The Incredible Crime

by Lois Austen-Leigh

  “Why not? I am blowed if I see why I shouldn’t come up the creek; I should love to do it, and get into the cellars. I never heard of anything so alluring.”

  Prudence laughed. “Yes, that’s how they smuggled in old days, but only shallow draught boats can get up, and only at high tide, then the channel can only be found by marks on the shore and I fancy only Ben and one or two of the keepers can do it. It’s a remnant of the old days when Wellende was fortified. There was one track over the marshes which has now been made into the drive, and by water it could only be reached at high tide, and then only one or two knew the way, so it was fairly impregnable!”

  “By Jove, yes, and now if not impregnable it must be pretty lonely.”

  “Yes, the marshes have ceased to be swamps. They are now some of the best grazing land in England, but the creek still fills at high tide, and still only one or two can follow its windings through the half-mile of mud, when it’s all covered with water,” said Prudence dreamily.

  “It must feel rather uncanny having that water under the house, and rather damp, I should think,” said Thomas.

  “Oh,” replied Prudence, “the walls are so thick I don’t believe it’s damp, but uncanny I should just think it can be. The place is haunted, of course, but considering all the queer noises that come whenever there’s a wind, and there generally is, it doesn’t much matter whether it’s haunted or not. You can imagine you can hear anything. I’ve heard footsteps and doors banging and creaking, and I know it’s all the wind really, but it might be anything you liked!”

  “Now what exactly do you mean, do you believe it’s haunted or do you not?”

  “Yes,” said Prudence slowly, “I do believe it may be haunted, no one but a fool can brush the possibility of all that sort of thing aside, but what I mean is, the sounds heard may be the murdered Temple walking, or may only be the winds.”

  “What’s the actual story of the ghost?”

  “Oh, that’s clear enough—they’ve got an account written of it soon after it happened—one of the Temples was suspected of having ‘trafficked with witches and magicians,’ and one fine morning he was found in the water under the house with his throat ‘cutted with a knife.’ It’s not known whether it was suicide or whether, as I think the paper goes on to state, the witches and magicians did it for him, anyhow he walks along a certain passage downstairs.”

  They drove on for some way in silence, each engaged with their own thoughts. Then Thomas said, “Isn’t Temple a near relation of Lord Wellende?”

  “He’s a cousin, but their fathers quarrelled and he never goes there. I don’t know what it was all about, but they would have nothing in common. Ben is all for sport, and I have heard Professor Temple describe him as a fool,” said Miss Pinsent, in extreme displeasure.

  “Is he?” said Thomas blandly.

  “Not at all,” replied Prudence, “he’s not what you would call brainy, he’s just a simple gentleman with entirely country tastes and pursuits.”

  “Well, that sounds all right,” replied Professor Skipwith. “I like ’em that way myself, especially during the vac., and I am coming to Wellende as soon as possible.”

  They paused for a moment in Bridge Street, held up by the traffic on the bridge. “Why there,” said Prudence, “actually is a small barge—now I wonder if that is on its way to the Wash?”

  Chapter III

  It was Sunday evening in the Combination Room of Prince’s College. Most of the Fellows and members of the High Table dined in Hall on Sunday evening, and if the company was good that evening, the setting was even better. Men with brains and ability can be found all over the world, moreover there are always others coming on to fill their places, but such Jacobean rooms as this are not to be found all over the world, nor are they to be reproduced. The ceiling was finely moulded, and the walls panelled with oak, stained and darkened by the passing years. The dominant colour of the room was dark red or red-brown, the carpet was one or the other, the drawn curtains dark red, and two generous fires at each end of the room lit up the ruby tints of the decanters of port on the table and the splash of scarlet of a doctor’s hood someone had thrown down on a chair. The Master, with his gaitered legs crossed, was reclining in a comfortable arm-chair discussing a point of doctrine with the Dean. Professor Temple, who had been fidgeting round the room, finally let himself down into another chair with a sigh. His hair was too long, he had whiskers, and one or two front teeth were missing; moreover he was imperfectly shaved; he had, in addition, a generally unwashed appearance which was probably not merited but due to a naturally dark complexion. It was commonly believed outside his own college that he always took snuff in the Combination Room, but if true, he was certainly not doing so to-night.

  “The influence of Teutonic thought,” said the Master slowly and ponderously, “on the doctrine of the Incarnation—” Professor Temple sighed audibly—“on the doctrine of the Incarnation,” continued the Master imperturbably, “is deleterious only so far as—”

  Professor Temple sighed again, more audibly. The Master regarded him blandly, “My dear Temple, what is the matter?”

  “Look here, Master, how would you like it if I was to discuss the influence of certain poisons on your intestines?”

  The Master flinched slightly at the last word, but replied energetically: “Poisonous? No, my dear Temple, the influence of Teutonic thought cannot be described as poisonous at all; indeed, it is only deleterious so far as—” But the end of his sentence was again drowned by the groans of the scientific professor. “Well, well,” said the Master, with admirable self-restraint and good temper, “perhaps, Mr. Dean, our friend here is right and we should not discuss our special subjects in the Combination Room.”

  “I particularly wanted to hear your views on that subject, Master,” replied the Dean, giving the Professor an old-fashioned look, “as I have to read a paper on it at the end of term.”

  “Come back to the Lodge with me later on this evening.”

  But even though he had gained his point, the Professor still remained surly. Indeed the good temper and manners of Bishop Pinsent seemed to act as an irritant. Presently a young Fellow of a neighbouring college, Brown, who worked with Professor Temple and was present that night partly to create a diversion and partly to get a rise out of the Professor, said: “I’ve just made an interesting discovery. Sir, I find I have the honour of being related to you.”

  Professor Temple regarded him with an expression of extreme distaste.

  “My mother tells me she is descended from Roger Temple, who was one of Marlborough’s generals.” The expression of distaste on the Professor’s face deepened into positive disgust.

  “General Temple,” he said, “had only one child, a daughter, and she was a congenital idiot, which lends a certain degree of probability to your statement, but,” went on the Professor, raising his voice slightly to drown the expostulations some of his audience looked like making, “since she died before she was of marriageable age—I have the honour to inform you that you are a damned liar,” and he replaced the cigar he was smoking.

  Brown put his head back and shouted with laughter, and indeed was so whole-heartedly amused at his own discomfiture that even the Professor’s ill-humour was not proof against it, and he took his cigar out of his mouth and grinned at the young man he had recently been so rude to. But this was too much for the Bishop. He turned to the Professor in real indignation:

  “You go too far, sir, you go too far—the occasion merits no such violent and uncontrolled outburst on your part.”

  “I apologize unreservedly, Master, for swearing in your presence; the only excuse I can offer is serious provocation. Just as you as a Christian really hate sin—so I as a scientist hate inaccuracy. Brown’s inaccurate statement roused my righteous wrath.”

  “That may somewhat mitigate your offence, but does not altogether excuse it. Your h
atred of inaccuracy is right and good, but the personal terms in which you elected to express your hatred I cannot condone.”

  The Professor, whose good humour seemed to be thoroughly restored by the breeze, again made some sort of apology, and peace was restored. The incident had really disturbed no one so much as the Master; they were all used to Temple’s odd ways and temper, though all silently agreed that language of that sort should not have been used in the Master’s presence. Presently, as the Master and Dean got up to go, Temple looked up and said hesitatingly to the former: “Er—I hope—er—that Miss Pinsent keeps well.”

  ‘That,” said the Master to the Dean as they walked across the court from the Combination Room to the Lodge, “is the only consistent effort at good manners that I can call to mind that Temple is guilty of: he regularly and perfunctorily inquires after my daughter, and indeed I would say he seems to listen to the reply.”

  “He is an odd fellow,” said the Dean, “and, of course, I know we must make allowances for that type of mind, and a really great intellect. But I thought he went altogether too far tonight.”

  The Bishop didn’t speak for a moment, and then he said: “I have known that man since he was a boy—we are, indeed, as perhaps you are aware, somehow connected—and I can tell you, in spite of what he is now, he commands my sincerest respect for the control he has of his temper.”

  Meanwhile the Senior Proctor had joined the company in the Combination Room—a tall, dark man, in a rustling silk gown and bands. He threw his gown on a chair and joined the company round the other fire, among whom were Professor Skipwith and Maryon, whose wife we have already met playing bridge. Maryon was a small, clean-shaven man with a nervous face, tanned permanently by hotter suns than ever shone on the British Isles, and he was physically as tough as the bit of leather he resembled. At the approach of the Senior Proctor he looked up eagerly as if to speak, and then seemingly changed his mind and pulled thoughtfully at his pipe. Finally he said: “Find the job of Senior Proctor very worrying?”

  “No, I am fairly well used to it by now—it doesn’t worry me.”

  “That means though, I suppose, that there’s no serious trouble on,” said Maryon equably.

  “Yes, I think you may take it it does,” laughed the Proctor. “If you think I am worrying about silly letters to The Times from irresponsible idiots about the Proctors keeping order in London on Boat Race night, I can ease your mind of that!”

  There was a general laugh.

  “No,” said Maryon, “I hadn’t got that in my mind—but tell me now, if a senior member of the University got into trouble with the police, it wouldn’t come to you, I suppose?”

  “I should think it would come straight to the senior member himself; but what on earth are you driving at?”

  “Well, I’ll risk your all laughing at me, and I will tell you a story.”

  “Hold hard a moment,” said someone, “while I fetch my drink; I must listen to this.”

  “You know,” went on Maryon, “that I had a small job in the Intelligence during the war. Well…” His company were all listening with real interest now, and certainly no signs of laughing at him; it was generally thought that Maryon’s job in the Intelligence had not been quite so small as he liked people to think, largely because he never could be got to talk about it. His lean brown face had a tense look.

  “Well, you all are probably rather vaguely aware that our Secret Service was better than anyone else’s, and that’s come rather from what has not been said than from what has been. But no one who doesn’t actually know the facts has any idea of the bravery, ability, and intelligence displayed by that Service. I was only adopted into it temporarily,” he added, “not really one of them. But there was one man who was the king of them all; there are fables and legends round him, and I don’t even know his name—as far as I was concerned he was No. 4. That man ought to have a row of Victoria Crosses; they wanted to knight him at one time, but they couldn’t. He’s the most daring and yet the most absolutely level-headed chap imaginable. He’s only used on the most serious cases, and he had a diabolical faculty of getting into the mind of his opponent. I lived with him once for two days and nights, believing he was a fool of a boy of twenty-five, and never discovered my mistake at all, and he’s a man of fifty or more, and when I once saw him for a few minutes with the face his Maker gave him, I took particular note of it. Yesterday I saw that face again, coming away from the rugger match…there’s mischief up, or that man wouldn’t be in Cambridge.”

  No one laughed, then Skipwith, from the depths of his comfortable chair, said: “What is there against his being up here in a private capacity? It seems to me the most reasonable explanation.”

  “Yes, it would be, except for this. He was looking at me when I first saw him, and I was so surprised I certainly showed in my face that I recognized him. His expression didn’t change when he must have first realized that I knew him, he’s far too wary a bird for that, but he just looked straight through me; he didn’t want me to know him.”

  “Yes,” said the Senior Proctor, “it’s just that first look that tells so much; I always know if I come suddenly on an undergraduate walking with a girl, by the first look on his face when he sees me, whether she’s a girl he ought to be with or not.”

  “I suppose this No. 4 knows you by sight quite well?” asked Skipwith.

  “You bet he does,” said Maryon. “I wouldn’t like to say what he doesn’t know, but, anyhow, if a fellow looked at you with the eager interest I must have done, you wouldn’t look through him in that way without a good reason, even if you didn’t know him.”

  “No,” said the Proctor, “I am inclined to agree with you, he knew you, and didn’t want you to know him, which certainly has the air of his being on business.”

  “The sight of his face calls up memories that I had hoped were buried, and makes me feel uneasy. The source of the trouble he’s hunting may quite likely be in Timbuctoo, and only a tentacle here; but the sight of him makes me somehow uneasy.” A coal dropped in the grate, and a spurt of flame lit up the serious faces of the men sitting round. Nearly all of them had grim memories of the War, and their thoughts went back for a time.

  “Why didn’t you speak to him after all?” asked someone else.

  “I had forgotten my old training,” laughed Maryon, “and was too surprised by the whole thing, and then the opportunity was gone, and when I came to think of it, I don’t even know his name! And it would have been rather like a private insisting on speaking to Haig because he recognized him!” And then, after a pause: “It was hard luck on him that I should recognize him—I happen to have a knack of remembering faces.”

  “When you lived with him for two days, and he was disguised, were you disguised, too?” asked Skipwith.

  “Yes, and I never saw through him, and he saw through me in twenty-four hours—blast him!” with a laugh.

  The flickering firelight made the shadows dance about the magnificent old room through a haze of smoke. No one spoke for some time, then the harsh voice of Professor Temple, who had drawn near unnoticed, broke the silence.

  “There was some trouble that had its origin in the East, I fancy, that culminated at a certain house in London; had you anything to do with that?”

  Maryon thought for a moment. “Grosvenor Square…in the winter?” he said.

  “Yes, when the Commander-in-Chief did not go.”

  “How do you know anything about it?” asked Maryon sharply. The Professor gave a grim chuckle.

  “I was called in to perform the autopsy on the body of the man that did go.”

  “And found that he had died of morphine,” stated Maryon.

  “Yes,” said Temple, “and self-injected.”

  “Then you will be glad to hear that No. 4 shot both Wolf and Stein; I saw him do it.”

  The Professor grunted. “I should like to meet that
man.”

  “If I have to listen to many more of your stories, I shan’t sleep to-night,” said Skipwith cheerfully. “Your ‘face’ is on a holiday, Maryon—that’s all.”

  Chapter IV

  It was on a bright, fine autumn morning that Miss Prudence Pinsent prepared to leave Cambridge for a few days’ hunting with her cousin in Suffolk. The morning seemed the brighter, and her sense of well-being even greater than usual, in consequence of her father having just told her that he intended to increase her allowance considerably, owing to the legacy just left him by an old cousin. Indeed, it would have been hard for Prudence to have felt more prosperous than she looked. Her leather coat with fur collar covered tweeds, not new, but of unmistakably good cut, and the nickel finish on her Standard saloon twinkled and sparkled in the sunlight. The knowledge that, packed up in her luggage at the back, was a brand new pair of patent leather top-boots, added to the general placidity of her mind. Down Jesus Lane and through Barnwell, Prudence drove slowly and carefully, until with slightly increasing speed she shot out into the grand open rolling country along the Newmarket road. A fine autumn morning, and is there any more perfect time for going through this country? Away to the left the ground rises slightly for the Isle of Ely, and farther still, on the horizon, lies the massive pile of the Cathedral. To the right is the flat country of Fulbourne Fen, and over the ploughed fields the plovers were calling. Just before entering Newmarket the road cuts through that tremendous prehistoric earthwork known as the Devil’s Dyke, and then in a few minutes she was slowing down for the little town of Newmarket. Ever since the days of James I Newmarket has been, perhaps, the most famous centre of horse-racing in the world. Surrounded on all sides as it is with heaths, a more suitable spot could hardly be imagined.