Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 4
“I’ve often heard it said,” the inspector commented in a disconsolate tone, “that you scientific people make the worst witnesses. You never will say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ plainly like ordinary people. You’re always hedging and qualifying.”
“Had a training in accuracy, I expect,” Rafford replied. “We don’t feel inclined to swear to things until we’re convinced about them ourselves.”
Armadale evidently decided not to pursue the subject further.
“What about the body?” he asked.
“I sent Sapcote up to look after it—the village constable. He’s up at Foxhills now. If it was to be left for your examination, somebody had to be there to see it wasn’t disturbed.”
The inspector nodded approvingly.
“Quite right. And I suppose I can get hold of this youngster—Colby’s his name, isn’t it?—any time I need him?”
Rafford gave him the boy’s address, which he took down in his note-book.
“Anything else you can think of that might be useful?” he inquired, putting the book back into his pocket.
The doctor shook his head.
“Nix. I suppose the coroner will want a look in?”
“I expect so,” Armadale replied.
He glanced at Wendover and Sir Clinton to indicate that he now left the field to them. Wendover took advantage of the tacit permission.
“You didn’t see anything that suggested poison, did you?” he asked the doctor.
Rafford’s faint smile put an edge on his reply:
“I believe I said that if it hadn’t been for the marks on the wrists, I’d have certified congestion of the brain. I don’t think poison marks the wrists.”
Wendover, feeling that he had hardly shone by his interposition, refrained from further questions and glanced at Sir Clinton. The chief constable appeared to think that further inquiries could be allowed to stand over for a time.
“I think we’d better be moving on,” he suggested. “Thanks for your help, Dr. Rafford. Once we’ve seen the body, perhaps something fresh may turn up, and we may have to trouble you again. By the way,” he added, “did you notice if there was a heavy dew last night? I was playing bridge at the hotel and didn’t go out after dinner; but perhaps you were out and can tell me.”
“The dew did come down fairly heavy,” Rafford said, after a pause for recollection. “I happened to be out at a case, and I noticed it. Are you thinking about the possibility of Hay’s death being due to exposure?”
“Not exactly,” Sir Clinton answered, with a faintly ironical smile. “As you would say, doctor, exposure doesn’t mark a man’s wrists—at least not so quick as all that.”
Rafford acknowledged the dig good-humouredly and accompanied them to the garden gate as they went out.
“I hope I haven’t started you on a wild-goose chase, inspector,” he said on parting. “But I suppose that sort of thing’s all in your day’s work, anyhow.”
Armadale digested this in silence as the car spun along towards Foxhills; then at last he uttered his views in a single sentence:
“That young fellow strikes me as uncommonly jaunty.”
And having liberated his soul, he kept obstinately silent until they had reached their destination.
“This is the place, I think,” Sir Clinton said a few minutes later, pulling his car up on the Foxhills avenue at a point where a side-road led off towards a little cottage among some trees. “I can see the constable in the garden.”
Getting out of the car, they made their way along the by-lane for a short distance, and, as they came to the garden gate, Armadale hailed the constable. Sapcote had been sitting on a wooden chair beside the body, reading a newspaper to while away the time; but at the sound of the inspector’s voice he rose and came forward along the flagged path.
“Things have been left just as they were, I suppose?” Armadale demanded.
Sapcote confirmed this and at once fell into the background, evidently realising that he had nothing to report which would interest the inspector. He contented himself with following the proceedings of his superior with the closest interest, possibly with a view to retailing them later to his friends in the village.
Armadale stepped up the paved path and knelt down beside the body, which was lying—as the doctor had described it—face downwards with the arms extended above the head.
“H’m! Looks as if he’d just stumbled and come down on his face,” the inspector commented. “No signs of any struggle, anyhow.”
He cast a glance at the paved path.
“There’s not much chance of picking up tracks on that,” he said disparagingly.
Wendover and Sir Clinton had come round to the head of the body and the chief constable bent down to examine the wrists. Armadale also leaned over; and Wendover had some difficulty in getting a glimpse over their shoulders. Constable Sapcote hovered uncertainly in the rear, evidently anxious to see all he could, but afraid to attract the inspector’s attention by pushing forward. Wendover inferred that Armadale must have a reputation as a disciplinarian.
“There seem to be marks of a sort,” the inspector admitted grudgingly, after a brief study of the skin. “Whether they mean anything in particular’s another matter. He might have had a fall at the gate and banged his wrists against a bar; and then he might have got up and staggered on until he fell here and died.”
Sir Clinton had been studying the marks with more deliberation. He shook his head at the inspector’s suggestion.
“The gate-bars are rounded, if you look at them. Now at one point this mark—see it?—shows a sharp line on the flesh. It’s only at one place, I admit; the rest of the marking is more like something produced by general pressure. But still, you can’t mistake that bit there.”
Armadale re-examined the mark with more care before replying.
“I see what you mean,” he admitted.
“Then go and try your own arm against the gate-bars and I think you’ll admit it won’t work.”
The inspector moved off to the gate, slipped his sleeve up, and pressed his forearm hard against the most convenient bar. While he was thus engaged, Wendover stooped down to examine the markings for himself.
“What made you so ready with the gate-bars, Clinton?” he inquired. “I never noticed what sort of a gate it was when I came in.”
“Obvious enough. Here’s a man been falling. Marks on his wrists. We learned that from the doctor. Naturally when I heard it, I began to wonder if he hadn’t fallen against something; and as soon as we got out of the car, I kept my eye open for anything that Hay could have bruised himself on. The gate-bars seemed a likely thing, so I noted them in passing. One keeps one’s eyes open, squire. But as soon as I saw this”—he indicated the edge on the marking where the indentation in the flesh was almost straight—“I gave the gate-bars the go-by. They couldn’t have done it.”
He glanced up.
“Satisfied, inspector?”
Armadale removed his arm from the bar, examined the mark left on it by the pressure, and nodded gloomily.
“This didn’t do it. It leaves a mark deep in the middle and fading out on each side.”
He came back to the body and scanned the mark once more.
“This thing on the wrist hasn’t got any middle. It’s fairly even, except for that sharp section.”
A thought seemed to strike him and he pulled a magnifying glass from his pocket, adjusted the focus, and made a minute inspection of the dead man’s wrist.
“I thought it might have been a rope,” he explained as he put away his lens with a disappointed air. “But there’s no regular pattern there such as a rope leaves. What do you think of it, Sir Clinton?”
“Got a piece of chalk in your pocket, inspector?” the chief constable inquired.
Armadale’s face showed some astonishment, which he endeavoured to conceal as well as he could.
“No, Sir Clinton, I haven’t.”
“Are you thinking of bringing a photographer up here to take a so
uvenir picture?”
The inspector considered for a moment or two.
“No,” he said at last. “I don’t see much use in that. The body’s lying quite naturally, isn’t it?”
“It looks like it; but one never knows.”
Sir Clinton’s fingers went mechanically to his waistcoat pocket.
“No chalk, you said, inspector?”
“No, I haven’t any.”
“Ah, and yet some people tell you that playing pool is a waste of time; and that the habit of chalking your cue and then pocketing the chalk is reprehensible. We now confound them.”
He produced a cube of billiard-chalk as he spoke and, taking out a penknife, trimmed the paper away.
“Just chalk round the outline of the body, please, inspector. This paved path will show the marks excellently. If we need the marks later on, we can always lay some boards over them to keep the rain off.”
While the inspector, obviously much against the grain, was chalking his lines, Sir Clinton turned to the constable.
“Perhaps you could give us some help, constable. Did you know Peter Hay?”
“Knew him well, sir.”
“You can’t throw any light on this business?”
“No, sir. It’s amazing to me, sir, if there’s anything in what the doctor says.”
“Ah! And what does the doctor say?”
“Swears it’s foul play somehow, sir.”
“Indeed? He didn’t go so far as that when he spoke to me about it.”
The constable seemed rather confused to find himself taken so literally.
“Didn’t quite mean that, sir. What I meant was I could see from his manner that something’s amiss.”
Sapcote, conscious that he had let his tongue run away with him, glanced anxiously at Sir Clinton’s face. The expression on it reassured him. Evidently this wasn’t the kind of man who would eat you if you made a slip. The chief constable rose considerably in his subordinate’s estimation.
“Nice little garden, this,” Sir Clinton remarked, casting his eyes round the tiny enclosure. “A bit on the shady side, perhaps, with all these trees about. Did you ever come up here to visit Peter Hay, constable?”
“Often and often, sir. Many’s the time we’ve sat on that seat over there when I’ve been off duty; or else in the house if it got too cold for my rheumatism.”
“Suffer from rheumatism, constable? That’s hard lines. One of my friends has some stuff he uses for it; he swears by the thing. I’ll write down the name for you and perhaps it’ll do you some good.”
Sir Clinton tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, jotted a name on it, and handed the paper over to the constable, who seemed overwhelmed by the attention. Decidedly this superior of his was a “real good sort.”
“Peter Hay was getting on in life,” Sir Clinton went on, with a glance at the silvering hair of the body before him. “I suppose he had his troubles too. Rheumatism, or something like that?”
“No, sir. Nothing of the kind. Barring these strokes of his, he was as sound as a bell. Used to go about in all weathers and never minded the rain. Never seemed to feel the cold the way I do. Kept his jacket for the church, they used to say about here. Often in the evenings we’d be sitting here and I’d say to him: ‘Here, Peter, shirt-sleeves must keep you warmer than my coat keeps me, but it’s time to be moving inside.’ And then in we’d go and he’d begin fussing about with that squirrel of his.”
“What sort of a man was he?” Sir Clinton asked. “Stiff with strangers, or anything like that? Suppose I’d come wandering in here, would he have been grumpy when he came to turn me out?”
“Grumpy, sir? That’s the last thing you’d have called him. Or stiff. He was always smiling and had a kind word for everyone, sir. One of the decentest men you could ask for, sir. Very polite to gentlefolk, always; and a nice kindly manner with everyone.”
“Not the sort of man to have a bad enemy, then?”
“No, indeed, sir.”
Inspector Armadale had finished his work with the chalk and was now standing by, evidently impatient to get on with the task in hand. His face betrayed only too plainly that he thought Sir Clinton was wasting time.
“Finished?” the chief constable inquired.
“Quite,” Armadale replied, in a tone which, hinted strongly that there was much more to be done.
“In that case, we can turn the body over.” Sir Clinton said, stepping forward as he spoke and beckoning to the constable.
Handling him gently, they turned the dead man on his back; and, before rising, Sir Clinton ran his hand over the front of the body. As he stood up, he motioned to Armadale to follow his example.
“His waistcoat and trousers are a bit damp,” the inspector said, after he had felt them. “Is that what you mean?”
Sir Clinton nodded in confirmation. An expression of comprehension flitted across the inspector’s face.
“So that was why you asked about the dew last night?” he observed. “I wondered what you were after, sir.”
“Something of the sort was in my mind,” the chief constable admitted. “Now have a look at the face, inspector. Has there been any bleeding at the nose? Or do you see anything else of any interest?”
Armadale bent down and inspected the dead man’s face closely.
“Nothing out of the common that I can see,” he reported. “Of course, the face is congested a bit. That might be the stroke, I suppose.”
“Or else the settling of the blood by gravity after death,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “Well, I hadn’t expected to find any nose-bleeding. If he’d bled at the nose it might have saved him from apoplexy.”
Armadale looked up inquiringly.
“You think it’s merely apoplexy, sir?”
“I’m afraid this is a ‘place’ within the meaning of the Act, inspector; otherwise I’d be quite ready to bet you a considerable sum that if Dr. Rafford carries out a post mortem, he’ll report that death was due to congestion of the brain.”
The inspector seemed to read some hidden meaning into Sir Clinton’s words, for he nodded sagely without making any vocal comment.
“What next, sir?” he asked. “Shall we take the body into the cottage and go over it there?”
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“Not yet. There’s just one thing I’d like to be sure about; and it may not be easy to see. There’s a better light out here. Turn up the trousers from the ankle, inspector, and have a good look for marks—probably on the front of the shins. It’s a long shot, but I’ve a notion you’ll find something there.”
Armadale did as he was bidden.
“You’re right, sir. There’s a very faint mark—far fainter than the ones on the wrists—on the front of each shin, just as you said. It’s more like a very faint bruise than a mark made by stumbling against anything. The skin’s not broken. Of course it shows up after death, otherwise I’d hardly have seen it.”
Sir Clinton nodded without making any comment. He was stooping over the dead man’s face, examining it closely. After a moment or two, he signed to Wendover to come to his side.
“Smell anything peculiar, squire?”
Wendover sniffed sagaciously once or twice; his face lighted up; and then a look of perplexity came over his features.
“I know that smell, Clinton. I recognise it well enough; but I can’t put a name to it somehow.”
“Think again,” the chief constable advised. “Go back to your early days and you’ll probably recall it.”
Wendover sniffed several times, but remained baffled. A look of interest passed over Sapcote’s face. He came forward, bent down, and sniffed in his turn.
“I know what it is, sir. It’s pear-drops—these sweets the children eat. Peter always had a bag of sweets in the place for youngsters that came to see him.”
“That’s it,” Wendover exclaimed with some relief. “I knew I hadn’t smelt that perfume for ages and ages; and yet it used to be familiar once upon a time.”
“Peter Hay suffered from apoplexy, the doctor told me. Had he any other troubles? Bad digestion? Asthma? Anything you can think of?”
Sapcote shook his head decidedly.
“No, sir,” he said without hesitation. “Peter was as sound as a bell, barring these turns of his. I never heard tell of his having anything else wrong with him these last ten years.”
The chief constable nodded, as though the information had satisfied him, but he refrained from comment.
“I think we’d better get him carried into his own bed now,” he suggested with a glance at the body. “After that, we can look round the place and see if there’s anything worth noting.”
They carried the remains of Peter Hay into the cottage and laid the body on the bed, which had not been slept in.
“You’d better examine him, inspector,” Sir Clinton suggested.
As the inspector set to work, the chief constable invited his companions to come into the second room of the cottage; and he left the bedroom door open, so that the inspector could hear anything of interest while he made his examination.
To Wendover, the tiny room seemed to offer little of interest. It was obviously kitchen and living-room in one. An oil cooking-stove; a grate; a sink; a dresser; two chairs and a table—these made up the more obvious contents. His eye wandered upwards and was caught by the movement of a tame squirrel in its cage on one of the walls.
“I heard he kept some pets,” he remarked to the constable who had gone across to inspect the squirrel with a rather gloomy expression on his face.
“Yes, sir,” Sapcote answered. “He took a lot of pleasure in the beasts. Some of them are in cages out behind the cottage.”
He reflected for a moment, then added:
“Somebody’ll have to look after the poor beasts, now he’s gone. Would there be any objection to my taking them away, sir? They’ll have to be fed.”
Sir Clinton, to whom the question was obviously addressed, gave permission at once.
“We mustn’t let the beasts starve. You’ll have to take the cages too, of course?”
“Yes, sir. I can put them in my backyard at home.”