Dead Man's Quarry

by Ianthe Jerrold

  I have a bargain to propose. Yon will get more out of it than l will. It was easy to read a sinister meaning into these words, in the light of what had happened. And yet—surely Clytie could not have made this assignation with her husband to propose and discuss the murder of his nephew! John could imagine the way in which the redoubtable Morris would receive such a suggestion. It was impossible! And yet—at that interview in Hereford something had happened to close Morris’s lips. It must be something more than mere obstinacy that had closed them so tightly that he would not disclose even to his lawyer the nature of his business in Hereford on that Monday afternoon. Suppose that Clytie had made a suggestion of murder. On that supposition Morris’s queer silence became comprehensible. He was shielding his wife. John lit a cigarette, and for twenty minutes or so remained sunk in reverie, his eyes unseeingly on the Aubusson carpet. Then he glanced at his watch, and finding that there was still an hour before tea-time, went out into the garden to restore “The Murder in the Attic” to Mr. Clino.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HOPELESSLY UNSCIENTIFIC

  “Do you mind driving, Sydenham?” asked John early that evening in the garage. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Certainly,” replied Rampson obediently, climbing into the driver’s seat. “But why this sudden caution? I’ve never noticed that driving cramped your conversational style in any way.”

  “This isn’t going to be a conversation,” said John ominously. “It’s going to be a monologue.”

  Rampson ostentatiously stifled a premonitory yawn.

  “It’s no use yawning,” said John, shutting the door and taking a map out of his pocket. “You’ve got to go about eighty miles before dinner.”

  “What? I thought you just wanted to nose about after clues.”

  “So I do. Half a sec while I study the map. Yes, we start off through Penlow and on past the Tram Inn. Then the cycling party’s road lay through Hereford, but I think there’s a quicker way than that. Yes, we turn off to the left—or stay! I think we will go through Hereford after all, and take the Queen’s Arms on the way.”

  “If I’ve really got to drive you to Hereford, which must be at least thirty miles off, I’m all for taking the Queen’s Arms on the way,” said Rampson with a sigh. “Where exactly is this clue of yours, John?”

  “In Moseley, a small village the other side of Hereford.”

  “How far the other side of Hereford?” asked Rampson sadly, turning out of the park gates.

  “About twenty miles as the crow flies.”

  “And as the car crawls?”

  “’Bout twenty-five, if you don’t mind a bad road.”

  “I do,” said Rampson decidedly. “I mind very much. I mind the whole expedition extremely. I mind being lured out to the garage on the pretext of taking a little air before dinner, and then being told I’m to drive eighty miles. I mind very much indeed seeing eighty miles grow into a hundred and ten or so before I’ve had time to protest. I suppose you know,” he added with desperate calm, “that we shan’t be back to dinner?”

  “I have made that simple calculation, yes,” replied John meekly. “Blodwen is going to see that there’s something cold for us, so you needn’t worry.”

  “May I ask why we’re going to this place?”

  “Moseley? It’s the place where Charles bought the bulls’ eyes. And I’m not sure what I’m going to find out there, nor whether there’s anything to find out, but I should like to go and make certain that he did buy bulls’ eyes and nothing else.”

  “Suppose you found that he bought clove-balls, would that be a clue?”

  “Don’t be foolish, Sydenham. It isn’t what he bought, it’s what he did, if anything, that interests me. And now start listening, because I’m going to talk. I think we can remove Waters from our list of suspects. Also Mrs. Maur. Waters’s alibi wants verifying, but it sounds perfectly all right.”

  John gave his friend an account of his interviews with the housekeeper and Waters, ending with Waters’s version of the letter left by the strange woman.

  “So I think we can take it that when Morris went on that mysterious business to Hereford on the day of the murder, he went to keep an appointment with his wife.”

  There was a pause while Rampson negotiated the sharp corner out of Penlow High Street.

  “And the latest theory is?” he inquired thoughtfully, as they took the peaceful road again.

  “Clytie Price is the obvious suspect at present, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s hear exactly why you think so.”

  “Well. To start with, we’ll assume for the moment, though we haven’t proved it yet, that Clytie Price and Mrs. Field of Sheepshanks Cottage are the same person. This is the theory I’m working on at present—mostly conjecture, of course, but it hangs together: Clytie Price, or Meadows, or Field learns of the death of Sir Evan Price, and knows that the heir, Charles Price, is lost in the wilds of Canada and can’t be traced. (There was difficulty and delay in tracing him at first, you know.) She realizes that Morris Price has a good chance of inheriting the title and estates, and that if she can manage a reconciliation with him, she would be settled in honour and affluence for the rest of her life. She determines to try to patch things up with her husband. But her plans are spoiled when the lawyers in Montreal succeed in tracing the direct heir. From being the probable heir of Rhyllan Morris becomes again a mere steward, whose prosperity and continuance at Rhyllan will depend entirely on how he gets on with the new owner. There is nothing to be gained by Clytie in a reconciliation with him in these circumstances. But she has thought the matter over so much, and seen herself as Lady Price of Rhyllan so clearly that she cannot abandon the scheme. And gradually the idea of getting rid of the interloper presents itself. How? Well, there is only one way—murder. She takes a cottage as near to Rhyllan as she can get, so as to be on the spot. But now she is in a difficulty. It is no use murdering Charles unless she is sure of a reconciliation with Morris, and she knows Morris too well to imagine that he will be easily reconciled. The simplest way out of the difficulty seems to be to involve him, if possible, in her scheme for getting rid of Charles. If she could make him a confederate or an accessory she would have a hold over him. When she wrote that note asking him to meet her in Hereford, she intended to propose a plan for murdering Charles, and to induce him to consent to it. The murder of Charles was her side of the bargain she mentioned. The reinstatement of her as his wife was Morris’s side. As I see it, Morris indignantly refused to have anything to do with such a scheme—eh?”

  Rampson, who had seemed about to interrupt, altered his mind and shook his head.

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “Morris,” resumed John, “refused to have anything to do with her precious bargain, and left her. She, however, determined to carry the scheme through, hoping to be able to put pressure on Morris afterwards. She had abstracted Morris’s revolver from the library drawer during her visit on the Saturday. She followed Morris out from Hereford in a hired car, saw his meeting with Charles, and determined that her opportunity had come. After Morris had departed, she followed Charles across the common, shot him and pitched him over the edge of the quarry. Before throwing him over, she took the ring off his finger and the coat he was carrying and went off with them. She buried Morris’s revolver in a rabbit-hole, hoping it would never be found. Later she hid the coat on the Forest and the ring somewhere else, hoping that they would be found and so confuse the issue. She must have seen that things would look rather black for Morris, and it was necessary to her plan that he should be proved innocent. Unluckily for her, Morris chose to spend that night on Radnor Forest, and the coat she had hidden there had the reverse effect from what she had intended.” John paused, looking expectantly at his friend. “There! What d’you think of that for a reconstruction of the crime?”

  “Rotten,” said Rampson succinctly.

  “Why?” asked John, and could not help feeling a little chagrined.
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br />   Rampson, his eyes on the long, downhill road ahead of him, meditated a moment and then spoke with quiet conviction.

  “Well. It sounds all right, superficially. But it’s simply bulging with query marks.”

  “Of course, it’s mostly conjecture, as I told you. But it makes a working theory.”

  “Does it?” asked Rampson placidly.

  * “Well, doesn’t it? Come on, Sydenham! Pick holes in it. It’s what I gave it you for. I know there are holes. But I didn’t think they were unmendable ones.”

  “Here goes, then,” said Rampson, cautiously slowing down as he began to speak. “Firstly, how did Clytie know there was a revolver in that drawer in the library? Secondly, and more important, what on earth did she want with Morris’s revolver? Surely she would have used a more non-committal weapon for her murder. She had no desire to throw suspicion on Morris. On your theory, quite the reverse. Next to her own safety, Morris’s safety was important to her.”

  “She might,” answered John slowly, “have taken the revolver with some vague idea of having a hold over Morris, if he didn’t fall in with her scheme.”

  “Possibly,” agreed Rampson. “But according to your theory, she not only stole the revolver, she actually used it, and used it in circumstances which could not fail to throw suspicion on Morris. Thirdly, what about the five-pound note? You haven’t mentioned the five-pound note. Can we really assume that the woman could have been such an idiot as to pick the pockets of a man she’d just murdered? And not only to pick his pockets, but to pay the note away within the next day or two? She must have known that five-pound notes can be traced fairly easily! We can’t, I think, assume that she would risk so much for so little.”

  John sighed.

  “The note is a difficulty, I know. And I didn’t mention it because, as you say, one can’t bring oneself to think she can have calmly pinched it after the murder. But there it is! Unless that old woman at Sheepshanks was making a mistake or telling a lie, which doesn’t seem likely, Mrs. Field did have one of Charles’s five-pound notes. And after all, that fact in itself is suspicious.”

  “Too suspicious,” said Rampson promptly. “Because when one tries to follow up the suspicion, one’s led to what you’ve just admitted is almost an absurdity. Fourthly, how do you account for Isabel?”

  “I don’t know,” said John thoughtfully. “She may have been an accomplice, or an innocent accessory—the latter, I’m inclined to think. Perhaps she was a kind of second string to Clytie’s bow.”

  “Oh! How?”

  “Clytie can’t have felt very sure that Morris would fall in with her pleasant little plan. And she may have thought that the next best thing to being Lady Price would be to be Lady Price’s aunt. In fact, her first idea, before Charles turned up, may have been simply to marry Isabel off to Felix, who, on the presumption that Charles was dead, was the next heir after Morris. When Charles turned up, she may have altered her scheme and planned to marry Isabel to Charles. And then afterwards it may have occurred to her that a future depending on her niece’s good graces might not be very pleasant. And then she would conceive the idea of doing away with Charles and trying for the position of Lady Price herself.”

  “Dear me,” observed Rampson, and meditated profoundly.

  “Well? Why dear me?”

  “Only you seem to think Isabel is a very accommodating young lady. She didn’t strike me like that.”

  “Perhaps it was Isabel’s own idea. Perhaps she and her aunt invented the scheme between them. I don’t say that Isabel was a mere cipher. But roughly speaking, I think my theory accounts for Isabel, and for the whole thing, don’t you?”

  Rampson was silent for so long that John had to repeat:

  “Don’t you?”

  “It might,” said Rampson guardedly.

  “But it doesn’t appeal to you?”

  “No.”

  “But is there any other theory that will account for the facts?”

  “I think so.”

  “What?” asked John, instantly hopeful. He knew Rampson, and knew that any theory he had formed would be worth the listening to. And his own reconstruction of the murder, which he had just sketched out for his friend’s benefit, did not really satisfy him. It was, as Rampson had said, too full of query-marks.

  To John’s surprise, Rampson slowed down and drew up by the side of the lonely road before replying. Taking a cigarette-case from his pocket he offered it to John, and lit one himself, and then, turning to face his friend with one arm over the wheel, he said gently:

  “You won’t like it.”

  “What?”

  “My theory.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not a new one. It’s the theory of the police.” John was about to protest, but Rampson stopped him.

  “Better let me finish what I’ve got to say now, old chap. But first answer me one question. What is there against the theory that Morris Price murdered his nephew?”

  “Well ” John cast around for some clinching argument, and found none. “I’m sure he didn’t, that’s all.”

  “Exactly. You’re sure he didn’t, but you can’t bring one reasonable argument against the view that he did. You’re sure he didn’t. Why? Because you took a liking to him, and because you’ve taken a liking to his relations and want to help them. But !” Rampson made a gesture of despair. “My dear John! How can you set up, even in your own mind, such a flimsy defence against such an overwhelming attack? Have you ever stopped to consider what there is against Morris Price? You haven’t, have you, because you’ve been prejudiced in his favour from the beginning. But consider now. He had motive. Have you been able to find sufficient motive in the case of any other person? No. You have this theory about Clytie Price, but you must admit that it’s only the wildest surmise. He was on the spot at the time the murder was committed, and he had a strong motive for the murder, and the murder was committed with his revolver. He has the devil of a violent temper, that seems to be agreed on all hands. The night the murder was committed he spent roaming about on Radnor Forest. Well! There’s no reason why a perfectly innocent person shouldn’t spend a moonlight night admiring the Forest scenery. But in point of fact, it was a thing that Morris had never done before. His family were extremely surprised at his doing it. It seems, therefore, to point to some stress of mind, which may have been a perfectly innocent stress, of course. He may have gone there, as he says, to think about his future and his approaching departure from Rhyllan Hall. But there it is! You can’t say it isn’t a strong point against him. And then Charles’s raincoat hidden in the bracken on the Forest! And the stub of a Rhyllan Hall cigarette in the shepherd’s hut! And his behaviour to the police! Any one of these things may be explained away, no doubt. But the cumulative evidence is enormous. Can you really shut your eyes to all this? Especially when you realize, as you must, that there’s no real evidence against my other person?”

  There was a silence. John looked through a gap in the trees over the sloping fields to the far blue hills. For a moment he was daunted. But then he saw Morris Price again as he had seen him at the inquest—arrogant, ill-tempered, baffled and at bay.

  “Thank you, Syd,” he said quietly at length. “I think I have been rather shutting my eyes to what we’re up against. You’ve made me realize there’s no time to lose.”

  Rampson threw away his cigarette and looked at his friend, half smiling, half frowning.

  “No time to waste in what?”

  “In finding the murderer.”

  Rampson sighed, laughed, shook his head and turned back to the wheel.

  You see,” said John, “I just can’t believe that Morris Price is the murderer, and that’s all about it. Until the inquest I was inclined to think he had done it. Half-way through the inquest, I was uncertain. But at the end, you remember, when he told the foreman of the jury not to be a fool, I was sure that he was innocent. He wasn’t acting. And there was something in his face— stupefied and yet indignant�
�that seemed to me simply to shout his innocence. I can’t forget it.”

  “I’m sure I hope you’re right,” said Rampson, as the car slid forward. As for me, I’ve got no choice but to think him guilty, and that’s why I’ve decided to go back to London to-morrow. I’ve been trying hard to see some solution of the case that wouldn’t involve Morris Price, and I can’t. And for me, that raincoat and cigarette-end we found on the Forest simply clinch matters. And I don’t feel very comfortable, living under what I suppose is his roof and thinking him a murderer. So I’m off, John. It’s high time I was back, anyhow.”

  “We’ll see,” replied John. “I’m going up to London myself to-morrow. But I rather wanted you to stay at Rhyllan and hold the fort for me. We’ll talk it over later. That’s Hereford, I suppose. We must be nearly there.”

  The Queen’s Arms proved to be a fair-sized, rather florid-looking hotel facing on the market square. John left Rampson in the car and went up the steps into a small square lounge full of wicker chairs and tables. A Sabbath peace brooded over the place. A porter who had been standing with folded arms contemplating the barometer sprang to life as John approached, and the young woman in the booking-desk raised a dreamy eye from the novel she was reading. After a cursory glance at the two of them, John decided on the porter. He had a jovial, intelligent and essentially tippable face. John beckoned to him.

  “Can you tell me where I can get some petrol?”

  A look of faint surprise came into the porter’s pink and healthy face. He glanced across the square.

  “There, sir. At the petrol station.”

  “Oh, yes, so I can. Wait a minute. There’s something else I want to ask you. We may as well come straight to the point.” John put his hand into his trouser-pocket and the man’s natural expression of good-humour became accentuated.

  “Willin’ to tell ye anythink I can, sir. But I ain’t the Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

  His accent struck gratefully on John’s ears. The cockney was a good observer.