The Layton Court Mystery

by Anthony Berkeley

  Lady Stanworth and Mrs Plant are in their rooms. Both naturally rather upset. And I’ve got to go into the town to see about a few things.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll be all right,’ Roger said easily. ‘Please don’t bother about us.’

  Jefferson glanced round.

  ‘Looking for a book?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Roger quickly. ‘As a matter of fact, I was studying this over-mantel. I’m rather interested in that sort of thing – carving, and panelling, and old houses. This is really rather a wonderful room. What’s the date, do you know? Early Jacobean, I should say.’

  ‘Somewhere about that,’ Jefferson said indifferently. ‘I don’t know the actual date, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Very interesting period,’ Roger commented. ‘And there’s usually a priest-hole or something like that in houses built at that time. Anything of the sort here? There ought to be, you know.’

  ‘Can’t say, I’m afraid,’ Jefferson replied, a little impatiently. ‘Never heard of one, at any rate. Well, I must be getting along.’

  As the door closed behind him, Roger turned to Alec.

  ‘I didn’t expect anything, but I thought I might as well try it. He didn’t give anything away, though, whether he knew or not. On the whole, I should say that he didn’t know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was far too off-hand to be lying. If he wanted to put us off, he’d have elaborated somewhat, I fancy. Well, if we can’t find our secret door, we must try other means of providing an exit for our man. That leaves us with one door and three windows. We’ll try the door first.’

  The door proved to be a massive piece of wood, with a large and efficient lock. Except where the socket in the lintel had been torn away in the efforts to force an entrance, it was still undamaged.

  ‘Well, that’s out of the question, at any rate,’ Roger said with decision. ‘I don’t see how anybody could possibly have got out through that and left it locked on the inside, with the key still in the lock. It might have been done with a pair of pliers, if the end of the key projected beyond the lock on the other side. But it doesn’t; so that’s out of the question. French windows next.’

  These were of the ordinary pattern, with a handle which shot a bolt simultaneously at the top and bottom. In addition there were small brass bolts at the bottom and top, both of which had been fastened when the window was opened that morning.

  ‘It looks out of the question to me,’ Roger muttered. ‘It is out of the question. Even if he had been able to turn the handle (which he couldn’t possibly have done), he couldn’t have shot the bolts as well.’

  ‘I’m blessed if he could,’ said Alec with conviction.

  Roger turned away.

  ‘Then that leaves these two windows. I don’t see how anyone could have left this little lattice one closed behind him. What about the sash one? That looks more hopeful.’

  He climbed up on the window seat and examined the fastening attentively.

  ‘Any luck?’ asked Alec.

  Roger stepped heavily on to the floor again. ‘I regret to have to confess myself baffled,’ he said disappointedly. ‘There’s an anti-burglar fitting on that window which would absolutely prevent the thing being fastened from the outside. I’m beginning to think the fellow must have been a wizard in a small way.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Alec weightily, ‘that if the chap couldn’t have got out, as we appear to have proved, then he could never have been in here at all. In other words, he doesn’t exist, and old Stanworth did commit suicide, after all.’

  ‘But I tell you that Stanworth can’t have committed suicide,’ said Roger petulantly. ‘There’s far too much evidence against it.’

  Alec threw himself into a chair. ‘Is there, though?’ he asked argumentatively. ‘As you put it, it’s certainly consistent with murder. But it’s equally consistent with suicide. Aren’t you rather losing sight of that in your anxiety to make a murder of it? Besides, don’t forget that your motive has fallen to the ground since the safe was opened. There wasn’t a robbery here last night, after all.’

  Roger was roaming restlessly about the room. At Alec’s last words he paused in his stride and looked at his companion with some irritation.

  ‘Oh, don’t be childish, Alec,’ he said sharply. ‘Money and jewels aren’t the only things that can be robbed. The motive still holds perfectly good if we’ve got to have a motive. It was robbery of something else; that’s all. But why stick to robbery? Make it revenge, hatred, self-protection, anything you like, but take it from me that Stanworth was murdered. The evidence is not equally consistent with suicide. Think it over for yourself and you’ll see; I can’t bother to go through it all again. And if we can’t find the way the chap got out, that’s because we’re a pair of idiots and can’t see what must be lying under our noses, that’s all.’ And he resumed his stride again.

  ‘Humph!’ said Alec incredulously.

  ‘Door, window, window, window,’ Roger muttered to himself. ‘It must be one of those four. There’s simply no other way.’

  He wandered impatiently from one to the other, trying desperately to put himself in the place of the criminal. What would he have done?

  With some ceremony Alec filled and lighted his pipe. When it was in full blast he leaned back in his chair and allowed his eyes to rest approvingly on the cool greens of the gardens outside.

  ‘Life’s too short,’ he remarked lazily. ‘If it really was a clear case of murder, I’d be on the trail as strenuously as anyone. But really, old man, when you come to consider – calmly and sanely, I mean – how extraordinarily little you’ve got to go on and how you’re twisting the most ordinary things, why I think even you will admit in a few weeks’ time that when all’s said and done we – ’

  ‘Alec!’

  Something in Roger’s tone caused Alec to turn round in his chair and look at him. He was leaning out of the lattice window, apparently intent on the garden outside.

  ‘Well?’ said Alec tolerantly. ‘What is it now?’

  ‘If you come here, Alec,’ said Roger, very gently, ‘I’ll show you how the murderer got away last night.’

  chapter thirteen

  Mr Sheringham Investigates a Footprint

  ‘Show me what?’ Alec exclaimed, bounding out of his chair.

  ‘How the murderer escaped,’ Roger repeated, turning and smiling happily at his dumb-founded accomplice. ‘It’s extraordinarily simple, really. That’s why we never spotted it. Have you ever noticed, Alec, that it’s always the simple things of life – plans, inventions, what you like – that are the most effective? Take, for instance – ’

  Alec seized his too voluble friend by the shoulder and shook him violently.

  ‘How did the chap escape?’ he demanded.

  Roger pointed to the window through which he had been leaning.

  ‘There!’ he said simply.

  ‘Yes, but how do you know?’ cried the exasperated Alec.

  ‘Oh, is that what you meant? Come, friend Alec.’ Roger took his fellow-sleuth by the arm and pointed triumphantly to the window-sill. On the surface of the white paint were a few faint scratches. ‘You see those? Now look at that!’ And he indicated something on the flower bed beneath. ‘I said it must be lying under our noses all the time,’ he added complacently.

  Alec leaned out of the window and looked at the bed. Just below the window was an unmistakable footprint, the toe pointing towards the window.

  ‘You said escaped, didn’t you?’ he asked, withdrawing his head.

  ‘I did, Alexander.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you and all that,’ said Alec, in a tone that curiously belied his words, ‘but nobody escaped this way. Someone got in. If you look again, carefully this time, you’ll see that the toe is pointing towards the window; not the heel. That means that somebody stepped from the ground to the window-ledge, not vice versa.’

  ‘Alec, you are on your day today, aren’t you?’ said Roger admiringly.
‘Precisely the same thought occurred to myself at a first glance. Then, looking carefully, as you so kindly suggest, I noticed that the indentation of the heel is very much deeper than that of the toe, indicating that somebody stepped backwards from the window to the ground, after thoughtfully closing the window behind him. If he’d been stepping up, the toe would be deeper than the heel, as a moment’s thought will show you, won’t it?’

  ‘Oh!’ said the crestfallen Alec.

  ‘Sorry to have to score off you in that blatant Sherlockian way,’ Roger continued more kindly, ‘but you did ask for it, you know. No, but seriously, Alec, this is most extraordinarily important. It clears up the last difficulty about murder.’

  ‘But how did he close the window behind him?’ asked Alec, still half incredulous.

  ‘Oh! That’s the neatest thing of all. And delightfully simple, although it took me a minute or two to discover it after I’d seen the footprint. Look! You see this handle, the ordinary type for this sort of window. It consists of an arm that fits into the lock and a heavy handle set at right angles to it, the whole moving on a central pivot; the weight of the handle end keeps the other end in position. Well, watch!’

  Carefully arranging the handle so that the heavy end was balanced exactly above the pivot, Roger pushed the window sharply back into its frame. Immediately the handle was dislodged by the jar, and, with a little click, the fastener fell into place in its socket, the weight of the falling handle driving it well home.

  ‘Well, I’m dashed!’ Alec said.

  ‘Neat, isn’t it?’ Roger said proudly. ‘He stood on the sill outside, you see, and pulled it to behind him, having fixed the handle in position before he got out. I suppose it’s a trick you could play with any lattice window, though I’ve never come across it before.’

  ‘That’s one to you, all right,’ said the humbled Alec. ‘I take back quite a lot of the unkind things I’ve said to you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t trouble to apologise,’ Roger said magnanimously. ‘Though I did warn you that I should turn out to be right in the end, you remember. Well, I don’t think you’ll trouble to dispute the fact of murder any more, will you?’

  ‘Don’t rub it in,’ Alec protested. ‘I did it for the best, like the doctor in the poem. Well, what’s the next move?’

  ‘Let’s go out and have a look at that footprint at close range, shall we?’ Roger suggested. ‘There might be some others, too. Footprints! We are getting professional, aren’t we?’

  On a more careful inspection the footprint fully bore out Roger’s contention that it must have been made by a man stepping backward from the sill. The heel end was nearly an inch and a half deep; the toe scarcely half an inch. The edges were slightly blurred where the earth had crumbled, but the mark was clearly that of a large foot.

  ‘At least a ten boot,’ Roger said, stooping over it. ‘Possibly eleven. This may be very useful indeed, Alec.’

  ‘It’s a bit of luck, certainly,’ Alec agreed.

  Roger straightened up and began to search among the plants near the edge of the bed. After a moment he dropped on his knees on the grass border.

  ‘Look!’ he exclaimed excitedly. ‘Here’s another!’

  He parted two little shrubs and peered between them. Alec saw another footprint, not so deep as the last, but quite plainly marked in the dry earth. The toe of this one was also pointing towards the window.

  ‘Same fellow?’ he asked, bending over it.

  ‘Yes,’ Roger replied, examining the print intently. ‘The other boot. Let’s see, this is well over a yard from the last one, isn’t it? He must have stepped back on to the path in two big strides.’ He rose to his feet and dusted the knees of his trousers. ‘It’s a pity we can’t track him any farther,’ he added disappointedly.

  ‘Can you do anything more with these?’ Alec asked with interest.

  ‘I don’t know. We ought to take accurate measurements of them some time, I suppose. Oh, and there’s something else I should very much like to do.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Get hold of a specimen boot from every male person in the house and grounds and fit them into these prints,’ Roger exclaimed, raising his voice slightly in his excitement. ‘Yes, that’s what we ought to do if we possibly can.’

  Alec was pondering.

  ‘But look here, wouldn’t you say that these footprints meant that the fellow was someone outside the house? They show him getting away from the place after Stanworth had been killed, don’t they? If the chap had been someone inside the house, why should he have troubled to get out so elaborately through the window, when all he’d got to do was to walk out by the door? After all the other things he’d done to make it look like suicide, it wouldn’t really be necessary to leave the door locked on the inside, would it?’

  ‘You mean we’re not likely to find a boot in the house to correspond with these prints?’

  ‘Not if the chap were someone from outside, no. What do you think?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I agree. I think in all probability it was someone not belonging to the household. You’re quite right about the existence of these footprints all pointing to that conclusion. But we don’t actually know, do we? And I believe in eliminating all possibilities, however remote. If we can get a chance to try everyone’s boots out and they don’t fit, then we know quite definitely that everybody in this house is free from suspicion of committing the crime itself; though not from suspicion of other things, by the way.’

  ‘What other things?’ Alec asked interestedly.

  ‘Being an accessory after the fact. After, certainly; and not improbably before, as well, some of them. It seems to me, Alec,’ Roger added pathetically, ‘that three quarters of this household seem to be accessories after the fact! It isn’t fair.’

  ‘Humph!’ said Alec. This was trespassing upon ground which he had no wish to cover. He felt thankful that at any rate Barbara Shannon’s mysterious behaviour had not come to Roger’s ears. What would the latter have said had he heard of that? Accessory after the fact seemed mild in comparison.

  ‘Hullo! What’s up?’ he asked, suddenly catching sight of Roger.

  That gentleman was listening intently, his head on one side. At Alec’s words he held up his finger warningly.

  ‘Thought I heard someone in the library!’ he whispered. ‘You creep up to the lattice window and look through. I’ll try the French ones. Carefully!’

  Enjoying himself thoroughly, he made his way stealthily to the side of the French windows and peeped cautiously round them. He had his reward. The library door was closing softly.

  He hurried back to Alec. ‘Did you see?’ he asked, in a voice thick with suppressed excitement. ‘Did you see?’

  Alec nodded. ‘Somebody was going out of the library,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but did you see who it was, man?’

  Alec shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t. Got here too late.’

  The two looked at each other in silence.

  ‘The question is, were we overheard?’ Roger said at last.

  ‘Good Lord!’ Alec exclaimed in dismay. ‘Do you think we were?’

  ‘Impossible to say. I hope to goodness we weren’t, though. It would rather give things away, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Hopelessly!’ said Alec with fervour.

  Roger looked at him curiously. ‘Why, Alexander, you’re actually getting quite keen on the chase at last!’

  ‘It’s – it is rather exciting,’ Alec confessed, almost apologetically.

  ‘That’s the spirit. Well, come off that bed and let’s get farther away from the house to discuss what’s to be done next. It’s not safe to talk near these windows, evidently. Hullo, you’ve made rather a mess of the bed. Steady! Don’t step on our two particular prints.’

  Alec glanced ruefully at the bed, which was now embellished with several extra footprints.

  ‘I’d better smooth mine out,’ he said hastily. ‘They look a bit suspicious, all round that window,
don’t they? Anyone can see that we’ve been mucking about here.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ Roger said approvingly. ‘But hurry up, and for goodness’ sake, don’t let anybody see you. That would be worse still.’

  ‘And now, Sherlock Sheringham,’ said Alec, when they had gained the security of the lawn, ‘what do you propose? Isn’t it time you disguised yourself, or something? I’m sure the best detectives always do that at about this stage of the proceedings.’

  ‘Don’t be ribald, friend Alec,’ Roger said reprovingly. ‘This is a very serious business, and we’re getting along with it very nicely. I think our next move is fairly clear, isn’t it? We embark on the quest of the Mysterious Stranger.’

  ‘What mysterious stranger?’

  ‘I mean, we make some inquiries round about as to whether any stranger was seen near the place last night. The lodge, the station, the village, and the rest of it.’

  ‘That seems a sound scheme.’

  ‘Yes, but before we start there’s just one other thing I want to do. You saw how productive the contents of the waste-paper basket were. I should like to have a look at yesterday’s as well.’

  ‘Haven’t they been destroyed?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I made some inquiries while you were otherwise engaged just now, saying that I had thrown away a letter I meant to keep, and as far as I can make out the contents of all the waste-paper baskets are emptied on to an ash pit at the back of the house, where they lie till William sees fit to use them up in a bonfire. I want to have a peep at that ash pit before we start. Not that I really expect to find anything, but you never know.’

  ‘How do we get there?’

  ‘We’ll go round the front of the house; it’s somewhere on the farther side, I think. We’d better get a move on; we’ve got no time to waste.’

  ‘I’m game,’ said Alec, quite enthusiastically.

  They set off.

  In front of the house the car was standing, the chauffeur lounging negligently at the wheel as if he had been there some time.