Death at Swaythling Court Read online

  If Flitterwick hoped to produce a sensation in his audience, he certainly succeeded. The Colonel stared at him with an expression in which astonishment and a certain apprehension seemed to be blended. Much encouraged, the Vicar proceeded.

  “A very strange affair, very strange; not at all what one would have suspected. I never imagined for a moment that young Leigh was that sort of person.”

  Apprehension was now the Colonel’s chief emotion. What had come to light about Jimmy Leigh? But he kept his feelings in hand; it would never do to let Flitterwick think the matter was being taken seriously. Impatiently he waited for the Vicar to divulge his news.

  “Horresco referens,” the Vicar went on, “I’m sorry to have to repeat such a thing.”

  Completely sceptical on this point, Colonel Sanderstead fumed with impatience and, to hasten Flitterwick’s procedure, looked at his watch pointedly. The Vicar noticed the glance and, afraid lest the Colonel might hurry on to some appointment, he came straight to the point at last.

  “It appears, Colonel, that young Leigh has . . . what shall I say? . . . eloped with that . . . well, with that . . . I should say with that rather flamboyantly attired woman who paid a flying visit to the ‘Three Bees’ on the night before he disappeared.”

  Colonel Sanderstead had difficulty in suppressing an outward sign of his internal relief. So they weren’t connecting Jimmy Leigh with Hubbard’s death after all! That was something to the good, anyway. And from the relief he felt, the Colonel was suddenly aware of how far he himself might go if it became a question of shielding Jimmy Leigh. Somehow, the farther he penetrated into the case, the more inclined he felt to side with the culprit—if, indeed, there was a murder at the bottom of the business at all. Even Lonsdale’s evidence had helped to tip the scale farther; for the more one heard about Hubbard, the more one hated the beast.

  Flitterwick was evidently disconcerted to find that the explosion of his gossip bomb had produced so trifling a result.

  “I can assure you, Colonel, there is no doubt in the matter. I have questioned the station porter myself. One owed it to young Leigh to have the facts clearly before one, if I may say so, before one sat in judgment in any way. But it’s all quite clear. This abandoned woman left Fernhurst Parva by the first train. She was early at the station; and as she walked up and down the platform she seemed to be expecting someone. She walked two or three times down the platform to the entrance and looked about. At last she gave it up and took her seat in a carriage. Just as the train was moving, young Leigh dashed up the platform, glanced along the train, and flung himself into her compartment. To my mind, the whole thing must have been prearranged between them. And that would account, of course, for his having left no address behind him. I must confess, Colonel, that I am gravely disappointed in young Leigh.”

  “Jimmy Leigh’s a friend of mine,” said the Colonel abruptly.

  And with that he crossed the road, leaving Flitterwick puzzled and aghast upon the pavement.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Non-skid Tyre

  CYRIL NORTON and Colonel Sanderstead had finished a round of the links when a heavy thunder-shower broke upon them; and they decided to retire to the Manor smoking-room until the weather became settled, one way or the other. Neither of them was of the golfing type which finds it necessary to replay verbally every stroke of the preceding round; and when they had settled themselves comfortably by the fire, it occurred to the Colonel that Lonsdale’s story might help to set Cyril’s mind at rest with regard to the relations between Jimmy Leigh and the blackmailer. Cyril was a person to whom one could safely mention a thing of that sort; Colonel Sanderstead felt that it would not be a breach of his understanding with the keeper if he repeated the gist of the affair.

  “I’ve come across something fresh on the Hubbard case, Cyril,” he began.

  Cyril Norton looked up with an expression into which the Colonel read a faint tinge of irony. “At it again?” his nephew seemed to inquire, without uttering any verbal comment. The Colonel disregarded the look.

  “This is for your own information, of course,” he continued. “It won’t go any farther. The fact is, I’ve got some evidence to prove that Jimmy Leigh and Hubbard parted on perfectly good terms at the Bungalow, that night.”

  Rapidly he sketched in outline the story which Lonsdale had told him.

  “Of course,” he concluded, “Lonsdale’s notion of an Invisible Man is nonsense. I expect that in some way or other he missed the scoundrel; though I don’t understand how he managed to do it. But anyway, there’s the story for what it’s worth. And it appears to me to clear Jimmy completely, so far as Hubbard’s death is concerned. It seems to me that Jimmy and Hubbard must have come to some agreement; and if they had done that, then there was no need for Jimmy to eliminate Hubbard at all.”

  Cyril Norton listened to the story with concentrated attention. For some moments he remained silent, his pipe clenched in his teeth, gazing into the fire. At last he broke silence.

  “I’ve told you before, uncle, that I don’t understand the ins and outs of this business. It looks as if a dozen kittens had been rolling amongst the clues and tangling them up. Even this Lonsdale affair doesn’t seem to me to make them much easier—quite the reverse, in fact. By the way, you don’t propose to publish this evidence abroad?”

  “No.”

  “Suppose you came across something that told on the other side—against Jimmy—would you show the same masterly restraint.”

  The Colonel was nettled by Cyril’s tone. He had uneasy memories of the map and compass episode. Off his guard, he blurted out his real views:

  “Certainly! I’m not a detective paid to catch Jimmy out. Besides, to tell you the truth, Cyril, I’m beginning to discover a certain sneaking sympathy with the man who finished Hubbard—if it turns out in the end to be murder and not suicide,”

  Cyril looked at his uncle curiously.

  “So you’re coming round to a sensible point of view? What’s a dead blackmailer, after all, eh? ‘A rat, a rat’ and all that sort of thing? That’s the line I took at the start, myself. I never was the kind that raises a hullabaloo about the extermination of vermin.”

  Colonel Sanderstead was experiencing a certain relief at the turn of the conversation. For some days he had been suffering from too much concentration, uncomfortable concentration, upon the Hubbard case; and now he felt that with Cyril he might safely venture to discuss the matter. Cyril would not betray any confidences. And, in the very earliest stages of the case, Cyril had shown a hard, critical spirit, which was just the thing his uncle wished now to see applied to the affair.

  “Haven’t you got any ideas about the business?” he asked. “Does it suggest nothing to you at all?”

  Cyril Norton smiled a little grimly; then the grimness faded out, as though something amusing had come into his mind.

  “Have you come across Flitterwick, lately, uncle? He’s got a fine explanation of Jimmy’s departure. Bolted with the damsel who came to see Hilton, you remember. Well, well, boys will be boys!”

  He laughed with obviously genuine amusement.

  “So you don’t believe that either?” demanded the Colonel. “Flitterwick’s an idiot, of course; and he annoyed me by his muck-raking and sniffing for scandal; but although one doesn’t swallow his story, there’s no denying that Jimmy’s bolting does require some sort of explanation. Have you any notion why he went off?”

  Cyril’s amusement came to a sudden end.

  “I suppose it was the usual reason: he didn’t want to stay where he was.”

  Colonel Sanderstead recognized the tone; whatever Cyril knew—and it looked as though he knew something—it was evident that he did not feel justified in giving information. He decided to be frank with his nephew.

  “The fact is, Cyril, this Hubbard affair has given me a great deal of worry lately. It’s no affair of mine; but there’s something about it that makes me uneasy. I hate to be puzzled by a thing; and that c
reature’s death does puzzle me. If Jimmy Leigh’s out of it, then why did Hubbard commit suicide? There’s no reason that I can see. If they parted on friendly terms, then Hubbard could count on Jimmy stopping your mouth; so he needn’t have suicided at all. Angermere thought that the butler was at the bottom of it. What do you think of that?”

  Cyril’s face lighted up for a moment as though he had seen a beacon on a dark road.

  “The butler? Now that’s an idea! That would help to clear up some of the tangle, perhaps. I can’t say I was impressed by Leake. Let’s hear Angermere’s notion.”

  The Colonel rapidly outlined the theory of the novelist.

  “H’m! He seems to have got it down to dots. That might account for some parts of the thing. The belt-fastener we found on the carpet, you remember; that might have been Leake’s. Yes, I’ll admit that Leake might have played a part in the affair.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “Did you take Lonsdale’s story as being correct all the way through? Did he give you the impression of a man remembering or did he look like a fellow reciting a prepared story?”

  “I’ve known Lonsdale—and you’ve known him too—for years, Cyril. You don’t suggest that he murdered Hubbard, do you?”

  “Everybody’s a potential murderer, uncle, given the proper circumstances. I bet that with your ideas, you’d be on the side of Judge Lynch if you lived in the Southern States. It’s just because you live over here that you’re clear of that.”

  “I’m down on any man who mishandles a girl, admitted.”

  “And Lonsdale, maybe, thinks the same when it’s his girl.”

  “I don’t believe Lonsdale killed Hubbard, if that’s what you mean,” declared the Colonel, emphatically.

  “Not quite that; but he may have seen more of the affair than he told you. Are you sure he didn’t go inside the house?”

  “I believed the story he told me, up to the Invisible Man episode. It sounded perfectly straightforward. Besides, how could Lonsdale have poisoned Hubbard?”

  “It was the stabbing I was thinking about.”

  “But that was aimless, apparently.”

  “Of course it was,” Cyril assented. “Quite futile. That’s what puzzles me about it. Hubbard was dead some time before the stabbing was done. Now a sane man doesn’t stick a knife into anyone unless he has a sound motive for it. And where’s the motive here?”

  “There’s Angermere’s theory,” the Colonel pointed out. “Suppose the stabbing was done to hide the poisoning.”

  “I doubt it. Everybody knows that there’s a P.M. examination in murder cases and that was certain to bring the cyanide to light. Besides, the room stank of the stuff, you remember. The weak point in Angermere’s theory is that it assumes first of all that Leake is a bit of a super-criminal; and then it makes him fake evidence of a murder by stabbing, which is an obvious mistake under the circumstances. It’s trying to prove too much in the evidence you leave behind.”

  “But don’t all murderers make mistakes?” objected the Colonel. “Isn’t that the usual hall-mark of that crime? They always get caught by being too clever.”

  Cyril took his pipe out of his mouth as if to lend force to his reply.

  “Yes, the ones who are too clever get caught. But when they’re not too clever they don’t get caught, because nobody thinks it’s a murder at all. Do you really suppose, uncle, that every murder is detected or even suspected of being a murder? Not a bit of it.”

  The Colonel went back to his original trouble.

  “Are you sure that Jimmy Leigh’s not mixed up in the affair? I don’t mind telling you I’ve been very worried over it, Cyril. I’ve come across some things that made me uneasy—not suspicious exactly, but troubled. Have you any notion why Jimmy cut his stick just at that moment?”

  Cyril Norton pondered over his reply for a few moments before speaking.

  “Between ourselves, uncle, I do know why Jimmy cleared out. You can set your mind at rest on that point, if it’s troubling you. I’ve gone into this business very fully; and you may take it from me as absolutely straight that Jimmy did not kill Hubbard. I could establish that to-morrow without the faintest difficulty if I were put to it. I’ve got all the evidence I need.”

  “Then why did he bolt?” demanded the Colonel. “It looks queer.”

  “You needn’t ask me why Jimmy went off,” Cyril said, with an air of finality. “I’m not going to tell you. And you needn’t apply to me for a solution of the mystery either; for a good many parts of it leave me just as much in the dark as you are yourself. I’ve got my own views about some sides of it; but the rest beats me entirely. And for that reason, if you’ve noticed, I’ve confined myself to knocking down other people’s theories. I’ve set up none of my own. I’m not going to start throwing suspicion on anybody, because I simply don’t know the whole story of what happened on that night at Swaythling Court. A silly owl like Flitterwick bubbles with theories—half of them libellous, like this latest effort about an elopement—and possibly some of his dirt may stick in some people’s minds. I’m not going to fall into that mistake, anyway.”

  Cyril Norton got up and walked across to the window, where the rain was drumming a diminuendo upon the panes.

  “Not worth playing another round,” he commented, gloomily, as he looked out over the wet surface of the sweep. “The greens will be sodden after that waterspout, and we’d only cut them up by walking on them. I think I’ll clear off home once this rain stops.”

  He came back and re-seated himself by the fire.

  “Give Hubbard’s affair a rest, uncle, and take up a fresh line. The village seems to be buzzing with a new sensation. All this nonsense about a haunted telephone has revived the old Green Devil. You’d better look into that yarn for a change. Local folklore and all that.”

  The Colonel made a sound suspiciously like an angry snort.

  “Where do they pick up stuff of that kind nowadays?” he demanded with some vexation.

  “General chatter, with the assistance of Flitterwick, I suppose. Rot, anyway. The only eyewitness seems to be Sappy Morton—just the sort of person one might expect to see a thing of that kind. I understand he swears he met the Green Devil one night; describes it in detail, too. All green, with great gnarled claws—quite in the old tradition. I suppose he had a nightmare of some sort.”

  “I’ll have a little chat with poor Sappy one of these days,” the Colonel decided. “A little kindly talk will probably get these notions out of his head.”

  “You’d better hurry up, then; or we’ll have some penny-a-liner down from London to write it up: ‘THE GREEN DEVIL OF FERNHURST. REAPPEARANCE OF WELL-KNOWN SPECTRE. ALL TEETH AND CLAWS. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?’ That sort of thing.”

  The Colonel ground his teeth at the prospect of seeing his village held up to ridicule in the cheaper Press.

  “I’ll see Sappy as soon as I can.”

  The rain had ceased and a watery sunlight came through the windows. Cyril got up.

  “I think I’ll clear off now while there’s a dry blink. I hate splashing through a downpour on a motor-bike.”

  The Colonel let him go; and soon he heard the purring of Cyril’s motor-cycle receding down the avenue. He refilled his pipe and sat down again beside the fire.

  The blunt statement of his nephew had taken a load off his mind; for Cyril was a trustworthy person. If he said that he could produce certain evidence, the Colonel knew that the evidence would be forthcoming if necessary. Cyril was the last person whom one could accuse of empty bragging in matters of that kind. That meant that Jimmy Leigh’s conduct, curious as it seemed on the surface, did not connect him with Hubbard’s death. And that, again, fitted in quite coherently with the evidence of Lonsdale, showing that Jimmy and the blackmailer had parted on friendly terms. That, in itself, was a sound corroboration of Cyril’s assertion.

  But how had Cyril got hold of this evidence which he had not disclosed? He was, quite frankly, holding back somethi
ng. The Colonel admitted to himself, as he thought over the matter, that he, too, had done the very same thing; he had kept his thumb on his discovery of the track of the defective non-skid tyre and had said nothing about it to Cyril. Possibly Cyril had seen something else that day, something more important, which had escaped the Colonel; and thus he had got ahead in the race.

  “Smart man, Cyril,” his uncle reflected. “But I wonder what he noticed that I didn’t see. From the way he talked, one got the feeling that he had a fair idea of the whole case—more than I have, anyway—but that he wouldn’t be hustled into saying anything until he’d got it completely straightened out. Probably he’ll tell me what he thinks by and by.”

  His attention was caught by the faint sound of a car passing under the windows of the study; and in a few moments a maid opened the door.

  “Mrs. Hilton, sir.”

  The Colonel rose to his feet as the maid stood aside to admit a grey-eyed girl in tweeds. Colonel Sanderstead’s face lit up. He liked Stella Hilton. “She looks you straight in the eye, and she doesn’t stare when she does it,” was his form of praise. He had known her since her childhood right up to the outbreak of the war; and when he came back after that interlude he had found her grown almost out of recognition, more responsible from the effect of her war-work and—married. It had come as something of a shock to the Colonel; a chit of fifteen reappearing as the mistress of a household; it made him suddenly feel older. But his affection for Stella had not been lessened; there was no difference in the side she showed to him.

  “Gardner wanted to immure me in the drawing-room; but I insisted on being shown in here. You don’t mind?”

  The Colonel reassured her with a gesture.

  “The fact is, I want a quiet talk with you about my affairs; and I don’t want to run the risk of some other visitor dropping in on the top of us. I want your advice.”

  The Colonel needed no further enlightenment. Stella’s “affairs” could mean one thing only: her relations with her husband. Colonel Sanderstead had long been in the secret of all her troubles; she had turned to him from time to time. And he had admired her more than ever for the way in which she had taken them. It was what he had expected of her: she wasn’t the whining type with a wet pocket-handkerchief. Without ceasing to be feminine, she had faced ill-fortune as bravely as a man could have done. When her whole happiness had gone down in disaster, she had wept, if she wept at all, in private; and to the world she had turned an inscrutable face. Only Cyril Norton and the Colonel had had glimpses of what went on behind that mask.