Death at Swaythling Court

by J. J. Connington

  Scattered about the room were the witnesses; and the grouping into which they had fallen seemed significant to the Colonel. He and Cyril Norton sat on adjacent chairs; slightly removed from them was Mrs. Pickering, Jimmy Leigh’s housekeeper; at a respectful distance, Bolam had taken his seat. Then, near the coroner’s chair, looking even more pompous than usual, was young Mickleby, fingering some notes of the evidence he meant to give. Isolated from them all, at the end of the room behind the reporter’s chair, Leake the butler sat impassively in his place, his face composed into a mask out of which his eyes appeared to peep furtively from time to time as he raised his lids.

  “In order that you may have sufficient information before you to enable you to form a correct judgment in this case,” the coroner continued, “it is necessary to explain that this man, William Blayre Hubbard, carried on a business in artificial perfumes, in which products he was a wholesale dealer in a small way. His income from this business would not have enabled him to keep up a house like Swaythling Court; and evidence will be given to show that he practised blackmailing—extorting money by means of threats. That fact may or may not have a bearing on the manner of his death; but in any case you must take it into consideration. I wish to make clear, however, that we are here for one purpose only: to determine what caused the death of this individual. We are in no way concerned with the details of his blackmailing operations. That is an entirely different question, which cannot be opened up at this inquest, except in so far as it touches the matter of his death.”

  Colonel Sanderstead breathed a slight sigh of relief at this ruling. The coroner proceeded with his explanation.

  “In order to make the matter as clear as possible, I have arranged to call the witnesses in an order which will lay before you, in proper sequence, all the events which can be connected with his decease; so that, as the evidence is unfolded, you will get an almost connected story of the last day of his life.”

  At this moment, the door opened; and the Colonel, glancing towards it, saw Hilton on the threshold. Cyril Norton, looking in his turn, allowed a frown to pass across his face as he recognized the new-comer. Hilton paused for a second or two, as though afraid to interrupt the coroner; then, after searching for a vacant seat, he walked across the room and took his place beside one of the windows. His appearance roused the Colonel’s interest considerably. Here was a witness who would be able to fill in some gaps in the story, if he chose to speak the truth.

  Hilton had barely seated himself, before the coroner called upon the butler to give his evidence. Leake came forward and took his place opposite the jury, on the other side of the long table. Seen thus, in the Swaythling Court dining-room which was part of his normal environment, he suggested nothing to the Colonel, who was watching him keenly. He took the oath without betraying any particular emotion; and, when prompted by the coroner, he delivered his evidence almost as though he had previously learned it by heart.

  “My name is Thomas Leake. I have been butler here ever since Mr. Hubbard came to Swaythling Court. On the day of his death, Mr. Hubbard went up to town as usual in the morning. He returned in time for lunch. About three o’clock, Mr. Hilton called . . .”

  The eyes of the jury swung round from the butler to Hilton; but as he was sitting between them and the window, they evidently could see nothing of interest; and they re-concentrated their attention on the witness.

  “Mr. Hubbard at that time was rearranging his collection of butterflies in the study. I showed Mr. Hilton in. In about half an hour he came out again and left the house. Except for a few minutes when he went upstairs, Mr. Hubbard remained in his study until I served dinner in this room at seven o’clock. Mr. Hubbard had given all the domestic staff permission to go to a dance in Micheldean Abbas that night; and the maids and chauffeur had left the house at half-past six. After dinner, about half-past seven, I took whisky and a syphon of soda into his study and left it beside him on the desk; and I looked to see that a breakfast-tray had been left in the pantry, according to his orders.”

  Simon got up from his seat, a bulky figure in a light-grey dusty suit, very shiny on the back and at the elbows. He had the air of a man who means to get to the bottom of a puzzling affair, even though it costs him trouble. Colonel Sanderstead, noting the motor-man’s side-glance at his fellow-jurors, let his dislike bubble up. Posing brute! Trying to show off before the yokels, no doubt.

  “Witness, will you be so good as to tell us what orders the deceased gave to you about this breakfast-tray?”

  Having delivered himself of this, Simon glanced again at his neighbours and sat down with great deliberation.

  “Mr. Hubbard had given orders that we were not to return before half-past ten or eleven on the following morning; and that I was to leave a breakfast-tray ready for him. He may have meant to take it up to his room with him and breakfast in bed.”

  “I must ask the witness to confine himself to facts,” interrupted the coroner. “The jury must draw their own conclusions from the evidence.”

  “When I placed the whisky on Mr. Hubbard’s desk, I noticed lying there a steel paper-knife which he frequently used. I left the house shortly afterwards, having carried out Mr. Hubbard’s orders to see that all the doors and windows were fast and having dropped the catch of the Yale lock on the front door. I did not return to the house until the following morning, when I found the police in possession.”

  Leake seemed inclined to resume his seat; but the coroner checked him with a gesture.

  “You identify this decanter and this tumbler as the ones which you took into the study?”

  “I do.”

  “And this implement is the steel paper-knife of which you spoke?”

  “Yes.”

  “On your inspection of the house after you returned, did you find anything abnormal?”

  “One of Mr. Hubbard’s exhibition cases of butterflies had been broken open and there was one butterfly missing, one which Mr. Hubbard had told me was his best specimen, very valuable.”

  “Anything further?”

  “After the police had gone, I found the pantry window broken and the breakfast-tray contents scattered about the floor.”

  One of the jurymen nudged his neighbour, and both stared at Bolam with apparent interest, much to the constable’s vexation. The coroner took no notice. Seeing that Leake was about to be dismissed, Simon lifted himself once more from his seat; and, holding tight to the table in front of him with both hands, he leaned forward and put a question:

  “Witness, are we to understand from your evidence that you were alone in the house with the deceased between 6.30 and the time you departed for this dance?”

  If Leake appreciated the bearing of this question, he gave no sign of the fact. He fixed his gaze on the exhibits which lay on the table before him; and in a perfectly clear voice he admitted the correctness of Simon’s suggestion.

  “I was certainly in the house alone with Mr. Hubbard for about an hour, I think.”

  Simon seemed to think that he had extracted something of value; and he sat down once more with the air of a man who knows more than he cares to tell.

  At this moment, the Colonel became aware of someone in the room whom he had overlooked in his original survey. Sitting almost behind the coroner, he discovered a middle-aged man with a close-clipped moustache, whose face seemed faintly familiar to him.

  “Who’s that?” he inquired from Cyril, in a whisper.

  “Angermere. Chap who writes books,” Cyril retorted brusquely.

  The Colonel inspected Angermere’s face again, as closely as politeness allowed: and across his memory there flitted the recollection of a shelf on a railway bookstall filled with volumes bearing titles like: The Secret of the Green Oak and The Ravenshaw Mystery. Each paper jacket displayed the author’s portrait; and the Colonel now understood why Angermere’s face had seemed familiar to him at first sight.

  “What’s he doing here?” speculated Colonel Sanderstead. “Probably a friend of t
he coroner; and came up here to see if he could pick up an idea or two for a book.”

  The next witness called by the coroner was Cyril Norton. Like the butler, he contributed nothing to the case which the Colonel had not heard before. And to the Colonel’s relief, he succeeded in keeping Jimmy Leigh’s name entirely out of the affair. “My friend communicated this to me.” “I will read a copy of a letter purporting to come from the deceased and demanding money from my friend under menaces.” “It was agreed that I should look after my friend’s interests in this matter.”

  The dusty figure of Simon rose again from its seat at the end of the evidence.

  “Witness, the jury wish to know who is this person whom you refer to continually as your ‘friend.’”

  Cyril Norton turned upon him with a scowl.

  “I have no intention of answering that question, Mr. Foreman. If I were to give you the name, it would not throw the faintest light upon this matter; and I have no desire to wash dirty linen in public.”

  Simon was obviously very ill-pleased at the snub.

  “I think that the jury have a right to know the full facts of the case before them. If you cannot tell us the name of the party, perhaps you can give us the person’s sex; whether it was a man or a woman that the deceased was said to be blackmailing.”

  Cyril Norton’s frown deepened.

  “I do not propose to answer that question. I am quite satisfied that the person to whom you refer did not commit the murder, if that is what you are intending to suggest.”

  The coroner intervened sharply.

  “The witness must not prejudice this case by referring to a ‘murder.’ We are here to discover how the deceased died.”

  Simon reseated himself with a sulky scowl; and the coroner proceeded to call Hilton as the next witness. As the name was announced, Colonel Sanderstead glanced at his nephew and was struck by a change to alertness in Cyril’s attitude. When Hilton came forward to give his evidence, Cyril’s face became an almost expressionless mask; his whole intentness seemed to be concentrated in his eyes. He seemed to be expecting something; and the Colonel, remembering Cyril’s air of knowing more than he cared to tell, turned with a growing interest to the new witness.

  But when it came, Hilton’s evidence apparently threw no fresh light upon the problem.

  “I called at Swaythling Court on 30th September—about three o’clock in the afternoon, I think. I wished to see the deceased on a matter of business. I had no previous appointment. The butler admitted me; and I found the deceased in his study. He appeared to be busy with his butterfly collection at the time. We had some discussion of the business which took me to see him.”

  “Can you give us any indication of the nature of your business with the deceased?” inquired the coroner.

  “It was purely private business—nothing to do with the present case.”

  “You had a disagreement with the deceased?”

  “I had.”

  “And after that, you left the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you give us no idea what the business was?”

  “It had nothing whatever to do with the death of the deceased. I am quite positive of that.”

  “Did you go to the deceased of your own free will?”

  “Yes, I wanted him to do me a favour, which he refused.”

  The Colonel, almost subconsciously, noted a slight relaxation in Cyril’s attitude as this answer came out.

  “You speak of a ‘favour’; but you also called it a ‘matter of business.’ Which was it?”

  “It was a favour for which I was prepared to pay him.”

  “After you left Swaythling Court, what did you do?”

  Hilton evidently saw the underlying meaning of the question.

  “I went back to my hotel at Micheldean Abbas and stayed in the smoke-room until dinner-time, talking to some people. After dinner, I came back to Fernhurst Parva to see a friend. I was in that friend’s company until about a quarter to ten o’clock. After that, I returned to my hotel and played billiards with the marker for an hour or so. Then I went to bed.”

  Mrs. Pickering was the next witness; and Colonel Sanderstead in his turn grew alert. Here was a chance of discovering what had happened during that mysterious interview between Jimmy Leigh and Hubbard at the Bungalow. He felt a certain apprehension as Mrs. Pickering took her place before the jury. She was obviously nervous; but she gave her evidence quite frankly.

  “My name is Susan Pickering, Since the end of the war, I have been housekeeper to Mr. James Leigh at the Bungalow. On the evening of 30th September, I was in the kitchen there. Mr. Leigh had been out to dinner, and I heard him come in again shortly after half-past eight, I think.”

  Simon rose ponderously from his seat.

  “Can the witness not tell us exactly when the man Leigh came in?”

  Mrs. Pickering disliked Simon and evidently resented his interruption. She looked him over witheringly, fixing her gaze particularly on a grease-stain which disfigured his grey sleeve.

  “No. And if I’m badgered with stupid questions, I’m sure to get muddled up. I’m telling you what happened as well as I can remember it.”

  “The times when things happened are most important,” Simon commented pompously.

  The coroner evidently sympathized with the witness.

  “I think it will probably facilitate matters if witnesses are allowed to tell their stories with as little interruption as possible.”

  Several of the jurymen smiled broadly at Simon’s discomfiture, which made the foreman still more angry. Mrs. Pickering continued:

  “At a quarter to nine, Mr. Leigh went to the front door and opened it.”

  Simon could not resist this opening.

  “How do you know it was exactly a quarter to nine?”

  “Because I heard the church clock chime the quarter just at that time,” Mrs. Pickering retorted, rather acidly. “When I say a thing happened, you can take it that I did know it happened, and when it happened, Mr. Simon.”

  The coroner frowned at Simon, who sank back into his chair. Quite obviously he was not making such a good impression as he had expected. Mrs. Pickering, with a triumphant smile at the foreman, went on with her evidence:

  “I heard Mr. Leigh open the front door and say: ‘Good evening, Hubbard. Come in.’ I heard their footsteps come down the hall and go into Mr. Leigh’s workshop.”

  Corley, the butcher, had been following the evidence with interest; and he now put a question:

  “If Mrs. Pickering doesn’t mind, I’d just like to get that clear. She heard footsteps. Was it quite clear that there were two people in the hall?”

  Corley was a favourite of Mrs. Pickering. She beamed on him as though he had been giving her help.

  “I heard the two sets of footsteps quite distinctly; and I heard Mr. Hubbard drop his walking-stick into the umbrella-stand as he passed. In about a minute or so”—she turned to gaze witheringly at Simon as she gave this information—“Mr. Leigh came out of the workshop and rapped at my door. He had a letter in his hand; and he asked me to go out with it to the post, as he wanted it to go that night, and he couldn’t leave Mr. Hubbard. I hurried to put on my things and went out with the letter immediately.”

  “Did you notice the address on the letter?” demanded Simon, the tone of his voice showing that he believed he had hit on something of importance.

  “I did not. I’m not so inquisitive as some of my neighbours.”

  The coroner again interrupted. Evidently he believed that Mrs. Pickering would tell her story best if she were left alone.

  “I think we shall get on faster if the witness is allowed to give her evidence without unnecessary interruption.”

  Simon shrugged his shoulders sulkily under the reproof.

  “At nine o’clock—I heard the church clock strike again as I came in at the gate—I got back to the house and went into the kitchen. The kitchen is next the workshop and the walls are very badly dead
ened, so I could hear voices talking next door. I recognized Mr. Hubbard’s voice quite distinctly, though I couldn’t make out what they were talking about. I wasn’t listening specially. They went on talking, with occasional stops in the talk, until I went to bed. That was at half-past ten, because I always go to bed then. Just after I got into bed, I heard Mr. Leigh opening the front door and letting Mr. Hubbard out. I heard him say: ‘Good night, Hubbard,’ quite distinctly. After that, I fell asleep. Next morning, when I was dusting the hall I found Mr. Hubbard’s stick in the umbrella-stand. I looked at it and found a silver plate with his name and address on it. I have seen that stick in his hand several times.”

  “You identify this stick on the table as the stick you found in the umbrella-stand?” inquired the coroner.

  “That is the stick,” Mrs. Pickering replied, picking it up from the table. “I happened to notice that one of the corners of the silver plate was rough. It caught my hand when I took it out of the stand; and you can see the rough bit here if you look at it.”

  Corley the butcher had evidently been thinking over the evidence. Again he ventured to put a question:

  “Did you hear Mr. Leigh in the house after the deceased had gone away that night?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Pickering hastened to add. “I forgot to say that immediately after leaving Mr. Hubbard at the door he went back to the workshop and began pulling heavy things about. He kept me awake for quite a while with the noise he made.”

  The Colonel pricked up his ears at this information. What the housekeeper had heard, evidently, was Jimmy Leigh shifting the Lethal Ray apparatus to bring it to bear on Swaythling Court.

  The next witness was a stranger to the Colonel.

  “My name is Timothy Simpson. I’m a clerk; and was employed by the deceased at ’is office. ’E visited ’is office as usual on the morning of 30th September. When ’e left for lunch, I gathered that ’e intended to return on the following morning. I ’ave a telephone in my ’ouse, put in at the expense of the deceased. At about five past eleven on the night of 30th September, the deceased rang me up and told me that ’e would not be at the office on the following morning. ’E then rang off.”