The Venner Crime by John Rhode

Author:John Rhode [Rhode, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

4

Oldland glanced at the clock as Dr. Priestley returned after seeing Faversham out. “It’s early yet,” he said “May I stop a bit longer, or would you rather that I followed Faversham’s example and went home?”

“I hope you will not go just yet,” Dr. Priestley replied. “As you know, I prefer not to go to bed too early.”

“Then I’ll help myself to another whisky, if I may. Faversham seems a bit cut up about that poor fellow Alcott, doesn’t he?”

“Because, I think, he feels that he is indirectly to blame. If he had been living at Markheys the man would not have died. It is utterly illogical, of course, but we are often inclined to blame ourselves for events entirely beyond our control. I have a distant recollection of the man, though I could not describe him. I have been in the habit of visiting Faversham’s laboratory for many years, at infrequent intervals.”

“Faversham’s analysis of the processes of indentification was pretty shrewd. I think he’s right. It isn’t always easy to recognise people, by any means. Do you think you would have recognised. Alcott, if you had been asked to?”

Dr. Priestley shook his head. “I think it very doubtful,” he replied. “I can only have seen him half a dozen times, and I never knew his name. To me he was merely Faversham’s assistant. Following the process of thought which Faversham described to us, I should probably have been able to say where I had seen him. Faversham, of course, could identify the body with certainty.”

“He wouldn’t have sworn to him, if he hadn’t been absolutely sure. He’s a cautious chap, is Faversham. You know, I never really meant to suggest for a moment that the body was that of Venner. It couldn’t have been, of course. I was only trying to pull Faversham’s leg.”

“Faversham has no taste for a problem which does not directly concern him. But why, apart from his identification of the body, could it not have been that of Venner?”

“Because of the circumstances. Venner cannot have been wandering about the country all this time, unless my original theory is right, and he had lost his memory. Who would wander about with only a few coppers in their pocket, when they need not? And if he had lost his memory, and was wandering aimlessly, he would have attracted attention and been recognised before this.”

After some further desultory conversation, Oldland finished his last whisky and soda, and went home.

But Dr. Priestley’s mind still ran upon what Faversham had told him of the circumstances of Alcott’s death. He had said that there was no mystery about it. That might be so. But there were certain features of it which had aroused his interest. And as Harold Merefield had once said in confidence, when he once got his teeth into a thing, it was a devil of a job to make him let go.

Alcott’s death has been satisfactorily explained. The mystery, if any existed, did not lie there. It lay, in Alcott’s behaviour during the days preceding it.

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