by Tony Medawar
He does not seem to have seen Hilda alone. It was a queer visit, with a queer atmosphere in the house, and it is difficult to fill in the gaps and discover how they grouped themselves and passed the time. But it is clear that one night all the men were together, drinking in the gun-room round about midnight, after Hilda had gone to bed.
Around the walls of the gun-room was a well-known series of sporting pictures depicting the first steeplechase, in which men were riding clad in white nightshirts and nightcaps. In one of the pictures was a background of a village and a church with a steeple, which looked faintly like the village and church of Hartways.
Cornboise records that he saw Hartways staring at the picture as if he saw it for the first time—So was almost prepared for the sudden whoop of insane joy.
‘I say, you fellows, these fellows were sportsmen, eh what! How would you like to do a cross-country by moonlight in a nightshirt?’
‘Don’t wear ’em!’ giggled Beeding, the jockey. ‘It will have to be pyjamas for me.’
‘You can get ’em off the servants,’ said Balmy. ‘l’ll get mine from Hilda. Hoicks!’
Cornboise tried to glare the others out of it, but they were all pretty drunk, and the deference had worn thin, for, at heart, they thought him a dull dog.
Balmy bolted upstairs and the others scattered in quest of white nightshirts or, as a substitute, nightdresses. Cornboise, after some hesitation, followed Balmy. His room was just beyond the Hartways’. Through the door he heard Balmy whooping.
‘Well, if you won’t tell me where you keep ’em I’m going to have that one. Whoops! By God, Hilda, you must come too! Come like that! As Godiva. We’ll make history all over again, and later on we’ll have a pageant—please the village, what! Come on! You look fine like that! You needn’t mind the boys. They’re all the best of fellows.’
‘Balmy! Balmy—give me my dressing-gown.’
‘Oh, rot, I say, what! You can’t have Godiva in a dressing-gown. All right, wear it to come down in.’
‘Yes. Yes. I’ll wear it to come down in. It’s a fine idea, Balmy! I’ll ride Daphne. Go and see that she’s saddled for me and I’ll join you.’
‘Good girl! Always said you were a good old sport.’
Balmy lurched out of the room, leaving the door open, and when he had gone Cornboise showed himself.
‘Why did you say you would go?’
‘Oh, I always agree when he’s like that. And in a minute or two he forgets. Dr Treadgold said I must always agree.’
‘The doctor told you that, did he?… What else did the doctor tell you, Hilda?’
(‘She was out of breath and her eyes were fixed, almost glazed, and I was very alarmed and thought it better to bully the truth out of her.’—This statement was made at the subsequent trial.)
The truth, anyhow, came tumbling out. Something like this:
‘Treadgold said he must have had it all his life. And it’s quite incurable and he’ll get worse. And Treadgold thinks that when he surrenders to his bail at Quarter Sessions they will have him examined. And Treadgold says he will be certified. And, if not then, it’s bound to happen later.’
There is a break here, and the next thing we know is that Cornboise confronted the steeplechase party on their return. They were a tough lot, and could have paid him out, but he sent them all to bed except Balmy, whom he pushed into the gun-room.
Balmy became nervous and defiant.
‘Afraid you’re rather bored with the little party, old man! Never mind! There’ll be a church parade on Sunday.’
‘I’m not exactly bored, Balmy. But I shall have to leave tomorrow.’
It was a life-long friendship, Balmy remembered this and became morbid.
‘If you must go, dear boy, I’ll come with you. We’ll go up in the eleven-twenty. I’ve got to go up anyway and sell that dashed necklace—getting devilish hard up. Mustn’t be robbed, for I forgot to insure it. You can be the bodyguard. And I tell you what—I’ll take the jolly old starting-handle off the car in case of an attack. Jackie Beeding says it’s the safest thing to carry nowadays.’ He used an imaginary starting-handle in the guise of a bayonet. ‘Where was I? Oh, yes—I’ll give you lunch at the club and we’ll talk about old times, what! No, no, I’ve resigned. Tell you what—’
‘Balmy, you and I are friends.’ (‘When I said this I put my hands on his shoulders and looked very hard at him. He looked back at me, and I was sure then that he was quite sane while I was speaking to him, and when he answered me his voice was like it used to be.’—Again I quote from the trial.) ‘I want to ask you something, old man. Don’t you feel that during the last year or so there’s been something wrong with you?’
‘Yes, I do, Lionel. I don’t know what I’m doing, fooling about like this. I must try and pull up.’
It was a preposterous setting for a tragedy. For a lucid minute Balmy faced the facts about himself—in the gun-room at midnight, flushed and ridiculous, with Hilda’s night-dress torn and mud-bespattered over his dinner-jacket and riding-boots.
Then the soldier acted on the doctor’s words in a way that would have horrified the doctor.
‘Balmy, old man, you can’t pull up—ever. It’s like having an incurable disease. If I could have it instead of you I would. But, of course, I can’t. I’m thinking of Hilda.’
‘Then what d’you think I ought to do?’
‘You’ve got a revolver in that drawer, Balmy. Use it like a gentleman.’
(‘And after I had said that he went silly again and roared with laughter, and I knew he would never do it. So I said I would go by an earlier train, and when I got to my room I admit I cried like a woman, because I had always been very fond of Balmy.’)
Hartways Station is built at the mouth of the Starcross tunnel. There is the end of the platform—ten yards to the signal-box and another five yards to the tunnel. Cornboise, we must suppose, spent the night thinking about the tunnel. There is no word of the actual preparations he made for the murder.
He left by the eleven-three—a dangerously pointless thing to do, because the eleven-three is local and peters out at Stortford Mills. If you want to go by the eleven-three from Hartways to Victoria you have to get out at Stortford Allills and wait on the same platform until the eleven-twenty comes along. So you might just as well catch the eleven-twenty to start with and save yourself a wait on Stortford Mills platform.
Cornboise was driven to the station in the car, which then returned for Hartways.
In the pocket in the door was the spare starting-handle—a normal precaution in the days before the self-starter. Cornboise slipped it into his Gladstone.
He boarded the eleven-three. When the train entered the tunnel, at a speed that was well under ten miles an hour, he opened the door, stepped on to the footboard, shut the door behind him and dropped on to the track.
For this operation he needed both hands. His Gladstone bag was looped on to his elbow by means of a cord. He was wearing a raincoat which he had buttoned right up to the throat, and in the pocket of the raincoat was Hartways’ revolver.
Now, it is easy enough for an athletic man to board a train going at about ten miles an hour, if he can reach the handrail. Cornboise had made a pretty good calculation of the distance and knew that he would miss the handrail by about a foot and a half.
That was where the starting-handle came in.
When the eleven-twenty entered the tunnel he caught the handrail easily enough with the starting-handle and swung himself on to the footboard.
He had chosen the second coach, where the first-class compartments would be. He had ascertained that no one else was going up with Hartways, and it was a safe bet that on that line there would be no other occupant of the first-class.
The bet came off. Hartways was alone in a first-class smoker. Cornboise steadied the Gladstone on the footboard, opened the door and got in.
He shot Hartways through the heart, and almost in the same moment threw him out of the open door
into the tunnel. He threw the revolver after him.
From opening the door to throwing the body on the line had taken him about nine seconds. He had shot through Hartways’ overcoat. Even so, there was a large splash of blood on the seat. He picked up the cushion and reversed it. Then he reversed all the cushions so that the black waterproof side was uppermost. He wiped the starting-handle and left it on the cushions.
With the Gladstone once more on his arm, he crawled along the footboard to the next compartment, a first-class non-smoker.
He was in the compartment the better part of a minute before the train left the tunnel. In the daylight, he inspected himself in the mirror. His face was covered with smuts, which he removed with eau-de-cologne from his Gladstone. He unbuttoned the raincoat. His collar was unsoiled. The bottom of the Gladstone bag was caked with grit. He removed it by rubbing it vigorously on the mat.
When the train stopped at Stortford Mills he stood up, put the Gladstone on the rack and behaved as if he had just got into the carriage.
Before the train started the porter ushered two ladies into the compartment with him and they travelled together to Victoria. The three of them slipped into a casual conversation concerning the opening of a window. One of the ladies lent Cornboise a paper.
An hour later he had passed through the barrier at Victoria and returned to his rooms in Knightsbridge.
All his leather was kept polished. In the absence of his man he cleaned and polished the Gladstone. He cut the raincoat into small pieces and burnt them in the open fire in his sitting-room.
The evening papers carried the story. He had just finished reading it when a couple of juniors from Scotland Yard called to ask him some more or less pointless questions.
He told them that he must go at once to Mrs Hartways, who might have need of him, and he talked to them in a four-wheeler to Victoria.
He had, he told them, travelled on the eleven-three to Stortford Mills and there waited for the eleven-twenty. He had taken the earlier train for the express purpose of avoiding his host’s company. And, for this reason, at Stortford Mills he had entered a non-smoker. He told them about the nightdress steeplechase. In reply to a question he said he believed Hartways was carrying a valuable necklace, but was not sure.
And then Cornboise had his first shock.
‘He was carrying it all right, sir. And we don’t need to look far for the motive. It was in his pocket when he left his house. Mrs Hartways testifies to that. And it was missing when the body was found in the tunnel.’
‘It’s an extraordinary thing, but he was almost expecting to be robbed. He said he intended to carry a starting-handle—as a weapon of defence,’ said Cornboise, and the juniors thanked him and wrote it all down.
In the train Cornboise tried to figure out how the necklace could have disappeared. Then he concluded with military simplicity that it was no concern of his. The detectives thanked him for giving them what amounted to no information whatever and left him at Victoria.
When he got down to Hartways the jockey party had only just left, having been detained for questioning by the police.
Hilda had ‘taken to her room’, but she received him—in a little dressing-sitting-room (the ‘boudoir’). She was in one of those accordion-pleated tea-gowns. She was white and haggard, but to him she was pathetically beautiful. At sight of him she cried a little and he said nothing.
‘I’m crying because I’m so glad to see you,’ she told him. ‘It’s terrible, Lionel, and I’m terribly sorry for poor Balmy. But the most terrible part is that I myself—I—oh, I’m a beast!’
‘Rot! It’s a blessed release. And we both know it, Hilda. For God’s sake let’s be honest with each other!’ He made her drink some sherry and eat an omelette. Before he went she sobbed again a little and he took her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead. And he said: ‘Be brave, little woman.’
Then he went to the inn to spend the night.
On the way out he had a word with the butler in the hall. Some of the older servants were hovering, for it was no time for discipline. For a minute or two he talked sympathetically to them all. He had the odd impression that they knew perfectly well that, necklace or no necklace, he had killed Hartways. They knew that he had been in love with their mistress and probably was still. They had tacitly sympathised with him over the appalling company that had been brought to the Manor. He had come down, disapproved—and then had happened the only solution to the Hartways tragedy.
Cornboise did not care. Everyone—with the possible exception of Hilda—might be morally certain that he had killed Hartways. But he knew now that he had made no slip. Already Stortford Mills station would have been combed. He knew, in fact, that the crime could never be brought home to him.
A few minutes after he had gone, the Scotland Yard men wanted Hilda again. Could she give them a detailed description of the necklace? She could do better than that—for Balmy had had an exact copy made in paste.
She gave them the paste copy and they insisted on giving her a receipt for it, though she protested she did not want to see it again, as she would never, in any circumstances, wear it. The Edwardian lady had a deep-rooted horror of imitation jewellery.
‘Was it a valuable necklace, madam?’
‘My husband paid six thousand guineas for it at Christie’s. It used to belong to the Riverstoke family.’
The paste necklace was sent on the next train to Scotland Yard. The detectives went over their facts. The only one of the house-party who had not a perfect alibi was Beeding, the jockey. It was known that he had fussed round Hartways, helped him on with his overcoat, and then followed the car on his motor-cycle as far as the station, and had then ‘gone for a spin’.
‘Suppose he didn’t go for a spin? Suppose he stopped by the hedge at the end of the station there and slipped between the signal-box and so into the tunnel? Then what if he jumped and hooked himself up with that there starting-handle and—did the trick?’
Next day they put this theory to a practical test and came to the conclusion that, though just possible, it was too far-fetched. Beeding had admitted that he had advised Hartways to carry a starting-handle for protection. This had been subsequently confirmed by Cornboise. The starting-handle, therefore, had nothing to do with the crime.
The inquest revealed no new facts. Hartways had been ingeniously murdered by a person unknown, the motive being the very valuable necklace.
The starting-handle and, six months later, the paste replica of the necklace drifted to the Department of Dead Ends.
Twelve months and one week after the death of Hartways the engagement was announced between his widow and Lionel Cornboise, who had now stepped into the baronetcy. They were married in April.
Hartways Manor and the house in Bruton Street had been sold, but even so there was very little left of the Hartways estate. And Hilda had been staying with an aunt at Brighton.
The following autumn Hilda’s father died and left to his daughter some two thousand a year and, in effect, to his son-in-law his seat for the Borough. Cornboise resigned his commission, and a year later, in the Liberal landslide, managed to hold his seat by a tiny majority.
On his being returned to Parliament, Cornboise bought a house in Queen Anne’s Gate. In the meantime Hilda had presented him with a red-headed replica of himself. Hilda became ‘one of our younger hostesses’. The scandal and misery of her first marriage were officially forgotten.
But not by Hilda, for the memory added salt to her present happiness. Lionel did not quite understand this point of view, and would become strong and silent whenever she referred to Balmy.
They had been married over five years when she dropped a newspaper and asked him:
‘Do you remember that horrid man Beeding? He was a jockey or something. He has got into the papers. They found him lying unconscious in a side-street off Holborn. And there was a starting-handle lying beside him, but he had been stabbed. The police think it was a race-gang.’
&n
bsp; ‘The devil gets his own sometimes,’ grunted Lionel, and went off to the House of Commons.
While Beeding lay unconscious in a private room in St Seiriols’ Hospital, Superintendent Tarrant, of the Department of Dead Ends, offered the information that they had a starting-handle which had been one of the clues in the Hartways murder five years previously. Detective-Inspector Rason sent back a minute with a polite denial that the starting-handle had ever been a clue to anything. It had long ago been decided that the presence of the starting-handle in the first-class compartment had no bearing on the crime.
As for the second starting-handle, when Beeding recovered consciousness he admitted it was his. He was, he said, carrying it from the garage to the agents’ depot for repairs. He did not know who had attacked him, nor could he guess the object of the attack. He had not, he said, been robbed.
Now, in Beeding’s pockets there had been found small change only. But the proprietors of the garage, a tumble-down stable, had handed Beeding a ten-pound note on behalf of a ready-money bookie and had seen Beeding put it in his pocket-case—a few minutes before the attack.
Beeding stoutly denied this. Rason was puzzled, but Tarrant jumped on it.
There on his table were the two starting-handles. The first one had been carried, so the notes ran, because Hartways had feared attack. And Beeding had advised him to carry it for that purpose. The second starting-handle did not seem to be in need of repair.
Beeding, then, believed in carrying a starting-handle as a weapon of defence, in case he might be attacked, when he was carrying something especially valuable. There was, Tarrant had to admit, no logical connection between the two crimes. But that did not matter in the least. He inquired from the doctor about Beeding’s condition. The doctor described the nature of the wound, then:
‘Officially, he is making good progress. He is quite clear-headed and feels no pain. He may be like that for a week, six months, a year. But if you want an unofficial opinion I should think it extremely unlikely that he’ll ever get out of that bed.’