At the police station Witcombe had asked for time to think things over and at first had said he would like to see a solicitor. This was not easy to manage on Bank Holiday evening, and before Rousdon had got hold of one Witcombe had said that “if they were not accusing him of anything, but merely asking him for information,” he didn’t want legal advice. He was completely innocent, he maintained, and quite ready to tell anything he knew, but he must have time to think things out and remember the details.
First of all he said that the piece of paper bearing Sir Osmond’s notes had fallen out of the Tatler as he was reading it and, thinking it was rubbish, he chucked it into the fire. Later he said he’d like to withdraw that and tell the truth. He gradually made a long statement. Sir Osmond, he said, had talked to him on Tuesday evening and told him he was going to make a new will, in which he intended to leave Jennifer a large sum provided she was still unmarried at the time of his death. The old man said that he did this because he had plainly told Jennifer that he wanted her to remain at home and he meant to make it worth her while if she chose to obey his wishes. He also—he hinted—was hoping that Jennifer’s future husband would realize that it was worth his while to wait for her. Sir Osmond suspected, however, that Jenny intended to throw herself into the arms of young Cheriton, and if she did so they would both see, when he was dead, what fools they had been. He was telling Witcombe all this so that Witcombe might drop a few hints to Jenny and also, perhaps, to Cheriton. There was some idea, too, in Sir Osmond’s mind, Witcombe thought, that he might thus be enlisted as Sir Osmond’s ally in looking out for and frustrating any plan for elopement which Jenny and Cheriton might make.
Witcombe declared that he hadn’t said a word about all this to any member of the family. He didn’t think he could influence Jennifer and in any case he had had no opportunity as yet to discuss the matter with her. But at the end of his conversation with Sir Osmond, which took place in the study, the old man left the room first. Witcombe, politely standing aside, looked round at the table where they had been sitting and saw that the sheet of paper with names and figures on it had been left lying there. Under the impulse of curiosity Witcombe pocketed it. Sir Osmond had said nothing about his other legacies and Witcombe couldn’t help wondering how they were planned. He confessed to Rousdon that it was “not quite above-board” to pick up the paper but seemed to think that his declared intention to return it to the study later purged his behaviour of real dishonesty.
He had studied the paper in his own room and had evidently gloated over his possession of information which members of the family had fished for in vain. He had put it away in his pocket book so that he could be ready to take any chance of slipping into the empty study and putting the paper in Sir Osmond’s blotting pad. After the Christmas Day happenings he had forgotten it until he was harassed by Rousdon’s questions. Then, he said, he asked himself what they had against him, and he remembered Sir Osmond’s notes and felt uneasy about them because he had no business to be in possession of them, so decided to destroy them.
“I see now,” he said to Rousdon, “I was very unwise not to hand the paper to you, in case you might know it was missing and be looking for it. But, of course, it’s of no real importance now, because Sir Osmond hadn’t made this will.”
Witcombe’s story was just credible, Rousdon thought. In any case, it didn’t seem likely that he had stolen those notes from the dead man’s pocket. As for the gloves, Rousdon agreed that they were not a very good piece of evidence. Witcombe said he had worn them to church on Christmas Day and had put them away in a drawer in his room; in the front of the drawer, he thought. Anyone could easily take them from there. Witcombe had apologized for the attack on Constable Mere, excusing it by saying he had been thoroughly startled when the man rushed at him, and didn’t see that he was a policeman.
By the time all this had been thrashed out and Witcombe had divulged all that he admitted he knew, it was after midnight. Rousdon offered to send him back to Flaxmere but he was not at all keen to return and so had remained at the police station as a voluntary guest. He was sleeping what Rousdon regarded with some doubt as the sleep of the just when Rousdon looked in this morning, but would be sent back later in a police car.
The most important point in all this was Witcombe’s statement that Sir Osmond had not executed the new will. Giving Rousdon the facts about the will, I pointed out that since Witcombe knew the state of affairs he could have no motive, either alone or in collaboration with Carol or even Jennifer, for murdering Sir Osmond. In fact, if he hoped to share either Jennifer’s inheritance or Carol’s he had every motive for keeping the old man alive.
Rousdon studied my notes of the provisions of the will and the proposed revision.
“Strikes me that Lady Evershot would be the person most likely to want to prevent that new will being made,” he suggested. “Any possibility that Witcombe told her what her father meant to do?”
I thought it most improbable, though I still wasn’t satisfied that Dittie had neither knowledge nor suspicion about the identity of the murderer.
Rousdon now told me the report of the finger-print expert. Jennifer’s finger-prints were on the pistol, all over it, on the muzzle as well as the butt, but not on the trigger. There were no other prints on it at all. That was what I expected, remembering George’s remarks which I heard through the telephone and her own admission that she had touched it.
“But why did she want to smear it all over like that?” Rousdon persisted. “Who did she think she was protecting? Strikes me we ought to look into Mr. Cheriton’s movements more carefully.”
The shutters showed the prints of the maid, Betty Willett, and Dittie had left her mark there too.
“Lady Evershot closed those shutters, I’ve no doubt,” Rousdon said. “What’s more, she either opened the window or tried to shut it. She’s had her fingers on the bottom of the sash, as if she’d tried to pull it down. There were no marks on the upper part, where you’d naturally put your hands in pushing it open, so I should say it was opened by the murderer with those gloves on.”
I asked if there were any sign of Sir David.
“Not a trace. Got a good record from his hair brush, but we can’t match it anywhere.”
So my idea that Sir David had climbed in by the study window out of curiosity was washed out. He would hardly have put on his gloves when he went out casually to cool his head on the drive, and bare-handed he could not have climbed in over the window-sill without leaving some mark.
But Dittie had been trying to protect someone; someone who, she thought, had used that window.
As Rousdon and I sat staring at each other glumly over these problems, there was a tap at the door and in walked Miss Portisham and George’s son, Kit. The child strutted in, very pleased with himself, and yet a little nervous. I couldn’t think for a moment what made him look so absurd. Of course, it was the eyebrows! He had tufts of bushy white hair stuck on to his brows, rather crookedly, one of them taking a satirical list towards his temple.
“I thought it only right,” began Miss Portisham timidly, “to show you this—”
“What the—we’re attending to serious business!” snorted Rousdon, furious at being interrupted by what he took to be a childish game.
“I’ve got Santa Klaus’ eye-brushes!” piped Kit.
“He won’t say where he found them,” Miss Portisham continued plaintively; “but they weren’t in the nursery and he’s been routing about the house. I hope I did right to show you?”
“Where’s the rest of the outfit?” I asked Rousdon. “You must have dropped these when you carried it away.”
Rousdon got very red and looked as if he might burst. He shot out of his chair and charged into the study, where he dialled a telephone call to the police station and I heard him demanding that the blank blank idiot who had carried the Santa Klaus outfit from Flaxmere, to be preserved as “ex
hibit A,” should come to the ’phone. Then he growled out a series of infuriated questions.
“You’ve got them there? Go and fetch them and bring them here—no! not here; to the ’phone; and let the Super tell me if you’ve really got ’em. You know the difference between eye-brows and a beard? Describe them! Now read me the list of the items of the costume originally collected from the drawing-room at Flaxmere. Did you ever see any other eye-brows? No, not growing on anyone’s face, you blankety blank; any others like those you’ve got there, loose ones, lying about here at Flaxmere. You’re dead sure? Hm!” He slammed the ear-piece on to its hook and returned to the library.
Whilst listening to this half of the lively dialogue in the next room, I was questioning Kit about where he had found the eye-brows, but I could get nothing out of the child. He, too, was interested in the telephone conversation and instead of answering me he cocked his head and jigged about from one foot to the other, exclaiming, “D’you hear him? Who’s that man talking to? OO! I wish I could hear the other man!”
Rousdon stumped in, glared at Kit and suggested to him:
“Now, you be a good boy and tell me where you found those things!”
The child’s face crumpled; he stammered, “I w-w-won’t! I w-w-w-won’t!” and began to yell.
Miss Portisham took him on her lap and tried to soothe him. He kicked at her viciously and yelled louder. I advised her to take him back to the nursery and see if the nurse could get anything out of him.
“And you might detach those things from his face and bring them back to us,” Rousdon commanded. They departed.
“That’s the first vestige of the second Santa Klaus costume,” I told Rousdon. “I want two men to search the house thoroughly for the rest of it. If a child can find it, a policeman should be able to.”
“They’ll find it all right, if it’s here,” Rousdon snorted.
I thought that it must be here and probably downstairs. The outfit would be too bulky to be carried about unnoticed, the front staircases could hardly have been reached unobserved by anyone on the evening of the crime and access to the back staircase, which began near the door of the servants’ hall, would be almost as difficult. Rousdon went off to give instructions for the search.
Miss Portisham returned with the eye-brows. “Kit had got hold of some gum they had been using to stick pictures in a scrap-book and stuck them on with that,” she explained. “They weren’t very tight. But really, Kit is a very difficult child. I’m sure I tried my best to get it out of him, but he won’t say a word. You see, I was going upstairs after breakfast and there he was at the back of the hall, prancing about as pleased as Punch. I can’t think where he found them. Really, I did what I thought was best but there’s a terrible commotion upstairs with Kit howling himself into hysterics.”
The library door swung open and in swept Patricia, now Lady Melbury.
“Really, Colonel Halstock, really, when the children are to be put through the fourth dimension or whatever you call it, and terrified, poor little things, out of their lives, really, it is too much! And, Miss Portisham, I think you are taking too much responsibility upon yourself! If you had brought the child to me I could have used my judgment as to how he should be treated. But really, without a word to his mother, to bring the child before strangers who have not the least idea how children should be dealt with, and to give him a shock from which his nervous system may never recover—!”
Poor Miss Portisham shrank; her lips trembled; she looked appealingly at me.
I did my best to mediate, trying to make Patricia see that Kit’s eye-brows might be a very important clue, which it was essential to tell us about at once. I couldn’t explain to her, of course, that once she had got hold of the boy and the eye-brows we could never have been sure whether he had really found them or when or where he had done so. In fact, she might easily have detached them and flung them into the nearest fire and we should have had only Miss Portisham’s word for their existence. I did, however, impress upon Patricia that we must somehow find out where the child discovered those clues. I disguised my opinion that he was a spoilt little brat, howling out of sheer naughtiness, and expressed tender concern for the state of his nerves. Miss Portisham managed to melt away during this difficult conversation.
Before I had got rid of Patricia, Gordon Stickland sailed in, his smooth, pinkish face looking, as usual, as if it had been well polished. He was smiling and pleased with himself.
“Understand, Colonel, that you want to know where Kit unearthed those eye-brushes, as he calls ’em? He found ’em in the cupboard under the stairs, the little beggar! No business to be there, of course, routin’ about in the dust, so he was scared to tell; but I got it out of him.”
“Oh, Gordon!” Patricia reproached him. “Kit has been so dreadfully frightened already; I do hope you haven’t upset him again. He’s so highly strung, you know and I always say that nothing can be so important as the necessity to protect a child’s nervous system; nothing in the world!”
“Now, Patricia, don’t get all het up about him; he’s right as rain; come and see for yourself. I just showed him a new game of hiding and finding and in the middle of it he told me all about the eye-brushes without any trouble. Come along now! That all right, Colonel?”
I thanked him for what he had done and—silently—for removing Lady Melbury. When they had gone off to the nursery, I went in search of Rousdon and together we inspected the cupboard under the stairs. It was a large, dark place, running in under the main flight of stairs and opening into the passage behind the hall. All sorts of oddments were stored there, old motor rugs, golf clubs, baskets, brown paper, hockey sticks, a croquet set. Rousdon called up one of his men who searched the place systematically with an electric torch—the cupboard had no light—but we found no trace of the rest of a Santa Klaus costume. Kit had a little torch of his own, we found, and probably he had selected the big cupboard as a suitable place in which to use it.
Rousdon dismissed the constable to continue the search of the rest of the house and we returned to the library to discuss the problem. The cupboard was obviously an ideal place for anyone to use as a dressing-room if he had to get into a Santa Klaus costume and out of it again without being seen and as near to the hall as possible. The gun room was conveniently close at hand, too. I cursed myself for not having searched the cupboard at the beginning but we had not guessed that there was anything to search for.
“He’s got the stuff away out of the house, that’s certain,” Rousdon grumbled. “That’s to say, if there really was a second outfit. We’d better make quite sure that those eye-brows weren’t in the house beforehand, part of some acting properties.”
We questioned Jennifer and Miss Portisham, and even George, with the idea that he might know of a theatrical property box which had been in the house before he married. They were all sure there had been nothing of the sort, and certainly we found nothing else in the cupboard or elsewhere to justify this idea. George declared bluffly that that sort of thing wasn’t in his line. Jennifer said they had never done much acting except some impromptu charades organized by Philip Cheriton—who was rather a good actor—during the previous Christmas visit of the family. They had no special properties. Miss Portisham confirmed this. She remembered the theatricals last year and was quite sure that no one bought any properties beforehand. “It was because I was quite convinced that those eyebrows did not belong to the house that I brought them to you immediately, Colonel Halstock,” she assured me, rather reproachfully.
“Now how did he get the stuff away?” Rousdon considered. The house had been thoroughly searched by now, without result. “My men have been here all the time and they’ve watched everyone who went in or out. By Jove! That open window! I always thought it was a bit pointless to open that heavy, noisy window just to throw away a key which need not have been thrown away at all. But supposing he wanted to hand the costume out
to an accomplice who was waiting there—Sir David, in fact—who would get rid of it? Where would he get rid of it?”
“And what about the eyebrows? How did they get back to the cupboard—where presumably he originally dressed up?”
“Maybe he hadn’t time to put on the eyebrows, or had forgotten the gum. Or else—yes! Snatching off the things in a hurry he might forget the eyebrows till Sir David was well away. Then he tears them off and skips round to that cupboard and chucks ’em in before he goes back to the hall. Pity he didn’t forget ’em altogether! Now, let’s consider Sir David; he hadn’t much time; he was back in the drawing-room, or at any rate in the house, before the alarm was given.”
“The pool!” I cried. I suppose it was in my mind because of my dream. “It would be a matter of a few minutes to run down the lawn, tie the things up in a bundle and sink them. Or would they float? A stone—there’s the rock garden at the end of the pool—done up in the bundle, would do the trick. That bundle must be near the edge; we can find it.”
For once Rousdon liked my idea. We were neither of us very satisfied with the casting of Sir David for the part of assistant, but it would be odd if there had been someone else hanging about near the study windows, whom Sir David had not seen.
“Seems to me that only another lunatic would take him in as accomplice!” Rousdon commented as he went to give orders for rakes and hoes to be collected from the gardener’s shed, for poles to be bound to their handles to lengthen them, and for his men to start dragging all round the edges of the pool.
Chapter Fifteen
Dittie Explains
by Col. Halstock
The inquest held that Friday morning was a short formal affair at which George gave evidence of identity. The other members of the family, having been assured that no further details would be inquired into, were not present. The proceedings were adjourned to the following week, and Rousdon was able to return to see how his dragging operations were getting on.
The Santa Klaus Murder Page 15