in his detached voice,
“It was what he saw when he opened the door, I imagine, which told him his number was up. I don’t think his suicide was premeditated, or he wouldn’t have come near us. He was scared stiff of course-too scared to keep away, so he came to see what was happening, and what he saw showed him the game was up. I don’t think anyone would have planned to lock the door. It was done on the impulse, so as to give him time to take the drop his own way. After what he must have seen he’d know he was for it one way or the other.”
“What did he see?” said March short and sharp.
Frank Abbott was unknotting the corners of a handkerchief. When he had them free he leaned over the table and laid the square of linen carefully on the blotting-pad. In the middle of it was a man’s brown leather wallet with the initials H.C. stamped in gold. March repeated them aloud-“H.C.” Frank said,
“Henry Clayton-the missing wallet.”
“Was there a missing wallet?”
“Oh, yes. Roger told Miss Silver about it. Old Mr. Pilgrim gave Henry fifty pounds for a wedding present, spot cash over this table, and Henry took out his wallet and put it away-a brown leather wallet with his initials on it. Roger was in the room at the time, and so was Robbins.”
“Where did you find it?”
Smith took up the tale.
“Back of the drawers in the chest. You know how it is, in a real good chest the drawer goes all the way to meet the frame, and this had been a good old chest in its time, but the back of the bottom drawer was broken away-worn in the wood. And this wallet had got down inside the frame, wedged between the bottom drawer and the back.”
March looked down at it lying on the spread handkerchief.
“Now why did he keep it?”
He looked up suddenly, to catch a slightly quizzical expression in Frank Abbott’s light blue eyes. Without quite knowing why, he experienced a sense of discomfort.
Smith had his answer ready.
“That’s a criminal all over. Extraordinary, the things they’ll keep. This Robbins now-how long is it since Mr. Clayton was murdered-three years, isn’t it? And Robbins is in and out of a kitchen with a good roaring fire going for the whole of that time-all he’s got to do is to push this wallet in the range any night after his wife’s gone up. But he keeps it, the silly fool-sticks it in his drawer along with all those old papers. Likely enough he never looked at them, and never knew the wallet had gone missing. But when he saw it lying there right on top of what we’d turned out he’d know that the game was up. If there was anyone in the family that could swear to it-and probably all that’s left of them could do that-well, it would hang him, wouldn’t it?”
March said, “It’s empty, I suppose?”