Sir Clinton’s opening scandalised Wendover by its tactlessness. He fished a cigarette-case from his pocket and offered it to Miss Lindfield.
“Would you care to smoke?” he suggested. “Interviews of this sort are always worrying, I know; and a cigarette sometimes helps to steady the nerves.”
Miss Lindfield waved the case aside politely.
“I don’t smoke, thanks,” she explained. Then with a faint smile she added: “I don’t think my nerves need bracing, though I suppose your Inspector told you I had hysterics at the Chalet, that afternoon. But perhaps you and Mr. . . .”
“This is Mr. Wendover,” Sir Clinton explained, briefly.
“You and Mr. Wendover would care to smoke yourselves?”
“No,” Sir Clinton retorted, giving her smile for smile, “I think I can answer for our nerves.”
He returned his cigarette-case to his pocket.
“You have a firearm certificate, I believe?” he asked in a perfunctory tone. “May I look at it, please? It’s merely a formality.”
Miss Lindfield crossed the room to an escritoire, turned over some papers in a drawer, and came back with the paper, which she handed over for inspection. Sir Clinton merely glanced at it and then returned it to her.
“Thanks. Now here’s something which is rather more important,” he continued, searching in his breast-pocket. “Ah, here it is.”
He produced two slips of glass about the size of quarter-plate negatives, clipped together with passé-partout edging. Between the glass plates was held something which Wendover could not recognise at the first glance. Sir Clinton passed the specimen across to Miss Lindfield.
“This is a piece of cloth which might turn out to be of interest,” he explained. “I want you to examine it carefully—both sides—and see if you can recognise pattern. Take a good look at it, please. There’s no hurry.”
Miss Lindfield bent over the little object, turning it this way and that with a faint puzzled frown as though she were striving to identify it. As she moved it to and fro, Wendover was able to see that the fragment was a piece of patterned silk of irregular shape.
“You don’t recognise it?” Sir Clinton questioned, in a tone which betrayed that he had expected a different result.
Miss Lindfield shook her head as she handed the exhibit back to him.
“You haven’t seen Miss Castleford wearing anything of the sort?” Sir Clinton persisted, anxiously.
“No,” Miss Lindfield declared, in a decided tone. “So far as I know, she has no frock that’s in the least like that.”
Sir Clinton put his exhibit aside on a table near-by. From his manner it was plain enough that things had not gone as he had hoped. However, he dismissed the matter and turned to a fresh subject.
“I needn’t make any mystery with you,” he said. “We’re very much interested in a brace of automatic pistols which seem to have played their part in this affair. Now can you tell me, to the best of your knowledge, what persons could have got access to these things between the time they were found by Frank Glencaple and the day of Mrs. Castleford’s death? I don’t want guesses, you understand. I want the names of the people whom you know might have been able to lay their hands on the pistols.
Miss Lindfield laid one hand on her knee and began to tick off the list on her fingers.
“I knew where the pistols were,” she began, “because I asked Mr. Castleford to stow them away in his study cupboard. He knew, since I gave them into his charge. Miss Castleford must have known, because she was there when I spoke to him about them—in fact, I asked her to put them there. The three of us knew definitely about the cupboard. Then there’s a possibility that Frankie might have rummaged round and discovered them. He was very angry when they were taken from him that night . . .”
“What night?” Sir Clinton asked.
“It was the night that his father and Dr. Glencaple were here to dinner.”
She went again to the escritoire, picked up an engagement-diary, hunted through the pages, and finally showed Sir Clinton the entry of the dinner-engagement.
“I couldn’t remember the day of the month,” she explained. “I knew it was a Tuesday. But you can see the date’s all right from the engagement-book.”
Wendover began to understand why power had passed into Miss Lindfield’s hands in the old days at Carron Hill. She was obviously so careful to think before she acted, and so decided in her action when once she had made up her mind. He had been impressed by her decisive denial in the case of the fragment of cloth, when Sir Clinton obviously wanted her to identify it if she could. Some women would have hemmed and hawed over it, trying to sit on the fence; but she had studied it minutely and had then come out bluntly with her statement.
“Frankie might have been hunting about and found the pistols again,” Miss Lindfield continued, as she regained her seat. “His father told him not to touch them and so did Mrs. Castleford; but he wasn’t a very obedient boy and the temptation may have been too strong for him. He didn’t know they were in that cupboard; but he was very prying and inquisitive, and he might quite well have taken it into his head to rummage in the cupboard out of mere curiosity.”
“I gather, from what you say, that his father knew of the existence of these pistols? And his uncle, Dr. Glencaple, too, perhaps?”
Miss Lindfield seemed very slightly taken aback by this suggestion. She paused for a moment before answering. Then, briefly, she gave a description of the scene in the drawing room when Frankie had produced the weapons.
“Of course, the maids had access to the cupboard,” she added as an after-thought, “but I shouldn’t think there’s much in that.”
“Then these are all the people you can think of?” Sir Clinton suggested. “Nobody else? What about Mr. Stevenage?” he added suddenly.
It needed no physiognomist to see that Miss Lindfield was startled by this allusion. Her self-control was not sufficient to conceal the suspicion in the look she shot at Sir Clinton as he brought out Stevenage’s name. Then, with an effort, she repressed her surprise.
“Mr. Stevenage?” she said, after a marked pause. “What makes you think of him? He could know nothing about the pistols—unless somebody told him about them. I certainly didn’t.”
“Somebody else might have, though,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “If he knew of the pistols’ existence, could he have laid hands on them: that’s the question. I understand that he was often on the premises here—a sort of chartered libertine.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Miss Lindfield in a tone of offence.
Then she appeared to see that she had made a blunder. Wendover could not quite make out why she had objected to the phrase. Sir Clinton seemed taken by surprise by her interjection.
“Free as the air,” he paraphrased. “I was thinking of Shakespeare’s Henry V. He calls the air a chartered libertine somewhere in the first Act. What I meant was that Mr. Stevenage could go freely about the house—more freely than an ordinary visitor, perhaps?”
Miss Lindfield still seemed rather ruffled.
“Yes, he was very friendly with the family. That’s true. He used the place as a sort of Liberty Hall.”
“Friendly with all the family?” Sir Clinton asked specifically.
“I don’t think that Mr. Castleford liked him very much.”
It was quite plain that Miss Lindfield was not eager to volunteer any information in this field; and Sir Clinton made no attempt to press her. Instead, he reverted to an earlier line of inquiry.
“Since the night of that dinner party we spoke about, Dr. Glencaple has not been here to dinner?”
Miss Lindfield shook her head; then, picking up the engagement-book, she consulted it to verify her impression.
“No,” she said definitely. “He hasn’t been here to dinner. In fact, I don’t think he’s been here at all.” Then, after a moment’s pause she added, “I’m speaking of what I know, of course. He may have come to see Mrs. Castleford when I was out, and
Mrs. Castleford might not have mentioned it to me.”
“You’ve seen him, at times, elsewhere?”
“I’ve met him outside, once or twice.”
“On the night of that dinner, he brought his doctor’s bag with him, I believe?”
Miss Lindfield seemed to have no difficulty in recalling that.
“Yes, he left it on the hall table. I saw it there as we went in to dinner.”
“Now this point is rather important,” said Sir Clinton gravely. “Could anyone have tampered with that bag without being noticed?”
Miss Lindfield did not give an immediate answer. She looked down at the tip of her shoe, and her brows contracted slightly as if she were racking her memory so as to be sure of her ground when she spoke.
“Before dinner, I doubt if anyone could have touched it,” she explained at last. “People were passing through the hall, the maids, and some of us, coming down from dressing. Then, during dinner, it was out of the question, of course, except for the maids. After dinner, Mrs. Castleford, Frankie, and I went into the drawing room, leaving the men over their coffee. Later on . . .”
“What about Miss Castleford, at that time? You didn’t say what became of her after dinner.”
“I don’t know where she went. Upstairs, probably; or into the study,” Miss Lindfield said, rather put out, apparently, that she had omitted the point. “Later on, Dr. Glencaple and Mr. Glencaple came into the drawing room. Mr. Castleford didn’t join us. He went to his study. Miss Castleford went there also, for I saw her there later on.”
She paused again, as though confirming her recollections in her mind.
“I’m trying to remember who left the drawing room. First of all, Mrs. Castleford asked me to give Miss Castleford a message. I went to the study and found her there with her father. After I gave her the message, she said she would telephone about something. I didn’t see her telephoning; but I happen to know that she did telephone, a few minutes later. The telephone box is at the other end of the hall from the study. I went back to the drawing room and after a while Frankie and I went over to the harness room to try his rook-rifle on an old archery target which we fixed up. After we came back to the drawing room, Dr. Glencaple himself went out and got some insulin out of his bag. That was after Frankie had been packed off to bed. And after that, our party kept together until Dr. Glencaple went away, taking his bag with him.”
Sir Clinton had listened intently to her account, and at the end of it he paid her a frank compliment.
“If only all witnesses could put things as clearly as you do, we should be saved a vast amount of time.”
Wendover noticed something more than the explicitness of the narrative. Miss Lindfield had refused to answer Sir Clinton’s actual inquiry. She had refrained from making even a tacit accusation but, instead, had given an objective account of the movements of the party, leaving the Chief Constable to put his own construction upon the facts.
“Now there’s another point I’d like to clear up,” Sir Clinton continued. “I don’t want you to be offended, but we’re handicapped by not knowing the relations between the members of the group at Carron Hill. If you don’t mind, I’d like to put a question or two on that subject.”
Miss Lindfield crossed her ankles, relaxed slightly in her chair, and then, as if thinking better of it, drew herself up again. She dropped her elbow on her knee, cupped her chin in her hand, and looked across at Sir Clinton.
“I don’t mind what questions you ask,” she said.
“You and Mrs. Castleford, of course, were likely to have a good deal in common. She relied on you more than on the others?”
Miss Lindfield admitted this with a nod.
“Naturally,” she explained, “we’d grown up together; we were much of an age; and Miss Castleford was a good deal younger, with different interests.”
“That’s what I meant,” Sir Clinton agreed. “You’d been schoolgirls together and naturally you had a good deal in common, things in which even Mr. Castleford couldn’t share?”
“That was bound to be the case, wasn’t it?” Miss Lindfield confirmed with just a hint of irony in her voice.
“I believe that the management of the place was left very much in your hands by Mrs. Castleford. You looked after everything, gave the orders, paid the bills, and so forth?”
“Yes. Mrs. Castleford had no head for business and was glad to hand all that kind of thing over to me. She hated to be troubled with the routine of things.”
“She didn’t think of letting her husband do it?”
“No,” Miss Lindfield explained candidly. “The fact is, I doubt if Mr. Castleford could have satisfied her. He’s rather dreamy—I suppose it’s the artistic temperament or something,” she added, as if in extenuation of her criticism.
“How did Miss Castleford stand with her stepmother?”
Miss Lindfield seemed to resent the question; then, thinking better of her first attitude, she answered reluctantly:
“I don’t think Mrs. Castleford liked her.”
“Mr. Stevenage came about the house. On whose account was that? Miss Castleford’s?”
But this question evidently seemed to go over the score.
“I think you’d better ask Miss Castleford herself about that,” said Miss Lindfield coldly. “Or Mr. Stevenage might be able to give you full details. It’s hardly a matter that concerns me.”
Wendover could see from her expression that she was displeased by Sir Clinton’s line of attack.
“You’re quite right,” the Chief Constable agreed, apologetically. “We’ll leave that aside. Now another question. Am I mistaken in supposing that Mrs. Castleford was not a very strong character—I mean that she was fairly easy to influence in some ways?”
“In some ways, yes,” Miss Lindfield confirmed, with a faint but unmistakable accent on the “some.” “But what makes you think that?”
“I was thinking of the history of her will-making,” Sir Clinton explained. “I gather that her original will left a good deal to the Glencaple brothers. I’m correct there? Then she fell under Mr. Castleford’s influence, and she made a new will under which he was the chief legatee. That’s right, I think? And then, quite recently, it looks as if she had fallen under the Glencaple influence again and had made up her mind to change once more and to make the two brothers the principal heirs. She strikes me as a very amenable person, in that respect.”
Miss Lindfield made no comment on this verdict. She shifted her elbow slightly into a more comfortable position and gazed across at Sir Clinton as though expecting him to say more.
“You had considerable influence with her yourself?” he asked in a neutral tone.
Miss Lindfield took up the implied challenge.
“You mean, I suppose,” she said, frostily, “that I evidently wasted my opportunities, since I had more chance of influencing her than anyone else had? I didn’t try. I knew that she meant to provide for me sufficiently. She did so in every will. If I had influenced her at all, it would have been in favour of Dr. Glencaple and his brother; for, after all, any money she had was Glencaple money. But as a matter of fact, the only advice I gave her was not to do anything in a hurry but to be sure that she had really made her mind up before she acted. She was too inclined to be impetuous in some things. I didn’t want her to be acting rashly and then feeling that she’d been too hasty.”
“I don’t know that I’d have been able to show so much self-restraint myself, in your shoes,” Sir Clinton confessed, frankly.
“Dr. Glencaple has always been very kind to me,” Miss Lindfield said, rather irrelevantly.
Sir Clinton left this subject alone.
“You got an anonymous letter, I believe, making accusations against Mrs. Castleford and Mr. Stevenage?”
“I don’t know how you got that information,” Miss Lindfield said with some heat. “Is it necessary to go into it? I’ve burned the letter, of course.”
“I merely wish to put a hypothetical case
to you. Mrs. Castleford was easily influenced. Mr. Stevenage was in a position to influence her. Might he not have exerted his influence to get her to make a will in his favour? She seems to have chopped and changed a good deal in her intentions.”
Miss Lindfield’s hand tightened on her chin and she fixed her eyes on the floor. Wendover guessed that this suggestion had taken her completely aback and that she was thinking out its implications before replying.
“I hadn’t thought of that possibility,” she said slowly.
Then, after a further pause for thought, she seemed to dismiss the idea.
“No, I don’t think there’s anything in it. We’d have heard of such a will before now, if it existed.”
“Not necessarily,” Sir Clinton corrected her. “Wills often come to light long after the testator has died. Age doesn’t invalidate them.”
“That’s true,” Miss Lindfield acknowledged, rather reluctantly.
The introduction of Stevenage’s name seemed to have disturbed her, and she knitted her brows in a very obvious effort of thought.
“Winnie would hardly have been such a little fool as that,” was her final judgment, which she unconsciously uttered aloud.
Sir Clinton apparently paid no attention to her words. He allowed her to think in silence for a few moments; then, apparently growing impatient, he glanced at his watch.
“I wonder if you can tell me when the next post goes from the nearest pillar-box?” he asked. “I’d like to catch the London mail, there, if possible.”
Miss Lindfield seemed to wake up with a start from her reflections.
“I really can’t say,” she confessed. “I just take my chance at the pillar.”
“Then I suppose I had better follow your example,” Sir Clinton said carelessly. “Now, there’s just one further matter. You mentioned an old target that you had in the harness room—the one young Frank Glencaple was firing at with his rook-rifle. May I see it?”
“I’ll send for it,” Miss Lindfield suggested, rising to ring the bell.
The Castleford Conundrum Page 26