“Oh, shut up!” cried Felix irritably, which had the effect of spurring the creature to louder, fiercer efforts to alarm the household.
Both John and Felix were tired, depressed and hungry. Standing on the narrow brick path that ran around the farmhouse, looking over the low fields from which the trees rose swathed in damp whitish mist, John had a sudden revulsion of feeling. Almost he could believe that Rampson was right, and that Morris Price had murdered his nephew. Almost he was inclined to abandon the whole affair. What were the Prices to him that he should lose sleep and go without food chasing wild geese for them all over the country? Why couldn’t that arrogant, obstinate idiot, Morris Price, speak out for himself and tell his lawyer about his meeting with his wife and what happened at it? It was as Rampson had said; all the clues that did not lead to Morris Price led up a blind alley. Lord! Couldn’t these confounded people open the door and tell their dog to stop barking? Standing stiff and weary, with that insane barking in his ears, John felt heartily sick of the Prices and their affairs.
“Poor old John, you look fagged out,” said Felix. He added in a low voice:“What should we have done without you this last week? Gone mad, I think.”
And so nicely adjusted are human emotions, and especially the emotions of tired and hungry humans, that on the instant at Felix’s words and his serious humble look, John’s conviction of Price’s innocence came back to him. It became the major object of his life to set Morris free. He heartily resumed his attack on the door of Upper Ring Farm.
“I am feeling a bit depressed,” he admitted cheerfully. “It’s the way all my best clues seem to lead nowhere that exasperates me. And I bet this one’ll prove no better than the others. Hufton stole those notes from poor Charles’s wallet when he found him dead, you can bet your boots. In fact, at the moment, there’s only one-thing sustaining me in hope.”
“What’s that?”
“The milk we didn’t drink at tea-time. Lord! I should have liked to have taken samples from those three lots of milk and had them analysed!”
Felix’s face in the moonlight was a study in horror.
“John! You don’t mean—I’ve been wondering what you meant by that remark about the Romans. You don’t—you can’t—”
“Can’t I? You must admit the ladies were strangely particular about the milk destined for our tea—not for their own, mind you. I wouldn’t mind betting there was more than milk in the second lot. I’m not sure about the third. I’m inclined to think that was a return to the status quo. Oh! Good evening. Is Mr. Hufton in?” The dark, thin-featured mistress of the farm stood in the doorway with a candle in her hand and looked at them suspiciously.
“Quiet, Rover!” she cried shrilly, with magical effect. Silence settled upon the landscape like a benediction. “Hufton, he’s in bed. What is it you wants?”
“I want to speak to you and Mr. Hufton,” replied John. “May we come in?”
She hesitated, then grudgingly opened the door and led them through into a comfortable kitchen dimly lit by a large but ill-burning table lamp. A heavily built man of middle age who had been warming his feet by the fire turned as they came in and bade them a gruff good evening. The woman made an attempt to turn up the lamp which immediately emitted thin streamers of black smoke.
“Drat!” she remarked perfunctorily and turned it down again and relit the candle she had blown out. She did not ask her visitors to be seated, but stood at the table looking at them from under black brows with an ill-humoured expression, as though she found them a nuisance: as, no doubt, she did.
“The matter is this,” said John, addressing the woman, who appeared on the whole a more lively and intelligent person than the man. “Last Wednesday a Mrs. Field, who was staying at Sheepshanks Cottage, came to you and asked you to change a cheque for her.”
The woman’s black eyes sought her husband’s. She seemed about to deny John’s statement but thought better of it and nodded.
“She gave you a cheque for ten pounds, and you gave her two five-pound notes. Now, Mrs.—”
“Dolphin, our name is. But I don’t—”
“Mrs. Dolphin, I want you to tell me where those two five-pound notes came from.”
“We didn’t steal them, if that’s what you means,” said the woman shrilly, flushing dark red. “And if you’re going to say as we did, I’ll ask you to step outside, master. We’re honest people here, besides having no need to steal, and can have five-pound notes in our purses as well as anybody else, I suppose!”
John waited a moment and then said calmly, noting that in spite of her indignation the woman looked confused and nervous:
“Hufton gave them you, didn’t he?”
“I’m sure I don’t remember,” replied Mrs. Dolphin, with the air of one to whom a five-pound note is a bagatelle. “Where did you get them notes from, Henry?”
She looked meaningly across the table at her peaceful husband. But he failed her.
“What you be talking about,” he remarked, scratching the stubble on his cheek. “I doesn’t know no more’n this chair.”
“Oh, Henry! You’ve forgot!”
“No, I hasn’t. I knows as you said tother day you’d give a lady change for a cheque, because didn’t I say more fool you without making sure it were a good’un? But I thoughts as you’d took the money from the box in the wardrobe. I never heard naught of a fi’-pun note.”
“Oh, Henry! You forgets everything!”
“No, I doesn’t,” said Mr. Dolphin with placid obstinacy. “I ha’n’t never seed a fi’-pun note but twice, and one o’ them were a bad’un.”
John cut into the conversation before the farmer’s disappointed wife could tell him what she thought of him.
“Perhaps you don’t know, Mrs. Dolphin, that all five-pound notes are numbered and can be easily traced?” She had not known, that was obvious.
“I’ve seen the two notes you gave Mrs. Field,” went on John, “and I know where they came from. They came from the pocket-book of Sir Charles Price who was found dead in Rodland Quarry a week ago.”
The woman’s thin lips fell apart and she gazed at him in silence. She went pale, then flushed.
“What?” she asked stupidly, and then, as the import of his words came home to her, broke out: “I never knew that, I swear I never knew! Hufton, he told me he found them in a field, and I thought no harm for him to keep them, not knowing the owner, for why should the police have them more than the chap as found them? Oh, you’re not going to say, sir, as Jim Hufton stole them! He’s a good lad, if he is a bit sly in some ways, and he pays his lodgings regular and doesn’t drink!”
“I’m not going to say anything till I’ve heard where he got these notes,” said John patiently, and taking the hint the woman went to the foot of the little enclosed staircase and called shrilly:
“Jim! Jim! Come down! You’re wanted!”
The lodger was heard to reply that he was asleep, but a bellowed summons from the master of the house brought him down in a few moments. He stood at the foot of the stairs, blinking and scratching his head, a pair of trousers hastily slipped on over his night-shirt. He was a heavy-faced, sunburned youth of twenty or so, with rather prominent teeth and a pair of sleepy, good-natured little eyes.
“What?” he said simply with the curtness of one aroused from a comfortable bed.
“Them notes, Jim—them five-pound notes you asked me to change—where did you get them?”
“Found ’em,” replied Jim laconically and gave a cavernous yawn.
“Oh, Jim! You ha’n’t been doing anything as you shouldn’t?” asked his landlady with sorrowful solicitude.
“Findin’s keepin’s.” If Jim Hufton had indeed stolen the notes his conscience did not appear to be unduly disturbed thereby. He yawned again, sighed deeply, supported himself against the door-post and with his big toe manoeuvred the door-mat under his bare feet.
“Make a clean breast of it, Jim,” urged Mrs. Dolphin, who seemed suddenly to have de
cided that guilt would be more interesting than innocence. She watched the possible criminal with an entranced eye, evidently hoping for the worst.
Mr. Dolphin, finding the strain of simultaneously keeping his feet on the fender and his eye on the lodger too much for him, reluctantly moved his feet to an adjacent chair and turned a solemn, disinterested gaze on the little scene. Mr. Hufton slowly woke to a sense of something wrong. He turned a filmy eye from John to Felix.
“I found ’em in the field,” he repeated in a slightly aggrieved tone. “What of it? Whoever left ’em there didn’t want ’em or he wouldn’t ’a’ left ’em there.” He contemplated his big toe-nail in silence for a moment. “That’s sense,” he added more cheerfully, struck by the rare wisdom of his own words.
“What field did you find them in?” asked John, convinced that this lethargic person was speaking the truth. Only an innocent man or an experienced actor could have shown such indifferent obtuseness.
“Eh? In the field near the common just afore the railway.”
“What, just lying about in the field?”
“Ah. Pushed under a gorse-bush, they was. I happened to stoop to tie me boot-lace and I seed a bit o’ white paper poking out from under the furze. And that’s what it were, sir. Two bank-notes. Well, it stands to reason the chap as put ’em there didn’t want’em, and—”
“When was this?”
“Eh? Oh, it were the day I found the chap in the quarry, same morning. I’d come back for me breakfus’ and I were going to work again. And it stands to reason, findin’s keepin’s and the chap as put—”
“Thank you,” said John, a bit weary of this piece of deduction, sense though it might be. He took up his hat. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Well, the chap as put ’em there,” said the man of sense again, “can’t have ’em back. ’Cos they’re spended on a sideboard and a wedding-ring and a clock. And it stands to reason—”
John got himself and Felix hastily outside the front door. The farmer’s wife seemed as loath to let them go as she had been to let them in.
“Will he be arrested?” she asked with bated breath and enraptured eyes.
“Lord, no. I don’t see any reason to doubt what he says.”
She looked disappointed.
“He oughtn’t never to have kept them notes, did he? He ought to have took them to the police,” she pronounced severely, determined not to be baulked of her lodger’s guilt.
John foresaw endless trouble for the luckless Hufton and determined to avert it.
“You’re just as bad, aren’t you?” he pointed out gently. “You actually changed the notes.”
And having thus silenced Mrs. Dolphin’s tongue and put a premium on her lodger’s perfect innocence, John took his leave.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AT DEAD OF NIGHT
They arrived at Rhyllan after eleven. Blodwen had retired to bed, but Rampson and Mr. Clino conducted them to the small parlour and watched them ravenously devouring cold meat and salads. Both Rampson and Cousin Jim seemed exceedingly pleased to see the wanderers return. There was about both these gentlemen a slight air of tedium, as if they had spent a long while in one another’s company without much entertainment.
“Dear me!” observed Mr. Clino, as Felix once more attacked the ham. “The detection of crime seems to induce hunger. I hope you did detect something, after all your journeyings?”
“Yes, oh, yes!” said John cheerfully, though he was a little surprised at a certain note of unfriendly irony in Mr. Clino’s tone. “We detected a lady and her charming niece having tea in a drawing-room.”
“You found Mrs. Field, then?” said Rampson.
“Oh, yes, we found her all right and she gave us a very nice tea.”
“That all?”
“And lots of explanations,” added John.
“Reasonable ones?”
“Oh, quite reasonable, if you accept the fact that she’s a valetudinarian, which she certainly doesn’t look.”
“She does not,” agreed Rampson emphatically. “She appeared to me exceptionally spry and lively. What’s the disease?”
“Bad heart, sore throat and weak nerves.”
“And she chose to stay by herself in a cottage miles away from anywhere!” murmured Rampson sceptically. “Don’t you believe her, John. She is fooling thee.”
“Ah, but that was just why. She wanted to be within call of her loving niece.”
“Within call! Is Sheepshanks Cottage on the telephone?”
“Shouldn’t think so. But that’s what she said. And of course there’s no accounting for the caprices of a malade imaginaire. In fact, I should probably have believed her if she hadn’t tried to poison my tea. Very inartistic touch, that. Puts one on one’s guard at once. Well, I’m going to bed,” said John, much refreshed in spirits. “Good night, Felix. Good night, Mr. Clino.”
“Good night,” responded the elderly gentleman without warmth. “I think I shall take a turn on the terrace before going up. What about you, Felix?”
“I’m off to bed, Cousin Jim,” responded that young man uncompromisingly, and followed Rampson and Christmas up the broad, shallow stairs. He paused with them outside Rampson’s room.
“I say, have you told Rampson about that bank-note? If what Hufton says is true, it’s valuable evidence on our side, isn’t it? Because no one could imagine that my father would have taken the notes. And they were found in a field at the other side of the quarry. My father came straight back to the Rodland Road.”
“Hufton’s evidence is certainly valuable,” replied John guardedly. “And I don’t see any reason to doubt the truth of it. Won’t you come in for a moment or two and have a talk?”
Felix refused, somewhat to the relief of John, who wanted a private word with Rampson, and with friendly good nights went along the passage to his own room.
“What was all that about Hufton and evidence?” asked Rampson, closing the door of his room. “Didn’t sound very convincing to me. If Morris could do the murder, I don’t see who’s going to imagine he’d stick at pinching a bank-note or two and planting them in a field.”
“No, of course not. But I wasn’t going to discourage Felix’s new-born optimism. Hufton’s evidence wouldn’t be in the least convincing to a jury. But I think it’s convinced Felix. Hence his sudden cheerfulness.”
“Oh, well!” said Rampson, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t understand these Prices. They’re altogether too temperamental for me. Old Clino seems to be the most rational one of the bunch, and he’s an unspeakable old bore, goodness knows!”
Rampson spoke feelingly and sighed.
“We’ve been fatiguing one another to death all day,” he explained, “except for an hour in the afternoon when he providentially fell asleep in a deck-chair. I was sorely tempted to go off by myself for a ten-mile walk, but I remembered what you said about staying on the premises, so I stayed. But nothing happened, except a few more hours of boredom. Funny thing,” added Rampson pensively, “I believe he found my society quite as tedious as I found his.”
“Remarkable.”
“Ass! No, but seriously. After tea he just sat on the terrace with me and yawned at nearly everything I said. Yet when I got up for a stroll, up he got too and trailed along by my side, obviously racking his brains to think of something to say to me that he hadn’t said before. He even asked me who were my favourite authors, and said he never read any novels but Scott and Thackeray. Oh, Lord! I’ve had a hell of a day! I feel a wreck!”
“Didn’t you see anything of Blodwen?” asked John, lighting a cigarette.
“At lunch-time. I don’t know where she was all the rest of the day. Lying down, perhaps. I must say she didn’t look at all well at lunch. Quite white, and she’d put rouge on her cheeks, and looked ghastly. I suppose she didn’t want to harrow our feelings by looking ill. But her conversation wasn’t equal to her cosmetics. She hardly said a word all lunch-time, but just stared out of the window
like a—like a sick little owl. After lunch, I ventured to be sympathetic and said that she must be feeling the strain of this business awfully; and she gave a kind of ghastly smile and said: ‘Strain? What strain? I don’t know of any. If you mean this absurd business of my uncle’s arrest, I can assure you it doesn’t disturb me unduly. I am quite confident of the outcome. But then, I know my uncle.’ And she turned her back on me and went away. Did you ever? ‘This absurd business!’ And I used to think Blodwen was a sensible woman, though as hard as nails. Really, John, I’m awfully sorry for the Prices, especially as you seem to like them, but they’re enough to drive an ordinary person crazy.”
John looked thoughtfully at the tip of his cigarette.
“Didn’t you see Blodwen again all day?”
“Oh, yes, at dinner. Same white face, same ghastly rouge, same silence. I wonder,” said Rampson thoughtfully, “whether this business has unhinged her mind. Or do you think she believes at the bottom of her heart that Morris is guilty, and can’t keep up the pretence of courage any longer?”
“Her emphatic remarks to you certainly sound like it,” murmured John. “But it’s a very sudden loss of courage, if so. She seemed perfectly cheerful yesterday. So you’ve had a quite peaceful day?”
“Peaceful!” echoed Rampson scornfully. “Oh, yes, awfully peaceful, with old Clino chirping in my ear all day. Tell me, John, why were you so keen on leaving me to hold the fort here? Did you expect anything to happen?”
“No. But, you see, Rampson, we haven’t found the murderer yet, and so long as we haven’t found the murderer, anybody may be the murderer.”
Rampson thoughtfully drew back the chintz curtains and let up the blind on to the moonlit garden scene.
“I see. Even Blodwen.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Rampson with a sigh, leaning on the sill. “I hope she didn’t. Not that I like her much, but I felt sorry for her to-day. When she made that idiotic speech about not feeling any strain there was real blank fear in her eyes, I could swear. I was sorry for her. Well. It’s a lovely night. The moon’s almost at the full.”
Dead Mans Quarry: A Golden Age Mystery Page 25