The Castleford Conundrum

by J. J. Connington

  “I could see part of Ringford’s Meadow and some of the nearer stretch. I remember that, because I was on the lookout to see if my father was coming.”

  “I suppose you could see the strip of road that runs from the Chalet down towards Ringford’s Meadow?”

  “Yes, I could see most of that,” Hilary answered, after the very faintest hesitation.

  “You were keeping a sharp lookout, of course, since you were expecting your father?”

  Again Hilary seemed to hesitate for an instant as though she doubted what was the best answer to make.

  “Yes, I was keeping a good lookout,” she admitted finally, in a tone which the Inspector found much less frank than before.

  Evidently, he surmised, he was “getting warm.” They were coming to the “really sticky bit” as he phrased it to himself. It was here that he hoped to entrap her if she was lying, by fastening upon a piece of evidence for which she might be unprepared; but he had two points at which he wished to pin her down; and either of them might see her on the alert for the other. In his turn, he paused to consider, watching her face as he did so.

  “You heard the Thunderbridge clock strike five, didn’t you?” he asked at last, when he had made his decision. “Was that before or after you sat down, can you remember?”

  “It was after I sat down,” Hilary answered with a readiness which rather took the Inspector aback. “I’d been sitting there for some minutes—five minutes or more—when the chime sounded. I’m quite sure about that, because I glanced at my wrist-watch to check it. It runs a shade fast, and I like to know just how much ahead of time it is.”

  “You were looking out for your father. Did you catch sight of him before or after the chime struck?”

  Here Hilary’s hesitation was quite a couple of seconds long before she gave her reply.

  “It was before I heard the chime . . . At least, I think so,” she added hurriedly.

  “Can’t you be sure about it?”

  Hilary seemed to have recovered from her tiny panic.

  “Yes,” she said definitely, “it was before the chime. I saw him in Ringford’s Meadow just before the clock struck.”

  Now the Inspector decided to spring his mine. This girl and her father might have concocted their story very neatly, but perhaps they had left a loose end.

  “Did you see anyone on the by-road leading towards the Chalet at that time?” he demanded sharply.

  What he wished to do was to pin her down to saying whether her father crossed the by-road in advance of or behind Stevenage, since from Stevenage’s evidence Castleford had been some distance from the road when he himself passed by. Quite obviously, the question took the girl aback. She had not been primed beforehand how to deal with it. She considered her reply for several seconds; but when it came, it eluded the whole point, much to the Inspector’s vexation.

  “I didn’t notice anyone.”

  What annoyed Westerham was that this answer might quite well be dictated by any one of several factors. It might be the plain truth; for she might easily enough have missed seeing Stevenage as he passed. Or it might be a flat falsehood told to evade the very difficulty in which he was trying to involve her. Or, again, it might be an attempt to leave Stevenage out of the question, for some reason or other which had nothing to do with Castleford. Finally, there was the possibility that Stevenage’s own evidence was inaccurate. If this last hypothesis were true then Stevenage must have had some cogent reason for mis-describing his movements.

  Westerham saw that if she chose to stick to this statement he could get no further, so he switched off to a fresh line.

  “When did your father meet you in the copse?”

  “At five minutes past five, as near as I can guess it.”

  Westerham gave the girl an intentionally incredulous stare.

  “Would you mind repeating that?” he asked.

  Hilary looked him straight in the eye as she answered him.

  “At five minutes past five. Certainly not later than that.”

  “Ah, indeed!”

  Westerham made no effort to hide his disbelief. Haddon, a witness with nothing at stake, apparently, had seen Castleford in the spinney by the Chalet at ten or fifteen minutes past five. It was out of the question that he could have been in the copse at 5.5 p.m. and at the Chalet at 5.10 p.m. Here, on the face of it, this girl was lying; and was lying with coolness and calculation, since he had given her a chance to retract. Well, he would pin her down further by his next question.

  “What happened after your father joined you?”

  Here again there was no hesitation.

  “We sat there and talked for a long time.”

  “H’m! What did you talk about?”

  “Private matters. Nothing that would interest you I’m sure.”

  “I should know better about that if you’d tell me what you were discussing,” the Inspector pointed out, “How can you say what would interest me and what wouldn’t, Miss Castleford?”

  “I’m quite sure about it,” Hilary retorted icily.

  The official side of the Inspector commented coarsely that Carron Hill seemed to produce a tough breed of women. Miss Lindfield had also been a cool card, he reflected; but what had most impressed him about her was a quality of detachment, as though she were a mere level-headed spectator. This girl’s coolness was of a different sort. It suggested the poise of a fencer on guard with his whole attention alert to prevent an adversary pinking him.

  It was clear to Westerham that this conversation between father and daughter must have had a close connection with the case. If it had been otherwise, Hilary would have made a parade of frankness and given him the facts in detail. Quite clearly, she and her father had not thought of concocting a spurious conversation; and she was afraid to launch out on her own for fear of putting her foot in it. But, as the Inspector realised, if she chose to stick to her guns, he had no means of forcing her to say anything.

  Evidently she read something of his thoughts, for with a faint malicious smile she underlined her refusal.

  “I certainly don’t intend to discuss the matter with you. Have you any further questions to ask?”

  “Yes, I have,” the Inspector snapped. “Do you know anything about a pair of automatic pistols which have been unearthed here?”

  If he expected to surprise her, he was disappointed.

  “My father told me you had found them. Miss Lindfield produced them one evening and asked my father to put them away in his study cupboard for safety.”

  She paused for a moment as though undecided whether to say more or not. Then she added:

  “My fingerprints are on them, I expect, and my father’s, and Miss Lindfield’s. We all handled them when she brought them out.”

  The Inspector had recovered from his discomfiture, and his voice showed no sign of it as he answered:

  “Thanks. That may save me a lot of trouble. I’m glad you mentioned it, Miss Castleford. Now, I’d just like to put one or two more questions, if you don’t mind. Dismiss the whole of this affair from your mind and go back to an earlier stage. You’ve lived here for years, and you must have kept your eyes open. Was there any friction here, at Carron Hill? Did you all get on well with each other?”

  Hilary stared at the Inspector, a picture of astonishment.

  “Friction here?” she asked in a tone of surprise. “What sort of friction would there be? One would think you imagined that my father and my stepmother didn’t get on well together; that they’d led a cat-and-dog life. Nothing of the sort, really. My father’s very easygoing and never interfered with his wife in the slightest. She had her own way in everything. As for me, I never had a quarrel with her in my life. Anyone will tell you that.”

  Then, after a moment’s pause she added:

  “But why are you asking me all this? I had nothing to do with Mrs. Castleford’s movements that afternoon. I never even saw her after we left the table.”

  Westerham decided to leave this sub
ject alone and to go on to a more delicate one. He ignored her question and put one of his own instead.

  “I’ve heard some talk about Mrs. Castleford altering her will. Can you tell me anything about the matter?”

  Hilary made a faint gesture as though to suggest that this was something beyond her purview.

  “I know nothing directly—I mean, Mrs. Castleford never spoke to me about it. I learned from my father that there was some talk of her altering her will. And once, when I went into the drawing room unexpectedly, I heard a snatch of conversation between Mrs. Castleford and Miss Lindfield. Miss Lindfield, I gathered, was urging Mrs. Castleford not to be in a hurry and to think over the matter well before she actually did anything. ‘I shouldn’t hurry about it till you’re quite sure what you want done,’ she said, or some words like that. When they saw me come into the room, they began to talk about something else.”

  “You know, of course, the present position?” Westerham demanded.

  Hilary’s expression, for a fleeting instant, hinted at something which amused her in spite of the seriousness of the situation.

  “You mean that she died intestate and that my father stands to gain by it? Yes, I know that. Miss Lindfield told me. Naturally, she wasn’t altogether pleased. I can’t blame her for that, can you?”

  “Have you ever had any friction with Miss Lindfield?” he asked, evading her question.

  Hilary shook her head decidedly.

  “No, never. In fact, she’s been rather decent to me at times. I had nothing to do with the running of Carron Hill. Miss Lindfield managed all that—entirely to Mrs. Castleford’s satisfaction, I’m sure. I’d better be quite explicit while I’m at it. I never saw any friction between Miss Lindfield and Mrs. Castleford or between Miss Lindfield and my father. I don’t remember a cross word spoken among us. Is that quite clear?”

  “Perfectly clear,” the Inspector acknowledged politely.

  His mental comment was that it sounded almost too good to be true. And he noted also that Hilary had, apparently deliberately, refrained from saying a word in favour of her stepmother.

  “I’d rather like to see Miss Lindfield for a moment or two,” he said, after a pause. “I’ve one or two questions to ask her, if she’s available just now.”

  Hilary looked at him with an air of speculation.

  “You needn’t trouble to get her to check what I’ve said,” she declared coldly. “It’s quite correct.”

  The Inspector sketched a gesture as though brushing the suggestion aside, but he made no verbal comment. Instead, he walked to the door and held it open for her to pass out.

  Miss Lindfield did not keep him waiting long. She was in mourning, but she had the air of wearing black because it suited her, rather than as a matter of ceremonial. She greeted him with a friendly smile and made a gesture towards a chair. When he had seated himself, she sat down close at hand, crossed her legs, and gave him a lead with an interrogative monosyllable:

  “Well?”

  “I get rather tired of saying: ‘I’ve got just a few questions to ask you,’” Westerham confessed. “But that’s what it comes to. Now, first of all, Miss Lindfield, do you know anything of that brace of pistols in the box there?”

  Miss Lindfield glanced over at the table on which he had placed them. She did not seem in the least surprised.

  “These? Oh, yes, I can tell you about them. That boy whom you saw here the other day—Frankie Glencaple—unearthed them upstairs. His father forbade him to use them—reasonably enough, I think—and I handed them over to Mr. Castleford for safe keeping.”

  “I suppose the boy fingered them when he found them?”

  Miss Lindfield showed her fine teeth in a faint smile.

  “If you’re looking for fingerprints on them,” she said, “I’m afraid you’ll find enough to stock a museum. Frankie handled them; so did I; so did Mr. Glencaple and Dr. Glencaple also, I think.”

  “You don’t know of anyone having fired them, do you?” Westerham asked. “The boy didn’t use them before they were taken away from him?”

  Miss Lindfield shook her head decidedly.

  “No,” she said, confidently, “that’s quite certain. He brought them straight to me as soon as he found them, and he had no opportunity of touching them again until his father forbade him to use them.”

  This evidence satisfied Westerham. Miss Lindfield obviously was sure of her ground in the matter.

  “There’s another question,” he went on. “On the afternoon of Mrs. Castleford’s death, you went for a walk through Piney Holt, didn’t you?”

  Miss Lindfield was quite clearly taken by surprise at this, but she nodded in confirmation, without comment.

  “When you came to the thicket on this side of the level crossing—it’s called The Wilderness, isn’t it?—you had a choice between two routes up to the spinney by the Chalet. Which of them did you take, do you remember?”

  “The long way round,” said Miss Lindfield, apparently rather mystified by the question. “I missed Frankie in that way. He came by the short cut to meet me.”

  The Inspector remembered this quite well. He had merely been testing her. Already he had dealt with three distorts of the truth at Carron Hill: Frankie, Castleford and his daughter; and he had now fallen into a habit of setting traps for his witnesses merely as a matter of precaution.

  “Another point,” he went on. “I’ve come on the track of some anonymous letters which seem to have been flying about. Did you get one, by any chance?”

  Miss Lindfield’s lips curved in a contemptuous smile. “Yes, I was favoured with one.”

  “Did you keep it?”

  “Keep it?” Miss Lindfield’s expression showed what she thought of this suggestion. “Of course not! Would you keep a thing of that sort yourself?”

  “What sort of notepaper was it on?” the Inspector inquired.

  “Some cheap, yellowish stuff, I think. The writing was illiterate.”

  “You remember something about its contents, perhaps?”

  “Need I go into details? I’d rather not . . . Well, if it’s necessary, and if it’s to be treated as confidential, I suppose I must tell you. It accused Mrs. Castleford of using the Chalet to carry on an intrigue with a man. And it said that the writer had sent word of this to Mr. Castleford, too. It was a thoroughly spiteful production, meant to hurt.”

  “The man’s name was mentioned, was it?”

  “Yes. Need I give it to you? Oh, well, then, it was Mr. Richard Stevenage.”

  “You didn’t mention this to Mr. or Mrs. Castleford?”

  Miss Lindfield’s eyes opened wider at this suggestion.

  “No, why should I? Mrs. Castleford would hardly have thanked me for the news, whether it was true or not. And the writer boasted that he’d told Mr. Castleford in another letter. I could have done nothing by interfering—except make people more uncomfortable. And an anonymous letter is not exactly proof, is it? I’m not eager to burn my fingers in affairs of that sort. I destroyed the thing and left it at that.”

  The Inspector felt that there was sound common sense in this attitude. It was one which he himself would have adopted in similar circumstances: let sleeping dogs lie. But as a sidelight on the state of things at Carron Hill, the incident seemed illuminating.

  “Leaving that matter out of account,” Westerham pursued, “can you tell me what were the relations between Mr. Castleford and his wife? Did they get on well together?—in the last year or two, I mean.”

  Miss Lindfield slipped into her favourite attitude with her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand. She seemed to be considering how best to describe the state of affairs.

  “Well,” she said at last, “it’s not easy to put these things into definite words; but my impression was something of this sort. Mrs. Castleford took a fancy to Mr. Castleford and married him on the strength of it. I mean that she was keener on him than he was on her, at that time. Then, before long, she grew tired of him. She felt she had
made a mistake. And, of course, when a man marries for money he can hardly expect much deference from a wife whom he has ceased to attract, can he? A strong character might assert itself, but a weak man can do nothing but knuckle down. I’ve seen a good many incidents in which Mr. Castleford gave in, even when he was in the right. What else could he do? It wasn’t a nice position for any man, I should imagine.”

  The Inspector nodded thoughtfully. This was the obvious truth of the business. Up to the very last there had been no open friction—just as Hilary had declared—but underneath the surface there had been contempt on one side and suppressed irritation on the other. And, finally, the anonymous letter might have come as a match to the mine. Or the suggested alteration in the will might have been enough to fire the train. Both together would be enough to throw a weak man off his balance and break the restraint he had hitherto imposed on himself.

  “Had Mr. Castleford any friction with you, Miss Lindfield?” Westerham demanded bluntly.

  Miss Lindfield’s eyebrows arched slightly at the question.

  “With me?” she asked in surprise. “No, none whatever. I don’t suppose he liked me much. Probably I couldn’t conceal that I hadn’t much of an opinion of a man who married purely for money. He may have felt that. But certainly I never taunted him with it, even in the remotest fashion; and he didn’t attempt to interfere with me in any way. I don’t admire his type; but I’ve nothing to say against him personally.”

  “And his daughter, did she have any friction with the rest?”

  Miss Lindfield lifted her chin, shook her head decidedly, and then returned to her former attitude.

  “No, Hilary was in a very awkward position—a stepdaughter, you know, and dependent, like her father, on Mrs. Castleford’s bounty—but she took it very well on the whole. She’s had no disagreements with Mrs. Castleford for a couple of years, at least. She’s done her best to fit into her place in the household. I don’t know that I could have done as well myself, in her position; for, to be quite honest, Mrs. Castleford could be trying at times.”

  “I understand that you’ve lost to some extent by the present state of things, Miss Lindfield?”