Death at Swaythling Court Page 16

  “And yet, perhaps Angermere’s stuff is right in the main outlines. It hinges together so very neatly. Possibly the man with the motor was only a super in the play. Possibly he came up to the door, rang, got no answer, and went off again without being inside the house at all. But in that case, why didn’t he come forward to give evidence?”

  He put down the poker and sat down in his easy-chair. The case still puzzled him; and the Colonel hated to be puzzled.

  “I still believe that motor had something to do with the business. But a motor may have come from anywhere within a radius of a hundred miles; the chance of it turning up again is pretty small. Still, I’d like to know who the fellow was. I’m not going out of my way to find out; but if by any chance I come across the track of that non-skid tyre, I’ll go quietly into the affair on my own. Vulgar curiosity, I suppose, or morbid curiosity; but I can’t get rid of it.”

  He would not admit even to himself that his real motive was to clear up the part which Jimmy Leigh had played in the affair. In spite of all Angermere’s lucid reasoning, the Colonel had uneasy feelings on that point.

  Chapter Ten

  The Invisible Man

  CURIOUSLY enough, the effect of Angermere’s conversation upon the Colonel was stimulative rather than sedative; far from allaying his uneasiness over the Hubbard case, it increased his discomfort. Some imp of contradiction insisted on gaining a hearing in his mind and prevented him from accepting the novelist’s hypothesis, as he would gladly have done if he could.

  Angermere’s reconstruction had been eminently satisfactory from the Colonel’s standpoint, for it excluded from the drama all the members of the ruling caste in Fernhurst Parva; and this was precisely what the Colonel, in his heart, desired to see. Not only so, but the novelist’s view accounted for practically everything—except the mysterious individual in the motor-car. But that piece of evidence, having been acquired by himself, had assumed great importance in the Colonel’s mind; and with the best will in the world, he felt himself unable to accept any theory, no matter how complete, which left no gap into which that character could be fitted.

  Smoking his pipe on the terrace after breakfast, he found that he could not shake himself free from the affair. Some subconscious influence kept insisting that he should go forward and satisfy himself about the business.

  “At any rate,” he concluded, “we’ll have no washing of dirty linen in public, whatever’s at the bottom of it. I’m uneasy; but that’s my own private affair. The police have had the thing in hand; and it’s not for an amateur like me to set them right if they’ve made a slip.”

  Though he would hardly admit it, even to himself, the thing that lay behind his troubles was simple enough. He remembered Jimmy Leigh’s statement that every animal killed by the Lethal Ray had cyanide in its stomach after death. For some reason, this information insisted on emerging from the Colonel’s memory, in spite of all his efforts to shelve it. For now it was linked with two other points of crucial importance: the cyanide found in Hubbard’s body; and the fact that Jimmy Leigh had left the Lethal Ray generator aimed at Swaythling Court. Try as he might, Colonel Sanderstead could not dissociate these three facts from each other; and when they were allowed to associate, they pointed straight in one direction—to the guilt of Jimmy Leigh.

  That was why Angermere’s reconstruction had failed to convince the Colonel, though he was only too eager to accept any explanation which would clear Jimmy Leigh. And there was the further fact that the novelist’s theory left the motorist out of account. But then, as the Colonel reflected, the motor-car was equally out of joint with the view that Jimmy Leigh had murdered Hubbard by means of the Ray. Whichever way one turned, that unidentified nocturnal visitor blocked the road. He, if anyone, ought to be able to fit the keystone into the mystery. He must have been on the premises just about the time when Hubbard returned from the Bungalow; possibly he met the blackmailer in the avenue or at the door of the Court.

  “If one could only run across the track of that tyre somehow,” he said to himself. “But I’m afraid it’s only a chance in a million.”

  Putting his hand in his pocket, he found he was running short of tobacco; and he decided to walk down to the village and get some more. The Fernhurst Parva tobacconist kept a stock of his brand, for the Colonel encouraged local trade.

  “Anyway,” he reflected as he moved away from the house, “if I run across that car, I’ll have it out with the owner. I promise myself that.”

  At the foot of the avenue, just as he turned into the main road, the Colonel was overtaken by Constable Bolam.

  “Good morning, Bolam. Fine day.”

  “Very fine, sir.”

  The constable pondered for a moment or two, as though doubtful if he should broach a fresh subject. At last he made up his mind.

  “Sir, after the verdict of the coroner’s jury, I suppose there will be no further investigations of the Hubbard case?”

  “I should imagine not, Bolam. Has anyone given you instructions on the point?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The county authorities are quite satisfied, then?”

  “It would seem so, sir. I’ve heard nothing from them on the matter.”

  “What’s going to happen to Swaythling Court, now? Do you know?”

  “Sir, Hubbard’s lawyer was over here this morning—or so I heard—and it seems they’re going to sell the Court as soon as they can get things fixed up. The lawyer said—so I heard—that Hubbard’s clerk, the man who gave evidence, is coming here soon to go through Hubbard’s papers.”

  “I thought most of his papers were burned, that night.”

  “It seems not, sir. A number of documents referring to his perfume business were stored elsewhere in the house. The lawyer found them; and the clerk is to go over them.”

  The Colonel was relieved to learn the nature of the surviving papers; for the first mention of them had suggested the possible existence of another store of blackmailing material.

  “Who inherits all this stuff, Bolam? Have you heard?”

  “Sir, it seems to be a second-cousin or somebody like that. Hubbard had no near relations. At least, so it was reported to me.”

  “Well, it’s satisfactory that we’ll have no more of that breed at the Court.”

  “Very satisfactory, sir.”

  For a few moments Bolam relapsed into silence; but it was evident to the Colonel that the constable had something more on his mind.

  “Out with it, Bolam, whatever it is that’s troubling you,” he said, at last, to encourage Bolam to begin.

  The constable seemed to hesitate; but finally he screwed himself up to the pitch of speaking.

  “Sir, there’s been a good deal of talk in the village about Swaffham’s shop; and I’d like you to know the rights of it, so that you won’t think I’ve had anything to do with it.”

  The Colonel became suddenly alert. Anything that touched Fernhurst Parva was of importance to him.

  “What’s wrong with Swaffham?” he demanded. “Who’s been complaining about him? He’s a thoroughly honest man.”

  “Sir, it isn’t that kind of talk. You’ve taken me up wrong. Nobody’s got a word to say against Swaffham. It’s something quite different. I hardly like to repeat it, sir, seeing it’s so silly; but it’s bound to come round to you sooner or later; and seeing I was mixed up in it, I don’t want you to be getting the idea that I was in any way responsible for putting about such nonsense.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Sir, the talk in the village is that Swaffham’s shop’s haunted.”

  “Rubbish!” interjected the Colonel, rather nettled by the suggestion.

  “That’s what I say, sir. But I’d better tell you how all the talk arose.”

  “Go on,” said the Colonel encouragingly. A haunted shop in his village! Absurd! Who ever heard of such a thing? The sooner this silly idea could be scotched, the better.

  Bolam put on his best orderly-room manne
r.

  “Sir, on the night of the affair at the Court, I was in the street at 11 p.m. The church clock had just struck when I met Ellen Farrar, the maid at the Vicarage, sir. I stopped to pass the time of day with her; and, seeing it was so late, I walked along with her towards the Vicarage. She told me she had been to see her mother over at St. Nicholas village; and she’d stayed later than she intended, owing to her watch having stopped. When we came to Swaffham’s shop, it was shut up and dark; no one lives on the premises, as you know, sir. Just as we were passing the front door, we heard the telephone bell ring inside the shop. I stopped, and we looked into the shop. There was no one there. I inspected the fastenings; and they were all secure. In about a minute, while I was still examining the windows, I heard the telephone bell ring again.”

  Bolam suddenly dropped his orderly-room manner and became an ordinary man under irritation:

  “And then, sir, if you’ll believe me, that girl had a fit of hysterics! Indeed, sir, she had. And there was I, at that time of night in the main street, with a young female on my hands, crying and laughing fit to split—excuse me, sir. As it so happened, no one came by; and after a time I got her quietened down, sir.”

  “A most unpleasant situation for you, Bolam,” commented the Colonel, sympathetically. Inwardly he was considerably amused by the picture which Bolam had drawn.

  “Very unpleasant indeed, sir, I can assure you.”

  With an effort, Bolam recovered his orderly-room manner:

  “I asked her what had excited her, sir; and she replied that she believed the shop was haunted and that a ghost was ringing up on the phone. I told her not to be a little fool; and I saw her to the Vicarage gate.”

  “An imaginative girl, evidently,” the Colonel commented.

  “A proper young ijjit!” said Bolam, wrathfully. “And by the next morning, she’d spread it all over the village that the shop was haunted. And, to tell you the truth, sir, the story’s grown and grown since then, until I hardly recognize it myself. Everybody seems to add a bit to it every time it’s repeated. The last I heard was that the Green Devil had come back again; and had rung up Hubbard on the phone; and that was what made him suicide!”

  Bolam’s expression betrayed a mixture of injury and contempt.

  “Sir, I knew you were bound to hear about it; and I didn’t want you to think that I had anything to do with spreading such a nonsensical tale. I’m fair exasperated with the whole thing; for they’re all saying: ‘And Constable Bolam saw it himself.’ As if I would ever dream of seeing such a thing! And half the children in the place after me, trying to get me to make their flesh creep for them. I’ve made some of their ears ring, anyhow.”

  Colonel Sanderstead fastened upon the important point.

  “Have you any idea why the telephone rang at all, Bolam?”

  “No, sir.”

  “A ring means an inward call, of course. Now who would think of ringing up a shop that was bound to be empty at that hour? Everybody who deals with Swaffham knows that he doesn’t live in the shop, so he couldn’t hear the bell. It seems a pointless affair.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No explanation forthcoming yet?”

  “None, sir.”

  “It’s strange. Why should anyone ring up a number which couldn’t answer? But perhaps it was a mistake—crossed wires, or a wrong number, or something like that. Probably that would account for it.”

  “Very probably, sir.”

  “Well, Bolam, don’t worry over the matter. No one who knows you would ever accuse you of putting a ghost-story abroad—especially a story like that.”

  The constable seemed satisfied with this and parted from the Colonel with a punctilious salute, acknowledged with equal punctiliousness by the Colonel

  Moved by a faint curiosity of which he was rather ashamed, Colonel Sanderstead turned into the St. Nicholas road in order to look at Swaffham’s shop as he passed. A small child was standing on the pavement near the shop, examining with awe the telephone wire over which “the ghost” had spoken; and the Colonel’s eye turned in the same direction. Swaffham’s telephone was the only one in the village itself; so if the mysterious ringing had been due to accidental contact, it must have originated farther out. Colonel Sanderstead moved on a little until the line of posts carrying the wire came into view; and he followed that with his eye across the fields. So far as he could see, Swaffham’s cable had supports to itself until it ran across the Bungalow garden; but at that point it was joined to two other wires, one coming from the Bungalow itself and another from the police station on the outskirts of the village. After that point, all three wires ran on the same posts. Farther up the slope, he could see the poles of the line from Swaythling Court which converged upon the trio and joined them somewhere farther along the Micheldean Abbas highway.

  “It must have been somebody ringing up the wrong number,” the Colonel concluded as he continued his walk in the direction of St. Nicholas.

  He was well outside the village when he recognized a figure approaching him. Lonsdale, his gamekeeper, lived in a cottage a little way off the road to the left; and apparently he had noticed the Colonel and had come down to meet him.

  For the second time that morning, the Colonel found himself in the presence of someone with news to communicate and hampered by a fear of being laughed at. Lonsdale, most evidently, had something on his mind which he wished to tell his employer; but Colonel Sanderstead had practically to drag it out of him. When it did come, the Colonel was not surprised that Lonsdale had had some difficulty in putting it clearly.

  “I just wanted to consult you, sir, about a matter that came up lately. It’s really about the inquest on that man Hubbard. I’m not sure whether I shouldn’t have volunteered my evidence at the inquest; but at the time I didn’t feel inclined to do it. Some people would have thought I was just making it up, sir; telling a silly story for the sake of being called as a witness. I thought it out; and I made up my mind to say nothing about it to anybody then. But after the inquest, I thought it over again; and it seemed to me, just in case that thing went any farther, that I’d better mention it to someone; so that if anything further turned up, it wouldn’t look as if I had anything to conceal.”

  The Colonel nodded encouragingly but said nothing.

  “So I thought I’d better mention it to you, sir; you being a J.P. and knowing me and not being likely to let it go any farther unless there was need for that.”

  “Quite right, Lonsdale. Go ahead.”

  Lonsdale fidgeted slightly, as though trying to find the proper opening.

  “It’s this way, sir. You know the Sproxtons of Upper Greenstead village?”

  The Colonel nodded again. The Sproxtons were a family that had been rooted in the Fernhurst soil for generations; and they now kept the tiny solitary shop of Upper Greenstead. A very sound family, by the Colonel’s standards. He began to wonder how they came to be mixed up in the affair of the inquest.

  “Well, sir, for some months back, Kitty Sproxton and I have been looking each other up and down, so to speak, and trying to see if we wouldn’t suit each other.”

  “Sensible man, Lonsdale,” commented the Colonel. “She’s a pretty girl, and a good girl, too.”

  “She’s that, sir. So you see it was only to be expected that I’d be often at Upper Greenstead. I used to go up there in the evenings and come back through the High Spinney. I’ve been a bit doubtful about the birds there lately; there’s a poaching fellow I’ve had my eye on lately—not from the village, sir—and I thought it would do no harm to be going through the Spinney at odd times in the night.”

  The Colonel smiled covertly at Lonsdale’s combining business with pleasure; but he said nothing, and Lonsdale continued his story.

  “On the night of this Hubbard man’s death, I was over in Upper Greenstead; and Kitty and I went for a walk in one of the lanes up there. I could see she was a bit upset over something; and gradually I got it out of her. It made me fair furiou
s, sir.”

  Even the recollection seemed to make Lonsdale angry. His face flushed and his brows contracted as he went on with his narrative.

  “She told me, sir, that the day before that she had been down in Fernhurst Parva, doing some shopping; and as she was walking home along the road, this beggar Hubbard overtook her in his car. He was alone; and there was no one else in sight. He stopped the car and offered her a lift into Upper Greenstead. Kitty isn’t that kind of a girl, sir.”

  “I know that,” said the Colonel. “Go on.”

  “Hubbard, it seems, wouldn’t take a civil no for an answer. He got down from the car and began to talk to her. She walked on; and he followed her along the road. Then he began to get familiar, sir. I didn’t ask her to tell me all about it; but I could see from the way she spoke that he must have got beyond bounds altogether. Anyway, there was a bit of a struggle and she got away from him. He followed her up in his car, keeping beside her and talking to her until they got in sight of the village; and from what she said, his talk was worse than what he did.”

  Outwardly unconcerned, the Colonel was raging in his mind. Here was another story of Hubbard pestering the village girls. Another black mark against the hound! Quite obviously a man of that sort was better dead.

  “Go on, Lonsdale.”

  “I’m not an easy-tempered man, sir; and that story fairly made me rage. Kitty had some trouble in calming me down after it. In fact, sir, we made up our minds about things that evening and we’re going to get married next month.”

  “Ah! That’s good news, Lonsdale. She’s a very nice girl in every way; and you’re a very lucky man. I must drop in at Upper Greenstead and congratulate her, too. I’m very pleased to hear about it.”

  Inwardly the Colonel was estimating what increase in pay he ought to offer Lonsdale when the marriage took place. He liked both the keeper and the girl; and young folk ought to be made easy in their minds at the start.