Colonel Blair chuckled.
“Yes, in a way,” he said. “One of the old family of crooks! The local police sent along his fingerprints and we checked up on ’em. Sam Sprigot known, I believe, as ‘Stackpipe Sam’.”
“That the feller, eh?” remarked Mr. Budd. “Now fancy Sam getting himself murdered. He only came out o’ prison a few months ago.”
“That’s the man,” said Colonel Blair. “We’ve traced him up.” He pulled a sheet of paper toward him on which were some scrawled notes. “He was staying in lodgings at 15 Tight Street, at the back of the Waterloo Road. A Mrs. Bagley’s the landlady. That’s about all I can tell you. You’d better get off to this place Marbury as soon as you can. Report to Superintendent Sones at Greystock, that’s the nearest town to Marbury. He’s in charge. He’ll probably be able to give you more details.”
He nodded a dismissal and Mr. Budd left the office and betook himself wearily back to his own.
“You can forget your autobiography for a bit an’ do a little honest work,” he remarked to Leek as he came in. “We’ve got an inquiry. We’re goin’ to Marbury to look at some nursery rhymes?”
Leek’s long face looked surprised.
“I don’t suppose you ever knew any nursery rhymes,” said Mr. Budd, taking one of his evil-looking black cigars from his pocket and sniffing at it with great enjoyment. “I can’t imagine you as a baby.”
“My mother thought I was a beautiful baby,” said Leek. “All our relations used ter come miles ter have a look at me.”
“People do that to the freaks in the circus,” said Mr. Budd rudely. “Have you ever heard of the House that Jack built?”
“Of course, I ’ave,” said the sergeant. “‘This is the house that Jack built. This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in . . .’”
“All right, all right, that’ll do,” interrupted the big man. “I didn’t ask you to recite. You better get ready to come with me. Somebody’s killed the rat that ate the malt an’ were going to find out who it is.”
Chapter Five
Mr. Budd and Sergeant Leek arrived at Greystock shortly after five-thirty. They found Superintendent Sones, a short, stout, ginger-haired man with a pleasant smile, waiting for them at the police station. He had arranged lodgings for them both at a farm on the outskirts of Marbury. Before taking them there, it was decided that they should have a conference to which Inspector Crutchley was invited.
“It’s a very queer business,” said Superintendent Sones, scratching gently at his short, ginger moustache, a habit which they discovered later was habitual with him when he was worried. “I’m very glad to have your help, I don’t mind admitting. Now, I’ll get Crutchley, here, to go over all he’s got so far. It isn’t much I’m afraid.”
It wasn’t much. It turned out to be very little more than Mr. Budd had already learned from the assistant commissioner. But he was able to add a small item of information to their meagre stock of knowledge.
Before leaving for Greystock, he had paid a visit to Mrs. Bagley and had learned from that interested woman about the letter which Sam Sprigot had received on the morning before his death.
“This woman says it gave him a shock,” said Mr. Budd. “Accordin’ to her, it was a pretty bad one too. It was the only letter he had while he was lodging with ’er.”
“She didn’t notice the post-mark, I suppose?” asked Sones, and Mr. Budd shook his head.
“No,” he answered regretfully. “It was smudged. But the envelope was an expensive kind. Not the kind of envelope any friends o’ Sam’s would be likely to use. We searched his luggage, which he’d left behind, there was only one rather battered old suitcase, but we didn’t find anythin’. Only a few personal belongings.”
“It looks as though he was expecting to go back,” remarked Inspector Crutchley. “Leaving his luggage there.”
“Yes, I think he was expectin’ to go back,” agreed Mr. Budd. “I should say that that letter was some sort of an appointment—to meet somebody. An’ judgin’ by what this woman says, he was a bit scared. . . .”
“Not without reason, as it turned out,” grunted Sones. “The appointment was made at Jackson’s Folly, I suppose?”
“Either that, or he was brought there,” said the stout superintendent.
“He came to Marbury by himself,” put in Crutchley. “I made inquiries at the station. The porter remembers ’im getting out of the train. It was the last one, an’ ’e was the only passenger to get out.”
“Queer sort of place to make an appointment at,” remarked Sones. “In the middle of the night too. You’d think, if he was scared of the person he was going to meet, he wouldn’t have kept it.”
“Maybe ’e had to,” said Mr. Budd. “We’re only conjecturing that this letter he got was makin’ an appointment. It may’ve been somethin’ else, altogether.”
“Well, he met somebody,” said Sones, “and there must have been an arrangement for the meeting, so I should say we could take it that it was in the latter.”
“An’ the person he met, if you take the evidence of that scarf,” said Crutchley, “was Lady Conyers.”
“I can’t believe there could have been anything between a chap like this feller, Sprigot, an’ a lady like Lady Conyers,” said Superintendent Sones, shaking his red head. “What could she have wanted to meet him for? Besides, can you imagine a woman dealing a blow like the one that killed him? Smashed his head in like pulp. It wanted a good bit of strength to do that.”
“And from the look of things,” remarked Mr. Budd thoughtfully, “someone killed Lady Conyers. If it wasn’t suicide,” he added.
“I’m quite sure it wasn’t suicide,” declared Sones.
“Which means it must have been an inside job,” said the stout superintendent. “How exactly did it happen?”
Crutchley cleared his throat.
“Lady Conyers was in the habit of taking a sleeping tablet every night,” he replied. “The tablets were kept in a bottle on her bedside table, and a fresh glass of water was left beside them last thing at night by the maid. . . .”
“And after her death, this glass of water was found to contain traces of cyanide,” interposed Sones. “She’d taken her sleeping tablet and swallowed it down with water from the glass. . . .”
“How d’you know she took a sleeping tablet?” interjected Mr. Budd quickly.
“She used to get them in bottles of twenty-five at a time,” answered Crutchley. “This was a new bottle. There were only twenty-four tablets in it left.”
Mr. Budd nodded approvingly.
“I see,” he said. “So somebody popped some cyanide in the glass of water, knowin’ she was bound to drink some of it. Simple.”
“But who?” demanded Sones. “And why?”
“We haven’t collected enough facts to answer that one,” said Mr. Budd. “What I’m interested in are these bits of rhymes. There was one on the door o’ this place Jackson’s Folly, an’ there was another on the door of Lady Conyers’ bedroom. Now, the question is: why was they put there? Was it just a queer bit o’ humour on the part of the murderer, or is there some reason—some sensible reason for it?”
“If you can think of one, you’re a cleverer man than I am,” declared Sones.
Mr. Budd leaned back in his chair which creaked protestingly under his weight. He looked with sleepy, half-closed eyes at a corner of the desk.
“‘This is the house that Jack built’,” he murmured softly. “‘This is the Malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the Rat that ate the Malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the Cat that killed the Rat that ate the Malt that lay in the house that Jack built.’ H’m, that’s as far as we’ve got at present. Do you find anything suggestive in that?”
They stared at him blankly.
“You don’t, eh?” went on Mr. Budd. He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Oh well, perhaps you’re right. Maybe I’m just imaginin�
� things. It’s only an idea—prob’ly the wrong one.” He changed the subject abruptly before they could ask him what he meant. “Who was this feller, Jackson?”
“You mean the chap who built the Folly?” asked Sones unnecessarily. “Well, he’s dead. He died a good many years ago. . . .”
“Over fifty,” said Inspector Crutchley. “He’s got nothing to do with this business.”
“Maybe not,” said Mr. Budd. He yawned. “Who does the place belong to now?”
Sones shook his head.
“Can’t tell you that,” he answered. “It’s been a ruin as long as I can remember. I suppose it must belong to somebody but they don’t come near it. Why do you want to know?”
“Just curiosity,” said Mr. Budd sleepily. “I’ve got a very strongly developed bump o’ curiosity. I think, if you don’t mind, we’ll go along to these digs you’ve got for us, have a bit of grub, an’ then I’d like to meet the people at Marbury Court.”
Superintendent Sones was in agreement with this programme. He sent for a police car and drove with them to a charming old farmhouse set in a country lane within a quarter of a mile of the village of Marbury. Mr. and Mrs. Kenwiddy, the elderly couple to whom the farm belonged, welcomed them with a friendliness that made them feel instantly at home, showed them to two delightful rooms under the thatched eaves, and declared that a meal would be ready for them in a few minutes.
As soon as he had seen them fixed up, Superintendent Sones took his departure, arranging for Inspector Crutchley to meet them at the farm in two hours time.
Mr. Budd unpacked his bag, had a wash, and went down to find the most enormous meal he had ever seen spread out on a large table in the sitting-room.
Sergeant Leek’s eyes glistened when he came in a few minutes later and saw what had been prepared for them.
“Do yer well, don’t they?” he said as he drew up a chair and sat down.
“Don’t forget to mention it in your reminiscences,” said Mr. Budd. “It’ll probably be the only interestin’ bit in the book.”
When he had finished, he left Leek dozing in an easy chair, and lighting one of his black, evil-smelling cigars, went in search of Mr. Kenwiddy and information.
Mr. Kenwiddy, a small, gnarled man with yellowish-white hair and the skin which goes with a long life in close contact with the soil, listened to what he had to say and nodded.
“Aye,” he said. “I know all about Jackson’s Folly. So do the wife. We was little childers when William Jackson built the place. Now, let me see, that’ud be over sixty year ago, that’ud be. A rare bit o’ trouble it caused.”
“Trouble?” said Mr. Budd.
“Aye, with the Conyers at Marbury Court,” answered Mr. Kenwiddy. “That’ud be the present Sir Basil’s father, o’ course.” He chuckled with a rattling hoarseness. “’E didn’t, want a ’ouse there at all, yer see. Swore it’ud spoil the view from ’is terrace. But ’e couldn’t do nuthin’ about it, though it weren’t fer want o’ tryin’. Jackson ’ad bought the land and nobody could stop ’im buildin’ ’is house. It didn’t do ’im much good, though, it didn’t.”
“What happened?” prompted Mr. Budd.
“When they built the well for the water,” said Mr. Kenwiddy, “they built it too near the cess-pit. There weren’t no other water supply, you see, or sanitation. The cons’quence was the water got pizoned. There was a seepage inter the well from the pit, yer see. Mrs. Jackson was took ill an’ died an’ so did the child. O’ course, arter that, William Jackson wouldn’t live there no more an’ no one ’ud buy it ’cos it would’ve cost too much money to put in a main water supply. He died himself soon arter.”
“An’ the house just fell into a ruin, I suppose?” said the stout man.
Mr. Kenwiddy nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “The kids in the neighbourhood used ter play around there. They kept to the garden at first but arter a bit the winders got broke an’ gradual like the ’ole place fell to bits. Like it is now.”
“Who owns it now?” asked Mr. Budd.
But Mr. Kenwiddy was not in a position to answer this. He supposed that it must belong to somebody, but he couldn’t say who.
It would seem, thought Mr. Budd, that the original Jackson or his descendents could have nothing to do with the present mystery. But he was glad he had found out the story that lay behind the Folly. He had a tidy mind and he liked to clear things up as he went along. He had wondered why the house had been allowed to go to rack and ruin, and now he knew. A certain vague idea that lay at the back of his mind had not been altered by what he had learned.
If there was reason to the rhyme that loomed so largely in this queer business, he thought, as he returned to the slumbering Leek, that vague idea might very well turn out to be true.
Chapter Six
The death of Lady Conyers had, not unnaturally, brought an atmosphere of gloom to Marbury Court.
Sir Basil, for perhaps the first time in his life, was uninterested in either horses or women, and spent his time moodily walking about the grounds or shut up in the library. Angela, who had been really fond of the dead woman, was silent, going about the house with a pale face and swollen eyelids, and avoiding the rest of the household as much as she could. Tony Harper, immersed himself in his estate duties and was only seen at meal times, during which he said very little, keeping his eyes fixed on his plate. Even Mrs. Mortlock’s acid tongue was less in evidence than usual although she couldn’t refrain from an occasional spiteful remark from pure force of habit.
Roger Marsden, smoking his pipe on the terrace, wore a puzzled frown. He and his sister had been genuinely devoted to each other and the shock of her sudden death had been such a paralizing shock to him that his senses were still numb. He remembered the change he had noticed in her and wondered more than once since the tragedy, what had been the cause.
He wished now, fervently, that he had asked her what the matter was, but he had put it down to the behaviour of her husband and hadn’t liked to interfere. That it was not due to Sir Basil’s behaviour, he was pretty sure. There had been something else—some secret that had been the cause of the anxiety he had seen in her eyes and those fits of melancholy and brooding silence. And it was something she had been either ashamed of, or too afraid of, to tell him.
If it had been anything more or less ordinary, she would have confided in him at once, he was sure of that. They had shared their troubles when they were children, and they had gone on sharing them in later life until she had married Sir Basil Conyers, and he, Roger, had joined the R.A.F. in the war. And this secret of hers, whatever it had been had led to her death.
Roger was under no delusions about that death being anything else but murder. He knew his sister well enough to be certain that under no circumstances whatever would she take her own life. She had been deliberately killed because of what she knew—because of this secret that she had been so closely guarding.
Roger tapped the ashes out of his pipe, put it in his pocket, and lighted a cigarette. There was a connection somehow between the man who had been killed in Jackson’s Folly and this secret which had been worrying his sister. Had she been in the old house when he was killed? Had she seen the murder committed and was that why she had had to die too? Her scarf had been found there and, so far as Roger could see, no one else could have taken it. It would have been easy for her to slip out of the house after they had all gone to bed. . . .
But why? That was the crux of it. Why? Why should a woman like Sybil sneak out of her own house to go and meet a man like that in the middle of the night?
And why choose a place like Jackson’s Folly, falling to pieces and overrun with rats, as a meeting place? Or hadn’t she any choice in that?
Roger shook his head unconsciously.
It wasn’t very much use conjecturing. He hadn’t enough facts to come to any decision. But he was determined to get to the bottom of it if it took him the rest of his life. If only Sybil had confided in him. She ought to have know
n that she could rely on him whatever the trouble was. . . .
Well, it was too late now. . . .
He flung away the remainder of his cigarette and turned to go in just as Lupton came out onto the terrace through the open windows of the drawing-room. The old man looked worried and drawn.
“Inspector Crutchley is here with two other men, sir,” said the old butler. “Two detectives from London. I can’t find Sir Basil anywhere. . . .”
“I’ll see them,” said Roger. “Where are they?”
“In the library, sir,” answered Lupton. “I thought Sir Basil was there. The last time I saw him he was just going into the library. He must have gone out. . . .”
So the local police had called in Scotland Yard, thought Roger, as he followed the butler into the house. That was a good thing. Perhaps they’d get to the truth of the matter. The local people didn’t seem to have made much headway. . . .
Inspector Crutchley, Mr. Budd, and Sergeant Leek were standing in a little group in front of the big fireplace when Roger came in, and Inspector Crutchley effected the necessary introductions.
“The Superintendent would like to have a word with Sir Basil and the rest of the household,” he concluded, “but it seems that Sir Basil can’t be found at the moment. . . .”
“Mr. Marsden ’ull do to be goin’ on with,” interposed Mr. Budd in his slow and rather ponderous manner. “Maybe, by the time we get through with Mr. Marsden an’ some o’ the other people, Sir Basil will turn up. You were the dead lady’s brother, I understand, sir?”
Roger nodded.
“Very nasty thing for you,” said Mr. Budd sympathetically. “Very unpleasant for everybody, but especially for you, sir. . . .”
“Even more unpleasant for my sister,” said Roger shortly.
“That’s true enough,” agreed Mr. Budd. “Unfortunately we can’t do much about that, you see. All we can do is to try an’ find out who was responsible for her death. . . .”
“I shall be satisfied if you do that,” retorted Roger. “I’m glad you’ve given up the idea that it was suicide. . . .”
The Nursery Rhyme Murders Page 4