“Then, almost at once when the lights went out, I heard glass breakin’—just as if you’d heaved a stone through a window. It seemed to me—but I couldn’t take my oath on it—as if there was two smashes, one after t’other. I couldn’t be sure. Then there was a lot of scufflin’ in the dark; but who did it, I couldn’t rightly say. I was busy tryin’ to get free from the man who was holdin’ me then.”
Sir Clinton moved over to the rifled compartment and inspected the broken glass thoughtfully for a moment or two.
“Are you looking for finger-marks?” asked Joan, as she came to his side.
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“Not much use hunting for finger-marks round here. Remember how many people must have leaned on this case at one time or other during the evening, when they were looking at the collection before the robbery. Finger-prints would prove nothing against anyone in particular, I’m afraid, Joan. What I’m really trying to find is some evidence confirming Mold’s notion that he heard two smashes after the light went out. It certainly looks as if he were right. If you look at the way that bit of glass there is cracked, you’ll see two series of lines in it. It might have been cracked here”—he pointed with his finger—“first of all: long cracks radiating from a smash over in this direction. Then there was a second blow—about here—which snapped off the apices of the spears of glass left after the first smash. But that really proves nothing. The same man might easily have hit the pane twice.”
He turned back to the keeper.
“Can you give me an estimate, Mold, of how long it was between the two crashes you heard?”
Mold considered carefully before replying.
“So far’s I can remember, Sir Clinton, it was about five seconds. But I’ll not take my oath on it.”
“I wish you could be surer,” said the Chief Constable. “If it really was five seconds, it certainly looks like two separate affairs. A man smashing glass with repeated blows wouldn’t wait five seconds between them.
He scanned the broken glass again.
“There’s a lot of jagged stuff round the edge of the hole but no blood, so far as I can see. The fellow must have worn a thick glove if he got his hand in there in the dark without cutting himself in the hurry.”
He turned back to the keeper.
“You can go outside, Mold, and keep people off the doorstep for a minute or two. Perhaps we shall have news of the man-hunt soon. If anyone wants to see me on business, let him in; but keep off casual inquirers for the present.”
Obediently Mold unlocked the door and took his stand on the threshold outside, shutting the door behind him as he went. When he had gone, Sir Clinton turned to Joan.
“Were these medallions insured, do you know?”
Fortunately, Joan was able to supply some information.
“Maurice insured them, I know, But I’ve heard him say that he wasn’t content with the valuation put on them by the company. It seems they wouldn’t take his word for the value of the things—they thought it was a speculative one or something—and in case of a loss they weren’t prepared to go beyond a figure which Maurice thought too small.”
“The electros weren’t insured for any great amount, I suppose?”
Joan shook her head.
“I don’t think they were specially insured. They were just put under the ordinary house policy, I think. But you’d better ask Maurice. He knows all about it.”
Sir Clinton glanced round the room once more.
“I doubt if there’s much more to find out here,” he concluded. “It doesn’t give us much to go on, does it? Perhaps we’ll have better luck when these fellows come in from their hunt. They may have some news for us. But as things stand, we can’t even be sure whether it was two men or two gangs that were at work. One can’t blame Mold for not giving us better information; but what he gave us doesn’t seem to amount to very much at present.”
He turned, as though to leave the room; but at that moment the door opened and Mold appeared.
“There’s a Mr Foss wants to see you, sir. He says he’s got something to tell you that won’t wait. He’s been looking for you all over the house.”
“That’s the American, isn’t it?” Sir Clinton asked Joan in a low voice.
“Yes. He’s been here for a day or two, consulting with Maurice about these medallions.”
“Well, if he can throw any light on this business, I suppose we’d better let him in and see what he has to say. You needn’t go, Joan. You may as well hear his story, whatever it may be.”
He turned to the keeper.
“Let Mr Foss in, Mold; and wait outside the door yourself.”
Chapter Six
MR FOSS’S EXPLANATION
MR FOSS had nothing distinctively American in his appearance, Sir Clinton noted; and when he spoke, his accent was so faint as to be hardly detectable. He was a stout man of about fifty, with a clean-shaven face and more than a trace of a double chin: the kind of man who might readily be chosen as an unofficial uncle by children. Sir Clinton’s first glance showed him that the American was troubled about something.
Foss seemed surprised to find the Chief Constable in the guise of Prospero. He himself, in preparation for an official interview, had exchanged his masquerade costume for ordinary evening clothes.
“We haven’t met before, Sir Clinton,” he explained, rather unnecessarily, “but I’ve something to tell you”—his face clouded slightly—“which I felt you ought to know before you go any further in this business. I’ve been hunting all over the house for you; and it was only a minute or two ago that I got directed in here.”
“Yes?” said Sir Clinton, interrogatively.
Foss glanced at Joan and seemed to find some difficulty in opening the subject.
“It’s a strictly private matter,” he explained.
Joan refused to take the implied hint.
“If it has any connection with this burglary, Mr Foss, I see no reason why I should not hear what you have to say. It’s a matter that concerns me as one of the family, you know.”
Foss seemed taken aback and quite evidently he would have preferred to make his confidence to Sir Clinton alone.
“It’s rather a difficult matter,” he said, with a feeble endeavour to deflect Joan from her purpose.
Joan, however, took no notice of his diffidence.
“Come, Mr Foss,” she said. “If it’s really important, the sooner Sir Clinton hears of it the better. Begin.”
Foss glanced appealingly at Sir Clinton; but apparently the Chief Constable took Joan’s view of the matter.
“I’m rather busy at present, Mr Foss,” he said, dryly. “Perhaps you’ll give us your information as concisely as possible.”
Having failed in his attempt, Foss made the best of it; though it was with obvious reluctance that he launched into his subject.
“Last night after dinner,” he began, “I went into the winter-garden to smoke a cigar. I had some business affairs which I wanted to put straight in my mind; and I thought I could stow myself away in a corner there and be free from interruption. So I sat down at one side of the winter-garden behind a large clump of palms where no one was likely to see me; and I began to think over the points I had in mind.”
“Yes?” prompted Sir Clinton, who seemed anxious to cut Foss’s narrative down to essentials.
“While I was sitting there,” the American continued, “some of the young people came into the winter-garden and sat down in a recess on the side opposite to where I was. At first they didn’t disturb me. I thought they’d be almost out of earshot, on the other side of the dome. I think you were one of them, Miss Chacewater: you, and your brother, and Miss Rainhill, and someone else whom I didn’t recognize.”
“I was there,” Joan confirmed, looking rather puzzled as to what might come next.
“You may not know, Miss Chacewater,” Foss continued, “that your winter-garden is a sort of whispering-gallery. Although I was quite a long way off f
rom your party, your voices came quite clearly across to where I was sitting. They didn’t disturb me at all—I’ve got the knack of concentration when I’m thinking about business affairs. But although I wasn’t listening intentionally, the whole conversation was getting in at my ear while I was thinking about other things. I suppose I ought to have gone away or let you know I was there; but the fact is, I’d just got to a point where I was seeing my way through a rather knotty tangle, and I didn’t want to break my chain of thought. I wasn’t eavesdropping, you understand?”
“Yes?” repeated Sir Clinton, with a slight acidity in his tone. “And then?”
But the American failed to take the hint. Evidently he laid great stress on explaining exactly how things had fallen out.
“After a while,” he went on, with an evident effort to be accurate, “Miss Chacewater and someone else left the party.”
“Quite true,” Joan confirmed. “We went to play billiards.”
The American nodded.
“When you had gone,” he continued, “someone else joined the party—a red-haired young man whom they called Foxy.”
Sir Clinton glanced at Joan.
“That’s Foxton Polegate,” Joan explained. “He’s a neighbour of ours. He made these electrotypes of the medallions for us.”
Foss waited patiently till she had finished her interjection. Then he resumed his narrative.
“Shortly after that, my ear caught the sound of my own name. Naturally my attention was attracted, quite without any intention on my part. It’s only natural to prick up your ears when you hear your own name mentioned.”
He looked apologetically at them both as if asking them to condone his conduct.
“The next thing I heard—without listening intentionally, you understand?—was ‘Medusa Medallions.’ Now, as you know, I’ve been sent over here by Mr Kessock to see if I can arrange to buy these medallions from Mr Chacewater. It’s my duty to my employer to get to know all I can about them. I wouldn’t be earning my money if I spared any trouble in the work which has been put into my hands. So when I heard the name of the medallions mentioned, I . . . frankly, I listened with both ears. It seemed to me my duty to Mr Kessock to do so.”
He looked appealingly at their faces as though to plead for a favourable verdict on his conduct.
“Go on, please,” Sir Clinton requested.
“I hardly expected you’d look on it as I do,” Foss confessed rather shamefacedly. “Of course, it was just plain eavesdropping on my part by that time. But I felt Mr Kessock would have expected me to find out all I could about these medallions. To be candid, I’d do the same again; though I didn’t like doing it.”
Sir Clinton seemed to feel that he had been rather discouraging.
“I shouldn’t make too much of it, Mr Foss. What happened next?”
Foss’s face showed that he was at last coming to a matter of real difficulty.
“It’s rather unfortunate that I came to be mixed up in the thing at all,” he said, with obvious chagrin. “I can assure you, Miss Chacewater, that I don’t like doing it. I only made up my mind to tell you about it because it seems to me to give a chance of hushing this supposed burglary up quietly before there’s any talk goes round.”
“Supposed burglary,” exclaimed Joan. “What’s your idea of a real burglary, if this sort of thing is only a supposed one?”
She indicated the shattered show-case and the litter of glass on the floor.
Foss evidently decided to take the rest of his narrative in a rush.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “The next thing I overheard was a complete plan for a fake burglary—a practical joke—to be carried out to-night. The light in here was to be put out; the house-lights were to be extinguished: and in the darkness, your brother and this Mr Foxy How-d’you-call-him were to get away with the medallions.”
“Ah, Mr Foss, now you become interesting,” Sir Clinton acknowledged.
“I heard all the details,” Foss went on. “How Miss Rainhill was to see to extinguishing the lights; how Mr Chacewater was to secure the keeper; and how meanwhile his friend was to put on a thick glove and take the medallions out of the case there. And it seems to me that it was a matter that interested me directly,” he added, dropping his air of apology, “for I gathered that the whole affair was planned with some idea of making this sale to Mr Kessock fall through at the last moment.”
“Indeed?”
Sir Clinton’s face showed that at last he saw something more clearly than before.
“That was the motive,” Foss continued. “Now the whole thing put me in a most awkward position.”
“I think I see your difficulty,” Sir Clinton assured him, with more geniality than he had hitherto shown.
“It was very hard to make up my mind what to do,” Foss went on. “I’m a guest here. This was a family joke, apparently—one brother taking a rise out of another. It was hardly for me to step in and perhaps cause bad feelings between them. I thought the whole thing was perhaps just talk—not meant seriously in the end. A kind of ‘how-would-we-do-it-if-we-set-about-it’ discussion, you understand.”
Sir Clinton nodded understandingly.
“Difficult to know what to do, in your shoes, undoubtedly.”
Foss was obviously relieved by the Chief Constable’s comprehension.
“I thought it over,” he continued, with a less defensive tone in his voice, “and it seemed to me that the soundest course was to let sleeping dogs lie—to let them lie, at any rate, until they woke up and bit somebody. I made up my mind I’d say nothing about the matter at all, unless something really did happen.”
“Very judicious,” Sir Clinton acquiesced.
“Then came to-night,” Foss resumed. “Their plan went through. I don’t know what success they had—the house is full of all sorts of rumours. But I heard that the Chief Constable was on the spot and was taking up the case himself; and as soon as I heard that, I felt I ought to tell what I knew. So I hunted you out, so as to avoid your taking any steps before you knew just how the land lay. It’s only a practical joke and not a crime at all. I don’t know anything about your English laws, and I was afraid you might be taking some steps, doing something or other that would make it impossible to stop short of the whole affair coming out in public. I’m sure the family wouldn’t like that.”
He glanced at Joan’s face, but evidently found nothing very encouraging in her expression.
“It’s been a most unfortunate position for me,” he complained.
Sir Clinton took pity on him.
“It was very good of you to give me these facts,” he said with more cordiality than he had hitherto shown. “You’ve cleared up the thing and saved us from putting our foot in it badly, perhaps. Thanks very much for your trouble, Mr Foss. You’ve been of great assistance.”
His tone showed that the interview was at an end; but, tactfully, as though to spare the obviously ruffled feelings of the American, he accompanied him to the door. When Foss had left the room, Sir Clinton turned back to Joan.
“Well, Joan, what about it?”
“Oh, it sounds accurate enough,” Joan admitted, though there was an undercurrent of resentment in her tone. “Foss couldn’t have known what sort of person Foxy is; and it’s as clear as daylight that Foxy was at the bottom of this. He’s a silly ass who’s always playing practical jokes.”
She paused for a moment. Then relief showed itself in her voice as she added:
“It’s rather a blessing to know the whole affair has been just spoof, isn’t it? You can hush it up easily enough, can’t you? Nobody need know exactly what happened; and then we’ll be all right. If this story comes out, all our little family bickerings will be common talk; and one doesn’t want that. I’m not exactly proud of the way Maurice has been treating Cecil.”
Sir Clinton’s face showed that he understood her position; but, rather to her surprise, he gave no verbal assurance.
“It is all right!” she demand
ed.
“I think we’ll interview your friend Foxy first of all,” Sir Clinton proposed, taking no notice of her inquiry.
Going to the door, he gave some orders to the keeper.
“You were rather stiff with our good Mr Foss,” he said, turning to Joan as he closed the door again. “What would you have done yourself, if you’d been in his position?”
Joan had her answer ready.
“I suppose he couldn’t help overhearing things; but when this affair came to light, I think if I’d been in his shoes I’d have gone to Cecil instead of coming to us with the tale. Once Cecil found the game was up, he’d have been able to return the medallions in some way or other, without raising any dust.”
“That was one way, certainly.”
“What I object to is Foss coming to you,” Joan explained. “He didn’t know you’re an old friend of ours. All he knew was that you were the Chief Constable. So off he hies to you, post-haste, to give the whole show away; when he might quite well have come to me or gone to Cecil. I don’t like this way of doing things—no tact at all.”
“I can’t conceive how Cecil came to take up a silly prank like this,” said Sir Clinton. “It’s a schoolboy’s trick.”
“You don’t know everything,” said Joan, in defence of her brother.
“I know a good deal, Joan,” Sir Clinton retorted in a decisive tone. “Perhaps I know more than you think about this business.”
In a few minutes the keeper knocked at the door.
“Well?” demanded Sir Clinton, opening it.
“I can’t find Mr Polegate anywhere, sir,” Mold reported. “No one’s seen him; and he’s not in the house.”
“He was here to-night,” Joan declared. “I recognized him when I was dancing with him. You can’t mistake that shock of hair; and of course his voice gave him away when he spoke.”
Sir Clinton did not seem perturbed.
“Bring Mr Cecil, Mold,” he ordered, and locked the door again as the keeper went off on his fresh errand.
This task Mold completed in a very short time. Sir Clinton opened at his knock and Cecil Chacewater came into the museum. He was dressed as a Swiss admiral and behind him came Una Rainhill in the costume of Cleopatra.
Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 7