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Page 94
"Did Mr. Cayley say anything?"
"He turned the body over, just so as to see the face, and when he
saw it, he said, 'Thank God.'"
Again the reporters wrote "Sensation."
"Did you understand what he meant by that?"
"I asked him who it was, and he said that it was Robert Ablett.
Then he explained that he was afraid at first it was the cousin
with whom he lived--Mark."
"Yes. Did he seem upset?"
"Very much so at first. Less when he found that it wasn't Mark."
There was a sudden snigger from a nervous gentleman in the crowd
at the back of the room, and the Coroner put on his glasses and
stared sternly in the direction from which it came. The nervous
gentleman hastily decided that the time had come to do up his
bootlace. The Coroner put down his glasses and continued.
"Did anybody come out of the house while you were coming up the
drive?"
"No."
"Thank you, Mr. Gillingham."
He was followed by Inspector Birch. The Inspector, realizing
that this was his afternoon, and that the eyes of the world were
upon him, produced a plan of the house and explained the
situation of the different rooms. The plan was then handed to
the jury.
Inspector Birch, so he told the world, had arrived at the Red
House at 4.42 p.m. on the afternoon in question. He had been
received by Mr. Matthew Cayley, who had made a short statement to
him, and he had then proceeded to examine the scene of the crime.
The French windows had been forced from outside. The door
leading into the hall was locked; he had searched the room
thoroughly and had found no trace of a key. In the bedroom
leading out of the office he had found an open window. There
were no marks on the window, but it was a low one, and, as he
found from experiment, quite easy to step out of without touching
it with the boots. A few yards outside the window a shrubbery
began. There were no recent footmarks outside the window, but
the ground was in a very hard condition owing to the absence of
rain. In the shrubbery, however, he found several twigs on the
ground, recently broken off, together with other evidence that
some body had been forcing its way through. He had questioned
everybody connected with the estate, and none of them had been
into the shrubbery recently. By forcing a way through the
shrubbery it was possible for a person to make a detour of the
house and get to the Stanton end of the park without ever being
in sight of the house itself.
He had made inquiries about the deceased. Deceased had left for
Australia some fifteen years ago, owing to some financial trouble
at home. Deceased was not well spoken of in the village from
which he and his brother had come. Deceased and his brother had
never been on good terms, and the fact that Mark Ablett had come
into money had been a cause of great bitterness between them. It
was shortly after this that Robert had left for Australia.
He had made inquiries at Stanton station. It had been market-day
at Stanton and the station had been more full of arrivals than
usual. Nobody had particularly noticed the arrival of Robert
Ablett; there had been a good many passengers by the 2.10 train
that afternoon, the train by which Robert had undoubtedly come
from London. A witness, however, would state that he noticed a
man resembling Mark Ablett at the station at 3.53 p.m. that
afternoon, and this man caught the 3.55 up train to town.
There was a pond in the grounds of the Red House. He had dragged
this, but without result ....
Antony listened to him carelessly, thinking his own thoughts all
the time. Medical evidence followed, but there was nothing to be
got from that. He felt so close to the truth; at any moment
something might give his brain the one little hint which it
wanted. Inspector Birch was just pursuing the ordinary.
Whatever else this case was, it was not ordinary. There was
something uncanny about it.
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