“No, sir. Only the young ’oman from the inn come down the garden to tell I her’ve had a matter of half a dozen eggs took from the hen-coops yesterday evening. Seemed to think as I’d ought to leave my post and go off looking for the thief, sir!” A broad grin overspread his good-humoured face. “Her’s a caution, her is! ‘I’ve got a theft to report,’ her says. Eggs! ‘A rat-trap’ll catch the thief better nor what I should,’ I says to she, and off her goes to the orchard to see whether there’s any apples been taken. Her counts they apples every day, I’ve heard tell.”
The loquacious young man gave a guffaw and then, remembering the solemn business he was employed upon, broke it off in the middle and looked unnaturally serious, and then rueful as the Superintendent said with grave reproof:
“That’ll do, Davis. That’s not the way to make a report.”
They passed into the cool, dusty shed, with its earthen floor piled with potatoes, firewood and gardening tools. A mangle stood in one corner, and a bin of chicken-meal in another, and against the farther wall something lay on a long trestle table, covered with a clean, faded bedspread. John Christmas noted that of his three new acquaintances Felix looked by far the most concerned and Blodwen Price the least. Felix’s hands were clenched and his lips tightly pressed together, and Dr. Browning’s kindly, humorous face wore a distressed, almost fearful look. But Blodwen looked merely pensive. Could a lengthy separation make one so indifferent to one’s closest kin? Or was it by some effort of self-control that the sister appeared so unconcerned at the brother’s fate?
She did change colour slightly when Superintendent Lovell, with a warning to them to be prepared, drew the cloth gently from the trestle table. The dead man was not a pleasant sight. John, after a moment of quick recoil, thought that if Blodwen had not seen her brother for fifteen years she would be hard put to it to recognize him now, in spite of her confidence. Felix gave a loud gasp, and his long hands went fluttering up to his face as if to shut out the sight from his eyes. But he dropped them again, and schooled himself to stand still at the table side and look down at the still, mutilated figure.
“Yes,” he said in a low, forced voice. “It is Charles.”
John saw the body of a tall, large-boned man, dressed in a rough tweed suit and cricket shirt, still wet with the heavy dew and streaked with dust and blood. The close-range bullet had terribly disfigured the face, but the round, smooth chin, thick hair and smooth eyebrows proclaimed him a man still on the youthful side of forty. The hands, one of which was bruised and broken at the wrist, were large, rough-skinned and ill-cared-for, but shapely.
There was a silence, during which the shed seemed to be filled with the loud humming of a large bee, which was endeavouring to find a way out through the closed, cobwebby panes of the window.
“Yes,” repeated Felix. “It’s Charles right enough. I’d hoped—”
He broke off suddenly and turned away.
“Dr. Browning tells me,” remarked Lovell, looking quietly down at all that was left of Sir Charles Price, “that a signet-ring is missing. Did you notice a ring on the finger yesterday, Mr. Felix?”
“Yes,” answered Felix, watching the exasperated bee with vague, unseeing eyes. “He always wore one on the little finger of his right hand. It may have fallen off.”
“Was it loose?” Lovell picked up the limp right hand and casually compared its size with his own.
“I don’t know,” replied Felix. “I didn’t notice that it was. But it may have been.”
“Large knuckles,” remarked the Superintendent. “It would have to be a very loose ring that would slip off that finger.” He turned to John. “You’re wearing a ring, sir. Would you lend it me a moment? That is,” he added, perceiving something gruesome in his request, “if you don’t mind.”
John, not quite sure whether he minded or not, obediently slipped off the ring he wore on his little finger and handed it to Lovell. But the demonstration came to nothing. The ring would not go over the joint. Lovell handed it back.
“You can take my word for it, though,” he remarked. “A ring that would slip off that finger would have to be so loose its owner would never dream of wearing it there. The ground’s been searched both at the top and bottom of the quarry, too. Well, it may turn up. I should be glad if you would look over the contents of the pockets, Mr. Felix, and tell me if anything is missing as far as you know. You’ll find them all set out on the bench over there. I’ve made a list.”
While Felix glanced over the array of small objects set out on the dusty bench, Superintendent Lovell read from the paper in his hand.
“A gold cigarette-case, two boxes of matches, a note-case containing five pounds in paper, seven and twopence in loose cash, a silk handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a silver pencil-case, a fountain-pen filled with red ink, a small photograph, a tube of cold cream, a few strands of wool, two cigarette cards and a handkerchief which has been used as a bandage.”
Felix looked vaguely at the small collection, which had a look of pathos set out thus neatly and incongruously on the dusty bench.
“I don’t know what he had in his pocket,” he said. “As far as I know, nothing’s missing. I recognize some of the things. The handkerchief, and the cigarette-case, and the photograph. And I remember he had a tube of cold cream, for sunburn. And a fountain-pen with red ink in it. Yes, all those things are Charles’s, I think, and I don’t remember seeing anything that isn’t there now.”
“Whose photograph is this?” asked Lovell, pointing to the little browned photo which represented a smiling girl of twenty in a frilled, old-fashioned dress.
“My cousin’s,” answered Felix, with a glance at Blodwen, in whose eyes for the first time showed a sudden look of horror and regret. She gave one glance at the little photograph and turned aside.
“Did he always write with red ink?” pursued Lovell. “I don’t think so. But his pen ran dry, and we were miles from a shop, and he borrowed some ink from Lion Browning. Lion’s black ink was Indian, which would have corroded his pen, so he had red.”
Lovell nodded, and went on:
“Do you know what he used the bandage for?”
“He was limping a little the day before yesterday. He’d twisted his ankle. But I didn’t know he had it bandaged.”
“Limping?” ejaculated Dr. Browning. “Was he? I never noticed that. Nobody told me he’d twisted his ankle. I’d have bound it up for him properly.”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything much,” said Felix listlessly. “He ricked it scrambling on the river-bank that day we all bathed. He said he had a weak ankle and often ricked it a bit, and didn’t want to make a fuss about it.”
“Which ankle was it?” asked Dr. Browning, drawing down one of the dead man’s socks and examining the skin.
“The left,” said Felix uncertainly. “No, the right. I can’t remember. But it was only a little twist, not anything noticeable, because I looked at it myself when he mentioned it.”
“Hullo!” exclaimed Dr. Browning. “What’s this?” He pointed to a spot half-way up the front of the shin where a large monogram forming the letters C.P. stood out in dark crimson on the white waxy flesh.
Blodwen glanced at it and observed:
“Yes. He had that done when he was a boy. I was thinking of that when I said I knew I could identify him. An old sailor in Cornwall did it for him on one of our holidays. He was about fifteen at the time. Our father was very angry about it. But tattooing is easier done than undone. I knew I should recognize my brother again.”
“There’s one thing more,” said Superintendent Lovell, who had been listening intently to this explanation. “Where is Sir Charles’s luggage?”
“Luggage?” echoed Felix. “His pyjamas and toothbrush, do you mean? Oh, I’ve got them. I carried the haversack, because I’d got a carrier on my bicycle and Charles hadn’t. His was a hired bicycle and a rotten one.”
“Did he have an overcoat of any kind?”
“A rain-coat, yes. I h
aven’t got that. He usually slung it over his handle-bars.”
“Well, it’s missing,” said Lovell briefly, jotting a note down in the book he was carrying. “Now, about this bicycle, Mr. Felix. You say it had no carrier?”
“No. It had no pump, no carrier and no mending-outfit.”
Superintendent Lovell looked at him intently, and then meditatively at the far corner of the shed. John Christmas saw an old, rather shabby bicycle, much crumpled and battered, lying upon a sack. A green enamelled pump was lying by its side. They all looked at it and there was a brief pause.
“That’s not Charles’s bicycle!” said Felix at length decidedly. “Or—wait a minute! Yes, he borrowed Lion’s pump just before we saw the last of him. But Lion’s pump wasn’t a green one!” He approached the bicycle and stooped over it. “And this bicycle has a carrier! No, Superintendent, that’s not the bicycle Charles was riding. This is a Rover. His was an old Humber.”
He straightened himself, quite flushed with the excitement of his discovery.
“This is very interesting,” observed Lovell in his quiet, unemotional voice. “I suppose you don’t recognize this bicycle, sir, as anybody else’s?”
“No,” answered Felix regretfully. “I wish I did. For surely it must be a very important clue. It must mean—why, surely it must mean that the murderer was also riding a bicycle, and pushed his own bicycle over the quarry in mistake for Charles’s! And that must mean that Charles’s own bicycle is still about somewhere! Why, if we can trace it, and trace the owner of this machine, we shall have the murderer!”
He spoke freely and excitedly. John, watching him, noted that with this discovery his concern over his cousin’s death seemed to have completely dropped from him. He was like a man suddenly relieved from a heavy load of care. Queer, thought John, and stored the impression in his mind for future use.
Lovell smiled grimly.
“Not quite so fast, sir. What you say’s possible, but by no means certain. Murderers do make extraordinary mistakes, and of course once he’d pushed the wrong machine over it would be impossible to get it up again. But on the other hand, the mistake may have been Sir Charles’s. He may have walked off with somebody else’s bicycle when he left the inn. Anyhow, our first business is obviously to trace the owner of this machine. That green pump on a black machine ought to make it fairly easy. I beg your pardon, Miss Price?”
Blodwen had uttered a small sound, as if about to speak. She was looking thoughtfully at the battered machine and seemed to hesitate.
“I seem to think I’ve seen a green pump on a black bicycle somewhere,” she murmured. “Now where? Whose? I think—”
There was a silence, while they all waited expectantly. Suddenly she drew in her breath with a tiny, sharp hiss.
“No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think I have seen it before. I was mistaken.”
Lovell looked at her keenly, and seemed about to protest, but decided to let the matter pass. Blodwen returned his glance calmly, then turned indifferently aside, as if the matter had lost interest for her. John could have sworn that in that silence, when she gave that little start, she had remembered.
“This looks interesting,” he said to himself. “More and more interesting. Rampson, my friend, we are not going back to London just yet awhile.”
Lovell shut his notebook with a snap and led the way out of the gloomy shed, carefully closing and barring the door.
“You will let me know as soon as Mr. Morris returns, won’t you, Miss Price?” he asked courteously. “We can’t fix a day for the inquest until we hear from him. He was apparently one of the last people to speak to Sir Charles.”
The anxious-faced daughter of the Tram’s proprietor was waiting for them in the garden, idly poking with a stick at a small smouldering bonfire. She intercepted the Superintendent as he went down the path.
“Oh, Mr. Lovell, there’s been somebody at my eggs! Seven eggs I’ve had took from the hen-house in the orchard. I don’t know how they gets in there, I don’t! I thought as there was somebody in the backyard yesterday evening as didn’t ought to be there! But I went and looked over the orchard gate and nobody did I see! You’ll bear me out, Mr. Felix, sir, for if you’ll remember the eggs was all hard-boiled at tea, owing to me thinking as I saw somebody! And I thought I’d report the theft to you while you was here, Mr. Lovell, for robbery is robbery, if it is only eggs, and we all has to live, and the robber did ought to be stopped, and—”
There was a suppressed snigger in the background, and turning John saw the young constable on guard looking portentously solemn.
Lovell allowed a faint smile to disturb the wintry severity of his features, but answered politely:
“You shall tell me about it afterwards, Miss Watt. I’m busy now.” He went on towards the inn, followed by Blodwen and the doctor.
The girl turned her worried face towards John, and encouraged by his sympathetic look, said in an injured voice:
“Well, I know as a murder has to take precedence, as they say, sir, but still it is a bit hard on poor folks to keep losing their goods this way! Them fowls don’t hardly lay up to what they eats, at the best!”
“Don’t you shut your chicken-house at night?”
“Why, surely, sir! These eggs was took yesterday evening, while I was busy about the house! And there’s been apples took too! One of the boughs is broke through being dragged down rough. And if the police isn’t here to catch robbers, sir, what is they here for? It’s a bit hard on poor folks—”
Perceiving that nothing but his departure would stem the flood of the young woman’s eloquence, John looked around for Felix. He had taken a paper from his pocket and was folding it into a spill.
“I’ve got a match,” said John.
“It’s all right,” said Felix, and lit his spill where small flames flickered round some straw at the side of the slow-burning heap. The paper did not catch well, and he had to stoop to the flame again before he could light his cigarette. Then he thrust the spill in among the twigs and smouldering grasses and sauntered after John towards the inn.
John looked back to see whether Miss Watt had transferred her complaints to the young constable, but she had evidently given him up as hopeless. She was going with a dejected air towards the orchard, to count her apples again.
“I say,” said John thoughtfully, as he and Felix drove at high speed back to Penlow, keeping in sight of Blodwen’s small blue car, “what was that paper you put on the bonfire, Felix?”
Felix, who was in the act of lighting a fresh cigarette with a match he had taken from his pocket, turned quickly and stared at John.
“What?” he jerked out. “Why? What, the spill I lighted my cigarette from, do you mean? Why, just a paper I found in my pocket! Why? Why do you ask?”
“Nothing private, I hope.”
There was a pause.
“N—no,” faltered Felix, and added after a moment: “Why?”
“Because,” said John, looking fixedly at Blodwen’s little cloud of dust fifty yards ahead of them, “when I looked back the young policeman on guard had just retrieved it from the bonfire. Like his impudence, of course. But in a case of this sort a young policeman hoping for promotion sees clues everywhere. Of course if it was only a bill or something, it won’t matter. But one doesn’t want one’s private letters read, even by worthy young constables. Does one?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter!” replied Felix with an unnatural jauntiness of tone, and a slight shake in his voice. The ingenuous young man was obviously not a good liar. After a moment he added :“Wasn’t it burnt, then?”
“There was a good deal of it left,” said John. “A smouldering bonfire can’t be depended on, you know.”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,” said Felix again, even more jauntily than before.
“Give me a light, would you?” asked John, whose cigarette had gone out.
Striking a match, Felix seemed to realize that some further explanation was necessary.
“You see,” he said carefully, “I couldn’t find the matches in my pocket, so I took the first piece of paper that came to hand. I had some matches all the time—here they are—but I couldn’t find them at the moment.”
“I see,” said John soothingly, as to a child’s laborious explanation, and to himself: “This gets more and more interesting. Felix, you are a babe. Miss Blodwen, you are a sphinx. But surely, surely neither of you is a murderer!”
CHAPTER FIVE
RHYLLAN HALL
Rhyllan Hall, with its air of withdrawn and dignified antiquity, proved to have all the beauty that the guide-books claimed for it. Cloistered behind its high brick wall and the great trees of its little park, it presented to the drive a long, three-storied frontage of warm red brick with the tall, gracious, many-paned windows of great Anna’s spacious days, and a beautiful stone porch opening on to a low flagged terrace. Below the terrace lay the formal Dutch garden created at the whim of some eighteenth-century owner, and beyond that the peaceful small park.
John Christmas and Rampson sat over coffee with Felix and Miss Price in one of the rooms looking over the terrace. It was a small room at one end of the building, and had probably been designed as a boudoir or writing-room. The painted panelled walls with their look of discoloured ivory and the long, faded curtains of fringed damask looked as if they had stayed untouched since first the room was decorated. Miss Price, sitting on the low seat in one of the deep window-embrasures, with her cropped dark head leaning back against the folded shutter, blowing rings of cigarette smoke into the rose-coloured folds of the curtains, seemed an anachronism. A silence had fallen upon the little party. Felix, supported by Miss Price, had begged John to keep his promise and come to Rhyllan, in spite of the altered circumstances. He had been so earnest that he had soon overborne John’s refusal.
Lunch, in spite of Miss Blodwen’s conversational gifts and the tacit determination of everybody not to discuss the murder, had been rather a dismal meal. Felix had been absent-minded and practically silent; he had the strained, unhappy air of a man listening with all his ears for some long anticipated sound. But no car purred up the drive, and the garage, except for Blodwen’s little Morris-Oxford, stood empty. Rampson, who never spoke when he had nothing to say, ate with enjoyment and said nothing. John and Blodwen had the conversation to themselves. They talked of Bordighera, from which delightful town Blodwen had returned two days earlier, of Italy generally, of motoring, of architecture, and of Rhyllan Hall. Her home, it soon appeared, was Miss Price’s chief passion. She loved it with that intimate, personal love which people deficient in human emotion often bestow upon bricks and mortar.
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