Ten Star Clues (20 page)

“Does you much credit, I'm sure, if you don't mind my saying so,” said the colonel in a slightly embarrassed voice, and Clinton made a slightly embarrassed bow in acknowledgment. The colonel went on:— “I suppose the— er—row you spoke of with Ralph wasn't very serious?”

“Oh, no. He has the devil of a temper, you know. Awfully good chap, but he'll flare up in a minute. You think he is going to throw you out of the window or something, and then it's all over. I just thought I would keep out of his way for the time. Besides, I was feeling a bit worked up myself. I still feel he ought to have paid more attention to my advice. Why have a solicitor if you won't listen to him? My view was that it was both useless and unwise for Ralph to insist on having a ‘show down', as he called it, with his great-uncle.”

“That was what your—er—difference of opinion was about?”

“Yes. Ralph insisted on having his ‘show down' with the old man. Trying to get the truth out of him, he said. I knew very well what the result of that would be. Both of them with tempers like barrels of gunpowder. I didn't want the breach between them to be final—or made worse by a lot of heated language. I like to be on the best of terms with the other side as long as possible. One of the first things I was taught. Good advice, too, I've found. I expect you've heard the result of Ralph's having his ‘show down' was a blazing row, just as I expected. You know about that?”

“A good deal of shouting seems to have been heard,” the colonel admitted. “We've been told about it by one or two different people.”

“I expect they went for each other hammer and tongs,” said Clinton with a half smile. “Said a lot of things neither of them meant most likely. But as I told Ralph by way of rubbing it in, it's just as well Martin saw him off the premises an hour or two before the murder.”

“Quite so,” murmured the colonel, “quite so. Yes. I am right in supposing that you consider this man, Bertram, to be an impostor?”

“Oh, yes. I thought so from the first.”

“Do you mind telling us why? Telling us all you know about it, in fact. It may be a very considerable help. In theory, of course, it's no business of ours. Matter for the civil courts. But murder is very much our business, and anything that would enable us to understand the situation here better might be a very great help.”

“I see that,” agreed Clinton thoughtfully. “Of course, you have a right to every help any one can give you— especially a solicitor. A solicitor is an officer of justice, too. I don't know if you've heard that the original Bertram got himself into serious trouble at Oxford. I don't know the details, I never bothered to try to find out. But I know he had to leave the country in a hurry, and that it was bad enough for there to be some danger of a criminal prosecution. Most likely, if he had been a poor boy, he would have gone to Borstal. But grandsons of peers don't go to Borstal, and young Bertram went to America instead. It's a good distance, and not the first time a British aristocratic family has been grateful that when Columbus discovered America he discovered it such a long way away. You understand Bertram wasn't the heir then. In the line of succession, of course, but not the direct heir. There were two or three lives between him and the title. But they all fell in, accident and illness and so on. This claimant fellow turned up at my office about three weeks ago. He didn't know that owing to various deaths he had become next heir. At least he said he didn't. What he wanted to know, he told me, was whether it would be safe for him to appear again, and also what sort of reception he was likely to get from his grandparents. At first, you understand, I accepted him at face value. Took him for granted. It was unexpected, of course, and rather startling, and even then I felt it was hard luck on Ralph. When I told the chap that owing to various deaths he was the heir he was either very surprised indeed, or else he is a jolly good actor. But I began to have my doubts. I can't say exactly why. Somehow, it didn't seem right. Or that's what I thought. But then I thought that might be because he had been knocking about America so long. Of course, I had no right to ask him questions. Not my business. I rang up and told the late earl. He wasn't impressed. He didn't say anything when I dropped a sort of careful hint that personally I wasn't quite happy about it. But he said he would see the chap. So I brought him along. I admit he puzzled me. He seemed to know a lot. He recognized places and he knew names. But there were holes. There were things I felt he ought to know he didn't seem even to have heard of. I was inclined to think he knew the district, knew a good deal about the Hoyle family, probably had met the genuine Bertram in America—did I tell you he showed me letters and papers the genuine Bertram would certainly have had?—and had somehow got hold of, stolen, perhaps, the proofs of identity he showed me. Bertram's death had been reported, you know, and it's not difficult, if you are on the spot, to get hold of a dead man's papers and so on. That's what I thought. That's what, I'm dead certain, the old earl thought at first. The fact that I can show letters written to John Smith doesn't necessarily prove that I am that particular John Smith. The old earl asked him one or two testing questions our man couldn't answer. I was fully prepared to see him kicked out—and to help for that matter—when he asked for a private interview. Said he could convince the old earl in two minutes. Well, it didn't take two minutes. It took half an hour or so. Martin came to ask me to go back to the library to join them. I was completely and utterly bowled over, flabbergasted, when the old earl said quite calmly that he had now recognized his grandson. So, he said, had the countess. I could hardly believe my own ears. But they both stuck to it, and the chap was publicly accepted as their grandson and heir. That was conclusive to most people. Every one knew how intensely proud of the family name and tradition were both the old people. It simply wasn't thinkable that they would accept a wrong 'un, and put an impostor, a stranger in blood, in possession of title and estates. Inconceivable. If they were satisfied, then it must be so. You can't wonder most people took it all for granted.”

“You didn't yourself?”

“Well, at first I simply didn't know what to think. I supposed the grandparents must know best. I felt I had been a fool to let my doubts be so plain. Not the best way of standing in with the new heir to let it be known you thought he was a fraud. I began to think I had done for myself and the firm, too. My partners rubbed that in rather vigorously when they heard about it all. I was told I had probably lost the firm the Wych estate business as soon as the new heir succeeded. Or sooner. He wasn't likely to forget in a hurry that I had as good as called him an impostor. There was a fine old dust-up in the office. I believe my partners would have thrown me out of the firm then and there if they had known how. Or sued me for damages. Well, there it was. I might have let them buy me out only for Ralph making it quite clear he didn't accept the new Bertram, and that he meant to fight. So I thought, all right, I'll go in with him. Right's right, all the world over. It meant I had to resign my partnership instead of being bought out. Couldn't be helped, and they were so glad to get rid of me, there was no trouble arranging things. I knew if Ralph said he meant fighting, fight he would. He's that sort. What he said confirmed my own ideas. I swung back to my first belief that this chap was another Arthur Orton and the whole affair another Tichborne case. You remember Lady Tichborne recognized Orton as her son, and if a mother could be mistaken in her own son and stick to it through thick and thin, then why couldn't grandparents be mistaken, too, no matter how they stuck to it? So I told Ralph I would sink or swim with him.”

The colonel nodded approvingly.

“One can't help liking a good fighter,” he remarked, and the remark was evidently intended to include both the absent Ralph and the present Clinton.

“Oh, Ralph's a good fighter all right,” declared Clinton with a laugh. “I mean to do my best, too,” he added modestly. “But then I'm just a lawyer. I've got to make my way in the profession. I don't deny a good fight is good fun, and I'm looking forward to it. And you don't much care for seeing a decent sort of chap like Ralph being done down by a dirty fraud. But I don't want you to think that I'm taking a sentimental view of the job. I'm not. I'm not taking it on out of friendship or sympathy or sense of justice or that sort of thing. Merely a plain business proposition.”

“Business that a good many people would go a long way to avoid, I think,” observed the colonel, and Clinton made a little deprecatory movement with his hands as if to wave the implied compliment aside.

“I suppose,” observed Bobby unexpectedly, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling, “I suppose that only the late earl's death makes it possible to test the succession in court?”

“Well, I was considering that,” admitted Clinton.

“Libel, scandal, an injunction to prevent Bertram from putting himself forward as heir, something on those lines, perhaps.”

“I don't quite see—” began Bobby, and Clinton interrupted him.

“Oh, I agree it's much easier to put a case now,” he said. “Of course, I've not had time even to begin getting evidence. There'll have to be inquiries in America. We must try to establish the real facts about Bertram's reported death. Then there's the question of this chap's actual identity. If he is—and I think he is—a native of this part, we shall have to try to trace every one who lived here about that time and has left since. A big job, but it can be done, and with luck we might get on the chap's trail very quickly. If we can prove who he really is, we've won at once. There's a lot to be done, and a plan of campaign will have to be thought out. It'll be a long time before we shall be ready to go into court.”

“I suppose so,” agreed the colonel. “The thing might take years. The Tichborne case did, didn't it?”

“Years,” agreed Clinton. “The two trials alone took nearly a year, taken together. I don't know,” he added, hesitatingly, “if I ought to ask you, but I suppose it is quite clearly established that Ralph left here an hour before the murder occurred? I'm inclined to suspect there's a certain amount of gossip going on, and I think it ought to be checked at once.”

“Martin is quite clear on that point,” the colonel admitted; surprised that so acute and zealous a lawyer as Clinton Wells seemed to be, did not see at once that such an early departure did not in any way prevent a later return. “It's most unfortunate there was this violent quarrel between Ralph and the late earl just before the murder. You can't wonder at there being gossip. Ralph says he went straight back home and to bed, and only heard of what had happened this morning. By the way, when you left here last night, you went home for your dinner?”

Clinton shook his head. 

“Oh, no,” he said. “My poor housekeeper would have had a fit. I told her I would be out for dinner, and there wouldn't have been a thing ready. Ought I to account for my movements?” he added smilingly. “I had dinner at the Midland Hotel.” He began to search in his pockets. “There's the bill,” he said, “if you like to see it—nineteen and six, it comes to. I don't always do myself as well as that, but they've a rather good Romanee Conti I treated myself to. To put myself in a good temper after my little upset with Ralph, I suppose. Then I went home, rang up one or two chaps I know to see if I could make up a four for bridge, found I couldn't, and spent the rest of the evening more usefully, I suppose, in looking up succession law and so on. I meant to make Ralph's case a big thing, win or lose. Put in the shade now, I suppose.”

“Why?” asked Bobby.

“Well, isn't it?” Clinton retorted. “Murders are much more exciting, much more sensational than missing heirs.”

“There seems a connection,” Bobby remarked. “There's a reference in your statement you made earlier to an automatic pistol you all, yourself, Mr. Longden, Ralph, seem to have handled in the Wych estate office last night?”

“Oh, yes,” Clinton answered. “But we all saw it securely locked up in the big safe in Ralph's office, and I understand Mr. Longden walked off with the keys by mistake. So Ralph couldn't have got it out, and Mr. Longden wasn't near the office till after the murder.”

“There's evidence,” Bobby agreed, “that Mr. Ralph Hoyle came straight here this morning when he heard what had happened, without going to his office. The housekeeper found the door bolted on the inside as usual when she came down about seven. She noticed, too, the keys on the floor where they had fallen when Mr. Longden pushed them through the letter-box.”

“Well, that seems all right,” observed Clinton. “The pistol must be still in the safe where we all saw it put away. Impossible for any one to have got hold of it. Longden had the key of the safe but not of the office. Ralph had the key of the office but not of the safe. Cancel each other out.” Bobby made no comment on this, though he wondered, much as the colonel had wondered before, how it was that so acute a lawyer did not see at once how easy it would have been for Ralph, who had sole charge of the safe key, to provide himself with a duplicate. In a slightly embarrassed voice, Clinton said:—

“I suppose you know the old earl kept an automatic in a drawer of the writing-table here? Martin said anything about—well, about it and me?”

“I don't think so,” Bobby answered. “No, he didn't. Why?”

“Well, it's like this,” explained Clinton, still slightly embarrassed. “I was in here the other day talking to the old earl, and he happened to show me the thing, the automatic I mean, a point three-two Colt automatic, I remember. Well, I happened to have it in my hand looking at it when Martin came into the room. I thought I had better mention it. You know, I don't trust that fellow, Martin. He would make mischief fast enough if he got the chance. I wouldn't put blackmail past him. It did just strike me that if he said he had seen me with it, well, that would prove I knew about it, which I did, and I've had plenty of opportunity of getting hold of it since, if I wanted to. I thought I had better mention it. My legal mind did suggest that it might look a trifle fishy, if that was the weapon used. Not that I had any reason for trying to get rid of the poor old boy, only in a case like this, it's better to mention everything, isn't it?”