“Not Raymond Shearsby, by any chance?” Harvey inquired.
Parmiter gave him a quick glance. His brows drew together.
“You knew him?”
“No. But I know his short stories, and very good they are. I am sorry to hear you refer to him in the past tense.”
Parmiter blew a gusty cloud of smoke. “Yes, it was Raymond Shearsby who died just over a week ago. On the 28th of July. I know his work too. Indeed, when I read of his death I wrote a short appreciation which appeared in one or two London papers.”
“I must have missed it,” Harvey said. “Was he an old man?”
“Only thirty-four.”
“What did he die of?”
“Another accident. It was reported in a Hertfordshire paper. He fell into a stream and was drowned. Apparently he stunned himself in falling. At least, that was the theory advanced at the inquest.”
“You think he was a relative of this Mrs. Porteous?”
“He was not her brother,” Parmiter said. “ The Authors’ Tear Book gives his father’s name as Geoffrey. But Shearsby is an uncommon name. There is not one in the current London Telephone Directory. It would seem likely that the two were related. Now it is not remarkable,” Parmiter went on, “to learn of the deaths, even the accidental deaths, of two persons bearing the same name within a week. One is constantly meeting coincidences of that kind. But the ratio of improbability is compound. When I find three people, sharing the same name, all in the prime of life, dying of accidents inside a few months, I begin to wonder.”
“Being inveterately and by training suspicious,” Mr. Tuke agreed, “I should do likewise. I take it you have another dead Shearsby up your sleeve?”
“Not a Shearsby patronymically, but I think one may presume one of the family. At least the odds must be greatly in favour of it. As soon as I read of Raymond Shearsby’s death, I recalled this previous case. Again, it was no feat of memory, for it occurred as recently as March. A Captain Dresser, whose Christian names were Sydney Shearsby, was killed in a traffic accident in the black-out, here in London.”
“You are too modest,” Mr. Tuke commented. “I suppose you deal with several hundred surnames alone every week, but you remember Christian names as well, and associate them with their appropriate patronymics.”
“Oh, it is a matter of practice making perfect,” Parmiter said again. “My cross-reference system does the rest.”
“You say these three people were in the prime of life?”
“Raymond, as I said, was thirty-four. Mrs. Porteous was the same age, and Captain Dresser a year younger.”
“It certainly suggests that they were cousins.”
“That is what I think,” Parmiter said.
He paused, and looked at his fellow member. There was something of expectancy in his look. Mr. Tuke returned it with one of faintly amused curiosity.
“From what you tell me of your methods,” he remarked, “I presume you will follow this up, for your private satisfaction?”
The obituarist shrugged. “A visit to Somerset House would settle the question of relationship. If it should turn out that these unfortunate people are in fact cousins, further inquiries as to other relatives, and any Shearsby wills, might prove instructive.” He shrugged again, watching Mr. Tuke with the same look of expectancy. “I am very busy just now,” he said.
“Oh, come,” said Harvey. “You disappoint me. After all you have said, I could have betted you would want to wring the last drop out of an affair like this.”
Parmiter drew in his violent way on his cigar. He took it from his mouth and frowned at it, as though wondering what it was. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. Then he looked up with a little smile, and said abruptly:
“Well, as a matter of fact, Tuke, this accident of meeting you here, with this puzzle fresh in my mind, has put an idea into my head. You will agree that these three deaths suggest some curious speculations?”
Mr. Tuke considered this. “Yes,” he said, “I would go as far as that. I think I implied as much before.”
“Do you feel sufficiently interested to take the matter further yourself?”
“I? This sort of thing is not my business. If there is anything in it, it is a police matter.”
Parmiter’s smile broadened. “Oh, I know your reputation.”
“If you mean what I suppose you mean,” Harvey said a trifle stiffly, “you exaggerate. Anyway, the discovery— if it is a discovery—is yours. As a law-abiding citizen, it is for you to take it further.”
“Which I am doing,” Parmiter rejoined lightly. “You are not merely an officer of the court, you are an official of a department concerned with crime. For all I care, let sleeping dogs lie. Or,” he added, “let the dead bury their dead. Well, think it over, Tuke.”
CHAPTER II
IF Mr. Tuke had not happened to meet Cecile Boulanger so soon after that game of billiards at the Sheridan, his reactions to the tale of fatalities in the Shearsby family would perhaps have been limited (in Parmiter’s own phrase) to a few curious speculations. And if that talk with the obituarist had not happened to take place shortly before Harvey met Mile Boulanger, her own story would scarcely have influenced him as it did. For while, in his capacity of the most senior of the Senior Legal Assistants to the Director of Public Prosecutions, he might emit blasting criticisms of the police, no one knew better than he how painstaking and reliable were their routine methods—though he drew a distinction here between the Metropolitan force and certain of the provincial constabularies. But on the whole, if, after investigation, the police decided that an accident was an accident, and nothing more, then an accident it most probably was. Two, or even three, such mishaps in one family within a short space of time did not affect the argument. Coincidences, in police work, called for stringent inquiry; but genuine ones cropped up almost
