This House to Let

“Never mind your grievances, Miles. If you could get a better job, I guess you would take it. Where did you spend the night?”

“At the same old show, down at Shepperton,” replied the unabashed Miles. “My old pal’s a sport, I can tell you. When he shut up his shop, he plied me with some of the best. I wasn’t backward, I admit. I missed the last train back, and slept on the sofa in the back room. When I woke, I remembered things a bit, and got an early train home. Here I am. My old pal Jack will tell you I’m speaking gospel truth.”

Neither of the two men listening to him had any doubt that his narrative was a true one. He was a poor, weak, bibulous creature, but by no stretch of the imagination could he be an accessory to the gruesome happenings at Number 10.

Even had he been at his post, as he should have been on this particular night, he would have been sunk in a stertorous sleep, and have heard nothing.

But to make everything sure, Constable Brown pulled him along and forced him to look at the dead man.

“You have never seen him before, Miles? I mean he has not called to look over the house or anything?”

“No.” Miles, looking shudderingly at the ghastly sight, was ready to swear he had never seen him before.

He turned his frightened gaze away: “It will be all over the town to-night,” he said ruefully. “We shall never let the house after this.”

“It will still be a soft job for you, Miles,” retorted Brown, a little spitefully. “You won’t have to play up the damp and the beetles. You are here for life, old man.”

“I know,” said Miles in a gloomy tone. “But I shall see him staring at me every minute of the day and night.”

The body was removed to the mortuary. The evening newspapers had flaring headlines: “Gruesome Discovery in Number 1 °Cathcart Square.” An enterprising journalist had got hold of Miles, and speedily discovering his weakness, had taken him to the nearest public-house, and plied him plentifully with liquor, with a view to a sensational article.

The enterprising reporter made the best of his material, but it did not amount to much. The caretaker knew nothing about the dead man, he was armed at all points with his alibi. As regards the house itself, invested with so much tragedy, the present tenant was a Mr Washington, a man of considerable means, now abroad. Mr Washington was prepared to let it furnished. The furniture was very valuable.

To a public greedily anxious for the smallest details, the astute journalist served up a nice little article, describing the expensive furniture, and adding a short life-history of Mr Washington, as supplied by the reminiscent Miles. The public swallowed this article eagerly and awaited further developments.

These came with the inquest, and there was a somewhat tame ending to what had promised to be a very sensational case.

Some three months previously, a certain man named Reginald Davis had been suspected of committing a murder while driving a motor-car in Cornwall. The evidence, although circumstantial, had been very convincing. The police had been on his track, but not quickly enough. The man had eluded their vigilance, and rim to earth somewhere.

On the body of the dead man in Cathcart Square, the two constables had found three letters addressed to Reginald Davis. Also a letter, signed Reginald Davis, addressed to the Coroner in which he avowed his intention of committing suicide at the earliest opportunity.

It was fairly evident from this that the wretched man, hunted by the police, and recognising that capture was imminent in the course of a few days, had resolved upon the fatal step, had effected his entrance into the lonely house in Cathcart Square, had found it even more deserted than he imagined, and in that little dressing-room cheated the law.

But, in addition to this overpowering evidence, there was added the fact of identification.

A tall, handsome young woman, giving the name of Caroline Masters, had been to the mortuary, and identified the body as that of her brother, Reginald Davis.

She gave her evidence before the Coroner with commendable composure, broken now and again with a little natural grief. Her disclosures were briefly as follows.

Reginald had always been the black sheep of the family, not naturally vicious, but impetuous, fiery-tempered and ungovernable. If he was guilty of the murder in Cornwall, it had been due to no natural criminal instinct, but to a fit of unbridled passion. Her theory was that remorse had weighed upon him for this unpremeditated crime, and that, through remorse and the fear of justice overtaking him, he had crept into this lonely house and passed sentence on himself.

She made a very great impression on the Court by the calm and dignified way in which she gave her evidence. The Coroner put to her a few questions. She was quite certain that the body was that of her brother, Reginald Davis? Were there any other members of the family who could support her in her identification?

No, there were no other members of the family alive. There was another brother dead, and a sister of whose whereabouts she knew nothing. Her father had been a strange man, he had quarrelled with all the members of his family, and she had never known one of them. Her mother had died some years ago. Her voice broke a little as she related these touching circumstances of her domestic life, more especially when she added she was a widow, her husband having been killed in the Great War.

There seemed but one possible verdict. The dead man, it was clearly established, was Reginald Davis, first by the letters found upon him, secondly by his sister’s identification.

It was also clear that Reginald Davis, hunted by the police, and knowing that it was only a question of days or weeks before he would be rim to earth, had considered the two alternatives of self-destruction or the extreme penalty of the law – and that he had chosen the former.

The verdict was recorded. Mrs Masters was complimented on the way in which she had given her evidence. The Coroner assured her that the sympathy of the Court was with her. The tears welled into her eyes as she listened to the Coroner’s well-chosen phrases. She bowed her grateful thanks.

Constable Brown was waiting in the corridor as she came out. Beside him stood the younger policeman who had assisted him on that very well-remembered night in Cathcart Square.

Brown touched his helmet. “A very trying time for you, ma’am,” he said, “a very trying time. You went through it bravely.”

She smiled wanly. “My poor brother! He had so many good points. But it is better as it is. I shudder to think of what might have been, if he had not done this dreadful thing.”

“Much the best way, ma’am, much the best way,” corroborated Brown.

She went out, a graceful figure, and Brown turned to his younger colleague.

“A remarkable case, old chap. As we said all along, suicide.”

The younger man paused a little before he replied. It may be mentioned that a few months later he was promoted to the detective force in consequence of some rather clever work connected with a gang of coiners in an obscure corner of the West End.

“It looks like it, but I’m not quite as sure as you are,” he said laconically.

Brown stared, but made no comment. A verdict was a verdict. His young colleague had the inexperience and the vanity of youth, and thought he was more clever than other people, perhaps!

But on one thing the young constable had made up his mind, and that was that Miles, the bibulous caretaker, had not told the truth when in the witness-box. He came to this conclusion from his demeanour. Miles swore that he had no knowledge of the dead man, but the constable believed this to be a lie.

And with the tame ending of the Coroner’s inquest, the mystery of Number 1 °Cathcart Square ceased to hold the public interest. Plenty of other things came on to attract their attention.

Chapter One

In the year before the Great War, when to all appearance there was not a cloud upon the horizon, when only a few statesmen felt “profoundly uneasy,” the secret of that uneasiness being carefully locked away in their own breasts, and hidden from the general public – in that year of 1913, in the month of March, the Twenty-fifth Lancers were quartered at the town of Blankfield, in Yorkshire.

The Twenty-fifth was a crack regiment. Most of the officers were members of the aristocracy, a few of the plutocracy, that portion of the plutocracy which on account of its wealth had been adopted into a superior world by marriage with its aristocratic daughters.

They were a fine set of clean-minded, healthy living, sporting young fellows. They rode to hounds, they played polo when there was any going, they shot over the coverts of their friends, they made love to all the pretty girls they came across in a gallant and desultory fashion, loving and riding away.

It cannot be said that they took their professional duties in too serious a fashion. But they were brave as lions, and when the time came to prove their mettle, none of their relatives had cause to blush for their record. The memories of most of them were enshrined deeply in the hearts of wailing mothers and weeping sweethearts, when the great holocaust came.

Foremost amongst this band of gay spirits and resolute sportsmen was a certain Captain Murchison, “Hughie,” as he was always called by his intimates.

“Hughie” was not a pure aristocrat. His father, a man of fabulous wealth, was the head of the great brewing firm of Murchison, Delaroyd and Co., the fourth in succession, for the big brewery had been founded over a hundred years ago.

It is supposed, in the case of self-made men, that it requires three generations to make a gentleman. Anyway, the present Sir Hugh had won his spurs by the fact of belonging to the fourth. And he had further firmly established his position by marrying Lady Gertrude Marchmont, a daughter of the Earl of Mounthaven. The Marchmonts had blue blood in profusion, they were one of the oldest families in the Kingdom, only just being beaten by such superior people as the Howards, the Talbots, and the Nevilles.

Captain Murchison was, therefore, plutocrat on the father’s side, aristocrat of aristocrat on the mother’s. But he did not owe his popularity to these adventitious circumstances. The fact that he was the most popular man in his regiment was due to his own sterling qualities.

In the first place, he was a man of the most unbounded generosity and the most serene good-humour. He had captained the Eleven at Eton, and he was one of the best shots, also one of the best polo-players, in England. Needless to say that he was a man’s man. The fact that he was also equally a Woman’s man can be easily explained. He boasted more than ordinary good looks, and he had a charming, deferential way with Women that captivated them at once.

The Twenty-fifth had a very good time at Blankfield, on the whole. The houses of the “county” were, of course, open to such a distinguished regiment, but perhaps they had a rather jollier time amongst the rather limited circle of rich townsfolk whom they condescended to visit: the people who, at the best, had only a nodding acquaintance with the “county.”

Murchison was a born sportsman. Hunting, polo, shooting, cricket, occupied nearly all his Waking thoughts, except those few that were claimed by his professional duties. Popular as he was with women, not a single member of the weaker and more charming sex had made any real impression on him up to the present.

He had had several flirtations with charming girls, of course: he might have indulged in a few sentimental passages with certain more or less detached, or semi-detached, married women. The latter very rarely, for although by no means a saint he was a very clean-minded young man, and held rather rigid notions as to what might be done, and what ought not to be done. Anyway at this particular moment he was quite heart-whole.