When she had passed out of earshot, Cressida turned to her husband.
“That’s the French girl I told you about, Stanley—Mme Laurent-Desrousseaux. I found her in some difficulty or other at the hotel desk—her English isn’t quite perfect—so I helped her out a little.”
Stanley Fleetwood nodded without comment; and Sir Clinton had little difficulty in seeing that he had no desire for his wife to extend her acquaintance with Mme Laurent-Desrousseaux. He could not help speculating as to the cause which had brought the Frenchwoman into this quiet backwater, where she had no amusements, apparently, and no acquaintances.
Before he had time to turn the matter over in his mind, however, his train of thought was interrupted by the appearance of a fresh figure.
“How’s the strain, squire?” he greeted the new-comer; and, as Wendover came up to the group, he introduced him to his two companions.
“I hope you enjoyed your round,” said Wendover, turning to Stanley Fleetwood. “Did he manage to work off any of his special expertise on you this morning?”
“He beat me, if that’s what you mean.”
“H’m! He beats me usually,” Wendover confessed. “I don’t mind being beaten by play; but I hate to be beaten by the rules.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Wendover? You seem to have a grievance,” Cressida asked, seeing a twinkle in Wendover’s eye.
“The fact is,” Wendover explained, “yesterday my ball rolled up against a large worm on the green and stopped there. I’m of a humane disposition, so I bent down to remove the worm, rather than putt across its helpless body. He objected, if you please, on the ground that one may not remove anything growing. I don’t know whether it was growing or not—it looked to me remarkably well grown for a worm, and had probably passed the growing age. But, when I urged that, he simply floored me by quoting a recent decision of the Royal and Ancient on the point.”
“If you play a game, you must play that game and not one you invent on the spur of the moment, squire,” Sir Clinton warned him, with no sign of sympathy in his tone. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
“Hark to the chief constable!” Wendover complained. “Of course, his mind dotes on the legal aspect of things, and he’s used to keeping all sorts of rules and regulations in his head. His knowledge of the laws of golf is worth a couple of strokes on his handicap on any average round.”
Cressida glanced at Sir Clinton.
“Are you really a chief constable?” she asked. “Somehow you aren’t like the idea I had of chief constables.”
“I’m on holiday at present,” Sir Clinton answered lightly; “perhaps that makes a difference. But I’m sorry to fall below your ideal—especially in my own district. If you could tell me what you miss, perhaps I could get it. What’s wanted? Constabulary boots, or beetle-brows, or a note-book ready to hand, or a magnifying glass, or anything of that sort?”
“Not quite. But I thought you’d look more like an official somehow.”
“Well, in a way that’s a compliment. I’ve spent a fair part of my existence trying hard not to look like an official. I wasn’t born a chief constable, you know. I was once a mere detective sort of person at the other end of the world.”
“Were you really? But, then, you don’t look like my idea of a detective, either!”
Sir Clinton laughed.
“I’m afraid you’re hard to please, Mrs. Fleetwood. Mr. Wendover’s just as bad. He’s a faithful reader of the classics, and he simply can’t imagine anyone going in for detective work without a steely eye and a magnifying glass. It jars on his finer feelings merely to think of a detective without either of them. The only thing that saves me is that I’m not a detective nowadays; and he salves his conscience by refusing to believe that I ever was one.”
Wendover took up the challenge.
“I’ve only seen you at work once in the detective line,” he confessed, “and I must admit I thought your methods were simply deplorable, Clinton.”
“Quite right,” Sir Clinton admitted. “I disappointed you badly in that Maze affair, I know. Even the success in the end hardly justified the means employed in reaching it. Let’s draw a veil, eh?”
They had reached the door of the hotel, and, after a few words, Cressida and her husband went into the building.
“Nice pair they make,” Wendover remarked, glancing after them as they went. “I like to see youngsters of that type. They somehow make you feel that the younger generation isn’t any worse than its parents; and that it has a good deal less fuss about it, too. Reinstates one’s belief in humanity, and all that sort of thing.”
“Yes,” Sir Clinton concurred, with a faint twinkle in his eye. “Some people one takes to instinctively. It’s the manner that does it. I remember a man I once ran across—splendid fellow, charm, magnetic personality, and so on.”
His voice died away, as though he had lost interest in the matter.
“Yes?” Wendover inquired, evidently feeling that the story had stopped too soon.
“He was the worst poker-sharp on the liner,” Sir Clinton added gently. “Charm of manner was one of his assets, you know.”
Wendover’s annoyance was only half-feigned.
“You’ve a sordid mind, Clinton. I don’t like to hear you throwing out hints about people in that way. Anyone can see that’s a girl out of the common; and all you can think of in that connection is card-sharps.”
Sir Clinton seemed sobered by his friend’s vexation.
“You’re quite right, squire,” he agreed. “She’s out of the common, as you say. I don’t know anything about her history, but it doesn’t take much to see that something’s happened to her. She looks as if she’d taken the world at her own measure at first, trusted everybody. And then she got a devil of a shock one day. At least, if that isn’t in her eyes, then I throw in my hand. I’ve seen the same expression once or twice before.”
They entered the hotel and sat down in the lounge. Wendover glanced from the window across the links.
“This place will be quite good when the new course has been played over for a year or two. I shouldn’t wonder if Lynden Sands became fairly popular.”
Sir Clinton was about to reply when a page-boy entered the lounge and paraded slowly across it, chanting in a monotonous voice:
“Number eighty-nine! Number eighty-nine! Number eighty-nine!”
The chief constable sat up sharply and snapped his fingers to attract the page-boy’s attention.
“That’s the number of my room,” he said to Wendover, “but I can’t think of anyone who might want me. Nobody knows me in this place.”
“You number eighty-nine, sir?” the page-boy demanded. “There’s somebody asking for you. Inspector Armadale, he said his name was.”
“Armadale? What the devil can he be wanting?” Sir Clinton wondered aloud. “Show him in, please.”
In a minute or two the inspector appeared.
“I suppose it’s something important, inspector,” Sir Clinton greeted him, “otherwise you wouldn’t have come. But I can’t imagine what brings you here.”
Inspector Armadale glanced at Wendover, and then, without speaking, he caught Sir Clinton’s eye. The chief constable read the meaning in his glance.
“This is a friend of mine, inspector—Mr. Wendover. He’s a J.P. and perfectly reliable. You can speak freely before him, if it’s anything official.”
Armadale was obviously relieved.
“This is the business, Sir Clinton. This morning we had a ’phone message from the Lynden Sands doctor. It seems the caretaker at a big house hereabouts—Foxhills, they call it—was found dead, close to his cottage. Dr. Rafford went up to see the body; and at first he thought it was a case of apoplexy. Then he noticed some marks on the body that made him suspicious, and he says he won’t give a death certificate. He put the matter into our hands at once. There’s nobody except a constable hereabouts, so I’ve come over myself to look into things. Then it struck me you were staying a
t the hotel here, and I thought I’d drop in on my way up.”
Sir Clinton gazed at the inspector with a very faintly quizzical expression.
“A friendly call?” he said. “That’s very nice. Care to stay to lunch?”
The inspector evidently had not expected to find the matter taken in this way.
“Well, sir,” he said tentatively, “I thought perhaps you might be interested.”
“Intensely, inspector, intensely. Come and tell me all about it when it’s cleared up. I wouldn’t miss it.”
Faint signs of exasperation betrayed themselves in the inspector’s face.
“I thought, perhaps, sir, that you’d care to come over with me and look into the thing yourself. It seems a bit mysterious.”
Sir Clinton stared at him in well-assumed amazement.
“We seem to be rather at cross-purposes, inspector. Let’s be clear. First of all, I’m on holiday just now, and criminal affairs have nothing to do with me. Second, even if I weren’t on holiday, a chief constable isn’t specially attached to the find-’em-and-grab-’em branch of the service. Third, it might cause professional jealousy, heart-burnings, and what not, if I butted into a detective’s case. What do you think?”
“It’s my case,” Armadale said, abandoning all further attempt at camouflage. “The plain truth is, from all I heard over the ’phone, that it seems a rum business; and I’d like to have your opinion on it, if you’d be so good as to give me it after you’ve examined things for yourself.”
Sir Clinton’s face relaxed.
“Ah,” he confessed. “Now I seem to have some glimmerings of what you’re after; and, since there’s no question of my having interfered without being asked, I might look into the affair. But if I’m doing you a favour—as you seem to think—then I’m going to lay down one condition, sine qua non. Mr. Wendover’s interested in detective work. He knows all the classics: Sherlock Holmes, Hanaud, Thorndyke, etc. So, if I come in, then he’s to be allowed to join us. Agree to that, inspector?”
The inspector looked rather sourly at Wendover, as though trying to estimate how great a nuisance he was likely to prove; but, as Sir Clinton’s assistance could evidently be secured only at a price, Armadale gave a rather ungracious consent to the proposed arrangement.
Sir Clinton seemed almost to regret his own decision.
“I’d hardly bargained for a bus-driver’s holiday,” he said rather ruefully.
A glance at the inspector’s face showed that the expression had missed its mark. Sir Clinton made his meaning clearer.
“In the old horse-bus days, inspector, it was rumoured that when a bus-driver got a holiday he spent it on somebody else’s bus, picking up tips from the driver. It seems that you want me to spend my holiday watching you do police work and picking up tips from your methods.”
Inspector Armadale evidently suspected something behind the politeness with which Sir Clinton had turned his phrase. He looked rather glumly at his superior as he replied:
“I see I’m going to get the usual mixture, sir—help and sarcasm, half and half. Well, my hide’s been tanned already; and your help’s worth it.”
Sir Clinton corrected him with an air of exactitude.
“What I said was that I’d ‘look into the affair.’ It’s your case, inspector. I’m not taking it off your shoulders, you understand. I don’t mind prowling round with you; but the thing’s in your hands officially, and I’ve nothing to do with it except as a spectator, remember.”
Armadale’s air became even gloomier when he heard this point of view so explicitly laid down.
“You mean it’s to be just the same as the Ravensthorpe affair, I suppose,” he suggested. “Each of us has all the facts we collect, but you don’t tell me what you think of them as we get them. Is that it, sir?”
Sir Clinton nodded.
“That’s it, inspector. Now, if you and Mr. Wendover will go round to the front of this place, I’ll get my car out and pick you up in a minute or two.”
Chapter Three
The Police at the Caretaker’s
Wendover, scanning his friend’s face, could see that all the carelessness had vanished from its expression. With the prospect of definite work before him, Sir Clinton seemed to have dropped his holiday mood completely.
“I think the first port of call should be the doctor,” he suggested as he turned the car into the road leading to Lynden Sands village. “We’d better start at the beginning, inspector; and the doctor seems likely to have been the earliest expert on the spot.”
They found Dr. Rafford in his garden, tinkering at a spotless motor-cycle; and Wendover was somewhat impressed by the obvious alertness of the young medico. Armadale introduced his companions, and then went straight to the point.
“I’ve come over about that case, doctor—the caretaker at Foxhills. Can you give us something to go on before we start to look into it up there?”
Dr. Rafford’s air of efficiency was not belied when he told his story.
“This morning, at about half-past eight, young Colby came hammering at my door in a great state. He does some of the milk delivery round about here; and Peter Hay’s house is one at which he leaves milk. It seems he went up there as usual; but when he got to the gate of the cottage he saw old Hay’s body lying on the path up to the door. I needn’t describe how it was lying; you’ll see for yourself. I didn’t disturb it—didn’t need to.”
Inspector Armadale’s nod conveyed his satisfaction at this news. The doctor continued:
“Young Colby’s only a child; so he got a bit of a fright. His head’s screwed on all right, though; and he came straight off here to get hold of me. Luckily I hadn’t gone out on my rounds as early as that, and he found me just finishing breakfast. I got my bike out and went up to Foxhills immediately.
“When I heard young Colby’s tale, I naturally concluded that poor old Hay had had a stroke. I’d been doing my best to treat him for high blood-pressure, off and on; but I hadn’t been able to do much for him; and once or twice he’d had slight attacks. He was bound to go, some time or other; and I concluded that he’d had a final attack through over-exertion or something of the sort.”
He paused in his narrative for a moment and glanced from face to face in the group.
“You’ll see, from this, that foul play was the last thing that entered my mind. I got up to his cottage and found him, just as young Colby had said, lying face down on the garden path. From the look of him he’d obviously died of congestion. It seemed all plain sailing. In fact, I was just going to leave him and hunt up some assistance when my eye caught something. His arms were stretched out at full length above his head, as if he’d gone down all of a piece, you know; and his right sleeve had got rucked up a little, so that it showed a bit of his arm. And my eye happened to catch a mark on the skin just above the wrist. It was pretty faint; but there had evidently been some compression there. It puzzled me—still puzzles me. However, that’s your affair. It struck me that I might as well have a look at the other arm, so I pushed up the coat-sleeve a little—that’s the only thing I did to alter things in any way around the body—and I found a second mark there, rather like the first one.”
He paused, as if to give the inspector the chance of putting a question; but, as none came, he went on with his story.
“The impression I got—of course, I may be wrong—was that marks of that sort might be important. Certainly, after seeing them, I didn’t care to assert that poor old Hay’s death was due entirely to natural causes. He’d died of congestion, all right. I’m dead sure that a P.M. will confirm that. But congestion doesn’t make marks on a man’s wrists. It seemed to me worth ringing you up. If it’s a mare’s nest, then it’s a mare’s nest, and I’ll be sorry to have troubled you. But I believe in having things done ship-shape; and I’d rather trouble you than get into hot water myself, if there’s anything fishy about the affair.”
Inspector Armadale seemed rather dubious about how he should take th
e matter. To Wendover it almost looked as though he was regretting the haste with which he had brought Sir Clinton into the business. If the whole thing turned out to be a mare’s nest, quite evidently Armadale expected to feel the flick of his superior’s sarcasm. And obviously a couple of marks on a dead man’s wrists did not necessarily spell foul play, since the man had clearly died of cerebral congestion, according to the doctor’s own account.
At last the Inspector decided to ask a question or two.
“You don’t know of anyone with a grudge against Hay?”
Rafford made no attempt to restrain a smile.
“Hay?” he said. “No one could possibly have a grudge against Peter. He was one of the decentest old chaps you could find anywhere—always ready to do a good turn to anyone.”
“And yet you assert that he was murdered?” demanded the inspector.
“No, I don’t,” the doctor retorted sharply. “All I say is that I don’t feel justified in signing a death certificate. That ends my part. After that, it’s your move.”
Armadale apparently realised that Rafford was not the sort of person who could be bluffed easily. He tried a fresh line.
“When do you think the death took place?”
The doctor considered for a moment.
“It’s no good giving you a definite hour,” he said. “You know as well as I do how much the symptoms vary from case to case. I think it’s quite on the cards that he died some time about the middle of the night or a little earlier. But you couldn’t get me to swear to that in the box, I warn you.”
Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 3