Abbey Court Murder: An Inspector Furnival Mystery: Volume 1 (The Inspector Furnival Mysteries)

by Annie Haynes

  “Ah, yes,” the inspector assented. “The name by which he is known here, please.”

  Judith looked at him; for a minute her lips seemed to move inaudibly.

  “He is Lord Chesterham.”

  “Chesterham!” The exclamation burst from Crasster.

  Sir Anthony did not stir; Mrs. Rankin, as if moved by some sudden impulse of pity, leaned forward and kissed Judith’s pale cheek.

  A little satisfied smile played round the inspector’s mouth as he made another entry in his book.

  “He would recognize you when he met you down here of course?”

  “Oh yes, yes; he knew me!” Judith said faintly. “He promised to keep silence if—if I would not try to stop his marriage,” she went on feverishly. “But now—now I can’t any longer.”

  “Thank you, I think that is all for the present.” The inspector wore a curiously triumphant expression as he looked up. “Sir Anthony, will you gives us your help? Please tell us what you know of the night’s doings.”

  Sir Anthony glanced up.

  “It is so; little I know, as I told you, inspector. I picked up a paper that Lady Carew dropped, having on it Warden’s address, and the hour at which she was to be at the flat. Sometimes now, it seems to me, looking back, that the very suspicion that my wife had made an appointment with another man drove me mad. I went to the flats at the time named; I waited in a doorway opposite, and I saw my wife go in, and come out again after some time. Then I went in. A man was standing in the vestibule; it struck me that he was watching Lady Carew, he was smiling to himself as he looked after her, but I had only a very cursory glimpse of him. I went up to the flat, but, of course, I could not get in. Of the tragedy itself I know nothing.”

  “Did you recognize Chesterham as the man who was standing in the vestibule watching Lady Carew?” Crasster asked eagerly. It was the first time he had spoken.

  Sir Anthony shook his head.

  “I cannot say that I did, though I have sometimes felt that his face was vaguely familiar. But as I say, it was only a glimpse I had of him that night. Can we help you any further, inspector?”

  “A little, I think, sir.” Inspector Furnival drew a paper from his pocket and studied it in silence for a minute or two. “If Lady Carew will kindly answer a few questions? The dress you wore that night has been placed in the hands of the police by your late maid, Célestine, Lady Carew. There are splashes of blood on the bodice that must have come from the murdered man and the skirt is stained with ink. How do you account for this?”

  “I—I tried to raise him—Stanmore—in my arms,” Judith faltered. Her voice wavered and broke. The very effort of speaking of it brought back the whole terrible scene before her eyes. “And—and—when he threw the pistol on the table he upset the inkstand; I tried to get it back; that is how the ink must have got on my dress.”

  “Ah! The ink was on the table with the pistol,” the inspector commented with a far-away look in his eyes. “One more question, Lady Carew. There was a blue star on Stanmore’s wrist.” Judith bent her head in assent. “Were you aware that there was a similar mark on the wrist of the man whom you knew as Jermyn Leigh?”

  Judith’s face grew strangely white, her eyes glanced obliquely round as though oppressed by some horrible fear.

  “I—I never saw one—I did not think he had one.” A hoarse sob rose in her throat.

  The inspector went on apparently scrawling hieroglyphics in his pocket-book. Lawrence and Crasster knew that his look, his very silence, betokened that he was satisfied.

  Nobody spoke for a minute or two, as if by common consent. Every one avoided looking at the agonized face of the woman in the big chair. Lawrence glanced at Crasster, some faint foreshadowing of what was coming upon him, unreal, fantastical, as must appear the happenings it involved. Inspector Furnival glanced at Mrs. Rankin. “You have nothing more to tell us, I think?”

  “No,” she answered with a little catch in her breath. “Only that on Tuesday before the murder Stanmore called on us and asked us if we could tell him where Lady Carew was to be found. We declined to give him any information of course, and he went away asking us if we should hear of her later, to let him know at the Abbey Court flats, where he told us he was staying under the name of Charles Warden.”

  The inspector tapped his notebook thoughtfully. “Did he tell you why he was anxious to find Lady Carew?”

  Mrs. Rankin shook her head.

  “No further than that he said he had come back to England to claim some great inheritance that had fallen to him, and we gathered that he wished her to share it with him.”

  “Um! Um!” The inspectors did not speak for a minute or two, then he looked up suddenly. “Did he give you any notion of the sort of inheritance to which he had succeeded?”

  “No—no,” Mrs. Rankin said slowly, “further than that he spoke as if it meant rank as well as wealth. But I think he was too much excited to talk coherently, and we, of course, were only too anxious to get rid of him.

  “Naturally!” the inspector assented. “Well, I don’t think we need trouble you any further to-day.”

  Mrs. Rankin sat back in her chair with an audible sigh of relief.

  Sir Anthony looked at the detective. “Can you help us, Furnival, or are we too hopelessly in the mire?”

  “I think I shall be able to do something, Sir Anthony.” The inspector glanced over what he had written, then he closed the book and fastened it. “But before we go any further I should suggest Lady Carew goes to her room. I am sure Mrs. Rankin will agree with me that it is the best thing for her.”

  “They—they do believe me, Anthony?” she said piteously, as her husband came forward and drew her arm through his.

  The inspector took the answer upon himself.

  “Well, I do, for one, Lady Carew,” he said heartily. “And later on Sir Anthony will tell you the name of the Abbey Court murderer.”

  “Thank you!” Judith murmured brokenly. She felt strangely bewildered, scarcely able even to think. All she could realize was that there was hope at last, hope that the awful black cloud that had brooded over Heron’s Carew for so long was going to be dissipated.

  Her husband half-supported, half-carried her to her room, and then, whispering soothing words, he left her to Mrs. Rankin’s care, and went back to the morning-room. The three men had their heads close together when he entered. He fancied that Crasster looked strangely disturbed.

  “Excuse me, Sir Anthony,” murmured the inspector. He went across to the window, and, throwing it open, put his head out with a curious whistling sound, like a bird’s cry. It was answered from the bushes on the other side of the terrace. He stepped back and closed the window.

  “It is all right,” he observed enigmatically. “You are going to have a visitor, Sir Anthony. I hear a car in the drive.”

  “A visitor!” Sir Anthony stepped to the bell.

  “Allow him to be admitted, please, Sir Anthony,” said the inspector. “I fancy it is one whose evidence may be very germane to the case.”

  Sir Anthony started.

  “Germane to the case! I don’t see—”

  “One moment, Sir Anthony!”

  The inspector held up his hand.

  The bell pealed loudly, they heard the old butler open the door, a murmured colloquy, then Sir Anthony’s face altered.

  “Chesterham! Ah, of course his testimony—”

  “Will supply the missing link!” the inspector finished.

  “Exactly.” Sir Anthony opened the door. “Ah, Chesterham, we were just speaking of you. Come in.”

  Chesterham was distinctly paler than usual, his face looked anxious and worried.

  “I only heard half an hour ago of the accident that happened to Lady Carew last night,” he began, advancing to meet Sir Anthony. “I trust its gravity has been exaggerated. How is she? I—” He broke off as he saw the men behind Sir Anthony.

  Inspector Furnival stepped forward. Sir Anthony with a puzzled expression
moved aside.

  “You do not disturb us, Lord Chesterham!” the inspector remarked suavely. “As Sir Anthony said, we were just speaking of you. You can supply exactly the evidence we want!”

  “Evidence! I don’t understand you!” Chesterham’s face darkened as he spoke, and he drew back. “I came here to speak to Sir Anthony Carew,” he added with an assumption of hauteur that brought a slight smile to the inspector’s lips.

  At the same time there was a knock at the front door. Furnival signed to the butler to open it. A couple of men in dark clothes entered and stood on the mat. As soon as they were fairly inside, the inspector advanced towards the astonished Chesterham.

  “Ronald Lee, alias Jermyn Leigh, alias Viscount Chesterham, I arrest you for the wilful murder of Cyril Stanmore, Lord Chesterham, at the Abbey Court flats on the night of April— 19—. And it is my duty to warn you that anything you say in answer to the charge will be taken down in writing and may be used against you.”

  He drew his hand from his pocket, something of steel dangling from it suggestively.

  For an instant, it seemed to the lookers-on that Chesterham visibly cowered and shrank, the next he had to some extent pulled himself together.

  “You must be mad!” he said loudly. “Stark, staring mad! When you hear that the visitor to Stanmore’s flat on the night of the murder was—”

  “We have been aware of that lady’s identity from the first.” The inspector’s tone was ominously quiet. “Your game has been a bold one, Mr. Lee, but I think it is played out now. I shall have to trouble you to come with me to the police station at Caversham. One of my men will get a conveyance from the Carew Arms, or if you would prefer to use your—I should say Lord Chesterham’s—motor, perhaps it would be better!”

  Chesterham’s eyes wandered slowly round from the pale shocked faces of Sir Anthony Carew and Stephen Crasster, to the inspector’s keen alert countenance and to his solid-looking assistants behind. Then he drew something from his pocket, something that gleamed in the light. The next instant there was a shot, a sharp exclamation from the inspector, and the men gathered round the prostrate figure on the floor. Furnival was the first to look up.

  “The fool I was not to think of this! But he has missed his aim—it is nothing but a flesh wound in the thick part of the leg; I can manage to dress it for the present, and we will call in at Dr. Bennett’s as we go through the village.”

  CHAPTER XXXI

  “Committed for trial, is he? Well, they couldn’t do much else!”

  It was the verdict of Mrs. Curtis, at the Carew Arms, as she watched the crowd pouring down the village street.

  Carew village had never known such excitement within the memory of man. Lord Chesterham, in some extraordinary way, had turned out not to be Lord Chesterham at all, but Ronald Lee, whom many of the villagers remembered as a child, and, as if this news was not thrilling enough, he had been brought before the magistrates that morning charged with having murdered somebody—the true Lord Chesterham, some people said it was—up in London.

  He had attempted to commit suicide too, and had been carried into court that morning with his leg swathed in bandages. Small wonder was there that there had not been standing room in the magistrates’ court—that the whole population of the neighbourhood seemed to have turned out, eager to learn all that there was to be learned of this astonishing story.

  Inspector Furnival came down the street with Stephen Crasster.

  “I congratulate you, inspector,” Crasster was saying, as they neared the Carew Arms. “You have done a difficult piece of work marvellously well. I wonder what it was that first gave you the clue that enabled you to straighten out the tangle?”

  The inspector pondered a minute, his hand on the garden gate.

  “I think it was the blue star of the Chesterhams! But I must premise that I never believed Lady Carew guilty. Though very soon it was a matter of certainty with me that she was Warden’s mysterious visitor, I felt a premonition all along that Warden’s murderer must be searched for elsewhere. The blue star made me feel sure that there was some connection between Warden and the Chesterhams too.”

  “It seems a very slight thing to have led to so momentous a conclusion,” Crasster said thoughtfully. “I can’t make out how you guessed the man to be an impostor, either. I say inspector, I think I will come in with you for a minute or two”—as he became suddenly aware that their colloquy was exciting an unusual amount of interest from the passers-by—“we shall have a crowd round us in no time if we stand here.”

  “By all means, sir.” The inspector stood back. “It is not often the folks down here get anything like this to talk about,” he added as he shut the gate.

  They did not enter the house, but walked up and down the garden paths.

  “You want to know what made me think him an impostor, sir?” the inspector went on. “Well, when the idea first occurred to me I had nothing to go on but guesswork. His friendship for the Lees was the first definite thing I had to put me on the track. I had the pleasure of ‘assisting’ at one of his interviews with old Betty, as our French neighbours say, and that was enough to show me that she, at any rate, suspected a mystery. Then I could find no trace of anyone who might have been Warden among the Chesterham collaterals. Although his likeness to them, as well as the blue star, proved that he must have been related. The only illegitimate descendant of whom I could find any definite trace was young Ronald Lee, and he had no blue star. Later I found that young Lee had a passion for tattooing, and also from his gipsy relatives he had learned many tricks of colouring. I became sure that one of them, either Warden or the man called Lord Chesterham, had simulated the star, and, on the whole, it didn’t seem to me it was so likely to be the dead man. The impersonation supplied the motive for the murder, you see.”

  “As one can’t doubt after to-day’s evidence,” Crasster assented. “The murder must have been premeditated, inspector.

  “Distinctly,” the inspector agreed. “He had discovered that Lady Carew was to be there, and laid his plans accordingly, so the suspicion should turn upon her. There can be no doubt that he was waiting in the outer room to accomplish his purpose; the accidental turning out of the light gave him his opportunity, and he instantly availed himself of it. He must then have gone out of the flat and watched. He met Lady Carew on the stairs designedly, to frighten her, to show her that she was in his power; and when he had left her he went back to the flat, having previously provided himself with a key—you remember the wax on the lock—and took all the papers that proved Stanmore to be the heir to the peerage of Chesterham. He trusted to his knowledge of the family history, and his undoubted likeness to the Chesterhams, to enable him to carry out the rest. It was a diabolical scheme, and might have succeeded, but that he gave himself away over the pistol. Undoubtedly he left it in the flat to implicate Sir Anthony or Lady Carew. He had forgotten that when he picked it up there was ink on the table-cloth, that some of it got on his hands, and that therefore his finger-prints were left on the revolver. That was what turned my suspicion into a certainty. When I applied to him for a warrant later I managed to upset some ink, and obtain some impressions of his thumb and fingers. They corresponded with those on the revolver, and thus practically clinched the matter.”

  “Well, it has been a pretty smart thing,” concluded Crasster. “And it will be a feather in your cap for years to come, inspector. There are not many men who could have cleared up the mystery as you have. Bless my life”—with a sudden change of tone, as they suddenly turned a corner—“who is this?”

  A woman stood before them on the path, a small scarlet fury of a woman, her little piquante face distorted with rage, her black eyes blazing. The inspector cast one glance at her, and then, distinguished police officer though he was, looked as though he was about to run away.

  But Célestine placed herself directly in front of him.

  “Good day to you, Meestare Lennox—or Inspector Furnival,” she said, subduing her
shaking voice to accents of ironic politeness. “So it is a—well what you call—police officer you are, after all!”

  Crasster with difficulty repressed a smile; the inspector’s face threatened to become a copper colour.

  “That is it, mademoiselle,” he responded, with a gallant attempt to appear at his ease.

  Célestine doubled up her little black-gloved fist.

  “And the things you collect,” she went on with a catch in her breath, “they are poor silly women’s secrets—and their hearts. Ah! ah! is it not so, Monsieur Lennox?”

  But the inspector was pulling himself together now.

  “Their secrets perhaps,” he said with a little hard laugh. “We poor police officers haven’t much time to think of other things, mademoiselle.”

  Hearing the new note in his voice, Célestine stared at him in astonishment for a minute: then to his consternation she burst into tears.

  “Oh it is hard—hard!” she sobbed. “You are a very cruel man, Mr. Lennox. You have broke my heart just to amuse yourself to find out my little secrets. And now what am I to do? No lady will take me for her maid again. Oh, yes, you have ruined me and broke my heart!”

  The inspector wiped his brow. “Mademoiselle—”

  Crasster glanced at him. “Let me speak to her, inspector. Oh, I don’t think your heart is broken, mademoiselle!” he said in a bantering tone. “Unless it is at the fate that has overtaken your friend, Lord Chesterham. That must have been a delightful walk you took with him in the Lount Wood the other day.”

  Célestine flashed a wrathful glance at him from beneath the shadow of her lace-trimmed handkerchief.

  “I do not know what you mean, monsieur!” she said.

  “Don’t you?” Crasster questioned, still smiling. “I think you will remember presently, mademoiselle. I was taking a short cut through the wood, and it happened that I was behind you and the prisoner who was brought before the magistrate to-day. I saw—”