“That,” agreed Jeremy, “was very smart. But what put you on to Lady Nunn in the first place?”
“I’ve never been satisfied with the solution, if you can call it that, of the Feltham scandal, the first Feltham scandal, I mean. I know a lot of fools went about saying that Percy Feltham must be guilty because innocent men don’t shoot themselves at the first breath of suspicion, but that was all my eye and Betty Martin. Feltham had no choice. He had to take his own life or stand his trial for treason. And whether he was convicted or no, he was a ruined man. There was a man whose work was his life, and when he’d lost the one the other had no value for him. But, on the other hand, people were right in saying that Cleghorne had an ally, and an ally who knew more about the business than he did. Some of those facts could not have come from him; he didn’t know them. No one but Percy Feltham knew them, and he never told official secrets. That went against him at the time, of course; a chatterbox might have been found guilty of indiscretion but not of wilful treachery. But everyone recalled Feltham’s reputation. They didn’t remember, though, that Feltham told everything to his wife. He had done it since their marriage; he rated her intellect very high; he regarded her as his partner and ally. Really he thought of her in those capacities more than he thought of her as his wife. And she did know as much as he knew himself. He relied on her to a very great extent. So if anyone had given the facts away, it was one of these two, and for every reason I was convinced it wasn’t Feltham. So you may say that I began this business with a prejudiced mind. It might, of course, only be coincidence that in the two biggest affairs of their kind that had entered my experience she was a figure, even a central figure, but I wanted some proof of that. She was Percy Feltham’s wife and confidante, and secret information was sold. She settled with her next husband at Feltham Abbey—in itself an odd thing to do—and Feltham Abbey was tracked down as being at all events connected with this Spider scandal.”
“We thought it was Nunn,” said Jeremy, thoughtfully, “and the odd thing is, we worked along much the same lines as yourself.”
“I considered Nunn,” Dennis acknowledged, “but he didn’t really fit the bill. You pitched on Mrs. Ross as his confederate, too; I never suspected her. The woman talks too much, and she can’t help showing off. It’s part of her attraction, I know, but it would make her quite useless for this kind of work. You’ve got to have a cool head and unlimited powers of reticence. I got hold of the dossiers of about a dozen of the Spider’s victims, and tracked them all down, and in each case I found that one of the two Felthams—Lady Nunn, that is, or the Captain—was intimate with the family. I hadn’t a doubt that Ralph Feltham was in the ramp; it would be honey to the bear to him. And I knew several stories of his wartime activities. I don’t doubt he was in the Cleghorne plot, too. You’ll realise that a big gang movement like this one isn’t built up easily; it requires a tremendous amount of machinery to ensure its smooth working, and every cog and nut must be thoroughly tested before being slipped into place. Lady Nunn, as Percy Feltham’s wife, had gone pretty well where she pleased. She had unlimited opportunities for collecting just the kind of information that would be useful. And information of that sort retains its value. Of course, she had her spies and confederates. I had picked on Feltham as one, and then I examined the facts to see whether there was anyone who might be described as a bridge between the past and the present.”
“And you found Hook?”
“I found Hook. The man had apparently had an excellent job, which he threw up to become Lady Nunn’s butler, though it must have meant recalling an extremely painful period in his own life. Then came the story of Lady Nunn being herself blackmailed by Feltham. Now, to my mind that argued a recent split between the two. Feltham must have had those letters of Cleghorne’s for years, but though he’d often been hard put to it for money, he’d never tried to raise it by those means. Not because he was scrupulous—he wasn’t—but because he and Lady Nunn were on excellent terms, and it was a more paying proposition to keep in with her. But after the split, he produced the correspondence. I daresay she paid him handsomely; on the other hand, all he may have asked of her was Nunn’s consent to the marriage. Lady Nunn, I’m sure, would have refused that. Knowing Feltham as she did, she probably felt a bit sick at the prospect of Hilary becoming his wife. And I daresay those were Ralph Feltham’s terms. Once he’d married Hilary, he’d very likely have settled down, and the reformed criminal is the most dangerous person alive. So clearly he must be put out of the way. He was dangerous to Hook, too…”
“I still don’t see how you can have been sure of Hook,” Jeremy expostulated. “You might have suspected him, but it doesn’t seem to me you had any evidence.”
“I didn’t, for a long time, do more than suspect him. But he showed his hand once in a very foolish fashion. He had said, you will remember, that he didn’t speak to Baynes, but when you, Keith, were asking him about the letters, he said at once that it would be better for him to slip the question to Baynes. But if he wasn’t on speaking terms with the fellow, it would be an extremely awkward subject to open up. And then, when I was thinking about Feltham’s death, I became convinced that that note Hilary found was a forgery and that it had been waiting in the summer-house ever since someone had murdered him. You see, even I know the legend of the paper he uses, and this didn’t fit in with the legend. Then I remembered it was Lady Nunn who prevented Hilary being in time. Well, if Feltham wasn’t killed during the party, it must have been before it began. It wouldn’t be safe to let Hilary find that note, with the chance of his wandering in inopportunely. I thought it was probably the work of two people—Feltham was a big man and he hadn’t been dragged—and so I got back to the story of the unusual car in the right-of-way. I argued that a man taking that road between half-past eight and nine would have time to put Feltham out of the way, and get back to the house probably before any of the guests arrived.”
“And Eleanor was late,” I agreed. “Mrs. Ross commented on it, saying she was locked in the bathroom. It hadn’t occurred to me that you can lock a door from either side.”
“Or that a woman wrapped in an old cloak could probably slip into the house without attracting much attention. She could come up through the private gardens, and everyone would be dressing when she returned. And she could use that small private door into the house.”
“It was taking a chance,” argued Jeremy.
“All murderers take chances. It’s part of the game. Hook took a chance when he banked on people identifying the man in the evening rig as a guest and not as a servant.”
“What damned fools!” Jeremy cried. “I’d forgotten there are two sets of men who wear open-faced shirts in the evening, and the whole household knew that Hook—the careful, the meticulous Hook—had allowed his stocks to run low on an important night. The very last thing Hook would be likely to do. And in any case he wouldn’t have gone himself, he’d have sent one of the underlings. Or even have telephoned.”
“Yes, it was his candour that almost saved him,” Dennis agreed. “He didn’t attempt to hide his movements. He was a very cool, crafty, intelligent chap, the kind of man it’s worth pitting oneself against.” Again he offered us that deprecatory smile.
“Those bloodstains in the summer-house were a mistake,” Jeremy observed. “I suppose if there weren’t these accidents there’d be more undetected criminals than there are. If the car hadn’t been seen that night, I suppose we’d never have brought it home to them.”
“There’s Mrs. Ross’s Mills of God for you,” Dennis protested. “You must remember that we always play a three-handed game—Fate insists on taking a hand in all these deals, and a lot depends on how she plays it. Generally, you know, in spite of the scepticism of the time and the public, she plays it on the right side. Still, it wasn’t Hook who was the artist in this case. It was Lady Nunn.”
A new thought struck me. “How did she make the appointment with Hi
lary?”
“Got you to drive her into Munford for the purpose. Mrs. Ross said she practically sacked that girl; she had to have some good excuse for getting out of the neighbourhood that afternoon. She managed very well; she couldn’t have allowed for Mrs. Ross coming, but she got round that difficulty by saying openly that she must telephone the house about her failure to find a parlour-maid. And she did telephone the house, and Hook, who was waiting, answered the call. She told him whatever was necessary, and then asked to be put on to Hilary. You’ve noticed, of course, that she has a fairly deep voice at all times, and it wouldn’t be difficult to pitch it a tone lower for the occasion. Besides, no one expects a voice to sound quite normal on the telephone, and these country wires, in particular, distort quite familiar voices. And then Hilary said the voice sounded strange and fierce.”
“And she wrote the letter to Ralph making the appointment that ended in his death?”
“I should say, unquestionably. Peters, by the way, was a most valuable witness. He can’t tell us what the letter contained; I don’t suppose we shall ever know that, but it must have been pretty strong to have had much effect on the fellow. I daresay Hilary offered to elope with him; otherwise, why pitch the meeting so early? But Peters did tell us something supremely important. He said that in the course of his conversation with Baynes, the latter said he’d be thankful when it was time for Feltham to go out, as he’d been indoors the whole blessed day. Well, if that were true, he couldn’t have telephoned Hilary, because there wasn’t an instrument on the premises. That’s why I asked you,” he nodded towards me, “to be as detailed as possible, because it’s in trifles like that that men give themselves away.”
3
Jeremy got up and said he must go. He had a lot of things to see to. He had accepted an invitation to join a party of deep-sea diving—trust Jeremy to get in touch with something unusual and, probably, unprofitable. He stood by the windows for a minute, looking out on the lighted street, where the taxis, little beetles in orange and black, ran to and fro among the moving crowds. It was, I saw, going to be all right about Jeremy, though Hilary was going to marry Dennis, and he had to go back to his wandering life. He lived for the adventure of the moment and the anticipation of to-morrow. A settled life wouldn’t really suit him at all. He had loved Hilary, but she wasn’t the one thing in his life that mattered beyond everything else. Deeper than his feeling for her was the sense of the perpetual challenge of existence and his need to answer it. Already he seemed hardly one of our company. He was reaching out towards the unknown, the inexperienced, the so far unattainable. Rooted in life though he was, he was possessed of no local roots. One place was as much home to him as another. Part of him, indeed, seemed already to have sped away; he himself was already drawing the door of this last experience close behind him, turning his feet towards the future.
He turned to Dennis. “Good luck,” he murmured. “You deserve it. I’ll drink your health on the 19th.”
Dennis, looking shy and becoming loquacious, stammered, “There’s no such thing as deserving good luck, really, you know. Sometimes for s-some reason the heavens open and s-shower gifts on to men. It’s all very s-strange. I haven’t really got accustomed to Hilary preferring me to the r-rest of the world. I daresay I shall, though,” he added philosophically. “I hope you’re going to enjoy things.”
“I expect so,” Jeremy reassured him. “What would you like for a wedding present? A nice little octopus or one of those jolly fish with mouths like dust-chutes? Either would probably act as a Hoover. Next time you see me I shall probably be a travelling showman. It’s more aristocratic than going on the movies these days.”
He went out, and I was left with a bleak sense of loss. It wasn’t Jeremy so much as Eleanor. She was wrapped up with the roots of my life; and I’d seen her lying dead. She had looked like a stranger, and it had almost knocked me off my balance.
Dennis said, “A nice chap, isn’t he? I’d almost sooner have cut out anyone else. But that’s how these things are. You know, I d-didn’t think I had a hope when he appeared in the field. But the gods are more fair-minded than we ever allow. They even up the balances in an amazing way. He’s everything I’ve always wanted to be, and yet Hilary d-doesn’t want to marry him. It’s very strange.”
But as I came out into the brilliance, the mystery and the enchantment of the London night, leaving Dennis standing at his window, it didn’t seem to me so strange after all.
Horseshoes for Luck
“Luck?” said the stranger on my left. “Tell that to the Marines. There’s no such thing. It’s nothing but superstition, and any sensible man will tell you the same. Look at these people that won’t see the new moon through glass, throw salt over their left shoulder, won’t walk under a ladder or sit down thirteen at table—are they any luckier than anyone else? You bet they aren’t. I had a pal once, full of ideas about one thing being lucky and something else being fatal. He bought a pub., a free house it was, and he called it the ‘Three Horseshoes.’ Full of what he was going to do with it, make it into a regular hotel, with a garage and a bowling green. Bound to be lucky with a name like that, he thought. But the first week some loafer smashed up the bar, and the second week his wife skipped off with a commercial traveller, who hadn’t even paid his account, and the week after that the barmaid helped herself to the till.”
“He should ha’ nailed three horseshoes over the door,” said someone else. “You got to do these things right.”
“That wouldn’t ha’ made a scrap of difference,” said my companion scornfully. “There’s no such thing as luck. What do you say?” and he turned expectantly to Inspector Field, who sat close by.
Field was ready for him. We used to discuss sometimes whether any man could have worked so many apposite cases as he seemed to have done, but if he hadn’t, then he was the best novelist lost to the world since Edgar Wallace.
“Anyone can have horseshoes for me,” he said promptly. “They’re like that other superstition, that a man that’s a gambler must be a good sportsman. It doesn’t follow. Ever heard of Cheesehampton?”
Two or three men nodded. “They’ve got some very fine stables down there.”
“It’s because of those very stables I ever went down there. It was a hotbed of racing folk. The time I was there was just before Goodwood, and I was there because one racing man wasn’t quite the sportsman you might expect.
“The day before I started we’d heard from the local police that the people at Cheesehampton were being bothered with anonymous letters. You keep getting outbreaks in various parts of the country and sometimes they’re dangerous and sometimes not. Mostly they’re the work of lunatics. All sorts of quite ridiculous people were getting them, people who had no more reason to fear the police than an archangel. It wasn’t so much that the letters constituted blackmail—mostly they were too silly for that—but some folk were getting upset and it was felt generally that the thing should be stopped. Whoever was responsible didn’t ask for money: he’d put his meaning something like this:
You think no one knows what happened at Brighton on the 4th June last. But I do. Beware.
It was like a story in a kids’ magazine, but there must have been some truth in some of the suggestions, because people were jumpy. Even people who hadn’t had letters were getting that way. Guilty conscience, I suppose. Quite often, of course, the man who got the letter didn’t pay any attention; sometimes he thought it was a maniac, because what the letter contained meant nothing at all. But there were others, as I’ve said, who took it more seriously.
“Well, this had been going on for some time when the writer overstepped his mark. There was a big man there called Bayliss, a rabid racegoer with his own stables. Apart from horses he really hadn’t any life at all. He wasn’t married, never opened a book, never heard a note of music. It was horses with him all the time. I’d been at Cheesehampton only a few hours when he came i
n waving one of these silly sheets, in a state of great agitation.
“‘Look here,’ he shouted, ‘I’ll tell you who this fellow is. Read this.’
“So I read it. It was the usual thing, written on the same kind of paper in the same obviously faked hand. It said:
If you do not withdraw Bluebeard from the race for the——Cup, the whole world shall hear the truth about A.
“‘Who’s A.?’ I said, and he told me Alcock, his jockey, who was going to ride Bluebeard for the Cup.
“‘What’s this chap talking about?’ I went on, and Bayliss looked murder and said: ‘About a year ago I had a couple of horses running in a big race, and biggish odds on both. I backed one heavily myself, and wouldn’t say anything definite about the other. She was a mare and very temperamental, particularly in wet weather, as mares often are. That was a drenching summer, and though she could make a very good pace if conditions suited her, she was no use unless she was pleased. Alcock was up that day, and if anyone could have coaxed a spurt out of her he was the man, but she was sulky, and even he could do nothing. A neighbour of mine, another racing man called Grey, whose property marches with mine, had a lot of money on her; he’d seen Alcock exercising her and knew she could make a fine pace. Of course, I didn’t tell him not to put money on her—what man would? Anyway, I’m superstitious enough to believe that if you start warning people against your horse it’ll get the inevitable reaction. The result was that Grey backed her heavily and lost a packet; afterwards he came round breathing death and swore that Alcock had pulled the beast. It was so vilely untrue that I was tempted to take action. I told him, anyhow, he could go to the stewards, but naturally he wasn’t going to chance being run in for libel, and the damages would have been pretty heavy. I’m well-known round here and so is Alcock, and Grey hadn’t a leg to stand on, and knew it. Still, he did what he could by dropping hints here and there, nothing definite enough to take up, but damned unpleasant for me, and galling as hell for Alcock. Fortunately, from my point of view, he’s not a very popular chap, and no one paid much attention. But what I am afraid of is that if the yarn goes round often enough he may shake Alcock’s confidence. The boy’s got nothing to fear, actually, but if he gets the notion that anyone believes this ridiculous yarn it’ll shake him to pieces, and he’ll be no use to me or anyone else. And Grey knows that. Naturally, I’m inclined to back my own stable, but I’m not the only man hereabouts that knows that Bluebeard, with Alcock up, will sweep the field next week.’
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