The Incredible Crime

by Lois Austen-Leigh

  “Yes,” said Studde without smiling, “if it wasn’t that I’ve known your father all my life, and would stake my all on his integrity, he would be an object of my deepest suspicion. A bishop and Head of his College—why, it’s the ideal setting; but,” with a sigh, “it’s no good; we must look elsewhere. Isn’t there a Professor of Greek and Latin?”

  “Yes, there are professors of both—and, now I come to think of it, they may both be open to suspicion, for I know nothing on earth against either. They are fathers of large families, and I seem to remember the horrid fact that one of them is a churchwarden and takes the bag round.”

  “Give me his name,” said Studde unsmilingly, as he produced pencil and paper from his pocket. “And isn’t there,” he went on, “such a thing as a Professor of Ancient History?”

  “Yes, but I don’t fancy he will be much good to you; his golf handicap is plus two.”

  “Bless my soul, he must be a likely lad; what age is he?”

  “I am sure I don’t know; about forty, I suppose.”

  “Dear me!” said Studde, “I thought all professors were about seventy.”

  “Really, Harry,” said Prudence crossly, “your ignorance is abysmal.”

  Studde was quite alive to the fact that the beautiful Miss Pinsent had quite ceased to be amused, and possibly even interested, in what he was saying, and that her sarcasm was becoming bitter; but he still pursued his inquiries undisturbed.

  “Divinity, now,” he said pleasantly; “that should be a likely covert to draw.”

  “Yes,” said Prudence, “and what I can tell you about the Professor of Divinity is as bad as you can want; to begin with, he is a poet of some distinction.”

  “That’s bad,” said Studde; “his name?”

  Prudence supplied it and then went on: “He has written exhaustively on various doctrines, and was at one time private chaplain to an Archbishop of Canterbury. I should think that pretty well damns him, doesn’t it?”

  Studde didn’t answer; he shut his pocket-book and put it away; for a little while silence reigned. Prudence had forgotten she still had half her journey in front of her, and time was getting on; she could not get over the shock she had felt when the possibility of Thomas’s being the distributing centre had occurred to her. For a year or more now, she remembered, Susan had referred to this mysterious little separate account which Thomas kept at another bank and did not allow her to interfere with; but it was a disgusting idea, even to play at suspecting him; she was thankful Harry had said nothing about scientific professors. She might ask him how long this business was supposed to have been going on, without arousing any suspicion, though. She put the question:

  “Oh, a year or so for certain—very likely longer,” said Studde.

  Well, that didn’t get her much farther; it just left it where it was, a possibility still. The silence continued for some time, and then Studde spoke again.

  “I’ve another piece of information for you,” said he, “but this time I don’t think it will be a shock—it will rather entertain you. There’s something going on at Wellende that’s wrong. I have a pretty shrewd suspicion that Lord Wellende’s people are smuggling, and taking advantage of their position as his people to do it, and to do a thing like that is doing the dirty on their master, who has the reputation of being one of the best. I suppose you realize it, Prue, but you know that chap’s as near feudal as anyone can be nowadays. It comes, I suppose, from his family having lived in the same spot for so long. Of course I don’t mean to suggest for a moment that it has anything to do with this drug—far from it; it’s his keeper who is up to something foolish, and that drug doesn’t pass through the hands of humble people, you may take your oath on that. It’s the keeper and one of the woodmen I’ve my eye on, but haven’t been able to fix anything to them yet.”

  “This is rather interesting,” said Prudence. “There’s something about decent smuggling which is extraordinarily attractive. I have smuggled myself and, at the bottom, one’s heart is really with the smuggler; besides which I know Woodcock, the keeper, well, and if he is doing a bit on his own he has all my sympathy.”

  “Yes,” said Studde diplomatically, “what you say is very true; one has great sympathy with anyone who can ‘do’ either the customs or the inland revenue. Why, I’ve smuggled myself; I once brought in thousands of cigars; hid them between the lining of the funnel and the funnel; told the first engineer that if the customs man so much as looked at the funnel, he was to light the fires at once, so I knew I couldn’t be caught; at the worst I could only lose all my cigars, but I didn’t—I got away with the lot!”

  “And now you want to catch poor Woodcock,” said Prudence.

  “Yes, I do. Your friend Woodcock isn’t doing it once. I’m afraid he’s making a practice of it, and that can’t be allowed; and anyhow, I am in my present job in order to catch him and his like.”

  “Well,” said Prudence, “I will mention it to Ben, if that is what you want me to do—though really—”

  “Not on your life,” said Studde, interrupting. “Remember, all that we have been talking of is only between ourselves; you promised me that.”

  “But then, what do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing but just keep your eyes open, and if you did see anything you considered of interest, tell me. To tell Lord Wellende would be a great mistake; either he would simply be angry at the idea of his keeper being suspected, or else if he believed it he would unconsciously put the man on his guard. No, nothing must be said, but you just keep your eyes open.”

  “Really, Harry, you have added quite a new zest to life. I shall go off to Wellende full of interest.”

  “Yes, but for God’s sake remember to say nothing about all I have told you; if for no better reason, remember if you talk you will ruin me. I am trusting you very far, Prue.”

  Prue’s face clouded over. “I am not likely to talk about the other. As to Woodcock, he’s been in Ben’s service over forty years himself, and his father before him.”

  “Yes,” said Studde, “that’s what contributes to making your cousin so feudal. Not only have dozens of his people been in service with his family for years themselves, but so many of their fathers were before them, and he owns most of the county. I have never been to the Hall myself, but there are legends that it has enormous cellars, that were used in the good old days for what we have been discussing the whole afternoon, when the Temples were in the business themselves!”

  “There are,” replied Prudence. “I shall never forget the fearful joy of exploring those cellars when we were children. There’s a canal comes right up under the house; it’s a fascinating place.”

  “It’s a fascinating old family, too,” said Studde. “You know Wellende has very special and peculiar rights all along the foreshore; unlike anyone else that I have ever heard of, for instance, he owns into the sea as far as he can ride his war-horse and throw a spear.”

  “Yes, I remember hearing that,” replied Prudence, “and they still have the deed in which the elder brother gave the younger brother the Manor of Wellende in the reign of William II, and dear old Ben himself is as reactionary at bottom as he can be. It transpired the other day he still wore an old-fashioned night-shirt instead of pyjamas, and when I asked him why, he replied quite seriously, ‘Of course I do, my father always did.’ And there,” said Prudence, laughing, “you have the 27th Lord Wellende in a nutshell.”

  “Yes,” said Studde; “glorious home, a great name, fine traditions, and, as far as I have come up against him, loved by all his people; it would be an awful tragedy if a fellow like that came a cropper…”

  “I know no one less likely to come a cropper than he is,” said Prudence brightly, “so cheer up.”

  Chapter VI

  By the time Prudence had got to thinking about her journey again, the short November day was so far gone that she decided t
o send a wire to say she had been delayed on her journey, and to spend the night at Ipswich.

  Studde, who was due to hold a night drill at a place on the coast not so very far off, stayed and had tea with her and then went away. As he buttoned up his coat and stepped out into the cold night air, he chuckled to himself, “Well,” he thought, “I may be an old fool that hasn’t had a classical education, but I’m not quite a lunatic yet. It was fright that made my beautiful Prudence suddenly begin to swear”—the daughter of a bishop, he thought helplessly again, the daughter of a bishop—“because someone she knew at Cambridge could put the cap on, and not annoyance at having been deceived, as she would have me believe; and I have left her quite successfully under the impression that the keeper is in the business without his lordship’s knowledge, whereas—”

  It was just as well that there was little traffic in the streets of Ipswich that night, and none at all along the country lanes that Captain Studde pursued, for his thoughts were far from his driving.

  For a couple of hours he drove slowly, steadily, and entirely mechanically, along twisting, curling, sandy Suffolk lanes. There wasn’t much along the roads, very occasionally a farm-cart, with no lights at all, a little more often a bicycle, sometimes carrying a weak headlight, more often none at all. The few pedestrians kept well to one side, as he came along. His thoughts were far away. The son himself, as has been said, of a landowner, he sympathized thoroughly with that much abused class, and realized how hardly they had been treated by present legislation. He appreciated the fine distinction between the man who inherits property from the father who has bought it, and treats his property like a business in consequence; and the man whose forbears have owned land for generations, to whom tradition is as binding as ownership, and who allows the people on the estate privileges as though they were rights. Before his mind’s eye rose the glorious old red-brick pile of Wellende Old Hall, and all it stood for.

  The home for seven hundred years of one family in unbroken male descent, who had consistently done their duty by and cared for their own people. Why, it was said the Wellende of the day had been one of the barons who met King John at Bury St. Edmunds in 1214 and forced on him the Charter of Henry I, and, far more remarkable, a Temple had been with Kett in his rebellion. When the poor had been up in arms against the aggression of the rich, a Temple had been on the side of the poor, and justice; and so down to the present peer. Studde remembered a few years ago when he had been putting up in a humble country inn, and the company over their beer were discussing the farming prospects locally—the price of labour, and the prospects of sugar-beet; when one old fellow, who had hitherto inclined to a general pessimism, said ponderously, “There’s one thing, his lordship,…his lordship won’t never raise the rent, not on any tenant left him by his old dad,” and there had been a murmur of assent; and even if Wellende had never made any such statement, which Studde doubted, the fact that it was believed of him spoke volumes. And this, this was the man he was forced against all his instincts to believe was trafficking in this infernal drug. It’s true he was said to be hard up, and with a place like that to keep in your family it was a very strong incentive to make money, but no…not like that.

  Decent smuggling Studde would have had plenty of sympathy with. If he had really thought the keeper was doing a bit on his own—with spirits or silk, as he had led Prudence to believe—that would have been a very different matter, but he didn’t think it for a moment. Whatever the keeper was doing, Wellende knew all about it, though the keeper himself almost certainly would not. Then also—beastly thought—there were more hunters in the stables at Wellende than there had been for years; the hounds had more spent on them, and were doing uncommonly well that season. Non-hunting man as he was himself, Studde yet had good blood in him—and there was something that responded to the music of a hound’s first whimper on the line and the wild joy of the sudden discordant screech of “gone away.”

  At this point his thoughts were abruptly brought back to the business in hand by a gust of strong wind cutting across the car; the road had taken an abrupt bend and for a mile and a half ran across the marshes to the sea. A wide, bare, bleak bank of shingle lay between the marsh and the sea, and on it a single look-out tower and a row of cottages, huddled together, and round them the wind howled. A more desolate spot would be hard to find; the shingle bank was just above the level of the sea on one side, and the marshes on the other, and got no protection anywhere. A little to the north of where the cottages stood a wide tidal river slid quietly and unobtrusively into the sea. Studde drove his car to the back of the cottages, where a little protection was to be got, and was met there by his next in command.

  “Everything ready for the drill, Catchpole?”

  “Yes, sir; but I just wanted a word with you. There’s a barge standing in for the mouth of the river; it’s too dark to see who she is, but she hasn’t signalled for a pilot, and she is coming in on her own. That means it’s a man that knows his way very well, in the dark, and the bar always shifting; if she waited for an hour she could come in with the tide, but she isn’t going to, that’s evident, sir.” Then he added more hesitatingly, with his eye on his superior officer, “It’s a risky job coming in against the ebb with the wind the way it is (though I dare say she’ll do it), rather than wait an hour and come in on the flow.” His eyes searched Captain Studde with a questioning look as he spoke.

  “Yes, it will take a good local man to do it,” the other replied slowly.

  “It will, sir, and it’s someone who is in a hurry, and I should say someone who don’t want too much notice taken of him.”

  “Yes,” said Studde, “you’re right; and mind you, this isn’t our usual date for the drill; they might have calculated on there being no one about to-night.”

  “I was thinking that, too, sir.”

  After a long pause, in which Captain Studde stood with his hands in his pockets gazing out to sea: “Well, we’ll risk it, Catchpole. After all, if she’s innocent no harm’s done. We’re a bit early yet for the drill; tell them to wait till I come back, and you come with me; I don’t want anyone else.”

  The two men walked together across the shingle to the river, and together they shoved a light dinghy down the bank into the water. The tide was racing out, swirling and rippling and gurgling along the banks; a few hundred yards away was the mouth. A bar of shingle showed up in places, and through the one safe channel a huge barge could be seen, slowly making way against the tide. There were a few moments to wait.

  “The Collector at Ipswich told me he had had the barges coming up the river all searched, through the summer,” said Studde.

  “Yes, sir, there was a couple of the water-guards here off and on, but the man who boarded his lordship’s barge was a local man; and I am not saying anything against the man, mind you, but he comes of a family which has been here hundreds of years, been smugglers themselves, too, and though I am not saying anything, ’is lordship is ’is lordship to such as ’im, and I’m not saying I shouldn’t feel it myself.”

  Studde laughed outright. “Well, Catchpole, I’ll do the searching of the barge, under the circumstances, and not leave it even to you!”

  The coast-guard’s men waited for the right moment; then, pushing out, were taken by the tide to the barge, which they hailed. Catchpole caught hold of the side, which was only moving slowly against the tide. A nautical face, decorated with grey whiskers, came to the side and asked him in nautical language what he meant by it.

  “Coast-guards,” said Catchpole.

  “You may be coast-guards,” said the nautical face, “but you ain’t customs, and what the something something ’ave yer to do with me? I don’t want a face like yours aboard my boat,” and then catching sight, or rather realizing that the second figure in the boat was a superior officer, he suddenly changed his manner. “I beg your pardon, sir, but I don’t expect to be boarded by the coast-guards.”


  “Here,” said Captain Studde, “take our painter and make us fast; I am coming to talk to you.”

  The skipper of the barge, recognizing the peremptory tone of authority, slowly and unwillingly did as he was bid, and Captain Studde got on to the barge.

  “What is this barge?” he said to the man.

  The skipper did not reply for a moment, than he said, “I didn’t know when I spoke to your man as the Inspector was aboard, sir, or I’d have spoken more civil. My owner is on board; might I just go and speak to him?”

  Captain Studde, somewhat surprised, nevertheless agreed, and waited while the old man went down to the cabin. After a few moments he came back and invited Captain Studde very civilly to come down. This was indeed an unusual procedure; owners of barges did not generally sail on them—or if they did do so, sailed as skipper; however, even though smuggling might still be going on, the days when Inspectors of coast-guards could be trapped and murdered were certainly over, so he followed the old man down to the cabin in some curiosity; and if he was expecting to get a surprise he was not disappointed, for there, sitting beside an evil-smelling paraffin lamp, was a large, loose-limbed man with a fair moustache—Lord Wellende.

  Chapter VII

  Captain Studde stopped dead with surprise; whatever he had been expecting, it was not this. Why, he thought angrily, did Lord Wellende risk being caught on his barge if she was smuggling? Why, if the barge was innocent, were appearances all against her? And how odious became his duty in circumstances like these. Was this the way, he thought grimly, that the local man in the water-guard had been got round? His thoughts were interrupted by a courteous voice, speaking with a slight drawl.

  “Captain Studde, I believe,” said Lord Wellende. “I have heard of you, of course, though I don’t think I have yet had the pleasure of meeting you,” and he held out his hand. Studde took it. There was something about the man—his dignity—a quiet air of self-forgetfulness—of simplicity; you would have taken his hand if it had been offered you, with all the evidence in the world against him.