The Measure of Malice

by Martin Edwards

  “Ring for Hart, Sydney,” Jack ordered. “We’d better go in here. No use interviewing her in the hall.”

  In a few moments a young, rather good-looking housemaid appeared, evidently in a very shaken state of nerves.

  “Your name’s Jenny Hart, isn’t it?” demanded the sergeant. “Tell me just how you came to discover Mr. Leadburn this morning.”

  The girl seemed taken aback by this official tone from a person with whom she already had a nodding acquaintance.

  “It was this way,” she explained nervously. “I went into that room about seven o’clock to clear it up and set things to rights.”

  “Was the electric light on?”

  “No. So the first thing I did was to go and draw the curtains back from the window, and when I’d drawn the first one, I saw Mr. Leadburn lying there in his blood on the chair, and I screamed and ran out of the room.”

  “Was the French window open when you drew the curtain?”

  “Yes, it was. It must have stood open all night. Mr. Leadburn always liked to have it open, but he used to shut it when he went up to bed, last thing.”

  The sergeant could think of no further questions to ask the maid just then, so he dismissed her and turned to the two nephews of Barnaby Leadburn.

  “Did anything out of the common—sounds or what not—attract your attention in the night?” he asked Jack Sparkford.

  Jack shook his head.

  “I went up to my room about eleven o’clock,” he explained. “My uncle was busy with his accounts and so forth. I heard nothing suspicious.”

  “And you, sir?” Longridge inquired, turning to Sydney.

  “I heard nothing inside the house,” the boy answered at once. “But I heard Caesar—that’s our big retriever, you know—I heard him give a long howl, a funny sort of noise, about twenty past twelve. I never heard him make a noise like that before—a kind of howl, very long-drawn-out.”

  “How do you know it was twenty past twelve then?” demanded the sergeant sceptically.

  “Because the down express passed almost immediately afterwards. It goes through at 12.25. I was kept awake part of the night with toothache, you see. And, by the way,” he added, “I haven’t seen Caesar this morning.”

  “You’d better get hold of him,” Jack said at once, “he might do damage to somebody if he’s left on the loose.”

  “Savage, is he?” inquired the sergeant, who had heard some rumours about the dog.

  “A bit nasty with everybody barring ourselves, I’m afraid,” Jack admitted. “My brother Timothy’s the only outsider he takes to. Even the gardener at the lodge is in terror of him. Caesar hates him for some reason or other. My uncle had him let loose in the grounds at night. Nobody would dare to come a-burgling here with Caesar off the chain. It would be as much as his life was worth.”

  “What the girl said about open windows is right?” inquired Longridge.

  “Oh, yes. We’ve all got a tendency to consumption in our family. My brother Timothy’s in a bad way with it. Naturally we believe in fresh air, and my uncle was all for open windows.”

  “H’m!” said Longridge. “Now about this dog, sir. Had your uncle any enemies, that he kept a savage dog about the place at night?”

  “Not that I know of,” Jack replied frankly enough.

  Something in Sydney’s expression caught the sergeant’s eye, and he put the same question to the boy.

  “I don’t know about enemies,” Sydney answered doubtfully. “He had a bit of a row with Corfe—that’s our gardener—last night. Something to do with our housemaid, Hart. I heard the two of them slanging each other and Corfe seemed a bit above himself with rage. He’s engaged to Hart, you know. Something about my uncle accusing her of stealing. I couldn’t help hearing some of it, but I didn’t listen on purpose. It was in the garden.”

  Sergeant Longridge veiled his interest in this new piece of evidence by changing the subject. He described the knife and asked if it belonged to anyone in the house.

  “Oh, yes, it’s mine,” Sydney admitted promptly. “It always lies on the desk, in there. I use it for trimming the white edges off my Kodak prints.”

  “Oh, it’s your knife and it always lies on the desk,” Sergeant Longridge repeated mechanically, as he noted the facts in his book. “Thanks. Now another question, Mr. Sparkford. Did any visitors call on your uncle last night?”

  “Visitors? Not that I know of,” Jack answered. “Unless you call my brother Timothy a visitor. He came in after dinner and left again about ten o’clock. I saw him down to the road then. His eyesight’s bad, and I went with him down the short cut to save him stumbling about in the dark.”

  “He left at ten p.m.,” noted the sergeant. “Have you notified him about the death, sir?”

  “Yes, I rang him up. But he was sick, last night; he had to call a doctor in the small hours, he told me. Probably he’s a bit shaky this morning and hasn’t felt up to coming over here yet.”

  “He lives across the railway, I think?”

  Longridge’s question was merely formal. He knew Timothy Sparkford by sight and reputation; but he believed in getting “the evidence of a witness” to put down in his notes.

  “Yes, he lives in Moss Cottage,” Jack replied.

  “I remember, sir. He moved over there after he had a bit of luck in the Sweep, didn’t he? By the way, your uncle didn’t seem nervous about anything when you saw him last night?”

  Jack shook his head decidedly.

  “Nothing of that sort, not a sign of it.”

  “Nothing missing, that you’ve noticed, sir? No valuables gone, or a safe opened?”

  “Nothing whatever in that line, so far as I know. There’s no safe in the house. He kept everything in the bank.”

  “I see, sir. Now I think I’d like to have your maid back again just to ask her a question or two more.”

  But when Hart was summoned, they learned that she had left the house, apparently to talk to the gardener; and it was a few minutes before she came back. When she reappeared the sergeant interviewed her alone.

  “Now, my girl,” he began in his most paternal tone, “you don’t want to be keeping anything back in a bad case like this. It wouldn’t do. People would begin to think there was something wrong, you see, if you did that. So just tell me what this bit of trouble was that you had with old Mr. Leadburn.”

  At the question, the prim maidservant vanished and in her stead a virago appeared, furious, bitter, and yet uneasy.

  “If anybody says I stole anything, they’re taking away my character, and I’ll have the law on them,” she burst out breathlessly.

  “The truth of it is, I was dusting his desk and I happened to pull open a drawer, and a note dropped out, and I picked it up, and I was standing there with it in my hand when he came in. He’d been out there in the garden, sneaking behind the bushes, watching me through the window.

  “Spying on me! That’s a nice occupation for a man with thousands a year, I don’t think! I wouldn’t demean myself so. And then he swore I’d stolen the note, and he’d been missing money for some time, for he kept a good check on it, which was like his mean, miserly ways. And I said I’d never touched a penny of any money in the house, and he said he was going to send for the police and see I was jailed for it, for he knew to a penny how much I’d taken—fancy!

  “And I went and told Simmy—my boy, he is, and we’re going to be married in three months. And Simmy was real angry, as who wouldn’t be, and he went and told Mr. Leadburn straight just what he thought about it, and then Mr. Leadburn said he’d have no thieves on his premises and if Simmy married me he could look out for another job, for he wouldn’t be kept on at the lodge.

  “And Simmy was angry, of course, for with things as they are nowadays it’s not likely he’d get another job, and so we wouldn’t be able to get married after all.
And they got to words about it, and you can’t wonder at Simmy, and that’s the plain truth. You can ask Simmy and see if it isn’t.”

  “I see,” said Longridge noncommittally, when the torrent ceased. “Quite so.”

  He had a shrewd idea that most likely there had been faults on both sides in that affair; but he had no desire to start inquiring into petty larceny in the midst of a murder case. He noted that there had been bad feeling between the gardener and his employer.

  “Now, tell me,” he went on, “did you see anything that might throw light on this business?”

  The girl seemed to realise that she might have done more harm than good by her outbreak, and when she spoke again, it was in a cooler tone.

  “I happened to be going through the hall last night; about half-past nine or so, it was: and I heard them at it, hammer and tongs, in that room. It was about Mr. Jack’s engagement and an extra allowance for him to get married on. Mr. Timothy was there, and the old man was as mad as a hornet at the idea and wouldn’t hear of it. And he seemed to be threatening Mr. Timothy, too, for I heard something about ‘discreditable doings’, and you know what Mr. Timothy is.

  “They were fair shouting at each other. That old man seemed to have a fair down on people getting married: Simmy and me, first of all, and then Mr. Jack and his girl. And he didn’t seem to like the other thing any better, neither, if you go by the way he was storming at Mr. Timothy. One would think he expected everyone to live like monks and nuns.”

  “A bad quarrel, it sounded like?”

  “Oh, of course they were always quarrelling, if it comes to that,” Jenny answered. “What else would you expect, with that old skinflint holding on to the cash and doling it out to grown men as if they were kids? It wasn’t a happy household, as you might say.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Longridge agreed. “Now, just another question. Was Mr. Leadburn left-handed?”

  “Not he,” Jenny replied. Then, after a pause, she added, “It’s Mr. Timothy that’s left-handed. Was that what you meant? What do you want to know for?”

  The sergeant was saved from answering by the hasty entrance of Sydney Sparkford, evidently in a state of excitement.

  “We’ve found Caesar!” he exclaimed breathlessly. “He’s dead, poor old dog! Poisoned, by the look of him. You’d better come and see him for yourself. He’s in the shrubbery close to my bedroom window. That’s why his howl waked me up, I expect, coming from so near at hand.”

  Longridge followed the boy to the shrubbery, where they found Jack Sparkford before them, staring thoughtfully at the dead dog. The sergeant got the impression that its end gave him more regret than the loss of his uncle seemed to do.

  “What do you make of this?” he demanded, as they approached.

  Longridge went down on his knees and examined the dog which, even in death, looked a formidable brute. As he bent close, the merest whiff of a familiar odour came to his keen nostrils: the scent of bitter almonds.

  “This’ll be a job for the vet, sir,” he said, tacitly admitting his own lack of expert knowledge. “I’ll just have a look round, though.”

  He ferreted about for some minutes without success, but at last he discovered the thing for which he had been searching: a piece of raw liver. By holding it close to his nose he managed to detect the faint smell of bitter almonds from it also.

  “That’s how it was done, sir,” he explained in triumph, holding out the meat to Jack. “Just you smell it, sir: same smell as the dog’s mouth has.”

  Jack evidently disdained a personal verification; but Sydney eagerly sniffed first at the dog and then at the liver.

  “I know what it is!” he declared jubilantly. “Cyanide, that’s what it smells of. Just the same as the stuff in my butterfly killing-bottle.”

  The sight of the dead retriever had led Longridge to revise some of his ideas abruptly. “An outside job” was his new verdict. The dog had been friendly with the house people, and with Timothy Sparkford.

  Any one of them could have got at old Leadburn without this huge brute interfering. But an outsider would need to dispose of it before he could penetrate to its master. Cyanide? Well, that should be an easy enough poison to trace. You had to sign for that at the druggist’s before you got it.

  He was stirred from his musing by the approach of a fresh figure: Timothy Sparkford, whom the sergeant knew by sight. He came forward with the hesitating walk of a man suffering from very defective vision, and as he reached the group he peered closely at each face before he greeted his brothers.

  With his shambling gait, low stature, powerful physique, and deep-set eyes, he had something about him which contrasted sharply with the appearance of his younger brothers; and when he spoke, it was with a certain truculence.

  “Who’s this?” he demanded, after he had scrutinised the sergeant at close quarters.

  “It’s Sergeant Longridge, Tim,” Jack explained. “I rang up the police before I got on to you on the phone.”

  Timothy acknowledged the introduction with a casual nod.

  “Has the old geezer kicked the bucket?” he asked brutally. “Best news I’ve had in a month of Sundays. No use being mealy-mouthed about these things, is there? No flowers, by request. That’s the right spirit in this case.”

  The ribald tone made Longridge prick up his ears, and it occurred to him suddenly that not one of the people he had questioned had shown the slightest regret for Barnaby Leadburn’s death. They had not vented their spite like Timothy, but their restraint had been almost equally significant. They had not thought it worth while to pay even a tribute of hypocrisy to his memory.

  “Sorry I couldn’t get over sooner,” Timothy went on. “When I got home last night I started some electro-plating, and in the middle of it I got the most frightful attack of gripes and sickness. Must have been the remains of some shrimp paste I had for supper. Been left open too long, I suspect. Ptomaine poisoning, likely. Anyhow, after the bout I had, I could barely crawl to the phone and ring up Dr. Ackworth. He came along, not over-pleased at being dragged out at half-past twelve, I gathered. All he did, when he arrived, was to stand around and let nature take its course. Anyhow, it’s over now, and I feel a bit better. Still a bit shaky though.”

  Then, completely ignoring the sergeant, he took his brother’s arm.

  “Come along and tell me all about it.”

  Longridge was going to call him back and question him when on the drive he saw the police surgeon beckoning to him. He hurried off, leaving Sydney to join his brothers.

  “Oh, sergeant,” Dr. Shefford said when they met. “You can rub one notion off your slate. This affair wasn’t suicide. He was strangled first of all, and then his throat was cut to hide the marks of the cord. At least, so one may suppose. That’s why he made no noise when he died. And, naturally, with the heart stopped, he didn’t bleed as much as one might have expected from the wound. There’ll be an inquest, of course. There’ll have to be some arrangements made for a p.m., I expect.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Sergeant Longridge’s investigations lasted longer than he had expected, but a couple of days later he was summoned—not for the first time—to give an account of his stewardship to Inspector Dronfield. The inspector was deep in a study of various documents, and he rubbed his eyes wearily as Longridge presented himself. He was a tall man who concealed a natural alertness behind an air of lassitude.

  “Not clear yet?” he grumbled. “Suppose we take it step by step. Systematically, I mean. Must have been either an inside or an outside job. That’s obvious. Insiders first. Not the cook?”

  Sergeant Longridge shook his head. That suggestion was absurd.

  “No. She’s got a first-class character and she’s only been in that place a couple of months. She hasn’t had time to raise a grievance big enough to account for the job.”

  “The maid, Hart, then
?”

  “I don’t somehow see her strangling the old man and then cutting his throat,” the sergeant declared. “She might, but it’s not my idea of her.”

  The inspector made a non-committal noise.

  “Hardly sounds like the schoolboy, either,” he confessed, “though one never knows what some kids may get up to in these days. That leaves Jack Sparkford as a possible.”

  He picked up a document from the table.

  “Your stuff about the family’s all gossip. Still, it seems pretty sound. I’ve had it checked up. Old Leadburn did get round his widowed sister before she died, and he drafted her will for her. She trusted him, it seems.

  “Here’s a copy of the will. Got it from Somerset House. Leadburn was to draw the income from the estate—about four thousand pounds a year—until the youngest son reached twenty-one. Then the four of them were to divide the capital in equal shares. Meanwhile, Leadburn was to allow each of them annually a sum equal to his own personal expenditure for the year. I suppose she thought that meant a very comfortable income for each of them.

  “What happened was that he turned out to be a miserly old skinflint who lived on about a pound a week himself, and he paid his nephews at the same rate. Shows how the best intentions may go wrong. And he wouldn’t let them take up any trade or profession.

  “Coming into a thousand pounds a year apiece, later on, they didn’t need it, he said. Then there’s a clause about any of them forfeiting all rights if he contests the will. Another clause allowing Leadburn to disqualify any of them for ‘discreditable conduct’. No definition given.”

  “Fairly had ’em by the short hairs,” the sergeant admitted. “No wonder they disliked him.”

  “Must have been feathering his nest to the tune of over three thousand pounds a year,” the inspector pointed out. “He pocketed the surplus each year. Nice little nest-egg for his old age. And this arrangement had still five or six years to run. The youngster’s only fifteen.”

  He thought for a moment or two, then put a question.