The Boathouse Riddle

by J. J. Connington

  “I was almost worked up to that point,” Keith-Westerton confessed half-ashamedly, “but I admit that if I’d done that, it might have waked me up.”

  “And as you didn’t wake up . . . ?”

  “I didn’t walk through any stream. But you’re quite right. I did notice one thing. I got into the fields, and in trying to get through a gap, I ripped my coat on some barbed wire.”

  “You’ve got that coat?”

  “No,” Keith-Westerton shook his head. “It was rather badly torn. I told my man Ferrers to give it away.”

  “Well, go on with your story,” Sir Clinton ordered.

  “I got back home at last. It must have been sometime in the small hours. I hadn’t been able to think of any way of getting out of the mess.”

  “Now be careful,” Sir Clinton warned him. “I want every detail, remember.”

  “I’m not keeping anything back. When I came in, I found a note from my wife on the table in the hall. I took it into the smoking room and opened it. It wasn’t very clear. Something had happened, she wrote, and she’d gone to see the Abbé here about it. She’d gone to London, and I was to ring up the Sisterhood of the Good Hope the next morning—that morning, it was, by then. My mind was full of this trouble I was in, and naturally I jumped to the conclusion that my wife had got wind of it somehow—I couldn’t think how. She’s a Catholic, you know; and they’re stricter than we might be in matters of that sort. That put the lid on the business.

  “I didn’t sleep that night. Next morning, I borrowed my chauffeur’s motor-bike and went off to Ambledown on it. My wife had taken our car when she went away. From Ambledown, I rang up the convent and spoke to my wife. She knew all about the affair, as she told you.”

  “You haven’t got that note your wife left for you?”

  Keith-Westerton shook his head.

  “No, I burned it. It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d care to leave about, with things as they were.”

  “And what was your next move?”

  “The next thing was that you came down on me. Naturally I thought that woman had given the whole show away and that you were after me for bigamy. I didn’t know she was dead, then. And when it turned out to be the Horncastle affair, I was quite relieved, though it sounds rather beastly to put it that way. I knew nothing about Horncastle. It was a load off my mind when I found you’d nothing against me on the real thing. And then these pearls came into the business, and I didn’t know where I was. I couldn’t make head or tail of the thing. So I played for safety and gave as little away as I could. My wife hadn’t mentioned the pearls to me on the ’phone, and I was completely muddled up over them.”

  “You didn’t consult a solicitor?”

  “Good Lord, no! The less said the better, so far as I could see.”

  “And after that?”

  “Well, the next thing was the discovery of the woman’s body. I recognised the portrait of her that was in some of the papers. That seemed to clear things up to some extent. She was dead. The whole affair was done with. I consulted the Abbé, here, and he advised me to put things straight at once. I was a free man again, and there was nothing to hinder me marrying. So he went up to see my wife in London, brought her down with him, and married us quite legally. That made my wife’s position quite regular.”

  Sir Clinton turned to the Inspector.

  “I think you might ’phone down to the station and get them to bring that fellow up, now.”

  Severn left the room and returned again in a few moments.

  “That’s all right, sir.”

  Sir Clinton turned to Keith-Westerton.

  “I promised that, if you’d be frank with me, I’d see you through; and by that, I think we both meant that there would be no charge of bigamy. You can make your mind easy. There won’t be one. If you’d consulted a solicitor, he’d have told you it was unlikely that any such charge could be substantiated. Your first wife hadn’t been continually absent from you for the statutory seven years. True enough, so you had no defence on that score. But undoubtedly you had a ‘bona fide belief on reasonable grounds’ that your wife was dead. That’s been held to be a good defence. There was a case, Rex v. Tolson, about forty years ago, which turned on that point. I don’t think there would be the slightest chance of a conviction in your case, even if a charge were brought; and nobody would think it worth while to bring a charge in these conditions. That ought to relieve your mind.”

  “It does,” said Keith-Westerton, with all the emphasis of relief. “You’ve no notion how this affair has weighed on my mind.”

  “One can guess,” Sir Clinton dryly suggested.

  He turned to the Abbé Goron.

  “Now I’d like to hear what part you played in the affair. As I understand it, Mrs. Keith-Westerton, after her meeting with the woman at the boathouse, went directly to you. You obviously advised her—quite soundly, if I may say so—to go into the convent until things had cleared up a little. You also promised her to interview this woman if possible. And you went up to the boathouse for that purpose, after Mrs. Keith-Westerton had left your house.”

  The Abbé, seeing that Sir Clinton had not attempted to violate the secret of the confessional, contented himself with a nod which might have been taken as confirming the Chief Constable’s statement either in whole or in part.

  “Perhaps you can tell us what happened after Mrs. Keith-Westerton left you?”

  “I see no harm in that. There is very little to tell. I left my house a few minutes after eleven o’clock and walked up to the boathouse, hoping to find this woman still there. When I arrived at the boathouse, it was all dark. Evidently the woman had gone away. I knocked at the door without effect. As I came away, I saw a man at the edge of the wood, who seemed to be lurking among the trees. It was no affair of mine, naturally, and I paid no attention. Failing to meet the woman at the boathouse, I returned home. That is all.”

  Sir Clinton seeemed inclined to dispute this last statement.

  “But not all you know about the case,” he said shrewdly.

  The Abbé apparently had his reasons for declining this challenge, for he made no answer.

  Sir Clinton turned back to young Keith-Westerton.

  “I hope your mind’s quite easy now.”

  “About the bigamy business? Are you dead sure about it? It’s a tremendous weight off my mind, if you’re right.”

  “You can consult your solicitor if you’ve any doubts. But in any case, I think there’s some more evidence available.”

  As he spoke, the figure of the Salvationist, accompanied by a constable, passed the window; and in a moment or two Sawtry was ushered into the room. He seemed to have lost a good deal of his assurance, Wendover noticed.

  “Now, Mr. Sawtry,” Sir Clinton began, “your movements, lately, have attracted our notice; and there are one or two points which need clearing up. I’ve had your record looked up. No convictions against you, I admit; but once or twice your escape was like Mr. Wendover’s salvation—a deuced narrow squeak. I tell you that to save you the trouble of protesting too much.”

  “That was all before I found grace,” Sawtry said, in a sullen tone. “Since the Army got me, I’ve run straight.”

  “I have a great respect for the Salvation Army. They often make a success in cases that look quite hopeless. What I’m interested in at present is whether they scored a success in your case.”

  “I can give you my word that they did.”

  “I’m not much interested in your words; it’s your deeds that matter. To the uninitiated, some of them seem rum companions for your professions.”

  “I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of.”

  “That hardly gets us much further,” Sir Clinton pointed out cynically. “But assuming your conversion’s genuine, I take it that you prefer truth to lies, nowadays. Very well, I want the truth. What took you to Aylesbury Prison, the morning before the Horncastle murder?”

  For a moment, Sawtry seemed completely taken aback to
find that his trip to Aylesbury was known to the police. He pulled himself together almost immediately, however, and with a faint return of his fanatical manner he declared:

  “I went there to save a soul.”

  “The soul of Cincinnati Jean, I take it. And were you successful?”

  A cloud passed over the Salvationist’s face.

  “No,” he admitted morosely. “That soul went straight to hell with sin fresh on it. Satan won the stake.”

  “Pursuing your mission,” Sir Clinton went on, “you accompanied her up to town. You went with her to her flat, didn’t you? And you spent the night with her there, I believe.”

  He paused almost imperceptibly and then added sharply:

  “Were you married to her?”

  Sawtry’s tone was almost triumphant as he retorted:

  “Yes, I was. A man can spend a night in his wife’s flat, can’t he? There’s no sin in that.”

  Sir Clinton seemed not a bit surprised by the answer.

  “When did you marry her?” he asked, as though in mere curiosity.

  “During the War.”

  Young Keith-Westerton started in his chair as he realised the implication of this statement.

  “You can prove that?” he demanded. “You really did marry her then? Legally?”

  “I married her at a registry office,” Sawtry replied, with obvious frankness. “It was in 1918.”

  “I told you I expected to get further evidence,” Sir Clinton reminded Keith-Westerton. Then, turning back to Sawtry, he continued his interrogation.

  “Between her coming out of prison and your arrival at her flat, had Cincinnati Jean any communication with any one except yourself?”

  Sawtry shook his head decidedly.

  “Not a soul. She never spoke a word to any one except me.”

  Sir Clinton seemed satisfied with this answer.

  “I take it that in your attempt to dissuade her from her criminal courses you must have discussed her plans for the immediate future. Did she tell you anything about them?”

  Sawtry hesitated for a moment and then appeared ready to answer.

  “She was nearly broke, she told me; and she needed money at once. I had none to give her. She had some plan afoot for blackmailing Mr. Keith-Westerton over an affair that had been framed up in the old days. I had no hand in that job at all,” he added, hastily. “She ran it with old Tommy Rigg and Cocoa Fanny as her partners.”

  “Now, be careful,” Sir Clinton advised sternly. “When did she first mention this scheme for blackmailing Mr. Keith-Westerton?”

  Sawtry considered for a few seconds.

  “It was shortly after we got to her flat. She had a look around the place to see if everything was in order. Then she came back into the sitting room where I was, and I began to try to persuade her to turn her back on all that kind of thing, let her see what sort of work it really was, and how much better she’d be if she turned over a new leaf and went straight. She just sneered at me; and then she told me I might spare my wind, for she’d got this Keith-Westerton affair up her sleeve. I strove hard with Satan,” he declared, with a faint return of his professional manner. “I wrought with her in every way I could. But you could never shift Jean a hair’s breadth when her mind was made up. She was stone broke and didn’t know where to raise cash; and Keith-Westerton would pay up like a lamb, she said.”

  Sir Clinton, apparently, seemed disinclined to accept Sawtry’s statements.

  “She was in Aylesbury Prison when Mr. Keith-Westerton’s marriage took place. She must have got the news of that after she came out of gaol. You’re sure you didn’t give it to her?”

  “No, I didn’t,” the Salvationist protested loudly. “Why, I didn’t even know he had got married at all, till she told me about her scheme. I’d no interest in him at all. I’d had nothing to do with the original frame-up; it was Jean, and Fanny and old Tommy who ran the business. I only heard about it by chance. I knew nothing about it.”

  Sir Clinton did not carry the subject further.

  “Well, let’s get back to what you do know,” he continued. “You tried to persuade her to drop this scheme, you say? And you failed. What happened after that?”

  Sawtry reflected for a moment as though not very sure of his ground.

  “This is the truth, anyhow, believe it or not,” he said. “I saw Satan had been too much for me; he’d got Jean firm in his hands and there was nothing to be done with her. But I wasn’t going to give in. I thought that perhaps if I stuck to it, I could wear her down; so I stayed the night at the flat with her. I’ve great faith in continual persuasion in cases of that sort; it’s only the faint-hearted ones that give in to Satan after the first bout doesn’t go in their favour.”

  “Keep to the point,” Sir Clinton interrupted testily.

  “What I’m trying to explain,” said Sawtry, in an aggrieved tone, “is that I’d no notion she meant to get off the mark so quick. I thought she wouldn’t be able to do anything for a week or two. She’d have to get her information about the lie of the land, find out Keith-Westerton’s whereabouts and how she could get in touch with him. And all that time I meant to spend in dissuading her from going back to that line of business. I’ve been very successful in some obstinate cases, just by keeping at them all the time; and I had just a faint hope that it might come off, even with Jean, if I had long enough to do it.

  “She didn’t give me a chance, though. The afternoon after she got out of Aylesbury, she gave me the slip. She’d been talking about her clothes, and how the fashions had changed since she was sentenced, and how dowdy she looked in the clothes she’d had when she went to prison. Finally she said she’d have to buy herself a new rig-out at once. That seemed natural enough; and I let her go off without thinking twice about it. After all, I could hardly tag on to her when she was buying some of the things she wanted. She clean took me in, there. She went off in the afternoon,—to shop, she said. Well, I waited for her to come back; but she didn’t turn up. And at last I tumbled to her game. She’d gone off to Talgarth to get her stroke in at once.

  “When I spotted that, it was no good thinking about giving her a change of heart. She was back at the old trade again and I’d wasted my wind in trying to persuade her to chuck it. I was a bit cast down. It was a real failure. But I made up my mind that Satan wasn’t going to get away with it so easy as all that. I mightn’t be able to persuade her; but I could draw her teeth, anyhow, and score over the Evil One that way.”

  “So you followed her by train?”

  “Yes, I landed here in the late evening. She’d made a slip and told me too much. I meant to see Mr. Keith-Westerton and tell him—well, warn him, anyhow. But when I got to his house, he wasn’t in. Well, what about it? I’ve had enough experience to keep me from putting anything of that sort on paper; word-of-mouth’s the right way to pass that kind of thing on. So I got a bed for the night and tried again next morning. Just the same luck then, though. I didn’t get hold of him.

  “And then there was the Horncastle murder; and you began taking an interest in me; and what with one thing and another, I lost my head a bit and made myself scarce. I’d done my best; no one could say I hadn’t: but I wasn’t over-eager to have my affairs raked over. I judged it best to clear out. Later on, when things had quieted down a bit, I could put Keith-Westerton wise to things. And then, I saw in the papers that Jean was dead. That seemed to close my side of the affair. If she was dead, she couldn’t do any more blackmailing. There was no need for me to stir a finger.”

  “You don’t seem to waste much emotion over the loss of your spouse,” Sir Clinton said in an ironic tone.

  “Why should I?” Sawtry queried in obvious surprise. “You don’t suppose I was over-keen on her, even when I married her? It was a pure business deal. It paid, sometimes, to be able to produce a real marriage certificate in a frame-up. A genuine husband can call any man’s bluff in that kind of case, so it suited Jean to have me handy with proper marriage lines when it
came to putting the screw on or bullying some damn fool or other? See?”

  Sawtry suddenly perceived that his reminiscences were carrying him on to dangerous ground.

  “And by your story, you never were at the boathouse at all on the night of the Horncastle murder?” Sir Clinton asked in a purely formal tone.

  “No, I never saw the place till next morning, when I came up against you there.”

  “I may need you later on, perhaps,” Sir Clinton said, in a noncommittal way. “You’re not objecting to being detained, I take it? Just as well. If you insist on consorting with notorious criminals engaged in illegal practices, you can’t complain if we keep an eye on you. That’ll do for the present.”

  Severn summoned the constable and Sawtry left the room.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Principal and Accessory

  “AND now, Inspector, I think we’re ready to interview Miss Louise Sandeau,” Sir Clinton suggested.

  As Severn rose, Wendover chanced to let his eyes fall on the priest’s face and he was puzzled by the expression which flashed across that usually impassive countenance. It was only momentary; but the Squire got the impression that the Abbé was surprised by Sir Clinton’s move and that he was now more than ever on his guard. Almost immediately Goron’s mouth settled itself once more into its normal firm lines.

  When the French maid entered the room, it was evident that the presence of the priest had its effect on her. “Not so much of the glad eye about her, this time,” was Wendover’s unspoken comment. “She seems a deuced sight less sure of herself than she was last time.”

  Sir Clinton, with a gesture, invited the maid to take a seat opposite him and the Inspector; then for a moment or two he remained silent, as though to give the girl time to recover.

  “I have invited Monsieur L’Abbé to be present, so that you may not feel yourself alone among foreigners,” Sir Clinton began slowly, so that she might have no difficulty in following him. “Besides, he already knows more about the matter than I do, I am sure.”