Serpents in Paradise

by Martin Edwards

  “Mercy!” Mrs. Langley’s voice was faint.

  “Besides that, the first four Georges and the fourth William were Kings of Hanover; so until Queen Victoria came along, and could not inherit Hanover because she was a female, the Arms of the House of Brunswick were jammed in along with our own. In fact, the tabard of the Garter King of Arms in the year when he proclaimed the peace with the United States of America was a horrible mess of the leopards of England, the lion of Scotland, the harp of Ireland, the lilies of France, together with a few more lions, and a white horse, and some hearts, as worn in Hanover. It was a fairly tight fit for one shield, but they managed it somehow—and you can see that the Arms on this tabard of yours are not nearly such a bad dream as that. It is a Victorian tabard—a nice, gentlemanly coat, such as no well-dressed herald should be without.”

  Langley thumped the table. “Well, I intend to be without it, anyway, if I can get my money back.”

  “We can but try,” Trent said. “It may be possible. But the reason why I asked to be allowed to see this thing, Mr. Langley, was that I thought I might be able to save you some unpleasantness. You see, if you went home with your treasure, and showed it to people, and talked about its history, and it was mentioned in the newspapers, and then somebody got inquiring into its authenticity, and found out what I have been telling you, and made it public—well, it wouldn’t be very nice for you.”

  Langley flushed again, and a significant glance passed between him and his wife.

  “You’re damn right, it wouldn’t,” he said. “And I know the name of the buzzard who would do that to me, too, as soon as I had gone the limit in making a monkey of myself. Why, I would lose the money twenty times over, and then a bundle, rather than have that happen to me. I am grateful to you, Mr. Trent—I am indeed. I’ll say frankly that at home we aim to be looked up to socially, and we judged that we would certainly figure if we brought this doggoned thing back and had it talked about. Gosh! When I think—but never mind that now. The thing is to go right back to that old crook and make him squeal. I’ll have my money out of him, if I have to use a can-opener.”

  Trent shook his head. “I don’t feel very sanguine about that, Mr. Langley. But how would you like to run down to his place tomorrow with me and a friend of mine, who takes an interest in affairs of this kind, and who would be able to help you if any one can?”

  Langley said, with emphasis, that that suited him.

  The car which called for Langley next morning did not look as if it belonged, but did belong, to Scotland Yard; and the same could be said of its dapper chauffeur. Inside was Trent, with a black-haired, round-faced man whom he introduced as Superintendent Owen. It was at his request that Langley, during the journey, told with as much detail as he could recall the story of his acquisition of the tabard, which he had hopefully brought with him in a suitcase.

  A few miles short of Abingdon the chauffeur was told to go slow. “You tell me it was not very far this side of Abingdon, Mr. Langley, that you turned off the main road,” the superintendent said. “If you will keep a look-out now, you might be able to point out the spot.”

  Langley stared at him. “Why, doesn’t your man have a map?”

  “Yes; but there isn’t any place called Silcote Episcopi on his map.”

  “Nor,” Trent added, “on any other map. No, I am not suggesting that you dreamed it all; but the fact is so.”

  Langley, remarking shortly that this beat him, glared out of the window eagerly; and soon he gave the word to stop. “I am pretty sure this is the turning,” he said. “I recognize it by these two haystacks in the meadow, and the pond with osiers over it. But there certainly was a signpost there, and now there isn’t one. If I was not dreaming then, I guess I must be now.” And as the car ran swiftly down the side-road he went on, “Yes; that certainly is the church on ahead—and the covered gate, and the graveyard—and there is the vicarage, with the yew trees and the garden and everything. Well, gentlemen, right now is when he gets what is coming to him, I don’t care what the name of the darn place is.”

  “The name of the darn place on the map,” Trent said, “is Oakhanger.”

  The three men got out and passed through the lychgate.

  “Where is the gravestone?” Trent asked.

  Langley pointed. “Right there.” They went across to the railed-in grave, and the American put a hand to his head. “I must be nuts!” he groaned. “I know this is the grave—

  but it says that here is laid to rest the body of James Roderick Stevens, of this parish.”

  “Who seems to have died about thirty years after Sir Rowland Verey,” Trent remarked, studying the inscription; while the superintendent gently smote his thigh in an ecstasy of silent admiration. “And now let us see if the vicar can throw any light on the subject.”

  They went on to the parsonage; and a dark-haired, bright-faced girl, opening the door at Mr. Owen’s ring, smiled recognizingly at Langley. “Well, you’re genuine, anyway!” he exclaimed. “Ellen is what they call you, isn’t it? And you remember me, I see. Now I feel better. We would like to see the vicar. Is he at home?”

  “The canon came home two days ago, sir,” the girl said, with a perceptible stress on the term of rank. “He is down in the village now; but he may be back any minute. Would you like to wait for him?”

  “We surely would,” Langley declared positively; and they were shown into the large room where the tabard had changed hands.

  “So he has been away from home?” Trent asked. “And he is a canon, you say?”

  “Canon Maberley, sir; yes, sir, he was in Italy for a month. The lady and gentleman who were here till last week had taken the house furnished while he was away. Me and cook stayed on to do for them.”

  “And did that gentleman—Mr. Verey—do the canon’s duty during his absence?” Trent inquired with a ghost of a smile.

  “No, sir; the canon had an arrangement with Mr. Giles, the vicar of Cotmore, about that. The canon never knew that Mr. Verey was a clergyman. He never saw him. You see, it was Mrs. Verey who came to see over the place and settled everything; and it seems she never mentioned it. When we told the canon, after they had gone, he was quite took aback. ‘I can’t make it out at all,’ he says. ‘Why should he conceal it?’ he says. ‘Well, sir,’ I says, ‘they was very nice people, anyhow, and the friends they had to see them here was very nice, and their chauffeur was a perfectly respectable man,’ I says.”

  Trent nodded. “Ah! They had friends to see them.”

  The girl was thoroughly enjoying this gossip. “Oh yes, sir. The gentleman as brought you down, sir”—she turned to Langley—“he brought down several others before that. They was Americans too, I think.”

  “You mean they didn’t have an English accent, I suppose,” Langley suggested dryly.

  “Yes, sir; and they had such nice manners, like yourself,” the girl said, quite unconscious of Langley’s confusion, and of the grins covertly exchanged between Trent and the superintendent, who now took up the running.

  “This respectable chauffeur of theirs—was he a small, thin man with a long nose, partly bald, always smoking cigarettes?”

  “Oh yes, sir; just like that. You must know him.”

  “I do,” Superintendent Owen said grimly.

  “So do I!” Langley exclaimed. “He was the man we spoke to in the churchyard.”

  “Did Mr. and Mrs. Verey have any—er—ornaments of their own with them?” the superintendent asked.

  Ellen’s eyes rounded with enthusiasm. “Oh yes, sir—some lovely things they had. But they was only put out when they had friends coming. Other times they was kept somewhere in Mr. Verey’s bedroom, I think. Cook and me thought perhaps they was afraid of burglars.”

  The superintendent pressed a hand over his stubby moustache. “Yes, I expect that was it,” he said gravely. “But what kind of lovely things do you me
an? Silver—china—that sort of thing?”

  “No, sir; nothing ordinary, as you might say. One day they had out a beautiful goblet, like, all gold, with little figures and patterns worked on it in colours, and precious stones, blue and green and white, stuck all round it—regular dazzled me to look at, it did.”

  “The Debenham Chalice!” exclaimed the superintendent.

  “Is it a well-known thing, then, sir?” the girl asked.

  “No, not at all,” Mr. Owen said. “It is an heirloom—a private family possession. Only we happen to have heard of it.”

  “Fancy taking such things about with them,” Ellen remarked. “Then there was a big book they had out once, lying open on that table in the window. It was all done in funny gold letters on yellow paper, with lovely little pictures all round the edges, gold and silver and all colours.”

  “The Murrane Psalter!” said Mr. Owen. “Come, we’re getting on.”

  “And,” the girl pursued, addressing herself to Langley, “there was that beautiful red coat with the arms on it, like you see on a half-crown. You remember they got it out for you to look at, sir; and when I brought in the tea it was hanging up in front of the tallboy.”

  Langley grimaced. “I believe I do remember it,” he said, “now you remind me.”

  “There is the canon coming up the path now,” Ellen said, with a glance through the window. “I will tell him you gentlemen are here.”

  She hurried from the room, and soon there entered a tall, stooping old man with a gentle face and the indescribable air of a scholar.

  The superintendent went to meet him.

  “I am a police officer, Canon Maberley,” he said. “I and my friends have called to see you in pursuit of an official inquiry in connection with the people to whom your house was let last month. I do not think I shall have to trouble you much, though, because your parlourmaid has given us already most of the information we are likely to get, I suspect.”

  “Ah! That girl,” the canon said vaguely. “She has been talking to you, has she? She will go on talking for ever, if you let her. Please sit down, gentlemen. About the Vereys—ah yes! But surely there was nothing wrong about the Vereys? Mrs. Verey was quite a nice, well-bred person, and they left the place in perfectly good order. They paid me in advance, too, because they live in New Zealand, as she explained, and know nobody in London. They were on a visit to England, and they wanted a temporary home in the heart of the country, because that is the real England, as she said. That was so sensible of them, I thought—instead of flying to the grime and turmoil of London, as most of our friends from overseas do. In a way, I was quite touched by it, and I was glad to let them have the vicarage.”

  The superintendent shook his head. “People as clever as they are make things very difficult for us, sir. And the lady never mentioned that her husband was a clergyman, I understand.”

  “No, and that puzzled me when I heard of it,” the canon said. “But it didn’t matter, and no doubt there was a reason.”

  “The reason was, I think,” Mr. Owen said, “that if she had mentioned it, you might have been too much interested, and asked questions which would have been all right for a genuine parson’s wife, but which she couldn’t answer without putting her foot in it. Her husband could do a vicar well enough to pass with laymen, especially if they were not English laymen. I am sorry to say, canon, that your tenants were impostors. Their name was certainly not Verey, to begin with. I don’t know who they are—I wish I did—they are new to us and they have invented a new method. But I can tell you what they are. They are thieves and swindlers.”

  The canon fell back in his chair. “Thieves and swindlers!” he gasped.

  “And very talented performers too,” Trent assured him. “Why, they have had in this house of yours part of the loot of several country-house burglaries which took place last year, and which puzzled the police because it seemed impossible that some of the things taken could ever be turned into cash. One of them was a herald’s tabard, which Superintendent Owen tells me had been worn by the father of Sir Andrew Ritchie. He was Maltravers Herald in his day. It was taken when Sir Andrew’s place in Lincolnshire was broken into, and a lot of very valuable jewellery was stolen. It was dangerous to try to sell the tabard in the open market, and it was worth little, anyhow, apart from any associations it might have. What they did was to fake up a story about the tabard which might appeal to an American purchaser, and, having found a victim, to induce him to buy it. I believe he parted with quite a large sum.”

  “The poor simp!” growled Langley.

  Canon Maberley held up a shaking hand. “I fear I do not understand,” he said. “What had their taking my house to do with all this?”

  “It was a vital part of the plan. We know exactly how they went to work about the tabard; and no doubt the other things were got rid of in very much the same way. There were four of them in the gang. Besides your tenants, there was an agreeable and cultured person—I should think a man with real knowledge of antiquities and objects of art—whose job was to make the acquaintance of wealthy people visiting London, gain their confidence, take them about to places of interest, exchange hospitality with them, and finally get them down to this vicarage. In this case it was made to appear as if the proposal to look over your church came from the visitors themselves. They could not suspect anything. They were attracted by the romantic name of the place on a signpost up there at the corner of the main road.”

  The canon shook his head helplessly. “But there is no signpost at that corner.”

  “No, but there was one at the time when they were due to be passing that corner in the confederate’s car. It was a false signpost, you see, with a false name on it—so that if anything went wrong, the place where the swindle was worked would be difficult to trace. Then, when they entered the churchyard their attention was attracted by a certain gravestone with an inscription that interested them. I won’t waste your time by giving the whole story—the point is that the gravestone, or rather the top layer which had been fitted on to it, was false too. The sham inscription on it was meant to lead up to the swindle, and so it did.”

  The canon drew himself up in his chair. “It was an abominable act of sacrilege!” he exclaimed. “The man calling himself Verey— ”

  “I don’t think,” Trent said, “it was the man calling himself Verey who actually did the abominable act. We believe it was the fourth member of the gang, who masqueraded as the Vereys’ chauffeur—a very interesting character. Superintendent Owen can tell you about him.”

  Mr. Owen twisted his moustache thoughtfully. “Yes; he is the only one of them that we can place. Alfred Coveney, his name is; a man of some education and any amount of talent. He used to be a stage-carpenter and property-maker—a regular artist, he was. Give him a tub of papier-mâche, and there was nothing he couldn’t model and colour to look exactly like the real thing. That was how the false top to the gravestone was made, I’ve no doubt. It may have been made to fit on like a lid, to be slipped on and off as required. The inscription was a bit above Alf, though—I expect it was Gifford who drafted that for him, and he copied the lettering from other old stones in the churchyard. Of course the fake signpost was Alf’s work too—stuck up when required, and taken down when the show was over.

  “Well, Alf got into bad company. They found how clever he was with his hands, and he became an expert burglar. He has served two terms of imprisonment. He is one of a few who have always been under suspicion for the job at Sir Andrew Ritchie’s place, and the other two when the chalice was lifted from Eynsham Park and the Psalter from Lord Swanbourne’s house. With what they collected in this house and the jewellery that was taken in all three burglaries, they must have done very well indeed for themselves; and by this time they are going to be hard to catch.”

  Canon Maberley, who had now recovered himself somewhat, looked at the others with the beginnings of a s
mile. “It is a new experience for me,” he said, “to be made use of by a gang of criminals. But it is highly interesting. I suppose that when these confiding strangers had been got down here, my tenant appeared in the character of the parson, and invited them into the house, where you tell me they were induced to make a purchase of stolen property. I do not see, I must confess, how anything could have been better designed to prevent any possibility of suspicion arising. The vicar of a parish, at home in his own vicarage! Who could imagine anything being wrong? I only hope, for the credit of my cloth, that the deception was well carried out.”

  “As far as I know,” Trent said, “he made only one mistake. It was a small one; but the moment I heard of it I knew that he must have been a fraud. You see, he was asked about the oar you have hanging up in the hall. I didn’t go to Oxford myself, but I believe when a man is given his oar it means that he rowed in an eight that did something unusually good.”

  A light came into the canon’s spectacled eyes. “In the year I got my colours the Wadham boat went up five places on the river. It was the happiest week of my life.”

  “Yet you had other triumphs,” Trent suggested. “For instance, didn’t you get a Fellowship at All Souls, after leaving Wadham?”

  “Yes, and that did please me, naturally,” the canon said. “But that is a different sort of happiness, my dear sir, and, believe me, nothing like so keen. And by the way, how did you know about that?”

  “I thought it might be so, because of the little mistake your tenant made. When he was asked about the oar, he said he had rowed for All Souls.”

  Canon Maberley burst out laughing, while Langley and the superintendent stared at him blankly.

  “I think I see what happened,” he said. “The rascal must have been browsing about in my library, in search of ideas for the part he was to play. I was a resident Fellow for five years, and a number of my books have a bookplate with my name and the name and arms of All Souls. His mistake was natural.” And again the old gentleman laughed delightedly.