Too Many Cousins

Mr. Shearsby, rolling his words. “Had I been asked about it, I would have given all the information in my power. But I was not asked. As a man of the world, Mr. Tuke, you will appreciate my motives in letting sleeping dogs lie.”
“The police ought to have known about the other case,” Lilian Shearsby added. “There was enough about it in the papers, and Guildford isn’t in Australia.” Her tone grew more tart. “Anyway, if they come badgering us now,
we can tell them of someone else who did know——”
Her husband turned on her again. “Lilian!”
She shrugged irritably, but subsided. Her pince-nez flashed as she shot her swift little glances between the two men. Harvey, after a moment, turned to the chemist.
“Now tell me something about your cousin Raymond. I know his stories.”
“Ah, Raymond,” said Mortimer Shearsby, with an air of relief. “Yes, yes. Poor fellow. I confess I have not read any of his writings. I have little time for reading. My work, my garden—I am in a small way a landscape gardener, Mr. Tuke, and my little plot is, I think, tastefully arranged, with a pool, and here and there a stone gnome or frog——”
“About Raymond Shearsby,” Mr. Tuke reminded him, repressing a shudder at this libel on landscape gardening.
“Ah, Raymond,” said the innocent offender again. “Well, really, we have seen very little of him, though he lived within twenty miles of us. He came to see us when he got back from France—before that, he and I had not met since we were children—but somehow the—the reunion never ripened. He never visited ‘ Aylwynstowe ’ again, but a few months ago Mrs. Shearsby and I made a Sunday jaunt to see him in his retreat. It was a pleasant outing, at any rate,” said Mr. Shearsby, with the air of making the best of a poor business. He wagged his head. “Raymond was a queer fellow. Solitary, a little cynical, perhaps. How little I foresaw then——”
“Yes, let us get on to his accident.”
A third • start was made. Kept firmly to the point, the chemist described how he had been summqned to the earlier inquest at the Hertfordshire village of Stocking. It was only through finding an old postcard of his that the local police had known how to notify the family, for Raymond Shearsby had dropped out of the ken of his other cousins. The evidence at the inquiry showed that on the evening of the 28th of July the writer left the village inn at a quarter past seven. He was not seen again alive. His body was found next morning in a stream called the Gat Ditch, under a bridge which carried the lane leading to the cottage he occupied. He was very short-sighted, and it was supposed he had gone for a walk down the lane after dark—there was no moon, and July had ended with clouds and rain— and had blundered through a gap between the hedge and the parapet of the bridge. He had received a severe blow on the head, presumably in falling against the stonework. Stunned by this, he had fallen unconscious into the stream.
“A bad business, however you look at it,” Harvey said at the end of the story. “And now we have talked the whole thing over, how do you look at it, Mr. Shearsby?”
The chemist took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his high forehead.
“I don’t know what to think. At the time—at the inquests —everything seemed perfectly straightforward. No doubts entered my mind. But now, after Cecile’s story. . . . After all, three of us. . . . ” He peered hopefully through his spectacles. “It was to glean your opinion, Mr. Tuke——”
“It may comfort you to know that the police still hold the view that Captain Dresser’s death was accidental.” The chemist brightened. “I am indeed glad to hear it.”
“But of course it may have given somebody ideas.”
Mr. Shearsby looked depressed again.
“Did you see much of him, by the way?”
“Sydney? Even less than I did of Raymond. He was at Birmingham before the war, and then. . . . it was a little difficult . . . there were reasons. . . .” Mortimer Shearsby cleared his throat and went on rather hastily: “Yes, I fear we cousins have drifted apart. Cecile saw more of Sydney than any of us. It was she who wrote to tell me of his death.”
“You did not reciprocate in the two recent instances?” The chemist waved his hands in a vaguely apologetic way.
“No, I have been very remiss. Cecile rightly reproached me. I have been exceedingly busy——”
“I should have written,” Lilian Shearsby said, though in a rather perfunctory tone. “But with one thing and another——”
“We are both busy bees,” said her husband with heavy humour. “Between us I think I may say we do our bit towards the war effort. We pull our weight.”
“It was not you, I take it,” Harvey said, “who sent Mile Boulanger a Guildford paper with an account of the inquest on your sister?”
“No, indeed. I should at least have written. Which reminds me. Cecile told me this morning that she had learnt of Raymond’s death only an hour or so before. From Mrs. Tuke.”
“Yes, I asked my wife to tell her.”
The chemist obviously would have liked to know how Harvey obtained this news, but the latter went off on a fresh track.
“One of your cousins still remains shrouded in mystery. Miss Ardmore.”
“Ah, yes, Vivien,” said the chemist. “H’m. Yes. I am afraid I have put off writing to Vivien too. It must be done,” said Mr. Shearsby firmly.
“She is in the Ministry of Supply, I believe?”
“She is personal secretary to Mr. McIvory.” An unctuous note had crept into the chemist’s voice. “A highly confidential post. Vivien is extremely fortunate. Especially as there was a time—well, well, that is better forgotten. We all have our ups and downs. Or some of us.”
“We do indeed!” Lilian Shearsby put in with a touch of astringency.
“Now,