Diabolic Candelabra

by E. R. Punshon

  “Oh, go to—” he began, and then seemed to remember Olive and paused just in time, finished his sentence with the word ‘Jericho’, and was marching angrily away when Bobby called him back.

  “One moment, one moment,” he called. “There are a couple of books here. There’s your family crest on the covers. Do you think they came from the library at the Abbey?”

  “How should I know?” Rawdon growled. He glanced at the two battered, torn and soiled copies of what had once been noble tomes, formed for a scholar’s delight, made for surroundings as rare and exquisite as themselves, but now only one item more in the heap of strangely assorted odds and ends that cumbered the floor of this squalid, almost primitive dwelling. He picked the books up and thoughtfully turned over the leaves. “Horace. Virgil,” he said. “Oh, well, that doesn’t prove anything. Someone been having a go at Horace. Notes for a translation in the margin.” He read aloud from the well-known lines, beginning ‘Vixi puellis nuper idoneus’, in which Horace declares his intention of abandoning the lists of love. “Can’t turn that into English,” he said, “and anyway, nothing to go on. Those scribblings might have been done any time by anyone.” He put the books down again and said to Bobby: “Books often get mislaid or lost. Given away sometimes. Or borrowed. Much the same thing generally. I expect every second-hand bookseller in Midwych has something from the Abbey library with our arms on the binding.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and with a brief nod and word of farewell walked away. Thoughtfully, Bobby watched as he went striding along the path whereby Bobby and Olive themselves had so recently arrived. When he was out of sight Bobby picked up the Horace, wrapped it in a clean handkerchief, and put it in his pocket.

  “What’s that for?” Olive asked, surprised.

  “Oh, I don’t know, might be useful some day,” Bobby answered vaguely. He scribbled a brief note to the effect that he had borrowed the Horace and that it would be returned on request. “Can’t afford to be accused of looting,” he remarked as he put the note on the undisturbed crockery shelf, securing it in position with a pin he borrowed from Olive.

  “I wish I knew what you had in your head,” she observed, watching these proceedings with interest and curiosity.

  “I would tell you if I knew myself,” Bobby assured her. “What I wish I knew, is whether our young friend is on his way to pay a visit to Miss Floyd.”

  “Why should he?” Olive asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know, I only wondered,” Bobby answered. “I had an idea he knew who she was when I mentioned her name. Perhaps he didn’t. I thought when he went off, he walked like someone with an aim in view. Did you notice he gave two separate and distinct explanations of his visit here? First it was to get one of the hermit’s lotions. Then it was to ask him if he had a lease of any sort for this hut. Shouldn’t think myself anyone would have the cheek to hand out a lease for a hole like this. But two differing explanations make a policeman’s suspicious mind wonder if there is also a third—and a true—explanation.”

  “Both may be true,” Olive pointed out. “I mean, he may have wanted to get the lotion and to ask about a lease as well.”

  “Yes, there’s that,” agreed Bobby. “Quite possible. All the same he gave me the idea of being a bit uneasy. I don’t much like the look of things somehow—not one little bit, I don’t. I wish I had some idea of what it’s all about.”

  “Is that really blood on the floor?” Olive asked.

  “Can’t say yet, have to get a test made,” Bobby answered. “Even if it is blood, it mayn’t mean anything. The hermit gentleman may have cut himself shaving. That’s the favourite explanation. Or skinning rabbits. Or perhaps he suffered from nose bleeding. When it isn’t shaving, it’s generally nose bleeding.”

  “What are you going to do?” Olive asked.

  “Nothing. No complaint received. No reasonable cause known for taking action. I’ll ask our chaps at Barsley Forest to watch out for the hermit’s return though. Miss Floyd will know if he gets back. They can ask her to tell them if he turns up all right. There’s nothing to go on. Loo was frightened by something and so she tried to frighten us. There seems to have been rather a rush of visitors round here. For a hermitage, that is. This hut looks as if it had been ransacked pretty thoroughly. No sign of any hermit, but that’s not unusual apparently. There’s what looks like a stain of blood on the floor. There must have been an axe used for chopping firewood and it seems to have been an eremitical habit—”

  “A what habit?” interposed Olive.

  “Long word for hermit,” explained Bobby. “Got it out of a crossword. Anyhow, a common or garden habit of the old gentleman’s to chase away people he didn’t like. Using an axe for emphasis. No sign of any axe now. He had hit on some kind of new flavouring that might be worth a bit of money. Or might not. A fifty-year-old story about valuable pictures missing from Barsley Abbey has had a new lease of life recently. That chap we saw washing his hands in the brook dropped a photo that may have been of one of the missing pictures—or again may not. Do you know what strikes me as the queerest part of the whole business?”

  “No. What? The way that man ran off when he saw us?”

  “No. Bad conscience that might be. Bad consciences are plenty common. No, it’s that he was washing his hands. Why should you stop in the middle of a forest stroll to wash your hands?”

  “Well, I suppose he had got them dirty,” suggested Olive.

  “What with?” Bobby asked. “Oh, well, no use guessing. Can’t make bricks without straw or guesses with nothing to go on. Then the same chap called recently at Barsley Abbey and young Mr Rawdon didn’t one bit like the suggestion that perhaps he had called about the lost El Grecos. Again, Mr Rawdon didn’t much like answering questions, wasn’t best pleased at finding a policeman here, was rather carefully indifferent to those two books with the Rawdon crest on them. Now, what does all that add up to?”

  “Perhaps it all cancels itself out.”

  “Think so?”

  “No.”

  “More do I. I’ll get this bit of earth analysed though to make sure if it’s blood or not. There’s that Dr Maskell Mr Rawdon mentioned. I believe he is more of a scientific swell than are most G.P.s. Not so long ago he gave some evidence against us. Expert evidence. Very scientific. Very much the professor to the elementary class. Impressed the jury tremendously. Nasty reference to our excellent police who are probably but little acquainted with scientific matters. The jury giggled.”

  “Poor little boy,” said Olive gently. “Were his little feelings hurt?”

  “They were,” Bobby answered frankly. “Badly. It wasn’t so much the nasty things he said as the nasty way he said them. I should guess that tongue of his had more than the hermit’s medicines to do with his losing his patients. I think I’ll ask him to see to the job.”

  “Why not send to Wakefield?” asked Olive, who had heard a good deal of Wakefield as a centre of up-to-date police methods. “Or ask Dr Gibbs,” she added, naming the prominent Midwych practitioner who generally dealt with such matters both for the county and the city police.

  “Because,” Bobby explained, “I may want Dr Maskell and that blistering tongue of his on our side next time, so I may as well get on terms with him. Besides, a local man might be able to give me a good deal of local information if I needed it. Asking him to make the analysis will give me an excuse for going to see him. Low police cunning, I suppose.”

  With that they went on their way and the next morning Bobby received a report from the Tombes police to the effect that Mr Charles Crayfoot, of ‘Bellavista’, Tombes, had not returned home that night, that his car, parked at the ‘Rawdon Arms’, near Barsley Forest, between the village and the Abbey, had not been claimed, and that his wife was seriously uneasy as Mr Charles Crayfoot was a man of regular habits, as indeed befitted the proprietor of the well-known and prosperous confectionery and bakery business, trading as Messrs Walters. It was this last piece of information that disturbed Bobb
y. As a general rule mysterious disappearances soon explain themselves, but ‘Walters’, Bobby remembered, was the shop which retailed so successfully Mary Floyd’s homemade chocolates with their new and exciting flavour.

  CHAPTER XI

  DR MASKELL

  BECAUSE OF THIS coincidence of lost hermit and missing tradesman, recipe for chocolates as a possible connecting link, Bobby decided to make the preliminary inquiries himself, instead of leaving what seemed on the face of it a routine ‘missing’ case to the care of his subordinates. At the moment he alone was responsible for such decisions since his chief, Colonel Glynne, was absorbed in perfecting A.R.P.—soon to be terribly tested—in other precautions and preparations for a possible invasion, and in writing passionate letters to anyone who by any stretch of the imagination could be supposed likely to help him to get back into the army. As the colonel was over sixty, the army was, of course, for him for ever an utterly unrealizable dream; but in his quality of good Englishman never recognizing defeat, he continued with his efforts, writing ever more and longer and more passionate letters, seeking ever more insistently more personal interviews, till there were those in authority who paled at the very mention of his name.

  As it was likely that in this preliminary inquiry the best results would be attained by informal, friendly talk, Bobby made up his mind to go alone, though generally, when carrying out an official inquiry, it is wise to have a companion at hand for support if necessary. He decided, too, to stop on the way for a talk with Dr Maskell who, he had learnt by making a ’phone call, was the medical attendant of the Crayfoot family and might be able to say something about Mr Crayfoot’s state of health. It was just possible, too, though hardly likely, for there had scarcely been sufficient time, that the analysis of the piece of earth from the floor of the hermit’s hut had been completed. If so, Dr Maskell would be able to say whether or no there was any sign of the presence of blood.

  Bobby found the doctor’s house without difficulty, though it lay a little off the main road. It was a sprawling and untidy place. Originally it had been a farm and there were still various outbuildings, ruinous and deserted now except for the one Maskell had fitted up as a laboratory. The door was opened by a deaf, elderly, and sullen-looking woman who only appeared at a second and more vigorous knock. Ill-temperedly she showed Bobby a card giving the surgery hours in the morning and the evening and tried to shut the door in his face. Bobby, however, had seen that coming and his foot thrust quickly forward prevented the design. In turn he showed his own card, bawled his demand to see the doctor into the old woman’s ear and finally succeeded in inducing her to show him into the patients’ waiting room, a bare, uncomfortable and draughty place without even the customary supply of back numbers of illustrated papers. After a time the old woman returned, mumbling to herself, and took him into a small inner room where presumably the doctor saw the patients whom he seemed to do so little to welcome.

  This room, too, was bare, uncomfortable and draughty, but habitation and use gave it a less forbidding air. Scientific papers—Science Progress, The Scientific American, and others—were lying about, and on shelves, and on a table standing against the wall, were ranged various bottles, test tubes, flasks and so on. On this table, too, Bobby recognized by his signature he had scrawled on it the packet he had made up containing the stained earth, and there was, too, a tray carrying a teapot, a half empty cup, and some thick and unattractive looking bread and butter hardly touched. Apparently this afternoon refreshment had been found as little appetizing as it looked. Dr Maskell seemed to care no more for his own comfort than for that of his patients. On another table, that at which he was evidently accustomed to sit, were lying two photographs or prints. These at once caught Bobby’s somewhat startled attention, for they were of pictures in El Greco’s unmistakable style. Bobby picked them up and was looking at them when the doctor himself came into the room.

  He was a tall, powerfully built, broad shouldered man, evidently in first-class physical condition, with piercing light blue eyes under bushy brows; an angry, thrust out nose; a grim looking, tightly closed mouth with a bristling moustache above; and he stared at Bobby with what seemed an habitual scowl. Hardly the best bedside manner, Bobby thought, and yet the man had about him an unmistakable air of power and efficiency. Those huge, gnarled hands, for instance, looked as capable as powerful, the eyes showed bright, intent, and steady; the mouth, ill-tempered certainly, but set in firm, strong lines.

  “If he doesn’t scare his patients to death, he would probably cure them,” Bobby thought, and the doctor’s scowl deepened as he saw what Bobby was looking at.

  “Thank you,” he said, and putting out his hand for the prints, he threw them into a drawer and banged it to.

  “Looked like El Greco’s work,” Bobby remarked, ignoring the doctor’s rudeness.

  “Those things? Who’s he? El Greco, I mean,” the doctor grunted. “Know more about paintings than you do about science, eh? El Greco’s stuff worth anything?”

  “Some of his work is extremely valuable,” Bobby answered.

  “If it’s like those prints, it doesn’t impress me,” Maskell retorted. “You’ve sent me some stuff to analyse. Why?”

  He asked this question with a kind of wary, angry emphasis that Bobby noticed with some surprise. He supposed, however, the question and the surprise were due to a memory of the passage of arms occurring during the police prosecution that had failed so dismally through Dr Maskell’s expert evidence. Possibly that memory, too, accounted for the hostility in the doctor’s manner and the abrupt and impolite way in which he had snatched the—presumably—El Greco prints from Bobby to shut them in his table drawer. However, neither the doctor’s bad manners nor his possession of El Greco prints were points of any very great importance, and when Maskell snapped out another angry ‘Why?’ Bobby merely answered:

  “Oh, as a general rule we ask local practitioners to help us, and, of course, we know your scientific qualifications.”

  “I had no idea your spying activities went so far,” growled Maskell. “How did you find out? Don’t read that sort of paper, do you?” He indicated the scientific journals lying about. “Prefer the News of the World, I expect, eh?”

  Bobby had far too much training in keeping his temper to be in any danger of losing it over what was evidently a deliberate and purposed offensiveness. He wondered a little what caused it. He even suspected for a moment that the other had been drinking. But he did not think that was the case. Just natural bad temper, he supposed, coupled with a consistent disregard for other people’s feelings. Quite possibly, too, the doctor cultivated a grudge against the police, and indeed Bobby remembered now that he had been summoned and fined for a small motoring offence. Some motorists never forgave that, their feelings hurt not so much by the fine as by what they held to be the uncalled for insult to their driving ability. Bobby said amiably:

  “Oh, police get to know quite a lot in the course of their daily work without any spying. So do doctors for that matter, I suppose.”

  “What do you mean by that?” demanded Maskell, looking more formidably angry than ever. “You don’t suggest doctors and police—” He did not put much respect into the former word, he put immeasurable contempt into the latter—“work on the same lines.”

  “I didn’t dream of doing so,” Bobby answered meekly, disregarding the snorted ‘hope not’, Maskell interposed, “but medical men can often give information—”

  “You don’t imagine,” roared Maskell at the top of his very loud voice, “that I am going to tell you anything about any of my patients, do you? If that’s what you’re after you can clear out, and the sooner the better.”

  “Dr. Maskell,” said Bobby, suddenly producing his most official tone, “I am here in my capacity as an officer of police to ask you a question. You can refuse to answer it, of course, but I must ask you to listen to it with ordinary civility.”

  CHAPTER XII

  ‘HUMAN BLOOD’

&nbs
p; A SILENCE ENSUED. A silence fraught as it were with rumbling distant thunders and lightnings only just held back. For a moment or two Bobby fully expected that he was going to be ordered out of the house then and there, if indeed mere ordering was going to content this huge and formidable man. He watched warily, prepared for any show of violence. Something of the sort had been, he was sure, Maskell’s first impulse. But then the doctor seemed to change his mind. He said sullenly:

  “Well, if that’s what you want to know, it’s human blood all right.” He seemed to notice then that Bobby looked surprised. He said: “That’s what you’ve come about, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you wanted an analysis made? Simple job. I don’t know why you wanted to bother me.” Again he looked at Bobby with mingled doubt and suspicion, as if suspecting a trap somewhere. Then he looked angrier than ever and went on: “I suppose our wonderful police know there’s no certainty except in a negative sense. Analysis shows it might be human blood. But it can’t give certainty.”

  “Yes, I see, thank you,” Bobby answered. “You’ll let us have your report explaining that as soon as you can manage it, will you?”

  “Yes, if you think you’ll understand the explanation,” Maskell growled.

  Bobby went on unheedingly:

  “As a matter of fact, it was something else I wanted to ask. I think I had better explain I am here with the knowledge and the consent of Mrs Crayfoot. I believe Mr Crayfoot is a patient of yours?”

  “No, he isn’t,” interrupted Maskell angrily. “I found he was taking some hogswash he got from a lying old humbug you ought to have run in for a rogue and vagabond long ago. I told Crayfoot he had to choose between us.”

  “And did he?” Bobby could not resist asking in a tone he made as innocently inquiring as possible.

  He half expected an outburst of rage for answer. But Maskell seemed for once a trifle subdued. He had even become a little pale; with anger apparently since there was no occasion for fear. He got up and went to a cupboard in the wall, marked ‘Poisons’. Bobby was startled for the moment, but Maskell merely produced a bottle of whisky and a soda syphon. He poured out a liberal allowance of the spirit, added a very little soda, said over his shoulder, ‘Like a drink’, but did not attempt to implement his offer to which Bobby made no reply. Still speaking over his shoulder, Maskell repeated: