Case IV
The Efficient Assassin
There was a silence that might be felt. The judge put on the black cap. The prisoner gave a queer cackle of laughter. And Mr. Reginald Fortune, the surgeon whose evidence had convicted him, yawned and stole out of court. The Sunday School murder, one of the most popular crimes of our generation, had bored Mr. Fortune excessively, and now that the Sunday School Superintendent was safely on his way to the hangman Mr. Fortune desired to forget all about it at once.
He stood on the steps of the Shire Hall, lighting a cigar. A large young man, who had been struggling to get in, detached himself from the guardian policeman and ran at him. “Fortune! My God!” he said emotionally. “I thought I’d never get at you. I say, come somewhere where we can talk.”
Mr. Fortune looked down through his smoke with sleepy eyes. “One moment. One moment,” he murmured. “Oh, ah. You’re Charlecote—Beaver Charlecote. Well, and what’s the best with you, Beaver?”
“It’s murder, old man,” Charlecote muttered.
“Everybody’s doing it.” Mr. Fortune frowned at him. “Who’s slain now?”
“It’s my father.”
“My dear chap! Oh, my dear chap!” Mr. Fortune was startled into sympathy.
“I say Fortune—for God’s sake—” Charlecote gasped.
“Quite. Quite,” said Mr. Fortune, linked arms with him, and marched him off.
When Reggie Fortune ambled through his four years at Oxford, Geoffrey Charlecote was one of the great men of his college, a cricket blue, socially magnificent, and even suspected of brains. The Charlecote family dated from the Victorian age. When the building of railways began, Geoffrey’s grandfather was a navvy. He became a contractor, made half a million, and died. Shares of his practical ability, his originality, his driving power, and his disdain for the ten commandments (he was a mean old sinner) were inherited in different proportions by his three descendants. Stephenson Charlecote, his son, had one child, Geoffrey, and was also the guardian of an orphan nephew, Herbert. Stephenson Charlecote was a capable man of business. In his hands the family wealth increased. His only ambition was that the family should get on in the world. So it was Eton and Oxford for Geoffrey, Harrow and Cambridge for his cousin Herbert. Herbert emerged elegant and ordinary. In spite of Eton and Oxford, Geoffrey disturbed his father by showing signs of originality. He was bored by the big house in Mayfair, he would not bother himself with society, he scoffed at going into Parliament. This freakish obstinacy roused the hereditary temper in Stephenson Charlecote, who was the more angry with his son because his nephew Herbert obeyed him in all things, and was successful in the most pompous drawing-rooms. The breaking-point came when Geoffrey discovered that he wanted to go abroad and be a sculptor. Stephenson Charlecote raged and decreed that he should not. And Geoffrey went.
All this Reggie Fortune, who never forgot anything when he wanted it, knew at the back of his mind. The rest Geoffrey told him as his car took them back to London.
“My God, Fortune, it’s ghastly! I found him lying dead in the street outside my place. I stepped in his blood. The old guv’nor!”
“Quite. Quite,” said Reggie Fortune. “Now begin at the beginning.”
“What is the beginning?”
“Well, you quarrelled, didn’t you?”
“He quarrelled. Oh, that sounds blackguardly. I dare say it was my fault. Yes, we had a big row. Damn it, man, what do you mean? Do you think I⸺ Oh, I say, this is loathsome. I believe that’s what the police think. The old guv’nor!”
“Yes. But this don’t help him,” said Reggie Fortune placidly. “From the beginning, please.”
Geoffrey Charlecote stared at him, gulped, and became more coherent. “Well, after the row I went abroad. Paris, Rome, Munich. I kept up a little place in Chelsea, too. I never saw the old man, and we didn’t write. I suppose I’ve been a brute.”
“Hard stuff in the Charlecote family. What?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Fortune—I swear I’m sorry.”
“Gut it out,” said Reggie Fortune.
“Well, in Munich I married.” He flushed. “You know, she’s an angel, Fortune.”
“Quite. German angel?”
“No. She’s Italian. She came to Munich singing. And we met, and in a month we were married. I tell you, Fortune, I’ve been a different man since. It’s as if she’d given me a soul, you know.”
“Did you tell your father that?”
“It was she made me write to my father again. Lucia—she can’t bear being in a quarrel. She’s so gentle, any sort of bad feeling hurts her. So she brought me to try and make it up. I wrote to the old man and he answered—just a short, civil, formal note. But Lucia was sure it would lead to something, and so we came back to England. Then I wrote to him again, and he came to see us in Chelsea. That was a week ago—just a week ago today. He was pretty stiff and standoffish, but he took to Lucia. Everybody does, you know. Fortune, old man, she’s wonderful. I thought he seemed a good deal aged, but he was just as brisk and sharp as ever. He had us to dine with him on Monday. And then—well, last night he
