And Death Came Too

by Hull, Richard

  “Quite. And what do you yourself do when you get into a car at night? Do you start by taking off the hand brake?”

  “No, sir. It’s quite true. I turn on the lights and switch on the engine and settle down. Then I think of taking off the brake.”

  “Precisely. And then, why should she have stopped at the top of the hill and apparently turned off her lights?”

  “I suppose it’s conceivable that they failed and she stopped for that reason.”

  “Carefully switching off the engine, but forgetting to put on the brake? And then when the car begins to move, either choosing that exact moment to faint or else doing nothing about it.”

  “The brakes might have failed too.”

  “If she’d put the car into gear, it would have had some effect.”

  Scoresby nodded.

  “I think you’re right, sir. I’m pretty sure that she was killed before that car started to move, but we’ve got to think of the possibility that she wasn’t. If Sergeant Evans hadn’t been there it would have looked quite different: we shouldn’t have known that the car hadn’t gone down the hill quite normally, lights on, engine running and all, and we should have assumed either bad driving by someone who didn’t know the road, or perhaps a failure in the brakes or the steering gear. The car was too smashed for us to have known anything. Of course we should have thought it odd that this Miss Westbury should be here at all when she ought to have been in London; but she’d been here once before for some reason we didn’t know—”

  “Quite. But for Sergeant Evans we might have thought that it was an accident. As it is, we may pretty safely assume that it probably was a murder. We haven’t got the medical evidence yet, but Dr Vesey told me that he is pretty sure that what killed her was a blow across the forehead. There are plenty of other injuries, but he seems to think that it’s likely that that was the one. He hasn’t quite committed himself, but he’s got some technical point about their different effects before and after death.”

  “A bang on the forehead? That could have happened as part of the car smash, couldn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes. Again, we could have put it down to that but for Evans’s insomnia.”

  Sergeant Evans did have the grace to blush, especially when he remembered that he had heard whispering in the road where the car must have been, and that he was therefore perfectly certain that two people had been there, which fact he had had to suppress. It might have been a very material point if the chief constable and Scoresby had not been convinced that it was improbable that they were dealing with an accident; but, as it was, he hoped that it would be safe for him to keep quiet and not make a disclosure which was bound to land him in awkward explanations as to what he had been up to.

  The next question, however, was nearly fatal to him, since, though he knew that it might be asked, it came when he was not expecting it.

  “I should like to know, sir, just what Sergeant Evans did next.”

  Actually, Evans’s first instinct on hearing the crash had been to cover his own tracks by seizing the rabbits, which he had insecurely hidden in the hedge, and put them in his own front garden. It had been a detour of only a few score yards, but he had been glad to find that he was apparently the only person who had heard the crash.

  “There was nobody else at the bridge when I got there,” he began incautiously.

  “Wouldn’t you have seen if there was?” Flaxman asked at once. “I thought the crash was practically under your eyes.”

  “Oh, no, sir. It would have been a good few yards away, and at night I couldn’t have seen if anyone had popped up from somewhere. The noise might have attracted someone. But when I got there,” he went on quickly, “there wasn’t anyone there. There was the fence knocked about and the car had gone, so I went to the edge of the river and said, ‘Is anyone there?’ in the sort of way one does, and of course no one answered. Then I began to wonder what I ought to do first. I didn’t know as how there had been anyone in the car, but there might be someone hurt there, and then I thought you ought to know, because it was the car you were after, and then I—well, it seemed funny a car going like that by itself, and I wondered if there was anyone at the top of the hill where it had come from.”

  “It did occur to you at once to look for someone else?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any reason for that?”

  “Not particularly, sir. Except that the car running away like that seemed odd.” Once again Evans could not give his real reason for being morally certain that there had been two people at the top of Trevenant Hill. “Actually, sir, my first thought was that this Miss Westbury had found out you were looking for her car and had decided to get rid of it in a dramatic sort of way. She sounded a theatrical sort of piece, from all accounts. If that was so, I don’t know how she was going to get away with only a few minutes’ start, so I thought the first thing to do was to get back to the station and let you know as much as I did and get everybody busy, according as you said I was to get them.”

  Flaxman tapped a pencil against his teeth.

  “I suppose you were right,” he said; “but it did mean that whoever killed her, assuming it was someone, could get away in any direction he or she liked.”

  It was, if he had known it, an even truer comment than he had imagined, for the presence of Evans running down the hill had been a very considerable shock to the man who had taken the name of Arthur Yeldham in order to marry Maud Westbury. He had reckoned on no one being about at that hour of the night, and he had to get down the hill and over the bridge in order to get home. He had no desire to be found carrying a spanner which almost certainly had bloodstains on it. Also he wanted to be sure that there had been no carelessness as to blood on his clothes.

  On the whole, the best thing to do seemed to him to be to follow Evans closely and hope for an opportunity to slip past. The sergeant’s movement to pick up the rabbits puzzled him considerably, and the detour to dispose of them nearly proved fatal to him, since, having lost sight of him for a minute, he accidentally reached the bridge first. He was only just in time to duck under its parapet as Evans asked his futile question, “Is anyone there?” It had sounded grimly foolish to him, but he was chiefly conscious of being thankful that he had taken the precaution of wearing sandshoes so that his footsteps had made no sound.

  Once Evans had gone, it was safe for him to go down to the river, for whoever else might doubt whether Maud Westbury had died naturally or not, he knew that she had not, and he never thought that now anyone else would. “Well,” he had murmured grimly to himself, “she must be dead, with her face in the water like that, and as they weren’t allowed to have the knife they shall have the spanner: underneath the car, I think, will be most artistic, as if I had buzzed it in after her. I only hope it won’t wash away. It oughtn’t to. And now home, John, and don’t spare the horses, as they say. No traces to be left and bright and smiling tomorrow as if I’d had a good night’s rest. Not so easy. It’s a good thing I kept off the grass in the fields. Too much dew. Bad enough here as it is.” With that he had quietly departed over the bridge, leaving the police to search for traces of him in the opposite direction on the top of Trevenant Hill. Perhaps there would have been something to be said for Reeves’s much-criticised method of remaining unobtrusively on the spot.

  Though the search had been carried out partly that night and more extensively when dawn broke, very little had been found in the neighbourhood of the lane leading to the deserted farm. Nor had the river bed provided much evidence. It had been a shock when the body of Maud Westbury had been discovered still entangled with the remains of the car, and Flaxman, who had himself actually made the discovery, still felt slightly sick when he remembered its appearance. Formal identification had not been made at once, but from the very first he had had no doubts as to who it was, and he had decided to wait for Reeves to return with Scoresby, rather than to tell either Lansley or Hands prematurely.

  A little later, when the spanner was fo
und, Scoresby was grateful for his superior’s action, because, as he looked at it in Flaxman’s study, he had the idea that he could guess where that spanner might have come from. It was not the type which was normally supplied with Maud’s make of car. But it might be used on Hands’ larger vehicle.

  22

  “A False Clue”

  “So you go back today? What a pity! It’s been great fun having you.” Mrs Featherstonhaugh passed her husband his tea and turned to her guest.

  “’Fraid so. Don’t want to go,” Salter answered.

  “Stay a bit longer,” Featherstonhaugh grunted without much enthusiasm from the depths of his morning paper. He had found Salter on the whole an entertaining companion, but he did disapprove of his habit of talking at breakfast.

  “Can’t, I’m afraid. Got to begin getting things ready,” Salter answered vaguely. There really was very little he had to do at Finchingfield, and he was not quite sure how best to employ the next week. The only thing of which he was positive was that it had better not be spent with the Featherstonhaughs. They were very old friends, and he was delighted to have spent a holiday with them, but he saw clearly that they had all had quite enough of each other.

  “H’m, sorry. Quite understand, though.” Featherstonhaugh turned over the page and looked at a picture. “Trevenant,” he said. “Wasn’t that the place you were at? I see there’s been an accident there. Woman called Westbury killed.”

  “Westbury?” Salter put down the marmalade quickly.

  “Yes. Car smash. In the night. Clean through a fence and into the river. They don’t say so, but it sounds as if the woman was drunk. Oh, and there’s been an arrest there. A man of the name of Hands. Detained in connection with the murder of Arthur Yeldham. I say, that’s the murder you were mixed up with, wasn’t it? Here, take the paper.”

  Rather to the surprise of Featherstonhaugh, Salter looked first at the photograph of the accident. Apparently he was disappointed in not finding there something which he had hoped to see.

  “I suppose she was knocked about and they hadn’t a photograph of her,” he said more to himself than to his companions; “but it must have been her.”

  “Who?” Mrs Featherstonhaugh asked.

  “The woman who arrived that night unannounced and left equally mysteriously.” In a few sentences, which were unusually lucid for him, he explained his reasons for connecting the name of Westbury with Yeldham. “And that being so, I’m afraid I must change my plans. Instead of going back to London direct, I must go to Trevenant first.”

  “Why?” Featherstonhaugh asked unsympathetically. He was well aware that the only reasonable way by which Salter could get to Trevenant was being driven there, and he grudged him not only the petrol, but Mrs Featherstonhaugh’s time in driving him. Such an expedition would spoil his own plans for the day.

  “I think the police will want to see me—to identify this woman, for one thing.”

  “From what you told me, there were plenty of other people who could do that. Personally, I should wait until the police sent for me.”

  “And if they do they won’t find me here, which won’t look too well.”

  “What’s it matter what you look like? If you ask me, I believe you’re just inquisitive. They could always find you at Finchingfield.”

  “Ye-es. Oh, yes, of course.” Salter remembered belatedly that he had already implied that he was going straight back to the school. “But it isn’t all curiosity, I assure you. I do not believe, if I am any judge of character, that Hands is guilty, and I think that I might be able to help him.”

  “Oh, of course, in that case—” Featherstonhaugh gave way at once, while his wife volunteered to act as chauffeur.

  It was quickly agreed that Salter should take his luggage with him, a course which the schoolmaster strongly insisted upon without knowing whether the trains from Trevenant would conveniently allow him to go on to London that night or not. Since they were not notoriously frequent, it seemed to Featherstonhaugh to be an optimistic course, but as it relieved him of Salter’s presence, he made no mention of such a difficulty, and with many expressions of regret at his departure, he saw him off. They had not really been insincere protestations. In the main he found Salter a likeable person, but after a time he became mentally exhausting.

  The journey to Trevenant, though long, was carried out in silence or with only trivial conversation, Mrs Featherstonhaugh respecting Salter’s obvious desire to think. On reaching their destination Salter went at once to the police station and, eventually getting in touch with Scoresby, was taken to see the remains of Maud Westbury.

  He was, he found, too late for the inquest, which, anyhow, had again been adjourned after merely formal evidence, and the identification of her as the woman who had visited Yeldham on the night of his death had been performed privately by Lansley and Barbara Carmichael, while Marie Lefevre had been induced to give some abbreviated information as to who her mistress was. The revelation that she generally went by the name of Madame Yeldham had caused a sensation at first, but it had been quenched by a hint being dropped that she had been coming to Trevenant on hearing of her former guardian’s death. It was allowed to be assumed that she had not read the papers before, and altogether the only difficulty had been to obtain the coroner’s jury’s consent to an adjournment. It seemed to them so simple a case of death by misadventure, and the coroner had had to use tact to get them to do so without betraying the police confidence.

  Salter had turned to Scoresby as he came out of the temporary mortuary.

  “Poor woman!” he said. “I believe she deserved it, but she certainly did get it.”

  “Why do you think she deserved it?” Scoresby asked idly.

  “Because I happen to know that she killed Yeldham,” Salter answered in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

  “Killed Yeldham? Why on earth do you say that? And why haven’t you told me before?”

  “Ah, why, indeed? It’s no good trying to bully me, sergeant, to bolster up your own preposterous theory. I’ve come over here to tell you what happened, and I am quite prepared to agree—now—that perhaps I ought to have told you before. On the other hand, now that she’s dead, I might not have told you at all unless you’d arrested Hands. Silly thing to do, that. Miss Westbury did it. I really think that anybody but you would have known that long ago.”

  Scoresby sighed. It reminded him, for some reason or another, of Lansley’s strictures.

  “Perhaps if you would tell me your story?” he suggested mildly.

  “Very well. Go back to that night. Everything that I told you was quite true up to the time when I went out of the dining-room, only then I didn’t go to fetch a pack of cards. Why should I want such a thing? I never could think of a good reason for that, though you appeared to swallow the one I gave. I went, in fact, to take a short walk in the garden, going out by the drawing-room window. There I was quite shut off from the front of the house, and I don’t know what happened to this day, except that Miss Westbury, or whatever her name is, arrived. By the way, is that really her name? I mean, is there any reason for Madame Yeldham?”

  “Never mind, sir, go on.”

  “Just as you please. Be suspicious if you like.” Salter shrugged his shoulders and resumed: “I was in the garden, wasn’t I? Very well. When I came back I happened to move quietly—not by design, but because I always do. The door of the drawing-room was not quite shut, and by the light it let in I made my way across the room. As I reached the door I heard a movement in the hall, and for some reason I looked unobtrusively round the corner of the door. There was a woman in the hall.”

  “One minute, sir. I ought to have said this before, but I had better stop you now. It seems to me that you are clearly going to tell me that you have kept back material evidence. That being so, you have made yourself liable as an accessory after the fact, and therefore it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. Now, sir, do you want to go on?”
>
  “You’re telling me! To save time, let’s take it down as I speak, because I am not going to have my words twisted in the usual fashion. Consequently, I am going to dictate, and I hope that this time you will not interrupt at what I consider a dramatic moment. Let me think. I must repeat the first part, I suppose. Another time, sergeant, warn people at the beginning. It saves them from boring themselves, which is after all the most heinous of crimes.”

  Scoresby doubted very much if the last remark was literally true, but he made no comment but busied himself with writing. Never before, he thought, had he met quite so cool a customer.

  “There was a woman in the hall.” Salter reached the point he had arrived at before and, again complaining that Scoresby refused to be impressed, he went on: “It was the same woman whose body I have just seen in the mortuary, where she has been described as Maud Westbury, alias Mrs Yeldham. She was arranging a sort of stiletto with a wooden handle on the doormat—in fact, the bloodstained putty-knife, because it was bloodstained then, which is why I subsequently made a slip by referring to it as being in that messy condition. Moreover, she spoke aloud.” There was a pause while Salter looked at Scoresby disappointedly. “Moreover, she spoke aloud,” he repeated. “Do play up, sergeant, and look impressed.”

  “I’m very busy writing, and I wish you would realise that this is serious.”

  “As I understand I am about to go to prison—it may be for years or it may be forever—I have no intention of being anything but serious. Nevertheless, allow me now and then to strut and have my day. I must have something. Where was I? Oh, yes. ‘Moreover, she spoke aloud.’ She said, ‘A false clue. And I wonder who it points to?’ Then I think I must have made some noise or other, because she bolted into the dining-room, and I think right through it into the kitchen, because when I ultimately came into the dining-room she went through the motions of having come from there.”

  “You didn’t follow her?”