“What brought him to Beaconsfield – is there anything wrong at your bank?”
Rufus saw the young man’s face go red.
“Well – there has been money missing; not very large sums. I have my own opinion, but it isn’t fair to – well, you know.”
He was rather incoherent, and Mr Machfield did not pursue the enquiry.
“I hate the bank anyway – I mean the work. But I had to do something, and when I left Uppingham the governor put me there – in the bank, I mean. Poor dear, he lost his money at Monte Carlo or somewhere – enormous sums. You wouldn’t dream that he was a gambler. I’m not grousing, but it is a little trying sometimes.”
Mr Machfield accompanied him to the door that night and shivered.
“Cold – shouldn’t be surprised if we had snow,” he said.
In point of fact the snow did not come until a week later. It started as rain and became snow in the night, and in the morning people who lived in the country looked out upon a white world: trees that bore a new beauty and hedges that showed their heads above sloping drifts.
2
There was a car coming from the direction of Beaconsfield. The horseman, sitting motionless in the centre of the snowy road, watched the lights grow brighter and brighter. Presently, in the glare of the headlamps, the driver of the car saw a mounted policeman in the centre of the road, saw the lift of his gloved hand, and stopped the machine. It was not difficult to stop, for the wheels were racing on the surface of the road, which had frozen into the worst qualities of glass. And snow was falling on top of this.
“Anything wrong–”
The driver began to shout the question, and then he saw the huddled figure on the ground. It lay limply like a fallen sack; seemed at first glimpse to have nothing of human shape or substance.
The driver jumped out and went ploughing through the frozen snow.
“I just spotted him when I saw you,” said the policeman. “Do you mind turning your car just a little to the right – I want the lamps full on him.”
He swung himself to the ground and went, heavy-footed, to where the man lay.
The second inmate of the car got to the wheel and turned the machine with some difficulty so that the light blazed on the dreadful thing. The policeman’s horse strayed to the side of the car and thrust in his nodding head – he alone was unconcerned.
Taking his bridle with a shaking hand, the second man stepped out of the car and joined the other two.
“It is old Wentford,” said the policeman.
“Wentford…good God!”
The first of the two motorists fell on his knees by the side of the body and peered down into the grinning face.
Old Benny Wentford!
“Good God!” he said again.
He was a middle-aged lawyer, unused to such a horror. Nothing more terrible had disturbed the smooth flow of his life than an occasional quarrel with the secretary of his golf club. Now here was death, violent and hideous – a dead man on a snowy road…a man who had telephoned to him two hours before, begging him to leave a party and come to him, though the snow had begun to fall all over again.
“You know Mr Wentford – he has told me about you.”
“Yes, I know him. I’ve often called at his house – in fact, I called there tonight but it was shut up. He made arrangements with the Chief Constable that I should call…h’m!”
The policeman stood over the body, his hands on his hips.
“You stay here – I’ll go and ’phone the station,” he said.
He hoisted himself into the saddle.
“Er…don’t you think we’d better go?” Mr Enward, the lawyer, asked nervously. He had no desire to be left alone in the night with a battered corpse and a clerk whose trembling was almost audible.
“You couldn’t turn your car,” said the policeman – which was true, for the lane was very narrow.
They heard the jingle and thud of his horse’s canter and presently they heard it no more.
“Is he dead, Mr Enward?” The young man’s voice was hollow.
“Yes…I think so…the policeman said so.”
“Oughtn’t we to make sure? He may only be…injured?”
Mr Enward had seen the face now in the shadow of an uplifted shoulder. He did not wish to see it again.
“Better leave him alone till a doctor comes…it is no use interfering in these things. Wentford…good God!”
“He’s always been a little bit eccentric, hasn’t he?” The clerk was young, and, curiosity being the tonic of youth, he had recovered some of his courage. “Living alone in that tiny cottage with all his money. I was bicycling past it on Sunday – a concrete box: that is what my young lady called it. With all his money–”
“He is dead, Henry,” said Mr Enward severely, “and a dead person has no property. I don’t think it quite – um – seemly to talk of him in – um – his presence.”
He felt the occasion called for an emotional display of some kind. He had never grown emotional over clients; least of all could this tetchy old man inspire such. A few words of prayer perhaps would not be out of place. But Mr Enward was a churchwarden of a highly respectable church and for forty years had had his praying done for him. If he had been a dissenter…but he was not. He wished he had a prayer book.
“He’s a long time gone.”
The policeman could not have been more than two hundred yards away, but it seemed a very long time since he had left.
“Has he any heirs?” asked the clerk professionally.
Mr Enward did not answer. Instead, he suggested that the lights of the car should be dimmed. They revealed this Thing too plainly. Henry went back and dimmed the lights. It became terribly dark when the lights were lowered, and eyesight played curious tricks: it seemed that the bundle moved. Mr Enward had a feeling that the grinning face was lifting to leer slyly at him over the humped shoulder.
“Put on the lights again, Henry,” the lawyer’s voice quavered. “I can’t see what I am doing.”
He was doing nothing; on the other hand, he had a creepy feeling that the Thing was behaving oddly. Yet it lay very still, just as it had lain all the time.
“He must have been murdered. I wonder where they went to?” asked Henry hollowly, and a cold shiver vibrated down Mr Enward’s spine.
Murdered! Of course he was murdered. There was blood on the snow, and the murderers were…
He glanced backward nervously and almost screamed. A man stood in the shadowy space behind the car: the light of the lamps reflected by the snow just revealed him.
“Who…who are you, please?” croaked the lawyer.
He added “please” because there was no sense in being rough with a man who might be a murderer.
The figure moved into the light. He was slightly bent and even more middle-aged than Mr Enward. He wore a flat-topped felt hat, a long ulster and large, shapeless gloves. About his neck was an enormous yellow scarf, and Mr Enward noticed, in a numb, mechanical way, that his shoes were large and square-toed and that he carried a tightly furled umbrella on his arm though the snow was falling heavily.
“I’m afraid my car has broken down a mile up the road.”
His voice was gentle and apologetic; obviously he had not seen the bundle. In his agitation Mr Enward had stepped into the light of the lamps and his black shadow sprawled across the deeper shadow.
“Am I wrong in thinking that you are in the same predicament?” asked the newcomer. “I was unprepared for the – er – condition of the road. It is lamentable that one should have overlooked this possibility.”
“Did you pass the policeman?” asked Mr Enward. Whoever this stranger was, whatever might be his character and disposition, it was right and fair that he should know there was a policeman in the vicinity.
“Policeman?” The square-hatted man was surprised. “No, I passed no policeman. At my rate of progress it was very difficult to pass anything–”
“Going towards you…on horseback…a mounted policeman,” said Mr Enward rapidly. “He said that he would be back soon. My name is Enward – solicitor – Enward, Caterham and Enward.”
He felt it was a moment for confidence.
“Delighted!” murmured the other. “We’ve met before. My name – er – is Reeder – R, double E, D, E, R.”
Mr Enward took a step forward.
“Not the detective? I thought I’d seen you…look!”
He stepped out of the light and the heap on the ground emerged from shadow. The lawyer made a dramatic gesture. Mr Reeder came forward slowly.
He stooped over the dead man, took an electric torch from his pocket and shone it steadily on the face. For a long time he looked and studied. His melancholy face showed no evidence that he was sickened or pained.
“H’m!” he said, and got up, dusting the snow from his knee. He fumbled in the recesses of his overcoat, produced a pair of eyeglasses, set them crudely on his nose and surveyed the lawyer over their top.
“Very – um – extraordinary. I was on my way to see him.”
Enward stared.
“You were on your way? So was I! Did you know him?”
Mr Reeder considered this question.
“I – er – didn’t – er – know him. No, I had never met him.”
The lawyer felt that his own presence needed some explanation. “This is my clerk, Mr Henry Green.”
Mr Reeder bowed slightly.
“What happened was this…”
He gave a very detailed and graphic description, which began with the recounting of what he had said when the telephone call came through to him at Beaconsfield, and how he was dressed, and what his wife had said when she went to find his boots (her first husband had died through an ill-judged excursion into the night air on as foolish a journey), and how much trouble he had had in starting the car, and how long he had had to wait for Henry.
Mr Reeder gave the impression that he was not listening. Once he walked out of the blinding light and peered back the way the policeman had gone; once he went over to the body and looked at it again; but most of the time he was wandering down the lane, searching the ground with his hand-lamp, with Mr Enward following at his heels lest any of the narrative be lost.
“Is he dead… I suppose so?” suggested the lawyer.
“I – er – have never seen anybody – er – deader,” said Mr Reeder gently. “I should say, with all reverence and respect, that he was – er – extraordinarily dead.”
He looked at his watch.
“At nine-fifteen you met the policeman? He had just discovered the body? It is now nine thirty-five. How did you know that it was nine-fifteen?”
“I heard the church clock at Woburn Green strike the quarter.”
Mr Enward conveyed the impression that the clock struck exclusively for him. Henry halved the glory: he also had heard the clock.
“At Woburn Green – you heard the clock? H’m…nine-fifteen!”
The snow was falling thickly now. It fell on the heap and lay in the little folds and creases of his clothes.
“He must have lived somewhere about here?”
Mr Reeder asked the question with great deference.
“My directions were that his house lay off the main road…you would hardly call this a main road…fifty yards beyond a notice-board advertising land for sale – desirable building land.”
Mr Enward pointed to the darkness.
“Just there – the notice-board. Curiously enough, I am the – er – solicitor for the vendor.”
His natural inclination was to emphasize the desirability of the land, but he thought it was hardly the moment. He returned to the question of Mr Wentford’s house.
“I’ve only been inside the place once – two years ago, wasn’t it, Henry?”
“A year and nine months,” said Henry exactly.
His feet were cold, his spine chilled. He felt sick.
“You cannot see it from the lane,” Mr Enward continued. “Rather a small, one-storey cottage. He had it specially built for him apparently. It is not exactly…a palace.”
“Dear me!” said Mr Reeder, as though this were the most striking news he had heard that evening. “In a house he built himself! I suppose he has, or had, a telephone?”
“He telephoned to me,” said Mr Enward; “therefore he must have a telephone.”
Mr Reeder frowned as though he were trying to pick holes in the logic of this statement.
“I will go along and see if it is possible to get through to the police,” he suggested.
“The police have already been notified,” said the lawyer hastily. “I think we all ought to stay here together till somebody arrives.”
The man in the square hat, now absurdly covered with snow, shook his head. He pointed.
“Woburn Green is there. Why not go and arouse the – um – local constabulary?”
That idea had not occurred to the lawyer. His instinct urged him to return the way he had come and regain touch with realities in his own prosaic parlour.
“But do you think…” he blinked down at the body. “I mean, it’s hardly an act of humanity to leave him–”
“He feels nothing. He is probably in heaven,” said Mr Reeder, and added: “Probably. Anyway, the police will know exactly where they can find him.”
There was a sudden screech from Henry. He was holding out his hand in the light of the lamp.
“Look – blood!” he screamed.
There was blood on his hand certainly. “Blood – I didn’t touch him! You know that, Mr Enward – I ain’t been anear him!”
Alas for our excellent system of secondary education! Henry was reverting to the illiterate stock whence he sprang.
“Not near him I ain’t been – blood!”
“Don’t squeak, please.” Mr Reeder was firm. “What have you touched?”
“Nothing – I only touched myself.”
“Then you have touched nothing,” said Mr Reeder with unusual acidity. “Let me look.”
The rays of his lamp travelled over the shivering clerk.
“It is on your sleeve – h’m!”
Mr Enward stared. There was a red, moist patch of something on Henry’s sleeve.
“You had better go on to the police station,” said Mr Reeder. “I will come and see you in the morning.”
3
Mr Enward climbed into the driver’s seat gratefully, keeping some distance between himself and his shivering clerk. The car was on a declivity and would start without trouble. He turned the wheels straight and took off the brake. The machine skidded and slithered forward, and presently Mr Reeder, following in its wake, heard the sound of the running engine.
His lamp showed him the notice board in the field, and fifty yards beyond he came to a path so narrow that two men could not walk abreast. It ran off from the road at right angles, and up this he turned, progressing with great difficulty, for he had heavy nails in his shoes. At last he saw a small garden gate on his right, set between two unkempt hedges. The gate was open, and this methodical man stopped to examine it by the light of his lamp.
He expected to find blood and found it: just a smear. No bloodstains on the ground, but then the snow would have obliterated those. It had not obliterated the print of footmarks going up the winding path. They were rather small, and he thought they were recently made. He kept his light upon them until they led him into view of the squat house with its narrow windows and doorways. As he turned he saw a light gleam between curtains. He had a feeling that somebody was looking out at him. In another moment the light had
vanished. But there was somebody in the house.
The footsteps led up to the door. Here he paused and knocked. There was no answer, and he knocked again more loudly. The chill wind sent the snowflakes swirling about him. Mr Reeder, who had a secret sense of humour, smiled. In the remote days of his youth his favourite Christmas card was one which showed a sparkling Father Christmas knocking at the door of a wayside cottage. He pictured himself as a felt-hatted Father Christmas, and the whimsical fancy slightly pleased him.
He knocked a third time and listened, then, when no answer came, he stepped back and walked to the room where he had seen the light and tried to peer between the curtains. He thought he heard a sound – a thud – but it was not in the house. It may have been the wind. He looked round and listened, but the thud was not repeated, and he returned to his ineffectual starings.
There was no sign of a fire. He came back to knock for the fourth time, then tried the other side of the building, and here he made a discovery. A narrow casement window, deeply recessed and made of iron, was swaying to and fro in the wind, and beneath the window was a double set of footmarks, one coming and one going. They went away in the direction of the lane.
He came back to the door, and stood debating with himself what steps he should take. He had seen in the darkness two small white squares at the top of the door, and had thought they were little panes of toughened glass such as one sees in the tops of such doors. But, probably, in a gust of wind, one of them became detached and fell at his feet. He stooped and picked it up: it was a playing card – the ace of diamonds. He put his lamp on the second: it was the ace of hearts. They had both apparently been fastened side by side to the door with pins – black pins. Perhaps the owner of the house had put them there. Possibly they had some significance, fulfilled the function of mascots.
No answer came to his knocking, and Mr Reeder heaved a deep sigh. He hated climbing; he hated more squeezing through narrow windows into unknown places; more especially as there was probably somebody inside who would treat him rudely. Or they may have gone. The footprints, he found, were fresh; they were scarcely obliterated, though the snow was falling heavily. Perhaps the house was empty, and its inmate, whose light he had seen, had got away whilst he was knocking at the door. He would not have heard him jump from the window, the snow was too soft. Unless that thud he had heard –
Red Aces Page 2