The Crime at the ‘Noah’s Ark’: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  “A hot bath and then a nice little dinner in bed will be just the thing for her,” confided Miss Amy to him, after she had shut her sister safely into the bathroom. “Very silly of her to have taken it like this, of course, but then, as I always say, it’s different when you’re deaf. Everything seems to get exaggerated so. Of course, it was a most unpleasant experience, to have a policeman turning over all one’s things! But then, as I told her, we could hardly stand out when the Misses Ford had actually asked him to search their rooms. It would have looked too odd, not to say suspicious. And, after all, if you take it in the right way, it is an experience, isn’t it, Mr. Stuart? One, I trust, we shall never have again, but still an experience! But you can hardly expect her to see it in that light, can you?”

  “I didn’t like it very much myself,” admitted Stuart, with his kindly smile. “So I can imagine how she felt.” The door of her room had hardly closed behind her when Trevor appeared at the end of the passage. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his round face was pink with indignation.

  “I say,” he shouted, at the sight of Stuart. “Has that chap been at your room again?”

  Stuart stared at him.

  “Bates, do you mean?” he answered. “He went through it thoroughly this afternoon.”

  “I know; that was when he searched mine. Well, he’s been back again! I advise you to have a look at your room!”

  Stuart opened his door, switched on the light, and stood aghast.

  The contents of every drawer and cupboard in the room were piled on the floor. Even the attaché-case that held his papers had been emptied, and the bed was littered with manuscript, proof sheets, and correspondence.

  “Pretty ghastly, isn’t it?” came Trevor’s voice from the doorway. “It may comfort you to know that mine’s worse! If that beastly policeman’s responsible for this, he ought to be sacked!”

  Stuart, with the picture of the barn as he had last seen it still fresh in his mind, shook his head.

  “Then that chap didn’t get the girdle,” was all he said.

  CHAPTER IX

  Leaving Trevor still spluttering with wrath in the doorway, Stuart ran downstairs, and, on the second floor, overtook a scared and scarlet-faced chambermaid, bound on the same errand as himself. She was on the verge of hysteria, but he managed to gather that Mrs. Orkney Cloude’s room had been ransacked also, and that she had sent the girl for the landlord.

  Stuart let her go on ahead, and, as he stood waiting, he heard a babel of excited voices wafted from the floor above, and guessed that others had made the same discovery as himself. The arrival of Girling, followed by a badly worried Bates, soon established the fact that, at any rate, the constable had no hand in this latest development.

  A careful inspection showed that nothing had been taken from any of the rooms, and that, with the exception of the servants, the Romsey family, Mrs. van Dolen, and the Misses Adderley, no one had escaped. The search, though obviously hurried, had been very thorough, and there could be no doubt that the intruder had had some definite object in mind. Whether he had found it or not was an open question.

  “If you ask me, I hope he has,” announced Soames frankly, pointing to the contents of an indexed folder that lay strewn upon the floor. “It’ll take me the best part of an hour to get those straight again, and there’s a dozen clean collars as good as done for. Let him have the blooming emeralds, provided he leaves my things alone!”

  “I wonder why the others got off scot free like that,” said Trevor. “Mrs. Cloude’s the only person on the floor below that suffered.”

  “Because the others are beyond reproach, my lad,” Soames informed him. “Remember, whoever has got the emeralds must have taken them in the first instance.”

  The boy flushed hotly.

  Constantine intervened.

  “As the only person who suspects us is, on the face of it, anything but honest himself, I don’t think we need concern ourselves with his opinion,” he said quickly, “The interesting point to me, is that whoever is after the emeralds now, obviously hasn’t the remotest idea who has got them. I fancy the Misses Adderley only escaped owing to the fact that they have been in their room all the evening.”

  “Your original assumption that the robbery was an inside job does seem pretty well established now,” said Stuart. “It’s pretty clear that the emeralds are hidden inside this house somewhere, and that the person who took them knows where they are.”

  “And some one else doesn’t! I wish he did!” added Trevor. “The brute has forced the lock of a perfectly good suit-case that I only bought last week. I suppose I ought to be thankful that he didn’t take the money that was in it.”

  “As he left Mrs. Cloude’s jewellery alone, I take it he was after something worth a pretty penny,” said Bates slowly. “I’d say you’re right about the emeralds, Dr. Constantine. I thought so this morning, but I’m sure of it now.”

  “Well, you can cheer up, constable,” remarked Soames consolingly. “If this other chap can’t find them they must be pretty well hidden, so no wonder your search was in vain. I’m off to do a little tidying.”

  Bates watched him disappear into his room, then he turned to Constantine.

  “Strikes me,” he said thoughtfully, “that that there thief, or whatever he is, would be mighty careful to chuck his own things about while he was about it. It’d be a bit pointed, like, if his things weren’t touched.”

  On that he departed, leaving Constantine and Stuart staring at one another.

  “That’s a nasty one!” exclaimed Stuart. “Poor old Soames!”

  Constantine smiled.

  “By now, I don’t suppose he’d give a clean bill to any one of us,” he said. “I must say, the thing is getting a little uncanny. I wish this snow would stop. I’m getting too old for these alarums and excursions.”

  His looks belied him. In spite of his evident discouragement, his face was as animated as that of a boy, and Stuart had a suspicion that the old man had not spent such an interesting or eventful holiday for years. He could not resist saying so.

  “I believe, if the truth were known, you’re enjoying it, sir,” he ventured.

  The wrinkles round Constantine’s eyes deepened.

  “You see too much, young man,” he admitted. “But, to tell you the truth, I’m getting exasperated. The thing’s like a chess problem one can’t solve, and, till now, I’ve been accustomed to deal adequately with chess problems! There’s a key move somewhere and I can’t get hold of it. Until I do I shall be like a cat on hot bricks. Besides, you forget, there are women in the house.”

  “You’re afraid of what may happen?”

  “I’m afraid because I don’t know what may happen. At the best, there’s a chance that some of them may be badly frightened before we’ve finished. And I can’t see a gleam of light anywhere!”

  “I suppose, if the worst comes to the worst, one of us could sit up and keep an eye on things,” suggested Stuart.

  He spoke reluctantly. He was a good sleeper, and. hated to be deprived of his night’s rest.

  “This is a jolly little Christmas holiday,” he complained. “When I think that I came away for a rest!”

  Constantine laughed.

  “You’d have got very little rest at Redsands,” he retorted. “It’s evident that you’ve never been there. Burglar hunting’s a more wholesome occupation than being entertained by an energetic committee to within an inch of your life. Joking apart, though, I should keep an eye on those old ladies next door to you. Like myself, they’re a little ancient for these nocturnal alarms.”

  As it turned out, Constantine’s misgivings were shared by the ladies themselves. After dinner, Miss Amy approached Stuart and asked him whether, by any chance, he was going up early to bed that night. It appeared that Miss Connie’s attack of nerves had brought on a bronchial cough to which she was subject, and her sister thought it unlikely that she would be able to leave her room for a couple of days at least.

&nbs
p; “We don’t want to feel that we are imposing on you,” she finished, rather wistfully. “But it is a relief, both to my sister and myself, to feel that there is a man in the room next door. If we noticed anything in the night, for instance, we could rap on the communicating door.”

  “Of course! I hope you will,” assented Stuart, inwardly praying that nothing unusual would obtrude itself on the Misses Adderley’s attention during the small hours. Then his naturally kind heart asserted itself. He remembered the proofs he had brought from London, and, with a pang, abandoned his original plan of inveigling Angela Ford into a return match at billiards.

  “As a matter of fact,” he assured her, “I’ve got some work I ought to tackle, and I may as well do it to-night. I can start on it now, in my room, and if I sit with the door open, I can keep an eye on your sister’s room till you come up to bed. How will that be?”

  He was rewarded by the look of relief on her little round face.

  “That will be delightful!” she exclaimed. “I’ll tell my sister that you are there, and it will make all the difference to her comfort. Of course, nothing will happen; but she’s apt to be nervous, you know.”

  The last sentence was more in the nature of a question than a statement, and he hastened to reassure her.

  “You can’t expect adventures every night, Miss Adderley,” he said, smiling. “I’m afraid you’ll find life quite dull now that things are settling down. Anyhow, I don’t expect you travel with much jewellery, so you were never in any real danger of being disturbed.”

  Miss Adderley peered warily over her shoulder.

  “My sister has got some very fine cameos that belonged to our mother,” she informed him in a hushed voice; “but we’ve been very careful not to allude to them in public.”

  “Quite right,” he assented, his lips twitching uncontrollably, and hurried away to find Constantine, and inform him that, if wanted, he was to be found keeping guard over the Adderley heirlooms.

  The chess maniacs had retired to Constantine’s room, and were already setting out the chess-men. It struck Stuart that neither of them was inclined to quarrel with the opportunity for making it an all-night sitting.

  “I suppose, now you’ve got an excuse, you’ll go on till breakfast,” he gibed as he left them.

  Soames grinned.

  “I’ve got my health to consider,” he said. “I propose to turn in not later than two-thirty, so don’t come to me after that, carrying your little poker!”

  But, as it turned out, it was Soames who came to him.

  Stuart settled himself down by the fire with his proofs, leaving his door open, and thus affording himself an excellent view of the various occupants of his landing as they sped to their baths. Punctually at ten o’clock Miss Amy Adderley flitted coyly across his vision, armed with the inevitable sponge and family bath salts. She was followed by Constantine, Rembrandtesque in his black silk dressing-gown. He had torn himself away in the middle of a fierce struggle with Soames over the chessboard, to take advantage of the bath water while it was hot. He paused at Stuart’s door on his way back to his room.

  Stuart, looking up, saw him standing there; his thick white hair on end, his figure instinct with vitality, his dark eyes ablaze with some emotion that the younger man could not fathom.

  “Hallo!” he exclaimed.

  To his surprise, Constantine did not answer, but with an inscrutable look turned and disappeared down the passage to his room, leaving Stuart gaping after him.

  He returned to his work and laboured steadily over his proofs until past one in the morning; but, in spite of the concentration demanded by that hateful task, the vision of the old man, as he had last seen him, kept intruding itself on his vision. Remembering his mingled depression and exasperation earlier in the day, he could not get over the feeling that something had happened to change his mood. Stuart was no chess player, but he could not bring himself to believe that checkmating an antagonist so obviously his inferior as Soames would have induced this triumphant aspect. More than once he was on the point of following Constantine to his room and demanding an explanation, but he knew the old man well enough to realize that, if he had made up his mind to say nothing, it would be useless to question him. All the same, as the night wore on, he became more and more convinced that Constantine not only had something up his sleeve, but that in his queer, whimsical way he had intended to convey the fact to him. It was not unlike him deliberately to whet Stuart’s curiosity, and then, as deliberately, to refrain from satisfying it.

  When he did get to bed he was tired out with the exhaustion born of a tedious job and too little exercise, and he had been asleep for more than two hours when he was awakened by the sound of his door opening, and remembered, with a start that brought him fully to his senses, that he had forgotten to lock it on going to bed.

  A hand came round the door and switched on the light. Soames was revealed to him, clad in the camel’s hair dressing-gown that he was beginning to know only too well.

  Stuart sat up in bed and gave vent to his exasperation.

  “If I see you in my room again in the middle of the night,” he exclaimed, “there’ll be another murder committed in this hotel! I don’t care what’s happened, I’m not going to get out of my warm bed!”

  He slid under the bedclothes and clutched them firmly under his chin.

  Soames bore down on him.

  “It’s Melnotte this time,” he announced cheerfully. “The poor lad’s had the fright of his young life. Fortunately, the doctor was wakened by the sound of a door shutting, and sallied forth to see what was happening. He found Melnotte literally gibbering, with a story of a masked man standing by his bed, feeling under his pillow. Looks as if your friend’s on the prowl again.”

  Stuart regarded him warily over the top of the blankets. He knew Soames to be quite capable of dragging him bodily out of bed. But he was more stirred than he chose to admit.

  “Well, if he is, what do you expect me to do about it?” he demanded. “I’m not responsible for his actions.”

  Soames scratched his head.

  “I suppose some one ought to do something,” he said, rather doubtfully. “Dr. Constantine knocked me up, and I came for you.”

  “Thank you,” said Stuart dryly. “It was a kind thought. Didn’t Melnotte go after him?”

  “Melnotte did precisely what one might have known he would do. He pretended to be asleep until the chap had left the room, and then lay sweating with terror, with the clothes over his head, till Constantine arrived. He’s about as much use as a sick hen!”

  “You don’t think he’s invented the whole thing?”

  “Dr. Constantine says he was almost insane with funk. He thinks it’s genuine enough.”

  “What’s Constantine doing?”

  Soames’s grin widened.

  “As far as I know, he’s gone back to bed. He seems to hold the same principles about getting up in the night as you do!”

  “Good luck to him!” was Stuart’s hearty comment. With a fat policeman sleeping on the premises, I’m blessed if I see why we should do our own burglar hunting. Where’s Bates supposed to sleep, do you know?”

  “Nowhere, I should have said. I understood that he was going to sit up with a truncheon in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other. If you won’t come, I’d better go for him alone; but if I’m knocked on the head on the way, I hope you’ll have the decency to attend the funeral.”

  With a sigh, Stuart climbed out of bed and began putting on his dressing-gown.

  “Look here,” he said. “You know where Girling sleeps, and I don’t. If you’ll go and rouse him I’ll have a look for Bates. He’s probably downstairs somewhere, if he’s sitting up. Then we can go back to bed and leave them to fight it out together.”

  He found Bates quite easily. He was sitting in Girling’s office with the door open; his theory being, no doubt, that he would thus hear anybody moving on the stairs outside. Unfortunately for the success of the plan
his head was sunk on his breast, and he was sleeping so heavily that even Stuart’s approach did not wake him, though the latter had made no effort to move quietly. It was as well that the Misses Adderley could not see their official protector at this moment.

  But he pulled himself together with astonishing celerity when Stuart placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Now then, sir,” he demanded, with the truculence of one who has been found in a thoroughly undignified position, “what are you doin’ here?”

  Stuart mastered his natural indignation and told him what had happened. He had barely finished before the constable was out of the door and half-way up the stairs. Stuart followed more slowly.

  “I’m going back to bed,” he called after him when he reached his own landing. “If you want me you know where to find me.”

  He felt so certain of the utter futility of any kind of search that, once back in his room, he merely took the precaution of locking his door and then tumbled thankfully enough into bed. For a time he listened to the sound of muffled voices in the passage outside, but within half an hour of the alarm he was sound asleep.

  Girling’s report next morning was as he had expected. Indeed, from the point of view of interest, it faded into insignificance beside the chambermaid’s announcement that the snow had ceased during the night and that the snow-plough at Rushton was already at work. The landlord and Bates had made a round of the house, and had drawn a complete blank. They had even been on to the roof and had searched it with the aid of pocket-torches, but had found no sign of any one’s having been up there. Nothing had been taken from Melnotte’s room, which had been pretty thoroughly ransacked earlier in the day, presumably by the same person. Apparently he had been acting on the assumption that Melnotte was carrying the object of his search on his person, and had been driven to the expedient of looking for it after he had gone to bed.

  The unfortunate Bates came in for a good deal of adverse criticism, which he could hardly have avoided overhearing. In addition to which, according to Girling, he had been summoned to the presence of Lord Romsey, who had asked him point-blank what steps he proposed to take to ensure the safety of the occupants of the “Noah’s Ark.” Bates’s retort that he was working single-handed and could hardly manage to be in two places at once, had, it appeared, only inspired Lord Romsey to further eloquence.