The Boathouse Riddle

by J. J. Connington

“The trouble with this case is that the most important desiderata aren’t facts at all, in the dictionary sense of the word. We’ve unearthed a lot of facts. We’ve picked up a fair amount of evidence bearing on what happened last night—and a pretty jumble it makes. What’s obviously missing is the whole psychology of the thing: the motives at work behind the façade.”

  “Admitted,” said Wendover judicially.

  “That’s where I’m afraid Severn may fall down, through no fault of his own,” Sir Clinton argued in defence of his subordinate. “He may be all right in his judgment of people like Horncastle, But he’s a middle-class Protestant. What chance has he of fathoming the motives of a Roman Catholic like Mrs. Keith-Westerton, let alone those of my friend the Abbé Goron? He and Mrs. Keith-Westerton come from different social strata; their conventions are dissimilar; his moral views may be quite at variance with hers, for all one can tell. So far as the mere collecting of facts goes, Severn is all right; but when he tries to get behind the facts . . . well, he’s likely to be badly handicapped, I’m afraid. I can understand his difficulty because I’m in much the same boat myself, in this case.”

  “How? You’ve met the Keith-Westertons more than once.” Wendover pointed out. “You haven’t Severn’s handicap there.”

  “True,” said Sir Clinton, taking a fresh cigarette, “but I didn’t know the late Horncastle, for instance. You could help me out there, Squire.”

  Wendover leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and reflected for a moment or two before answering.

  “Nil nisi bonum, and all that,” he said at length, “but the plain truth is that I never liked Horncastle much. I suppose he must have been all right when Keith-Westerton’s agent took him on; but he was an unlikeable fellow at the best. The village Don Juan is a nuisance, sometimes. And there were stories about him, too. If they were true, then some of the poulterers around about here were getting pheasants a good deal cheaper than they might have done. It was never proved, of course, but Horncastle wasn’t quoted, locally, as an example of honesty. The impression I got of him, from one thing and another, was that he was a mean fellow, keen on the dibs and not minding much how he did it, so long as he got his paws on them. He got the name of being more than vindictive in some of his quarrels, too.”

  “Ah! Vindictive, you say? That’s interesting,” Sir Clinton commented in a serious tone.

  He was interrupted by the arrival of a maid, bringing the telephone. The message was from Severn, and Sir Clinton’s talk with the Inspector was a fairly long one. At last he hung up the receiver and turned to Wendover with an apology.

  “Severn must have lunched on bread and cheese; he’s been working like a Trojan while we’ve been taking our ease. Here’s the stop press news. First of all, the police surgeon has found nothing on Horncastle’s body except the shot wound in the skull, the bruise on the chin, and another bruise on the back of the head.”

  “The one you asked him to look for?”

  Sir Clinton nodded, but added nothing further on that point.

  “The next thing is the jewellers’ report,” he went on. “It seems that necklace was made up by them, partly from some family pearls of Keith-Westerton’s and partly from new stuff which they supplied themselves. They’ve no doubt whatever that these pearls came from Mrs. Keith-Westerton’s necklace.”

  Wendover discovered that all along he had been mentally discounting this possibility; and the facts gave him an unpleasant shock, now that they were indisputable. All through the morning he had clung to the idea that the murder and the flight of Mrs. Keith-Westerton were two entirely independent affairs, events which had no connection beyond the mere coincidence of time. But the identification of her pearls seemed to put that hypothesis out of the question. Ruefully he realised that the prestige of the country gentry in the neighbourhood was threatened with a grievous shock. His rather old-fashioned chivalry was roused also; for his mind conjured up the picture of a girl, isolated from her relatives, cut off from her husband in some mysterious manner, and now passing under the shadow of an accusation of complicity in a sordid crime.

  Sir Clinton, guessing what was in his friend’s mind, passed hastily to the next item in his bulletin.

  “Severn’s found no fingerprints of any value whatever on the oar handles and so forth, up at the boathouse.”

  “He must have found ours. We’ve been using the boats lately.”

  “So have the Keith-Westertons. Beyond these four sets he’s spotted nothing.”

  “That’s why I said he’d found no prints of any value,” Sir Clinton explained. “These of ours don’t help. The third item is another blank. Your gramophone motor and horn haven’t turned up, though Severn’s had a search party looking for them all through the wood.”

  “I can’t think what a murderer would want with these things,” Wendover grudgingly admitted, with a puzzled air.

  “The thief evidently attached great weight to them,” Sir Clinton pointed out, with almost owlish solemnity. “That must be so, surely, or they wouldn’t be missing.”

  Wendover got the impression that the Chief Constable was as much at sea in the matter as he himself was, but was trying to disguise his ignorance by making statements of the obvious.

  “Even Severn’s imagination would rise to that level,” he said ironically.

  Sir Clinton brought him back to seriousness by the next item in his bulletin.

  “That envelope addressed to ‘COLIN’ has no fingerprints on it except those of the two Keith-Westertons. Evidently it passed direct from her to him without any one else having tampered with it, so far as one can see.”

  “That proves nothing.”

  “It proves nothing,” Sir Clinton said, and this time he was evidently more serious than he had yet been. “But it brings us to the kernel of the whole affair, if I’m not mistaken. If I had the text of that letter, I’d know definitely whether I’m on wholly wrong lines or not in this affair. You know these people better than I do. Can’t you think of something to account for the girl decamping so suddenly?”

  Wendover’s mental hackles rose at the question.

  “It’s hardly my business to pry into the private affairs of my friends,” he said, with a touch of anger in his tone.

  ‘“I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of the realm, without fear or favour, affection, or illwill,’” Sir Clinton quoted from the oath taken by Justices of the Peace.

  Wendover, though he suspected that the Chief Constable was stretching the oath in making it cover his private conduct, was brought up sharply when the phraseology was invoked. He had a simple code, in which oath-breaking formed no part and which would hardly tolerate one standard of conduct on the Bench and another in a private capacity. Sir Clinton had gauged him accurately, and Wendover recognised that his friend would never have used this thumbscrew had he not been in deadly earnest.

  The Chief Constable, scanning Wendover’s expression, saw that he had gained his point; but he was not so tactless as to make a direct attack when a roundabout one would serve as well. Mrs. Keith-Westerton was the more dangerous subject, so he began with her husband.

  “I remember you telling me something about young Keith-Westerton the day I arrived. Led a rackety life in town for a while, and then pulled up short, you said?”

  Wendover, evidently relieved at the turn of Sir Clinton’s inquiry, had no objection to confirming this.

  “H’m!” the Chief Constable said thoughtfully. “That might mean either that he waked up suddenly to common sense or else that he got a fright. If it was the first, then one has to credit him with some backbone in cutting loose from the sharks. If it was the second, then perhaps there’s a black mark in his record, somewhere. It’s worth thinking over.”

  “You mean it might be something of that sort that led to her leaving him?”

  Sir Clinton flicked the ash from his cigarette mechanically, as though his thoughts were concentrated on some problem. For a few moment
s he made no reply. When he did speak, it was evident that his mind had turned to a fresh aspect of the case.

  “Just let’s get the sequence of things clear. About six o’clock last night, young Keith-Westerton was sparring with his valet. At that time, according to Ferrers, Keith-Westerton seemed to have nothing on his mind; and later on the house-parlourmaid heard him whistling upstairs. Presumably that means he was in good spirits. Up to 7.15 P.M., then, it’s fair to assume that nothing out of the common had happened.”

  Now that the line of inquiry seemed to be avoiding Mrs. Keith-Westerton, Wendover was off his guard. This was the kind of investigation which he enjoyed; and as he had no great liking for young Keith-Westerton, it left his withers unwrung.

  “At 7.15 P.M.,” Sir Clinton continued, “the maid Holland heard a lady’s voice at the telephone, asking for Keith-Westerton. Keith-Westerton went to the ’phone. After that episode, we have the evidence of both the maid and the valet to prove that the whistling mood passed off.”

  “That’s my recollection too,” Wendover confirmed.

  “It’s plain sailing up to that point,” Sir Clinton went on. “But at the next stage somebody must have been lying hard. On the one hand, the maid told us that at dinner Keith-Westerton mentioned the telephone call and said a friend wanted to see him later on in the evening. By the way, Squire, what did you make of that maid?”

  Wendover assembled his recollections with some difficulty and was surprised to find how meagre a collection they made.

  “Well, she seemed to me honest enough,” he said, in a judicial tone. “She was flurried—or seemed so—when she was questioned. I don’t think that means much, for I’d probably feel worried myself if I had to answer a lot of questions without knowing why they were asked. She has her head screwed on right, I think, for she managed to remember important points, although they weren’t things which were out of the common when they happened.”

  “A credible witness, then?”

  “I don’t think she was lying.”

  “She saw no signs of friction between the Keith-Westertons at dinner. Keith-Westerton seemed absent-minded, that was all. The valet confirmed her evidence on that subject.”

  “I noticed that they both used the same word to describe it,” Wendover pointed out.

  “You think they may have been telling a tale they’d got up together beforehand?” asked Sir Clinton.

  Wendover had not thought of this possibility and when it was presented to him he shook his head.

  “No, I didn’t get that impression,” he admitted. “So far as I could see, the valet wasn’t interested in Holland, not in the very slightest.”

  “What did you make of him?”

  “Ferrers? Well, except when the French maid came into the question, he seemed to me a cool, collected sort of individual. He wasn’t rattled by questions and he gave you straight answers to everything that was asked. I should say he was rather better class than the ordinary valet; and I’d be prepared to bet that he’d be efficient in his work, by the look of him. From the frank way he volunteered his tale about giving Horncastle a thrashing, it was pretty clear that he didn’t know the keeper had come to a bad end, else he’d have kept his thumb on that subject, obviously. I should, I know, if I’d been in his shoes.”

  “Anything more about him?”

  “The rest of it was obvious. He’s fairly enamoured of that French girl. That stuck out all over him, even without the Horncastle shindy. He struck me as a cool-headed sort of fellow, and yet, when the girl came into question, he evidently flared up and lost his temper completely. I’m sorry for him, really, for he’s not likely to have a happy time if he marries the woman.”

  “You don’t seem to approve of her, Squire?”

  “I don’t. She’s a forward piece, from what I saw of her; and she’ll give trouble to any man she marries, I judge. Look at the way she ogled the lot of us when she was being questioned.”

  “She’s got rather fine eyes,” said Sir Clinton, with a faint smile.

  “Yes, and she uses them on all and sundry, too. She’s the sort of woman who doesn’t give a damn how much trouble she raises so long as she can get admiration. Look at the Horncastle episode. Any one can see what happened. She led Horncastle on and then turned him down because he went too far, by her way of it. I expect she was just asking for that. Then she runs off to Ferrers and pours the whole yarn into his ears—poor little innocent insulted by brutal keeper, I suppose, with no provocation at all. She works Ferrers up to go and lay Horncastle out. That’s a nice brand of female, isn’t it? And then, instead of keeping quiet about it, she practically boasts about the affair to us, just to enhance her value.”

  “I don’t say you’re wrong, Squire. She’s one of these women who have the luck to be sexually attractive and who simply can’t help using their attraction on the first comer. And I should think you’re right about Ferrers and her too. However, let’s get back to the history of last night. After dinner, the Keith-Westertons went into Mrs. Keith-Westerton’s sitting room. Keith-Westerton, by his own admission, was keeping his eye on the clock, obviously because he had made an appointment with the person who rang him up on the ’phone at 7.15 P.M. And yet he did his best to leave us with the impression that he went out for a mere aimless stroll.”

  “He’s not a credible witness,” Wendover admitted with a certain reluctance. “He did try to mislead us there.”

  “I had the impression that some parts of his tale rang true, though,” Sir Clinton conceded. “When he denied any disagreement with his wife, he sounded as if he were speaking the truth.”

  “The servants’ evidence confirms that,” Wendover pointed out.

  “Yes, so far as the dinner table’s concerned. They might have had dissensions after they went into her sitting room, which the servants wouldn’t know about. But still, I’m inclined to think he was giving us the truth when he said there was none. He left her about 9 P.M., then, and she supposed that he was going to see a friend, some man or other in the neighbourhood, probably. And after that, he vanishes, so far as we’re concerned, until 1 A.M. this morning, when he says he returned home. Did anything occur to you, Squire, when Severn was pressing him about a visit to the boathouse?”

  “He denied it,” Wendover admitted glumly, “but if ever I saw a man lying, it was then. I’ve no doubt whatever that he was at the boathouse sometime that night.”

  “Neither have I,” Sir Clinton agreed quickly. “Now we come to the pearl necklace.” Wendover shifted slightly in his chair as this ill-omened subject came up, but the Chief Constable took no notice. “Mrs. Keith-Westerton was wearing it at dinner, according to her maid; and Keith-Westerton confirmed that.”

  Wendover contented himself with a faint gesture admitting that this was beyond dispute.

  “This morning, parts of it turned up in the boathouse and other bits of it were beside Horncastle’s body. That’s one of the few points in this case where we’re not dependent on other people’s statements.”

  Sir Clinton’s tone hinted that he had no entire faith in the oral evidence which they had collected during the day.

  “There seem to be only three possibilities to account for the pearls,” Wendover argued, though with a certain reluctance. “She was in these places herself last night: that’s one. Or she gave the necklace to some one who went to these places: that’s the second possibility. Or else the pearls were stolen from her by some one who went, later on, to the boathouse and Friar’s Point. That covers the whole business, and it must have been one of the three that happened.”

  Sir Clinton shook his head.

  “One might just as well suppose that she gave her necklace to a second party from whom it was stolen by a third party who took the pearls to the places where we found them. And there are other possible explanations as well. Let’s get back to the sequence of events last night. At 9 P.M., Mrs. Keith-Westerton was left alone in her sitting room. No message had reached her during the day, so far as w
e know. Yet she goes to the garage, takes out the car, and drives up to the boathouse. That Salvationist fellow saw her on the wood road at about 10 P.M.; and I’m inclined to believe his evidence, since he quite evidently didn’t know who she was.”

  Wendover, in whose mind several motives were struggling grimly for the upper hand, refrained from making any comment on this.

  “Half an hour later, she was at the door of the Abbé Goron,” Sir Clinton pursued. “In the meantime, something happened—something so serious that she flew at once to her confessor for absolution and advice.”

  Wendover saw his opening and plunged.

  “Horncastle wasn’t shot until about midnight,” he pointed out, with a certain triumph in his tone. “At 11.55 P.M. Mrs. Keith-Westerton was in the train at Ambledown.”

  Sir Clinton’s gesture of surprise gave Wendover a thrill of honest satisfaction, but his delight was only momentary.

  “You didn’t suppose I’d overlooked that?” the Chief Constable inquired in mild astonishment. “Nobody could possibly suppose that Mrs. Keith-Westerton knocked Horncastle out and then carried his body neatly up to the bank, arranged it, and so forth.”

  “Then why are you concentrating your attention on her at all?”

  Sir Clinton deliberately lit a fresh cigarette before answering. Wendover, who thought the pause was intended to give the Chief Constable time to furbish up a reply, fumed at the delay.

  “Because,” Sir Clinton explained frankly, “Mrs. Keith-Westerton seems to me to be the central point of the whole affair. If there had been no Mrs. Keith-Westerton, Horncastle might be alive this afternoon. That’s what I think, not what I know, remember, Squire. This is one of these infernal cases where the accessories may be more important than the actual criminal, so far as the springs of action are concerned. So I judge, anyhow.”

  Without giving Wendover time to digest these statements, Sir Clinton returned to the chronology of the case.

  “Mrs. Keith-Westerton left the Abbé Goron about 11 P.M. Most probably she went straight to the Dower House and packed a suit case with some necessaries. She also wrote that rather mysterious letter to her husband and left it on the table for him. Barring the name of the Abbé Goron, there’s nothing to be made out of its ashes; but from that alone it’s reasonable to suppose that she mentioned her visit to the Abbé in it. Probably, if we had that letter, we’d have the centre of the case quite clear.”