Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

by J. J. Connington

“Then where’s he gone?” demanded the Prehistoric Man, who was a creature of few words.

  “I dunno! Must have given us the slip somehow. If he isn’t here, he must be somewhere else. No getting round that.”

  He shouted the news to the watchers on the banks; and a confused sound of argument rose from amongst the sedge.

  “Not much use hanging round the old home, Frankie. Pull for the shore, sailor. We’d best manhandle her along the face of the cliff. I’ve had enough of that paddling.”

  When they touched firm ground again they were surrounded by their friends, most of whom seemed to doubt whether the search of the cave had been properly carried out.

  “I tell you,” declaimed the exasperated Michael, “I got right into the damned hole! It’s so small that I nearly broke my nose against the back wall as I heaved myself inside. It would have been a tight fit for me and a squirrel together. He’s not there, whether you like it or not. . . . I can’t help your troubles, Tommy; you can go and look for yourself, if you like the job of lying on your tummy on a raft that’s awash. I shan’t interfere with your simple pleasures.”

  “But . . .”

  “We’ve lost him. Is that plain enough? There’s nothing to be done but go home again with our tails between our legs. I’m going now.”

  He accompanied his friends to the top of the cliff again; but when he reached the terrace a fresh thought struck him, and he loitered behind while the others, soaked and disconsolate, made their way down into the pine-wood. When the last of them had disappeared, Michael retraced his steps to the edge of the cliff.

  “He reached here all right,” he assured himself. “And he didn’t break back through the cordon.”

  He stooped down, picked up the rope, and refastened it round one of the pillars of the balustrade.

  “Everyone knows there are secret passages about Ravensthorpe,” he mused. “Perhaps this beggar has got on to one of them. And quite possibly the end of the passage is in that cave down there. That would explain the rope. I’ll slide down and have another look round.”

  He got into the cave-mouth without difficulty and used up the remainder of his matches in a close examination of the interior of the cavity; but even the closest scrutiny failed to reveal anything to his eyes.

  “Nothing there but plain rock, so far as I can see,” he had to admit to himself as the last match burned out. “That’s a blank end in more senses than one.”

  Without much difficulty he swarmed up the rope again, untied it from the balustrade, and coiled it over his arm.

  “A nice little clue for Sir Clinton Driffield to puzzle over,” he assured himself. “Sherlock Holmes would have been on to it at once; found where it was sold in no time; discovered who bought it before five minutes had passed; and paralysed Watson with the whole story that same evening over a pipeful of shag. We shall see.”

  He threw a last glance round the empty terrace and then moved off into the spinney. As he passed into the shadow of the trees he saw, a few yards to one side, the outline of the Fairy House dappled in the moonshine which filtered through the leaves overhead. Half-unconsciously, Michael halted and looked at the little building.

  “They could never have overlooked that in the hunt, surely. Well, no harm in having a peep to make certain.”

  He dropped his coil of rope, stepped across to the house, and, stooping down, flung open the door. Inside, he caught a flash of some white fabric.

  “It’s the beggar after all! Here! Come out of that!”

  He gripped the inmate roughly and hauled him by main force out of his retreat.

  “Pierrot costume, right enough!” he said to himself as he extracted the man little by little from his refuge. Then, having got his victim into the open:

  “Now we’ll turn you over and have a look at your face . . . Good God! Maurice!”

  For as he turned the man on his back, it was the face of Maurice Chacewater that met his eyes. But it was not a normal Maurice whom he saw. The features were contorted by some excessive emotion the like of which Michael had never seen.

  “Let me alone, damn you,” Maurice gasped, and turned over once more on his face, resting his brow on his arm as though to shut out the spectacle of Michael’s astonishment.

  “Are you ill?” Michael inquired, solicitously.

  “For God’s sake leave me alone. Don’t stand there gaping. Clear out, I tell you.”

  Michael looked at him in amazement.

  “I’m going to have a cheerful kind of brother-in-law before all’s done, it seems,” he thought to himself.

  “Can I do anything for you, Maurice?

  “Oh, go to hell!”

  Michael turned away.

  “It’s fairly clear he doesn’t like my company,” he reflected, as he stepped across and picked up his coil of rope from the ground. “But I’ve known politer ways of showing it, I must say.”

  With a final glance at the prostrate figure of Maurice, he walked on and took the road back to Ravensthorpe. But as he went a vision of Maurice’s face kept passing before his mind’s eye.

  “There’s something damned far wrong with that beggar, whether it’s an evil conscience or cramp in the tummy. It might be either of them, by the look of him. He didn’t seem to want any assistance from me. That looks more like the evil conscience theory.”

  He dismissed this with a laugh; but gradually he grew troubled.

  “There he was, in white—same as the burglar. He’s in a bit of a bate at being discovered, that’s clear enough. He didn’t half like it, to judge by his chat.”

  A discomforting hypothesis began to frame itself in his mind despite his efforts to stifle it.

  “He’s the fellow, if there is one, who would know all these secret passages about here. Suppose there really is one leading out of that cave. He could have swarmed down the rope, got into the cave, sneaked up the subterranean passage, and got behind us that way.”

  A fresh fact fitted suddenly in.

  “And of course the other end of the passage may be in that Fairy House! That would explain his being there. He’d be waiting to see us off the premises before he could venture out in his white costume.”

  He pondered over the problem as he hurried with long strides towards the house.

  “Well,” he concluded, “I’m taking no further steps in the business. It’s no concern of mine to go probing into the private affairs of the family I’m going to marry into. And that’s that.”

  Then, as a fresh aspect of the matter came to his mind, he gave a sigh of relief.

  “I must be a stricken idiot! No man would ever dream of burgling his own house. What would he gain by it, if he did? The thing’s ridiculous.”

  And the comfort which this view brought him was sufficient to lighten his steps for the rest of his way.

  Chapter Five

  SIR CLINTON IN THE MUSEUM

  “THERE’S the light on again in the museum,” Sir Clinton observed. “I think we’ll go in and have a look round, now, to see if the place suggests anything.”

  Mold stood aside to let them pass, and then resumed his watch at the door to prevent anyone else from entering the room. The servant had just finished fitting the new globe in its place and was preparing to remove the steps which he had used, when Sir Clinton ordered him to leave them in position and to await further instructions.

  The museum was a room about forty feet square, with a lofty ceiling. To judge by the panelling of the walls, it belonged to the older part of Ravensthorpe; but the parquet of the floor seemed to be much more modern. Round the sides were placed exhibition cases about six feet high; and others of the same kind jutted out at intervals to form a series of shallow bays. In the centre of the room, directly under the lamp, stood a long, flat-topped case; and the floor beside it was littered with broken glass.

  “I think we’ll begin at the beginning,” said Sir Clinton.

  He turned to the servant who stood waiting beside the steps.

  “Have you
got the remains of the broken lamp there?”

  “You can go now,” he added. “We shan’t need you further.”

  When he had received the smashed lamp, he examined it.

  “Not much to be made out of that,” he admitted. “It’s been one of these thousand candle-power gas-filled things; and there’s practically nothing left of it but the metal base and a few splinters of glass sticking to it.”

  He looked up at the fresh lamp hanging above them.

  “It’s thirty feet or so above the floor. Nothing short of a fishing-rod would reach it. Evidently they didn’t smash it by hand.”

  He stooped down and sorted out one or two small fragments of glass from the debris at his feet.

  “These are more bits of the lamp, Joan,” he said, holding them out for her to look at. “You see the curve of the glass; and you’ll notice that the whole affair seems to have been smashed almost to smithereens. There doesn’t seem to be a decent-sized fragment in the whole lot.”

  He turned to the keeper.

  “I think we’ll shut the door, Mold. We’d better conduct the rest of this business in private.”

  The keeper closed the door of the museum, much to the disappointment of the group of people who had clustered about the entrance and were watching the proceedings with interest.

  “Now, Joan, would you mind going round the wall-cases and seeing if anything has been taken from them?”

  Joan obediently paced round the room and soon came back to report that nothing seemed to have been removed.

  “All the cases were locked, you know,” she explained. “And there’s no glass broken in any of them. So far as I can see, nothing’s missing from the shelves.”

  “What about that safe let into the wall over yonder?” Sir Clinton inquired.

  “It’s used to house one or two extra valuable things from time to time,” Joan explained. “But to-night everything was put on show, and the safe’s empty.”

  She went over and swung the door open, showing the vacant shelves within.

  “We do take precautions usually,” she pointed out. “The museum door itself is iron-plated and has a special lock. It was only to-night that we had everything out in the show-cases.”

  Sir Clinton refrained from comment, as he knew the girl was still blaming herself for her share in the catastrophe. He turned to examine the rifled section of the central case.

  “What’s missing here, Joan, can you make out?”

  Obediently, Joan came to his side and ran her eye over the remaining articles in the compartment.

  “They’ve taken the Medusa Medallions!” she exclaimed, turning pale as she realized the magnitude of the calamity. “They’ve got the very pick of the collection, Sir Clinton. My father would have parted with all the rest rather than with these, I know.”

  “Nothing else gone?”

  Joan looked again at the case.

  “No, nothing else, so far as I can see. Wait a bit, though! They’ve taken the electrotype copies as well. There were three of each: three medallions and an electrotype from each that Foxton Clifford made for us. The whole six are gone.”

  She cast a final glance at the compartment.

  “No, there’s nothing else missing, so far as I can see. Some of the things are displaced a bit; but everything except the medallions and the electros seems to be here.”

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “Certain.”

  Sir Clinton seemed satisfied.

  “Of course we’ll have to check the stuff by the catalogue to make sure,” he said, “but I expect you’re right. The medallions alone would be quite a good enough haul for a minute or two’s work; and probably they had their eyes on the things as the best paying proposition of the lot.”

  “But why did they take the electros as well?” Joan demanded.

  Then a possible explanation occurred to her.

  “Oh, of course, they wouldn’t know which was which, so they took the lot in order to make sure.”

  “Possibly,” Sir Clinton admitted. “But don’t let’s be going too fast, Joan. We’d better not get ideas into our minds till we’ve got all the evidence, you know.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Joan, with a faint return of her normal spirits, “I’m to be Watson, am I? And you’ll prove in a minute or two what an ass I’ve made of myself. Is that the idea?”

  “Not altogether,” Sir Clinton returned, with a smile. “But let’s have the facts before the theories.”

  He turned to the keeper.

  “Now we’ll take your story, Mold; but give us the things in the exact order in which they happened, if you can. And don’t be worried if I break in with questions.”

  Mold thought for a moment or two before beginning his tale.

  “I’m trying to remember how many people there were in the room just before the lights went out,” he explained at last, “but somehow I don’t quite seem able to put a figure on it, Sir Clinton. I’ve a sort of feeling that some of ’em must ha’ got away before I stopped the door—sneaked off in the dark. At least I know I felt surprised when I saw how few I’d got left when they began to come up to me to be let out. But that’s all I can really say, sir.”

  Sir Clinton evidently approved of the keeper’s caution.

  “Now tell us exactly what happened when the light went out. This is the bit where I want you to be careful. Tell us everything you can remember.”

  Mold fixed his eye on the corner of the room near the safe.

  “I was patrollin’ round the room, sir, most of the night. I didn’t stand in one place all the time. Now just when the light was about to go out, I was walkin’ away from this case here”—he nodded towards the rifled central case—“and as near as may be, I’d got to the entrance to that second-last bay, just before you come to the safe. I just turned round to come back, when I heard a pistol goin’ off.”

  “That was the first thing that attracted your attention?” questioned Sir Clinton. “It’s an important point, Mold.”

  “That was the first thing out o’ the common that happened,” Mold asserted. “The pistol went bang, and out went the light, and I heard glass tinkling all over the place.”

  “Shot the light out, did they?” Sir Clinton mused.

  He glanced up at the carved wooden ceiling, but evidently failed to find what he was looking for.

  “Have you a pair of race-glasses, Joan? Prismatics, or even opera-glasses? Tell Mold where he can get them, please.”

  Joan gave the keeper instructions and he left the room.

  “Knock when you come back again,” Sir Clinton ordered. “I’m going to lock the door to keep out the inquisitive.”

  As soon as the keeper was out of earshot, Sir Clinton turned to Joan.

  “This fellow Mold, is he a reliable man? Do you know anything about him, Joan?”

  “He’s our head keeper. We’ve always trusted him completely.”

  She glanced at Sir Clinton, trying to read the expression on his face.

  “You don’t think he’s at the bottom of the business, do you? I never thought of that!”

  “I’m only collecting facts at present. All I want to know is whether you know Mold to be reliable.”

  “We’ve always found him so.”

  “Good. We’ll make a note of that; and if we get the thing cleared up, then we’ll perhaps be able to confirm that opinion of yours.”

  In a few minutes a knock came at the door and Sir Clinton admitted the keeper.

  “Prismatics?” he said, taking the glasses from Mold. “They’ll do quite well.”

  Adjusting the focus, he subjected the ceiling of the room to a minute scrutiny. At last he handed the glasses to Joan.

  “Look up there,” he said, indicating the position.

  Joan swept the place with the glasses for a moment.

  “I see,” she said. “That’s a bullet-hole in the wood, isn’t it?”

  Sir Clinton confirmed her guess.

  “That’s evide
ntly where the bullet went after knocking the lamp to pieces. Pull the steps over there, Mold. I want to have a closer look at the thing.”

  With some difficulty, owing to his injured ankle, he ascended the steps and inspected the tiny cavity.

  “It looks like a ·22 calibre. One could carry a Colt pistol of that size in one’s pocket and no one would notice it.”

  His eye traced out the line joining the bullet-mark and the lamp.

  “The shot was evidently fired by someone in that bay over there,” he inferred. “Just go to where you were standing when the light went out, Mold. Can you see into this bay here?”

  Mold looked round and discovered that a show-case interposed between him and the point from which the pistol had been fired.

  “They evidently thought of everything,” Sir Clinton said, when he heard Mold’s report. “If a man had brandished his pistol in front of Mold, there was always a chance that Mold might have remembered his costume. Firing from that hiding-place, he was quite safe, and could take time over his aim if he wanted to.”

  He climbed down the steps and verified the matter by going to the position from which the shot had been fired. It was evident that the shooter was out of sight of the keeper at the actual moment of the discharge.

  “Now what happened after that, Mold?” Sir Clinton demanded, coming back to the central case again.

  Mold scratched his ear as though reflecting, then hurriedly took his hand down again.

  “This pistol went off, sir; and the lamp-glass tinkled all over the place. I got a start—who wouldn’t?—with the light going out, and all. Before I could move an inch, someone got a grip of my wrists and swung me round. He twisted my arms behind my back and I couldn’t do anything but kick—and not much kickin’ even, or I’d have gone down on my face.”

  “Did you manage to get home on him at all?”

  “I think I kicked him once, sir; but it was only a graze.”

  “Pity,” Sir Clinton said. “It would have always been something gained if you’d marked him with a good bruise.”

  “Oh, there’ll be a mark, if that’s all you want, sir. But it wouldn’t prevent him runnin’ at all.”

  “And then?” Sir Clinton brought Mold back to his story.