“And if you could get your maid to bring some paper and twine,” Sir Clinton added, “I may have to take it away. It might be required as an exhibit in the case, you see.”
In a few minutes the maid had brought the target—a straw boss with a painted canvas face, evidently much the worse for use. She laid it on a table, along with a string-box and a large sheet of brown paper. Sir Clinton made a very cursory examination of the target and then set about the task of wrapping it up into a parcel. As he was just completing this task, he drew a folding knife from his pocket, one of those knives which take an old safety-razor blade instead of the usual cutting edge. With this open in his hand, the Chief Constable continued to tie up his parcel. As he drew the last knot, he turned to Miss Lindfield.
“Would you mind putting your finger on the string?” he asked. “I’d like to get this tight.”
Miss Lindfield leaned over and put her finger on the half-completed knot. What happened next was hidden from Wendover, as they stood between him and the parcel. He saw the girl wince slightly and heard a muffled ejaculation and a quick apology from Sir Clinton. Then Miss Lindfield stepped back a pace and examined a cut in her forefinger, from which the blood was beginning to ooze. Manifestly the Chief Constable had been careless or clumsy with his pocket-knife.
Sir Clinton took a spotless handkerchief from his pocket and insisted on putting a temporary bandage on the wounded finger. Then he despatched Wendover to his car for a first-aid case; and, removing the handkerchief, he bound up the cut with proper dressings.
“I’m exceedingly sorry,” he protested, when he had finished. “It was very stupid of me to try to tie that knot with a knife in my hand.”
Miss Lindfield made no fuss over the incident; but by her manner she expressed plainly enough what she thought of the Chief Constable’s clumsiness.
“Have you any more questions you’d like to ask?” she demanded with some asperity, when the bandaging was completed.
“One or two points about Mrs. Castleford’s family I’d like to clear up,” Sir Clinton explained. “Her parents are dead, are they?”
“Long ago,” Miss Lindfield confirmed.
“She had no brothers or sisters?”
“No, none. She was my half-sister—my father and hers were the same, I mean. I had a sister younger than myself, but she’s dead, now.”
“Had she any other relations alive? Grandparents?”
“No, they died long ago. She had an uncle in America but she didn’t correspond with him. He died three years ago.”
After a pause, Miss Lindfield added:
“If you’re thinking of the Administration of Estates Act, I’d better simplify things by saying that if she hadn’t married and had died intestate, then I’d have been next in succession.”
She glanced at Wendover with a smile which had just a touch of bitterness in it. Obviously there were limits to her power of hiding her hurts. The Squire sympathised with her.
“She’s a plucky girl,” was his unspoken verdict, and in giving it he was not thinking of her wounded hand.
Sir Clinton made no comment on Miss Lindfield’s last remark.
“I don’t think I need trouble you any further,” he said. “If Miss Castleford’s in, I’d like to see her. Perhaps you could ask her to give me a minute or two?”
“Certainly, I’ll send her to you,” Miss Lindfield assented briskly. “Then that’s all?”
“That’s all,” Sir Clinton repeated, rising to open the door for her.
When she had gone, Wendover turned to his friend. “Awkward devil, you are, Clinton. You hurt that girl more than a bit, though she didn’t show it.”
Sir Clinton’s defence took an unexpected line:
“‘I must be cruel, only to be kind,”’ he quoted. “‘Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.’ Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Act Three, Scene Four,” he added, blandly.
“You seem very strong on Shakespeare today,” said Wendover testily. “That’s the second time you’ve dragged him in.”
“I always quote him on Tuesdays and Saturdays,” the Chief Constable explained seriously. “After all, Squire, one must have some regular rules of life, or things would get into a dreadful state.”
“Like that girl’s finger, eh? H’m!” Wendover grunted. “So you did that intentionally?”
“What do you think?” was all Sir Clinton deigned to reply.
Chapter Twenty
Sir Clinton and the Castlefords
With Hilary Castleford’s entrance into the room, Wendover discovered how far his preconceptions had led him astray. Instead of the “nice friendly little kiddie” whom he remembered, he found a slim, fair-haired girl with arresting hazel eyes and a determined chin. When he planned his “rescue expedition,” he had pictured a helpless little creature caught by chance in the cruel machinery of the Law and crying in despair to him for deliverance. But the girl now before him did not suggest helplessness. At the very first glance, he got the impression that she was quite capable of looking after herself. There was nothing timid or shrinking about her, though she looked worried and anxious, certainly. But what struck Wendover most—in view of his preconceived ideas—was the very obvious fact that she did not seem altogether sure that she wanted him, now that he had actually arrived. There was a certain awkwardness for which he was wholly unprepared, an awkwardness of manner and not of manners. He felt suddenly discomfited. It almost looked as if she had appealed to him impulsively and regretted her move when too late to retract it.
“You remember Sir Clinton, don’t you?” he asked, merely to break the very conspicuous ice.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Hilary answered, without any enthusiasm in her tone. “I suppose you want to ask me some questions?” she added, turning to the Chief Constable. “Will that take long? I’ve just had a telephone message from the hospital to say they need me.”
“At the Sunnyside hospital?”
“Yes. I’m on the list of donors there, for blood transfusion,” Hilary explained. “There’s been a bad motor-accident and they’ve rung me up. If you’re going detain me long, I’ll get my father to go instead. He volunteered too, and his blood’s the same as mine. But it’s the first time they’ve called on me for it, and I don’t like to cry off unless it’s necessary.”
“I shan’t keep you more than a few minutes,” Sir Clinton reassured her.
“Very well, then,” Hilary said, rather ungraciously. “You’d better begin.”
Wendover was puzzled by her behaviour. Then his thoughts went back to the time he received her letter, and he began to see one possible explanation of her conduct. She had written to him spontaneously, without telling her father. Since then, she had consulted Castleford and he had persuaded her that she had made a blunder. That would explain the change in her attitude.
“Perhaps you won’t see the point of some of my questions,” Sir Clinton began, unperturbed by his witness’s obvious lack of cordiality. “Don’t mind that. I’m merely trying to get at the state of things at Carron Hill while Mrs. Castleford was alive. First of all, how did she treat you?”
“I was a poor relation with no claim on her and living at her expense. That was how she saw it and that was the way she treated me,” said Hilary in a rather bitter tone.
“Ah, I think I understand. You mean that you had to work your passage?” Sir Clinton asked.
“Exactly,” Hilary confirmed. “I drove her car and ran errands for her.”
“And apart from that, how did you get on with her?”
“She snubbed me whenever she got a chance. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that, but you asked the question, and I’m answering it. She disliked me and she behaved as if she grudged me my keep. I can’t pretend that she was nice to me.”
“No consideration?” Sir Clinton suggested.
“No consideration whatever,” Hilary said bluntly. “If she wanted my services on the spur of the moment, then any arrangements I had made had to be cancelled f
or her benefit. It was very irksome.”
“It must have been,” Sir Clinton commented sympathetically. “What sort of errands did she send you on? Changing books at the local library and that sort of thing?”
“Yes. She never could understand the system there, though it’s simple enough. When she wanted books, Miss Lindfield or I had to get them for her. I hardly got any use from my own ticket, for she always used it when she wanted an extra book. Father was in the same boat. If she wanted a book, we had to return the one we were reading so that she could use the ticket herself.”
“I think I see. You had a ticket each, but one person could monopolise all four at times. And I suppose these tickets were kept in some place where anyone could get hold of them when they were needed?”
“Yes, they were kept in an open drawer. When I was sent for a book, I simply took the first ticket that came to hand in the drawer. They’re not supposed to be transferable; but nobody minds about that rule.”
Wendover found himself swinging round to Hilary’s side again. Behind her brief phrases, he could glimpse a long vista of petty persecution which must have made a young girl’s life anything but happy. With a history like that, she could hardly be expected to show conventional restraint in talking about her late stepmother.
“Here’s something else I’d like you to do for me,” Sir Clinton pursued.
He pulled from his pocket a pair of glasses with a piece of cloth clipped between them and handed them across to the girl; but to Wendover’s surprise, the cloth-fragment in this case was a piece of tweed, evidently clipped from a man’s suit.
“Can you identify that cloth?” Sir Clinton asked “Look at it well, so as to be sure about it. Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Here, evidently, Sir Clinton had sprung a nasty surprise on the girl. Wendover could see perfectly well that she did recognise the pattern of the cloth. She betrayed that in her face at the very first glance she took. But with an effort she restrained herself and made a pretence of a long and careful inspection. Then she lifted her head.
“I don’t recognise it,” she declared firmly.
Sir Clinton held out his hand for the exhibit and took it from her. He seemed to accept her statement without demur.
“Now there’s another question,” he went on. “Do you remember one night, not long ago, when the Glencaple brothers came here to dinner? Dr. Glencaple left his professional bag on the hall table. Did you see it there when you passed through the hall on your way to telephone, after dinner?”
“Yes . . . I think it was there then.”
“You left your father in his study. Could he have come out of his study while you were telephoning and come into the hall without your knowledge?”
“He might,” Hilary admitted.
She had evidently meant to add something—a denial of some sort, Wendover guessed—but pulled herself up. Then an idea seemed to occur to her.
“Miss Lindfield was in the hall before I was. She came to bring me a message from Mrs. Castleford about the car.”
Sir Clinton ignored this side-issue and dropped the subject.
“Are you engaged to Mr. Stevenage?” he asked pointblank.
Hilary flushed.
“No,” she said rather awkwardly.
“He proposed to you, perhaps?”
Hilary seemed to recover herself.
“I don’t know what business you have to ask these questions,” she said, with a nervous catch in her voice. “But I don’t mind answering them, for fear you should go drawing all sorts of conclusions. Mr. Stevenage came very near proposing to me more than once. A girl can always tell. But I managed to put him off. I hadn’t made up my mind about him.”
“What came in the way? Was it because he paid too much attention to Mrs. Castleford?” Sir Clinton asked pointedly.
“I didn’t feel very sure about him,” said Hilary, guardedly.
Sir Clinton seemed to be considering this answer. For some moments he was silent. Then, looking the girl straight in the face, he spoke again.
“Just one final question, Miss Castleford. Why did you and your father tell Inspector Westerham a pack of lies?”
For one moment, Wendover saw a blaze of fury in the hazel eyes at this plain challenge. Then Hilary’s expression changed; she made a very good pretence of astonishment.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sir Clinton.
“Let it go at that, then,” the Chief Constable said, icily. “I gave you your chance.”
He crossed the room and rang the bell. When the maid appeared, he asked her to tell Mr. Castleford that he wished to see him. Wendover, who was wholly taken aback by the last turn of events, had no difficulty in seeing the meaning of this manoeuvre. Sir Clinton did not propose to allow father and daughter to consult together before had interviewed Castleford.
When Castleford came into the room, Sir Clinton, with a certain cold courtesy, showed Hilary out, without giving them a chance of exchanging more than a glance When he turned back to Castleford, his manner had resumed its earlier geniality.
“Miss Castleford tells me that she has been called up by the hospital for blood transfusion,” he said, as he motioned Castleford to a seat. “You’re on the list of donors also, I believe? Who does the blood-testing there, do you know?”
“Dr. Pendlebury, I believe,” Castleford explained.
“I’ve heard his name,” Sir Clinton said, musingly. “Quite a good man, I believe.”
Wendover had nodded to Castleford as he came into the room, but now he had a better opportunity of studying him. Here again he was slightly disappointed. Castleford seemed subdued, furtive, and too obviously on his guard for Wendover’s liking.
“I believe you have a good public library hereabouts,” Sir Clinton remarked, as though merely making conversation before he began his real inquiry.
“Yes, there’s one in Strickland Regis, quite a good one. They’re very obliging, and they don’t bother too much with red tape.”
“You have a ticket, I suppose?”
Castleford was evidently glad to keep to such a safe subject as long as possible. He went over to a drawer and took out a little piece of pasteboard folded in half about the size of a visiting-card. He handed this over to Sir Clinton, who examined it with some curiosity.
“Thanks,” the Chief Constable said, handing it back again. “Now you mustn’t mind if I ask you a question or two which may seem futile. I’m trying to understand what sort of person Mrs. Castleford was. I gather that she was rather unstable in some ways. What sort of interests had she?”
Castleford reflected for a moment or two. Evidently he could not make out whither this was trending.
“Dress was one,” he began. “She was very keen on clothes. And she was always very nervous about her health. The slightest thing going wrong with her always worried her. She was impulsive, at times; and she liked to have her own way.”
He halted, as though unable to think of any other characteristics. To Wendover, it seemed a very brief and peculiar list, without a single engaging quality in it. Quite obviously Castleford had not been a doting husband.
“Generous? Frank? Open in her dealings?” Sir Clinton suggested in a perfectly neutral tone.
“No,” said Castleford, evidently stung into plain speech.
“Secretive in some ways, perhaps?”
“Yes,” Castleford blurted out, and then seemed immediately to regret what he had said.
“Can you give me an instance?” Sir Clinton persisted.
Castleford was no actor. His face betrayed him. Wendover could guess what was happening in his mind. He had been thinking of his wife and Stevenage; but that was the last instance he wanted to produce; so, instead, he paused while he cast about for something else.
“I can give you one example,” he said, with a nervous laugh. “When we were engaged to be married, she was very worried lest her brothers-in-law should find it out. She made all sorts of silly arrangements for me
eting me, lest they should get to know. She even used to wire to me in a childish kind of code—the sort of thing a couple of schoolgirls might devise—you read every second word to get the real message. She was immensely proud of it—thought no one could possibly fathom it. I don’t know where she picked it up.”
“Surely she might have invented it herself.”
“She hadn’t enough brains for that,” said Castleford brutally. “No, she’d learned it from someone.”
Wendover found that as the interview progressed he was liking Castleford less and less. There was a ring of dislike and contempt in the last two sentences which seemed . . . well, hardly the thing for the circumstances.
Sir Clinton appeared to have clarified his ideas about Mrs. Castleford, for he now produced the glass slips which had become familiar to Wendover, though yet again the cloth between them was different from the previous specimens.
“Have a look at that, Mr. Castleford, and see if you can identify it?”
Castleford examined it minutely. Wendover could just see that it seemed to be a fragment of some thin dress-material.
“No, I don’t recognise it,” Castleford said at last, with a faint hesitation which suggested to Wendover that he was lying.
“Look again,” Sir Clinton suggested.
Castleford obeyed, then shook his head and passed the exhibit back.
“I don’t remember it.”
“Very well,” Sir Clinton said stiffly. “I’ll leave it at that. Now I come to an awkward subject. You said your wife was impulsive. Was she easily amenable to influence?”
Castleford evidently suspected some trap in this. He seemed to turn the question over in his mind before answering.
“Not to mine,” he said, guardedly, at last.
“Do you know anyone who could influence her, then?”
“Miss Lindfield could generally manage her,” Castleford admitted sulkily. “I think the Glencaples were able to get round her, too. She was easily flattered into doing things.”
“Anybody else? Mr. Stevenage, for instance?” Sir Clinton demanded coolly. “Could he have influenced her enough to get her to make a will in his favour, do you think?”
The Castleford Conundrum Page 27