Sir Clinton gave a last glance round the rock plateau; then, followed by his companions, he retreated to the upper sands. Cargill, thus left alone, hovered uncertainly for a moment or two, and finally sat down on the groyne, looking idly at the sand around his feet. Evidently he understood that he was not wanted, but it looked as though he had still some faint hopes of being allowed to join the party.
“We must carry all this stuff up to the car,” Sir Clinton reminded his companions. “I’ll take some of the casts; you can manage the rest, inspector. Wendover, the blow-lamp and the rest of the candles are your share, if you don’t mind.”
When they reached the car, he motioned Wendover into the driving-seat and signed to the inspector to get in also.
“I’m going for a short walk along the road towards the hotel,” he explained. “Let me get a bit ahead, squire, and then follow on, slowly. I’m going to have a look at that extra wheel-track at close quarters. It won’t take more than a moment or two.”
He moved along the road to a point just before the groyne, and halted there for a few moments, examining the faint track left by the turning of a car. Then he continued his walk towards the hotel, scrutinising the ground as he went. At the end of a few hundred yards he halted; and, when Wendover brought up his car, Sir Clinton got into it, taking the seat in front.
“There are really two tracks there,” he explained, as he closed the door. “Down by the beach, both of them are very faint, and I noticed rain-marks on top of them. Then, just a few dozen yards back from here, one of the tracks is strongly marked, while the second track remains faint. It’s so lightly marked that I expect you missed it this morning, squire. Now what do you make of that?”
Wendover considered for a few moments.
“Somebody came down the road in a car before the rain and made the light track,” he suggested. “Then he turned and came back in this direction; and when he had got this length the rain came on, and his tracks after that were in mud and not in dry dust, so they’d be heavier. That it?”
“I expect so,” Sir Clinton acquiesced. “No, don’t go on yet. I’ve something to show you before we go farther. I didn’t care to produce it before all that audience down at the rock.”
He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the piece of note-paper found on Staveley’s body. Wendover leaned over and examined it as the chief constable unfolded it.
“Hullo! The hotel heading’s on the sheet, Clinton,” he exclaimed. “This is getting a bit near home, surely.”
“It is,” said Sir Clinton drily. “I’ll read it, inspector. It’s short and very much to the point, apparently. The date on it is yesterday. This is how it goes. There’s no ‘Dear So-and-so’ or anything of that sort at the beginning.
“‘Your letter has come as a complete surprise, as you expected, no doubt. You seem to know all about what has happened, and I suppose you will do all you can to make the worst of things—at least I can’t take any other meaning out of what you have written. I shall come to Neptune’s Seat to-night at 11 p.m. to hear what you have to say. But I warn you plainly that I will not submit to being blackmailed by you, since that seems to be what is in your mind.’
And the signature,” Sir Clinton concluded, “is Cressida Fleetwood.”
The inspector leaned forward and took the letter.
“Now we’ve got something to go on!” he exclaimed jubilantly. “That name, coupled with the hotel note-paper, ought to let us lay our hands on her within half an hour, if we’ve any luck at all.”
Wendover had been thunder-struck by the revelation of the signature. His mind involuntarily called up a picture of Cressida as he had seen her less than twenty-four hours earlier, frank and care-free, and so evidently happy with her husband. A girl like that could hardly be mixed up with a brutal murder; it seemed too incongruous. Then across his memory flitted a recollection of Sir Clinton’s description of the poker-sharp, and the implied warning against trusting too much to appearances; but he resolutely put them aside. A glance at Armadale’s face tended to increase his bias, for it displayed a hardly restrained exultation. Quite evidently the inspector supposed that his case was now well on the road to a satisfactory solution.
“Damned man-hunter!” Wendover commented inwardly, quite forgetting that a few minutes earlier he himself had been every bit as eager as the inspector. “I don’t want to see her fall into that brute’s hands.”
His imagination called up a picture of Cressida, with that fascinating touch of shyness changed to dismay, faced by the harsh interrogations of an Armadale determined to force from her some damning statement. The inspector would see no reason for kindly treatment in the case of a woman whom he seemed to have condemned already in his mind.
Wendover turned to Sir Clinton in the hope of seeing some signs of other feelings there. But the chief constable’s face betrayed nothing whatever about his thoughts, and Wendover remembered that Sir Clinton had known the contents of the letter before he left the beach. It had not affected him when he read it then, Wendover recalled; for there had been no change in his manner.
Suddenly the squire felt isolated from his companions. They were merely a couple of officials carrying out a piece of work, regardless of what the end of it might be; whereas he himself had still his natural human sympathies to sway him in his judgments and tip the scale in a case of doubt. Almost with surprise, he found himself disliking Armadale intensely; a great, coarse-fibred creature who cared nothing for the disaster which he was about to unchain within an hour.
Wendover awoke from his thoughts to find Sir Clinton looking at him with an expressionless face.
“Care to step off here, squire? Your face gives you away. You don’t like the way things are trending? Better leave us to finish the job alone.”
Wendover’s brain could work swiftly when he chose. Almost in a moment he had gauged the situation. If he dropped out, then the two officials would go forward together and there would be no human feelings among the hunters. If he stayed with them, he could at least play the part of critic and shake the inspector’s confidence in any weak links of the chain which he was forging. Further than that he could not go, but at least he could hold a watching brief for Cressida. His mind was made up at once.
“No,” he answered. “If you don’t mind, since I’m in the thing now, I’ll stay in. You may need an impartial witness again, and I may as well have the job.”
The inspector made no attempt to conceal his disgust. Sir Clinton showed neither approval nor objection, but he evidently thought it right to give a warning.
“Very well, squire. It’s your own choice. But, remember, you’re only a witness. You’re not to go putting your oar in when it’s not wanted.”
Wendover indicated his acquiescence by a curt nod. Sir Clinton restarted his car and drove along with his eyes fixed on the clearly marked tracks of the non-skid tyres. At the hotel entrance the studded print turned inward, and was lost on the gravel of the sweep up to the hotel.
As he noticed this, the inspector made an involuntary gesture of satisfaction, whilst Wendover felt that the net had been drawn yet tighter by this last piece of evidence.
“That’s a clincher, sir,” Armadale pointed out with a frank satisfaction which irritated Wendover intensely. “She took a car down and back. This is going to be as easy as falling off a log.”
“I suppose you noticed that that car never stopped at all on the road home,” Sir Clinton remarked casually. “The track showed no sign of a stop and a restart once the machine had got going.”
Only after he had run his car into the hotel garage did he speak again.
“We don’t want any more chatter than we can help at present, inspector. There’s no real case against anyone yet; and it won’t do to rush into the limelight. I suggest that Mr. Wendover should ask to see Mrs. Fleetwood. If you inquired for her, every tongue in the place would be at work in five minutes; and by the time they’d compared notes with each other, it’ll be quite impo
ssible to dig out anything that one or two of them may really happen to know. Everything will have got mixed up in their minds, and they won’t remember whether they saw something themselves or merely heard about it from someone else.”
Wendover saw the force of the argument; but he also realised clearly the position into which he was being pushed.
“I’m not so sure I care about that job, Clinton,” he protested. “It puts me in a false position.”
The chief constable interrupted him brutally.
“Five minutes ago I offered you the chance to get off the bus. You preferred to stay with us. Therefore you do as you’re told. That’s that.”
Wendover understood that his only chance of keeping in touch with the hunters now depended on his obeying orders. Gloomily he made his submission.
“All right, Clinton. I don’t like it; but I see there are some advantages.”
Accompanied by the others, he entered the hotel and made his way to the desk, while the two officials dropped into the background.
“Mrs. Fleetwood?” the clerk repeated, when Wendover had made his inquiry. “Yes, sir, she’s upstairs. Didn’t you know that Mr. Fleetwood broke his leg last night? The doctor’s set it now. I think Mrs. Fleetwood’s up in his room with him.”
“What’s the number?” Wendover asked.
“No. 35, sir. Shall I ’phone up and ask if you can see her? It’s no trouble.”
Wendover shook his head and turned away from the desk. As he crossed the hall, the other two rejoined him.
“It’s on the first floor. We’ll walk up,” said Sir Clinton, turning towards the stairs. “You can do the talking, inspector.”
Nothing loath, Armadale knocked at the door of No. 35, and, on receiving an answer, he turned the handle and entered the room. Sir Clinton followed him, whilst Wendover, acutely uncomfortable, hovered on the threshold. On the bed, with his features pale and drawn, lay Stanley Fleetwood. Cressida rose from an arm-chair and threw a startled glance at the intruders.
The inspector was no believer in tactful openings.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said gruffly, “but I understand you can give me some information about the affair on the beach last night.”
Wendover, despite his animus against Armadale, could not help admiring the cleverness of this sentence, which took so much for granted and yet had a vagueness designed to lead a criminal into awkward difficulties in his reply. But his main interest centred in Cressida; and at the look on her face his heart sank suddenly. Strain, confusion, and desperation seemed to have their part in it; but plainest of all was fear. She glanced from her husband to Armadale, and it was patent that she understood the acuteness of the danger.
“Why,” he admitted to himself in dismay, “she looks as if she’d really done it! And she’s deadly afraid that Armadale can prove it.”
Cressida moistened her lips automatically, as if she were about to reply; but, before she could say a word, her husband broke in.
“What makes you come here with inquiries? I suppose you’ve some authority? Or are you a reporter?”
“I’m Inspector Armadale.”
Stanley Fleetwood made an evident effort to keep himself in hand, in spite of the physical pain which he was obviously suffering. He nodded in acknowledgment of the inspector’s introduction, and then repeated his question.
“What makes you come to us?”
Armadale was not to be led into betraying anything about the extent of his information.
“I really can’t go into that, Mr. Fleetwood. I came to ask a few questions, not to answer any. It’s to your interest to answer frankly.”
He turned to Cressida.
“You were on the beach last night about eleven o’clock?”
Stanley Fleetwood broke in again before Cressida could make a reply.
“Wait a moment, inspector. Are you proposing to bring a charge against me?”
Armadale hesitated for a moment, as if undecided as to his next move. He seemed to see something further behind the question.
“There’s no charge against anyone—yet,” he said, with a certain dwelling on the last word; but as he spoke his eyes swung round to Cressida’s drawn features with a certain menace.
“Don’t say anything, Cressida,” her husband warned her.
He turned back to the inspector.
“You’ve no power to extract evidence if we don’t choose to give it?” he asked.
“No,” the inspector admitted cautiously, “but sometimes it’s dangerous to suppress evidence, I warn you.”
“I’m not very amenable to threats, inspector,” Stanley Fleetwood answered drily. “I gather this must be something serious, or you wouldn’t be making such a fuss?”
In his reply, Armadale reinforced his caution with irony.
“It’s common talk in the hotel that there’s been a murder on the beach. Perhaps the rumour’s reached you already?”
“It has,” Stanley Fleetwood admitted. “That’s why I’m cautious, inspector. Murder’s a ticklish business, so I don’t propose to give any evidence whatever until I’ve had legal advice. Nor will my wife give any evidence either until we’ve consulted our lawyer.”
Armadale had never seen a move of this sort, and his discomfiture was obvious. The grand scene of inquisition would never be staged now; and his hope of wringing damning admissions from unprepared criminals was gone. If these two had a lawyer at their elbow when he questioned them, he wouldn’t stand much chance of trapping them into unwary statements. Wendover was delighted by the alteration in the inspector’s tone when he spoke again.
“That doesn’t look very well, Mr. Fleetwood.”
“Neither does your intrusion into a sick-room, inspector.”
Sir Clinton evidently feared that things might go too far. He hastened to intervene, and when he spoke his manner was in strong contrast to the inspector’s hectoring.
“I’m afraid you hardly see the inspector’s point of view, Mr. Fleetwood. If we had the evidence which you and your wife could evidently give us, then quite possibly we might get on the track of the murderer. But if you refuse that evidence just now, we shall be delayed in our work, and I can’t guarantee that you won’t come under suspicion. There will certainly be a lot of needless gossip in the hotel here, which I’d much rather avoid if I could. The last thing we want to do is to make innocent people uncomfortable.”
Stanley Fleetwood’s manners gave way under the combined action of his physical pain and his mental distress.
“Where do you buy your soap?” he asked sarcastically. “It seems a good brand. But it won’t wash. There’s nothing doing.”
Inspector Armadale threw a glance at his superior which suggested that Sir Clinton’s intervention had been a mere waste of time.
“When’ll your lawyer be here?” he demanded brusquely.
Stanley Fleetwood paused to consider before replying.
“I’ll wire him to-day; but most likely the wire will lie in his office until Monday. I expect Monday afternoon will be the earliest time he could get here, and perhaps he won’t turn up even then.”
Inspector Armadale looked from husband to wife and back again.
“And you’ll say nothing till he comes?”
Stanley Fleetwood did not think it worth the trouble to answer.
“I think you’ll regret this, sir. But it’s your own doing. I needn’t trouble you further just now.”
Armadale stalked out of the room, suspicion and indignation written large in every line of his figure. Sir Clinton followed. As Wendover closed the retreat, he saw Cressida step swiftly across to her husband’s side and slip to her knees at the edge of the bed.
Chapter Eight
The Colt Automatic
At the foot of the stairs, Armadale excused himself.
“Better have some breakfast, inspector,” Sir Clinton suggested. “You’ve been up all night, and you must be hungry.”
Rather to Wendover’s relief, Arm
adale rejected the implied invitation.
“I’ll pick up a sandwich, probably, later on, sir; but I’ve something I want to make sure about first, if you don’t mind. Will you be ready again in half an hour or so?”
Sir Clinton glanced at his watch.
“We’ll hurry, inspector. After all, it’s about time that we took Billingford out of pawn. The constable may be getting wearied of his society by this stage.”
Inspector Armadale seemed to have no sympathy in stock so far as either Billingford or Sapcote was concerned.
“Staveley’s body has to be collected, too,” he pointed out. “I’ve a good mind to ’phone for some more men. We really can’t cover all the ground as we are.”
“I should, if I were you, inspector. Get them sent over by motor; and tell them to meet us at Lynden Sands. A sergeant and three constables will probably be enough.”
“Very good, sir.”
The inspector went off on his errand, much to the relief of Wendover, whose antagonism to Armadale had in no way cooled. Sir Clinton led the way to the breakfast-room, and impressed on his waiter the necessity for haste. As they sat down, Wendover saw inquisitive glances shot at their table by other guests in distant parts of the room. Evidently the news of the tragedy on the beach was common property by now.
“I don’t think Armadale made much of that business,” Wendover commented in a voice low enough to be inaudible to their nearest neighbours. “There’s nothing so undignified as a bit of bullying when it doesn’t quite come off.”
Sir Clinton never allowed a criticism of a subordinate to pass unanswered.
“Armadale did his best, and in nine cases out of ten he’d have got what he wanted. You’re looking at the thing from the sentimental standpoint, you know. The police have nothing to do with that side of affairs. Armadale’s business is to extract all the information he can and then use it, no matter where it leads him. If an official had to stop his investigations merely because a pretty girl breaks down and cries, we shouldn’t be a very efficient force in society.”
Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 10