Scallaway's End

The hunter and the lawyer

Sturling slid the cogs into the inner pocket of his coat along with the letter, and looked about the room. Who next to interview? Perhaps… the lawyer. Two very one sided conversations were taking place; Ethel Braithwaite seemed thoroughly invested in her conversation with the silent Mrs Minkwater, while Sir Cumbridge talked animatedly to Sylvester Symes, who in turn swilled his glass and slid his narrow eyes over the furniture of the room as if appraising its value. Sturling moved over to where the gentlemen were standing and joined in the conversation.

‘...and we shot a giraffe, my dear Symes, a giraffe!’ Cumbridge was saying. ‘Well, we shot at it, at any rate. Then all those bloody natives and wildlife conservers came running at us telling us to get out of the game park.’

‘Intriguing,’ said Symes boredly, his greasy stare now sliding over an antique table in the centre of the room, before drifting up to look in a disinterested fashion at Sturling. ‘Do you have any views on shooting wild animals in Africa?’ he asked sarcastically.

‘Not a great deal,’ said Sturling. He could already see that the one to interview would be Sir Cumbridge. Symes was clearly not in a talkative mood. At frequent intervals his eyes would stop trailing over the furniture and would rest on Mrs Minkwater, much like a snake sizing up its prey.

‘Is shooting game a hobby of yours?’ asked Sturling, turning to Cambridge.

‘Hobby? Yes, I suppose you could call it that,’ said Cumbridge jovially. ‘Ever since I was a young man I’ve been shooting at every living thing with fur I can train my gun on. Not literally of course,’ he added hastily. ‘All your household pets are safe from me!’ He laughed loudly.

‘The maid will be pleased to hear that,’ murmured Symes, his drifting gaze settling unblinkingly on Mrs Minkwater.

‘I imagine your house must be like a furriers,’ said Sturling, warming Cumbridge to his topic. Cumbridge laughed again.

‘You can say that again!’ he chortled. ‘Why, my halls are lined with heads and antlers and all sorts of other mounted trophies. I have a tiger skin rug in my library, as fresh as the day I shot the beast thirty odd years ago!’

‘And I imagine you shot all of those animals with your own gun?’ said Symes lazily.

Cumbridge hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I mean… that is to say… we paid the natives in India and Africa to take us out for the day, and… I mean, we paid for the whole thing. They just finished off the animals once we’d had a good shoot at them - if we didn’t hit them.’

‘When you didn’t hit them,’ murmured Symes, swilling his glass, his eyes never ceasing their roaming of the room. Sir Cumbridge inflated like a balloon.

‘We very rarely missed!’ he said, going pink in the face. ‘And besides, the important part isn’t whether you shoot ‘em, it’s whether you’ve got the money to prove that you did shoot ‘em.’

‘Who did you go shooting with?’ asked Sturling.

‘Oh, some good old chaps, most of whom I’d known my whole life,’ said Cumbridge. ‘In fact, I had a very good friend, my senior by several years, called Maxwell Minkwater. He was, in fact, the late husband of Mrs Minkwater.’ Sturling leant forwards. This was getting interesting. ‘Good old Max coached me in the art of hunting,’ Cumbridge continued. ‘A wonderful hunter himself, shot a lion in his early years, I heared. He has a fantastic collection of heads and furs and guns… pity the old lady keeps them all locked away.’ He shot a bitter glance at the back of Mrs Minkwater’s head.

‘How did he… you know… pass away?’

Cumbridge shifted from one foot to another, and his gaze flitted briefly over to Mrs Minkwater, sitting in her chair by the fire. ‘I… er… tragic accident,’ he said shiftily. ‘Tragic,’ he repeated, ‘shocking.’ His gaze once more darted to Mrs Minkwater, and Sturling remembered the old lady mentioning that she and Cumbridge had fallen out. Did the argument somehow link to Mr Minkwater’s death? This would have to be uncovered once Mrs Minkwater had left the room, as Cumbridge clearly didn’t want to talk with her within hearing shot.

Time for the lawyer. Sturling turned to Symes. ‘Do you have any similar hobbies?’ he asked.

‘None worth mentioning,’ said Symes. While talking, he never met Sturling’s eyes; his gaze endlessly roamed the room, and he would occasionally glance over his shoulder or fix his eyes on one person, making no attempt to hide this.

The way to get people talking, Sturling knew, was to find common ground. Sylvester Symes was certainly one of the hardest people with which to do this, but it was still possible.

‘Nice house, this is,’ Sturling said. ‘These sort of houses are selling for a lot.’

‘Real estate agent, are you?’ asked Symes boredly.

‘I picked up a bit of the trade in my travels,’ said Sturling. ‘Have you been Mrs Minkwater’s lawyer for long?’

Symes’s eyes stopped sliding about the room and briefly rested on Sturling. ‘About six years,’ he said shortly.

Sturling was silent, weighing up this information. ‘Is she a good client?’ he asked.

‘Goodness, Sturling,’ said Symes greasily, ‘one would think you were… a detective, with all of these questions.’

Sturling carefully monitored his expression, keeping his face even and mildly surprised. Only his mind, invisible to the lawyer, gave a start. Clearly Symes was not to be dealt lightly with. ‘I don’t mean to interrogate you,’ he said lightly, ‘though I am often told I speak as though I am a detective on a case.’ This was, in part, true. ‘In fact, I had an aunt who was a detective in her earlier years.’

‘Indeed?’ said Symes, meeting Sturling’s eyes briefly in something which could almost be interest.

‘Yes,’ said Sturling, ‘though of course, she was never professionally recognised as a detective. She was also a part time baroness, every now and then she’d get a weekend to herself and sneak away to do some detective work.’

‘I didn’t know one could be a part time baroness,’ said Symes.

‘Oh, my aunt was very good at that sort of thing. However she never liked to be recognized whenever she caught criminals, so she’d leave a note at the police station with all the evidence and the name of the criminal. Police stations all over that part of the country soon got used to getting the notes telling them who had committed the crime. Eventually someone from Scotland Yard, a high ranking detective, I believe, was sent out to try and catch the mystery detective catching all the criminals.’

‘What an entertaining piece of family history. How did she die?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You said previously that you ‘had’ an aunt. I merely assumed…’

‘Of course.’ Sturling thought quickly. ‘She was killed while walking down the street. It was quite tragic, really.’

‘An omnibus?’

‘No. A toaster.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Sturling put on an expression of great sorrow. ‘She was walking along the footpath with her umbrella, a blue one I believe, one of her favourites, in fact.’

‘And?’

‘Well, she was walking beneath some two story buildings. You know the sort, the ones which have large windows and front directly onto the road. Well, a couple in a second story were having an argument, a rather violent one, I believe. The husband took up the toaster and, in his anger, flung it out the window, just as my aunt was walking below. And… well, that was the end of that.’

The lawyer nodded. ‘I see. Was it ever glued back together?’

‘What, my aunt?’

‘No, the toaster.’

‘I believe it was beyond repair,’ said Sturling sadly. ‘Both the toaster and my aunt… and the marriage of the couple living on the second floor.’ He paused. ‘The umbrella survived, though.’

‘Was there… toast in the toaster?’ the lawyer inquired.

‘I believe there was,’ said Sturling. ‘In fact, I have a feeling the couple’s argument sprung from the fact that they both wanted different spreadings on their toast.’

Symes shook his head, a smile curling his narrow mouth. ‘What a waste of good toast.’

Sturling nodded. ‘It wasn’t the way my aunt would have wanted to go,’ he said. ‘I expected her to die whilst in a mad chase with some drug dealing criminals, you know, dying while falling from a ten storey building. I just never imagined… it does rather hit home, having a beloved aunt killed by a toaster containing uneaten toast just to add to the injury.’

‘I had several aunts,’ Symes said, ‘however luckily none of them lasted long. They all lived just long enough to sign a few papers I gave them, which did help to give me a good head start in life, I suppose.’

Just then, rain began to splatter the windows in thick, heavy sheets. The sky was packed with dense purple clouds which were rolling and churning like boiling soup, until the rain became too thick and fast to see out the glass. There was a slam as the front door opened and closed, and heavy footfalls tramped up the hallway. The door burst open, letting a blast of cold air into the room. Tristan Sueducate stood there, soaked to the skin. ‘What weather!’ he exclaimed. ‘I had a feeling this would be packing in. Well, looks like this will be lasting the night and most of tomorrow, so settle in for being stuck inside.’ He slammed the door closed, and his footsteps continued banging loudly along the hallway.

‘Nasty boy,’ said Mrs Minkwater loudly, ‘dripping all over my clean carpet.’

‘Indeed, my dear,’ agreed Ethel Braithwaite amiably.

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ snapped Mrs Minkwater. Sturling sighed. He could see that this was going to be a long night.