“Yes, I must admit I have, and have taken the precaution of bringing two plain-clothes men with me. To-night, after a pleasant little chat with that gentleman, we are going to dig up his garden and unearth Lord Bygrave’s body,” replied Heather, with an air of supreme confidence.
“Of course you have information in support of the conjecture that it’s there?” asked Vereker.
“Yes. To-day I had a lengthy interview with Mr. George Darnell, at the address you furnished me with, and under the cross-examination to which I subjected him he broke down completely and made a clean breast of it. As we surmised, he was blackmailing Lord Bygrave by threatening to make public his secret marriage, and he was also successful in extorting the £10,000 worth of bearer bonds from him by forging his wife’s handwriting in a letter pleading that she was destitute. It was on this very business of blackmail that Lord Bygrave kept the fatal appointment at the Mill House with Darnell. But the man behind the scenes, the brains and engineer of all this roguery, was none other than Grierson. Now, in years gone by, this George Darnell and Mr. Grierson were as thick as thieves, and on his arrival in England Darnell promptly looked up his old friend. They very soon, it appears, began to exchange confidences, and quickly resumed their former intimate friendship. Neither of them had altered for the better since those days. Darnell had been imprisoned for forgery in America and Grierson had been secretly appropriating public money for years. Apart from Darnell’s information, I had discovered this much some time ago, by instituting a thorough audit of his accounts at the Ministry of X—. Lord Bygrave discovered his defalcations by mere accident, so cleverly had they been executed and, to avoid a scandal, quietly cleared up matters out of his own pocket. He, however, insisted on Grierson giving him a written confession and tendering his resignation. This Grierson did, handing Bygrave the letter on the latter’s departure for Hartwood, on a holiday. It was agreed that Grierson should leave immediately Bygrave returned from that vacation.
Naturally, when these two boon companions, George Darnell and Grierson, came to understand one another thoroughly once more they decided, as they were both short of money, to work together for their common benefit. There were distinct possibilities for making money at hand and they did not hesitate to exploit them to the utmost. As I have mentioned, the Mill House was agreed upon as the scene for a meeting between Bygrave and George Darnell, Grierson being at hand in another room in case of trouble. That interview ended in a violent quarrel in which George Darnell felled his cousin with a chair—in self-defence, he protests. Aghast at his action, he rushed into the bathroom for water, and on his return found Grierson standing over the prostrate man with a coal hammer in his hand. Grierson at once informed him that Lord Bygrave was dead and angrily upbraided him with having used quite unnecessary violence. Darnell is certain that Grierson, seizing his opportunity, finished the dastardly business during his (Darnell’s) absence in the bathroom, by smashing Lord Bygrave’s skull with the hammer. Knowing that Winslade was waiting outside with his car for his uncle, Grierson at once worked out a most ingenious plan to avoid the discovery of their crime. It was the work of a master mind. Darnell was to wait in the room until Grierson, who was to jump from the window into the yard, had extinguished the lamp at the gate of Mill House, and then go down and meet Winslade as if he were Lord Bygrave. It was a bold and risky enterprise, requiring nerves of steel, but the situation was desperate. Darnell, however, succeeded beyond all expectation in his rôle, and managed to manoeuvre Winslade down to Hartwood out of the way while Grierson, who had been hiding in the garden after putting out the lamp, returned to the house to remove the body. This he did by dragging it down the stairs and placing it in the back of his car, and driving forthwith to Carrington House. It was also arranged that Darnell had to turn up at the White Bear,’ still impersonate Bygrave, and ransack Bygrave’s portmanteau for Grierson’s incriminating confession. This all succeeded according to plan.
“And the body?” asked Vereker.
“Grierson subsequently informed Darnell that he had safely disposed of that by burying it in his garden beneath a rubbish heap close to the boundary wall.”
“Admirable, Heather, admirable; and what are you going to do to-night?” asked Vereker eagerly.
“I’m going to have a brief interview with Grierson, tell him what we know, and then by lantern light exhume the body,” replied Heather in a matter-of-fact tone: “You will, of course, accompany us?”
“An unpleasant business, but I should like to see the thing through,” replied Vereker. “Of course you have arrested Darnell?”
“Darnell is dead,” returned Heather. “He swallowed some poison or other after his confession and expired in the cab on the way to the police station.
An hour later Inspector Heather, with two assistants and Vereker, arrived at Carrington House. A light was burning brightly in one of the front windows on the ground floor, and on their receiving no reply to their summons Heather glanced in that illuminated window.
“Another tragedy, Mr. Vereker,” he said.
Vereker quickly stepped over to where the inspector stood, and peered into the room. To his horror, he saw Mr. Grierson seated at a beautifully polished mahogany table; one arm hung limp at his side; the other; clutching a revolver, was thrust out in front of him, and his head, with its white, rigid face towards the window, rested on the table against that extended arm. A shining pool of blood had run from a ghastly hole in the forehead across the lustrous mahogany and dripped on to the light, fawn-coloured carpet below, creating a gruesome dark stain on that fabric. In front of the body was a writing pad on which lay some sheets of paper and a fountain-pen.
To effect an entrance to the house was the matter of only a few minutes, and soon Heather, Vereker and the two plain-clothes men were standing in the room of the tragedy, grouped about the body of the suicide. Heather was calmly examining the lifeless corpse, and jotting down notes in his diary.
“His last act seems to have been to set down a complete confession of his share in the crime,” said Vereker, glancing at the sheets of written matter lying on the table. And he has addressed that confession to me,” he added as he picked up the closely written leaves the more easily to read them.
“While you are going through that document,” said Inspector Heather, “we’ll proceed with digging operations outside. I’ll let you know when we come upon the body, Mr. Vereker.”
Vereker nodded his head and, leaving the room of the tragedy, entered the drawing-room next door where a bright fire was still burning. Switching on the electric light, he ensconced himself in a comfortable chair, and began to read.
Grierson’s confession as to his share in the crime was a quiet, dispassionately written document. No trace of excitement or remorse or anxiety troubled the easy flowing sentences as they revealed the incidents of a most brutal and cold-blooded murder. That murder, it transpired from the document, Grierson had decided upon prior to George Darnell’s appearance upon the scene, but his advent had at once been seized upon with alert opportunism by the old civil servant as dove-tailing admirably into his own plans. George Darnell he had used as a tool throughout the whole horrible business, and was quite prepared to send him to the gallows by throwing the onus of the crime upon him. He wrote:
The extinction by hanging of a life so utterly worthless as his, George Darnell’s, is no loss to the community, and my intention of so managing the death of Lord Bygrave that he should take my place at the end of the hangman’s rope was forced on me by the fact that I required time to complete my monumental work on the World’s Famous Etchers. Not that I consider my personal life any worthier than Darnell’s, but just the possession of knowledge which I felt it imperative to bequeath to mankind decided me to make him suffer the penalty of an act which by the mere machinery of law and social order was undoubtedly my due. I therefore state as an act of justice to the man, now that my plans have failed to achieve success, that Darnell merely stunned Lord Bygrave when he fell
ed him with a chair in the Mill House, Eyford. As Lord Bygrave’s existence was inimical to my interests, for my retirement would have inflicted a further strain on my depleted exchequer, I gave him his quietus with a blow from a hammer. I think I am justified in believing that death was almost instantaneous and painless.
The best laid schemes, however, oft come to grief, and I am now aware that Scotland Yard is slowly but inexorably drawing the net about me and that even you, Vereker, playing the amateur detective, have discovered something which remorselessly points to me as the culprit. I could not interpret your visit and your interrogation about George Darnell this evening in any other way, and am forced to the conclusion that he has been discovered by the police and made a statement incriminating me. This failure of my plan to evade the consequences of my act has come as a great disappointment to me and it is with infinite regret that I now feel obliged to end my life before finishing my book. I therefore ask you, Vereker, to make a thorough study of my manuscript and attempt to bring it to a worthy conclusion. It is in the belief that you will not fail to undertake this task in the praiseworthy labour of human enlightenment, and for the furtherance of a wider study of Art, that I now meet the “Angel with the darker draught” with composure and a certain cheerfulness. In my safe you will find my will bequeathing my collection of etchings to the nation.
GREGORY FEATHERSTONEHAUGH GRIERSON.
Hardly had Vereker finished reading this amazing document, which filled him with horror by its frigid moral insensibility and insane egotism, than Heather entered the drawing-room. He was perspiring freely from recent physical exertion and his clothes and boots were thick with viscous mud.
“We have discovered the body, Mr. Vereker,” he said, removing his hat and wiping his streaming brow, “would you care to come and see it?”
Vereker rose slowly from his chair. “No, thanks, Heather,” he replied, “I have seen quite enough of horror to-day to last me a lifetime. On thinking the matter over, I have come to the conclusion that the moment has arrived when I can quietly and unobtrusively sever my connexion as a private detective with the Bygrave case. I heartily wish that I was not a trustee under my old friend’s will, because, until I have finished my work in that capacity, the whole horrible business will be ever-present in my mind. After that, I hope to forget.”
“You’re a sensitive type, Mr. Vereker. Recent occurrences have made a deep impression on you. But, bless my soul, you’ll be as right as a trivet in a few weeks’ time.”
“I hope so, Heather, and now I’ll bid you goodbye for some months. I am leaving England to-morrow for a long holiday on the Continent.”
“Good-bye, sir, and God-speed!” replied the inspector, warmly shaking Vereker’s proffered hand.
On reaching town, Vereker wired to Ricardo to pack and meet him on the boat train at Victoria the following morning. He also despatched a marconigram to Muriel Ellerton (she had reverted to her maiden name) advising her that he was starting on the morrow for Mentone, where she was staying, and that he was travelling unaccompanied by his beloved paint-box.
THE END
About The Author
Robin Forsythe was born Robert Forsythe in 1879. His place of birth was Sialkot, in modern day Pakistan. His mother died when a younger brother was born two years later, and ‘Robin’ was brought up by an ayah until he was six, when he returned to the United Kingdom, and went to school in Glasgow and Northern Ireland. In his teens he had short stories and poetry published and went to London wanting to be a writer.
He married in 1909 and had a son the following year, later working as a clerk at Somerset House in London when he was arrested for theft and fraud in 1928. Sentenced to fifteen months, he began to write his first detective novel in prison.
On his release in 1929 Robin Forsythe published his debut, Missing or Murdered. It introduced Anthony ‘Algernon’ Vereker, an eccentric artist with an extraordinary flair for detective work. It was followed by four more detective novels in the Vereker series, ending with The Spirit Murder Mystery in 1936. All the novels are characterized by the sharp plotting and witty dialogue which epitomize the more effervescent side of golden age crime fiction.
Robin Forsythe died in 1937.
Also by Robin Forsythe
The Polo Ground Mystery
The Pleasure Cruise Mystery
The Ginger Cat Mystery
The Spirit Murder Mystery
Robin Forsythe
The Polo Ground Mystery
AN “ALGERNON VEREKER” MYSTERY
Mr Sutton Armadale, the financier, was shot dead on the private polo ground of his palatial home. Before expiring in his gamekeeper’s arms, he muttered the one word “murder”.
Among the suspects are Armadale’s second wife; a drunken, loud-mouthed stranger in the neighbourhood; and an irresistibly attractive ballerina. The amiable and eccentric Algernon Vereker finds the case as befuddling as a crack on the head from a polo mallet. Two witnesses were certain they heard two shots fired, yet only one spent cartridge case was found on the ground by the dead man’s body. What is the “Sutton Stakes” connection… and is a “Bombay Head” part of the solution?
The Polo Ground Mystery (1932) is a classic country house whodunit, with a sporting equestrian theme. The second of the Algernon Vereker mysteries, this new edition is the first published in over 70 years. It features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
‘A first-rate thriller – keeping you dancing with suspense to the end.’ Daily Herald
Chapter One
EXTRACT FROM “THE LONDON EVENING BULLETIN”
MYSTERY OF SHOT MILLIONAIRE.
SCOTLAND YARD MEN ARRIVE ON THE SCENE.
NUTHILL, August 14th.
Mr. Sutton Armadale, the millionaire sportsman, was found lying shot dead on the private polo ground of his palatial home, Vesey Manor, in Surrey, at an early hour this morning. The body was discovered by his gamekeeper, Stephen Collyer. Collyer, it appears, was awakened at five o’clock in the morning by the sound of two shots and, believing that poachers were at work in Hanging Covert, near his cottage, immediately rose, hastily pulled on his clothes, and went out to investigate. He was convinced that the shots he had heard were due to the springing of alarm guns which he had set in the covert. The sun had just risen and, as he put it himself, “visibility was good.” He was about to enter Hanging Covert when he happened to glance towards the manor. Between where he stood and Vesey Manor, in the dell below, lay Mr. Sutton Armadale’s private polo ground, and as the keeper’s eye ranged over that level green expanse it encountered a mysterious, dark object lying at its farther end. Using his field-glasses, which he had thrust in his pocket prior to setting out from his cottage, he at once distinguished it as the recumbent body of a man. Giving up his intention of trying to surprise intruders in the covert, Collyer hurried down the hill and crossed the polo ground to ascertain who the prostrate stranger might be. To his surprise and horror, he discovered that it was the body of Mr. Sutton Armadale. The dying financier, who was still breathing faintly, was bleeding profusely from a wound in the right temple, and on examination the keeper found that his employer was also suffering from another terrible wound in the abdomen. In his left hand he was clutching an automatic pistol, a Colt of .45 calibre. Collyer rendered what assistance he could in the circumstances, but Mr. Armadale never recovered consciousness. Before expiring in his gamekeeper’s arms he muttered the one word, “Murder.” On this point Collyer is quite positive, and ridicules any suggestion that he may not have heard aright. Seeing that nothing further could be done, Collyer at once ran to Vesey Manor and roused the servants. They in turn conveyed the news to Mr. Basil Ralli, Mr. Armadale’s nephew, who was staying with his uncle on a holiday visit from town. Mr. Ralli, after breaking the news as gently as he could to Mrs. Armadale, at once telephoned for the local doctor and the Nuthill police, who soon made their appearance on the scene. The small party of guests who were staying at Vesey Manor includ
ed Miss Edmée Cazas, who made quite a hit in the revue What’s Yours? with her dancing and her song, “He kissed me in the Cinema but wouldn’t see me home”; Captain Rickaby Fanshaugh, the well-known polo player, late of the 14th Lancers; Mr. Ralph Degerdon, son of Mr. Harold Degerdon, stockbroker of Drapers Gardens and Meadway Court, Godstone; Mr. Aubrey Winter, a cousin of Mrs. Armadale; and Mr. Stanley Houseley.
Displaying his characteristic energy and initiative, Captain Fanshaugh collected the male servants of the house, and with the aid of Collyer combed the neighbouring coverts in search of a possible assailant. Their efforts, however, proved abortive.
The tragedy presents several very perplexing features and is being thoroughly investigated by Detective-Inspector Heather of Scotland Yard, assisted by Detective-Sergeant Lawrence Goss, who arrived during the day as the result of an urgent summons for assistance by the Chief Constable of Nuthill.
It appears that Mr. Sutton Armadale retired last night between twelve and one o’clock. He was in his usual good health and excellent spirits. During the afternoon he had played a brilliant game at No. 4 in a friendly polo match for the Pandits against a team of the 14th Lancers on the private ground at Vesey manor. Later he put in an appearance at the village flower show being held in one of the meadows adjoining the manor, at which Mrs. Armadale (she was, of course, the beautiful Miss Angela Daunay prior to her marriage two years ago) distributed the prizes. At cocktail time the guests indulged in a swimming party in the charming pool in the rock garden, and after dinner played bridge and billiards until midnight, when every one retired. Mr. Armadale, who was a martyr to insomnia of late, slept apart from his wife, but shortly before one o’clock he came into her bedroom and bade her good night. From that moment no one either saw or heard his host until he was found dying by his gamekeeper on the polo ground near the manor.
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