Unravelled Knots: The Teahouse Detective

The Mystery of the Khaki Tunic
I
I cannot pretend to say how it all happened: I can but relate
what occurred, leaving those of my friends who are versed in
psychic matters to find a plausible explanation for the fact that
on that horrible foggy afternoon I chanced to walk into that
blameless teashop at that particular hour. Now I had not been
inside a teashop for years and I had practically ceased to think
of the Man in the Corner—the weird, spook-like creature with
the baggy trousers, the huge horn-rimmed spectacles, and the
thin claw-like hands that went on fidgeting, fidgeting, fidgeting,
with a piece of string, tying it with nervy deliberation into
innumerable and complicated knots.
And yet when I walked into that teashop and saw him sitting
in the corner by the fire, I was hardly conscious of surprise; but
I did not think that he would recognise me. So I sat down at the
next table to him, and when I thought that he was most intent on
fidgeting with his piece of string, I stole surreptitious glances at
him. The last twenty years seemed to have passed him by; he was
just the same; his hair was of the same colourless, lank texture
and still lay plastered across his bald, pointed cranium, his pale
eyes were no paler, his face no more wrinkled, his fingers were
just as agile and restless as they had been when I last saw him
twenty years ago.
Then all at once he spoke, just as he used to do, in the same
cracked voice, with the dry, ironic chuckle.
“One of the most interesting cases it has ever been my good
fortune to investigate,” he said.
I had not realised that he had seen me, and I gave such a
startled jump that I spilt half a cup of tea on my frock. With a
long, bony finger he was pointing to a copy of the Express Post
which lay beside his plate, and, almost against my will, my eyes
wandered to the flaming headline: “The Mystery of the Khaki
Tunic.” Then I looked up enquiringly at my pixy-like interlocutor.
His watery blue eyes contemplated me through his horn-rimmed
spectacles and his thin, colourless lips smiled on me with placid
benevolence. It never occurred to me to make a conventional
little speech about the lapse of time since last we met; for the
moment I had the feeling as if I had seen him the day before
yesterday. “You are still interested in criminology then?” I asked.
“More than ever,” he replied with a bland smile, “and this
case has given me some of the most delightful moments I have
ever experienced in connection with my studies. I have watched
the police committing one blunder after another, and today
when they are completely baffled, and the public has started
to write letters to the papers about another undetected crime
and another criminal at large. I am having the time of my life.”
“Of course you have made up your mind,” I retorted with what
I felt was withering sarcasm.
“I have arrived at the only possible solution of the mystery,”
he replied unperturbed, “and you will do the same when I have
put the facts clearly and logically before you. As for the police,
let ’em flounder,” he went on complacently. “For me it has been
an exciting drama, to watch from beginning to end. Every one of
the characters in it stands out before me like a clear-cut cameo.
There was Miss Mary Clarke, a quiet middle-aged woman who
rented ‘Hardacres,’ from Lord Foremeere. She had taken the
place soon after the Armistice and ran a poultry farm there on a
small scale with the occasional assistance of her brother Arthur,
an ex-officer in the East Glebeshires, a young man who had an
excellent war record, but who seemed, like so many other young
men of his kind, to have fallen into somewhat shiftless and lazy
ways since the glorious peace.
“No doubt you know the geography of the place. The halfpenny
papers have been full of maps and plans of ‘Hardacres.’
It is rather a lonely house on the road between Langford and
Barchester, about three quarters of a mile from Meere village.
Meere Court is another half-mile or so further on, the house
hidden by clumps of stately trees, above which can be perceived
the towers of Barchester Cathedral.
“Very little seems to have been known about Miss Clarke
in the neighbourhood; she seemed to be fairly well-to-do and
undoubtedly a cut above the village folk; but, equally obviously,
she did not belong to the county set. Nor did she encourage
visitors, not even the vicar; she seldom went to church, and
neither went to parties nor ever asked anyone to tea; she did
most of her shopping herself, in Meere, and sold her poultry
and eggs to Mr. Brook, the local dealer, who served all the best
houses for miles around. Every morning at seven o’clock a girl
from the village named Emily Baker came in to do the housework
at ‘Hardacres,’ and left again after the midday dinner. Once a
week regularly Miss Clarke called at Meere Court. Always on a
Friday. She walked over in the afternoon, whatever the weather,
brought a large basket of eggs with her, and was shown without
ever being kept waiting, straight into Lady Foremeere’s sittingroom.
The interview lasted about ten minutes, sometimes more,
and then she would be shown out again.
“Mind you,” the funny creature went on glibly, and raising
a long, pointed finger to emphasise his words, “no one seems
to have thought that there was anything mysterious about Miss
Clarke. The fact that ‘she kept ’erself to ’erself ’ was not in itself
a sign of anything odd about her. People, especially women, in
outlying country districts, often lead very self-centred lonely
lives; they arouse a certain amount of curiosity when they first
arrive in the neighbourhood, but after a while gossip dies out,
if it is not fed, and the hermit’s estrangement from village life
is tacitly accepted.
“On the other hand Miss Clarke’s brother Arthur was exceedingly
gregarious. He was a crack tennis-player and an excellent
dancer, and these two accomplishments procured him the entree
into the best houses in the county—houses which, before the war,
when people were more fastidious in the choice of their guests,
would no doubt have not been quite so freely opened to him.
“It was common gossip that Arthur was deeply in love with
April St. Jude, Lord Foremeere’s beautiful daughter by a previous
marriage, but public opinion was unanimous in the assertion
that there never could be any question of marriage between an
extemporary gentleman without money or property of any kind
and the society beauty who had been courted by some of the
smartest and richest men in London.
“Nor did Arthur Clarke enjoy the best of reputations in the
neighbourhood: he was over-fond of betting and loafing about
the public-houses of Barchester. People said that he might help
his sister in the farm more than he did, seeing that he did not
appear to have a sixpence of his own, and that she gave him bed
and board; but as he was very good-looking and could make
himself very agreeable if he chose, the women at any rate smiled
at his misdeeds and were content to call Arthur ‘rather wild, but
not really a bad boy.’
“Then came the tragedy.
“On the twenty-eighth of December last, when Emily Baker
came to work as usual, she was rather surprised not to see or
hear Miss Clarke moving about the place. As a rule she was out
in the yard by the time Emily arrived; the chickens would have
had their hot mash and the empty pans would have been left for
Emily to wash up. But this morning nothing. In the girl’s own
words, there was a creepy kind of lonely feeling about the house.
She knew that Mr. Clarke was not at home. The day before the
servants at Meere Court had their annual Christmas party, and
Mr. Clarke had been asked to help with the tree and to entertain
the children. He had announced his intention of putting up
afterwards at the Deanery Hotel for the night, a thing he was
rather fond of doing whenever he was asked out to parties, and
did not know what time he might be able to get away.
“Emily when she arrived had found the front door on the
latch as usual, therefore—she reflected—Miss Clarke must have
been downstairs and drawn the bolts; but where could she be
now? Never, never would she have gone out before feeding her
chickens, on such a cold morning too!
“At this point Emily gave up reflecting and proceeded to
action. She went up to her mistress’s room. It was empty and
the bed had not been slept in. Genuinely alarmed now, she ran
down again, her next objective being the parlour. The door was,
as usual, locked on the outside, but, contrary to precedent, the
key was not in the lock; thinking it had dropped out, the girl
searched for it, but in vain, and at one moment when she moved
the small mat which stood before the door of the locked room
she at once became aware of an overpowering smell of gas.
“This proved the death-blow to Emily’s fortitude; she took to
her heels and ran out of the house and down the road toward
the village, nor did she halt until she came to the local police
station, where she gave as coherent an account as she could of
the terrible state of things at ‘Hardacres.’
“You will remember that when the police broke open the
door of the parlour the first thing they saw was the body of Miss
Clarke lying full length on the floor. The poor woman was quite
dead, suffocated by the poisonous fumes of gas which was fully
turned on in the old-fashioned chandelier above her head. The
one window had been carefully latched, and the thick curtains
closely drawn together; the chimney had been stuffed up with
newspaper and paper had been thrust into every aperture so as
to exclude the slightest possible breath of air. There was a wad of
it in the keyhole, and the mat on the landing outside had been
carefully arranged against the door with the same sinister object.
“It was clearly a deliberate case of murder; the news spread
like wildfire and soon the entire neighbourhood was gloating
over a sensation the like of which had not come its way for
generations past.”