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'Blackbirds?'
'Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie! Or black-berries if you prefer to be literal!
George, you comprehend, was after all not quite a good enough actor. Do you remember
the fellow who blacked himself all over to play Othello? That is the kind of actor you
have got to be in crime. George looked like his uncle and walked like his uncle and spoke
like his uncle and had his uncles' beard and eyebrows, but he forgot to eat like his uncle.
He ordered the dishes that he himself liked. Blackberries discolour the teeth - the corpse's
teeth were not discoloured, and yet Henry Gascoigne ate blackberries at the Gallant
Endeavour that night. But there were no blackberries in the stomach. I asked this
morning. And George had been fool enough to keep the beard and the rest of the make-
up. Oh! plenty of evidence once you look for it. I called on George and rattled him. That
finished it! He had been eating blackberries again, by the way. A greedy fellow - cared a
lot about his food. Eh bien, greed will hang him all right unless I am very much
mistaken.'
A waitress brought them two portions of blackberry and apple tart.
'Take it away,' said Mr Bonnington. 'One can't be too careful. Bring me a small helping of
sago pudding.'
THE LOVE DETECTIVES
Little Mr Satterthwaite looked thoughtfully across at his host. The friendship between
these two men was an odd one. The colonel was a simple country gentleman whose
passion in life was sport. The few weeks that he spent perforce in London, he spent
unwillingly. Mr Satterthwaite, on the other hand, was a town bird. He was an authority on
French cooking, on ladies' dress, and on all the latest scandals. His passion was observing
human nature, and he was an expert in his own special line - that of an onlooker at life.
It would seem, therefore, that he and Colonel Melrose would have little in common, for
the colonel had no interest in his neighbors' affairs and a horror of any kind of emotion.
The two men were friends mainly because their fathers before them had been friends.
Also they knew the same people and had reactionary views about nouveaux riches.
It was about half past seven. The two men were sitting in the colonel's comfortable study,
and Melrose was describing a run of the previous winter with a keen hunting man's
enthusiasm. Mr Satterthwaite, whose knowledge of horses consisted chiefly of the time-
honored Sunday-morning visit to the stables which still obtains in old-fashioned country
houses, listened with his invariable politeness.
The sharp ringing of the telephone interrupted Melrose. He crossed to the table and took
up the receiver.
"Hello, yes - Colonel Melrose speaking. What's that?" His whole demeanor altered -
became stiff and official. It was the magistrate speaking now, not the sportsman.
He listened for some moments, then said laconically, "Right, Curtis. I'll be over at once."
He replaced the receiver and turned to his guest. "Sir James Dwighton has been found in
his library - murdered. "
"What?"
Mr Satterthwaite was startled - thrilled.
"I must go over to Alderway at once. Care to come with me?"
Mr Satterthwaite remembered that the colonel was chief constable of the county.
"If I shan't be in the way -" He hesitated.
"Not at all. That was Inspector Curtis telephoning. Good, honest fellow, but no brains. I'd
be glad if you would come with me, Satterthwaite. I've got an idea this is going to turn
out a nasty business."
"Have they got the fellow who did it?"
"No," replied Melrose shortly.
Mr Satterthwaite's trained ear detected a nuance of reserve behind the curt negative. He
began to go over in his mind all that he knew of the Dwightons.
A pompous old fellow, the late Sir James, brusque in his manner. A man that might easily
make enemies. Veering on sixty, with grizzled hair and a florid face. Reputed to be
tightfisted in the extreme.
His mind went on to Lady Dwighton. Her image floated before him, young, auburn-
haired, slender. He remembered various rumors, hints, odd bits of gossip. So that was it -
that was why Melrose looked so glum. Then he pulled himself up - his imagination was
running away with him.
Five minutes later Mr Satterthwaite took his place beside his host in the latter's little two
seater, and they drove off together into the night.
The colonel was a taciturn man. They had gone quite a mile and a half before he spoke.
Then he jerked out abruptly. "You know 'em, I suppose?"
"The Dwightons? I know all about them, of course." Who was there Mr Satterthwaite
didn't know all about? "I've met him once, I think, and her rather oftener."
"Pretty woman," said Melrose.
"Beautiful!" declared Mr Satterthwaite.
"Think so?"
"A pure Renaissance type," declared Mr Satterthwaite, warming up to his theme. "She
acted in those theatricals - the charity matinee, you know, last spring. I was very much
struck. Nothing modern about her - a pure survival. One can imagine her in the doge's
palace, or as Lucrezia Borgia."
The colonel let the car swerve slightly, and Mr Satterthwaite came to an abrupt stop. He
wondered what fatality had brought the name of Lucrezia Borgia to his tongue. Under the
circumstances -
"Dwighton was not poisoned, was he?" he asked abruptly.
Melrose looked at him sideways, somewhat curiously. "Why do you ask that, I wonder?"
he said.
"Oh, I - I don't know." Mr Satterthwaite was flustered. "I - It just occurred to me."
"Well, he wasn't," said Melrose gloomily. "If you want to know, he was crashed on the
head."
"With a blunt instrument," murmured Mr Satterthwaite, nodding his head sagely.
"Don't talk like a damned detective story, Satterthwaite. He was hit on the head with a
bronze figure."
"Oh," said Satterthwaite, and relapsed into silence.
"Know anything of a chap called Paul Delangua?" asked Melrose after a minute or two.
"Yes. Good-looking young fellow."
"I daresay women would call him so," growled the colonel.
"You don't like him?"
"No, I don't."
"I should have thought you would have. He rides very well."
"Like a foreigner at the horse show. Full of monkey tricks."
Mr Satterthwaite suppressed a smile. Poor old Melrose was so very British in his outlook.
Agreeably conscious himself of a cosmopolitan point of view, Mr Satterthwaite was able
to deplore the insular attitude toward life.
"Has he been down in this part of the world?" he asked.
"He's been staying at Alderway with the Dwightons. The rumor goes that Sir James
kicked him out a week ago."
"Why?"
"Found him making love to his wife, I suppose. What the hell -"
There was a violent swerve, and a jarring impact.
"Most dangerous crossroads in England," said Melrose. "All the same, the other fellow
should have sounded his horn. We're on the main road. I fancy we've damaged him rather
more than he has damaged us."
He sprang out. A figure alighted from the other car and joined him. Fragments of speech
reached Satterthwaite. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]