“You’ve interviewed all the servants in the manor, I suppose?” asked Vereker.
“Yes, but the servants’ quarters are practically in a separate wing of the house. None of them heard or saw anything unusual on the night of the burglary. Dunkerley, the butler, told me all about Portwine, and Frederick, who unbolted all the doors on Thursday morning, found that a bolt of the side door near the gun-room had been pulled back. As this bolt fits very badly into its socket, there’s a knack in pushing it home. He is absolutely certain that he shot that bolt home when he locked up on Wednesday night.”
“Of course he may have been mistaken,” said Vereker, “but it’s an important item. When the guests left the house on Thursday morning for the scene of the tragedy, out of which door did they go?”
“The door leading out of the dining-room on to the back veranda.”
“But the door near the gun-room leads out of the western end of the house and is certainly nearest the polo ground.”
“That’s true, but it’s a door that was very seldom used except by Mr. Armadale himself. It has a specially constructed lock, very much resembling a Yale, but there’s no handle on the inside, and it has to be opened by a key from both sides. Dunkerley has one key, and the other Mr. Armadale always carried on his own bunch.”
“That explains it fairly satisfactorily,” replied Vereker. “Did you interview the maid who was told to look after Miss Cazas? She didn’t bring her own maid.”
“Yes,” replied the inspector, “but she’s not a very intelligent girl and chatters like a magpie. She seemed very concerned that Miss Cazas had grazed both her knees in the swimming-pool the evening before, and told me at length what trouble she had in matching a button which the young lady had lost off one of her walking shoes. She wound up by saying that Miss Cazas wasn’t the goods because she only tipped her half a crown on leaving.”
“And what about Mrs. Armadale’s maid?”
“She’s too clever by half and as tight as an oyster. But, by gum, she’s pretty—she’d make a robber’s go- bang. She has gone with her mistress to Sutton Pragnell for a couple of days. I’ll give her another twisting when she comes back. I’m rather fond of baiting a cheeky girl if she’s really pretty. It’s like trying to hit a butterfly with a baton. But did you see any of Wednesday’s guests up at the manor to-day, Mr. Vereker?”
“Two. Captain Fanshaugh and Mr. Ralph Degerdon. Fanshaugh’s a retired cavalryman. He knows a good deal about fire-arms and surprised me with his knowledge about the marks an extractor and a firing-pin leave on the brass shell of a cartridge. This may mean nothing, because the matter had been brought to his notice by a shooting affair in India. He’s a downy bird with all his wits about him and of a very resolute temper, I should say. Still, I like him immensely. Degerdon is rather hard to place. He’s younger and shows few marked characteristics. Oppressively good-looking and would make a first-rate lover in a musical show if he had a third-rate voice. He’s cast in a softer mould and has a tendency towards being a ‘good-timer’; but, as a horsy man would say, he has a generous eye. I’m going to interview him alone; he may yield something important. I shall also try to get in touch with the other two male guests of Wednesday; Houseley, who left early, and Mrs. Armadale’s cousin, Aubrey Winter. I particularly want to meet Houseley.”
“Still sticking to your old line, I see,” remarked Heather. “Because Mr. Houseley’s yum-yum with Mrs. Armadale. You may be right, but at a first glance none of the gentlemen you’ve mentioned seem to me in the list of possibles. They’re not the kind to engineer a burglary and then pump lead into their friend and host. What we’ve got to do is find that damned automatic pistol!”
Inspector Heather glanced hurriedly at his watch and rose.
“My men will have stopped work by now,” he remarked. “And, if any of them have found that pistol on the estate, you’ll have to stand him a bottle of fizz and I’ll present him with a packet of Player’s. I’ll go and see if I can find them. After that I must run down to the police station at Nuthill. I’ll be back in time to have a night-cap with you unless something very important has turned up.”
Chapter Ten
On Inspector Heather’s departure, Vereker settled himself in the only easy-chair in the coffee-room, and lighting his pipe gave himself up to idle dreaming about the Armadale case. In this mood, which on subsequent analysis always appeared to him to resemble very closely the preliminary mood from which sprang his creative impulses in painting, his mind flitted inconsequently from one point to another. It was a pleasant, fluid sort of cerebration without any of the exhausting demands of purposive concentration, and yet from its idle ferment ideas suggesting a line of action frequently grew. He fell to thinking of the divergent courses taken by himself and Inspector Heather in their pursuit of a solution to the riddle of Sutton Armadale’s violent death. Heather had proceeded from the discovery of trouble between the financier and his underkeeper, Peach, to inquire into the latter’s history and movements. In this he was working on the very tangible basis of a threat to kill. The officer had also been considerably impressed by the intrusion of Jonathan Portwine into the fabric of the case. Here, again, were factors which might be sufficiently strong to drive a violent man to murder. He himself had from the very first been attracted by the marital differences between Sutton Armadale and Angela as the source from which the trouble had risen. What might have proved an eminently happy marriage had resolved itself into a complete severance except in outward appearance. And what bitter ferocity on both sides might underlie icy politeness and simulated endearments! He could imagine the deadening pain which Angela must have suffered on her discovery of Sutton’s deception of her and in her swift disillusionment in him. Her aristocratic egotism must have received a disrupting shock on finding that love, which she had idealized and qualified with a nice discrimination, could be so capricious and catholic in taste as to lead her to the same couch as a lady’s-maid! And in her revulsion she had flown back into the arms of her former lover, Houseley, whose passion apparently approximated her ideal of steadfastness and cultured appreciation.
Stanley Houseley! For a moment, in Vereker’s mind, he was dramatically transfigured, and with swift transition slipped ludicrously into the sporting anticlimax of “Hell-for-leather.” Thence arose the memory of Heather’s remark about a Rover Meteor car, and at once Vereker jumped from his chair. He would go and interview Mrs. Burton, the gardener’s wife, at the lodge at the manor gates. At the entrance to the inn he encountered a telegraph boy who had just propped his bicycle against the post from which hung the sign of the “Silver Pear Tree.” The wire in the boy’s hand was addressed to him. Vereker took it and tore it open. It ran:
Have got in touch with Edmée prospects look costly treasury depleted—RICKY
Procuring a telegram form from the messenger, Vereker scribbled the reply:
Lunch with me at L’Escargot one o’clock Monday—ALGERNON
Handing it to the boy for transmission, he set out at a brisk pace towards the gates of Vesey Manor.
Mrs. Burton, the gardener’s wife, was one of those comfortable women who take existence with a sane and versatile enjoyment. No note in its pleasant roundel was unduly stressed; there was a quiet, happy interest in birth, in love, in marriage, and even a funeral, though a gloomy emotional necessity, could yield its quota of sweet tears. Funerals had to stand the test of criticism from the point of view of successful functions. “Uncle Jim’s funeral was pretty good, but I’ve seen better in our family,” were her words on a recent occasion, and they are instructive. She and her husband had finished tea when Vereker arrived. Victor Burton, her husband, was a thin, weather-beaten-looking man of very few words. His vital juices seemed to have been sapped as a tribute to his wife’s bland exuberance, but he had an air of complacency which suggested that the process had not been altogether unpleasant. When Vereker explained that he was a friend of Mr. Ralli and would like to ask a few questions about the car she had
heard start up and pass the lodge on Thursday morning, Mrs. Burton shed any pretence at reserve and became affable, if not voluble. She was unable, however, to add much to what Vereker had already learned from Inspector Heather. In the midst of the conversation her son, Reginald Burton, entered, and hearing a discussion about a motor-car at once became alert. He was a fresh-looking youth of about sixteen, who had just got employment in a garage and petrol station at Nuthill. At this phase of his existence the world seemed to him to have been created as a fitting mise en scène for the internal combustion engine. With the superciliousness of youth and its pride in knowledge, he brushed his mother aside and took the matter into his own hands.
“I heard both cars, sir,” he said, addressing Vereker.
“Then there were two cars?” asked Vereker, with surprise.
“Oh, yes. I’m nearly certain the first was a Rover Meteor and I know the second was a Trojan. Nobody could mistake a Trojan engine.”
“At what time did you hear the first car?”
“I couldn’t say exactly, but it must have been between two and half-past two. I was lying awake with toothache. When I heard the first car, I sat up and looked out of the window. You can see right down the Nuthill road from my window. The driver was larking about with his headlights, putting them on and then dimming them. Having a game with them, I suppose. It wasn’t a pitch-dark night, and I could see fairly well across the meadow next to the road. A woman was in the meadow about twenty yards from the hedge when I looked out. She went through the gate and seemed to join the car on the road. I could see her quite clear in the light of the lamps.”
“Was she tall or short?”
“Tall and wore a brown fur coat but no hat. To me it seemed the double of Mrs. Armadale, but of course it couldn’t have been Madam. Then I heard the car start up, and it accelerated and went past here at about forty miles an hour.”
“Did the lady enter the car?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
“You didn’t by any chance see her in the meadow after the car had passed here?”
“I didn’t look. I was too much interested in the car itself—which I was pretty certain was a Rover Meteor—to bother about the lady. My mate, George Barter, who had been over at Godstone and was getting back to Nuthill about that time, told me next day that a Rover Meteor had passed him on the road.”
“What about the second car you heard?”
“I heard it about half an hour afterwards. It stopped at almost the same spot as the Rover Meteor had done. This seemed rather rum to me, and I got up and looked out of the window to see what was going on. This time I saw a lad leave the gate and run as hard as he could across the fields towards the polo ground. Then the second car started up and passed here. I knew by its engine that it was a Trojan.”
“Thanks very much, Burton. I see you take a great interest in your job. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to spot the makes of those cars.”
“You get to know them all after a bit, sir,” replied the youth, highly pleased with Vereker’s compliment.
Vereker then drew Burton senior into conversation about the parcel of clothes which he had found under the rhododendrons near the bathing pavilion. Burton explained that he was hoeing and raking between the shrubs when he came upon the parcel.
“Could you say if it had been there any length of time, Burton?” asked Vereker.
“Mebbe a night, mebbe a week, mebbe longer, sir. We rakes and ’oes between them shrubs every Thursday. The weather has been bone dry all August, so that weeds haven’t bothered us much. Next month’s the month for weeds. Ted, my man, did the job last week, but, as he said, it didn’t need anything more than a kiss and a promise, and he possibly missed the packet.”
“Were there any footprints on the loose earth?”
“No, sir, or if there was, I raked ’em out without noticing ’em. The inspector from the Yard had a good look round to see if he could find footprints, and he remarked as how rakes was a blinkin’ noosance and ought to require permits like fire-arms.”
“I’d like to see the exact spot if you could spare the time just now, Burton,” remarked Vereker.
To this Burton was agreeable. Slipping on his coat and a straw hat reminiscent of a past and joyous decade, he accompanied Vereker from the lodge to the rock garden behind the manor. Here Vereker made a very careful search among the shrubs and rhododendrons bordering on the spot where Burton had picked up the parcel, but his quest brought nothing further to light. With an air of disappointment he stood mopping his brow when, looking in the direction of the bathing pavilion, he caught sight of a fragment of gauzy material held fast in the foliage of a daphne, a few yards away. Crossing to the evergreen, he plucked the material from its entanglement and found that it was a diminutive handkerchief of beautiful French lace. Instinctively he put it to his nose. It was still heavily scented in spite of its exposure, and there was no mistaking the perfume. “Stephanotis!” he exclaimed, and all at once his face lit up with a strange light. It had recalled a vivid memory, one of Vereker’s very few romances, and it took him back to his work on the Bygrave case. Mrs. Cathcart had been passionately fond of the scent, and she—well, she and he had parted since then. For some moments Vereker stood in a mood of wistful reflection, and then with dramatic suddenness straightened himself. The air of romantic lover vanished in a flash, for he had recalled the scent that had almost overwhelmingly pervaded the room which Miss Edmée Cazas had recently occupied in Vesey Manor. Thrusting the handkerchief into his pocket, he crossed rapidly to the bathing pavilion, followed by Burton, who was apparently coming slowly to the conclusion that the young gentleman was a “bit batchy.” In the pavilion, after an intensive search, Vereker found nothing, but just as he was about to return with Burton to the lodge he picked up on the loose gravel path leading to the swimming-pool a button that had become detached from a lady’s shoe. This he carefully inserted in his ticket pocket and, after a further general survey of the rock garden, signified to Burton that he would return to the “Silver Pear Tree.” As they walked slowly together down the drive to the gates, they were overtaken by Ralph Degerdon, who had just left the manor. He had stayed on after Captain Fanshaugh’s departure to have a private talk with Ralli, and was now making his way to the Captain’s bungalow for dinner. At the lodge they parted with Burton and, as they tramped westward, Vereker at once turned the conversation on the topic of the burglary at Vesey Manor.
“Did you hear any suspicious sounds during the early hours of Thursday morning, Degerdon?” he asked.
“Yes, I did,” replied Degerdon, without any hesitation. “I was awake at several intervals during the night. If you remember it was poisonously hot, and it must have been between two and three that the sound of a window being opened attracted my attention. At first I thought it must be some one, either Edmée or Angela, on the floor below, who had pushed open a casement for air. The idea at once occurred to me to follow suit, and I rose and did so. I was feeling very wakeful and, as it was a glorious night, I lit a cigarette and stood at the window smoking and cooling off in my pyjamas. I casually leaned out to see whose window had been opened on the floor below, and to my surprise found that all the windows on that floor were closed. I at once concluded that either Edmée or Angela had closed a casement instead of opening it, and thought no more about the matter for the moment. Since then, of course, it has occurred to me that I must have heard the burglar entering by the library door. I finished my cigarette, flung the butt on the stone balcony below, and was just about to get back to bed when I heard a footstep on the gravel in front of the veranda on the ground floor. I at once rushed to the window and looked out. Unfortunately the gravel close to the veranda was hidden from my view by the balcony, and a burglar to avoid being spotted from the upper windows would naturally keep well in to the house. I stood and listened for fully five minutes, but heard no further sound. Just as I had returned to bed I once more heard footsteps on the gravel and, jumping up, hurri
ed to the window. There wasn’t a soul close to the house clear of the balcony, but I thought I caught a glimpse of a man’s figure vanishing round a bend in the path that leads through the laurels to the rock garden.
“Tall or short man?” asked Vereker.
“I couldn’t distinguish in the half-light, but I should say a short man.”
“You didn’t take any action in the matter?” asked Vereker.
“No. I thought it was damned funny,” continued Degerdon, with a curious uneasy hesitation, “and at the moment I wondered whether I should knock up Sutton. On further consideration I thought I’d better not. I suppose I’m rather sensitive to ridicule and—well, you know what a bally fool I’d have looked if I’d waked the whole house up on a dud burglar scare. They’d have ragged the life out of me for weeks. I turned in and, forgetting all about the business, fell asleep again.”
“You heard no further sounds in the house itself?”
“Oh, yes; I’m forgetting to tell you that before I actually fell asleep again I heard Sutton moving about in his room.”
“But Fanshaugh’s and Winter’s rooms separated your bedroom from Armadale’s,” commented Vereker, looking disconcertingly into Degerdon’s eyes. “You couldn’t possibly know that it was Sutton who was moving about.”
“Yes, I know that,” replied Degerdon, smiling, “but I reached the conclusion that it was Sutton after I had learned what had happened next morning. At the moment, of course, I couldn’t say who it was, though I was fairly certain that it wasn’t ‘Fruity,’ who was separated from me by only one wall.”
“I see,” said Vereker dubiously. “You were wakened by Ralli, I believe.”
“Yes. I thought for a moment I was at home and didn’t jump to things very quickly. But when I heard my pyjama jacket tear, I thought it was time to sit up and ask questions.”
The Polo Ground Mystery Page 13