Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 16

  He jotted something down on a sheet of paper.

  “Thanks. Good-bye, Joan.”

  He flicked the note over to Armadale.

  “Would you mind seeing if we can get on to that house by ’phone, Inspector? Hunt up the London Directory for it.”

  “It’s Cecil Chacewater’s address?” said Armadale, glancing at the slip.

  “Yes. The man he’s staying with may be on the ’phone.”

  In a few minutes the Inspector came back with the number and Sir Clinton rang up. After a short talk he put down the receiver and turned to Armadale.

  “He says he can’t come to-day. You heard me explaining that we want that secret passage opened, if there is one. But he doesn’t seem to think there’s any hurry. He has some business which will keep him till to-morrow.”

  “I heard you tell him that his brother’s disappeared,” the Inspector commented. “I’d have thought that would have brought him back quick enough.”

  “It hasn’t, evidently,” was all that Sir Clinton thought it necessary to say. There seemed to be no reason for admitting the Inspector into the secret of the Ravensthorpe quarrels.

  Chapter Eleven

  UNDERGROUND RAVENSTHORPE

  WHEN Inspector Armadale presented himself at the Chief Constable’s office next morning he found Sir Clinton still faithful to his proposed policy of pooling all the facts of the case.

  “I’ve just been in communication with the coroner,” Sir Clinton explained. “I’ve pointed out to him that possibly we may have further evidence for the inquest on Foss; and I suggested that he might confine himself to formalities as far as possible and then adjourn for a day or two. It means keeping Marden and the chauffeur here for a little longer; but they can stay at Ravensthorpe. Miss Chacewater has no objections to that. She agreed at once when I asked her.”

  “The jury will have enough before them to bring in a verdict of murder against someone unknown,” the Inspector pointed out. “Do you want to make it more definite while we’re in the middle of the case?”

  Sir Clinton made a non-committal gesture as he replied:

  “Let’s give ourselves the chance, at least, of putting a name on the criminal. If we don’t succeed there’s no harm done. Now here’s another point. I’ve had a telephone message from Scotland Yard. They’ve nothing on record corresponding to the finger-prints of Marden or the chauffeur. Foss was a wrong ’un. They’ve identified his finger-prints; and his photograph seems to have been easily recognizable by some of the Yard people who had dealings with him before. He went by the name of Cocoa Tom among his intimates; but his real name was Thomas Pailton. He’d been convicted a couple of times, though not recently.”

  “What was his line?” the Inspector inquired.

  “Confidence trick in one form or another, they say. Very plausible tongue, apparently.”

  “Did they say anything more about him?” asked the Inspector. “Anything about working with a gang usually, or something like that? If he did, then we might get a clue or two from his associates.”

  “He usually played a lone hand, it seems,” Sir Clinton answered. “Apparently he used to be on the Halls—the cheaper kind. ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Woz’ he called himself then. But somehow he made the business too hot for him and cleared out into swindling.”

  “Ah!” Armadale evidently saw something which had not occurred to him before. “Those pockets of his—the ones that puzzled me. They might have been useful to a man who could do a bit of sleight of hand. I never thought of that at the time.”

  He looked accusingly at Sir Clinton, who laughed at the expression in the Inspector’s eyes.

  “Of course I admit I saw the use of the pockets almost at once,” he said. “But that’s not a breach of our bargain, Inspector. The facts are all that we are pooling, remember; and the fact that Foss had these peculiar pockets was as well known to you as to myself. This notion about sleight of hand is an interpretation of the facts, remember; and we weren’t to share our inferences.”

  “I knew pretty well at the time that you’d spotted something,” Armadale contented himself with saying. “But since you put it in that way I’ll admit you were quite justified in keeping it to yourself as special information, sir. I take it that it’s a race between us now; and the one that hits on the solution first is the winner. I don’t mind.”

  “Then there’s one other bit of information needed to bring us level. I’ve just had a message over the ’phone from Mr Cecil Chacewater. It appears he’s just got home again; came by the first train in the morning from town, apparently. He’s waiting for us now, so we’d better go up to Ravensthorpe. I have an idea that he may be able to throw some light on his brother’s disappearance. At least he may be able to show us how that disappearing trick was done; and that would always be a step forward.”

  When they reached Ravensthorpe Cecil was awaiting them. The Inspector noticed that he seemed tired and had a weary look in his eyes.

  “Been out on the spree,” was Armadale’s silent inference; for the Inspector was inclined to take a low view of humanity in general, and he put his own interpretation on Cecil’s looks.

  Sir Clinton, in a few rapid sentences, apprised Cecil of the facts of the case.

  “I’d heard some of that before, you know,” Cecil admitted. “Maurice’s disappearance seems to have caused a bit of a stir. I can’t say he’s greatly missed for the sake of his personality; but naturally it’s disturbing to have a brother mislaid about the place.”

  “Very irksome, of course,” agreed Sir Clinton, with a faint parody of Cecil’s detached air.

  Cecil seemed to think that the conversation had come to a deadlock, since the Chief Constable made no effort to continue.

  “Well, what about it?” he demanded. “I haven’t got Maurice concealed anywhere about my person, you know.”

  He elaborately felt in an empty jacket pocket, ending by turning it inside out.

  “No,” he pointed out, “he isn’t there. In fact, I’m almost certain I haven’t got him anywhere in this suit.”

  Cecil’s studied insolence seemed to escape Sir Clinton’s notice.

  “There was a celebrated historical character who said something of the same sort once upon a time. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ you remember that?”

  “Good old Cain? So he did. And his name begins with a C, just like mine, too! Any other points of resemblance you’d like to suggest?”

  “Not just now,” Sir Clinton responded. “Information would be more to the purpose at present. Let’s go along to the museum, please. There are one or two points which need to be cleared up as soon as possible.”

  Cecil made no open demur; but his manner continued to be obviously hostile as they made their way along the passages. At the museum door the constable on guard stood aside in order to let them pass in.

  “Wait a moment,” Sir Clinton ordered, as his companions were about to enter the room. “I want to try an experiment before we go any further.”

  He turned to Cecil.

  “Will you go across and stand in front of the case in which the Muramasa sword used to be kept? You’ll find the sheath still in the case. And you, Inspector, go to the spot where we found Foss’s body.”

  When they had obeyed him he swung the door round on its hinges until it was almost closed, and then looked through the remaining opening.

  “Say a few words in an ordinary tone, Inspector. A string of addresses or something of that sort.”

  “William Jones, Park Place, Amersley Royal,” began the Inspector, obediently; “Henry Blenkinsop, 18 Skeening Road, Hinchley; John Orran Gordon, 88 Bolsover Lane . . .”

  “That will be enough, thanks. I can hear you quite well. Now lower your voice a trifle and say ‘Muramasa,’ ‘Japanese,’ and ‘sword,’ please. And mix them into the middle of some more addresses.”

  The Inspector’s tone as he spoke showed plainly that he was a trifle bewildered by his instructions.

  �
�Fred Hall, Muramasa, Endelmere; Harry Bell, 15 Elm Japanese Avenue, Stonyton; J. Hickey, sword, The Cottage, Apperley . . . Will that do?”

  “Quite well, Inspector. Many thanks. Think I’m mad? All I wanted was to find out how much a man in this position could see and hear. Contributions to the pool. First, I can see the case where the Muramasa sword used to lie. Second, I can hear quite plainly what you’re saying. The slight echo in the room doesn’t hinder that.”

  He swung the door open and came into the museum.

  “Now, Cecil,” he said—and the Inspector noticed that all sign of lightness had gone out of his tone, “you know that Maurice disappeared rather mysteriously from this room? He was in it with Foss; there was a man at the door; Foss was murdered in that bay over there; and Maurice didn’t leave the room by the door. How did he leave?”

  “How should I know?” demanded Cecil, sullenly. “You’d better ask him when he turns up again. I’m not Maurice’s nursemaid.”

  Sir Clinton’s eyes grew hard.

  “I’ll put it plainer for you. I’ve reason to believe that there’s an entrance to a secret passage somewhere in that bay beyond the safe. It’s the only way in which Maurice could have left this room. You’ll have to show it to us.”

  “Indeed!” Cecil’s voice betrayed nothing but contempt for the suggestion.

  “It’s for your own benefit that I make the proposal,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “Refuse if you like. But if you do I’ve a search-warrant in my pocket and I mean to find that entrance even if I have to root out most of the panelling and gut the room. You won’t avert the discovery by this attitude of yours. You’ll merely make the whole business public. It would be far more sensible to recognize the inevitable and show us the place yourself. I don’t want to damage things any more than is necesary. But if I’m put to it I’ll be thorough, I warn you.”

  Cecil favoured the Chief Constable with an angry look; but the expression on Sir Clinton’s face convinced him that it was useless to offer any further opposition.

  “Very well,” he snarled. “I’ll open the thing, since I must.”

  Sir Clinton took no notice of his anger.

  “So long as you open it the rest doesn’t matter. I’ve no desire to pry into things that don’t concern me. I don’t wish to know how the panel opens. Inspector, I think we’ll turn our backs while Mr Chacewater works the mechanism.”

  They faced about. Cecil took a few steps into the bay. There was a sharp snap; and when they turned round again a door gaped in the panelling at the end of the room.

  “Quite so,” said Sir Clinton. “Most ingenious.”

  His voice had regained its normal easy tone; and now he seemed anxious to smooth over the ill-feeling which had come to so acute a pitch in the last few minutes.

  “Will you go first, Cecil, and show us the way? I expect it’s difficult for a stranger. I’ve brought an electric torch. Here, you’d better take it.”

  Now that he had failed in his attempt, Cecil seemed to recover his temper again. He took the torch from the Chief Constable and, pressing the spring to light it, stepped through the open panel.

  “I think we’ll lock the museum door before we go down,” Sir Clinton suggested. “There’s no need to expose this entrance to anyone who happens to come in.”

  He walked across the museum, turned the key in the lock, and then rejoined his companions.

  “Now, Cecil, if you please.”

  Cecil Chacewater led the way; Sir Clinton motioned to the Inspector to follow him, and brought up the rear himself.

  “Look out, here,” Cecil warned them. “There’s a flight of steps almost at once.”

  They made their way down a spiral staircase which seemed to lead deep into the foundations of Ravensthorpe. At last it came to an end, and a narrow tunnel gaped before them.

  “Nothing here, you see,” Cecil pointed out, flashing the torch in various directions. “This passage is the only outlet.”

  He led the way into the tunnel, followed by the Inspector. Sir Clinton lagged behind them for a moment or two, and then showed no signs of haste, so that they had to pause in order to let him catch up.

  The tunnel led them in a straight line for a time, then bent in a fresh direction.

  “It’s getting narrower,” the Inspector pointed out.

  “It gets narrower still before you’re done with it,” Cecil vouchsafed in reply.

  As the passage turned again Sir Clinton halted.

  “I’d like to have a look at these walls,” he said.

  Cecil turned back and threw the light of the torch over the sides and roof of the tunnel.

  “It’s very old masonry,” he pointed out.

  Sir Clinton nodded.

  “This is a bit of old Ravensthorpe, I suppose?”

  “It’s older than the modern parts of the building,” Cecil agreed. He seemed to have overcome his ill-humour and to be making the best of things.

  “Let’s push on, then,” Sir Clinton suggested. “I’ve seen all I wanted to see, thanks.”

  As they proceeded, the tunnel walls drew nearer together and the roof grew lower. Before long the passage was barely large enough to let them walk along it without brushing the stones on either side.

  “Wait a moment,” Sir Clinton suggested, as they reached a fresh turning. “Inspector, would you mind making a rough measurement of the dimensions here?”

  Somewhat mystified, Inspector Armadale did as he was bidden, entering the figures up in his notebook while Cecil stood back, evidently equally puzzled by these manœuvres.

  “Thanks, that will do nicely,” Sir Clinton assured him when the task had been completed. “Suppose we continue?”

  Cecil advanced a few steps. Then a thought seemed to strike him.

  “It gets narrower farther on. We’ll have to go on hands and knees, and there won’t be room to pass one another. Perhaps one of you should go first with the torch. There’s nothing in the road.”

  Sir Clinton agreed to this.

  “I’ll go first, then. You can follow on, Inspector.”

  Inspector Armadale looked suspicious at this suggestion.

  “He might get away back and shut us in,” he murmured in Sir Clinton’s ear.

  The Chief Constable took the simplest way of reassuring the Inspector.

  “That’s an ingenious bit of mechanism in the panel, up above,” he said to Cecil. “I had a glance at it as I passed, since it’s all in plain sight. From this side, you’ve only to lift a bar to open it, haven’t you?”

  “That’s so,” Cecil confirmed.

  Armadale was evidently satisfied by the information which Sir Clinton had thus conveyed to him indirectly. He squeezed himself against the wall and allowed the Chief Constable to come up to the head of the party. Sir Clinton threw his light down the passage in front of them.

  “It looks like all-fours, now,” he commented, as the lamp revealed a steadily diminishing tunnel. “We may as well begin now and save ourselves the chance of knocking our heads against the roof.”

  Suiting the action to the word, he got down on hands and knees and began to creep along the passage.

  “At least we may be thankful it’s dry,” he pointed out.

  The tunnel grew still smaller until they found more than a little difficulty in making their way along it.

  “Have we much farther to go?” asked the Inspector, who seemed to have little liking for the business.

  “The end’s round the next corner,” Cecil explained.

  They soon reached the last bend in the passage, and as he turned it Sir Clinton found himself at the entrance to a tiny space. The roof was even lower than that of the tunnel, and the floor area was hardly more than a dozen square feet. A stone slab, raised a few inches from the ground, seemed like a bed fitted into a niche.

  “A bit wet in this part,” Sir Clinton remarked. “If I’d known that we were in for this sort of thing I think I’d have put on an old suit this morning. Mind your knees on the
floor, Inspector. It’s fairly moist.”

  He climbed into the niche, which was no bigger than the bunk of a steamer, and began to examine his surroundings with his torch. Inspector Armadale, taking advantage of the space thus made clear, crept into the tiny chamber.

  “This place looks as if it had been washed out, lately,” he said, examining the smooth flagstones which formed the floor. He turned his attention to the roof, evidently in search of dripping water; but he could find none, though the walls were moist.

  Suddenly Sir Clinton bent forward and brought his lamp near something on the side of the niche.

  The Inspector, seeing something in the patch of light, craned forward to look also, and as he did so he seemed to recognize what he saw.

  “Why, that’s . . .” he ejaculated.

  Sir Clinton’s lamp went out abruptly, and Inspector Armadale felt his arm gripped warningly in the darkness.

  “Sorry,” the Chief Constable apologized. “My finger must have shifted the switch on the torch. Out of the way, Inspector, please. There’s nothing more to be seen here.”

  Inspector Armadale wriggled back into the passage again as Sir Clinton made a movement as though to come out of his perch in the recess.

  “So this is where Maurice got to when he left the museum?” the Chief Constable said, reflectively. “Well, he isn’t here now, that’s plain. We’ll need to look elsewhere, Inspector, according to your scheme. If he wasn’t elsewhere he was to be here. But as he isn’t here he’s obviously elsewhere. And now I think we’ll make our way up to the museum again. Wait a moment! We’ve got to get back into that passage with our heads in the right direction. Once we’re into the tunnel there won’t be room to turn round.”

  It took some manœuvring to arrange this, for the tiny chamber was a tight fit for even three men; but at last they succeeded in getting back into the tunnel in a position which permitted them to creep forwards instead of backwards. They finally accomplished the long journey without incident, and emerged through the gaping panel into the museum once more.

  “Now we’ll turn our backs again, Inspector, and let Mr Chacewater close the panel.”