Trent’s Own Case. E. C. Bentley

inspector suddenly turned his eye on Raught once more. ‘Not hard of hearing, are you?’ he observed agreeably; and as the colour flooded the man’s pale face he added: ‘You’re sure you haven’t forgotten any other little details of this private conversation between your master and his secretary? No? All right. Then Mr Trent called at six?’

      ‘It was just six, sir, when I opened the door to him,’ Raught said subduedly. ‘It was accidental, sir, as you may say, me being here when he called, because on Wednesdays my time is supposed to be my own after three o’clock. But you know, sir, what the weather was like all yesterday, and I hadn’t anything to do with myself before meeting my sister and her husband at seven thirty, and so I had a bit of a sleep in the afternoon, and then there was my best suit wouldn’t be none the worse for a pressing, and what with one thing—’

      ‘Never mind all that,’ Mr Bligh snapped. ‘You were still here at six—is that it?’

      ‘Yes, sir. And when I went to answer the bell, Mr Randolph was just coming out of the sitting-room to answer it himself; and he says: “Oh! You’re here still,” he says. “Well, if that’s Mr Trent at the door,” he says, “show him in here,” he says. So I showed Mr Trent in.’

      ‘And then what did they talk about?’

      ‘I could not say, sir.’

      ‘You didn’t listen, I suppose,’ Mr Bligh remarked dispassionately, ‘because you knew all about it beforehand. Well; what next?’

      ‘After about a quarter of an hour I heard the sitting-room door open, and Mr Randolph calls to me to show Mr Trent out again, which I did. And that’s all I know, sir, about anyone calling on Mr Randolph yesterday, because I went out for the evening myself a little later, and never come back again till near twelve, like I told you.’

      Mr Bligh considered for a few moments, still fixing the unhappy Raught with a baleful eye.

      ‘You say you were out of here,’ he summed up at last, ‘by not later than 6:30. And your master had a dinner appointment in the City. You have told the sergeant here that the dinner was for eight o’clock, and that Mr Randolph would usually send for a taxi when keeping appointments of that kind. Is that right?’

      ‘Quite right, sir. He never had his own car in London.’

      ‘Hm! Time enough,’ the inspector muttered; then: ‘What do you know about a person called Bryan Fairman?’

      Raught appeared sincerely surprised at the question. ‘I suppose that would be Dr Fairman, sir?’

      ‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ Mr Bligh grunted. ‘Who is he?’

      ‘I believe, sir, he is one of the doctors at the mental ’ospital at Claypoole, which is named after Mr Randolph, and kept up as you probably know, sir, entirely at his expense.’ (Mr Bligh nodded.) ‘I have seen Dr Fairman once, when he was dining at Brinton one evening. I think he had been asked over, sir, to speak about the work he was doing at the mental ’ospital.’

      ‘You think!’ Mr Bligh remarked with devastating emphasis. ‘You heard what he and Mr Randolph were talking about—that’s what you mean. Well, you’ve seen Dr Fairman. What kind of a man is he to look at? Tall or short? Dark or fair? Give me a description.’

      Raught, in evident relief at the thought of some other person having attracted the notice of the police, took a moment for consideration. ‘I saw him only the once, sir, and that would be about three months ago, as near as I can fix it. But I remember him as a gentleman of what you might call medium size, rather thin, with black hair and a little moustache, a bit pale in the face.’

      ‘About what age? Does he wear glasses?’

      ‘I should say somewhere in the thirties, sir. I didn’t see him wearing glasses; he seemed to me like a keen-sighted man, his eye being sort of piercing, as they say, when he looked at you. I can’t think of anything else special about him, except his acting a bit nervous-like—jerky in his movements, if you know what I mean, sir.’

      ‘What about his expression? Pleasant?’

      ‘’Ardly that, sir. I should call it severe—not unpleasant I don’t mean, not that at all, but as if he wouldn’t laugh very easy. If I may say so,’ Raught added with an air of cringing slyness, ‘Dr Fairman’s expression is a little bit like your own, sir.’

      ‘Not unpleasant, eh?’ Mr Bligh said. ‘Well, you ought to know. Now then; apart from his appearance, what else do you know about Dr Fairman?’

      ‘Nothing, sir, only what I’ve heard mentioned in talk sometimes between Mr Randolph and other parties when—’

      ‘When your ear happened to be in the neighbourhood of the keyhole,’ Mr Bligh suggested pleasantly.

      ‘No, sir,’ the valet said, as one making patient allowance for the working of a suspicious temperament. ‘In my position, sir, people’s conversation often comes to my ears without me having to listen for it, even in a big ’ouse like Brinton. And as for a small place like this, you can see for yourself, sir, I’d be bound to hear a good deal of what was being talked about unless it was meant to be private—what with doors left open, or me going in and out about my work. And if I know anything about Mr Randolph,’ Raught added with the first touch of genuine feeling that the inspector had noted in him, ‘anything he wanted to be kept private would be kept private.’

      ‘And no blooming error,’ Mr Bligh prompted him with the ghost of a smile.

      ‘You take the words out of my mouth, sir,’ Raught said. ‘But I only mean that the old man—Mr Randolph, I should say—was no fool, if he was kind-hearted to a fault, as the saying is. I do know this, sir—if he wanted to see anybody here without the chance of being overheard, it was his habit to make an appointment for the Wednesday evening, which has always been my time off, and open the door to them himself.’

      ‘No fool, as you say,’ the inspector observed drily.

      Raught ignored this offensive interjection. ‘As for what was said about Dr Fairman, his name has come up in conversation more than once between Mr Randolph and Mr Verney. Mr Verney seemed to think a lot of some special job Dr Fairman was doing at the mental ’ospital; what it was I can’t say. I thought Mr Randolph didn’t seem to think quite so much of it—spoke of it a bit short-like. Once, I remember, he said that the worst of these loony-doctors—’

      ‘Did he say “loony-doctors”?’ Mr Bligh cut in.

      The valet hesitated. ‘He did not, sir; but he used some expression which the meaning of it was obviously that. And he said that the worst of them was that when they often got a bee in their bonnets themselves—that he did say, I’ll swear to it.’

      The inspector smiled another wintry smile. ‘I said you were not hard of hearing,’ he commented. ‘Did anything more about this Dr Fairman come to your ears?’

      ‘Nothing that I can recall, sir.’

      Mr Bligh sighed gently. At this hour the much-wanted Fairman, if he had caught the night-boat, as appearances suggested, might still be at his destination in Dieppe. On the other hand, his true destination was more than likely to be elsewhere, and he might be receding each moment farther beyond the reach of the English law’s long arm. The inspector strode to the sitting-room telephone, and soon was in touch with the same official to whom he had spoken before. He repeated briefly, for transmission to Dieppe, Raught’s description of the suspect, and asked that inquiries about him should be made immediately at the Randolph Mental Hospital at Claypoole, where he was one of the medical staff.

      ‘Now then,’ he resumed, turning to the valet who stood uneasily awaiting his attention, ‘before you went out, you left your master’s evening clothes ready for him?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Did you put out his razor?’

      ‘No, sir. I never knew him need to shave in the evening.