by Miles Burton
“Oh, yes, sir, before that. Friday or Saturday of the week before, it must have been. I don’t have occasion to come in here much in the winter.”
“That oil dripped from the gear-box of a car,” said Merrion decisively. “Now, let’s get back to the missing key. You used it to get in here about a fortnight ago. When you locked up the garage you hung the key in the usual place, I suppose?”
“Well, sir, I could have sworn I did. But, seeing that it isn’t there now…”
“Could anybody have taken it, since then?”
“Not unless they got into the house, and I don’t see how they could have done that. Nobody else but me has a key, and I always keep the door locked when I’m not about. Besides, there’s nobody comes up here at this time of year.”
“You said that Mr. Dredger was here on Wednesday, last week,” said Arnold sharply.
“Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Dredger. But he’s a friend of the family. I wasn’t counting him.”
“And on that occasion he asked you to let him into the house?”
“That’s right, sir. But Mr. Dredger can’t never have taken the key. What would he take it into his head to do a thing like that for?”
“People do unaccountable things sometimes,” Arnold replied. “Now, look here, Quince. You were not up here at all on the Thursday you went to Norwich. Suppose somebody had stolen the key of the garage. Would it have been possible for anybody to drive a car here early in the morning, leave it in the garage all day, and drive it away again in the evening without anybody knowing anything about it?”
“Well, sir, I suppose they might have done. Especially if they came from Medbridge way, up the lane. There aren’t no houses along that for nigh on a mile. But what would make them do it?”
Arnold made no reply to this. He and Merrion devoted themselves to a minute examination of the garage and of Mrs. Saxonby’s car without finding anything to reward their efforts. They then asked Quince to show them the interior of the house. This also they searched thoroughly, still without success. This done, they re-entered the car which had brought them and started to drive back to London. “Well, and what about Dredger now?” was Arnold’s first question. “Are you still going to maintain that he had nothing to do with it?”
“I don’t know,” replied Merrion doubtfully. “My faith in his complete innocence is a bit shaken, I confess. That missing key is infernally suggestive. What’s your theory now?”
“That Dredger was the man whom we’ve agreed to call B,” replied Arnold promptly.
“Then you’ve got to admit that somebody disguised himself as Dredger, at least in the evening. If Dredger was B, he was working things at the top of the ventilating shaft at the time when somebody exactly like him was travelling in the five o’clock train. And why, in heaven’s name, should a criminal disguise himself as his accomplice? If Dredger had been involved it would have been in the interests of the gang to keep him from suspicion as far as possible. Certainly not to run any chance of putting the police on his track. No, I’m pretty sure Dredger wasn’t B.”
“He fulfils all the conditions which you yourself laid down,” Arnold replied doggedly. “He was intimate with Sir Wilfred’s family, he knew all about the affairs of the firm, and he lives close to the shaft.”
“That’s just why he was such a suitable man to impersonate. And there’s another reason. He was in the habit of driving over to the Saxonby’s place now and then. Anybody looking like him, and driving Mrs. Saxonby’s car, which you say is exactly similar to his, would attract no attention, even if he were actually seen on the premises. He would be taken for Dredger, paying one of his periodical visits. Gosh! This is a tangle! Let’s see if we can straighten it out a bit.
“Yates, or Figgis, or whatever he chooses to call himself, drove the breakdown lorry from Plymouth. Early on Thursday morning he reached the Saxonby’s place, and put the lorry in their garage. Those spots of oil on the floor tell their own story. But in order to do this he had to have the key of the garage which, in any case, we know to have disappeared. We’ll suppose for the moment that Dredger conveyed it to him, though I don’t quite see how.”
“Dredger took the key and left it in some prearranged spot on the premises. Under a stone in the yard, for instance.”
“Yes, that will do. Next, Quince had to be got out of the way during the whole of Thursday. Most providentially, Quince receives a letter from Mrs. Wardour, sending him on an errand to Norwich. It’s really remarkable.”
“I shall see Mrs. Wardour and ask her about that letter,” said Arnold.
“I should. One point in particular seems to me to want a bit of explaining. Mrs. Wardour is supposed to have been in the South of France during the whole of last week. How then did she come to post a letter in London late on Tuesday evening?”
Arnold groaned. “Are you suggesting that she was in the plot, too?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as that until I had definite proof that she wrote the letter. By the way, there’s a point about that letter not to be lost sight of. We have it from Quince that Richard Saxonby had spoken about putting rhododendrons in that particular bed. Mrs. Wardour might well have known this. If she can prove that she didn’t write the letter you’ll have to look for some one else who also knew about the rhododendrons.
“But let’s get back to the sequence of events on Thursday. Yates drove the lorry into the Saxonby’s garage. Later in the morning, disguised as Dredger—no, don’t interrupt, I’m as much entitled to my theory as you are to yours—later in the morning, I say, Yates drove Mrs. Saxonby’s car to the shaft and left it there. He then went up to London, and we know what he did there. In the evening B arrives at the garage. He takes out the lorry and drives it to the shaft. A, having been fished out of the tunnel, takes over the lorry and fetches up eventually at Bleak’s place near Whitchurch. B takes Mrs. Saxonby’s car and returns it to its accustomed place in her garage. And then, confound him, he disappears into thin air, so far as we are concerned. I say, I wonder if Richard Saxonby is really in America all this time?”
“Why should Richard Saxonby conspire with Yates to murder his father?”
“Because, perhaps, his father was up to profitable mischief of some kind. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, let’s get on to the subject of motive at this stage. Find out who wrote that letter to Quince. It may have been Mrs. Wardour, but I don’t believe it was. B wrote that letter, I’m convinced. It’s just possible that Mrs. Wardour may have been B, I suppose. But if she was, would she have signed the letter in her own name?”
“Quince would hardly have obeyed the instructions of anybody else, I should imagine.”
“Probably not. But his very obedience causes a complication. As soon as his master comes back, or at all events as soon as he sees Quince, he will hear about those rhododendrons. And then, unless I am greatly mistaken, it will come out that he never wrote to his sister at all, or if he did, that he never gave her the message for Quince. If Mrs. Wardour wrote the letter, how did she propose to explain all that? It seems to me far more likely that Richard Saxonby wrote it. In which case no need for explanations would arise.”
“Richard Saxonby is supposed to arrive in England to-morrow,” said Arnold thoughtfully. “I shall make it my business to meet him. Meanwhile, as soon as we get back to London, I shall call on Mrs. Wardour. She may have something interesting to tell me about those confounded rhododendrons.”
XVII
Arnold was once more fortunate in finding Irene Wardour at home. He opened the conversation by inquiring about Richard Saxonby. “You are expecting your brother home to-morrow, are you not, Mrs. Wardour?” he asked.
“I am going down to Southampton to meet him,” she replied. “He is on the Iberia, and she is due there at two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Do you happen to know when the Iberia left New York?”
“Last Friday, a week
ago to-day. She was the first boat to sail after he received Olivia’s cable telling him of my father’s death.”
“Have you heard from your brother since he was in America, Mrs. Wardour?”
“I’ve had a couple of letters from him. Nothing of any importance.”
“Did he, by chance, mention the subject of rhododendrons in either of them?”
Mrs. Wardour looked at the inspector as though she suspected him of being under the influence of drink. “Rhododendrons!” she exclaimed. “No, certainly not! Why in the world should he write to me about rhododendrons?”
“Perhaps, Mrs. Wardour, because you knew that he intended to plant rhododendrons in the bed opposite his front door.”
“I haven’t the remotest notion of what you are talking about,” she replied sharply. “Now you mention it, I remember Richard saying something of the kind one day last summer. But I had completely forgotten it until this moment. I’m not particularly interested in gardening myself.”
“But you have heard of Fremlins, the nurserymen, of Norwich?”
“I have heard of them, but only in connection with the business of Wigland and Bunthorne. We occasionally import rare shrubs and plants for them.”
This accounted for a fact which had puzzled Arnold. Fremlins might have had their doubts about executing an order given by a strange gardener, unsupported by any sort of reference. But Richard Saxonby’s name would be familiar to them, and Quince’s visit would have occasioned them no surprise. Perhaps this might give an additional clue to the identity of the writer of the letter.
The inspector drew from his pocket the letter itself, so folded that only the signature was visible, and showed it thus to Mrs. Wardour. “Do you recognise this signature?” he asked.
“Certainly,” she replied, with hardly more than a glance at it. “It is mine.”
“You are sure of that?”
“As sure of it as I am that you are asking me questions of which I don’t in the least understand the drift.”
Arnold unfolded the letter and held it out to her. “Perhaps if you will read that it will enable you to understand,” he said.
Mrs. Wardour read the letter, with ever-growing astonishment.
“I don’t understand it at all!” she exclaimed. “I certainly never wrote that letter. Nor, as I told you before, has Richard so much as mentioned rhododendrons in writing to me from America. This must be a joke, though I don’t quite see the point of it. Somebody seems to have been pulling Quince’s leg.”
“I should very much like to know who that somebody was, Mrs. Wardour,” said Arnold sternly. “You admit that the signature of the letter is yours?”
“Yes, it is certainly mine. I think, though, that I can account for that. Before I went abroad I went down to Mavis Court to spend a day with my father. While I was there he asked me to sign my name on half a dozen sheets of the firm’s notepaper. It sometimes happens that our letters require the signature of two directors. As both Richard and I would be away for the next week or two, my father wished to have my signature, to which he could add his own, in case of necessity.”
“Do you know what became of those sheets of paper, Mrs. Wardour?”
“My father put them away in his desk,” she replied. And then, as an afterthought, she added: “Olivia was in the room at the time. And I see that the day on which Quince was told to go to Norwich was the day on which my father was shot.”
“Yes, that is so,” Arnold agreed in a tone which suggested that the coincidence had struck him for the first time. “But if you did not write this letter I am bound to inquire who did. By the way, do you happen to remember where you were on Tuesday evening of last week?”
“Tuesday evening? Yes, that was the day before my husband left me and came home. We were at Cannes, and we spent the evening with some friends at their hotel.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wardour. Now, can you offer any suggestions as to who might have written this letter?”
“Olivia saw me sign the sheets of paper, and she saw my father put them away. Besides, she’s got a typewriter, I know. She fancies that she’s got a gift for writing short stories, but people don’t seem to appreciate her gift.”
“Would Miss Saxonby be likely to know the name of your brother’s gardener, that the question of putting rhododendrons in that particular bed had been discussed, and that your firm had had dealings with Fremlins?”
“I don’t see why she shouldn’t have known. She might have heard all those things from my father, or from one of us.”
“Do you happen to know if Mr. Dredger is fond of gardening?”
“Yes, he is. He and Richard can talk of nothing else sometimes.”
“Perhaps your brother discussed the planting of that bed with him. And he would, of course, have known of your firm’s business relations with Fremlins?”
“Yes, I suppose he would. But he isn’t at all the sort of person to write a letter like that. He would never dream of doing anything that might annoy Richard or myself. Besides, how could he have got hold of that sheet of paper with my signature on it?”
This was, for the present at least, unanswerable. Arnold left Mrs. Wardour and returned to Scotland Yard more puzzled than ever. His conversation with her had convinced him that she had told the truth. And her explanation of the appearance of her signature upon it was probably the correct one.
What was Sir Wilfred most likely to have done with the signed sheets of paper? He was hardly likely to have kept them at Mavis Court, where they would be of little use to him. He had probably taken them up to the office on his next visit. Torrance might know something about them. Arnold set out to find out.
But Torrance could tell him very little. “I know that Mrs. Wardour signed some sheets of paper in blank before she went abroad, because she told me so,” he said. “But what Sir Wilfred did with them I can’t say. None of them were used, since no occasion arose for doing so. And I don’t think that Sir Wilfred can have brought them here. If he had he would have given them to me to put in the safe, or he would have locked them away in his room. He didn’t give them to me, and they are certainly not in his room now, for Mrs. Wardour and I went through everything there only yesterday.”
“How many typewriters have you in the office, Mr. Torrance?”
“Fourteen all told. They are all the same make, Reming-
woods.”
“Could you let me have samples of work done by each of them?”
“Easily enough. If you’ll wait a minute or two I’ll have it done.”
Torrance disappeared and came back shortly with fourteen slips of paper, on each of which had been typed the phrase: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” “Not a very enlightening statement, I’m afraid,” he said. “But you’ll observe that apparently meaningless sentence brings in all the letters of the alphabet.”
“Thanks,” Arnold replied. “That’s just what I wanted.” He took out the letter and compared it with each of the specimens in turn. Even to the uneducated eye it was apparent that it bore no similarity to any of them. Then he handed the letter to Torrance. “Read that and tell me what you think of it,” he said.
Torrance read it without any great interest. “I don’t see anything peculiar about it,” he said. “Mrs. Wardour transmits her brother’s orders to his gardener. Why not?”
“Mrs. Wardour assures me that she did not write the letter.”
“Then it is a bit queer, I’ll admit. I’m beginning to understand what you’re after. And perhaps I might be able to give you a hint. I know something about typewriters. That letter was typed with a Regal portable, and not a particularly new one, either. We haven’t got such a thing on the place. Nor has Mrs. Wardour, I’m pretty sure.”
“Do you know anybody who has?”
“Oh, there are plenty of them about. Let me think, now. Yes, I do know of somebody
who uses one. Excuse me a minute, will you?”
He disappeared for the second time and returned with a sheet of paper on which a few words were typed. “I hereby acknowledge the receipt of £125 (one hundred and twenty-five pounds) from Messrs. Wigland and Bunthorne Ltd.” A twopenny stamp was affixed, and over this was written the signature “Malcolm Dredger,” and the date.
“Receipt for his last quarter’s pension,” said Torrance. “That was typed with the Regal portable which he always uses.”
The type of the receipt exactly resembled that of the letter. But Arnold remembered Mrs. Wardour’s question. He repeated it to Torrance. “Anything that we say to one another is strictly confidential, you understand that. Can you suggest any way in which Mr. Dredger could have obtained a sheet of the firm’s notepaper with Mrs. Wardour’s signature on it?”
Torrance frowned. “I somehow can’t imagine old Dredger playing a trick like that,” he replied. “But I suppose, since you ask me, that he could easily find a way of getting hold of Mrs. Wardour’s signature if he had wanted it. It doesn’t follow that that letter was typed upon one of the sheets signed by her before she went abroad, does it?”
Arnold went back to Scotland Yard, more firmly convinced than ever that Dredger had been concerned in the plot to murder Sir Wilfred. He sent the letter, and the receipt, which he had borrowed from Torrance, to the appropriate department for expert examination. Then, once more, he turned to the baffling question of the identity of the person known as B. Merrion had suggested Richard Saxonby. That could be settled, one way or the other, next day. If Richard Saxonby disembarked from the Iberia on her arrival at Southampton he could not have been in the neighbourhood of Blackdown on the Thursday, since the Iberia had left New York on the following day.
Then, with Dredger still at the back of his mind, the inspector began to look at the matter in a fresh light. He agreed with Merrion that one of the conspirators must have possessed an amazing fund of special knowledge. Every fresh discovery emphasised that fact. But was it necessary that this individual should have been either A or B? Might they not have carried out the crime upon information supplied by some third person? If so, that person had undoubtedly been Dredger.