Adventures of Martin Hewitt (23 page)

“Anyway he pushes back the catch with his knife, opens the window and gets
in, and
then
he sees. He is completely knocked out of time. The thing
is terrible. What shall he—what can he do? Poor Rewse’s mother and
sister dote on him, and his mother is an invalid—heart disease. To let
her see that awful letter would be to kill her. He burns the letter, also the
note to himself. Then an idea strikes him. Even without the letter the news
of her boy’s suicide will probably kill the poor old lady. Can she be
prevented hearing of it? Of his death she must know—that’s inevitable.
But as to the manner? Would it not be possible to concoct some kind lie? And
then the opportunities of the situation occur to him. Nobody but himself
knows of it. He is a medical man, fully qualified, and empowered to give
certificates of death.

“More, there is an epidemic of small-pox in the neighbourhood. What
easier, with a little management, than to call the death one by small-pox?
Nobody would be anxious to examine too closely the corpse of a smallpox
patient. He decides that he will do it. He writes the letter to Mrs. Rewse
announcing that her son has the disease, and he forbids Mrs. Hurley to come
near the place for fear of infection. He cleans the floor—it is
linoleum here, you see, and the stains were fresh—burns the clothes,
cleans and stops the wound. At every turn his medical knowledge is of use. He
puts the smashed clock and the pistol out of sight under the hearth. In a
word he carries out the whole thing rather cleverly, and a terrible few days
he must have passed. It never strikes him that he has dug a frightful pit for
his own feet. You are suspicious, and you come across. In a perhaps rather
peremptory manner You tell him how suspicious his conduct has been. And then
a sense of his terrible position comes upon him like a thunderclap. He sees
it all. He has deliberately of his own motion destroyed every evidence of the
suicide. There is no evidence in the world that Rewse did not die a natural
death, except the body, and that you are going to dig up. He sees now (you
remind him of it in fact) that
he
is the one man alive who can profit
by Rewse’s death. And there is the shot body, and there is the false death
certificate, and there are the lying letters, and the tales to the neighbours
and everything. He has himself destroyed everything that proves suicide. All
that remains points to a foul murder and to him as the murderer. Can you
wonder at his complete breakdown and his flight? What else in the world could
the poor fellow do?”

“Well well—yes, yes,” Mr. Bowyer replied thoughtfully, “it seems
very plausible of course. But still, look at probabilities, my dear sir, look
at probabilities.”

“No, but look at
possibilities.
There is that clock. Get over it if
you can. Was there ever a more insurmountable alibi? Could Main possibly be
here shooting Rewse and half way between here and Cullanin at the same time?
Remember, Mrs. Hurley saw him come back at two, and she had been watching for
an hour, and could see more than half a mile up the road.”

“Well, yes, I suppose you’re right. And what must we do now?”

“Bring Main back. I think we should advertise to begin with. Say, ‘Rewse
is proved to have died over an hour before you came. All safe. Your evidence
is wanted,’ or something of that sort. And we must set the telegraph going.
The police already are looking for him, no doubt. Meanwhile I will look here
for a clue myself.”

The advertisement was successful in two days. Indeed Main afterwards said
that he was at the time, once the first terror was over, in doubt whether or
not it would be best to go back and face the thing out, trusting to his
innocence. He could not venture home for money, nor to his bank, for fear of
the police. He chanced, upon the advertisement as he searched the paper for
news of the case, and that decided him. His explanation of the matter was
precisely as Hewitt had expected. His only thought till Mr. Bowyer first
arrived at the cottage had been to smother the real facts and to spare the
feelings of Mrs. Rewse and her daughter, and it was not till that gentleman
put them so plainly before him that he in the least realised the dangers of
his position. That his fears for Mrs. Rewse were only too well grounded was
proved by events, for the poor old lady only survived her son by a month.

These events took place some little while ago, as may be gathered from the
fact that Miss Rewse has now been Mrs. Stanley Main for nearly three
years.

Among the few personal friendships that Martin Hewitt has allowed himself
to make there is one for an eccentric but very excellent old lady named Mrs.
Mallett. She must be more than seventy now, but she is of robust and active,
not to say masculine, habits, and her relations with Hewitt are irregular and
curious. He may not see her for many weeks, perhaps for months, until one day
she will appear in the office, push Kerrett (who knows better than to attempt
to stop her) into the inner room, and salute Hewitt with a shake of the hand
and a savage glare of the eye which would appall a stranger, but which is
quite amiably meant. As for myself, it was long ere I could find any resource
but instant retreat before her gaze, though we are on terms of moderate
toleration now.

After her first glare she sits in the chair by the window and directs her
glance at Hewitt’s small gas grill and kettle in the fireplace—a glance
which Hewitt, with all expedition, translates into tea. Slightly mollified by
the tea, Mrs. Mallett condescends to remark in tones of tragic truculence, on
passing matters of conventional interest—the weather, the influenza,
her own health, Hewitt’s health, and so forth, any reply of Hewitt’s being
commonly received with either disregard or contempt.

In half an hour’s time or so she leaves the office with a stern command to
Hewitt to attend at her house and drink tea on a day and at a time
named—a command which Hewitt obediently fulfills, when he passes
through a similarly exhilarating experience in Mrs. Mallett’s back
drawing-room at her little freehold house in Fulham. Altogether Mrs. Mallett,
to a stranger, is a singularly uninviting personality, and indeed, except
Hewitt, who has learnt to appreciate her hidden good qualities, I doubt if
she has a friend in the world. Her studiously concealed charities are a
matter of as much amusement as gratification to Hewitt, who naturally, in the
course of his peculiar profession, comes across many sad examples of poverty
and suffering, commonly among the decent sort, who hide their troubles from
strangers’ eyes and suffer in secret. When such a case is in his mind it is
Hewitt’s practice to inform Mrs. Mallett of it at one of the tea ceremonies.
Mrs. Mallett receives the story with snorts of incredulity and scorn but
takes care, while expressing the most callous disregard and contempt of the
troubles of the sufferers, to ascertain casually their names and addresses;
twenty-four hours after which Hewitt need only make a visit to find their
difficulties in some mysterious way alleviated.

Mrs. Mallett never had any children, and was early left a widow. Her
appearance, for some reason or another, commonly leads strangers to believe
her an old maid. She lives in her little detached house with its square piece
of ground, attended by a house-keeper older than herself and one
maid-servant. She lost her only sister by death soon after the events I am
about to set down, and now has, I believe, no relations in the world. It was
also soon after these events that her present housekeeper first came to her
in place of an older and very deaf woman, quite useless, who had been with
her before. I believe she is moderately rich, and that one or two charities
will benefit considerably at her death; also I should be far from astonished
to find Hewitt’s own name in her will, though this is no more than idle
conjecture. The one possession to which she clings with all her
soul—her one pride and treasure—is her great-uncle Joseph’s
snuff-box, the lid of which she steadfastly believes to be made of a piece of
Noah’s original ark discovered on the top of Mount Ararat by some intrepid
explorer of vague identity about a hundred years ago. This is her one
weakness, and woe to the unhappy creature who dares hint a suggestion that
possibly the wood of the ark rotted away to nothing a few thousand years
before her great-uncle Joseph ever took snuff. I believe he would be bodily
assaulted. The box is brought for Hewitt’s admiration at every tea ceremony
at Fulham, when Hewitt handles it reverently and expresses as much
astonishment and interest as if he had never seen or heard of it before. It
is on these occasions only that Mrs. Mallett’s customary stiffness relaxes.
The sides of the box are of cedar of Lebanon, she explains (which very
possibly they are), and the gold mountings were worked up from spade guineas
(which one can believe without undue strain on the reason). And it is usually
these times, when the old lady softens under the combined influence of tea
and uncle Joseph’s snuff-box, that Hewitt seizes to lead up to his hint of
some starving governess or distressed clerk, with the full confidence that
the more savagely the story is received the better will the poor people be
treated as soon as he turns his back.

It was her jealous care of uncle Joseph’s snuff-box that first brought
Mrs. Mallett into contact with Martin Hewitt, and the occasion, though not
perhaps testing his acuteness to the extent that some did, was nevertheless
one of the most curious and fantastic on which he has ever been engaged She
was then some ten or twelve years younger than she is now, but Hewitt assures
me she looked exactly the same; that is to say, she was harsh, angular, and
seemed little more than fifty years of age. It was before the time of
Kerrett, and another youth occupied the outer office. Hewitt sat late one
afternoon with his door ajar when he heard a stranger enter the outer office,
and a voice, which he afterwards knew well as Mrs. Mallett’s, ask “Is Mr.
Martin Hewitt in?”

“Yes, ma’am, I think so. If you will write your name
and——”

“Is he in there?” And with three strides Mrs. Mallett was at the inner
door and stood before Hewitt himself, while the routed office-lad stared
helplessly in the rear.

“Mr. Hewitt,” Mrs. Mallet said, “I have come to put an affair into your
hands, which I shall require to be attended to at once.”

Hewitt was surprised, but he bowed politely, and said, with some suspicion
of a hint in his tone, “Yes—I rather supposed you were in a hurry.”

She glanced quickly in Hewitt’s face and went on: “I am not accustomed to
needless ceremony, Mr. Hewitt. My name is Mallett—Mrs.
Mallett—and here is my card. I have come to consult you on a matter of
great annoyance and some danger to myself. The fact is I am being watched and
followed by a number of persons.”

Hewitt’s gaze was steadfast, but he reflected that possibly this curious
woman was a lunatic, the delusion of being watched and followed by unknown
people being perhaps the most common of all; also it was no unusual thing to
have a lunatic visit the office with just such a complaint. So he only said
soothingly, “Indeed? That must be very annoying.”

“Yes, yes, the annoyance is bad enough perhaps,” she answered shortly,
“but I am chiefly concerned about my great-uncle Joseph’s snuff-box.”

This utterance sounded a trifle more insane than the other, so Hewitt
answered, a little more soothingly still: “Ah, of course. A very important
thing, the snuff-box, no doubt.”

“It is, Mr. Hewitt—it is important, as I think you will admit when
you have seen it. Here it is,” and she produced from a small handbag the
article that Hewitt was destined so often again to see and affect an interest
in. “You may be incredulous, Mr. Hewitt, but it is nevertheless a fact that
the lid of this snuff-box is made of the wood of the original ark that rested
on Mount Ararat.”