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Updated: June 18, 2025
"You can rely upon me to do so, ma'am," said Tufnell earnestly. "Very well. We will now go upstairs." She left the drawing-room and proceeded towards the broad oak staircase, with Musard close behind her. Detective Caldew followed more slowly, noting his surroundings.
Sergeant Lumbe's brain such as it was was in too much of a whirl to permit him to talk coherently; Tufnell, habitually a taciturn individual, had been rendered more so than usual by the events of the night; and Caldew was plunged into such a reverie of pleasurable expectation, regarding the outcome of his investigations of the moat-house murder, that the stages of his promotion through the grades of detective, sub-superintendent, and superintendent, flashed through his mind as rapidly as telegraph poles flit past a traveller in a railway carriage.
"We charge tuppence more for this bedroom because it's a single doss," he said, not without a touch of pride in his tone. "And well worth the money," remarked Caldew. "Look here, Mr. Funnysides, I didn't bring you up here to listen to no sarcastical remarks," retorted the man, with the sudden fury of a heavy drinker. "If you've seen enough, you'd better clear out. I want to get to bed."
It is so important that I cannot understand the attitude of Detective Caldew in dismissing it as a matter of no consequence. If Hazel Rath were convicted with that question unsettled, she would be condemned on insufficient evidence. It is for this reason I have taken her interests into my hands.
Once more Caldew reluctantly admitted to himself that Merrington's deductions were more swift and vigorous than his own, but he was secretly annoyed to think that the other had gained partly by guesswork the solution of a clue which had caused him so much thought and perplexity. "The brooch is no more direct evidence than the revolver and handkerchief," continued Merrington.
Caldew was so impressed by the significance of the second appearance of the man in the trench-coat that he had timed himself in a fast walk over the same ground from Weydene to the moat-house, and was able to cover the distance in half an hour.
At the bottom of the staircase he was stopped by Tufnell, who had evidently been waiting for him to descend. The usually imperturbable dignity of the butler was for once ruffled, and he looked slightly flushed and dishevelled. "I have been down to the village looking for you," he said, in a querulous tone. The majesty of the law had not vested Caldew with any dignity in the old butler's eyes.
They walked out, and Caldew locked the door behind him and placed the key in his pocket. When they reached the entrance hall Colwyn paused outside the door of the recess where the housekeeper lurked, like an octopus in a pool.
It was here that the regular cronies and select patrons of the establishment sat in comfortable seclusion to discuss the crops, the weather, and market prices in the broad Sussex dialect, which Caldew, from the force of old association, unconsciously fell into again when he was with them. The room was nearly full, but his appearance threw a marked restraint on the group of assembled countrymen.
The point to which I want to draw your attention is the extreme slightness and smallness of the revolver with which Mrs. Heredith was killed. As Captain Nepcote told Merrington yesterday, it is little more than a toy." "That struck me as soon as I saw it," said Caldew. "But I do not see what bearing the fact has on the case, one way or another."
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