Crystal Beads Murder

by Annie Haynes

  Harbord drummed his fingers upon the wooden mantelpiece.

  “It is a thousand pities Mayer did not take Lord Medchester into his confidence. What did he mean when he said something was ‘hid’?”

  “A thousand pities he did not ring us up from the police station instead of going to the Hall at all,” the inspector agreed dryly.

  When Harbord spoke next it was hesitatingly and without looking at the inspector:

  “At any rate, somebody must have known well enough what the superintendent had discovered.” The inspector knocked the ashes from his cigarette.

  “You mean Who?”

  “His murderer.”

  The inspector nodded. “That seems likely. The superintendent might have been shot to prevent him stumbling on the truth as his assailant thought.”

  “I see! But the two things are pretty much the same, aren’t they, sir?”

  “Well, I have gone through Mayer’s movements yesterday morning pretty thoroughly. First thing after he had had his letters he had to make arrangements for an inquest at Twistleton – old chap who had tumbled down dead in the street, presumably of heart disease. After that he had to go through a report from Sergeant Thompson of Bastow. Then he appears to have looked over his accounts, which took him some time, he having had, as his wife said, no head for figures. Followed an interview with Constable Jones, in which he appears to have given no faintest hint of any discovery in connexion with Saunderson’s murder. As a conclusion he went his usual round, which seems to have taken him pretty nearly all over the village. He posted some letters, but I can’t make out that he stopped to speak to anybody. Several folks, with that desire to be in the know which distinguishes so large a portion of the British public, say that he passed the time of day with them, but nothing more seems to have been said until he reached his old crony, Mrs. Yates, at the lodge. Then he was, as we have heard, excited, and throwing out hints as to his discovery which would lead to the solving of the mystery of Robert Saunderson’s death and his own consequent promotion. Therefore, as far as we can judge, the discovery must have been made between his leaving the police station and reaching the front lodge, though it seems impossible to find out at present when or how it was made.”

  “Is it certain there was nothing in his letters?” The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing is certain, but Constable Jones swears only five letters arrived, and all those five are on his desk in the office. Purely official, all of them.”

  “It seems pretty much of a deadlock,” Harbord said thoughtfully. “But –”

  The inspector looked at him. “Speak out, Alfred.”

  “Well, as far as we have got,” Harbord went on diffidently, “only three people had conversations of any length with the superintendent. One of those three, it seems to me, must know more than they have said.”

  “Those three being?” the inspector interrogated.

  Harbord looked away, right through the open window, to where, through the trees, it was possible to catch a glimpse of Holford Hall.

  “Well, there’s Constable Jones and Mrs. Yates at the lodge and – Lord Medchester. If all these three would speak out I think from one of them we should get a hint of the truth.”

  The inspector raised his eyebrows. “Especially the last, eh, Alfred?”

  “And the first,” Harbord said slowly. “We have only his account of his interview with the superintendent, you know, sir. And he was pretty much on the spot when Saunderson died.”

  “He was,” the inspector assented. “Oh, I have had my eye on Constable Jones, but I have gone through him pretty well with a tooth-comb and I don’t think he had anything to do with shooting Saunderson. Besides, where’s his motive? There were plenty of men, and women too, with first-class motives for doing Saunderson in, but Constable Jones wasn’t one of them. As for Mrs. Yates, I haven’t quite made up my mind about her. Remains the last of your three – Lord Medchester. What he knows he won’t say, and how much he knows it isn’t easy to find out – and he may know nothing. As you remarked about Constable Jones just now, we have only his account of what took place yesterday morning between Superintendent Mayer and himself. The same thing applies to Mrs. Yates and Lord Medchester. But one thing is clear: whatever the superintendent discovered was after he left the police station, or he would have rung me up instead of coming to the Hall.”

  “Yes, one sees that,” Harbord agreed. “But he doesn’t seem to have done anything but his usual trot round, and if there was nothing in his letters how the dickens did he find out anything about Saunderson’s murder? Mrs. Mayer says he gave her not the slightest hint of any discovery before he went out.”

  “No; whatever he found out, he found out after that, I am convinced.” The inspector glanced curiously at Harbord. “Didn’t it strike you – but I am sure it did – that there was something rather significant about the superintendent’s last words? – ‘Someone called me.’ Who called him?”

  Harbord met the inspector’s eye. “It makes one think, sir. We know who Mayer had just left, but –”

  “Exactly! But if he was called back with some ulterior motive by the person to whom he had been talking – and we know who that was – the question that presents itself to my mind is, why was he allowed to leave that person at all? And we can verify that person’s alibi through Mr. Maurice Stainer.”

  Harbord looked right away from his superior now. “As I see matters, it might have been done to establish a sort of alibi, to show that Mayer had got out of the Hall and off the immediate premises before he was shot.”

  The inspector considered a minute. “It might have been so, but I think the odds are against it. It was a pretty dangerous thing to do anyhow, and he’d have had to be pretty nippy about it. And whatever Mayer had found out about Saunderson’s murderer it must have been fairly conclusive, or a second murder wouldn’t have been risked.’’

  “‘Called me,’ the poor old chap said,” Harbord went on, taking up an ornament from the mantelpiece and twisting it about as he spoke. “Has it struck you, sir, that the distance from the bridge where he was last seen by Lord Medchester to the spot where Mayer was found isn’t great?”

  “H’m, yes!’’ The inspector nodded. “But Lord Medchester says he watched him from the house, and the bridge is a long way from the house.”

  “Nobody came through the lodge gate after the superintendent went up, according to Mrs. Yates,” Harbord said thoughtfully, “so that the murderer must have been in the park or in the gardens.”

  The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Not necessarily; the park is quite accessible in several places. I shouldn’t imagine that the murderer would walk up to the front entrance and ring the bell; he could come in across the Home Farm, go round by the small gate on the edge of the wood, and up the rosery way, as Saunderson did on the night he was murdered. Or he might have come by the gamekeeper’s cottage, through the old quarry, and across the pinewood to the park.”

  “I wonder,” Harbord said thoughtfully. “I wonder; the trainer Burford was up here yesterday you see, sir.”

  “Michael Burford, h’m!” The inspector wrinkled his brow. “I have made a few tentative inquiries and I can’t make out any harm about him. I will have him looked up, though. I was certain at the time of Saunderson’s death that Mrs. Burford knew more than she said, and her brother – Lord Gorth, as he is now – was a young rotter, if ever I saw one. I shouldn’t think he had the pluck to commit one murder, let alone two. Still, he was in with Saunderson, and a bully like Saunderson goes too far sometimes, and even a weakling like Gorth can turn.”

  “The proverbial worm,” Harbord assented.

  “But I think myself –”

  Just as the last word left his lips there was a tap at the door, and the landlady put her head in.

  “There’s a lady to see you, sir.”

  “A lady!” The inspector looked at her.

  “Who is it, Mrs. Marlow; anybody you know?” Mrs. Marlow shook her head. “No
. She’s a stranger to these parts, I should say, sir. But she tells me her name is Saunderson – Mrs. Robert Saunderson.” The landlady lowered her voice as she spoke the name.

  “Mrs. Robert Saunderson!” the inspector repeated. “Show her up at once, please, Mrs. Marlow.”

  When the landlady had departed he looked across at Harbord. “This is an unexpected development, Alfred. And yet I don’t know that I am altogether surprised. Robert Saunderson was the kind of man who might have had a dozen Mrs. Saundersons hanging round. I wonder where this one has sprung from?”

  They had not long to wait. The landlady reappeared, ushering in a tall, showily-dressed woman, quite evidently not in her first youth. She looked from one to the other of the two detectives with a smile that showed two rows of expensive teeth.

  “Which of you two gentlemen is in charge of the Saunderson case?”

  Harbord drew back. Stoddart moved forward and pulled out a chair for her.

  “I am. Mr. Harbord here is my most trusted assistant. Mrs. Robert Saunderson, is it? Not related to –?”

  “The Robert Saunderson that was murdered in the park here,” the lady finished. “Only his wife, and wives don’t count for much nowadays – never did in Saunderson’s eyes.”

  “But,” the inspector hesitated, “we have so far had no knowledge that Mr. Robert Saunderson was married.”

  “I dare say not,” the lady returned. “He knew he had a better time if he passed as a bachelor – a rich bachelor. But we were married right enough in the Register Office up at Marylebone, a good five and twenty years ago and more. We had a nice home in Bayswater for a bit, then the dibs grew scarce and Bob ran off to the Argentine, and I went back to the stage.”

  “The stage! Why, of course!” the inspector resumed. “You are –”

  “Tottie Delauney of the Frivolity,” the lady finished for him. “I dare say you have seen me, inspector.”

  “I have that, Mrs. Saunderson,” Stoddart rejoined, “and enjoyed your performance too. I little thought I should ever meet you and sit chatting here like this.”

  Mrs. Saunderson bridled. Quite evidently this was the style of conversation to which she was accustomed.

  “He was away some time, Bob was,” she went on. “And when he came back I didn’t see why he should hang up his hat in my hall, seeing he hadn’t attempted to keep me while he was away, I’d made a name on the stage then and I liked my work, and I stuck to it. Bob, he set up as a money-lender; he’d always done a bit of that in a small way, but now he began to make it pay. He went out to the War for a time, but he didn’t stick that long – too fond of his own skin. After he came back he picked up a pretty good income by his wits. But I didn’t come here to talk about that, inspector. Bob Saunderson had his faults, but, after all, he was my husband, and his murderer has got to be punished.”

  “He will be, if we can catch him,” the inspector assured her quickly.

  “And if that doesn’t happen to be a ‘him’ at all?” Mrs. Saunderson questioned.

  “The punishment will be about the same,” the inspector returned. “Women have their rights, you know.”

  “I know. And some of them they’ve lost, I guess,” Mrs. Saunderson said sharply. “I can tell you who shot him, inspector.”

  “Can you?” Stoddart allowed no touch of surprise to appear in his voice. “I need not say that we shall be grateful for any help you can give us.”

  “Oh, I can help you right enough,” Mrs. Saunderson said with a nod. “The woman who shot Robert Saunderson was Anne Courtenay – Mrs. Michael Burford she is now.”

  “Mrs. Michael Burford?” the inspector repeated. “You have some proof of this assertion, I suppose?”

  “Proof? Bless you, I know what I’m talking about!” the lady retorted sharply. “I saw Saunderson on the Tuesday before he was shot. I had seen a lot about him in the papers – there was his name in the society news every day pretty nearly. I saw he had race-horses in training, and you can’t do that on nothing. So I thought it was his duty to do something for me. After all, it is supposed to be a man’s duty to keep his wife, though it’s precious few of ’em that do it nowadays, if you come to that. I didn’t want Bob to keep me, but I thought he ought to do his bit. So I went over to his flat. He was nearly scared out of his skin when he saw me; pretended he thought I was dead. And then after beating about the bush for a bit, and looking mighty ashamed of himself, he told me that he had deceived me and that the registrar who married us was a friend of his and that we weren’t really married at all. It was a lie, and I knew it, but it suited my book to pretend to believe him. So I said that if he would make me an allowance while I was resting he could wash his past out as far as I was concerned. Then when it was all settled he told me that there I was a girl, a lady, he had taken a fancy to, and he meant to marry her. She was engaged to some one else, he said, but he had got the means of breaking it off, and he was going to do it.”

  The inspector looked inquiringly at her. “How did you know he meant Miss Courtenay?”

  “I went to his flat to find out,” Mrs. Saunderson said, a note of fear creeping into her voice. “When he saw I was quite friendly like and not going to interfere with his doings, he began to talk quite freely. And when I suggested a night-club to finish up with he came with me like a lamb. We had cocktails and what not, and by and by I ferreted out of him what I wanted to know. He wouldn’t tell me her name, but he said he’d got hold of her through her brother, who was in his power. She would have to marry him, he said, or he would send her brother to gaol. It would all be in the papers, for she was going to give him his answer that week. I didn’t know about the murder just at first. I don’t read the papers much, bar the theatrical news and the divorces. When I did, I didn’t realize what it meant until I saw a paragraph about the new Lord Gorth, and it said that he and his sister, Mrs. Michael Burford, the wife of the famous trainer, had been included in the house-party at Holford Hall, when his friend, Mr. Robert Saunderson, had been murdered. Then I saw plainly enough how it must have been. It was Anne Courtenay he went to meet, and it was Anne Courtenay who shot him.”

  “That doesn’t quite follow,” the inspector said. “But we will have Mrs. Burford’s movements carefully looked into; and Lord Gorth’s while we are about it.”

  Mrs. Saunderson got up. “Well, with what I have told you it ought not to be a difficult matter to bring it home to Anne Courtenay – Anne Burford, I should say. But if you want me again I shall be staying here a day or two. You know where to find me, I shall be up at the Frivolity next week.”

  “I will make a note of that at once,” the inspector said, producing his notebook. “And your address in Holford, please, Mrs. Saunderson? We might want to communicate with you at any moment.”

  For a moment Mrs. Saunderson looked embarrassed; she stared from one detective to the other. “Well, I don’t know why you shouldn’t know; I am not ashamed of it. I am staying at the lodge, and I am not ashamed of it.”

  “The lodge!” the inspector echoed. “What lodge?”

  “Holford Hall lodge,” Mrs. Saunderson returned, a shade of defiance creeping into her voice, “and I am not ashamed of it, I tell you. Mrs. Yates is my mother – I am not ashamed of that, either. Miranda Yates, that’s my name – was, before I was married to Bob Saunderson leastways. I’m not ashamed of having got up in the world.”

  “Ashamed!” the inspector repeated. “I should think not – I can see nothing but a cause of pride in that.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t know about that!” Mrs. Saunderson said as she got up and turned to the door. “But if there’s anything you want me for there I am.”

  When the door had closed behind her Stoddart looked at Harbord.

  “Well, this is an unexpected development. Apparently it complicates matters considerably, though we’ve only got her word for it.”

  “I suppose so, and I wouldn’t believe her on her oath without confirmatory evidence!” Harbord assented. “Nice sort of lad
y, wasn’t she, sir?

  “She was that,” the inspector agreed. “I can’t help sympathizing with Saunderson. If I had been fool enough to marry Tottie Delauney I should have done my best to get rid of her.”

  Harbord laughed. “You mightn’t have found it so easy, sir. What do you think of her story?”

  “I think it will bear a good deal of investigation, and it will have it,” Stoddart said grimly.

  “It was she who was at the lodge yesterday, then.”

  “You didn’t question her about that?

  “No. That will come when we have inquired a little more into her story. In the meantime –” The inspector paused, and there was a far-away look in his eyes.

  “Yes, sir?” Harbord queried.

  “I think we will go over to East Molton and interview Mrs. Michael Burford,” the inspector finished.

  CHAPTER 15

  The inquest on the body of Superintendent Mayer was held in the club-room at the back of the “Medchester Arms.” A great crowd had gathered round the door long before the hour fixed for the opening. Holford folks were there in strength, for the late superintendent was a Holford man born and bred, and all his acquaintances were there as a matter of course. People had come by train from York and Liverpool, and even the London papers had sent representatives. The fact that it was the second inquest to be held at the “Medchester Arms” within a month was much commented upon. The connexion between the two murders was discussed, and all sorts of theories were put forward. The general idea seemed to be that some maniac haunted Holford Hall and gardens. A local paper created a sensation by appearing with, “A Modern Jack the Ripper” in big head-lines across the front page.

  Lord Medchester, accompanied by Lord Gorth and Michael Burford, was among the first to enter. All three were accommodated with seats near the coroner. The jury, nine men and three women, were sworn in, and then departed to view the body in the mortuary, escorted by a couple of policemen from Loamford, who had been imported to fill the vacant places at Holford. They returned shortly, looking very white and shaken, and took their places.