Baynes could offer us nothing further and the evidence for the day closed there. The position was highly unsatisfactory and everyone knew it. The Coroner rose and weightily explained their duties to the jury. If, he told them, in the face of everything they’d heard, they could conscientiously say that Ralph met his death by accidental means, then they must do that. If they weren’t satisfied, they must say so.
The jury seemed to have a good deal to talk about, and were away a long time. When they returned the foreman said they weren’t satisfied as to the actual cause of death. Medical evidence had conflicted, and in their view there were too many additional factors in the case for them to come to any conclusion with an easy mind. They didn’t think it possible, even if accidental death were ruled out, to bring in a verdict against any particular person, since, although they had good reason to believe that several people wished the deceased out of the way, no evidence had been offered to show the movements of any of these people during the important hours. They considered that the case warranted a great deal more inquiry, and regretted their inability to bring in a definite verdict.
And there, for the day, the matter had to stand. The funeral was fixed for four days ahead, but long before that took place the police were in possession, nosing about, as Mrs. Ross remarked, like jackals in search of offal.
Chapter X
1
The police and I had little to say to one another. They asked me a few obvious questions, and seemed satisfied with my replies. At no time did anyone suggest that I had any motive for the crime, and from the official point of view I faded out from the beginning. We weren’t, of course, taken into their confidence, and we didn’t know what line they were following. But Jeremy and I got together and decided we might do a bit of sleuthing on our own account; we were in the know in certain things that the police knew nothing about—Ralph’s blackmailing activities, for instance, and Hilary’s flight to the garden.
“Besides,” said Jeremy, “we’re not wholly unofficial. We are here by request of your friend, Philpotts, and we ought to be singing for our supper. Let’s have our shot at putting two and two together and see what they make. To begin with, where was Hilary making for when Lady Nunn stopped her on the night of the party? What time was it?”
I said it was almost eleven when Eleanor told us, and she seemed to have been talking to Hilary for ten or fifteen minutes. So that eleven o’clock seemed a fairly safe guess for Hilary’s appointment. But where and with whom?
“We might assume it was with Ralph. Anyway, let’s see where that supposition gets us. What time did Ralph leave the Cottage? Some time after ten, his man said. He’s two miles off, call it half-an-hour’s walk for him, so if he left about ten-thirty, and Hilary was leaving this house at ten forty-five, where would they meet?”
I exclaimed, “Of course. The summer-house. Why didn’t we think of that before?”
The summer-house was a very ancient ramshackle structure well hidden in the wooded part of the estate, about a hundred yards from the pond where Ralph was found. At one time it had the reputation of being a favourite rendezvous for the young bucks at the Abbey, who used to meet their village wenches there, but for a long time now it had fallen into a very bad state of disrepair, and practically no one used it. I remember going there as a lad, when there were visitors I wanted to escape, taking my books with me, and it had quite romantic associations for Hilary, who used to hide there from the wrath of governesses or when she wanted to shirk her lessons. But the younger people in the village would hardly know of its existence. It seemed a likely place for Ralph to fix upon for a meeting, and the fact that the pond was so close made us pretty sure we had hit on the truth. This pond had nothing in particular to differentiate it from a dozen other ponds on the estate, except a withered thorn tree that had been brought a couple of centuries earlier from the Holy Land by a devout Humphrey Feltham. In flower, the tree was extraordinarily beautiful, tall spikes of very pure creamy blossoms thrusting upwards; and there had been a time when people made excursions to see it in full bloom, and brought their children there. But that was long ago, and the tree had now been dead for years. A number of legends had sprung up about it, having their source no doubt in the devout fables of the time. It was said that the thorns had mystic healing qualities; if you broke one of them off the bough, and dipped it into the pond, and then laid it on a sick person, that person recovered at once. If he didn’t, then he was in league with the Evil One, and should be left to die, and there are even stories told of people refused Christian burial on no better ground than that they obstinately persisted in succumbing even after treatment by the holy thorn. Another legend I often heard recounted was that it was the thorn of love; break off a thorn and prick your arm, then with the blood still warm upon the point prick the arm of him or her whose love you desired, and you would attain happiness. Legend doesn’t say what happened when this failed; presumably it never did.
The present generation hardly knew these stories, though little boys sometimes broke off the long sharp thorns and carried them away for the purpose of tormenting their companions; even Hilary knew very little, but there was a phase when Percy Feltham was deeply, even passionately, interested in this folklore, and during one of my school holidays I helped him to arrange various papers and letters, and picked up a lot of stray information in that fashion. To anyone else, I fancy these stories had little more significance than those bogeys of childhood (when one has outgrown them), the Bathroom Guggle, the Tiger on the Stairs, Tommy Dodd in the Nursery Cupboard. The village accepted the pool as they accepted every other pool in the neighbourhood. There were a number of them, frequently on the edge of the public way, deep, still and green; occasionally, they were decorated with duckweed; more rarely, you saw water-fowl there, and occasionally lilies, but none of them excited comment any more than they suggested to the average countryman, as they certainly did to inexperienced town cousins, like the labourer’s wife, quite unjustifiable dangers. They, poor creatures, wanted to see them ringed round with red lights or white palings for the protection of the populace. Imperilling human life, they said. And indeed the townsman was right to have his misgivings. It would be easy enough for him to lose his path and his life on one of those dark nights on a road that, unlike city highways, had scarcely an illumination from end to end. And yet it’s very rare to hear of accidents of this nature in a countryside, nothing like so frequent as the accidents in traffic that happen in well-lit, secure, suburban roads.
2
Jeremy and I went secretly down to the summer-house. It was very dark and dirty, and the steps leading to it were broken and eaten by beetles and so forth. Inside there was a very much stained rustic seat, with rounded ends, and several sharp splinters in the woodwork; the floor was covered with dust and shavings and had been disturbed very recently. Jeremy went round like Sherlock Holmes; he said the naked eye wasn’t enough, and produced a magnifying glass. I was inclined to laugh at him, until he exclaimed, “Shut up, you damned fool! Come and look at this.”
I came, and saw a darkish stain on the end of the rustic seat.
“That may have been there ages,” I said.
Jeremy took out his handkerchief and moistened it. Very gently he rubbed the mark; a rusty sort of dye came from it.
“And what’ll you bet me that’s blood?” he demanded, grimly. “Look at the floor here.”
Beneath our feet were other darkish marks, not as if anyone had bled with any profusion, but the kind of marks you’d get from a cut wrist, or, as Jeremy pointed out, from a cut ear.
“Suppose Ralph to be standing here, and someone had come up behind and knocked him over the head, he might easily stagger, and bang up against the seat. You see.” He gave a convincing illustration of his contention. “If you’re taken unawares your knees automatically sag. That seems to be sound enough. The question is, who done it? Not Hilary. I should say someone came up behind him while h
e was talking. There isn’t even any reason to suppose it was a plot. If Dennis, for instance, came up without warning and heard them, he might lose his head and sock Ralph one, and then, without realising how serious the position was, discover he’d done the poor devil in. Yes, I know we’re getting away from the medical evidence a bit, but as that didn’t agree I don’t feel that matters awfully at the moment. I’m more inclined to think this was an accident, and that he was dumped in the pond in the hopes of pulling wool over the eyes of all of us. It seems such a rotten sort of night to choose for a deliberate murder.”
“Then, if you’re right, Hilary knows the position.”
“She must. It must be ghastly for her. No wonder she won’t say a word.”
“Particularly if it were Dennis. But could it be? He was with us when Eleanor came to tell us about Hilary.”
“But he went away before we dispersed; he’s got legs like a kangaroo; have you ever seen him run? He covers the ground at the most amazing speed. I know he looks a leisurely sort of devil, but I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather be up against Nunn if it came to a scrap than that fellow. Besides, he knows such a lot of dirty tricks; he’s had me on my knees, remember, and I’m not likely to forget that.”
“I wonder if Eleanor suspects anything; the trouble with the household at present is, quite half of them daren’t be candid. Eleanor may have seen something, Dennis lolloping over the lawn, perhaps, and she wouldn’t be able to speak. While Hilary’s lips, naturally, are sealed. It would be rather satisfactory, don’t you think, if we could get a bit of proof of any of these things?”
Jeremy agreed that it would. “All the same,” he said, “I think we’re on the right track. These marks here are quite clearly blood, and I don’t see any reason for supposing they’re animal blood. Animals don’t make appointments in summer-houses as a rule, not when there’s a whole wood, up and down stairs, to choose from. And we do know that Hilary was going to meet someone.”
“We’d better not take Dennis into our confidence at the moment,” I suggested. “Not if there’s any likelihood of his being implicated. It would look pretty bad if he were, and the facts came out. I doubt if anyone would believe it was an accident. They’d regard Hilary as a decoy.”
“I wonder if the police have made any of our discoveries or speculations,” remarked Jeremy. “It’s a pity we’re all so much in the dark. If they are going to suspect Dennis, one would like to warn the fellow, though I daresay he’s at least as capable of looking after himself as any of the rest of us.”
We had no way of knowing what line the police were following up. They were skating all about the neighbourhood, paying us surprise visits every now and again, and asking further questions. Someone had come forward to say that on the night of the 15th he had noticed a car driving through the right-of-way between half-past eight and nine o’clock. Of course, cars frequently did drive there; the path wasn’t good, but neither were most of the cars. Motor-cycles went there, too; there had been a loud outcry at first, as the path had been intended for pedestrians going to and from the works at Melford. But it was pointed out that a good many of these young men came on motor-cycles, and the right-of-way did save a great deal of time even for these. And when the motor-cycles began to be superseded by three-wheeled cars, and later by things that looked like disused buses on a small scale, with perforated windows and a general effect of mud and grease, there was no logical objection to raise. The right-of-way was wide enough to take them—it would have taken a Rolls for that matter—and as it wasn’t much used, and no one lived near the road—the danger to pedestrian life was practically nil. So the cars of the workmen continued to go to and from Melford, and no one these days made any comment. The police’s informant, however, said that he had noticed this car, particularly, because it was a rather better car than you often saw on that road, and inside was a man in evening dress, accompanied by a woman in a dark cloak. The car had passed him at some little distance from the pool. Another man had seen a figure wandering slowly along the road, hands behind his back, at about ten o’clock; he had been wearing a dark suit, and a hat tilted over his eyes; he gave the impression that he was waiting for someone. And a third witness remembered seeing two bicycles thrust in among some bushes quite near this spot; he had passed the place twice in the course of an hour, and each time the bicycles had been there. No one appeared to have heard any sounds or cries, no one had seen anything very important. But the police, in duty bound, took down all statements, investigated them, and where they were practicable made use of them. Meanwhile, they had broadcast a request for any information that might be forthcoming, and asked that if anyone had seen the figure of a man, apparently a tramp, coming through the Feltham property on the night of the 15th, he or she would come forward. In addition, the press was busy with the question of the conflicting medical evidence. Quite an interesting correspondence sprang up in the Times, eliciting at length a long, well-reasoned letter, inclining towards the official police view, from that veteran authority, Sir Willoughby Hare. So that the affair could be said to have created a quite appreciable stir, and we had a number of reporters coming and going, coming with hopes and departing with fleas in their ears, wanting photographs and news and above all, information about the position of Hilary and Dennis. Other people wrote suggesting that a reward should be offered, that possibly blackmail was involved and people who could tell the truth were being forcibly prevented from so doing; a lunatic came forward with a most elaborate confession that occupied some attention, as it was shown that he had at one time been comparatively intimate with Ralph, and had excellent reasons for wishing him out of the way. And Jeremy and I tried to get some kind of proof of our version of the affair.
3
Our luck, on the whole, was in. Three days after the discovery in the summer-house Eleanor said to me, “Tony, only God knows how long this is going on or how it’s going to end. Personally, I feel as if we had been sheltering the police for years. Hilary’s looking a wreck, and James is quite unapproachable. He doesn’t say anything, but I know in his heart he blames me, for giving Ralph any foothold here at all.”
I told her, rather uneasily, she was being ridiculous, but I, too, had noticed Nunn’s attitude. It certainly wasn’t conciliatory and I thought privately that Eleanor was very likely right, and he did lay the blame at her door.
“I’m not talking nonsense,” said Eleanor, wearily. “I know James pretty well by this time. But it won’t help to argue about it. I’m going to do some gardening; it’s the best antidote to depression that I know.”
I offered to come and help.
She said, “Would you? That would be delightful. Talk to me about something that has nothing to do with Ralph. And get me my garden-coat, will you? You know it, it’s the one I’ve had for years and years, that will never wear out.”
I said, “That old black thing with the caracul collar? My dear, it must be done for by this time.”
Eleanor laughed. “Oh, no. It’s like those invalids who outlast all their attendants. I had it cleaned the other day; I haven’t worn it since. It’s on those pegs in the hall, where it’s hung from time immemorial.”
I went to get it, remembering it well enough, since she had had it as a garden-coat for at least a dozen years. It was very long, very heavy, very shabby. It had a belt and large pockets and a deep collar. As I took it down something pricked me sharply, and withdrawing my hand I saw that there was a bead of blood at the base of the thumb. I examined the coat, and found a long black thorn in the collar. There was no need to ask where that had come from. There is only one tree in the neighbourhood where you can find such thorns, and that is the withered tree growing by the pond.
I was so much startled at coming upon this scrap of evidence that for a minute I stood stock still, forgetting Eleanor waiting in the garden, only trying to see what this meant. That Eleanor was involved in Ralph’s death! I couldn’t get any further
than that. Eleanor! And there my imagination stopped dead. When it began to work again I reflected that the murder, if murder it was, had been the work of two people, and I wondered who had helped her.
Eleanor’s voice called, “Can’t you find it, Tony? It’s on the same hook where it’s always been. Are my gardening-gloves in the pocket?”
I put my hand into the pocket automatically. There were no gloves, but there was a slip of smooth grey paper covered with Ralph’s writing. It was no concern of mine what he chose to write to Eleanor, but some impulse made me thrust the paper into my pocket, as I called out, “Yes, here they are. I’m coming, Eleanor. But you’ve smartened it up so much I hardly recognise the old friend.”
For about an hour I gardened steadily, and we talked of various local matters, without touching on the one subject that filled both our minds. I wondered if I sounded very distrait, but she seemed satisfied enough, and as it drew towards dusk, she threw her trowel into the gardening basket, saying, “That’s enough for one afternoon. Now, what about tea?”
I didn’t get an opportunity of talking to Jeremy till some time that evening. I had glanced at the slip of paper, which said:
I have waited ten minutes and that is enough. Now you can come over at half-past twelve. Don’t fail me. I’ve warned you what will happen.
R. F.
I couldn’t endure the thought that Eleanor had played into that brute’s hands, and it occurred to me that, so soon as I had shown the paper to Jeremy, I should be wise to destroy it. I didn’t want that to get into the hands of the police. When at last I got hold of him, he said in a slow kind of voice, “Do you realise what this is?”
I said nothing, and he went on, “This is our answer to one of the problems that have been racking us. Now we know why Hilary went into the garden at eleven o’clock, and why she tried to get away from Dennis during supper.”
Death in Fancy Dress Page 16