by Annie Haynes
“Who saw me – is supposed to have seen me?” she said with a vehement gesture of denial. “I tell you I was in my room.”
“Never mind who saw you; you were seen, that’s enough. It’s no good denying it; I have my witness. If you knew no more of this affair than you first admitted there would have been no need to resort to subterfuge. Now, Lady Medchester, be frank – it will be better for you in the long run – and I know you were in the garden that night.”
Bluff is an excellent servant when applied to certain types of human nature, and it did not fail here. Lady Medchester caught at the back of a chair to steady herself. In spite of powder and paint she looked ten years older than when she came into the room.
“Tell me,” Stoddart went on, pressing his opportunity, “was it you who met Saunderson in the summer-house that night?”
The shock of the sudden question broke down her last defence.
“It was not!” she cried emphatically. “I never went into the summer-house at all – at least, not until – not –” dropping helplessly into a chair.
“Oh – damn you!” she cried, losing all control, reverting to type as, in a crisis, is the manner of her kind. “I did not kill Saunderson, if that’s what you think – and I don’t know who did!” she finished violently.
“Better make a clean breast of it, Lady Medchester,” Stoddart said evenly; experience had taught him when to turn the screw and when to ease the strain. “Nothing that does not bear on the case shall go any further.”
She stifled a sob with a handkerchief rolled into a small, compact ball, and for a moment silence reigned in the long room from whose walls the painted eyes of her husband’s forbears looked down upon this unworthy bearer of the name. Her shoulders shook with the effort to smother her sobs and bring herself to the point of confession.
“Send him away,” she said at last, nodding her head in Harbord’s direction.
At a signal from the inspector his subordinate went out, closing the door softly behind him. The sight of a soul bared to the world cannot fail to have its effect on the least thinking man or woman.
Stoddart waited in vain for Lady Medchester to speak.
“Why did you go out in the garden that night?” he asked gently.
With a deep sigh she looked up, the rouge on her cheeks riddled with tears.
“I’ll tell you all I know,” she said slowly. “You won’t understand – no man ever would understand – and it doesn’t matter,” she added desperately. “I did go out that evening, but it was not in order to meet Robert Saunderson.”
“Why did you go?”
She sat up and pulled herself together.
“I went into the garden that night to spy on Anne Courtenay – as she was then. I never liked her, perhaps because I knew she did not like me. There was a peculiar touch of careless arrogance towards me in her manner that got through the skin somehow – and I’m not thin-skinned as a rule. It may have been unintentional – I don’t know. Anyway, I hated her; and I suspected that when she pleaded headache and went to her room she was up to some game or other. So I slipped out into the gardens and hid among the trees near the summer-house.”
The inspector nodded. With a recollection of the rumours concerning her and Saunderson he could read between the lines. Jealousy was writ large all over the page.
“You were seen,” he said shortly. “I can describe the exact spot where you stood, if you wish.”
Lady Medchester shook her head.
“No need to do that. I am telling the truth – anyhow, this time.
“I had only waited a few minutes,” she went on, “when sure enough Anne Courtenay’s figure flitted from the shadow of the house into the moonlight and I held my breath. There was no doubt about it, she expected some one to meet her.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because instead of walking calmly into the open she darted from one patch of shadow to another, glancing each side of her in a nervous sort of way quite unlike her. As she came near to where I was standing in the deep shadow her face looked pale and drawn, even in the moonlight, and I saw she was making for the summer-house just beyond the rose garden. At the foot of the steps she hesitated and looked round her again. The moon went behind a cloud, but I could still see her. She mounted slowly and pushed open the summer-house door.”
Stoddart listened with breathless attention. Was this going to be the solution of the problem that had worried him by day and interfered with his sleep at night? Somehow, he did not feel all the exultation he would have expected. Anne Courtenay!
“What did you do then?”
“I stood still of course,” was the sharp answer. “I wanted to find out whom she expected to meet in the summer-house. She came out again almost immediately and half ran, half tottered down the steps; I thought she was going to fall. She caught at the gate into the rosery to steady herself, and the moon came out again full and I saw her face – horror-stricken, her eyes staring in front of her. Then she ran, flinging caution to the winds, as though all the devils in hell were after her, and disappeared into the house. And that’s all I saw.”
She ceased abruptly, but the representative of justice had not yet done with her.
“What did you do then, Lady Medchester?” he asked, keeping his eyes steadily fixed upon her face.
The victim of this rigid interrogation wiped her lips with the handkerchief folded and unfolded by her nervous fingers as she talked, and looked round as though hoping for a means of escape. There was none; she knew that well enough. The law had its clutch on her; she was frightened and tired – too tired to care much what happened to her. There was only one thing – if that could be kept from this tormenting devil he should have the rest.
“I waited a moment to make sure she was not coming back,” Lady Medchester resumed, “then I went across the rosery and up the few steps to the summer-house. I had to see what Anne Courtenay had seen that had blanched her cheeks and put that look of terror into her eyes. I pushed open the door –” She broke off with a shiver, and for the first time looked Inspector Stoddart straight in the face. “You must believe what I say, for I swear I am telling the truth,” she protested.
“What did you find in the summer-house?” he asked, unmoved.
“Robert Saunderson’s dead body was lying on the floor,” she went on in a hard voice, her manner changing, “and at the sight of it I knew Anne Courtenay was meeting him secretly. It was a shock.” Her eyes dropped. “Robert Saunderson and I have been friends – friends,” she repeated with emphasis, “for some time, and I had had no idea of it.”
“Yet you followed her into the garden?”
“I guessed she was going to meet some one, and I wished to know who it was,” was the evasive reply. She covered her eyes as though to screen them from the penetrating gaze of the man opposite her. “I had always hated her, but I think at that moment I could have killed her. I dare say you don’t understand – it was the deception –” She broke off.
“I understand perfectly,” the inspector interposed. Being man as well as policeman he felt rather embarrassed. It was so easy to read between the lines.
Her hand dropped from her eyes and she continued:
“Self-preservation, I suppose, is the most powerful instinct we have, and even at that moment I knew I mustn’t be found alone with Saunderson’s dead body at that hour. I looked round hurriedly to see if any weapon could be seen, and my eye was caught by something on the floor between the body and the top of the steps. It was a necklace of crystal beads, shining in the moonlight – broken, as though the wearer might have stooped forward and caught it on the door-handle. I slipped it into my pocket and crept back across the gardens and into the house.”
She sank back in the chair as though the narrative had come to an end; but the inspector’s questions were not finished.
“Did you hear any shot fired during the interval between the entry of Mrs. Bur ford into the summer-house and her exit?” he asked
.
Lady Medchester shook her head. “I am sure no shot was fired, or I should certainly have heard it.”
“Are these the beads you found, Lady Medchester?” he asked, producing the broken string from his pocket and holding them up to view.
“Yes.”
“Then how was it they were found near the scene of the crime – three of them in the pocket of the dead man?”
A curious look of cunning satisfaction came into her eyes. She gave a harsh little laugh.
“Because in the morning when I examined the beads I thought they were Anne’s, and that I had been a fool not to leave them where I found them. Suspicion would have fastened on her quite naturally, and I should have had my –” She pulled herself up abruptly.
Stoddart smiled; there was no need to supply the word.
“But,” she went on, eyeing him defiantly, “I didn’t see why I shouldn’t remedy the evil; there would be no harm in assisting the ends of justice instead of hindering. I determined to put them back.”
She wiped her mouth again nervously. Her interrogator waited in silence.
“Of course I know it was wrong of me to have done it for the reason I did, and I’m not sure I am not sorry. But you have no cause to complain, as my intention was to help the law; and as the beads have turned out not to be Anne’s there’s no harm done. Anyway, I went out as soon as I could leave the house without being noticed, and from my old hiding-place in the trees saw the police were already at work in the summer-house. They came out on to the steps, talking; Wilton, the gardener, was with them and he pointed in the direction of the old barn. Then the three of them walked off and I got my chance.”
She paused, and Stoddart noticed tiny beads of perspiration were standing out on her forehead.
“I tore off three of the beads, ran across the rosery and into the summer-house, slipped them hurriedly into Saunderson’s pocket and, throwing the remainder of the necklace into the shrubbery, got back to the house without meeting anyone.”
She sank back into the chair again and closed her eyes.
Inspector Stoddart looked down at her with an inscrutable expression in his eyes. What will a jealous woman not risk for revenge?
“And as those beads do not belong to Mrs. Burford, whom do you suppose they do belong to?” He shot the question at her suddenly.
“I haven’t the least idea,” Lady Medchester replied listlessly.
And this time the inspector believed she was speaking the truth.
CHAPTER 21
Inspector Stoddart left Holford Hall considerably worried.
It looked uncommonly as though Miss Tottie Delauney’s story might be true, and that Mrs. Burford had played the star part in this sordid drama. If so, his suspicions that Saunderson and Superintendent Mayer had been murdered by the same hand would have to go. Mrs. Burford might possibly have shot the former, but for the hour during which Mayer had been killed she had an unassailable alibi.
He promised Harbord, who had been waiting for him in the hall, to tell him the main points of the interview later on. He wanted to think, and when he had that object in view had found nothing so efficacious as solitude and a cigarette in the fresh air.
It was a lovely autumn day – one of those days on which it seems good to be alive. He turned his back on the Hall with its old grey walls shining as placidly in the last rays of the setting sun as though no such tragedies as crime and sudden death had been enacted under their shadow; walked through the rosery with the fateful summer-house on his right; glanced as he passed at the shrubbery and woods on the left where Lady Medchester had hidden herself on that evening of tragedy; and passed on towards the boundary of the copse.
What a woman! Experienced as he was in sordid crime and the seamy side of life, he felt as though he needed cleansing after such a contact. A woman without excuses for her mean jealousies, and her indulgence of instincts not far removed from the brute beast.
He walked slowly along the narrow path, worn by the passing of innumerable feet through scrub and undergrowth, under the shadow of beech and oak to a side gate leading to the high road. He was becoming very familiar with the geography of the place, and had purposely avoided the lodge with the possibility of being intercepted by Mrs. Yates or her daughter and forced to talk when he wanted to think. He had the power, so necessary in his profession, of thinking in watertight compartments, of switching off from one aspect of a subject before switching on to another: an invaluable asset and one that many a time had stood him in good stead.
Lady Medchester’s confession – for it amounted to no less – had not greatly advanced the case. The problem of why the beads had been found in the murdered man’s pocket after Mayer had declared they had not been there when the body was first searched had been solved, and he made a mental note to emphasize that fact when retailing the story to Harbord. He rather congratulated himself on having pulled up the latter for underrating the superintendent’s intelligence on that occasion. But they were no nearer their ownership. They were certainly not Anne Burford’s; no one would be likely to possess two strings of beads so nearly identical. The weapon still remained a problem. Both murders had been committed by means of a shot, and in neither case was there any trace of the revolver. The bullet that had killed Saunderson had been found lodged in the wooden boards of the back wall of the summer-house. In Mayer’s case the bullet had not been found at all; it had quite likely embedded itself in the soft ground among the roots of the undergrowth and never would be found.
But Anne Burford? Was it possible?
He would have been prepared to go bail almost on her straightforwardness. She had given her evidence so unhesitatingly, so simply, with such an air of complete innocence, admitting her presence in the garden that night, but disclaiming all knowledge of any unusual occurrence having taken place. He would have been inclined to doubt Lady Medchester’s story – she was capable of any malicious invention that would clear herself and inculpate the girl she hated – if it had not been that Miss Tottie Delauney’s evidence pointed in the same direction. Although founded on statement only and not carrying much weight in itself, each story backed the other up.
Why had Anne not admitted her visit to the summer-house? A girl might be shy of an assignation of the sort being discovered, particularly as she was already engaged to Michael Burford, but she might have explained the episode away very plausibly; could have said she drifted in by accident while wandering about the gardens. Women were ingenious at that sort of thing, and from all accounts no one would ever have suspected her of a deliberate arrangement to meet Saunderson secretly.
But she had denied the whole affair, and if she could lie once she could go on lying, unless – Stoddart’s mind was suddenly side-tracked along another line – she was shielding some one?
He reached the wicket-gate leading to the high road, and leaning his arms on the top rail stared in front of him. If Anne Burford were shielding some one, it brought Lord Gorth into it good and plenty. That was what Miss Tottie Delauney had said – that Anne Courtenay had killed Saunderson to save her brother, and herself.
Save him from what? Nothing incriminating Harold Courtenay had been found among Saunderson’s papers, and he seemed harmless enough, taking him all round; not much brains perhaps – people said he was making a foolish marriage.
Stoddart smiled grimly. All marriages came into that category in his opinion; he intended to remain a bachelor. If, as they said, a woman was at the bottom of all trouble, it was asking for it to marry one of them. But Lord Gorth’s dossier would have to be looked into more particularly; and Mrs. Burford’s, too, for that matter. She had brought it on herself by her want of frankness.
Lord Gorth lived somewhere in the neighbourhood, not far away. The inspector had never been there, but he had heard it talked about. He decided to ring him up from the Medchester police station. His alibi had never been satisfactory; no alibi at all really. He had been seen that night by one or two of the guests at various time
s during the evening; that was all it amounted to. There were intervals nobody could swear to, times when he could have slipped away to the summer-house and back again and no one have been the wiser.
The little perpendicular lines between Stoddart’s keen grey eyes deepened as his thoughts travelled away from the scene of that first tragedy and strayed to the spot where the superintendent had been murdered. That the two crimes were closely related was certain. He still clung to the theory that both had been committed by the same hand, but if that were the case then Anne Burford and her brother were both innocent. They were far enough away when Superintendent Mayer was killed to be entirely clear of suspicion.
Inspector Stoddart pulled himself up. After many injunctions to juniors not to start a theory and then make the facts fit it, here he was doing it himself! There was nothing to prove the criminal in the one case to have been the criminal in the other. Circumstances pointed that way, and that was all that could be said.
He felt justified in the conjecture that the criminal who fired the shot that killed Mayer had heard him state that he knew who had killed Saunderson. There were three persons of whom that could be said – Mrs. Yates; the self-styled Tottie Delauney, her daughter; and Lord Medchester.
But it was possible Mayer had mentioned it to some one else. He had been in a self-congratulatory mood, finding it difficult to keep this precious discovery to himself, as was evidenced by his confidences to Mrs. Yates and Lord Medchester. He had very nearly blurted out the whole secret to the latter, only restrained by the discipline of his training in the Force.
Had he met anyone on his way to catch the Empton bus? Some one who had given him a clue to the murderer – and who had then, perhaps, regretted it and lain in wait for him on his way back?
These questions raced through Stoddart’s brain as he stood leaning on the wooden gate, his eyes gazing across the road at the hedge opposite without consciously seeing it. It was growing dark; a few stray rooks were cawing overhead, and a dove in the recesses of the wood was coo-cooing with gentle persistence. The tall trees beyond the hedge threw the road into shadow.