He paused, and Macdonald asked bluntly:
“Why?”
Dubois spread out his hands in a puzzled way, his shoulders hunched up, as he replied:
“Did you not observe that it was strange that a man of the world, wealthy, of mature years, should live thus in appartements meublées, with no personal belongings about him, no photographs, no books? I thought so, too, Inspector. I said to myself, ‘This is like the apartment of a man who is always prepared to depart at short notice; to vanish, to filer a l’Anglaise, décamper.’ ”
“Do a bolt, in short,” said Macdonald, and Dubois nodded thoughtfully.
“Exactly, Inspector, and yet for four years this man has not – done a bolt – and when the occasion comes about when he might have been expected to do so, when he appeared to have made every arrangement for doing so, then he blows his brains out. It is lacking in logic.”
The last sentence came in an outburst of rapid stacato speech, the foreign accent growing more accentuated as the’ tempo quickened.
“I quite agree with you,” said Macdonald. “It appears very illogical, and it is for that reason that further investigation is desirable. Now I think it improbable that Mr. Mallowood lived here for four years without having any personal possessions about him. He took a suitcase with him to his old home at Wulfstane, but only a small case, such as a man might use for a week-end visit. I take it that he would have come in and packed that on the Tuesday when he went to Wulfstane in response to his brother’s telephone message.”
“If so, nobody saw him enter or leave this house,” replied Dubois. “There is a porter on duty in the hall. He did not see him. I did not see him. Nobody in this house saw Mr. Mallowood since Friday morning. It is true that he took a suitcase with him then, but it was a large case, and heavy. He carried it himself from the lift to his car.”
“And in that case were doubtless packed the various trifles which I might have expected to find here,” said Macdonald. Dubois rubbed his chin. “That one, he changed his mind,” he said. “He knew that retribution was at hand: he made all his arrangements for removing himself to safety, having made it very difficult for the police to get on his trail, hein? and then he blew his brains out… There is without doubt something strange here… A woman, one might guess?”
“One might,” agreed Macdonald dryly, “one might even hazard several women. I should be glad if you would think over this matter very carefully, Mr. Dubois. Somewhere in London – or not very far from London, there is another establishment where traces of Mr. Basil Mallowood could be found. It is possible that in some unguarded moment he let out a phrase which might give a clue to his other quarters. If anything occurs to you, I should be glad if you will let me know. I will call on you again later.”
“As you will, Inspector. I would gladly help you were it in my power, but I can assure you of this. It would be more in character for an oyster to open of itself and to offer you a pearl than for Mr. Mallowood to drop information concerning himself. He was a silent one.”
As Macdonald left the house he mused over the fact, that Paul and Basil Mallowood had at least one characteristic in common – their secretiveness. It was also an indisputable fact that if Mr. John Dubois had had any motive to remove all traces of his late tenant from that furnished site, he had had abundant opportunities for so doing.
Macdonald pondered over the phrase: “That one, he changed his mind…”
It was all a very queer business.
CHAPTER SIX
IT was on Monday, October 15th, that Macdonald set out on his way to Wulfstane, driving by way of the Kingston by-pass, and following the Portsmouth road as far as Liss, where he turned off the main road, and proceeded leisurely by narrow roads shaded by the rich gold of autumn woodland. It was a year prolific in fruits of all kinds. The hedgerows were gay with trails of bryony berries, their enamelled scarlet shining in twines around bramble and thorn. Rose hips, crimson haws, scarlet fruits of the wayfaring tree, spindle berry, spikes of lords and ladies, blue-black of privet and whiteness of wild clematis – Macdonald caught glimpses of them all as he drove slowly through narrow lanes, in a country where chalk and gravel alternated as subsoil, so that the woodland varied from beech and ash and yew to clumps of dark conifer, golden larch and patches of birch, the latter turned to their autumn splendour in which the leaves were primrose yellow against the slender silver branches.
By the time he had left the main road far behind and was approaching the village of Wulfdean, Macdonald had taken a strong liking to the countryside in which it lay. It was what he called “honest country,” being innocent alike of bungalow, council house or modern mansion of the wealthy.
The fields, some still in stubble, some already ploughed, curved magnificently over the underlying chalk. The cottages were a mixture of split flint walls and well-mellowed brick, the churches had little extinguisher spires of weathered shingle – ancient comfortable buildings whose materials were derived from their surrounding countryside without importation of alien stuff. The village of Wulfdean was as consistent as the other hamlets through which he passed. A good village green, part of it mown to serve as cricket pitch in summer, was surrounded by flint cottages, a rambling old inn, a Norman church with a tiny apse, and a fine stone vicarage, whose walls were of the chalky stone which fares so ill in cities and survives well in the open country, the rough stone and mortar interspersed in places with additions of split flint.
Macdonald left his car in the open yard of the inn, sampled the local beer, and set out on foot to the manor. He found a small gate in the enclosing wall, and followed a path which led him through a belt of woodland. Here the beeches were clad in sheer magnificence of flaming gold, and at length, through a clearing, Macdonald saw the Manor House, pale and stately on a rise some few hundred yards away, with the open parkland bathed in sunshine below it. Macdonald liked old houses, and he had a natural sense of proportion which responded to an architectural achievement. He stood still in the shadow of the beeches and considered the building before him. The south front of Wulfstane was Jacobean in period, its detail showing the native genius of English architecture which absorbed the classic of the Renaissance and adapted it to fit in with the traditional gothic of the gabled medieval manor. There were gables on the south front of Wulfstane, but their abrupt angles were masked by an Italianate balustrade which threw a strong horizontal line across the south front. The great entrance door had a flattened perpendicular arch above it, and the windows were mullioned. The east wing, at right angles to the main front, was of earlier date, its Elizabethan windows smaller, its rooms obviously lower and less spacious than those of the main block. The whole building, mellowed by time, unspoilt by later additions, was unforgettably beautiful, and Macdonald forgot his own job for a while and stared fascinated at the gracious stone pile, serene in the pale October sunlight.
He was still staring when he heard a footfall on the carpet of beech leaves to his right, and he turned and came face to face with Veronica Mallowood. He had no doubt about her identity at all: her height and bearing were so unusual, her presence so arrogant, that something in Macdonald stiffened, and he straightened himself, chin well up, as she approached, gun under her arm, striding through the sun-dappled glade. She addressed him in her calm deep voice when she was still a few yards distant.
“You must surely know that you are trespassing here?”
“I was walking up to the house, and took what seemed to be a short-cut,” he replied, and then, following an impulse, expressed the thought in his mind. “I had heard about Wulfstane, but the reality came as a surprise. It is rarely beautiful.”
Veronica’s harsh face softened, and she turned and looked up at her home, her eyes dwelling on it with serene satisfaction. When she turned to him again, Macdonald proffered a card, saying:
“I am sorry that I have to break in on the peace of your home, Miss Mallowood. I have been put in charge of the case concerning your late brother.”
&n
bsp; A frown drove the serenity from her face, and she surveyed Macdonald with a look of angry distaste, not unmixed with surprise. The detective, in tweed coat and flannel trousers, bareheaded, his lean face well tanned with the weather, looked not at all the type usually associated with the police. Dark-headed, grey-eyed, assured of bearing and quiet of voice, Macdonald came as a surprise to Veronica Mallowood, who had a tendency to believe that she could place any man at a glance. She met his eyes resentfully.
“Because my brother was a swindler who chose a coward’s way out, it seems that my home is to have peace no longer, Chief Inspector. What do you imagine that you can do which will make a disgraceful episode less degrading? Have we not had trouble enough in our home, without being reminded of it afresh?”
“I realise that you have been subjected to great distress, and that you must be living under a burden of anxiety,” replied Macdonald quietly, “but in one respect I may be able to help you. You must be worried over your younger brother, Martin.”
She gave an exasperated shrug of her shoulders, a movement which Macdonald interpreted as a nervous reflex, indicative of mental tension.
“Shall we go on up to the house?” she inquired. “Since you have come down from London to ask questions – and I tell you frankly I am so sick of questions I have hardly the patience to answer any more – we might as well go indoors and get the farce over. Nothing that I can tell you will alter what has happened.”
She swung on ahead of him up the path towards the parkland, and Macdonald followed, noting the easy swing of her long limbs, and the pace at which she covered the ground. Just as verbal descriptions had given him no adequate idea of the beauty of Wulfstane, so descriptions of Veronica Mallowood had given him no idea of her curious impressiveness. Macdonald, who had an analytical mind, was quick to assess the one important point that here was a woman who had just missed being beautiful. In missing it, she had a quality that was not far removed from the fantastic, but she also impressed Macdonald with her strength. Her physical strength was obvious in the way she moved over rough steep ground, but in that set deliberate face, strong jaw, and steady eyes, he recognised another sort of strength – something of the power of the fanatic. He spoke to her again when the path widened as they left the beech trees and came out on to the open parkland.
“I like the way the Jacobean builders worked on two opposing styles and achieved a new one for themselves,” he said. “You get something of the same kind in some of the collegiate buildings at Cambridge.”
She turned and stared at him. “Is English domestic architecture a branch of detection?” she asked scornfully, and Macdonald replied:
“Not to my knowledge, but a detective is not debarred from enjoying man’s common heritage. We have our personal interests, as other men do. I enjoy buildings, and I don’t often get the chance of seeeing anything so interesting as this house of yours. It must have seen a lot of English history in the making.”
“It must also have seen many crimes of varying natures,” she replied. “Like so many old houses, it has had varying functions, from a fortified holding of Plantagenet days, through a period when it housed a religious community. Then, at the Reformation, it was turned into a dwelling-house again, rebuilt in Elizabeth’s day, partially rebuilt again in Charles I.‘s, and improved upon in Charles II.‘s. We owe some of our later panelling to Queen Anne; since then it has been left untouched so far as its main fabric is concerned.”
She turned and looked at him, a half smile in her dark eyes. “What a pity that your visit here is not dictated by your pleasure in architecture, Inspector. Wulfstane itself is a vastly more profitable subject for research than the death of one of its ignoble sons.” She laughed, a short harsh laugh which Macdonald pondered over. “The Mallowoods have produced a diversity of scoundrels in their many generations,” she went on calmly. “Their villainies are hardly worthy of the attentions of a historical research worker – but the house remains. An object lesson in values, Chief Inspector. I commend you to a study of the house.”
“Wherein I should be well repaid,” replied Macdonald. They had crossed the pasture of the parkland, and Veronica led on through a gate to a bridge which crossed a deep ditch, and then up a short flight of moss-covered stone steps which gave on to the formal garden, whose lawns rose in a series of terraces connected by steps which were edged by low stone balustrades similar in design to those along the south front. While he enjoyed the beauty of the design, Macdonald also observed the state of neglect into which lawns and stonework and borders had fallen. The grass paths were hardly distinguishable from the moss-grown steps: the noble ironwork of the low gates which closed some of the shallow flights was in a woeful state, gates hanging on broken hinges, mosses and lichens thick on the ornament of stone pillars. Macdonald remembered Paul Mallowood’s opulent flat in St. James’, and wondered to himself. Wulfstane had fallen on sorry times, it seemed, its family divided against itself.
Again he addressed Veronica solely on the subject of Wulfstane.
“I take it we have crossed your one-time moat, and that these terraces were levelled on the outworks of the ancient defences?”
She nodded. “Roughly speaking, yes. The house has always served as its own stone quarry, successive builders reframing the original material. You can’t dig deep in these borders. You come on remains of vaulted cellars.”
The last rise gave on to the spacious lawns all round the house, a wide area of level turf, with borders in which chrysanthemums and michaelmas daisies glowed in gay masses of colour, though weeds choked the less vigorous plants, and bindweed and traveller’s joy rioted unchecked over once fine shrubs.
“The morning-room seems to have been adapted as the inquisition parlour,” said Veronica. “Shall we go straight in there?”
She led the way to the garden door which stood open to the lawns – all the doors of the Manor House were open, Macdonald noted. Putting down her gun, she nodded brusquely, indicating a chair, and said:
“Now what on earth is it that you want to know that has not been told already?”
Macdonald stood by the window, facing her, and did not answer at once. He wondered by what method he could best get in touch with her mind, and gain some access to her confidence, assuming that she had nothing to hide. It was that last proviso which gave him an idea of how to tackle his problem, and at last he said:
“I am in a difficulty which I think you can understand for yourself, Miss Mallowood. On the one hand, I am presented with a case which seems straightforward. A man has shot himself in order to escape the penalty of the law on his own misdemeanours. Can you say, in all honesty, that that statement covers the situation here? Is there not something further to be investigated?”
He waited for her to answer, studying her frowning face, and at length she said:
“In saying that a man has shot himself, you state the reason for a police inquiry. The jury were satisfied that he did shoot himself – it was obvious enough, heaven knows! – and that he had reason for shooting himself. Why worry the question as a terrier worries a dead rat?”
“You have not answered my question,” replied Macdonald. “I asked ‘Is there not something else?’ Why, because one of your brothers shot himself, should two other brothers disappear?”
“Two? You mean Paul. I can’t answer for him, but I fail to see that his journey and Basil’s death could be connected. Paul had arranged his journey long since. He had deliberately arranged his affairs, so he said, that he could go away without troubling his mind about letters or cables. He meant to go away for some months, deliberately cutting himself off from his usual preoccupations. If you are arguing a certain prescience in his action, I think you are mistaken. He knew nothing of Basil’s affairs, and cared less. Paul is a very self-contained person.”
“Very well. I accept it as a fact that you are satisfied with that explanation. But about your other brother, Martin? You are satisfied about his absence, too?”
A deepe
r frown cleft Veronica’s brow, and her troubled eyes glowed under their knitted brows:
“If you mean do I understand his absence, I can reply that I do,” she rejoined. “Perhaps you, who are not devoid of imagination seemingly, can understand that it is hateful to have our intimate affairs pried into. Martin has always been different from other people. He had infantile paralyses when he was young, and he has always been liable to do unexpected things. This is not the first time he has been away without explanation. On several different occasions he has walked out of the house and not come back for days. I don’t know if it was loss of memory, or some nervous instability which made him go, but he never has given any explanation of why he goes or where he goes, and I have learnt not to ask. I know that he comes back – often exhausted, unaware, apparently, of the fact that he has been away for so long. If it had not happened before I should be worried about him – but I have given up worrying. It’s just Martin. He will come back some time.”
“On the other occasions when he went away, did you inform the police, or have any search made for him?”
“The first time it happened was years ago, when our father was alive. There had been some trouble, my father was notoriously short-tempered, and Martin was away for days. The police were told then, and the keepers made a search of the estate, but nobody found him. He just came back, bewildered and exhausted, quite unable to answer any questions. When I asked him where he had been, he simply said that he did not know – and I think he spoke the truth. On later occasions I did not ask questions. It only worried him.”
She talked in abrupt nervous phrases; her eyes staring out of the window, her hands clasped round her knees as she sat an the edge of the table. There was something moving in the simplicity of her narrative, and Macdonald was hard put to it to make up in his mind whether to believe in her explanation or not. There was some baffling quality about her which made her very difficult to assess.
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