Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

  J. J. Connington and The Murder Room

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  Tragedy at Ravensthorpe

  J. J. Connington

  Contents

  Cover

  The Murder Room Introduction

  Title page

  I. THE FAIRY HOUSES

  II. MR POLEGATE’S SENSE OF HUMOUR

  III. THE THEFT AT THE MASKED BALL

  IV. THE CHASE IN THE WOODS

  V. SIR CLINTON IN THE MUSEUM

  VI. MR FOSS’S EXPLANATION

  VII. WHAT WAS IN THE LAKE

  VIII. THE MURDER IN THE MUSEUM

  IX. THE MURAMASA SWORD

  X. THE SHOT IN THE CLEARING

  XI. UNDERGROUND RAVENSTHORPE

  XII. CHUCHUNDRA’S BODY

  XIII. THE OTOPHONE

  XIV. THE SECOND CHASE IN THE WOODS

  XV. SIR CLINTON’S SOLUTION

  Outro

  By J. J. Connington

  About the author

  Copyright page

  Chapter One

  THE FAIRY HOUSES

  “GOT fixed up in your new house yet, Sir Clinton?” asked Cecil Chacewater, as they sauntered together up one of the paths in the Ravensthorpe grounds. “It must be a bit of a change from South Africa—settling down in this backwater.”

  Sir Clinton Driffield, the new Chief Constable of the county, nodded affirmatively in reply to the question.

  “One manages to be fairly comfortable; and it’s certainly been less trouble to fit up than it would have been if I’d taken a bigger place. Not that I don’t envy you people at Ravensthorpe,” he added, glancing round at the long front of the house behind him. “You’ve plenty of elbow-room in that castle of yours.”

  Cecil made no reply; and they paced on for a minute or more before Sir Clinton again spoke.

  “It’s a curious thing, Cecil, that although I knew your father so well, I never happened to come down here to Ravensthorpe. He often asked me to stay; and I wanted to see his collection; but somehow we never seemed able to fix on a time that suited us both. It was at the house in Onslow Square that I always saw you, so this is all fresh ground to me. It’s rather like the irony of fate that my first post since I came home should be in the very district I couldn’t find time to visit when your father was alive.”

  Cecil Chacewater agreed with a gesture.

  “I was very glad when I saw you’d been appointed. I wondered if you’d know me again after all that time; but I thought we’d better bring ourselves to your notice in case we could be of any help here—introduce you to people, and all that sort of thing, you know.”

  “I hardly recognized you when you turned up the other day,” Sir Clinton admitted frankly. “You were a kiddie when I went off to take that police post in South Africa; and somehow or other I never seem to have run across you on any of my trips home on leave. It must have been ten years since I’d seen you.”

  “I don’t wonder you didn’t place me at once. Ten years makes a lot of difference at my advanced age. But you don’t look a bit changed. I recognized you straight off, as soon as I saw you.”

  “What age are you now?” asked Sir Clinton.

  “About twenty-three,” Cecil replied. “Maurice is twenty-five, and Joan’s just on the edge of twenty-one.”

  “I suppose she must be,” Sir Clinton confirmed.

  A thought seemed to cross his mind.

  “By the way, this masked ball, I take it, is for Joan’s coming-of-age?”

  “You got an invitation? Right! I’ve nothing to do with that part of the business.” Then, answering Sir Clinton’s inquiry: “Yes, that’s so. She wanted a spree of some sort; and she generally gets what she wants, you know. You’ll hardly know her when you see her. She’s shot up out of all recognition from the kid you knew before you went away.”

  “She used to be pretty as a school-girl.”

  “Oh, she hasn’t fallen off in that direction. You must come to this show of hers. She’ll be awfully pleased if you do. She looks on you as a kind of unofficial uncle, you know.”

  Sir Clinton’s expression showed that he appreciated the indirect compliment.

  “I’m highly flattered. She’s the only one of you who took the trouble to write to me from time to time when I was out yonder. All my Ravensthorpe news came through her.”

  Cecil was rather discomfited by this reminder. He changed the subject abruptly.

  “I suppose you’ll come as Sherlock Holmes? Joan’s laid down that everyone must act up to their costume, whatever it is; and Sherlock wouldn’t give you much trouble after all your detective experience. You’d only have to snoop round and pick up clues and make people uncomfortable with deductions.”

  Sir Clinton seemed amused by the idea.

  “A pretty programme! Something like this, I suppose?” he demanded, and gave a faintly caricatured imitation of the Holmes mannerisms.

  “By Jove, you know, that’s awfully good!” Cecil commented, rather taken aback by the complete change in Sir Clinton’s voice and gait. “You ought to do it. You’d get first prize easily.”

  Sir Clinton shook his head as he resumed his natural guise.

  “The mask wouldn’t cover my moustache; and I draw the line at shaving that off, even in a good cause. Besides, a Chief Constable can’t go running about disguised as Sherlock Holmes. Rather bad taste, dragging one’s trade into one’s amusements. No, I’ll come as something quite unostentatious: a pillar-box or an Invisible Man, or a spook, probably.”

  “I forgot,” Cecil hastened to say, apologetically, “I shouldn’t have asked you about your costume. Joan’s very strong on some fancy regulation she’s made that no one is to know beforehand what anyone else is wearing. She wants the prize awarding to be absolutely unbiased. So you’d better not tell me what you’re going to do.”

  Sir Clinton glanced at him with a faint twinkle in his eye.

  “That’s precisely what I’ve been doing for the last minute or two,” he said, dryly.

  “What do you mean?” Cecil asked, looking puzzled. “You haven’t told me anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  Cecil was forced to smile.

  “No harm done,” he admitted. “You gave nothing away.”

  “It’s a very useful habit in my line of business.”

  But Sir Clinton’s interest in the approaching masked ball was apparently not yet exhausted.

  “Large crowd coming?” he asked.

  “Fairish, I believe. Most of the neighbours, I suppose. We’re putting up a few peop
le for the night, of course; and there are three or four visitors on the premises already. It should be quite a decent show. I can’t give you even rough numbers, for Joan’s taken the invitation side of the thing entirely into her own hands—most mysterious about it, too. Hush! Hush! Very Secret! and all that kind of thing. She won’t even let us see her lists for fear of making it too easy to recognize people; so she’s had to arrange the catering side of the thing on her own as well.”

  “She always was an independent kind of person,” Sir Clinton volunteered.

  Cecil took no notice of the interjection.

  “If you ask me,” he went on, “I think she’s a bit besotted with this incognito notion. She doesn’t realize that half the gang can be spotted at once by their walk, and the other half will give themselves away as soon as they get animated and begin to jabber freely. But it’s her show, you know, so it’s no use anyone else butting in with criticisms and spoiling her fun before it begins.”

  Sir Clinton nodded his assent; but for a moment or two he seemed to be preoccupied with some line of thought which Cecil’s words had started in his mind. Suddenly, however, something caught his eye and diverted his attention to external things.

  “What’s that weird thing over there?” he asked.

  As he spoke, he pointed to an object a little way off the path on which they were standing. It was a tiny building about a yard in height and a couple of yards or more in length. At the first glance it seemed like a bungalow reduced to the scale of a large doll’s house; but closer inspection showed that it was windowless, though ventilation of a sort appeared to have been provided. A miniature door closed the entrance, through which a full-grown man could gain admittance only by lying flat on the ground and wriggling with some difficulty through the narrow opening provided.

  “That?” Cecil answered carelessly. “Oh, that’s one of the Fairy Houses, you know. They’re a sort of local curiosity. No matter where you are, you’ll find one of them within a couple of hundred yards of you, anywhere in the grounds.”

  “Only in the grounds? Aren’t there any outside the estate?” inquired Sir Clinton. “At the first glance I took it for some sort of archaeological affair.”

  “They’re old enough, I dare say,” Cecil admitted, indifferently. “A century, or a century and a half, or perhaps even more. They’re purely a Ravensthorpe product. I’ve never seen one of them outside the boundary.”

  Sir Clinton left the path and made a closer examination of the tiny hut; but it presented very few points of interest in itself. Out of curiosity, he turned the handle of the door and found it moved easily.

  “You seem to keep the locks and hinges oiled,” he said, with some surprise.

  Pushing the door open, he stooped down and glanced inside.

  “Very spick and span. You keep them in good repair, evidently.”

  “Oh, one of the gardeners has the job of looking after them,” Cecil explained, without showing much interest.

  “I’ve never seen anything of the sort before. They might be Picts’ dwellings, or something of that kind; but why keep them in repair? And, of course, they’re not prehistoric at all. They’re comparatively modern, from the way they’re put together. What are they?”

  “Ask me another,” said Cecil, who seemed bored by the subject. “They’re an ancestral legacy, or an heirloom, or a tenant’s improvement, or whatever you like to call it. Clause in the will each time, to provide for them being kept in good repair, and so forth.”

  Sir Clinton seemed to prick up his ears when he heard of this provision, though his tone showed only languid interest when he put his next inquiry.

  “Anything at the back of it all? It seems a rum sort of business.”

  “The country-people round about here will supply you with all the information you can believe about it—and a lot you’re not likely to swallow, too. By their way of it, Lavington Knoll up there”—he pointed vaguely to indicate its position—“was the last of the fairy strongholds hereabouts; and when most of the fairies went away, a few stayed behind. But these ones didn’t care much for the old Knoll after that. Reminded them of past glories and cheery company too much, I suppose; and so they made a sort of treaty with an ancestor of ours. He was to provide houses for them, and they were to look after the general prosperity side of Ravensthorpe.”

  Sir Clinton seemed amused by Cecil’s somewhat scornful summary.

  “A case of ‘Farewell rewards and fairies,’ it seems, Cecil.”

  Then, half to himself, he hummed a few lines of Corbet’s song:

  Witness those rings and roundelayes

  Of theirs, which yet remaine;

  Were footed in queene Maries dayes

  On many a grassy playne.

  But since of late Elizabeth . . .

  “Do you go as far back as Elizabeth, here at Ravensthorpe, by any chance, Cecil?”

  “So far as the grounds go, yes. The house was partly destroyed in Cromwell’s time; and some new bits were built on in place of the old stuff. But there’s a lot of the old part left yet, in quite good repair.”

  Sir Clinton still seemed interested in the compact with the Fairies.

  “Was there any penalty clause in the contract about these Houses? There’s usually some drawback to these affairs—like the Luck of Edenhall, for instance.”

  “There used to be some legend or other that unless the Fairies found their houses always in good order, the Family Curse would come home to roost, one-time. No one believes in that sort of stuff nowadays; but it’s kept alive by this clause that’s put into every will—a kind of family custom, you know, that no one cares to be the first to break. If you call it a damned old wives’ tale, I shan’t blame you.”

  Sir Clinton could not be sure whether Cecil’s indifference in the matter was natural or assumed; but in any case he thought it tactful to pursue the subject no further. Closing the door of the Fairy House again, he made his way back to the path where his companion was waiting for him.

  As the Chief Constable rejoined him, Cecil looked round the horizon with feeble interest.

  “Not much else to show you, I’m afraid,” he said. Then, with an after-thought: “Care to see rather a good view? The best one hereabouts is just up above us—through the wood here—if you think it worth the trouble of the climb. It’s not very far. We’ve plenty of time before lunch.”

  Sir Clinton acquiesced, and they began to mount a further slope in the path which now led them up through a sparse pine-wood.

  “There seems to be a good sound foundation to this path,” the Chief Constable commented, as they walked on.

  “There used to be a carriage-drive, at one time, leading up to the top. I suppose the old birds used to drive up here and sit out having tea and admiring the view on fine days. But it’s been neglected for long enough. Hardly anyone goes up to the top now, except once in a blue moon or else by accident.”

  Sir Clinton gave a nod of acquiescence.

  “Anyone can see the path’s hardly ever used.”

  “Just beyond this brow,” Cecil explained as they moved on, “there’s an old quarry cut in the further side of the hill. It’s a very old place, rather picturesque nowadays. Most of the stone for Ravensthorpe came from it in the old days, and during the rebuilding. After that, the quarry dropped out of use gradually; and finally someone had the notion of letting water in at the foot of it and having a sort of model lake there, with the cliff of the quarry at one end of it. We’re making for the top of the cliff by going this way; and when you get out of the wood into the open, you’ll find rather a good outlook over the country.”

  A short walk took them through the rest of the pine-wood. On the further side they came into a belt of open ground beyond which, on a slight eminence, a little spinney blocked part of the view.

  “That’s where we’re making for,” Cecil explained. ‘The best view-point is on the other side of these trees. The old birds, a century back, chose it carefully and did some laying out
at the top; so I suppose they must have been keen on the place.”

  As they approached the spinney, Sir Clinton noticed a fence running down from each side of it. Cecil followed the direction of the Chief Constable’s glance.

  “That’s barbed wire,” he pointed out. “The spinney’s at the top of the quarry; but there’s a bad drop down towards the hollow on either side—a dangerous bit, practically precipitous—and so the wire was put up to prevent anyone wandering near the edge and tripping over.”

  Cutting through the fringe of trees, they emerged at the top of the cliff. Here the ground had been levelled and paved. Along the precipice, a marble balustrade had been erected as a safeguard. Further back, a curved tier of marble seats faced the view; and here and there in the line rose pedestals carrying life-sized marble statues which faced out towards the gulf.

  “This is really very elaborate,” Sir Clinton commented. “Evidently your ancestors liked the view, if they took so much trouble to put up this affair.”

  He moved across the paved space, leaned on the balustrade, and looked down into the depths.

  “I don’t wonder you fenced that in with barbed wire on each side,” he said. “It’s a nasty drop down there—well over a fifty-foot fall at least.”

  “It’s nearer a hundred, really,” Cecil corrected him. “The height’s a bit deceptive from here. And a fall into that pool would be no joy, I can tell you! It’s full of sharp spikes of rock jutting up from the bottom. You’d get fairly well mauled if you happened to drop on any of them. You can’t see them for that green stuff in the water; but they’re all present and correct under the surface.”

  Sir Clinton looked down at the weed-grown little lakelet. The dense green fronds gave the water an unpleasant appearance; and in some tiny backwaters the surface was covered with a layer of scum.

  “Why don’t you get all that stuff cleared out?” he demanded. “It looks rather beastly. Once you got rid of it you could stock the pool with trout or perch, easily enough. I see there’s some flow of water through it from a spring at the east end.”