Ten Star Clues

by E. R. Punshon

  There seemed to be a general impression that that was what he might intend doing, and that, if so, then those deep forest recesses afforded safe concealment. The colonel said gloomily:—

  “Take an army to search Wychwood—and then they mightn’t find.”

  A fox-hunter’s expression Bobby did not much like, for he did not care to think of Ralph as the hunted creature pursued thus with horn and dog through the indifferent forest trees. An ugly picture, he thought, and an offence to human dignity, and yet, if Ralph were indeed the murderer of the old earl, what better fate did he deserve?

  Having learned nothing by their inquiries in the village and neighbourhood the colonel and Bobby went on to the castle in the hope of getting some information there. No one seemed to know anything though all were closely questioned. Countess Wych was in bed and Sophy thought her unfit to see any one. However, when asked she declared herself both fit and willing to receive the colonel.

  “But not that young man of his,” she sent the message down. “I don’t like him. He gets on my nerves.”

  The colonel thought this a little hard on Bobby, but thought it would be better to see the countess on her own terms, rather than not at all. So, leaving Bobby downstairs, he went off; and to Sophy, who also had stayed downstairs, since Lady Wych had stipulated that she and the colonel were to talk alone, Bobby said:—

  “You know, I’m awfully sorry to think I got on Lady Wych’s nerves. Especially as she doesn’t strike me as a nervy person. In fact, I shouldn’t have said she went in for being nervy.”

  Sophy made no answer to this, though it was plain that she was of much the same opinion. Abruptly she said:— “Mr. Ralph didn’t do it.”

  “If he is innocent he should have stayed here,” Bobby said. “Innocent people don’t run away.”

  He used the expression deliberately, in the hope that it might sting Sophy into a defence of the absent man. If once she could be induced to talk, any information she had and was keeping to herself might presently get itself uttered. He thought the attempt had failed, for she remained silent, though it was easy to see that there was deep fear and unease in the bright clear eyes fixed steadily on his. Since she did not speak, he said presently:—

  “Is not running away as good as a confession?”

  “Mr. Ralph didn’t do it,” she repeated.

  “ If you have any reason to think so,” Bobby said gravely, “or if there is anything you know, or think you know, or suspect, won’t you tell us? If Ralph Hoyle is innocent, it can only help him.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she answered, and added unexpectedly:— “I suspect everything. It’s all so vague, like a nightmare, when you feel you must and yet you can’t. There’s something... you don’t know what... all around you... something horrible... it’s like that... only you can’t do anything.”

  She had begun by speaking calmly enough, but at the end her words came in gasps, in broken sentences. Bobby, watching her closely and not without sympathy, felt that he understood well what she meant. He had often felt like that. Groping in the dark for he knew not what and knew not even if it were there, whatever it might be.

  “If you think of anything, no matter how trivial, won’t you let us know?” he asked, almost pleadingly, for he could not get away from the feeling that those small hands, however unwittingly, might hold the vital clue still needed. “No harm would be done by telling us, even if it turned out to be quite unimportant.”

  She made no reply to that, and presently he went on:— “I expect you feel very sorry for Ralph, don’t you?”

  “I do think it’s such a shame,” she burst out as though this question released depths of feeling hitherto held up. “I just know he would never do anything like that, and now Anne says she won’t be engaged to him any more, and I think it’s wicked, I do, and I don’t know how any one can think of marrying Mr. Bertram, not if he’s Lord Wych ten times over, and he isn’t, I know he isn’t.”

  “Then why did the old earl recognize him?”

  For once her eyes dropped before his. He wondered if she knew or suspected the true reason. But he knew also that she would say nothing unless and until she thought the time had come.

  “Lady Wych is still willing to accept him, isn’t she? to let him inherit the title?” Bobby asked after a time.

  Perhaps... I don’t know...” Sophy answered slowly. “It’s all so difficult... I don’t think she has made up her mind... knows what to do... everything is such a dreadful muddle... I think she’s all confused and upset.”

  “Miss Longden,” Bobby said slowly, “don’t you think you ought to be willing now to answer us, to tell us everything. Police have no power or authority to insist on your speaking, but if you are called as a witness, the courts have authority. They can make it very unpleasant for any one, who won’t answer reasonable questions.”

  “Yes, I know,” she answered, as one who long ago had seen what was inevitable, and, since it was inevitable, knew there was nothing to be gained by trying to avoid it. “I looked in a book and it had all about what they can do to you. I think being shut up in prison must be worse than almost anything, don’t you?”

  “Miss Longden,” Bobby repeated, “if you refuse to answer questions, you must not wonder at what we think. There are two possibilities. Either you shot Lord Wych yourself...”

  “Me?” said Sophy and looked very surprised. “Oh, I wouldn’t ever do a thing like that,” she assured him. She shook her head gravely. “I don’t think I could, not really. Do you?” Bobby expressed no opinion, and she continued: “Of course, I’m an awfully good shot.”

  “Eh?” said Bobby, a good deal startled.

  “Didn’t you know?” she asked. “I thought detectives always found out everything. It was Uncle Jim. He’s an officer in the Territorials. He showed me their shooting range, and it was awfully interesting, and I said could I try, and he looked ever so superior, and said all right, and promised me a pair of silk stockings if I hit the target once in five shots, and I hit it every time, right on that round black spot in the middle, only he wouldn’t give me five pairs of stockings, and I think it was rather cheating not to, don’t you? and then he got his revolver and told me to try with that, and I did, but he wouldn’t promise me anything for hitting, though I wanted him to.”

  “Were you as good with the revolver?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, yes, nearly, not quite. I hit the black round thing three times and uncle said two hits were inners and one missed altogether—I can’t think why. It’s quite simple really. All you’ve got to do is to point the thing straight. Uncle said lots of people couldn’t. I think that’s rather funny, don’t you? because it’s only pointing straight.”

  “I suppose that is all,” agreed Bobby, feeling a little worried by this unexpected light thus thrown on Sophy’s powers and capacities.

  He remembered having once heard a firearms expert remark that sometimes people—almost invariably women —were extraordinarily successful the first time they shot. But almost equally invariably they failed just as badly at a second attempt. A kind of beginner’s luck, probably. Bobby did not know in the least what to make of Sophy’s apparently spontaneous and naive tale. Or had she known he was sure to hear sooner or later the story of her skill, and had she thought it wiser to tell it herself in this apparently simple and innocent way? Was, in short, the girl as simple as she seemed? He reflected grimly that all women are the most inexplicable mixture of child-like simplicity and Machiavellian subtlety. The devil of it was that you never knew which they were turning on—the child-like simplicity or the Machiavellian, more than Machiavellian, subtlety.

  Sophy was saying thoughtfully:—

  “I don’t think I could ever possibly shoot any one. At least not an old man like Lord Wych. I was awfully frightened of him,” she added, “he always seemed so grand and imposing, and rather nice with it, only his being nice made you all the more frightened because somehow it made you feel how awful it would be if
he stopped being nice. No,” she decided firmly, “I’m sure I could never possibly have shot him.”

  Then we are forced to the second conclusion,” Bobby said. “That you know something, and that you won’t tell us because you are shielding someone.”

  She made no answer, but she looked full at him, and he perceived with exasperation that now she was a third woman, neither simple nor subtle, but the very incarnation of an oxlike and immovable obstinacy.

  “Oh, hell,” said Bobby, losing his temper.

  “I don’t think,” Sophy told him, “that that is a very nice way to talk. My father says it’s very sad that young people”—she said this as one of immeasurable age rebuking callow youth—“have got into such a way of using so lightly what are really very dreadful words—like hell and damn—as if they didn’t mean anything. They do,” Sophy told him sternly, “they have very dreadful meanings indeed.”

  “Sorry,” muttered Bobby, and Sophy at once put on so smug an air of feeling that her rebuke had done him good that he longed passionately to box her little ears for her— the usual coarse masculine reaction when the feminine shaft has struck fairly home.

  Another bull’s-eye she probably thought, he told himself resentfully.

  Partly to change the subject, he asked:—

  “Does Lady Wych know Miss Anne has broken off her engagement with Ralph?”

  “Oh, yes. Anne didn’t want her to know, but I told her at once,” Sophy answered primly, and Bobby wanted to shout ‘sneak’ at the top of his voice, only he didn’t dare.

  All at once he perceived that now she was neither simple nor subtle, nor prim, nor smug, but entirely different—a larky schoolgirl enjoying a rag on an unpopular mistress.

  “Bertram’s ever so frightened,” she said. “I mean about Anne marrying him. He doesn’t want to one bit. You can’t imagine how scared he is.”

  “Well, he hasn’t got to if he doesn’t want,” Bobby remarked, and Sophy surveyed him with quiet contempt. “You don’t know Anne,” she said simply.

  “Oh, well,” Bobby muttered.

  “I heard Lord Wych say once that Anne was like Parliament,” Sophy went on, “and I asked Lady Wych why, and she said it was because Parliament can do anything except turn a woman into a man, and Anne can do anything except turn herself into a man. If she’s made up her mind, Bertram just simply hasn’t got a chance, and he knows it, and it makes him most awfully sick. Because he is slack all through, and Anne won’t have that. He’s tremendously upset now he knows what she means. He was upset before, I mean about being the new Earl Wych. He didn’t know there was such a lot to it. Being Earl Wych, I mean. He thought it was just being rich and having a good time. And it isn’t. Not a bit.”

  “Being an Earl Wych is a whole-time job,” Bobby agreed. “You’ve got to live up to it—in person, too.”

  “I showed him Earl Wych’s appointment book,” Sophy said. “All dinners and speeches and meetings and one thing and another. And Anne to see he didn’t shirk. He said it would be like gaol, only in gaol you did get some time to yourself. I don’t know if earls are necessary,” Sophy added musingly. “Our socialist club in Poplar used to call them an excrescence, only a lot of adjectives as well, but they are kept on the go. And with Anne—”

  “Rubbed that in, did you?” Bobby asked when she paused.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she answered with dignity. “I was only telling him. And he doesn’t like the idea of going to the war, either. There’s a picture in one of the rooms of an Earl Wych leading a charge or something, and looking awfully fierce, and waving his sword about, and telling the rest to come on. I used to think it was the charge of the Light Brigade at Waterloo or somewhere, but it was only practising in the park really.”

  “Show it to Bertram?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, I did happen to be looking at it while he was there,” Sophy admitted, “and I asked him if he thought they were all killed, and then he went away. That’s all.”

  “Rubbing it in?” asked Bobby again.

  “I don’t know why you keep saying that,” Sophy answered with still greater dignity. “He’s got to know, hasn’t he? It’s the Wychwood Dragoon Regiment, only they use motor cars now instead of horses, but it’s really all the same, and they say they are going to be the very first to be sent to France.”

  “Did you tell him that, too?” Bobby asked.

  “I think it was mentioned,” Sophy admitted again. “He’s got to know, hasn’t he? What with going to the war, and Anne going to marry him, and having to live up to being Earl Wych, I don’t think he is feeling awfully happy.”

  “Well, thanks for telling me,” Bobby said. “Most interesting. Especially why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why you told me,” he explained, and she looked at him doubtfully, as if she understood but was not quite certain that he did. He added:— “I see you are a psychologist.”

  “What’s that?” Sophy asked suspiciously.

  “You,” said Bobby.

  “Oh,” said Sophy. “Well, I hope a what’s-its-name is nice.”

  “Generally bald and stuffy and awfully old clothes and big spectacles and a nose in a book,” Bobby told her.

  “Oh!” said Sophy again, and contemplated this picture without pleasure. “Sike—what is it yourself,” she said, and then asked abruptly:— “Why does Mr. Clinton Wells want to know where the Charles the Second oak is?” Bobby blinked, bewildered by this sudden change of subject. Then he asked:—

  “What is the Charles the Second oak?”

  “It’s where he hid once when there had been a battle and he was running away or something,” Sophy explained. “There’s all about it in the Midwych County History— it’s an awfully dry book and I read it all, at least nearly all except what I skipped—when we came here first—and it says doubts have been thrown on the story, but it doesn’t say why. I think it’s an awfully nice story, and besides it’s still there—the oak, I mean—only Mr. Clinton Wells didn’t know and Mr. Bertram didn’t either, though nearly every one does, so they asked me, and I told them. But why did Mr. Clinton Wells want to know?”

  “There’s quite a lot of things I don’t know,” Bobby answered, “and that’s one of them.”

  He noticed that Sophy was looking hard out of the window. Bertram was strolling along one of the garden paths with his hands in his pockets, and certainly he looked very depressed. Sophy looked away from him at Bobby and then back at Bertram, and Bobby received the conviction that he had been given a hint. He said:—

  “Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll go and have a talk with him.”

  “I think that would be a very good idea,” Sophy approved gravely.

  CHAPTER XVII

  TEN STAR CLUES

  On his way, however, to obey the unspoken hint he felt he had received, Bobby, in crossing the hall, met Martin, busy about some of a butler’s duties. Moved by a sudden impulse, Bobby stopped.

  “Martin,” he said, “can you tell me—you know I’m a newcomer about here—where there’s an oak they call the Charles the Second oak, after some old story or another?”

  Martin did not answer for a moment, and the look he gave Bobby was sly, calculating, puzzled. That he saw some significance in the question was plain, equally plain that he did not know what that significance could be.

  “The Charles the Second oak, sir?” he repeated, obviously trying to gain time.

  “Well,” said Bobby sharply. “Where is it?”

  “Very well-known spot, sir,” Martin answered then. “In the forest, sir. Fine view from the top of the nearby hill. Favourite place for picnics.”

  He proceeded to give directions for finding it. It was about seven miles by road, but by paths through fields and the outskirts of the forest not more than four miles, if as much. Bobby listened attentively, and when Martin had finished, thanked him and remarked casually:—

  “I shall be able to tell Mr. Clinton Wells now where it is, if he asks
me.”

  “Oh, Mr. Wells would be sure to know,” Martin answered. “Born and bred about here, sir. He’s sure to have been there for a picnic or something.”

  “Apparently he doesn’t know, for he was asking about it,” Bobby said.

  “Well, sir, that’s funny, very funny indeed,” said Martin, and once more the look he gave Bobby was sly and wondering and suspicious.

  “Very funny,” Bobby agreed and walked on, aware that he had nearly said:—“Very fishy.”

  Clear, he thought, that Martin did not believe in Clinton Wells’s ignorance of the position of so well known a local landmark, and equally clear that in this pretence of ignorance Martin felt there was some significance about which he was anything but clear.

  Nor was that significance clear to Bobby, who was still turning the problem over and over in his mind when he joined the new earl, who, hands in pockets, looking very glum and depressed, had slumped down on one of the seats with which the castle grounds were well provided. He looked up as he heard Bobby approaching and favoured him with an ugly scowl.

  “Oh, it’s you, is it?” he snarled. “Well, better a cop than any more of that blasted lawyer.”

  “Has your lordship—?” began Bobby, and Bertram interrupted him angrily.

  “Oh, can the lordship,” he snapped. “I used to think I would be tickled to death getting called ‘my lord’, and now I only want to reach for a club. Strikes me being ‘my lord’ in this damn old country just means being odd-job man about the house. That old stick of a lawyer—”

  He paused, apparently for lack of words to express himself, and Bobby said:—