He paused, and then added, as though speaking to himself:
“He which is joined to a harlot is one body. St. Paul wrote that. It’s true, like everything else in the Bible.”
“Mind your language, when you’re speaking of your betters,” Wendover interrupted angrily, only to feel Sir Clinton’s restraining hand on his arm under cover of the car’s side.
The Salvationist seemed oblivious of the interruption. He had the look of a man absorbed in some deep problem for which he has found no solution; and, apparently he was musing aloud.
‘“A well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts.’ Nahum the prophet said that. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ That’s the Law. ‘All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient.’ St. Paul wrote that.”
To Wendover’s surprise, Sir Clinton was listening intently while the Salvationist rambled on. In a few moments, however, Sawtry seemed to realise that he was speaking his thoughts aloud. He passed his hand over his brow and, turning towards the car, spoke in a different tone.
“You’re Sir Clinton Driffield, the Chief Constable. I know you, now. Well, answer me this. When you set your men to get up a case against a man and hang him, do you mean to prevent him committing another murder, or do you want to deter other people from murder, or are you punishing him for what he’s done? Why do you do it?”
“Because I’m paid to do it,” said Sir Clinton prosaically. “It’s part of my work.”
Sawtry gave him an angry look.
“And meanwhile sin can stalk under your eyes in this very village and you would never lift a finger. A priest can receive a woman by stealth in the night, but that’s no affair of yours? It’s not part of your work. You aren’t paid for that! So Satan gets a soul while you look on.”
‘“All things are not expedient,’” Sir Clinton quoted. “One of them is to listen to cock-and-bull stories.”
This stung the Salvationist on the raw. He dropped his semi-archaic phraseology and used plain English.
“Oh, you may sneer, but it’s true enough. Last night, about half-past ten, I was coming along the road here near the house where that foreign priest lives, when a car passed me and stopped at the gate. A young woman got out of it, in evening dress. I saw her face quite plain in the light of a street lamp. And what’s more, I saw her in a car on the wood road that leads up to that boathouse. She passed me there about ten o’clock last night. I’d know her again any day. She went up the path to the house. It was all dark except for one window on the ground floor—a sitting room. She went up and knocked on the window; the curtains were pulled back, and I saw the priest standing there. The woman pointed to the door and he went round and let her in quietly. She didn’t come out again, for I waited there quite a while. What have you got to say to that, Mr. Chief Constable?”
“Would you swear to that yarn?” Sir Clinton asked in a sceptical tone.
“Of course I’d swear to it.”
Sir Clinton thought for a moment, then he turned to Wendover.
“You’ve got those photographs in your pocket, haven’t you? Let me have them for a moment.”
Some days earlier, Wendover had entertained the Keith-Westertons at tea on the boathouse balcony; and in the course of the afternoon he had taken several snapshots of groups. The prints had arrived that morning, and Wendover, without examining them, had thrust them into his pocket. Very reluctantly, he pulled the case out and handed it over to Sir Clinton.
“You didn’t know this girl?” the Chief Constable asked Sawtry. “Well, then, was she like this?”
He picked out a print showing Mrs. Keith-Westerton lying back in a camp chair and passed it to the Salvationist.
“That’s the woman,” Sawtry admitted, evidently surprised by the Chief Constable’s promptness.
“Are you sure? Look at this one,” Sir Clinton handed over the picture of a group containing himself and the two Keith-Westertons. “How many people do you recognise there?”
“The girl for one. You for another. I don’t know the other man.” Sawtry seemed to consider for a moment. “What’s this got to do with me? I was only chaffing you. It’s no business of yours whether a priest keeps a fancy lady or not, is it? You can’t raise trouble over that.”
“The only trouble will be yours, if you spread that kind of story,” Sir Clinton rejoined abruptly. “The Abbé Goron isn’t that sort of man—very far from it, I believe. So I warn you to keep your tongue quiet—for your own good, you understand?”
He looked the Salvationist in the eye; and the man, after a second or two in hesitation, mumbled something which sounded apologetic.
“Turn round,” Sir Clinton directed Wendover. “I want to go back for something.”
Obediently Wendover reversed, leaving the Salvationist by the roadside. They drove back past the Dower House gate. A little beyond it, in the village, Sir Clinton signalled to Wendover to stop at the house in which the Abbé Goron had taken rooms.
“I’ll do the talking,” Sir Clinton said to Severn, as they went up the path. “We sha’n’t get much.”
They were shown into a sitting room on the ground floor, evidently the one of which Sawtry had spoken. As they entered, the Abbé Goron rose from his chair and stood confronting them with a small book in his hand, wherein his finger marked the place. In his other hand he held Sir Clinton’s card.
“Well, gentlemen, what do you want?” he demanded, glancing at each of them in turn.
Wendover, despite his prejudices, could not help comparing the priest with the Salvationist and preferring the former. Sawtry he had disliked at first sight; and the second interview had merely confirmed him in his opinion. The Salvationist gave him the impression of an unbalanced mind, a fellow with a weak spot in him who would be prone to sudden impulses and equally sudden recoils after the impulses had carried him further than he intended. The Abbé Goron was of a different type. Scanning his clean-cut ascetic features, with the hard lines running from nostrils to the mouth corners, Wendover was impressed against his will. This was a man with a strong, even vivid personality, the kind of man who might be admired without being liked. And yet here too Wendover sensed the fanatic, though of a different sort. This was the cold type, sure of itself and its mission, ready to drive weaker humanity with a whip, if persuasion failed. “That fellow would be equally ready to send a man to the stake or go to it himself,” Wendover reflected. “He looks just what one would expect an inquisitor to be. He wouldn’t flinch from anything.”
“I see we have interrupted you,” said Sir Clinton, with a pointed glance at the book in which the priest’s finger still marked his place. “I am sorry, but we must plead urgency. We are investigating a murder which was done last night and I wish to ask you one or two questions.”
“Murder?”
The priest’s eyebrows rose very slightly at the word, but beyond that, his face betrayed nothing.
“Murder, Monsieur L’Abbé. One of Mr. Keith-Westerton’s keepers has been shot.”
Wendover, watching eagerly, thought he detected something like relief in the Abbé Goron’s face; but the expression was so faint and fleeting that he could not feel sure.
“I know nothing of Mr. Keith-Westerton’s keepers, not even their names.”
“You had a visitor last night?” Sir Clinton asked, disregarding the Abbé’s assertion.
“A penitent came to demand guidance,” the priest admitted frankly, with a faint accentuation of the second word in his sentence.
He looked straight at the Chief Constable as he spoke. Sir Clinton nodded in understanding.
“And to confess to you?” he amplified. “I have nothing to do with that, Monsieur L’Abbé. Technically we recognise no secrets in English law; but in practice a priest is never asked to violate the secrecy of the confessional. I ask no questions on that point, you understand?”
The Abbé Goron bowed gravely in reply, as though acknowledging the courtesy of an adversary.
“At what time did Mrs. Keith-Westerton knock on the window here?” Sir Clinton asked.
The Abbé may have been surprised at the accuracy of Sir Clinton’s information, but he showed no sign of this.
“That, of course, I can answer,” he admitted. “She came at about half-past ten o’clock.”
“She was in evening dress, I believe? And, after consulting you, she left again . . . ?”
“Shortly after eleven o’clock.”
“Have you seen her since then, Monsieur L’Abbé?”
“No.”
“Do you know where she is now?”
The priest made a gesture as though dismissing that subject.
“I cannot reply to that question.”
Sir Clinton’s answering gesture implied that he admitted this.
“I understand. It was part of her confession? Then, I think, we need not trouble you further just now, Monsieur L’Abbé. I must thank you for helping us so freely, so far as was possible.”
With grave courtesy, the priest showed them to the door. He did not linger, but returned at once to his interrupted reading.
“Not much change there,” said Wendover ironically, as they walked down to the car.
“I got as much as I expected,” Sir Clinton said cheerfully. “It’s always nice to have one’s preconceived notions confirmed, you know.”
As they were getting into the car, a constable came hurrying up.
“Sir, they sent me after you from the station with a message. There’s been a car found in the woods up behind here, near the lake. Empty, sir, and no one near it. Abandoned by the driver so far as can be seen, sir.”
“Do you know where it’s lying?” Sir Clinton demanded.
“Yes, sir, it’s—”
“Then jump in behind, here, and tell us the road. We’ll go up and have a look at it. Give Mr. Wendover directions as we go along.”
As he got into the seat next Wendover, Sir Clinton repeated, with a quizzical intonation:
“As I was saying a moment ago, it’s nice to have one’s preconceived notions confirmed, Squire.”
“You think it’s the Keith-Westertons’ car?” Wendover asked, in a tone of anxiety.
“I doubt if it is.”
He turned around in his seat and questioned the constable.
“No, sir. Mr. Keith-Westerton’s car is a blue saloon, almost new. This is a brown-painted saloon, a bit old-fashioned, by the look of it.”
Just beyond the village they turned off the main road into a track leading up to the boathouse; and under the constable’s direction Wendover ran his car cautiously along a little alley which branched off from the woodland trail near the boathouse. Around a bend, hardly twenty yards from the direct route, they found the abandoned car standing, well screened by some bushes.
“A London number,” Severn pointed out, as they came up to it. “That doesn’t mean much. Any one can register a car under a London number, no matter where they live.”
“It means even less than that,” Sir Clinton added, “for it happens to be a false number plate screwed on top of the real one. Just undo those thumbscrews, please, Inspector. H’m! The real number’s GX.5749. We can find out something about that from the register—always assuming that it’s a real number. It may be a fake also, for all one can tell.”
Severn, notebook in hand, had begun an examination of the car.
“Brown Renault five-seater saloon,” he noted. “Mr. Keith-Westerton’s car’s a dark-blue Sunbeam.”
Sir Clinton had approached and examined the license card.
“GX.5749 seems the right number,” he pointed out. “That saves some trouble. Ring up the licensing authority as soon as you can find time, Inspector, and find out what name the car was registered under.”
Severn was pursuing his search of the car.
“There’s a lady’s coat here,” he reported. “No initials on it, though,” he added, in a disappointed tone. “I don’t see anything more. The wheel might give some fingerprints, but I expect she was driving in gloves, if it was at night.”
“You wait here in charge of this car until you’re relieved,” Sir Clinton said to the constable. “Meanwhile, we’d better be getting along to Ambledown. Stop at the police station as we pass,” he added to Wendover. “We’ll need to make arrangements for getting this car shifted into a place of safety.”
When they reached Ambledown, Sir Clinton directed Wendover to stop at the post office.
“You go in, Inspector. They know you. Find out if any one put a trunk call through on the ’phone this morning and look up the address if you can get the number. If it was ’phoned from this office, ask what the person was like.”
In a very short time the Inspector returned.
“There was only one trunk call this morning they say, sir. A man—his description corresponds roughly to Mr. Keith-Westerton—came in here and asked to be put through to a London number. They were able to get me the address. It’s the Sisterhood of the Good Hope in Kensington. I warned the girl, of course, that she wasn’t to mention my inquiries to any one. She seemed an intelligent girl; I don’t think she’ll talk.”
“Quite right,” Sir Clinton approved. He glanced at Wendover. “That relieves your mind, I hope? One doesn’t need to look in the Hereafter for a place where a girl wears neither evening dress nor jewels, you see. A convent fits the bill just as well. Where else would a Roman Catholic girl go, if she were in trouble and had no friends in this country—especially after paying a visit to her confessor? It wasn’t certain, but I was pretty safe in making the guess.”
“Am I to get a warrant, sir?” Severn asked. “London’s outside our jurisdiction, and I’ll have to get our warrant countersigned by a London J.P. That’ll take time.”
Sir Clinton’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
“Arrest her? On what charge, Inspector? You’ve got to prove the pearls were hers before you can even connect her with Horncastle’s death.”
“You’ve nothing against her at all, so far as I can see,” Wendover put in. “She’s left her home and gone into a convent. There’s nothing criminal in that, surely. She saw her confessor before she went. That’s not illegal, is it? She went off in her own car. What’s wrong with that?”
“I’d rather put it this way, Mr. Wendover,” said the Inspector gravely. “She left home hurriedly and unexpectedly just about the time that Horncastle was shot. Why did she do that?”
“If you could answer that question, you’d have the secret of the whole case,” Sir Clinton volunteered. “But as things are, you haven’t enough evidence to justify even detention, let alone arrest.”
“But if we don’t get hold of her now, she may slip through our fingers,” Severn protested.
“We’ve got to risk it,” said Sir Clinton, in a tone which showed that he disliked the hazard but could see no way to avoid it. “So long as she thinks she’s got away unnoticed, I don’t suppose she’ll change her address. Besides, to judge from this business, she’s hardly likely to baffle pursuit. Between them, they seem to have made every possible blunder.”
He seemed to dismiss the subject.
“Now for the next port of call—the all-night garage nearest to the railway station. You’ll go in, Inspector, and find out if the Keith-Westerton car was left there last night. If not, we’ll try the other garages near by. Then we’ll go on to the station and see if any one there can tell us whether Mrs. Keith-Westerton left by the midnight train for London. And that finishes the morning’s work, unless something fresh turns up.”
Severn did not take long over the first part of this programme. The nearest garage yielded nothing; but his second choice proved lucky. He was able to identify the Keith-Westerton saloon there; and he learned that a lady answering to Mrs. Keith-Westerton’s description had left it late on the previous night with instructions that it was to be given up to a gentleman who would come to take it away later on.
The railway inquiries took rather longer, since the night
porters were off duty and had to be hunted up at their homes. Fortunately one of them remembered that a lady had actually taken the 11.55 P.M. train; and from the photographs he was able to identify her as Mrs. Keith-Westerton. The booking office clerk also remembered a lady travelling first class; but he was unable to identify her definitely.
“When do you expect to hear about these pearls?” Sir Clinton asked, when they were once more on the road to Talgarth.
“Some time in the afternoon, sir,” Severn explained. “When we stopped at the station to give orders about that derelict car, I gave a man instructions to go to London by the next train. He’s to ring me up as soon as he’s got the information.”
“You’d better ring me up as soon as you hear from him,” Sir Clinton suggested. “You’ve wasted no time,” he added, in a tone which gave Severn as much pleasure as more direct praise might have done. “It seems you’ve got a busy afternoon before you, Inspector, what with fingerprints and so forth. I’m going fishing; but if anything special turns up, you can let me know.”
Chapter Eight
Dramatis Personæ
“I’M sorry for Severn,” Sir Clinton admitted to Wendover, as they sat in the Grange smoking room after lunch. “He’s got enough work on his hands to keep two men busy. He didn’t blench, though. A sound man.”
Though sparing in praise of subordinates to their faces, the Chief Constable never failed to give them full credit for good work.
“Not very brilliant,” Wendover qualified, in a doubtful tone. “He didn’t elicit much, after all.”
“He didn’t ask useless questions; and when he had a free hand he got at the relevant facts,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “There’s more in that than you’d think, Squire. Unfortunately, if this affair’s to be cleared up, we’ll need some imagination as well as the facts; and whether Severn will rise to that or not, one can’t tell just yet.”
“You mean: ‘Has he enough wit to fill in the missing bits in the puzzle?’”
The Boathouse Riddle Page 12