Death at Swaythling Court Page 24

  “It was miles from anywhere, apparently. I got out the map; and it turned out that there wasn’t a railway station anywhere within reasonable distance. We hung about for a bit; but there seemed to be next to no traffic on that bit of the road.

  “We’d just made up our minds that it was a case for tramping, when the lights of a big car came round the bend. I stopped it and asked for a lift. It wasn’t going our way; but that didn’t matter. All I wanted was a lift to the nearest railway station on the road.”

  Cyril Norton paused in his narrative for a moment. The Colonel was still in doubt as to where all this was leading. Cyril continued.

  “It was Hubbard’s car. He recognized us, of course, and was effusively friendly, most anxious to help, and all that. He took us aboard and told his chauffeur to drive to the nearest station. But he took us to a branch line; and when we got down and his car had gone, we found that the last train had steamed out of the place ten minutes earlier.

  “Of course there was nothing for it but an hotel. It was a miserable little town with only one decent pub in it; and that seemed to date from the coaching days. However, we went to it and got rooms for the night. Of course I see now that I ought to have walked the streets rather than go in myself; but one simply doesn’t think of the things other people might think about. Anyway, I didn’t even know where Stella’s room was. I had a room two stairs up. It was a most rambling old place—all sorts of turnings and passages in it; and you had to walk half over the house to get from the top of the first stair to the beginning of the second flight.

  “We had something to eat and then Stella went off to her room. I smoked for a bit and then found my way up to my den. By that time it was late. The whole place seemed to be deserted, everyone in bed.

  “I’d just got ready to turn in when suddenly I remembered I’d left that £50 in notes in the pocket of my driving-coat. I hadn’t been too impressed with the general look of the waiters and so forth in that pub. It was a second-class place. And I didn’t like the notion of that money lying in the hall where anyone could pick it up. So I put on enough clothes for decency and wandered out to get the money. There seemed to be nobody astir in the place.

  “I took my bedroom candle with me; but as I told you, the old place was a rambling one; and when I got to the bottom of my flight of stairs, I took the wrong turn and wandered along a passage. It came to a blank end at last, nothing but bedroom doors all along it. So I turned back to try my luck in the other direction.

  “Just as I came out of the passage, I found I wasn’t alone in the house at that time of night. One of the servants was coming along the corridor in the opposite direction. I explained that I wanted to get my motor-coat. The maid looked at me rather queerly, I thought, but she showed me the right road and I got my notecase without any further trouble. Then I went off to bed again.

  “I think I told you it was an uncomfortable kind of pub. I was up pretty early next morning; and as I pulled back the curtains I found I was looking out on the main street. And who should I see but Hubbard’s chauffeur loafing about. Of course I thought nothing about it at the time. Why should I? It was only afterwards that I had reason to put two and two together.

  “Stella and I had breakfast together and she took the train home, while I went off to see about getting my car towed in for repairs. It had been rather an anticlimax to our day; but neither of us thought anything about it. That’s the end of Act I.”

  “If that’s all Stella was worrying about,” said the Colonel, “she must have an extra clean conscience. Who could ever think anything of a mishap like that?”

  “Wait a bit. Nothing did happen for a while. Before we had time to think of the thing again, something else happened. You remember young Eric Campbell, one of my subs?”

  “Poor young chap who committed suicide?”

  “That’s the one. Well, I happened to come across him about that time—I was rather keen on the cub, you know—and he dropped some sort of hint about Hubbard. He’d got into a corner, it seemed, and somehow he seemed to be in deadly terror of Hubbard. He didn’t tell me anything. It was only afterwards that I put two and two together. Anyway, the pup seemed to be up against it, hard, and I could get nothing out of him. He talked a lot about ‘indelible disgrace’ and so forth; and people who knew about things, and so on. I didn’t take it as seriously as perhaps I ought to have done; but you know that at least fifty per cent. of youngsters think they’ve indelibly disgraced themselves at some time or other, especially the ones who’ve done nothing in particular but suffer from acute consciences.

  “The next thing I heard was that he’d shot himself. I went to see his people. Decent old man, his father—quite heartbroken over the business—so fond of the boy, you know—only son—so proud of him. And the old man showed me a letter which didn’t come out at the inquest. It was wild, rambling stuff; but knowing what I did, I could see what it all meant. The boy had been blackmailed for something or other; got the wind up; evidently thought he would disgrace his people; and so he took to the pistol.

  “It was all clear enough to me, from what the boy had told me. Hubbard had blackmailed him and driven him to that. I don’t know what you think about things, uncle; but by my simple lights there’s not much difference between that and plain murder. If Hubbard had shot young Campbell with his own hand he couldn’t have finished him more certainly.”

  “Couldn’t you have done something in the matter?” asked the Colonel.

  “Two reasons why I couldn’t. First, I had no evidence except the hints young Campbell dropped. Second, suppose I had made a move, it would have meant stirring up all the mud of the case—the very thing the cub had shot himself to avoid. That wouldn’t have been serving him well, would it?”

  “I suppose not,” the Colonel admitted. “But I’m delighted that Hubbard came to a bad end himself. There’s a certain justice in things, I’ve always believed.”

  Cyril Norton regarded his uncle curiously for a moment and then continued his narrative.

  “The next thing was Hubbard’s interview with Stella, the one she told you about. Perhaps you can guess what it amounted to now. It seems Hubbard had sniffed a chance of his blackmailing game when he picked us up that time on the road. He’d deliberatley taken us on to a station where the last train was sure to have gone. Then, when he pretended to go off in his car, he really simply went round the corner and kept his eye on us. He and the chauffeur put up for the night at the next town; and in the morning he sent the chauffeur in early to see that we’d really spent the night at that hotel. That was how I happened to see him in the street.”

  “I don’t see much foundation for a blackmail case in that,” interjected the Colonel.

  “No? That’s because you don’t know yet a thing that neither Stella nor I knew ourselves until Hubbard interviewed her. By pure bad luck and accident, we’d played right into his hands. I told you I’d blundered into a passage that night, a cul-de-sac. As ill luck would have it, Stella’s room was in that passage and when that maid saw me coming out of it, she drew her own conclusions, and she repeated them to Hubbard when he interviewed her a day or two later. It looked black enough. And that was the tale Hubbard had to tell when he met Stella.”

  “Still I don’t see much in it. You could have laughed at him if he’d tried to spread a story like that. And there’s a law of libel, too. You could have muzzled him easily enough.”

  “Think so? Now I’ll tell you something that puts a new complexion on the affair. Stella had got her decree nisi. But until it was made absolute, it might be upset. And it could be upset by the King’s Proctor if anyone informed him that she’d been up to any tricks with me. Hubbard had only to drop a note to the King’s Proctor—acting purely as an honest citizen trying to see justice done—and Stella’s divorce was in the soup. Now do you see where we were? Would anyone have believed the true story in the face of the obvious interpretation of the facts? And we couldn’t deny the facts.”

  The
Colonel had to admit that it made a black case to go before a jury who did not know the actors personally. Cyril Norton looked glumly at the fire and remained silent for some minutes. At last he made up his mind to say something.

  “I was against this business coming out at all; but Stella insisted that you should be told. I hate stirring up things. It’s like pitching a stone into a pool; you never know where the ripples will get to before all’s over. I know exactly what’s going to happen next. You’ll begin putting two and two together; and before we know where we are, you’ll have got near the centre of the Swaythling Court affair. You couldn’t help doing that now, since you know so much. I know you spotted Stella’s car and kept that up your sleeve; never told even me about it. What I don’t know is how much else you’ve collected.”

  “I certainly know some sides of it that probably you don’t,” Colonel Sanderstead admitted with a certain pride. He was getting his own back now for Cyril’s ironical treatment of him on the morning they had gone together to the Court.

  “Well, I don’t mind admitting that a lot of it’s still a mystery so far as I’m concerned. Some parts of it were outside my experience. But I do know that you had suspicions of Jimmy Leigh. You showed that quite clearly. I don’t wonder at it, either. Jimmy’s doings must seem a bit mysterious to you. And if you go on thinking, your suspicions will probably crystallize a bit further, after what Stella insisted on my telling you. Look here, Jimmy Leigh is coming back soon. Oh! yes, I’ve been in communication with him all along. He’s coming back next week for the wedding. We’ll both come up for dinner on Thursday; and you can ask Jimmy yourself what part he played in the affair of Hubbard. He’ll trust you; and now that you know as much as you do, I can’t see there’s much harm in your knowing more. But I wish Stella had let well alone. I couldn’t tell her to drop it because her brother was mixed up in it. She doesn’t know that. And if I had forbidden her to talk, she’d have wanted to know why. And she must never know why.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  How It Happened

  DINNER was over at Fernhurst Manor; and the Colonel’s guests were making themselves comfortable in the smoke-room. Cyril Norton selected a saddle-bag chair that fitted his size and, after dragging it towards the fire, sat down in it and began to fill his pipe. Jimmy Leigh, on his right, drew the cigarette-box to a handy position and then inspected his host, who was adjusting a piece of coal on the fire. The Colonel, looking round as he completed his task, found Jimmy’s quizzical bright eyes fixed upon his face. He put the tongs back into place and sat down himself on Cyril Norton’s left, so that he could see the faces of both his guests. Then finding that no one volunteered anything, he turned to Jimmy Leigh.

  “Well, Jimmy, what have you been doing all this time?”

  “Me?” Jimmy Leigh’s voice expressed a feigned surprise. “Me? What have I been doing? Oh, nothing much. ‘Just loungin’ around an’ sufferin’ ’ like Brer Tarrypin, you know. Just loungin’ around an’ sufferin’.”

  “Well, then, where have you been, if you can answer that?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you,” snapped the exasperated Colonel.

  “Oh! I’ve been abroad. Places where nobody ever goes. Exempli gratia: Margate, Afghanistan, Broadstairs, Tung-king-cheng—all those places that you find on the outside edge of the map you know. Take the first turn on the left as you leave Charing Cross and you get to them in no time.”

  “H’m! I suppose it’s no business of mine,” Colonel Sanderstead conceded, giving Jimmy up as hopeless. He swung round to his nephew. “Perhaps one could get something serious out of you, Cyril?”

  Cyril Norton settled himself more comfortably in his chair before replying.

  “This is going to be a longish tale, uncle. I’ll give you the general outline; Jimmy can chip in when I come to bits that he knows most about; and perhaps you’ll fill up the gaps that we happen to leave. I suspect that there are one or two points where you can enlighten us. As you’ll see, I’ve been rather handicapped in my investigations and I don’t profess to have cleared everything up even now.”

  “Very well,” said the Colonel. “Go ahead and I’ll do what I can.”

  “Jimmy knows all about the part I told you the other day, so we may skip that,” Cyril began. “I’ll start after Hubbard’s interview with Stella. Of course, she came straight to me with the story; and when I’d heard it and realized what a nasty corner we’d blundered into, I got hold of Jimmy here and we talked it over. Perhaps I ought to mention that Hubbard had boasted to Stella that he had an alternative market for his goods—Hilton. If she didn’t pay up, then he’d sell his news to Hilton, who would use it to break the divorce case. And I ought to tell you, also, that Hubbard had pitched his demands high, it would pretty well have bankrupted me to pay his price. He knew to a hair what I was worth, it seems.”

  Jimmy Leigh reached over and took a fresh cigarette. He was evidently following Cyril Norton’s story closely.

  “Jimmy and I talked it over, and we advised Stella to temporize. I didn’t want to appear in the matter at all, for reasons you’ll understand very soon. So, through her, we kept Hubbard in play as long as we could. But I may as well tell you that from the very first neither of us was inclined to stick at trifles in the matter. We’d both known young Campbell—you may remember that he was the boy who pulled Jimmy out of a hot corner the time he was chewed up—and we didn’t suffer from any soft spots where Hubbard was in question. So far as I was concerned, Hubbard’s mouth was going to be shut, one way or another. He’d as good as murdered young Campbell, and he’d blackmailed Stella. That was quite enough for me. Switch off that light over there, Jimmy. It’s in my eyes.”

  Jimmy Leigh leaned across and snapped the switch.

  “Thanks. We talked it over, Jimmy and I, and we could see no possible way of ensuring Hubbard’s silence. If we’d paid him, there was nothing to hinder him selling his tale to Hilton all the same; and then Stella would have been back in the net again, tied to that brute once more. We were going to run no risks of that. And there seemed no way out of it. Who would trust to the honour of a blackmailer? Not I, certainly.”

  “Nor I,” confirmed the Colonel. “It was an awkward affair.”

  “Spoken very gentlemanlike, Colonel,” said Jimmy Leigh. “In my uncultured way I’d have called it a ‘hell of a predicament.’”

  Cyril Norton paid no attention to the interjections.

  “It boiled down to this in the end: either two people’s lives were to be spoiled or else this murderer Hubbard was to—disappear from the scene.”

  “My idea from the first,” Jimmy Leigh explained. “Cyril had his scruples. When it came to choosing between Stella and friend Hubbard, the trouble was simply nothing, so far as I was concerned. He’d overreached himself; and I meant to see him pay up. Plank the double-blank on him! Domino! That was the way I looked at it.”

  “H’m! Logical mind you seem to have, Jimmy,” commented the Colonel. “I don’t say you’re wrong.”

  “Young Campbell saved my life once,” Jimmy Leigh retorted soberly. “I owed him something for that. So far as I was concerned, Hubbard wasn’t going to cost me any pangs of conscience. Do you suppose the Public Executioner loses sleep over his job? Well, I was quite ready to play Private Executioner for Hubbard and lose just a little sleep over it. And glad of the chance, too.”

  The Colonel had never seen Jimmy Leigh so serious before. Cyril Norton rapidly took up the tale again.

  “Jimmy and I put our heads together over the business. The usual trouble in a murder, it seems, is to arrange an alibi for the murderer. Jimmy had a stroke of genius and suggested that it would be just as easy to arrange an alibi for Hubbard; post-date the murder, you see, and then both of us could prove we’d been elsewhere at that hour. Hubbard’s body wouldn’t be found till morning, if we arranged things properly; so all the medicos would have to go on would be the drop in the body temperature after death. And in front of a hot fi
re, a body doesn’t lose its temperature nearly so quickly as normally.

  “Now I begin to see light,” Colonel Sanderstead commented. “And I suppose you trusted to Mickleby not to be too clever?”

  “We did,” Jimmy Leigh interjected with a grin.

  “The next thing was to arrange a cast-iron alibi,” Cyril Norton went on. “It was Jimmy’s idea. You know he’s an expert on gramophones and dictaphones and all that kind of truck. So it occurred to him to fix up a wax cylinder record of a long conversation between himself and Hubbard—had the machine running while Hubbard paid him a visit—and reproduce it on a loud speaker for Mrs. Pickering’s benefit that night. Then, to make things doubly sure, he got a dictaphone record of a telephone message from Hubbard to his clerk; it was taken that morning when you were down inspecting the Lethal Ray. That record also was filed for use. Between the two of them, we had enough evidence to convince anyone that Hubbard was alive and talking, long after the brute was really getting his deserts in the next world. See the point?”

  The Colonel nodded assent.

  “That scheme implied that Hubbard was left to me whilst Jimmy looked after the machinery. And then Jimmy had another idea: in case anything went wrong, why not supply a false trail leading to himself? And so we hit on the faked Lethal Ray.”

  “Faked? Why, I saw Jimmy kill a rat with it myself!”

  “How we are misunderstood!” drawled Jimmy Leigh. “What you saw was me electrocuting a rat with the help of the village main. It walked on to two plates in that shooting-gallery tube and got 250 volts d.c. through its spine. A complete fake, Colonel. Sorry to disappoint you, and all that; but that’s the truth. There never was a Lethal Ray. But Flitterwick helped us to spread the glad news about it. A useful fellow.”