Appleby nodded kindly. “Yes, indeed. And I am very sorry that you had the shock.”
Suddenly the girl’s lip quivered. “But Ivor! Please, please, what has happened to him?”
It took Appleby a second to know how to meet this appeal. “That,” he said gravely, “is something that I think we shall know quite soon.”
“He wouldn’t be…suspected? Ivor could never do a thing like that.”
“I’m afraid that everybody concerned, Miss Hereward, must in some degree be suspected – until we clear the matter up.”
“Can I help?” She was suddenly eager.
And once more Appleby produced his crumpled piece of paper. This time he concealed no part of it. “Is this your
fiancé
’s handwriting?”
She glanced at it only for a moment. “Yes, it is.” She looked pitifully up at him, as if hoping to discover that this was good news. What she saw made her shrink a little. “It can’t mean anything bad?”
“Its meaning – or its significance – is obscure to me, Miss Hereward. And that, perhaps, is something. For it ought, you see, to be as damnably clear as daylight.”
“You mean–?”
Appleby shook his head. And as he did so, the front doorbell pealed. “At least,” he said, “we’re making progress. For here, I think, is the last of our
dramatis personae
. Will you go and join Miss Hatt for a little? I must see this fellow on his own.”
Charles Cokayne was smooth and featureless. Quite soon after a casual meeting, one would probably recall only that he had a cold grey eye.
“Why was I uneasy?” He made a small restrained gesture. “It is this family quarrel. For months it has been upsetting the relations of Dr Macrae with his nephew Ivor. That has been very bad for our work.”
“And the work is very important just now? There is a big discovery pending?”
Cokayne smiled faintly. “That is the sort of story that is always going round. One day – perhaps, yes. But my chiefs, I think, had still rather a long way to go. And the friction between them didn’t help.”
“I see. And your uneasiness–”
“What I have feared is the secretary here, Miss Hatt. She is secretly passionate on Colin Macrae’s behalf. And I believe her to be very unscrupulous. Yesterday I heard from Ivor Macrae that she had betrayed herself in a flash of temper as keyed up to any mischief. So I have been worried. And this evening I thought I would ring up Dr Macrae, and then come across and have a serious word with him about the situation.”
“You were on terms with him that made that an appropriate course? He would have welcomed your intervention and counsel?”
Cokayne made his small gesture again. “I could only hope so, Sir John.”
“You had no worries, no suspicions, about Ivor Macrae?”
“But certainly not!” Cokayne was emphatic. “Ivor is rash, and he had this open break with his uncle. But I have worked for him and with him for years, and I would never believe ill of him.”
“That is very gratifying.” And once again Appleby fished the enigmatic scrap of paper from his pocket. “You would agree that this fragment of a letter is in Ivor Macrae’s hand? I wonder, Mr Cokayne, if you would oblige me by reading it – aloud?”
Cokayne raised his eyebrows – as he well might at this slightly strange request. Appleby wondered whether the action didn’t reveal in the eyes themselves some glint of excitement. In Cokayne’s hand, however, there was no tremor as he took the charred and crumpled paper. And what he read was in an even, carefully expressionless voice:
“My dear Uncle,
“You have twenty-four hours. If this surprises you, the fault is mine for hesitating as I have done. But if you have come to think of me as a man who cannot make up his mind, then you are, believe me, fatally wrong. Give up what you have unjustly taken, or you will not live to enjoy even what is rightfully yours. And decide within, I say, twenty…”
There was a moment’s silence when Cokayne had finished reading the fragment. Then Appleby, who had been listening with a curiously strained attention, took back the paper. “Well,” he asked, “does this sound as if it’s Miss Hatt who’s for the Old Bailey?”
“No…it doesn’t.” Cokayne spoke hesitantly, as if his mind were groping its way into a new situation. “It sounds hike something quite different.”
“And that is?”
“Insanity!” Cokayne came out with the word vehemently. “Ivor Macrae could never turn into a calculating criminal – but he might, I suppose, turn into a madman. We can all testify that he is an intensely highly-strung intellectual type, who might conceivably–”
“Quite so.” Appleby cut this short almost harshly. “The question is, where are we now? What happens to a man who writes this” – and he tapped the paper – “proceeds to act on it lethally, and then, on retrieving it, tosses it carelessly to the side of a feeble fire?”
Cokayne produced a handkerchief and nervously dabbed at his lips and forehead. “It’s too horrible. It’s an abomination. And that poor girl to whom he’s engaged! But there’s only one answer to your question. A man in that position has no future. And he’d be very mad indeed if he didn’t know it.”
“But you’d call this whole notion of Dr Macrae’s wrongfully holding on to family property a bit crazy?”
“I know nothing about the rights and wrongs of the matter. But, looking at it in the light of what’s happened, I can see that Ivor has been quite irrationally obsessed with it… I suppose a search is being organised?”
“Not yet. But it will be, within the next ten minutes.” Appleby spoke grimly. “And I think that – dead or alive – we’ll find Ivor Macrae quite soon.”
“If I can give any help, I’ll be glad. Miss Hatt has my telephone number.”
“Thank you.” Appleby, as if he had lost interest in Charles Cokayne, was already moving towards the door, with the charred letter held slightly out before him. It was almost as if he felt it to be in the strictest sense a clue, which his hand must follow if he was to gain the heart of the labyrinth.
Colin Macrae, Miss Hatt and Joyce Hereward were together in a large, bleak drawing-room at the front of the house. If it wasn’t cheerful, at least it didn’t harbour a corpse. The two women were conversing in low tones, and Colin was moodily turning the pages of a weekly paper. The young girl sprang to her feet as soon as Appleby entered. “Is there any news?”
“No – but it isn’t news that’s needed, Miss Hereward. It’s some piece of logical inference – probably perfectly simple in itself – that I just haven’t got round to.” As he made this candid report, Appleby moved restlessly across the room. “Mr Macrae, what do you think of that fellow Cokayne?”
“I d-d-don’t like him.” The answer was prompt.
“Then you’ll be glad to know I’ve discovered something he may have difficulty in accounting for. Unfortunately it seems inconsequent. It just doesn’t fit in with…this.” And Appleby tossed his letter on the table. “By the way, you’d better read the whole of it.”
Colin Macrae threw down his weekly and moved over to read the letter. “I c-c-can’t believe it,” he said.
For a moment the two men looked at the fragmentary letter in silence. And then Appleby stiffened. “I can!” he exclaimed. “I believe I can – at last.”
“You mean you know what h-happened?”
“I think I do. I think the explanation may have been – well, under your very nose not long ago. Just let me take a look–” Appleby broke off as the door opened and a police sergeant came hurriedly into the room. “Yes?”
“We’ve lost our man, sir.” The sergeant was rueful. “He was on the drive, and must have tumbled to what was happening, and taken alarm at it. We think he slipped into the shrubbery and doubled back towards the river. One of our constables says he heard someone trying to start up a motor-launch there.”
“That’s bad.” Appleby wasted no further time in recrimination, but turned to Colin Macrae. “You keep a launch here yourselves?”
“Yes – and it’s in g-g-good order. I w-was out in it this afternoon.”
“If we can get it moving within three or four minutes, we’ve some chance of averting a tragedy. Lead the way.”
And they all tumbled from the room. But Appleby – rather surprisingly – spared seconds to sweep up a pile of newspapers and periodicals that lay on a window-seat. He was still clutching these as he doubled across the lawn.
Ivor Macrae’s launch had vanished; it seemed plain that somebody had made his escape in it. But there appeared to be a chance that he was not yet far away, since the sound of an engine could just be heard fading down the river. The fugitive – Appleby thought grimly as he watched Colin unlock a boathouse – was doing rather more than just bolting. In fact he was still out to win. And that had meant an operation – at which Appleby could at last pretty confidently guess – by which his departure had been hazardously delayed. But if he now succeeded in doing what he was minded to do, he might yet get away with a lot. For it mightn’t be very easy to prove – Colin’s launch glided to the landing-stage and Appleby jumped in. Joyce Hereward did the same, and there was no time to expostulate. The engine roared and the vessel leapt forward. In the same instant Colin switched on a powerful searchlight in its bow, and a long reach of the river before them flashed into view. Here and there were the dim lights of vessels moored or anchored, and a few craft were still cruising through the soft summer night. Their own speed increased; a long curling wake was flying out from their stern; now and then Appleby thought he could hear indignant shouts. No doubt they were causing a sort of disturbance that the Thames Conservancy Board wouldn’t much care for. But it wasn’t a moment for worrying about that.
“Ten minutes!” Bending slightly forward, Colin was shouting in Appleby’s ear. “We’ll b-b-be up with him inside that.”
Appleby nodded, and felt in his pocket for a torch. Switching it on, and wedging himself securely against a thwart, he began rapidly to sort through his bundle of papers and journals. He caught Joyce Hereward staring at him in astonishment. “All right!” he called to her. “I’m pretty sure. But I just want to be certain… Ah!” He had found what he wanted, and within a couple of seconds he appeared to be satisfied. “Really simple – as all truly devilish plans are.” He glanced at her with compassion. “I’m afraid there’s – well, a crisis ahead. It will come when that launch passes under the first bridge.”
“But that’s almost at once! The railway–”
Colin Macrae gave a shout. “There he is! But he’s crazy. He’ll k-kill himself and–”
“The bridge!” Joyce Hereward was pointing forward. Appleby could now see, first, the fugitive launch, leaping and swerving madly on the surface of the river; and then, dimly and uncertainly beyond, two stone arches. A moment later the leading launch had plunged beneath one of them, seeming to miss by a hair’s breadth the massive central pier. And in the same instant something could be seen hurled overboard.
Colin had cut out his engine, and their own speed was slackening. Appleby got to his feet, scanning the surface of the water. “There!” he cried – and dived. And even as he hit the water, he knew that the girl – as if prompted by some flash of intuition – had dived too.
When Colin Macrae, having lost sufficient speed to turn, swept back up river, it was to find Appleby and Joyce Hereward supporting in the water the inert body of a young man. With a good deal of difficulty, they were all got on board.
“Is he–?” The girl, kneeling in a puddle in the launch, looked imploringly at Appleby as he presently knelt beside the unconscious figure of Ivor Macrae.
And Appleby smiled. “A little the worse for wear, Miss Hereward. But he’s decidedly alive – and a perfectly innocent and honourable man.”
Miss Hatt, not having been in at what was so nearly the death of Ivor, had to be given explanations next day.
“You remember the charred letter?” Appleby asked. “In it, the writer described himself as a man who couldn’t make up his mind. Now, who is famous for just that?”
“Hamlet.” Miss Hatt answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Precisely. And the simple explanation of the whole thing ought to have jumped at me at once. But it didn’t – until, in the drawing-room last night, I saw Colin happening to turn over a copy of a weekly paper:
The New Spokesman
. And then I remembered. Ivor was in the habit of doing the competitions in that sort of paper. So I grabbed a pile of recent ones as I ran for that launch. And this is what I found, in the last
Spokesman
but one. Listen.” And Appleby read:
“Prince Hamlet, having set the players to present
The Murder of Gonzago
and thus neatly caught the conscience of the king, unfortunately falls a prey to hysteria and loses his grip of the situation. A prize of two guineas is offered for a letter addressed by the Prince to his uncle at this point, cogently arguing that the game is up and he had better abdicate quietly.”
Miss Hatt needed only a second to consider. “Cokayne found Ivor’s unfinished attempt at the competition?”
“Just that. And he saw that it could be passed off as an incriminating letter from Ivor to
his
uncle, which would fit neatly into this bit of trouble about family property. That gave him his idea.”
“I see. But what was his motive?”
“You set me on the track of that yourself. Dr Macrae and Ivor were on the verge of perfecting a valuable chemical process, and Cokayne was their chief assistant. If he could liquidate both of them he would be able, after a discreet interval, to come forward with it as his own. I noticed that when I mentioned this piece of research to him, he at once played it down. His cunning was notable all the way through. He professed that it was you he suspected, and he gave Ivor a high character – while at the same time starting the notion that he might be subject to serious mental disturbance. But his real flair was for timing. His mouse-trap was a much more intricate affair than Hamlet’s. And it almost came off pat.”
Miss Hatt considered. “His first job was to get Ivor and yourself on stage at just the right moment?”
“Precisely… And while getting Ivor with a false message was comparatively easy, the getting me out here was tricky. The request was so queer – so cool, you might say – that I rather surprised myself by agreeing to it.”