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

by Molly Thynne

  Constantine agreed.

  “There’s something engaging, even about his foibles,” he said. “And he’s a very sound chess player. I hope to enjoy many games with him in the future.”

  Stuart looked up sharply.

  “Then he’s not one of your suspects!” he exclaimed.

  Constantine’s eyes twinkled.

  “I congratulate you on your powers of deduction,” he said. “But you won’t get anything more out of me.”

  But Stuart had yet another shot in his locker.

  “By the way,” he observed casually, “I looked into your room on my way down to dinner, and was glad to see that your fire was burning beautifully.”

  Constantine’s voice was very bland as he answered—

  “Was it? Then that nice little maid must have been attending to it. I needn’t have obtruded myself on you after all.”

  At about ten o’clock Stuart went to his room and busied himself with his belated Christmas letters. He left the door ajar, with the result that, at about a quarter to ten, he saw Macklin returning from his dinner engagement. Though he had flouted Soames’s suspicions he took the trouble to rise from his chair and stand listening in the doorway after Macklin had turned up the short flight of steps to his room. Thus it was that he caught the sound of murmured conversation, and was sufficiently curious to step lightly along the passage. He arrived at the foot of the steps just in time to see him parting from Miss Hamilton. Neither of them was aware of Stuart, standing watching at the foot of the steps, and when Macklin handed the girl a good-sized key, he did so quite openly. His voice was so carefully lowered, however, that Stuart could not hear what he said as he gave it to her. Then they both disappeared into their respective rooms.

  Stuart hesitated for a moment, then he hastened down the passage, and called softly to Soames.

  “Is there a communicating door between your room and Trevor’s?” he asked, as Soames appeared at the foot of the stairs.

  “Yes. Why do you want to know?”

  “Only that your room corresponds with the one Captain Macklin is using at this end of the passage.”

  Soames’s eyes widened.

  “But he’s got Miss Hamilton next door to him,” he said.

  “I know,” was Stuart’s cryptic rejoinder. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  He withdrew so swiftly that he missed Soames’s next question, and returned to his room, gleefully conscious of the fact that he had, at least, left him something to ponder over.

  About fifteen minutes later Miss Hamilton passed his door on her way downstairs, presumably to Mrs. van Dolen’s room. Ten minutes afterwards she returned, evidently on her way to bed. Of Macklin there was no sign, and Stuart was certain that his door had not opened. At 11.30 Constantine joined him, and he told him what had occurred.

  “The key was a good sized one,” he said. “The kind that might fit any of these old-fashioned doors. I’ll wager it was either the key of his door or of the communicating door between their two rooms.”

  Constantine, who was standing with his back to the fire, frowned.

  “It really looks as if Soames was going to have the satisfaction of saying ‘I told you so,’” he said. “Macklin is a darker horse than I thought.”

  He looked up sharply at the sound of an opening door, then relaxed as Miss Amy Adderley’s blameless figure trotted past on the way to the bath.

  He turned again to Stuart.

  “If Captain Macklin—” he began, then, with a swiftness astonishing in one of his years, made a dive for the door.

  But he was too late. As he reached it, the key turned on the other side.

  Stuart, who had reached his side, tried the handle, but the door was securely locked.

  Constantine eyed it malevolently.

  “Caught!” he said bitterly. “Did you see who did it?”

  Stuart shook his head.

  “I’d got my back to it,” he answered. “And I never heard a sound. Whoever it was must have slipped down behind Miss Adderley.”

  He shook the door violently, but there was not a sound from outside. Then he tried shouting, but the door was too solid for his voice to travel far, and, in any case, Miss Connie Adderley, his only neighbour, was too deaf to hear him.

  He turned to find Constantine standing by the fire, his finger on the bell.

  “Unless they’ve cut the wire this ought to bring some one,” he said.

  It did, but not until another five minutes had passed, and they had to wait, helpless and exasperated, until they heard the footsteps of the chambermaid and the sound of the key turning once more in the lock.

  While Constantine was explaining to her what had happened, Stuart went down the passage and up the flight of steps leading to Macklin’s room. As he reached it Macklin came out.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked. “I thought I heard some one shouting.”

  “You did,” answered Stuart. “Some bright spirit locked me into my room. You didn’t hear any one down this end, did you?”

  “Not a soul. What did they do it for?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” returned Stuart, as he went back to his room.

  He found Miss Amy in the doorway, much perturbed by this new menace to their security.

  “It’s a dreadful thought,” she wailed, “that one might be locked in at any moment. Supposing there was a fire!”

  “You could always come out through the communicating door into my room,” said Stuart soothingly.

  “But supposing you were locked in too!” she objected, and he found that argument impossible to meet.

  She was eventually sufficiently reassured to return to her room. Not, however, until she had seen Stuart take his doorkey out of the lock and slip it into his pocket.

  He did not share with her his conviction that, in all probability, most of the locks on the bedroom doors were alike, and the keys interchangeable.

  He accompanied her to her room and saw her safely inside, then made his way along the passage, only to meet Constantine coming out of the bathroom.

  “He couldn’t have been in there,” said Stuart. “Miss Amy was in possession when it happened.”

  “I know,” answered the old man calmly. “All the same, I propose to keep the bathroom door locked till the time arrives for my own nightly ablutions.”

  Stuart stared at him.

  “I call that pretty arbitrary,” he said. “Supposing some one else wants a bath?”

  Constantine stowed the key away in his pocket.

  “You know where to come for this if you want one,” he answered. “And I happen to know that every one else on this landing baths in the morning, with the exception of Captain Macklin, who will simply have to go without.”

  But at midnight when, persuaded by the untiring Constantine, Stuart lay down on his bed for a couple of hours’ sleep, Captain Macklin had shown no desire to wash, and Constantine, still in triumphant possession of the key, was comfortably established with a book in his old place by the door. He had promised to wake the younger man so that he might relieve him in two hours’ time, and Stuart, after five minutes of intense wakefulness, drifted off into complete oblivion.

  He was awakened by the low murmur of voices, and opened his eyes to see Mrs. Orkney Cloude in conversation with Constantine in the doorway. He looked at his watch. It was close on two o’clock.

  Hastily getting to his feet he joined them.

  His first thought was that Mrs. Cloude was looking extraordinarily pretty. Her hair was in disorder, and she had evidently flung a wrap hastily over her nightclothes. She had obviously only just arrived, and was still panting from her race up the stairs.

  “Geoffrey’s trying to get in,” she was saying; “but the door’s locked, and there’s a most frightful shindy going on inside! I’ve been trying to find that policeman, but he’s nowhere to be seen!”

  Constantine seized her arm and hurried her out of the room.

  “Put your finger on the be
ll and keep it there,” he called over his shoulder to Stuart. “Girling’s bound to hear it in time. But on no account stir from this landing till I come back!”

  With that he departed, sweeping Mrs. Cloude with him. But Stuart was not to be disposed of so easily. He followed them on to the landing.

  “Here, I say! What’s it all about?” he demanded.

  Constantine took no notice, but Mrs. Cloude turned a startled face in his direction.

  “Something awful is going on in Mrs. van Dolen’s room,” said she, “and we can’t get in!”

  CHAPTER XVI

  It seemed hours to Stuart before Constantine returned, though, as he afterwards discovered, the old man could not have been gone for more than five minutes. He arrived breathless with the haste with which he had mounted the stairs.

  “You must admit that I’ve been merciful,” he gasped. “I left at the most exciting moment in the game! If you’re quick, you’ll get there just in time. Off with you!”

  “Then there really was some one in Mrs. van Dolen’s room?”

  “From the noise I should say there were at least half a dozen of them!”

  Stuart hesitated.

  “I don’t like to use you like this, sir,” he said. “If you really do feel that this landing ought to be guarded, I’m ready to stay.”

  Constantine picked up his book.

  “Wild horses wouldn’t drag me from this landing,” he announced contentedly. “And, before you go, I’ll tell you this, my friend. Bates may be arresting the murderer of Carew at this moment, for all I know, but he hasn’t laid hands on the emeralds. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

  But Stuart had little time to ponder over these cryptic words. Things happened so swiftly and unexpectedly during the next half-hour that Constantine and his conundrums went completely out of his head.

  Every occupant of the “Noah’s Ark” seemed to be gathered outside Mrs. van Dolen’s door when he arrived there. It was still closed, and presented an ominously blank surface. Mrs. Orkney Cloude, as they continued to call her, joined him.

  “Girling and the policeman have gone round by the balcony,” she informed him. “They thought they could get in more easily there.”

  “Is Mrs. van Dolen all right?”

  “Goodness knows! She hasn’t made a sound, but there’s been a struggle of some kind, and we could hear a man’s voice.”

  There was a cry from one of the maids in the foreground.

  “Get back! They’re coming out!”

  The crowd surged back on to Stuart and Mrs. Cloude. Then the door opened and Girling came out. On his face was a broad grin of triumph.

  “We’ve got one of them, at any rate,” he announced.

  Mrs. Cloude pushed her way through the crowd, and the servants fell back to let her pass. Stuart followed her through the door and into the bedroom.

  The first person his eyes fell on was Captain Macklin. His collar had been torn from its stud and was under one ear, and there was a bruise on his cheek-bone that was colouring rapidly, but he seemed as cheerful and self-possessed as ever. His hand was grasping the cuff of an individual even more battered than himself, who was dabbing his bleeding knuckles with a handkerchief, considerably hampered in his work by the handcuffs that encircled his wrists.

  Stuart gave a gasp as he recognized the sick chauffeur he had tucked up in bed so tenderly only that afternoon.

  Mrs. van Dolen was nowhere to be seen.

  “Better get out of this!” said Macklin briskly. “Can we use your office, landlord?”

  “Right, Inspector,” agreed Girling, who was engaged in shooing the maids down the passage as though they were a pack of hens.

  Trundling his silent prisoner in front of him, Macklin led’ the way, Stuart treading dose on his heels. As they entered Girling’s little office Macklin turned and caught sight of him.

  “I’m afraid I played a dirty trick on you to-night, Mr. Stuart,” he said, with a friendly smile. “I had to change places with Mrs. van Dolen unperceived. There was too much risk of running into the servants on the back stairs, so there was nothing for it but to lock you into your peep-hole for a minute or two. You see, coming fresh to the job as I did, I couldn’t take any of you for granted, and could only let Bates and Mr. Girling into the secret.”

  Stuart could not help laughing.

  “It’s only fair to tell you that we’ve been cherishing the basest suspicions of you,” he answered. “We knew you hadn’t come from Redsands.”

  Macklin’s eyes widened.

  “That’s one up to you,” he exclaimed. “I must have made a bad slip somewhere! Perhaps, some time, you’ll put me wise to how you caught me. By the way, Macklin’s not my name. Detective-Inspector Arkwright, at your service. As you guessed, I came straight down from the Yard.”

  He swung round and faced his prisoner.

  “Now we’ll have a word with this chap. I won’t bother you with all the names we’ve known him under, Mr. Stuart, but his friends call him Puggy Walker, because he began his career in the ring. And I will say this for you, you haven’t forgotten everything you learned there, Puggy!” he finished, fingering his cheek tenderly.

  “You’ve no call to bring that up against me, Mr. Arkwright,” muttered Walker sullenly. “If I’d known it was you I’d have come quiet; but I can’t see in the dark.”

  “Thought you’d only got a woman to deal with, eh? “

  Walker snorted.

  “I knew it wasn’t no woman as soon as our little party began! No. I thought it was the village flatty.”

  He cast a vicious glance at Bates, who stood, stolid as ever, by his side. But if he hoped to draw him he was doomed to disappointment.

  “It may be a comfort to you to know that, if it hadn’t been for this officer here, we shouldn’t have got you to-night,” was Arkwright’s brisk retort. “Let’s have that parcel I left with you, will you, Mr. Girling?”

  Girling unlocked the front of his heavy bureau and handed Arkwright a parcel wrapped in newspaper.

  “Bates found this up the chimney in a box-room upstairs,” went on Arkwright, as he undid the string. “He brought it to me, and, when I heard of the sick chauffeur, my thoughts naturally turned to you, Puggy. You’ve played that game once too often, son. Why don’t you fellows vary your methods?”

  Stuart’s eyes were on the man’s face. The colour was ebbing slowly from it, leaving even the thin lips white. He moistened them with his tongue before he answered.

  “Whatever you’ve got in there’s got nothing to do with me,” he asserted hoarsely.

  “Then why did you try to fetch it to-night?” snapped Arkwright. “You’d got your hand on the box-room door when you saw Bates at the end of the passage. As a matter of fact, you’d been under observation ever since I arrived.”

  He undid his parcel and took out the object it contained.

  “I suggest that you were going to wash this, and put it back in the car,” he said. “Though why you left it so late I can’t imagine.”

  Stuart broke into the conversation.

  “I believe I can explain that,” he exclaimed. “He probably did try on the night I locked the box-room door. It was the only door that I forgot to unlock next morning, and I only remembered it to-day.”

  Arkwright nodded.

  “What about it, Walker?” he asked. “You’re not bound to talk, you know, but you may as well tell us now as later.”

  He held out the object in his hand to Stuart.

  “You see?”

  Stuart saw and shuddered. It was a heavy sparer and, even to his unpractised eye, it was obvious that the stains on it were not those of rust.

  Walker found his voice.

  “Whoever used that has got the emeralds,” he retorted defiantly. “Wait till you find them before you try to put it on me!”

  “I wonder what makes you so sure of that, now?” said Arkwright gently. “We’ve no evidence that the man who killed Major Carew was after the eme
ralds. That may have been another job altogether.”

  He was watching his man closely, but, conscious of how nearly he had blundered, Walker was moving very warily now.

  “You won’t find no emeralds on me,” he repeated stubbornly. “I’d have been out of this, snow or no snow, long ago, if—”

  He broke off and relapsed into stubborn silence.

  Stuart’s excitement got the better of him.

  “If some one hadn’t pinched them from you,” he cut in, completing the man’s sentence for him.

  Walker looked up quickly. Only for a second was he taken unawares; but that second was his undoing, and Stuart knew that his shot had found its mark.

  “You hid them in a sack of bran in the barn, and some one took them from there,” he went on, almost involuntarily.

  Arkwright placed a restraining hand on his arm.

  “Just a minute,” he said. “Keep anything that you know to yourself till I come back.”

  He hurried out of the room, and Stuart heard his footsteps on the stairs outside.

  In a few minutes he was back again, carrying a coat and a dirty shirt over his arm.

  He threw them on the table and examined them rapidly, concentrating his attention on the sleeves and buttonholes. It was not till he had turned down the cuffs of the shirt that his search was rewarded.

  “Another score for you, Mr. Stuart,” he observed, as he shook the open cuff over the table, and watched a little drift of bran trickle out of the fold. He picked up the spanner and turned to the handcuffed man.

  “I think it was you who said that the man who used this got the emeralds,” he said, all the lightness gone from his voice now. “I’ll talk to you again when I’ve heard what Mr. Stuart here has got to say. You can take him, Bates. Got another man who will go with you?”

  Bates nodded.

  “There’s Mr. Girling’s Joe as’ll oblige, if he’ll spare him,” he said.

  He opened the door to find Joe’s face on the other side of it. He and the entire staff of the “Noah’s Ark” were congregated in the passage.