Where Estelle parted company with Sir Clinton was in the matter of inviting Rex to Fern Lodge. Without being able to formulate her reasons, she inclined unconsciously to Mrs. Thornaby’s view; and she felt that Sir Clinton was running unnecessary risks of friction by bringing Rex into so much direct contact with Francia. Her vague distrust of the Argentiner made her apprehend trouble between him and Elsie, sooner or later; and if trouble arose when Rex was on the spot . . . She did not feel inclined to probe the possibilities. Rex had one of those deceptive tempers which flash up only at times of deep disturbance, and it was often difficult to say where things would stop if once he were roused.
She had caught Rex’s expression as he glanced after Elsie when she left the group to go up to the house for her cigarette-case; and she had mentally filed that along with the very different look which was on his face as he watched Francia attaching himself to the Anstruther girls and Sir Clinton. Though she laughed at herself for over-imaginativeness, she could not help fancying that there was danger in the air when two such opposite feelings were lodged in a single mind.
“Care to take me for a row on the lake, Rex?” she inquired lazily. “I don’t mind going, if you’re very keen.”
Rex shook his head.
“Nothing doing, when you put it in that tone of voice,” he answered, meeting her with her own weapons.
Estelle waved her cigarette disconsolately.
“How manners degenerate—all except mine. Now a couple of generations ago you’d have said: ‘Indeed, you honour me too much, my dear Miss Scotswood. Permit me to procure a duenna for you, and then conduct you to the wherry.’ Or something like that.”
“I daresay,” Rex answered abstractedly. “They all had no-trump hands in the politeness game then.”
Estelle saw that he was disinclined to talk, so for a time she devoted her whole attention to discouraging the mosquitoes by means of her cigarette-smoke. At last, thinking that Rex would be none the worse of having his attention diverted from his thoughts, she broke the silence.
“Elsie seems to have been a long while looking for that cigarette-case.”
Rex woke up suddenly at the sound of her voice.
“Yes, hasn’t she!”
Then he seemed to recollect something, and his face clouded.
“Confound it! I’d forgotten I had a sort of half-engagement to-night.”
Seeing that Estelle seemed curious, he added in explanation:
“There’s a weirdish bird staying at the Black Bull—a fellow Yarrow. He’s by way of being interested in the wild life of the countryside—so he tells everyone. An Amateur Naturalist, in capitals. Accent on the adjective, I should think; for the beggar would be hard put to it to tell a dragonfly from a kingfisher, so far as I’ve gathered. I half promised I’d give him the benefit of my expert knowledge—take him for a stroll in the evening and explain the difference between a frog and a toad, and all that sort of thing. I’ll need to put him off, or he’ll be hanging round the place waiting for me all evening. He’s no call to complain, really, for we fixed up nothing definite; but I’d better ring up the Black Bull and leave a message for him.”
He rose to his feet with a gesture, asking her permission to go and send his message.
“Give me another cigarette, please?” Estelle begged, as he was about to leave her. “These mosquitoes are a bit too enterprising.”
He offered his case and she helped herself to a cigarette, which he lit for her. Then he took one himself and struck a second match.
“Turkish?” Estelle inquired. “A bit heavy for me; but anything’s better than a mosquito-bite.”
“An Abdullah won’t do you much harm,” he reassured her as he turned away.
Estelle watched him take the path up to the house.
“This party’s going the way of the Ten Little Nigger Boys,” she reflected. “It seems to dwindle as one looks at it. I’ll be Old Maid in a minute or two if this goes on.”
She crossed the grass and took a chair beside her father and Mrs. Thornaby; but she felt no inclination to join in their conversation. The heat of the afternoon was apparently having its effect on Mr. Scotswood, for by degrees his contributions to the talk were approaching the monosyllabic stage. Estelle leaned back and amused herself by warding off the cloud of midges and mosquitoes which had gathered about the party.
Suddenly, across the hot, still lawns, came the report of a firearm, muffled but unmistakable.
“What’s that?” Mr. Scotswood ejaculated, starting up from his chair as the sound reached his ears.
“A shot, it sounded like,” Estelle’s eyes showed something which looked like fear, though it was not of herself she was thinking. “Come on, Daddy. I think it came from the house.”
She started to her feet and took a step or two before her father could restrain her.
“You stay where you are!” Mr. Scotswood directed in a tone that admitted no disobedience. “I’ll go and find out what it was.”
Estelle hesitated. Then, glancing at Mrs. Thornaby’s face, she saw in its expression a counterpart of her own emotion. She allowed her father to go off alone, and turned to her hostess.
“It may have been only Johnnie with his air-gun,” Mrs. Thornaby suggested, but her tone betrayed that she did not take her own supposition seriously.
Estelle made no pretences.
“That wasn’t an air-gun,” she said. “But who’d be firing a gun up here? There’s nothing to shoot at.”
And she cast an anxious glance after the retreating figure of her father as he cut across the lawn in the direction of the house.
As Mr. Scotswood drew near the front door of Fern Lodge he heard a fresh and even less reassuring sound: the scream of a girl in panic; and on the doorstep he encountered Staffin flying from the house, her face a mask of terror. Deftly he intercepted her.
“What’s all this about?” he demanded, in the same tone that he might have used in inquiring why his afternoon tea had been overlooked.
His apparent calmness brought Staffin up sharply and avoided the attack of hysteria which he had dreaded.
“Oh, sir, I heard shooting in the smoke-room; and when I went to the door, there was Mr. Francia lying on the floor and Mr. Brandon standing over him. And there was a great pool of blood on the hearthrug. Oh, such a shock I got! I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I won’t dare to go to sleep at night for fear of dreaming about it . . .”
Mr. Scotswood had little patience with useless emotion. He took the terrified girl by the arm, swung her round, and directed her towards the path leading down to the boat-house.
“Go down to the lake and wave to Sir Clinton. He’s out in a boat there. Tell him to come up here immediately. Now get off, and don’t waste any time.”
Staffin responded to this mechanically. Evidently she had feared that he might want her to go back into the house again; and the prospect of getting away was a relief. She set off immediately; and Mr. Scotswood, after seeing that she was obeying his orders, stepped into the hall. At the end of it he caught sight of two terrified faces; and his first act was to send the maids back to their own quarters. Then he turned the handle of the smoke-room door and walked in with a steady step.
Staffin had given him the essentials of the scene in two sentences. Francia’s body was lying contorted on the hearthrug before the fireplace; and from its attitude there was little difficulty in seeing that, if he had died quickly, the end had not been painless. His flannels were splashed with blood and a great pool was slowly extending itself on the floor. Bending over the body was Rex Brandon, and at the sound of the opening door he swung round and turned upon the intruder a face which puzzled Mr. Scotswood even at that extraordinary moment. Horror and amazement seemed to have had their moulding influence on Rex’s expression; and in addition there was something which hinted at a hardening resolution struggling to the front in the turmoil of conflicting emotions. Somehow, Mr. Scotswood had not expected a murderer to look quite like th
at, if he were caught red-handed. Then, suddenly, Rex gained control over his countenance; and he straightened himself up with a sullen look on his face which obliterated the earlier expression.
“What’s all this about?” Mr. Scotswood repeated.
He could not help giving himself a good mark for the way in which he was succeeding in repressing his own emotions in this unexpected situation.
Rex gulped for a moment before he could find his voice.
“He’s been shot,” he said at last, with a gesture towards the body at his feet.
Mr. Scotswood’s glance followed the gesture and he shivered slightly. After an instant’s inspection of Francia’s body, he turned his eyes again to Rex’s face.
“Damn it, man!” he broke out. “Did you do it?”
Rex’s face hardened at the question, but he made no reply. Mr. Scotswood was suddenly impressed by the strangeness of the whole affair. His world seemed to have been given a twist since he had heard the shot a couple of minutes before. Here he was, with a dead man at his feet, asking a boy whom he had known for years the plain question: “Did you do it?” And the boy did not take the trouble to reply! What was one to make of it? There seemed to be no key to this puzzle, for Mr. Scotswood had no inkling of the state of affairs brought about by Elsie’s marriage. To him, the whole situation was inexplicable to the verge of incredibility. He had come up in the car that afternoon with a sane youth who had discussed batting averages in the most matter-of-fact fashion; and now . . . He simply could see no glimmering of meaning in the whole affair.
Some sheets of manuscript scattered over the floor added to the complexity of the puzzle. He stooped to pick one up; then, recalling that nothing should be disturbed, he straightened his back, and found Rex, with a white, set face, giving him stare for stare in silence.
“Damnation, man! Say something!” Mr. Scotswood exclaimed in a tone of mingled anger and appeal.
Rex’s only noticeable response was an almost imperceptible movement of his head—a mere involuntary action which conveyed nothing to Mr. Scotswood. Then another glance of Rex’s directed the older man’s attention to the floor, and he found that the ever-widening pool of blood from Francia’s body had almost encroached upon his tennis-shoes. A sudden qualm attacked him at the sight; and he crossed the room to the window overlooking the verandah, in search of fresh air. One of the curtains was drawn back; he leaned out through the open casement; and as he did so his eyes fell on the figure of Sir Clinton hurrying up the path from the boat-house. Staffin must have found him as he was bringing the boat in to the landing-stage.
“Thank God! He’ll tackle this business,” was Mr. Scotswood’s softly-breathed expression of relief at the sight.
In a moment or two, quick steps sounded on the parquet of the hall, the door opened, and Sir Clinton appeared on the threshold. For a moment he stood there, and even his long training was unable to conceal his surprise and consternation at the spectacle before him. Then his eyes narrowed and his face seemed to grow grimmer as he looked about the room.
“H’m!” he said, in a perfectly expressionless voice. “This is a surprise.”
The callousness of this remark put the coping-stone on Mr. Scotswood’s edifice of new sensations. He had never seen Sir Clinton engaged on a case, and this matter-of-fact way of treating a murder seemed convincing proof that the whole world had gone mad. He stood silently at the window, watching for the next incredible happening.
Sir Clinton advanced into the room, closing the door behind him. For a moment he stooped over Francia’s body, as though merely to satisfy himself that life was really extinct. Then he confronted Rex.
“You didn’t do it?” he asked in an almost conversational tone, which gave Mr. Scotswood yet another jar.
Rex’s eyes wandered round the room for a moment; but he brought them back to face Sir Clinton’s glance when he replied:
“I’ve nothing to say.”
Sir Clinton was obviously puzzled by this response; and he did not take the trouble to conceal his surprise.
“Look here, Rex,” he said kindly, “I suppose you’re keeping your story for the police when they arrive. But if you’ll tell me about the business, it’ll help to get the details fixed in your mind while they’re fresh. And perhaps we could sift out the main points together, so as to have a cut-and-dried tale ready. That would save time.”
Rex shook his head definitely.
“I’ve nothing to say,” he repeated.
Sir Clinton examined him with more attention than he had hitherto seemed to give him; and under the scrutiny Rex’s face grew even more dogged in its expression. Quite obviously, he had determined to withhold any explanation whatever; and Sir Clinton could make nothing of this decision. Mr. Scotswood, studying the two faces before him, imagined that Sir Clinton really had discounted the possibility of Rex’s guilt and was doing his best to help; but at the same time Rex’s sullen refusal to give information seemed inexplicable on any hypothesis except that of culpability.
With a gesture which betrayed his dissatisfaction, Sir Clinton turned away and began methodically to examine the room. He went first to the open window and glanced out, as though to gauge what could be seen by a person standing outside and looking into the smoke-room; but he was careful to disturb nothing. The row of books on the window-shelf was half concealed by the section of the curtain which was still drawn; and Sir Clinton inspected them sideways, apparently without finding anything worth noting.
Turning round, he came next to the cane chair in which Francia had been sitting when he was killed. There was a splash of blood on the back of it; and, in the centre of the stain, the cane had been smashed and torn by the passage of the bullet. Mr. Scotswood saw Sir Clinton’s glance pass back from the bullet-hole to the window; and he inferred that the shot must have travelled in a line joining the casement to the chair.
As he stood watching the late Chief Constable’s proceedings, an adventitious thought crossed Mr. Scotswood’s mind. Here he was, thrust by accident into the position of a Watson to Sir Clinton’s Holmes; but Watson never seemed to have felt as he himself felt at this moment. Watson could encounter all the accessories of a violent death without turning a hair. In fact, he hardly noticed them, so far as one could gather from his accounts. Mr. Scotswood, on the other hand, was acutely conscious of the spreading pool of blood on the floor, the contorted body on the hearthrug, and the cold detachment with which Sir Clinton was going about his work.
“I suppose it’s sound enough,” he reflected inconsequently. “Watson was a sawbones, so blood wouldn’t disturb his nerves as it disturbs mine.”
Sir Clinton’s glance went back to Rex’s face for a moment; and again Mr. Scotswood read in his expression a perplexity, which seemed the counterpart of his own feelings. So far as Mr. Scotswood’s knowledge went, there was not the slightest reason for Rex to disagree with Francia, much less to shoot him. They had been perfectly polite to one another when they were playing tennis together not twenty minutes before. And yet, if Rex had not killed the Argentiner, why did he remain silent under what was practically an accusation? Mr. Scotswood felt that he was completely out of his depth. Unless . . . but he dismissed the idea that Rex could be a homicidal maniac whose madness had come suddenly to the surface. That was out of the question.
His attention went back to Sir Clinton, who was obviously hunting on the floor for something which he could not find. Mr. Scotswood had not given a thought to the weapon, up to that moment, but now he seized the opportunity of doing something, and he joined in the search.
“You can’t find the pistol?” he demanded, as he began to ferret about on the floor near Sir Clinton.
As he uttered the remark, he heard a faint sound behind him; and, turning round, he found Rex staring at him with hate and dismay written plainly on his white, set face.
“There’s no pistol here,” Sir Clinton said, rising to his feet and mechanically dusting the knees of his trousers.
Mr. Scotswood was puzzled for a moment by this. Then a wave of relief passed over his mind.
“Of course not,” he said, meeting Rex’s stare. “The shot must have been fired through the window.”
He had expected to see Rex’s face brighten at the announcement of this positive proof of his innocence; but, instead of that, the expression on Rex’s features seemed to grow more sullen. He relaxed his lips momentarily as though to say something; then, apparently, he thought better of it and remained silent. Mr. Scotswood, turning to Sir Clinton to see how he was taking the remark about the pistol, found him examining Rex’s face in an abstracted fashion as though he were thinking of something which puzzled him completely. A few seconds passed before Sir Clinton spoke.
“I’ll have to ring up the police, Rex. Can’t you be frank with us? It’s really the safest thing in the end. You can talk to me alone, if you like. I must have the facts if I’m to be of any use to you. Once Ledbury gets this business into his hands, you’ll have to speak, whether you like it or not.”
Rex shrugged his shoulders almost impatiently.
“I’ve nothing to say,” he repeated in the same dogged tone.
Sir Clinton made a gesture of despondency.
“Then there’s nothing for it,” he said.
After a final glance round the room, he moved over to the telephone on the table beside the door. As he did so, his eye was caught by the receiver, which lay at a little distance from the telephone-stand, as though it had been put down hurriedly on the table-top. Mr. Scotswood, watching his face, saw it light up with a gleam of hope. Sir Clinton swung round to where Rex still stood impassively in the middle of the room.
Nemesis at Raynham Parva (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 21