“Shops still open, I see. That’s all right!”
He got down from the car.
“Now, off you go. Don’t waste a moment!”
As the car moved off, the Chief Constable glanced along the street and then, with deliberate restraint, he lounged over to the door of the local ironmonger. All traces of hurry had disappeared. He seemed merely a casual purchaser.
“Good evening,” he said pleasantly to the man behind the counter. “You seem to stock a fairly wide selection of things, to judge by your window. I’m looking for a small drill, if you have one on the premises. Could you let me see one or two?”
The ironmonger, it seemed, kept such things in stock.
Sir Clinton examined them.
“This seems to be what I want,” he said at last. “Have you a brace to fit it?”
He fitted the drill to the brace, took out a penny and tried the drill. Then, with the hole half-bored, he seemed to lose interest in the matter.
“You don’t stock air-gun slugs, do you?”
“As a matter of fact, we do, sir. Mr. Hawkhurst of Whistlefield uses a lot of them, and he persuaded me to keep a stock of them. Nobody else has any need for them; but he buys quite a lot from time to time.”
“Perhaps you keep darts, too?”
“Yes, I’ve got some in stock.”
Sir Clinton considered for a moment.
“Let’s see. I’ll take a hundred slugs and a couple of dozen darts. You might put the whole lot in one parcel—I’ll take the brace and drill as well.”
While the man was packing up the articles, Sir Clinton made inquiries as to the position of the druggist’s shop in the village; and on leaving the ironmonger’s he made his way to it.
“Let’s see,” he reflected aloud, after he had had a few words with the druggist on local gossip. “I’ll have a pennyworth of Condy’s Fluid crystals. They’re a good antiseptic, aren’t they? And about threepence worth of some carbolic solution, too. Have you any litmus, by any chance—the solid stuff is what I want.”
It happened that the druggist had all these in stock.
“That will be all to-night, sir?” he inquired, as Sir Clinton took the packets and paid for his purchases.
“That will be all for the present,” said the Chief Constable absent-mindedly; and he left the shop after saying good-evening.
He made his way to the police station, where the sergeant-in-charge, recognising him, came forward at once.
“Have you a room here that I can have to myself for ten minutes or so, sergeant?”
“Yes, Sir Clinton. This way.”
“This will do all right,” the Chief Constable said, after a glance at the place. “By the way, sergeant, send a man out at once to get me a small table vice—you know these portable things—at the ironmonger’s. I saw one in the window as I passed. And wait a moment—can you smoke Navy Cut? Good. Then get a couple of small tins of it as well.”
Considerably mystified, the sergeant executed his orders; and when the various articles had been procured, Sir Clinton closed the door behind him and set to work. His task took him rather longer than he expected, but at last it was done to his satisfaction. He called his subordinate in again.
“A glass of water, sergeant, if you please.”
When this was brought, he shut the door again. Some minutes later he came out and called the sergeant.
“Here’s your Navy Cut, sergeant. I’m sorry I can’t give you the tins.”
The sergeant, completely at a loss to understand these proceedings, thanked him in a dazed fashion and began to sweep the tobacco from the table into his pouch.
“How far is it to Whistlefield?” Sir Clinton inquired. On learning the distance he borrowed a bicycle from one of the constables.
“Send up to Whistlefield for it to-morrow—or in an hour, if you like. I’ll leave word that you’re to get it.”
And with that the Chief Constable mounted the machine and rode off. The sergeant watched him out of sight and then returned into the police-station. He entered the room which Sir Clinton had been using and looked at the debris of the unknown experiment.
“He’s had something clipped in that vice, I suppose. And there’s a drill; I wonder where he picked that up. And he’s got some pinky stuff in that glass of water, too. And he takes away the tins and he leaves the tobacco to me. This is a rum kind of Chief Constable to have, for sure. What’s he getting at?”
Chapter Seven
The Pot of Curare
After leaving the Chief Constable in the village, Wendover took the road to Whistlefield. Sir Clinton’s obvious anxiety had impressed him; and he drove fast. He was not altogether pleased at having Ardsley thrust upon him as a companion; for he disliked the toxicologist. Whenever he saw Ardsley’s grim, clean-shaven face he had a vision of tortured animals, and a spasm of repugnance attacked him. His knowledge of the Vivisection Act was negligible, and his imagination pictured helpless beasts strapped to tables and writhing under the knife of the vivisector. For politeness’ sake, he forced himself to make conversation.
“It’s to be hoped we can manage this for Driffield without a hitch,” he said. “He seems to be afraid of leaving the stuff lying loose. You can find it all right, I suppose?”
“I can go straight to the place where it used to be kept,” Ardsley assured him coldly, paying no attention to the speculative part of Wendover’s speech.
He seemed to feel no desire to continue the conversation; and Wendover felt that he had suffered a snub.
“Surly devil!” he commented inwardly. “He won’t even meet one half-way.”
He had no time to brood over the matter, however, for very soon they reached Whistlefield:
“You’d better do the talking,” Ardsley advised, as they got out of the car and approached the door of the house. Wendover nodded in agreement and rang the bell. When the maid appeared he asked if Ernest Shandon was disengaged. The maid seemed doubtful.
“He’s in the study, sir, and he left word that he wasn’t to be disturbed.”
Wendover thought of asking for the secretary; but it struck him that since they had come to commandeer the drug, it would be best to see one of the family. After all, it was private property, even if it was dangerous stuff.
“Is Mr. Hawkhurst at home?”
The maid showed them into a room and asked them to wait until she could find him.
“If he isn’t there, then ask Miss Hawkhurst to see us for a moment if she can,” Wendover directed.
In a few moments, Arthur Hawkhurst entered the room, looking rather surprised when he saw who his visitors were.
“Fairly travelling round and seeing the country, aren’t you, Wendover? Morbid curiosity, I think, haunting the scene of crime like this.”
He nodded to Ardsley. Quite obviously the double murder had not affected his spirits to any extent. Wendover was not much surprised. The boy had never been a favourite with either of his uncles; and though he seemed lacking in decent respect for the victims, Wendover put it down to Arthur’s slightly unbalanced mentality.
“I’d have preferred a shade less cheeriness, I must say,” he thought to himself, “but I suppose it would have been mere hypocrisy in his case, and one must make some allowance for his brain being a bit abnormal just now.”
He came to the point at once.
“We’ve been sent up by Sir Clinton Driffield to see if something is in that museum of your uncle’s. He wants to know if it’s been removed by any chance.”
“What the devil does he know about the museum?” demanded Arthur. “He never saw it when he was here in the afternoon. What does he want with it anyway? And what is it that he does want? Does he think one of the blokes upstairs had offended one of the Mayan idols and got a settler by way of squaring the account?”
“No,” Wendover said, hastily. “Nothing of that sort.”
“Well, what is it then? I’ll get it for you.”
“Don’t trouble, please. Dr. Ardsley knows the look
of it and it will be easier for us to go to the museum and look round ourselves.”
“Oh, indeed!” Arthur grew distinctly hostile. “You seem to take a good deal on yourselves. Why not wait till you’re asked, before wandering about in people’s houses?”
Wendover felt that the matter was becoming awkward. The boy seemed to have flown into a passion, one of these storms of emotion to which he had been subject since his illness. And then another thought crossed Wendover’s mind, though he tried to dismiss it. Why should Arthur be so anxious to prevent them entering the museum? Curare had not been mentioned. Surely young Hawkhurst could have no suspicion of what they wanted; and yet he seemed determined to put difficulties in the way. It was with great relief that he saw Sylvia come into the room. After greeting her, he turned away from Arthur and explained the matter to the girl.
“Of course. Come along at once,” she invited them, ignoring Arthur’s lowering face. “Anything we can do to clear up this miserable affair ought to be done.”
She led them through the house to the museum. It was, as Ardsley had said, mainly filled with rubbish—odds and ends which might possibly call up recollections in the mind which had gathered the stuff, but of very little interest to a casual visitor. It was a miscellany of souvenirs rather than a museum, and the items seemed to be lying on the shelves without any system whatever.
Ardsley evidently knew exactly where to go. Leaving the others, he moved across to one of the cases on the wall, opened it, and took down from a shelf a little pot of unbaked earthenware.
Arthur had followed him suspiciously.
“What’s that you’re doing?” he demanded, abruptly.
“The Chief Constable asked me to find this for him,” Ardsley replied, examining the material in the pot as he spoke.
“You’re not taking any of it are you?”
Young Hawkhurst put the question with obvious distrust. He had his eyes fixed on the toxicologist’s hands, as though he feared that Ardsley might remove some of the stuff under their very eyes.
“No,” Ardsley retorted, with a certain sharpness in his tone. “I’ve nothing further to do with it.”
He handed the little vessel to Wendover as he spoke; and seemed to dissociate himself from any further connection with the matter. Arthur’s eyes fixed themselves on the pot. He was still, apparently, disturbed by the way things were going.
“I don’t care about this way of doing things,” he complained. “Here you come along. For all we know you’ve no authority whatever behind you. And you go straight to this stuff and want to take it away with you, by the look of it. I know what it is. It’s curare—Indian arrow poison. And you propose calmly to walk off with it! We can’t have that sort of thing. It’s dangerous stuff. You’ve no right to take it: I object.”
Wendover tried to throw oil on the waters.
“We aren’t going to take it away,” he explained, turning to Sylvia. “Sir Clinton asked us to pick it out—that’s all. He’ll be here shortly and you can learn from himself what he intends to do. But in any case, I think it ought to be in a safer place than this. As you say”—he turned again to Arthur—“it’s dangerous stuff.”
Sylvia agreed immediately.
“It was rather careless to leave it about like that if it’s poisonous,” she confirmed.
Wendover’s mind had been busy in the meanwhile. He had noted for Sir Clinton’s benefit that Arthur evidently knew the nature of the stuff, although there was no label on the specimen. If Arthur knew, then the chances were that other people knew also. He glanced at the contents of the pot in his hand, and he thought he could detect that some of the stuff had been removed. The original surface seemed to have been disturbed. Then he remembered that Ardsley had volunteered an account of how he had run short of curare and had taken some of Roger’s specimen. That might account for the disturbance. Another thought occurred to him, and he asked permission to inspect the museum.
“Do you mind if I look round the shelves?” he asked Sylvia. “I’ve never been in this place before, you know. Your uncle seems to have collected a lot of specimens.”
Sylvia accompanied him in his tour of inspection; but she could throw little light on the various objects.
“Hardly anything’s labelled, as you see,” she pointed out. “Once or twice I offered to label them all for Uncle Roger; for it seems so silly to have a lot of things there with no explanation, doesn’t it?”
They moved down the room, scanning the shelves. Ardsley remained near the door, grimly aloof from the rest of the group. Arthur hovered uncertainly about the room, evidently keeping his eye on the visitors as though troubled by suspicions of their motives.
“This is a dreadful business about my uncles,” Sylvia said in a low voice, when she and Wendover had moved away from the others. “I was terribly shocked when I got back here and heard what had happened. I’m not going to pretend I was very fond of either of them—they always seemed to me different from the rest of us, somehow—but I liked them in a way; and it was horrible to come back and find that while I’d been enjoying myself in the afternoon, they’d been . . .”
She hesitated, evidently disliking the word—“murdered.”
Wendover nodded understandingly. He quite appreciated her feelings. Neither of the dead men had been of the type that would attract the admiration or even the respect of a girl like Sylvia. Their disappearance would leave no real gap in her world. But after all, they were relations of hers and the sudden incursion of violence and death into her family was bound to leave its impression.
“You’re not frightened, are you?” he asked.
“No, of course not. But it seems a frightful affair, doesn’t it? It leaves one dazed, somehow—like a bad dream. Only one doesn’t wake up. We all seem to be going about trying to persuade ourselves that the world’s just the same as ever; but somehow I don’t seem to succeed. It’s too horrible for that.”
Wendover did his best to soothe her. Behind the pretence of indifference he could see that she was badly shaken. Quite obviously she was trying to minimise her feelings so as not to make him uncomfortable. They continued their tour of the collection, and she tried to interest herself in explaining to him the various objects in it.
When they had completed their inspection, Wendover suppressed a sigh of relief.
“Well,” he said to himself, “there are no poisoned arrows there, at any rate. This pot of stuff seems to be the only danger-point in the whole lot.”
He bent his efforts to infusing at least a semblance of harmony into the company, but it was not a very successful attempt. Sylvia seconded him to the best of her ability; but Arthur still maintained his suspicious attitude; and Ardsley seemed disinclined to emerge from his state of unfriendly neutrality. It was a relief to them all when the door of the museum opened and Ernest Shandon ushered in the Chief Constable. Stenness followed close on their heels.
“This is Sir Clinton Driffield, Miss Hawkhurst,” Wendover hastened to say, when he remembered that they had not met in the afternoon. Sir Clinton bowed to the girl and then, with a word of apology, he turned to Wendover.
“Got the stuff?” he demanded; and his face cleared when Wendover held up the little earthenware pot. A glance at Ardsley confirmed that it was the right thing; and Sir Clinton seemed to pay no further attention to it at the moment.
“I’m afraid I disturbed your uncle, Miss Hawkhurst. He was busy in the study, and I was rather loath to interrupt him; but he very kindly came out at once.”
Ernest, in the background, fumbled for a moment with his eyeglasses.
“I was very busy,” he admitted. “But of course I wasn’t so busy that I couldn’t stop. In fact, I was just turning over papers and going through the safe with Stenness. It wasn’t really important, or at least not so important that it couldn’t be put aside for a time, and Sir Clinton said he wasn’t going to stay more than a few minutes. So I just left things, of course. I’d just been looking over Roger’s will. We happe
ned to come across it on the top of a pile of things in the safe. I couldn’t understand it—to tell you the truth. These lawyers are terrible fellows for putting in long words—like ‘hereinafter’ and ‘heritable’ and ‘moveable’ and ‘accretion,’ and so on. And all about ‘survivor or survivors’ and ‘beneficiaries’ and a lot of complicated things besides. If it hadn’t been for Stenness I don’t think I could have made out what it was all about.”
He blinked helplessly at the group, and then continued with a tinge of pride in his tone.
“Roger made me one of his trustees. Neville was another of them. And there’s a third, the head of his firm of lawyers, I think, or at any rate a lawyer.”
Then, in a rather discouraged voice:
“I suppose that’ll mean a lot of bother—signing papers and all that sort of thing.”
Sir Clinton waited patiently for the end of Ernest’s speech; and then he came to the point at once.
“If you’re an executor that simplifies matters, Mr. Shandon. I want to take away this article here”—he indicated the pot in Wendover’s hand—“but only for a day or two, probably. You’ll get it back again in due course. It’s only a loan, you understand.”
Ernest evidently felt the dignity of his new position. He put out his hand for the pot, examined it carefully through his glasses, then handed it over to Sir Clinton, though with a certain reluctance.
“Have I any right to part with it, Stenness? You know what the will says.”
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, Mr. Shandon,” the secretary reassured him. “Besides, if the Chief Constable wants it in connection with this afternoon’s affair”—he glanced interrogatively at Sir Clinton—“I’ve no doubt he could get power to take it, whether you want to give it up or not.”
Ernest seemed to feel that he had got into deeper waters than he cared about.
“Well, if Stenness says that, I suppose it’s all right. He understood the will and he ought to know. He explained it all to me very carefully just a few minutes ago, so he knows what’s what. I could understand him all right. Why can’t lawyers use plain language like Stenness, instead of wrapping it all up in ‘hereinafters’ and ‘aforesaids’? It’s a stupid sort of way to write. I can’t think what they do it for.”
Murder in the Maze (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 10