The Mystery at Underwood House

by Clara Benson

  John Haynes

  Motive: did not want to sell house. Deaths of his sisters and brother made it easier for him to keep same.

  Opportunity: ? not known in case of P and E (was he really in his study when W fell?).

  Ursula Haynes

  Motive: claims to have none, although she inherits E’s money.

  Opportunity: none in case of W, as was in drawing-room when she fell.

  Robin Haynes

  Motive: see above. Financial scandal? (see Inspector J).

  Opportunity: claims to have arrived on scene of W’s fall after DH.

  Susan Dennison

  Motive: none known (did she want her mother out of the way so she could come to an arrangement with John about selling Underwood House?).

  Opportunity: only person known to have been in the right place to kill W.

  Donald Haynes

  Motive: ?

  Opportunity: according to Robin, was first on the scene when W died.

  Mr Faulkner

  Motive: money, and lots of it! Inherits five thousand pounds outright from each of the three.

  Opportunity: none, apparently. Has an alibi for each occasion (see Inspector J to be sure).

  1) Find out more about what everyone was doing when P and E died. Furthermore:

  - How was the soup served on the night of P’s death? Did they have coffee?

  - Who can swim?

  2) Speak to Donald and Susan.

  3) Look at the will.

  Angela regarded her work mournfully.

  ‘Is this really the sum of all I have discovered in the past few days?’ she said to herself. ‘For shame, Angela! You must do better than that. Ah yes, I almost forgot.’

  She picked up the pencil and appended a note in large letters: ‘WHO IS THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH?’

  ‘And perhaps I should also add, “Why did John say he didn’t recognize it?”’ she said.

  She stood up and crossed the room to where she had left her handbag. The picture had seemed familiar to her the first time she looked at it. Perhaps it would come to her now. She opened the bag and felt inside, but could not find the photograph. She frowned and pulled everything out, then straightened up in puzzlement and summoned Marthe.

  ‘Marthe, did you find a photograph of a woman in my coat pocket?’ she asked.

  ‘But no, madame,’ replied Marthe. ‘There were a number of things that—as I have told you before many times—one does not expect a lady à la mode to carry in her pockets, such as a pen-knife and some string and a quantity of liquorice. But no, there was no photograph.’

  Suitably chastened, Angela dismissed the girl and rifled through her things again without success. The picture had gone.

  ‘How very odd,’ she said. ‘But how—’

  She stopped as she thought back to her adventure on Northumberland Avenue that afternoon. Had the picture fallen out of her handbag when it was stolen, or had it been taken intentionally? But why should anybody want to steal an old photograph when there was plenty of money in the bag for the taking, as well as a gold cigarette-case? Now for the first time it occurred to her that perhaps she had not, after all, been the victim of a casual thief, but had in fact been deliberately attacked.

  ‘Who was it, then? And why did he do it?’ she said to herself. ‘Was it the owner of the picture? Did he merely wish to retrieve it by any means necessary, or did he also intend to do me harm? Why, had that motor-van stopped even one second later I could have been badly hurt or even killed.’

  She shivered as she recalled the brief thrill of terror she had experienced as the vehicle bore down upon her. Until that moment she had had no intention of calling the police, but now she felt in need of advice. She suddenly noticed the soreness in her grazed hands and knees and winced. It was almost as though they were tingling in agreement.

  ‘Very well then,’ she said, and lifted the telephone-receiver, then paused and smiled wryly. ‘But I shan’t mention it to Marthe.’

  Inspector Jameson was away on a case, Scotland Yard informed her, but was expected back the next day. Mrs. Marchmont left a message, then returned to her paper and added one or two notes.

  ‘An early dinner and then bed, I think,’ she said, and was as good as her word.

  The next morning she summoned her chauffeur, William, and regarded him for a moment with her head on one side.

  ‘I have a task for you, William, which I hope you will accept, even though it is out of the way of your normal duties,’ she said.

  William pricked up his ears with interest.

  ‘You know I’m always happy to help, ma’am,’ he said in his customary drawl. ‘Just say the word and I’ll do it.’

  ‘Wait until you hear what it is before you give your promise. I have been engaged by a friend to discover whether or not three members of her husband’s family were murdered, and I should like your assistance in the inquiry.’

  William raised his eyebrows in surprise, then broke out in a wide smile that gave his freckled face the look of a rosy sun.

  ‘Murder, eh? Why, I should be mighty pleased to do anything I can in the investigation.’

  ‘Very good. I think it only fair to warn you beforehand, however, that there may be danger involved. You will, of course, have heard that I myself was attacked yesterday afternoon, although no harm came of it, thankfully. Now, the attack may or it may not be connected to this case, but I should like you to be on your guard at any rate.’

  William’s smile grew even wider.

  ‘Danger, you say? Take me to it!’ was all he said.

  Angela could not help laughing at his carefree air.

  ‘I see you would rather put yourself in peril than not,’ she said. ‘But I am afraid the first thing I want you to do is quite ordinary. I am going down to Underwood House this morning, and you shall come with me. While we are there, I should like you to insinuate yourself with the servants and find out one or two things. Can you do that, do you think?’

  ‘Can I!’ the young man exclaimed. ‘You just watch me.’

  Angela told him what she wanted, and he listened carefully and nodded.

  ‘That ought to be easy enough,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I am sure you will do an admirable job of exerting your charms on the maids, at the very least,’ Angela smiled. ‘I expect their heads will be quite turned by your American accent.’

  ‘We-ell, that’s a mighty fine compliment you just paid me, ma’am,’ said William, his drawl even more pronounced than usual.

  ‘Oh, and you need not admit to them that, as a matter of fact, you were born in Peckham,’ said Angela slyly, as he prepared to leave the room.

  William’s smile grew so wide that his face looked as though it were about to split in two, and a touch of pink tinged his cheeks.

  ELEVEN

  The weather was holding nicely and Mrs. Marchmont, ensconced comfortably in the back seat of the Bentley, admired Beningfleet’s high street as they passed through it, its higgledy-piggledy houses and shops seeming to doze gently in the sunshine as the villagers went about their daily business. William was in great high spirits, and she listened to his amusing anecdotes with half an ear as she turned various thoughts over idly in her mind.

  She was brought up short when she caught sight of the Hayneses’ solicitor, Mr. Faulkner, striding purposefully in the direction of his office, which was situated in one of the more attractive buildings not far from the square.

  ‘Stop!’ she said. ‘I want to get out.’

  William duly obliged.

  ‘Wait for me here,’ she said, and hurried after Mr. Faulkner.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs. Marchmont,’ said the solicitor genially, turning as she hailed him. ‘A fine day today, I’m sure you’ll agree. And how goes your little investigation?’

  ‘Rather inconclusively, I’m afraid,’ replied Angela. ‘I was just on my way to call on Louisa when I saw you and was hoping you could spare me a few minutes. I wanted to take a look at Philip
Haynes’s will, as you did not have your keys with you last time I visited.’

  ‘Ah, the will. I must confess I’d forgotten about it, but—oh! Yes, of course, that reminds me of something I meant to tell you the last time we spoke, which had completely slipped my mind. The inevitable consequence of age, I fear. It did not seem important at the time—and indeed I may have been guilty of not taking it very seriously when she told me about it, but it has since occurred to me that it may possibly have a bearing on this case.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Angela, her curiosity aroused.

  ‘Yes. Shall we sit here? It is such a beautiful morning it seems a shame to cower in my stuffy old office as though we were afraid of a little sunshine.’

  He indicated a bench placed in such a position as to afford weary walkers a restful view of the Downs beyond the edge of the little town. They sat. Angela regarded him expectantly but for a few moments he appeared to have forgotten his purpose as he stroked his chin and his features gradually gathered into a perplexed frown. At length he seemed to come to himself and turned to Angela with a wry smile.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘But I wonder whether I mayn’t after all be making a mistake in telling you this, since her story was vague in the extreme and is, when all is said and done, quite unlikely to bear any relation at all to the business at hand. I should hate to set you off on a wild-goose chase.’

  Angela laughed.

  ‘If you were hoping to dampen my curiosity with that I’m afraid you have failed miserably,’ she said. ‘Now I am simply dying to hear it. Don’t worry about sending me off on a false scent—I have no intention of taking any action precipitately.’

  The lawyer’s eyes twinkled in acknowledgment.

  ‘Yes, I ought to have remembered that the surest way to arouse a lady’s interest is to tell her that there is nothing to tell,’ he said. ‘Very well, then, but remember that there may be nothing in it. The person to whom I am referring is Winifred Dennison. Some time ago she came to me with a confused tale in which, in short, she accused a person or persons whom she was not willing to name of having cheated her out of a large sum of money.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Angela.

  ‘I believe I mentioned to you before, and probably you have heard it from others, that Winifred was an extremely unworldly woman. She was the type to be taken in by any hard-luck story one might care to tell her, and as a result she was frequently the object of charlatans, swindlers and other persons of questionable character claiming to represent good causes of various kinds. When she came to me with this tale, therefore, I confess I paid little attention to it, as I assumed that she had once again been “stung”, as the vulgar phrase has it, by a petty confidence-man with a plausible story. It was not until after she died and it was discovered that all her money had gone that I began to think that perhaps there was something in it.’

  ‘Do you remember what she said, exactly? When was it that she came to you?’

  ‘It must have been about a year ago—not long before she died, as a matter of fact. It was late in the afternoon and I was about to go home which, I am ashamed to say, may have influenced my actions—or rather lack of them. She drifted into my office in the peculiar way she had, scattering scarves and hat-pins as she went, and said she wanted to consult me about a private matter. I had just begun to hint that perhaps a more suitable time could be found in which we could converse at our leisure, when she launched suddenly into a highly confused account of a fast-growing investment fund into which somebody—she would not say who—had persuaded her to put a large sum of money. The fund was meant to be as safe as houses, and she had been told that she could withdraw her money at any time. She had hoped to increase her capital significantly, as there were a number of charitable concerns which required her assistance, and she had initially agreed to leave the money with this person for a period of one year on the promise of a return of something in the region of thirty per cent.’

  Angela pursed her lips as though to whistle but stopped herself just in time.

  ‘Good gracious!’ she said instead.

  ‘Quite,’ said Mr. Faulkner. ‘At all events, it so happened that one of her projects found itself in need of funds rather sooner than she had expected, and so she asked to withdraw some of the money before the year was up. This, it seems, was not at all to the liking of her mysterious correspondent, who at first tried to dissuade her from doing so, then attempted to convince her that she was under a legal obligation to keep the money on deposit. According to her story, she stood firm—most unlike her, I should say—and pointed out that as she had not signed any agreement, she was perfectly entitled to have her money back whenever she chose.’

  ‘She hadn’t signed anything!’ exclaimed Mrs. Marchmont.

  ‘It appears not. And so, after some further prevarication, Winifred’s unnamed adviser finally agreed to pay her the sum she had requested. She waited a month, but the funds were not forthcoming and, what was worse, her correspondent appeared to have begun to avoid her, since her letters went unanswered and he could not be contacted by telephone, although she tried on several occasions. It was at this point that she came to consult me but, as I said, I did not give the matter the attention that perhaps it deserved. On the contrary,’ he went on, ‘I am ashamed to say that I made excuses for this person, and encouraged her to wait another week or two. A fortnight later, she was dead.’

  ‘And you have no idea who the person was?’

  ‘None at all. It does strike me, however, that her reluctance to give his name is suggestive.’

  ‘Yes, it does seem to indicate that whoever it was must have been a friend or member of the family. Why refuse to give his name, otherwise?’

  Mr. Faulkner inclined his head.

  ‘That would appear to be a rational deduction,’ he said. ‘But to go any further than that would be indulging in mere speculation.’

  Angela was just about to ask again to see the will when the lawyer, who had been gazing past her down the street, suddenly started, glanced at his watch and gave an exclamation.

  ‘Dear me! I have been so caught up with the fine morning and the charming company that I had quite forgotten I have an appointment. I am five minutes late already, and you must know I make it quite a rule never to keep a client waiting.’

  He rose to his feet, as did Angela.

  ‘I’m afraid I must rush,’ he said. ‘You will forgive me, won’t you? But of course you will. Think of me trapped among my musty old papers while you enjoy the beauty of this delightful morning.’ He waved an expansive hand and indicated the Downs in the distance. ‘Indeed, if you have time, I highly recommend you take a trip to Beningsdown Hill. There is a very fine view from the top.’

  ‘I should love to. But when can I see Philip’s will?’

  ‘Another time, another time,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I shall be only too delighted—’ he bowed and was off.

  Angela returned thoughtfully to the Bentley, where William was polishing the paint-work in a desultory fashion. He stood to attention when he saw her.

  ‘William,’ she said, ‘you saw the gentleman I was just talking to, I believe?’

  ‘Yes ma’am,’ he replied.

  ‘Did you see the woman who went into his office a few minutes before him?’

  ‘I guess I did. Straight as a ramrod, looked like a fury. That the one you mean?’

  Angela smiled at the apt description.

  ‘That’s the one,’ she said. ‘I want you to watch the building until she comes out, and if the solicitor comes out with her I’d like you to see if you can hear what they say. You don’t object to eavesdropping?’

  ‘Eavesdropping? Why, ma’am, how can it be eavesdropping if I chance to overhear a conversation between two people in a public street?’

  ‘My thoughts precisely,’ said Angela. ‘It’s a shot in the dark and I don’t suppose it will come to anything, but you may as well try. In the meantime, I shall walk the rest of the way to Underwood Hou
se. You follow after.’

  She set off at a brisk pace, smiling faintly. It was curious, she thought. There was no reason why Ursula Haynes should not visit Mr. Faulkner, but the lawyer had been so anxious to prevent her from seeing it, directing her attention towards the beauties of the countryside, that her suspicions had been immediately raised. There might be nothing in it, but she resolved to keep an eye on them in future.

  TWELVE

  Underwood House looked almost handsome in the sunshine, its grey frontage, which on cloudy days had a dark, unwelcoming aspect, seeming to shake off its customary gloom and smile kindly upon all comers.

  Two or three men bearing ladders and gardening tools were crossing the lawn towards the house as Mrs. Marchmont approached, and she watched as they stopped below the window that she had pointed out to John Haynes as being half-covered by ivy. One of the men was wrinkled and stooped, and he touched his hat politely as she drew near.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Angela. ‘I see you are going to tackle that ivy.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ replied the old fellow. ‘Shot away when my back was turned, she did. Got to keep an eye on them creepers, you have, or they’ll squirm their way into every crack and cranny and before you know it, the whole house’ll come down. Dangerous things, they are.’

  ‘You sound as though you weren’t fond of them.’

  The old man sensed a sympathetic soul.

  ‘No I’m not, and never will be,’ he said. ‘Nasty, sneaking things they are, and ivy most of all. A rose, now, or a nice box ’edge—why, you know where you stand with them. Show ’em who’s the master and they’ll do your bidding. But ivy’ll slither up behind you and strangle you dead before you know it. You can’t beat her. You can only keep her down.’