The Middle of Things Read online

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  THE MIDDLE OF THINGS

  BY J.S. FLETCHER

  1922

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I FACED WITH REALITY

  II NUMBER SEVEN IN THE SQUARE

  III WHO WAS ASHTON?

  IV THE RING AND THE KNIFE

  V LOOK FOR THAT MAN!

  VI SPECULATIONS

  VII WHAT WAS THE SECRET?

  VIII NEWS FROM ARCADIA

  IX LOOKING BACKWARD

  X THE PARISH REGISTER

  XI WHAT HAPPENED IN PARIS

  XII THE GREY MARE INN

  XIII THE JAPANESE CABINET

  XIV THE ELLINGHAM MOTTO

  XV THE PRESENT HOLDER

  XVI THE OUTHOUSE

  XVII THE CLAIMANT

  XVIII LET HIM APPEAR!

  XIX UNDER EXAMINATION

  XX SURPRISING READINESS

  XXI THE MARSEILLES MEETING

  XXII ON REMAND

  XXIII IS THIS MAN RIGHT?

  XXIV THE BROKEN LETTER

  XXV THROUGH THE TELEPHONE

  XXVI THE DISMAL STREET

  XXVII THE BACK WAY

  XXVIII THE TRUTH

  XXIX WHO IS TO TELL HER?

  CHAPTER I

  FACED WITH REALITY

  On that particular November evening, Viner, a young gentleman of meansand leisure, who lived in a comfortable old house in Markendale Square,Bayswater, in company with his maiden aunt Miss Bethia Penkridge, hadspent his after-dinner hours in a fashion which had become a habit. MissPenkridge, a model housekeeper and an essentially worthy woman, whosewhole day was given to supervising somebody or something, had aninsatiable appetite for fiction, and loved nothing so much as that hernephew should read a novel to her after the two glasses of port which sheallowed herself every night had been thoughtfully consumed and he and shehad adjourned from the dining-room to the hearthrug in the library. Hertastes, however, in Viner's opinion were somewhat, if not decidedly,limited. Brought up in her youth on Miss Braddon, Wilkie Collins and Mrs.Henry Wood, Miss Penkridge had become a confirmed slave to thesensational. She had no taste for the psychological, and nothing butscorn for the erotic. What she loved was a story which began with crimeand ended with a detection--a story which kept you wondering who did it,how it was done, and when the doing was going to be laid bare to thelight of day. Nothing pleased her better than to go to bed with a braintitivated with the mysteries of the last three chapters; nothing gave hersuch infinite delight as to find, when the final pages were turned, thatall her own theories were wrong, and that the real criminal was somebodyquite other than the person she had fancied. For a novelist who was solittle master of his trade as to let you see when and how things weregoing, Miss Penkridge had little but good-natured pity; for one who ledyou by all sorts of devious tracks to a startling and surprisingsensation she cherished a whole-souled love; but for the creator of aplot who could keep his secret alive and burning to his last fewsentences she felt the deepest thing that she could give to any humanbeing--respect. Such a master was entered permanently on her mentallibrary list.

  At precisely ten o'clock that evening Viner read the last page of a novelwhich had proved to be exactly suited to his aunt's tastes. A deadsilence fell on the room, broken only by the crackling of the logs in thegrate. Miss Penkridge dropped her knitting on her silk-gowned knees andstared at the leaping flames; her nephew, with an odd glance at her, rosefrom his easy-chair, picked up a pipe and began to fill it from atobacco-jar on the mantelpiece. The clock had ticked several times beforeMiss Penkridge spoke.

  "Well!" she said, with the accompanying sigh which denotes completecontent. "So he did it! Now, I should never have thought it! The lastperson of the whole lot! Clever--very clever! Richard, you'll get all thebooks that that man has written!"

  Viner lighted his pipe, thrust his hands in the pockets of his trousersand leaned back against the mantelpiece.

  "My dear aunt!" he said half-teasingly, half-seriously. "You're worsethan a drug-taker. Whatever makes a highly-respectable, shrewd old ladylike you cherish such an insensate fancy for this sort of stuff?"

  "Stuff?" demanded Miss Penkridge, who had resumed her knitting. "Pooh!It's not stuff--it's life! Real life--in the form of fiction!"

  Viner shook his head, pityingly. He never read fiction for his ownamusement; his tastes in reading lay elsewhere, in solid directions.Moreover, in those directions he was a good deal of a student, and heknew more of his own library than of the world outside it. So he shookhis head again.

  "Life!" he said. "You don't mean to say that you think those things"--hepointed a half-scornful finger to a pile of novels which had come in fromMudie's that day--"really represent life?"

  "What else?" demanded Miss Penkridge.

  "Oh--I don't know," replied Viner vaguely. "Fancy, I suppose, andimagination, and all that sort of thing--invention, you know, and so on.But--life! Do you really think such things happen in real life, as thosewe've been reading about?"

  "I don't think anything about it," retorted Miss Penkridge sturdily. "I'msure of it. I never had a novel yet, nor heard one read to me, that washalf as strong as it might have been!"

  "Queer thing, one never hears or sees of these things, then!" exclaimedViner. "I never have!--and I've been on this planet thirty years."

  "That sort of thing hasn't come your way, Richard," remarked MissPenkridge sententiously. "And you don't read the popular Sundaynewspapers. I do! They're full of crime of all sorts. So's the world. Andas to mysteries--well, I've known of two or three in my time that weremuch more extraordinary than any I've ever read of in novels. I shouldthink so!"

  Viner dropped into his easy-chair and stretched his legs.

  "Such as--what?" he asked.

  "Well," answered Miss Penkridge, regarding her knitting with appraisingeyes, "there was a case that excited great interest when your poor motherand I were mere girls. It was in our town--young Quainton, the banker. Hewas about your age, married to a very pretty girl, and they'd a finebaby. He was immensely rich, a strong healthy young fellow, fond of life,popular, without a care in the world, so far as any one knew. Onemorning, after breakfasting with his wife, he walked away from his house,on the outskirts of the town--only a very small town, mind you--to go tothe bank, as usual. He never reached the bank--in fact, he was never seenagain, never heard of again. He'd only half a mile to walk, along afairly frequented road, but--complete, absolute, final disappearance!And--never cleared up!"

  "Odd!" agreed Viner. "Very odd, indeed. Well--any more?"

  "Plenty!" said Miss Penkridge, with a click of her needles. "There wasthe case of poor young Lady Marshflower--as sweet a young thing as mancould wish to see! Your mother and I saw her married--she was aRavenstone, and only nineteen. She married Sir Thomas Marshflower, a manof forty. They'd only just come home from the honeymoon whenit--happened. One morning Sir Thomas rode into the market-town to presideat the petty sessions--he hadn't been long gone when a fine,distinguished-looking man called, and asked to see Lady Marshflower. Hewas shown into the morning-room--she went to him. Five minutes later ashot was heard. The servants rushed in--to find their young mistress shotthrough the heart, dead. But the murderer? Disappeared as completely aslast year's snow! That was never solved, never!"

  "Do you mean to tell me the man was never caught?" exclaimed Viner.

  "I tell you that not only was the man never caught, but that although SirThomas spent a fortune and nearly lost his senses in trying t
o find outwho he was, what he wanted and what he had to do with Lady Marshflower,he never discovered one single fact!" affirmed Miss Penkridge. "There!"

  "That's queerer than the other," observed Viner. "A veritable mystery!"

  "Veritable mysteries!" said Miss Penkridge, with a sniff. "The world'sfull of 'em! How many murders go undetected--how many burglaries arenever traced--how many forgeries are done and never found out? Piles of'em--as the police could tell you. And talking about forgeries, whatabout old Barrett, who was _the_ great man at Pumpney, when your motherand I were girls there? That was a fine case of crime going on for yearsand years and years, undetected--aye, and not even suspected!"

  "What was it?" asked Viner, who had begun by being amused and was nowbecoming interested. "Who was Barrett?"

  "If you'd known Pumpney when we lived there," replied Miss Penkridge,"you wouldn't have had to ask twice who Mr. Samuel Barrett was. He waseverybody. He was everything--except honest. But nobody knew that--untilit was too late. He was a solicitor by profession, but that was a merenothing--in comparison. He was chief spirit in the place. I don't knowhow many times he wasn't mayor of Pumpney. He held all sorts of offices.He was a big man at the parish church--vicar's warden, and all that. Andhe was trustee for half the moneyed people in the town--everybody wantedSamuel Barrett, for trustee or executor; he was such a solid,respectable, square-toed man, the personification of integrity. Andhe died, suddenly, and then it was found that he'd led a double life,and had an establishment here in London, and was a gambler and aspeculator, and Heaven knows what, and all the money that had beenintrusted to him was nowhere, and he'd systematically forged, andcooked accounts, and embezzled corporation money--and he'd no doubthave gone on doing it for many a year longer if he hadn't had a strokeof apoplexy. And that wasn't in a novel!" concluded Miss Penkridgetriumphantly. "Novels--Improbability--pooh! Judged by what some peoplecan tell of life, the novel that's improbable hasn't yet been written!"

  "Well!" remarked Viner after a pause, "I dare say you're right, AuntBethia. Only, you see, I haven't come across the things in life that youread about in novels."

  "You may yet," replied Miss Penkridge. "But when anybody says to me of anovel that it's impossible and far-fetched and so on, I'm always inclinedto remind him of the old adage. For you can take it from me, Richard,that truth is stranger than fiction, and that life's full of queerthings. Only, as you say, we don't all come across the strange things."

  The silvery chime of the clock on the mantelpiece caused Miss Penkridge,at this point, to bring her work and her words to a summary conclusion.Hurrying her knitting into the hand-bag which she carried at her belt,she rose, kissed her nephew and departed bedward; while Viner, afterrefilling his pipe, proceeded to carry out another nightly proceedingwhich had become a habit. Every night, throughout the year, he alwayswent for a walk before going to bed. And now, getting into an overcoatand pulling a soft cap over his head, he let himself out of the house,and crossing the square, turned down a side-street and marched slowly inthe direction of the Bayswater Road.

  November though it was the night was fine and clear, and there was ahalf-moon in the heavens; also there was rather more than a suspicion offrost in the air, and the stars, accordingly, wore a more brilliantappearance. To one who loved night strolling, as Viner did, this wasindeed an ideal night for the time of year; and on this occasion,therefore, he went further than usual going along Bayswater Road as faras Notting Hill Gate, and thence returning through the various streetsand terraces which lay between Pembridge Gardens and Markendale Square.And while he strolled along, smoking his pipe, watching the twinklinglights of passing vehicles and enjoying the touch of frost, he wasthinking, in a half-cynical, half-amused way, of his Aunt Bethia's tastefor the sensational fiction and of her evidently sincere conviction thatthere were much stranger things in real life than could be found betweenthe covers of any novel.

  "Those were certainly two very odd instances which she gave me," hemused, "those of the prosperous banker and the pretty bride. In thefirst, how on earth did the man contrive to get away unobserved from atown in which, presumably, every soul knew him? Why did he go? Did he go?Is his body lying at the bottom of some hole by some roadside? Was hemurdered in broad daylight on a public road? Did he lose his reason orhis memory, and wander away and away? I think, as my aunt sagelyremarked, that nobody is ever going to find anything about that affair!Then my Lady Marshflower--there's a fine mystery! Who was the man? Whatdid she know about him? Where had they met? Had they ever met? Why did heshoot her? How on earth did he contrive to disappear without leaving sometrace? How--"

  At this point Viner's musings and questionings were suddenly and rudelyinterrupted. Unconsciously he had walked back close to his own Square,but on the opposite side to that by which he had left it, approaching itby one of the numerous long terraces which run out of the main road inthe Westbourne Grove district--when his musings were rudely interrupted.Between this terrace and Markendale Square was a narrow passage, littlefrequented save by residents, or by such folk familiar enough with theneighbourhood to know that it afforded a shortcut. Viner was about toturn into this passage, a dark affair set between high walls, when ayoung man darted hurriedly out of it, half collided with him, uttered ahasty word of apology, ran across the road and disappeared round thenearest corner. But just there stood a street-lamp, and in its glareViner caught sight of the hurrying young man's face. And when theretreating footsteps had grown faint, Viner still stood staring in thedirection in which they had gone.

  "That's strange!" he muttered. "I've seen that chap somewhere--I knowhim. Now, who is he? And what made him in such a deuce of a hurry?"

  It was very quiet at that point. There seemed to be nobody about. Behindhim, far down the long, wide terrace, he heard slow, measuredsteps--that, of course, was a policeman on his beat. But beyond thesubdued murmur of the traffic in the Bayswater Road in one direction andin Bishop's Road, Viner heard nothing but those measured steps. And afterlistening to them for a minute, he turned into the passage out of whichthe young man had just rushed so unceremoniously.

  There was just one lamp in that passage--an old-fashioned affair, fixedagainst the wall, halfway down. It threw but little light on itssurroundings. Those surroundings were ordinary enough. The passage itselfwas about thirty yards in length. It was inclosed on each-side by oldbrick walls, so old that the brick had grown black with age and smoke.These walls were some fifteen feet in height; here and there they werepierced by doors--the doors of the yards at the rear of the big houses oneither side. The doors were set flush with the walls--Viner, who oftenwalked through that passage at night, and who had something of awhimsical fancy, had thought more than once that after nightfall thedoors looked as if they had never been opened, never shut. There was anair of queer, cloistral or prisonlike security in their very look. Theywere all shut now, as he paced down the passage, as lonely a place atthat hour as you could find in all London. It was queer, he reflected,that he scarcely ever remembered meeting anybody in that passage.

  And then he suddenly paused, pulling himself up with a strangeconsciousness that at last he was to meet something. Beneath the feeblelight of the one lamp Viner saw a man. Not a man walking, or standingstill, or leaning against the wall, but lying full length across theflagged pavement, motionless--so motionless that at the end of the firstmoment of surprise, Viner felt sure that he was in the presence of death.And then he stole nearer, listening, and looked down, and drawing hismatch-box from his pocket added the flash of a match to the poor raysfrom above. Then he saw white linen, and a bloodstain slowly spreadingover its glossy surface.