August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  "But who could have suspected 'Mrs. Ruthven'?" asked Mr. Penworthy.

  "Kraven had time to reach toward Fenn's face before he died. His hands, you will remember, were covered with cream and talcum powder; this immediately suggested a heavy make-up, which left one with scarcely any choice but 'Mrs. Ruthven,' " said Pons. "A further touch of it lay on the body—enough to indicate that it was being worn heavily enough to conceal evidence of masculine facial hair. And, of course, our brief meeting with 'Mrs. Ruthven' was quite sufficient to convince me of her real identity —the injured leg disguised as a clubfoot, the supposed operation for throat cancer to explain 'her' husky, harsh voice, the clever artlessness of 'her' concealment of 'her' large hands in handkerchief or gloves. 'Mrs. Ruthven' was easy to take at face value —unless you happened to be looking for James Fenn. Since the data Kraven had kept was extremely suggestive, together with his fright at sight of a ring he had last seen in the possession of what he supposed was a dead man pointed to James Fenn, I was."

  The Adventure of the Crouching Dog

  THE TRAIN had stopped at Chudleigh, and Solar Pons, chafing at every delay in our return to London from Cornwall and the puzzling matter of the Innkeeper's Clerk, had lowered the window and stuck his head out. He stood so for a few moments, looking up and down the station platform, his hands clasped behind his back; then he drew back into our compartment.

  "You may think London is England, Parker," he said. "But it is not so. Out there is England —in a thousand villages and hamlets scattered across the face of the loveliest countryside in the world." He waited upon no comment from me to add, "At this point we are approximately two hundred miles and five hours from Paddington."

  The guard's whistle sounded, and the train moved on.

  Pons sat down after raising the window once more, for, though the October sunlight was warm, the wind that came in through the open window was chill.

  We had hardly settled back for the remainder of our journey when there was a sharp rap on the door of our compartment, and a voice asked, "Mr. Solar Pons?"

  Pons leaped to his feet and threw open the door.

  A ticket inspector stood there with an envelope in his hands. He thrust it at Pons. "For you, sir."

  Pons thanked him.

  Standing with his back to the door, he tore open the envelope and drew out a telegram.

  "So," he said, having read it, "it was premature to count on Paddington today." He threw the document to me. "I can hardly refuse Ramsey."

  I read the message, "STANDING BY AT EXETER. PLEASE JOIN ME. HORRIBLE CRIME AT JOWETT CLOSE. RAMSEY." I looked up. "Who's Ramsey?"

  "Sir Roderick Ramsey, Chief Constable of Devon. An old friend," replied Pons. "He must have telephoned Mrs. Johnson at 7B, and tracked us away from St. Mawes in the same fashion." He looked at his watch. "It can't be more than an hour to Exeter. Presumably he'll be at St. David's. We can only wait on our arrival there."

  At the Great Western station in Exeter a tall, imposing man, whose most distinguishing feature was a fierce moustache, strode toward us as we descended from our compartment. He wore a rumpled tweed suit beneath a motoring jacket, and on his head a checkered cap; he carried a swagger-stick under one arm. His grizzled face, with his moustache and the bristling eyebrows, lent him the appearance of the popular screen-star, C. Aubrey Smith.

  "My dear Pons!" his voice boomed across a hundred feet of the station platform. "Sorry, and all that —interrupt your journey — know how anxious you must be to get back to London." But with this he was upon us. He caught hold of Pons's hand and shook it vigorously, acknowledged Pons's introduction to me with equal vigour, and went on, lowering his voice only a trifle, "It's poor Larry Jowett —been done in —found him with his head crushed —all torn — some animal —horrible thing."

  By the time we had passed through the crowd at St. David's and got into Sir Roderick's Rolls-Royce, Pons managed to stay our host's ebullience, and the account came with more coherence.

  "You may or may not know it, Pons," began Sir Roderick, as the car drew away from St. David's and began to thread its way through the historic city of Exeter, across the Exe toward West Devon, "but Jowett had been out of England for two years. With Lord Carnarvon's expedition in Egypt. He was with the party when they opened the tomb of Tutankhamen, and all that. It sounds like balderdash, but wait until you've had a look into it. By my count, Jowett's the fourth man of that party to die, and I say it's enough to alarm a more rational man than I am.

  "He came home in September. Jowett Close is an old manor-house on the northeastern edge of Dartmoor, not far from Throwleigh — about an hour's distance from here. It's a big place —once a moor farm —but you may know that country, remote as it is; it's high moorland country —and Jowett's wife lived there with the servants, his two younger brothers, and one of hers. Jowett was a wealthy man; he had to be, to support such an entourage." He shook his head brusquely. "But that's neither here nor there —the fact is, he's dead. Shocking sight, too. I knew him well. It shook me, Pons. He went out some time in the night and the evidence shows that he went for a walk on the moor and something tracked him; he began to run, it went after him, caught up, struck him down, and killed him. I've ordered nothing touched until you reached the spot. I lost no time tracking you down."

  "So I see," said Pons dryly.

  "I'm no amateur in these things, Pons," Sir Roderick went on. "What puzzles me is the complete absence of motive. And then Larry's going on —they tell me —about some sort of dog —a crouching dog, that's it —and the tomb curse and all that —and the look of his having been killed by some great dog! It's a bit unnerving. It needs a clearer mind. So I sent for you. What d'you think?"

  "Let us just wait upon events," said Pons. "I'll want to look about at the scene of the crime."

  "Naturally. A man can't do everything from an armchair!"

  "Not everything," conceded Pons. "But I submit a man doesn't need to rise from an armchair to conclude that no dog, large or small, has as much motive for killing a man as one of his fellow men."

  "Touche!" boomed Sir Roderick.

  "One question, however," said Pons. "You said Jowett was wealthy. Now he's dead, who inherits?"

  "I gather his widow does. There were no children. And his brothers come in for something, I have no doubt."

  "And her brother?"

  "Nothing. She'll have the best of his estate, and the living at Jowett Close if she wants it."

  "His brothers, now. Why have they been content to stay there? I assume, since Jowett can hardly still have been a very young man, to be with Carnarvon's expedition, his brothers must have reached their majority."

  "Well, one was studying for the ministry. That's Harold. He gave it up and came back to Jowett Close about six months ago. Hasn't shown any sign of wanting to leave so far. John's a bookish type — reading, writing poetry, that sort of thing. Just the kind of fellow who'd be glad of any niche to settle in."

  "Independent income?"

  "Yes, but small."

  "Education?"

  "Oxford, I believe. Both of them. Her brother's an older man, retired barrister. I've had a game of darts with him, but I don't know much about him. One of those taciturn, pipe-smoking individuals."

  Pons nodded, and gazed thoughtfully out at the fleeting landscape. He asked no further questions.

  In less than an hour we drove into the grounds at Jowett Close. Sir Roderick leaped from his car, beckoning us to follow; with instructions to his chauffeur to stay with the vehicle, he strode away toward the moor. The manor-house, from what it was possible to see of it in our passage, was in large part very old — a low building of two storeys, with square towers of two and three storeys at some of its corners, bespeaking a conglomeration of architectural influences. It had wings projecting from both ends with several small outbuildings, and there were signs that other such structures had been removed long since.

  Beyond the house loomed the moor. The hour was now high noon,
but even so, the great expanse of desolate land, with its tors, its shadow-swept slopes and barren outcrops, a lone grove of trees to our right, was impressively formidable, and yet not without a certain wild beauty inherent in its solitude. Clouds had risen, and, driven by a high wind which could not be felt where we walked, crossed the sun from time to time, so that we walked alternately in sunlight and in shade, and the moor ahead of us was a patchwork of sunlight and swiftly moving cloud-shadows.

  Sir Roderick walked with singular purpose, sawing the air at his side with his swagger-stick, his driving coat flowing outward at no more than the impetus of his swift strides. He did not once turn to discover whether Pons and I followed, which was fortunate, for Pons had gone off to one side, and was now loping along almost like an animal, hunched over, dropping to his knees from time to time, paying no heed to the comments Sir Roderick flung over his shoulder.

  The manor-house receded behind us; the moor closed in, diminishing us in a world of sky, clouds, stone outcroppings, and desolate moorland. We had gone perhaps a mile in this fashion when, rounding a granite tor-formation that crowned a little rise in the tableland, we came suddenly upon a party of people, grouped together at one side of a covered form lying still in death.

  Sir Roderick plunged at once into introductions—two constables named Warburton and Jones, a pair of photographers, Dr. Horace Annesley, and a harassed-looking man of approximately forty, whose name Sir Roderick brashly mispronounced —Anthony Heyle, who had been, said Sir Roderick, lowering his voice, "Larry Jowett's old friend and legal adviser. And this," he went on, "is Mr. Solar Pons," at which he turned and for the first time noticed that Pons was only now coming up. He hastily amended his speech. "This is Dr. Lyndon Parker, and that fellow coming up is Pons —you see, he's already on the trail." He turned to the constables, gestured with his swagger- stick, and commanded, "Uncover him —but take care how you step there —we'll want those marks undisturbed!"

  Pons came up, his eyes blazing with keenness, his lips grimly pursed, just as the tarpaulin was removed from the body of Lawrence Jowett. Jowett was almost spread-eagled on the ground, lying on his face; his outflung arms ended in clawed fingers partly dug into the ground in his death agony, which could not have lasted long, for a great wound gaped in his skull where flesh and bone had been torn away, and below it, smoking-jacket, shirt, and vest, exposing his back and bloody, claw-like scratches deep in his flesh.

  Pons walked delicately around the body, looking now at it, now away, at the ground around it. He bent to study the torn clothing as well as the horrible wound. Plainly Jowett had been felled by a single blow, seemingly made by a gigantic paw. Pons straightened and looked toward the physician who had been called to the scene.

  "Dr. Annesley, would you say he took long to die?" he asked.

  "No, Mr. Pons. He may not have died instantly, but it certainly did not take him long to die with such a wound."

  "You've examined him. When would you estimate death took place?"

  "Sometime after midnight and before two o'clock, possibly one o'clock. Rigor mortis is well advanced, but the night was chill."

  "Hm! The marks of his running are clear. He began to run a quarter of a mile back."

  "You saw the animal tracks?" interrupted Sir Roderick.

  Pons merely nodded. "But what kind of dog—or other animal — would strike him so? I submit that this may be the primary question. I commend it to your attention, gentlemen," he said to the constables.

  Sir Roderick struck his leg with his swagger-stick. "If you've finished, let's cover him, and get on with it."

  "One moment, Sir Roderick," said Pons, as he bent and drew something carefully from beneath the clawed fingers of the dead man's right hand. "What have we here?"

  He walked toward us, holding forth a stone, one face of which was engraved with a dog crouching above nine kneeling men.

  For a moment no one spoke.

  Then Heyle shuddered and said, "Mr. Pons, that is the seal of the crouching dog, the seal of the necropolis of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen."

  "You are an Egyptologist, Mr. Heyle?"

  "No, sir. Mr. Jowett explained it to me. This stone is only a copy. It had no value save as a curio. But Mr. Jowett had grown somewhat upset by the deaths which had taken place as a result of what he called the curse of Tutankhamen."

  "Whose deaths, Mr. Heyle?"

  "Lord Carnarvon's of a mosquito bite —Georges B6n6dite's of a stroke —Arthur Mace's in New York."

  "And now Larry Jowett's," said Sir Roderick, with a heavy sigh.

  The constables had lifted Jowett's body and placed it upon a stretcher which had been awaiting Pons's arrival, preparatory to bearing it away, and Pons turned once more to the spot where Jowett had lain, bending to scrutinize it with the utmost care. He lingered longest at the place where the dead man's hands had clawed into the earth, kneeling there for a few moments, while Sir Roderick watched him with narrowed eyes. Only when he had satisfied himself that nothing had escaped his notice did Pons rise and rejoin us.

  The constables, followed by the photographers, were already leading the melancholy way back to the house. Sir Roderick, Anthony Heyle, Pons and I fell into step behind them.

  Pons walked for some distance in silence, his high brow furrowed in thought, his eyes fixed upon the ground. He carried his hands clasped behind him, and his lips, as before, were grimly tight until he looked up suddenly.

  "You said, I believe, Mr. Heyle, that the late Mr. Jowett spoke with some concern about the curse of Tutankhamen. Can you repeat his words?"

  "Well, no, sir," answered Heyle hesitatingly. "I can give you their substance, but, frankly, I didn't think them important enough to commit them to memory."

  "Their substance, then," said Pons shortly.

  "He recounted the deaths of the three men I mentioned. He seemed disturbed. Yet he joked about it, saying if any strange dogs were seen about the place —especially large dogs —he'd want to know in time to clean his guns. That sort of thing. Still he more than half believed in the curse."

  "Damned queer business!" cried Sir Roderick.

  "But you did not?" asked Pons.

  "I fear, Mr. Pons, that the profession of the law demands more concrete evidence."

  "He spoke of this matter frequently?" pressed Pons.

  "What is 'frequently,' Mr. Pons?"

  "How many times did he mention this?"

  "Since he came home five or six weeks ago, he mentioned it, I suppose, once a week. It seemed to be on his mind, but he did not seem to be worried about it. It was something that interested rather than worried him."

  "When was the last time, Mr. Heyle?"

  "Only last night."

  "Ah, you spoke to him last night?"

  "I may have been the last person to speak with him, Mr. Pons. We were up late —close to midnight. We had been going over some legal matters. Mr. Jowett had many investments I had been seeing to in his absence. Then there was his will, in which he planned to make some alterations."

  "Specifically?"

  "He wanted to increase his brother Harold's share of the estate. Since Harold had gone into the ministry prior to Jowett's joining the Carnarvon expedition, it had not then seemed to Jowett that he would need as much of a stipend as John. Now that he had deserted this calling, it seemed to Jowett that he would need equally as much as John."

  "So you spoke of this, and the curse of Tutankhamen cropped up again?"

  "Yes, rather violently. I had tired of hearing about it. I don't have that kind of mind, Mr. Pons. I suppose mine was a professional reaction. In the end we had words about it, with Mr. Jowett becoming rather insistent in his belief that there was some pattern in the events which had taken place. Which was nonsense, of course."

  "And you said as much." "I did."

  "As his solicitor, what is your estimate of Jowett's net worth?"

  "Something over a quarter of a million pounds. Of this sum, his wife will receive two-thirds, including Jowett
Close, his brothers will share unevenly, since he had not had time to change his will—John will receive two thousand pounds a year, Harold five hundred, and the rest goes to some of the servants and certain charities. He left a very clear and unambiguous will, Mr. Pons."

  "If Mr. Jowett had lived to alter his will, would Harold's increased allowance have come from the sum allotted to John?" "Possibly," said Heyle. "But I really couldn't say, Mr. Pons."

  "Were the brothers aware that a change was being contemplated in the will?"

  Heyle answered cautiously. "I should think they may well have been."

  Pons retreated into silence.

  The head of the melancholy little caravan was now entering the garden area of the grounds around Jowett Close. The scene had gone grey and sombre; clouds had closed over the sky, the sunlight was gone. Behind us the moor brooded darkly, almost menacing, like a great sentient being lying in wait, the tors like sinister sentinels wrapped in stony silence. Even Sir Roderick said nothing as we moved upon the house, until, at the threshold, he turned to Pons and spoke.

  "Mrs. Jowett has asked to see you."

  He led the way to the drawing-room where Sybil Jowett sat looking emotionlessly out upon the moor. She rose as we entered, and revealed herself to be a handsome, full-breasted woman, of more than average height. With that intuition so common to women, she fixed her lustrous blue eyes upon Pons and advanced to meet us.