Death at Swaythling Court Read online

  While this idea was taking shape in his mind, the Colonel’s eye mechanically scanned the typewritten sheet before him; and again his subconsciousness came into action. By some trick of memory he seemed to hear Cyril’s voice; “Look at the ‘d’ in ‘don’t’ and the other ‘d’ in ‘down.’” These letters were defective in the blackmailer’s letters to Jimmy Leigh; but in this new specimen of the Well-wisher’s correspondence the “d’s” in “arranged” and in “and” were perfect.

  “I suppose he changed his shuttle. And yet, this letter must fit in somewhere between the earlier ones to Jimmy Leigh and that last one we found on his typewriter that morning. It had the defective ‘d’ in it too.”

  The Colonel did not make this comment aloud; nor did he follow the line of thought further at the moment. Stella was obviously waiting for him to raise his eyes from the paper; and when he looked up, she continued her narrative.

  “When I got that letter, I felt I had to consult someone. I consulted . . .” (she hesitated for an instant) “. . . I consulted Jimmy.”

  Colonel Sanderstead felt a momentary disappointment. Why hadn’t she come to him? He had had far more experience of the world than Jimmy Leigh had. Then a fairer judgment forced him to admit that a sister would naturally go first to a brother in a case of this sort.

  “And what did Jimmy say?”

  “He advised me not to go.”

  The Colonel showed his astonishment.

  “Was that all he had to say?”

  “Oh, of course, he did his best to reassure me; said it would come out all right in the end, and so on. He was so certain about it that he convinced me, temporarily, that it would be all right. Jimmy can be very convincing when he sets about it, you know.”

  “And after that?”

  “After I got home, the thing got hold of me again; but Jimmy had somehow managed to get me back into a more normal state of mind. I seemed to see things in truer perspective, somehow. Jimmy had managed to dislodge the terror or at any rate to shake it a bit; and the result was I could sit down and think more or less calmly—a thing I hadn’t been able to do since Hubbard first sprang his mine. And suddenly I saw a way out and I wondered why I had been such a fool as not to see it before. Remember, I’d just been desperate—absolutely up against it, so far as I could see. I don’t suppose I’d have dreamed of such a thing in cold blood.”

  The Colonel was making an attempt to run two currents of thought through his mind at one time and was not succeeding very well. His surface attention was concentrated on Stella’s narrative; for evidently the story was drawing near the crucial 30th September and he was going to hear adventures on that night. But the second half of his mind was obsessed with the bearing of this fresh evidence on the doings of Jimmy Leigh. Here was a second score coming to light between Jimmy and the blackmailer. Hubbard had been trying to get the whole family into his grip at once. And Jimmy was fonder of his sister than of anybody else in the world. And yet, with all this knowledge in his possession, he could meet the blackmailer that very night and let him go off, throwing a friendly “Good night” after him as if he had been a mere casual caller. That would need a lot of explaining. Unless . . . unless the Lethal Ray were at the bottom of the whole thing after all. If Jimmy knew that he could snuff out Hubbard the moment he got home, there would be no need for a violent quarrel at all. In fact, it would be a fatal mistake to have one. Probably Jimmy had pretended to cave in completely to Hubbard, even to stand out of his way in the matter of Stella; and then . . . the Lethal Ray would square all accounts.

  Stella’s voice recalled the Colonel to the other strand in his thoughts.

  “I thought over it and thought over it; and the more I thought, the simpler it seemed. He had terrorized me. Why shouldn’t I terrorize him and force him to keep his mouth closed? So obvious, when one looks at it now. And, do you know, I began to take almost a pleasure in the thing in anticipation. He had terrorized me. Well, I was going to get a little of my own back! And I positively gloated over the prospect. You’ve no conception what a lot of good it did me, to feel that I could put the fear of death on him—I mean it literally. That’s what I meant to do. He had sent that insulting invitation to me. Very good; I would take him at his word; and I would go there at the time he fixed. But I’d take this with me.”

  She held up the 0.22 automatic.

  “That’s what I meant to do: go there and tell him that if he moved a finger against me, then or later, I’d shoot him with less compunction than I’d feel in killing a fly. I wasn’t a bit afraid of not convincing him. When I thought of what he’d made me feel, I hadn’t the faintest doubt I could make him understand that if necessary I would put him through it. He wouldn’t mistake what I had to say for mere bluff.”

  “And do you mean to tell me that Jimmy allowed you to go off on that insane errand?”

  “Jimmy? I didn’t say a word about it to Jimmy. I knew he’d have tried to stop me. Let me tell the thing in my own way. After dinner that night I got out the pistol and loaded it. Then I cleaned every finger-mark off it and put it back in its case. By that time it was getting on towards ten o’clock. I had given Hales leave to go to that dance in Micheldean Abbas, and I had told him not to bother about cleaning the car before he went. That meant I could use the car to go across to the Court and no one would know that it had been out.

  “But just then I had a cold fit. Somehow I felt that I’d better have some reserves to call up in case things wept wrong. So I rang up Cyril at High Thorne. But it seemed that he was out at a bridge-party at the Allinghams’, on the Micheldean Abbas road. So I rang up the Allinghams’ house, shortly before ten o’clock; and asked for Cyril. But by the time he came to the phone, I’d changed my mind again; and when he spoke to me I made some silly excuse or other. I asked him when he expected to be finished with his bridge; and he said they meant to play well on into the morning—two or three o’clock. So I said that it didn’t matter; and I rang off.”

  “Evidently you hadn’t told Cyril your plans,” commented the Colonel with a grim smile. “I can’t imagine him letting you go to the Court, if he’d known anything about it.”

  “Of course, he knew nothing about it. Now I’m getting near the end. About ten o’clock I got fidgety; I simply couldn’t sit in the house any longer. I wanted to be doing something—no matter what—so that I shouldn’t have to sit about and think. So I went down to the garage, got out the car, and went for a spin up the Bishop’s Vernon road. I hadn’t gone far before it started to rain. I came back; and just before eleven o’clock I turned into the Swaythling avenue. The lodge-keeper’s windows were dark, I noticed; but the gates were open, fortunately.

  “I forgot to tell you that before I went out I’d put on my driving-gloves; and then I’d gone up to my room and taken out the pistol. I’d thought out very carefully any chances of leaving finger-marks behind me—just in case I had to deny being at the Court at all. I made up my mind to keep my gloves on all the time I was at the Court. Oh, and another thing: I took with me the Yale key he’d enclosed in his letter.”

  Colonel Sanderstead made no audible comment; but he noted in his mind that one of the “misfits” in the evidence was now accounted for satisfactorily. Clearly this was the Yale key which he had picked up on the doorstep of the Court.

  “I was very pleased with myself as I drove up the avenue. I hadn’t a quiver; and I stopped the car at the front door and walked up the steps as if I’d been going into my own house. When I took out his latch-key, I got it into the lock without the slightest fumbling. My nerves really are good, you know.”

  The Colonel nodded assent.

  “I’m afraid I really shouldn’t brag about it,” Stella continued, “for, as you’ll see, I hadn’t so much to brag about after all. But I was quite proud of myself at the time. As I turned the key and pushed the door open, I even remembered to take the pistol out of my pocket. I thought I’d better have it handy as soon as I crossed the door-step.”

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nbsp; “I suppose that was what made you leave the key in the door,” commented the Colonel. “I expect you pulled it half-way out of the key-hole and then took your hand away to get the pistol. And so you forgot to pull the key out of the door.”

  “How do you know about that?” demanded Stella. “I hunted everywhere for that key after I got home again. I couldn’t think what had become of it.”

  “I picked it up off the door-step next morning.” explained Colonel Sanderstead.

  “If I’d only known that! It would have saved me a lot of anxiety. I was in terror lest I’d left it lying about somewhere—dropped it out of my pocket into the car or something like that. And then somebody might have picked it up and connected me with the affair at the Court.”

  “It’s all right,” the Colonel reassured her. “Nobody made anything of it. Go on.”

  “When I got into the hall, I found the light burning. He had evidently left it on so that I could see my way about. I thought it funny that he had sent me the latch-key instead of letting me in himself when I rang the bell; but when I got into the hall I saw the reason. The whole place was in darkness except for the hall lights. Apparently he had been going out somewhere that evening and hadn’t been able to get back in time to meet me. So I thought, at least; and that accounted quite satisfactorily for the latch-key. He was late for his appointment, that was all.”

  “What time was that?” the Colonel interjected.

  “The Fernhurst church clock had struck eleven just before that. It must have been a little after eleven—perhaps two or three minutes after the hour.”

  The Colonel’s interest was increasing; for now Stella was approaching a crucial time in the affairs of that night. From the next section of her narrative it would be possible to check the gamekeeper’s evidence as to Hubbard’s presence in his study at eleven o’clock.

  “I saw a door ajar just a little way along the hall,” Stella continued, “so I made my way to it. It used to be old Mr. Swaythling’s study; so I thought that very likely it would be Hubbard’s study also. As I came up to it, I saw that there was no light burning in it; so as I pushed the door a little I put my hand round to the switch—you know how one does that mechanically—and turned on the light before the door was really open.

  “The light went up; and just as it did so, I heard Hubbard’s voice calling: ‘Get out! Shut that damned door. I don’t care who you are. Get out!” And then he said a lot of other things that I needn’t repeat. That beastly lisp of his made them sound rather dreadful—did you ever hear a man swear with a lisp?”

  The Colonel shook his head. He was thinking of something else. Lonsdale had been right in his results, though he was wrong in supposing that Hubbard himself had switched on the study light. Anyway, the blackmailer had been at home at that particular moment; and part, at any rate, of Lonsdale’s tale was accurate. The electricity had been switched on almost at the very moment he had mentioned.

  “And now I’ve got to scramble down off my pedestal,” Stella went on. “You’ve no idea what a shock that voice gave me. You know, I hadn’t expected to find anyone in the room; and to be cursed like that out of the void, so to speak, simply knocked my nerves to fiddle-strings. You can’t imagine the tone he spoke in. It sounded more like an angry animal than a human being—as if he’d lost all control of his temper. And of course I couldn’t understand what it all meant. Altogether, it was a bit of a nerve test; and I didn’t pass. I drew back from the door; and then I fell into a pure panic; and all I wanted was to get out of the place safely. I must have been in a pretty state; for I dropped the pistol and ran for the front door. Luckily I managed to get it open without any bother. I slammed it behind me; bolted down the steps and scrambled into the car almost without knowing what I was doing. Pretty inglorious, wasn’t it? The only thing I can take credit for was that I didn’t fall into hysterics. But there certainly wasn’t much of the conquering heroine about that affair.”

  “Lucky you didn’t faint, Stella. That would have complicated matters, wouldn’t it? If you want my plain opinion, I think you had no right to go into a business of that kind at all; and you were extra lucky to get out of it safely. That’s the main thing, after all.”

  “Nice of you not to rub it in; but I’ve rubbed it in myself often enough since then. I’m not over-proud of the way I behaved. I didn’t know my own limitations—that’s quite evident—but I’ve learned a good deal about myself. What a little fool I was to think that I could terrorize anybody! But I really thought I was up to the thing, quite fit for the job. I suppose I must have been a bit off-colour with all that worrying.”

  “Forget about it, Stella; that’s my advice. Now if you’ll get a duster and clean your finger-marks off that pistol, I’ll take it away with me; and there’ll be an end of the whole thing. Nobody else knows that you were there that night?”

  “Nobody at all. I had to tell you, because you evidently had some information about it and I didn’t want you to think I had anything to conceal. I could tell you the whole story and not feel particularly ashamed, except of having shown myself such a coward when it came to the pinch.”

  “I don’t know if I’d have liked you any better if you had managed to carry the thing through. Tackling a blackmailer in that way is a man’s business, Stella, not a girl’s. I’m quite glad you didn’t manage to carry it off. I mightn’t have thought any the worse of you for it; but I’d have thought differently of you, if you understand me.”

  For a few moments the Colonel remained silent. When he spoke again, it was evident that the non-skid tyre was still engaging his mind.

  “By the way, Stella, did you drive straight home?”

  “No. I kept my head enough to remember that I mustn’t be identified as coming from Swaythling Court at that time of night; so instead of turning into the front gate and coming up the avenue here, I drove round through Micheldean Abbas and came in by the back approach. There was no one about, so far as I saw; but I thought it just as well to be on the safe side.”

  “Quite right,” the Colonel commented. “And the main street of Micheldean Abbas is paved, so you’d leave no tracks there.”

  “So it is,” Stella confirmed. “I never thought of that. All I wanted was to avoid the risk of someone seeing my car come out of Swaythling gate and then turn into my own avenue.”

  The Colonel did not extend his visit much longer. He had got what he wanted; in fact, he had got more than he expected. Although his interview with Stella had cleared up certain points in the Hubbard case, it had raised at least two fresh ones which puzzled him as much as anything that had gone before.

  In the first place, there was the type of the “Well-wisher” letter. How did it, with its perfect lettering, come to be interjected into the middle of a series of communications all containing defective “d’s”? That was a curious thing.

  And the second puzzle was even more difficult. Why should a blackmailer arrange a meeting of that kind with a girl and then, when he had apparently got her into his power, order her off the premises in that fashion? And why should he commit suicide just when he seemed to have the ace of trumps in his hand? For quite obviously if Hubbard had played his cards properly, he had Jimmy Leigh at his mercy. Stella’s wild-cat scheme ought to have been Hubbard’s deliverance. All he had to do was to let Jimmy know that his sister had been at the Court that night and threaten to make the affair public. Jimmy would have done anything to save his sister’s reputation; he would have agreed to any terms with that hanging over him; the projected prosecution would have vanished into thin air; and Hubbard could have continued his career without a qualm.

  Colonel Sanderstead was driven to a fresh series of inferences. Admit that Hubbard at eleven o’clock had all the cards in the game. Still he needed time to play them. Jimmy Leigh knew nothing of his sister’s visit. And suppose that meanwhile, before Hubbard could communicate with him, Jimmy Leigh had been getting his Ray into action and had wiped out the blackmailer shortly after Stella go
t away from the Court. That really seemed to be the only hypothesis that would fit the facts.

  “Nobody will ever prove it now, that’s one good thing,” was the Colonel’s mental comment as he turned his car into his own avenue.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Voice from the Beyond

  COLONEL SANDERSTEAD banked in Micheldean Abbas; and, a few days after his interview with Stella Hilton, he took his car over to the town in the afternoon in order to cash a cheque. As he came out of the bank, he noticed a man loaded with parcels standing on the pavement.

  “I wonder who that is,” he thought. “I can’t place him; and yet he obviously recognizes me.”

  Not liking to appear forgetful, the Colonel nodded to the unknown and fell into casual conversation with him as they stood by the car; and as they talked, the tones of the stranger’s voice recalled the scene at the inquest.

  “You’re Mr. Simpson, aren’t you—Hubbard’s clerk? I thought so. I remembered your face at once from seeing you that day at the inquest; but I couldn’t place it for a moment.”

  Simpson seemed delighted to be recognized. Colonel Sanderstead, inspecting the laden figure beside him, was moved to one of his kindly actions:

  “Been shopping? You seem fairly loaded. I’ll give you a lift back in my car, if you like; that is, if you’ve finished your round of the shops.”

  Simpson accepted the offer eagerly; and they got into the car. Having encumbered himself with the man, Colonel Sanderstead sought for some common ground in conversation; and as the Swaythling Court case was never very far from the surface of his thoughts, he opened the talk with a question.