Nemesis at Raynham Parva (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 4

  Sir Clinton’s face betrayed his sympathy with the girl in her trouble, but his reply was guarded.

  “It’s everybody’s business to see that an innocent man isn’t condemned. But I can’t suppress what I know myself about your doings last night, remember.”

  “But that’s the worst thing there is against Teddy!” the girl exclaimed. “If that comes out, everybody’ll be sure he went after Mr. Quevedo and killed him.”

  “They’ll have to prove it, though; and that’s harder than merely saying it. Take my advice, and make a clean breast of the whole affair, if they ask you about it. If you don’t, it’ll be dragged out of you sooner or later; and it’ll make a very much worse impression that way.”

  The girl was obviously about to make another appeal to him when the sound of a chair colliding with something in the breakfast-room arrested the words in her throat.

  “They’re coming,” she muttered, and she hurried away towards the servants’ quarters before the breakfast-room door opened.

  Sir Clinton glanced after her as she went. A faint, but not altogether pleasant smile crossed his face as he thought of the trouble she had raised by not knowing her own mind in time. Of course some men had the gift of a plausible tongue; and no doubt Quevedo had played his game well enough to take this girl in completely. Barford’s temper had probably precipitated the whole business and thrown the girl straight into the foreigner’s hands at the crucial moment; though luckily for her he had upset the arrangement and let Quevedo show himself in his real colours in the end. On the face of it, the whole business seemed to be a sordid enough little affair; and it was the duty of the local police to clear it up. But would the local police get to the bottom of it? Sir Clinton discovered a certain sympathy in his mind for Barford, in the circumstances.

  His train of thought was interrupted by the opening of the breakfast-room door. He heard his niece’s voice speaking to some people who were evidently still at table. Then, as she came out of the room, she caught sight of him and hurried forward.

  “Oh, there you are, uncle! You must have come down very early. When we turned up, Johnnie had carried you off somewhere or other, and no one knew where you’d gone.”

  She held up her face and Sir Clinton kissed her. As he did so, he became aware of a second figure in the background.

  “This is Vincent, uncle. Mother’s told you all about us, I expect, hasn’t she?”

  Francia came forward as she spoke and bowed to Sir Clinton with a certain foreign politeness which seemed to suit his appearance. Sir Clinton let his eyes travel unobtrusively over his new relative. He did not wish to let himself be prejudiced by anything his sister had said; and, at the first glance, he found little to cavil at in Francia’s appearance. The man would never have passed for an Englishman; but Sir Clinton was enough of a cosmopolitan to judge other races by their own standards rather than by British criteria; and he mentally ticked off the externals of the man before him. Foreign-looking, Francia undoubtedly was; handsome, by some standards undeniably, though to Sir Clinton’s taste the Argentiner’s looks were a trifle florid. As for his clothes, “good tailor” might have been inferred at a glance from their appearance. Altogether, the result of his survey removed one of Sir Clinton’s apprehensions. This new nephew-in-law was at least outwardly presentable; though Mrs. Thornaby had been quite fair in describing him as “foreign.”

  “He’s not Anne’s sort; that’s plain,” Sir Clinton reflected rather ruefully. “The main thing is, though, does he suit Elsie?

  He seemed to find an answer in a glance which his niece shot at her husband. Despite himself, he felt a twinge of jealousy as he saw it. All of them would have to take a back seat now, evidently. The old relationships might go on, but this new one had altered all former bearings; and Sir Clinton could not help realising how acutely his sister would feel the change.

  Elsie slipped her arm into her uncle’s and led him towards the hall door.

  “Now I’ve rescued you from Johnnie’s clutches, I’m not going to let you go,” she announced. “I’ve heaps of things I want to hear.”

  She turned to her husband.

  “Vincent! Please bring some camp-chairs out to the lawn. We’ll sit there for a while—over yonder under the lee of the rhododendrons. You’d better fetch four chairs when you’re about it. Mother may come out when she’s got through breakfast.”

  Her husband, with a gesture of excuse towards Sir Clinton, went off obediently in search of the chairs, while Elsie led her uncle out into the open air.

  “Well?” she demanded eagerly, as soon as Francia was out of earshot.

  Sir Clinton had guessed the reason which had led her to despatch Francia on his errand; but he wished that he had more time in which to reply to the implied question.

  “You seem to favour the compendious in your conversation nowadays,” he said teasingly. “I suppose your ‘Well?’ means ‘What do I think of your husband?’ He seems all right and he says ‘Good morning’ better than most people. Beyond that, our acquaintance hasn’t provided much material, has it?”

  He glanced down at his niece’s eager face.

  “Quite happy?” he demanded seriously.

  “Just ever so, and a bit more,” Elsie answered, with equal seriousness. “You’ve no notion what a dear Vincent is. You’ll like him, uncle, once you get to know him. He’s so thoughtful—seems to spend his time thinking of things that’ll please me.”

  “H’m! Spoils you, in plain English,” said Sir Clinton, with a glimmer of a smile.

  “Well, what if he does? You did your best yourself in your day, uncle, so you can’t afford to put on airs.”

  Sir Clinton’s smile vanished abruptly. The sting of the phrase ‘in your day’ was all the sharper owing to Elsie’s complete unconsciousness that she was marking the vanishing of the old order of things. His day was over now, as it was bound to be, sooner or later. That was inevitable, of course. No one wanted a girl to spend all her life in circling round an uncle. But at the back of Sir Clinton’s mind there had always been a fairly definite idea of the sort of man who would supplant him: not necessarily young Brandon, of course, but at least someone of the young Brandon type, a youngster one could take to and trust with Elsie, because he was one’s own sort. This man from the Argentine was different—“foreign,” as Mrs. Thornaby had put it the night before. He might be all right; one hoped he was; but he wasn’t young Brandon or anything like him.

  “You mustn’t be jealous, you know,” Elsie said impulsively, as though she had been able to read her uncle’s mind. “You needn’t think anything of that sort. I’m not that kind.”

  “Jealous!” Sir Clinton laughed to conceal the shrewdness of the stroke. “What would I be jealous about? I couldn’t have married you myself, could I?” All I want is to see you happy, Elsie. You know that well enough.”

  “Then I am happy, so that’s all right.”

  Her smile vouched for her even better than her tone.

  “Here’s Vincent with the chairs. Put them down over here, Vincent, please. Oh, by the way, you’d better get a couple more. I’d forgotten that these two girls may be coming out later on.”

  “Time enough when they turn up,” Sir Clinton suggested.

  He had no desire to pursue the conversation with his niece at the moment. It was getting on to dangerous ground, and he knew that by an incautious phrase or even a failing in enthusiasm he might open a breach which would be hard to re-close. Besides, he was curious to learn something at first-hand about Francia. He helped to set up the camp-chairs, and watched Elsie’s husband arrange a cushion at her back when she sat down.

  “That’s nice,” she said, leaning back luxuriously. “Nobody arranges a cushion so comfortably as you do, Vincent. You must have taken lessons or something.”

  “A correspondence course,” Francia admitted, with a smile which showed white, even teeth. “Seven lessons, $10, with a diploma thrown in.”

  He gave the cushion a final to
uch and went over to his own chair. Sir Clinton also smiled, but without amusement. Francia was obviously an old hand at settling a girl’s shoulders comfortably on a cushion; and the joke about a correspondence course seemed rather pointless.

  “Have you been long in Europe?” he asked, as he sat down in his turn.

  “A few months,” Francia answered concisely.

  He pulled a cigar-case from his pocket.

  “You allow me?” he asked, glancing at Elsie for permission to smoke.

  She nodded, and he selected a cigar with some care.

  “I do not like your climate,” he continued, turning to Sir Clinton with another smile, which showed his teeth under his moustache. “We are not accustomed to this particular kind of dampness over yonder. Brrr!”

  He shrugged his shoulders as though a shiver had gone up his spine.

  “I shall be glad to be back in Buenos Ayres, I can tell you, Sir Clinton.”

  “You aren’t thinking of leaving immediately, I suppose?”

  “In a month or six weeks,” Francia answered. “I shall be much pleased to taste café con leche again. England is, of course, a wonderful country; but it cannot make café con leche as we can.”

  “That’s café au lait, uncle,” Elsie explained.

  Sir Clinton needed no assistance in the matter, but he nodded his thanks for the information.

  “Six weeks?” he said, returning to the earlier subject. “I’d no idea you were leaving so soon as that.”

  “It does seem short,” Elsie interrupted. “But won’t it be a lovely trip when it does come? We’re joining the boat at Havre, you know, uncle; and then we go down the coast of Spain. I’ve never seen Spain before. And then on to Teneriffe and Dakar—fancy seeing Africa! I never thought I’d get as far as that.”

  “Neither did I,” Sir Clinton admitted, with an assumption of cheerfulness so good that it deceived his niece. “And then?”

  “Oh, Rio. You know, the place where the armadillos come from. You used to make me sing ‘Roll down, roll down to Rio’ when you gave me the Just-So Stories, you remember, long ago; and I used to wish I could roll to Rio. I was only about six then, wasn’t I?”

  “About that, I suppose.”

  “And then Santos, Montevideo, and Buenos Ayres.” Elsie wound up, disregarding him. “I’ve looked it all up in the atlas, you know, uncle. What a trip!”

  Sir Clinton agreed with a gesture.

  “If I had the time, I’d go out with you and have a look round myself. Nice to see you settled down in your own house.”

  “I wish you could,” Elsie exclaimed. “Oh, uncle, now you’re out of the police, couldn’t you manage it?”

  Sir Clinton saw from the tone of her voice that, although he might have dropped into the second place in her life, he still had his full share of her affection. Quite obviously, she was eager to see him come out. The tail of his eye swept round to Francia’s face in time to catch a totally different feeling displayed there. It was a mere fleeting expression, but Sir Clinton saw it clearly enough before it was suppressed.

  “Can’t be done, I’m afraid, Elsie,” he said regretfully. “I’ll have my work cut out for me this year in getting to know my way about the estate business. I’m new to it, you know.”

  Elsie’s face betrayed her disappointment.

  “Then you’ll come out later on,” she decided.

  A mischievous expression crossed her face.

  “What a pity you can’t come. You’d have been such company for Estelle.”

  “What’s Estelle got to do with it?” Sir Clinton demanded.

  Estelle Scotswood was one of Elsie’s oldest friends, and in the days when the two children had been almost inseparable, Sir Clinton had been elected to the post of Estelle’s “Honorary Uncle.” The honorary uncleship had its perquisites later when Estelle grew up into a tall, graceful girl who was never bored when taken out to dinner or to a theatre.

  “It was Vincent who suggested it,” Elsie explained. “He said he was afraid I might be lonely, going away out yonder, at first.”

  Francia nodded gravely to Sir Clinton as though in confirmation.

  “A new country, new faces, a new language,” he said, “it might be rather trying at first if one had no friend at hand. So I thought.”

  “And so we’re taking Estelle out with us, and she’ll stay with me for a couple of months. Wasn’t it nice of Vincent to think of it? Of course, we’re paying Estelle’s passage, as she’s our guest. She’s tremendously keen to come; and it’ll be so nice to have her there, instead of starting off with no friends at all. Won’t it?”

  A weight fell from Sir Clinton’s mind when he heard the plan. Elsie couldn’t have picked a better companion than Estelle; and it was a relief to know that she wouldn’t be landed out in Buenos Ayres with not a soul she knew, except her husband, on the whole western continent. Estelle would bridge the gap until Elsie picked up some acquaintances. He had to admit to himself that Francia had shown the thoughtfulness for which Elsie had praised him. An idea of that sort needed some sympathetic imagination to produce it. And there was a certain amount of sacrifice involved as well. Most men would shrink from having a friend of their wife’s planted on them for a couple of months immediately after marriage and before there had been time for the inevitable adjustments which marriage brings in its train.

  Before he could answer his niece, however, there came an interruption. The figure of the table-maid came across the lawn towards their group; and as she drew near Sir Clinton saw that her face was white.

  “Sergeant Ledbury’s in the smoking-room, sir,” she said, addressing Francia. “He’s called about a motor-car, he says. And,” she added, turning to Sir Clinton with a look of appeal in her eyes, “he says he’s heard that you’re here; and he’d be very glad if you could spare time to have a word with him.”

  Francia was evidently taken by surprise.

  “What can he want to see me about?” he asked.

  “A motor-car was what he said, sir.”

  Sir Clinton dismissed the maid.

  “We’d better see what it’s all about,” he suggested quietly.

  He was careful to betray no hint that he had any clue in the matter. Francia looked doubtful, and a puzzled expression passed over his face as he offered Elsie his excuses for leaving her. Sir Clinton said nothing; but the unspoken message in his glance served to reassure his niece as they left her and turned towards the house.

  Chapter Four

  ACCIDENT OR HOMICIDE?

  Sergeant Ledbury proved to be a burly, red-moustached man whose general air of dullness was curiously belied by the sharpness of his rather small and close-set eyes. Sir Clinton, after a shrewd glance of inspection, inclined to the view that the dullness was wilful rather than natural; and he waited with some interest to see if his inference would prove accurate.

  “You’re Sir Clinton Driffield, sir?” Ledbury inquired respectfully as they came into the room. “And this will be Mr. Francia, I suppose? Just so.”

  Sir Clinton nodded; and the sergeant subjected both of them to a polite but detailed scrutiny, as though he had not quite decided what to say next and was merely occupying his eyes while he turned over his phrases in his mind.

  “I’ve called about your motor-car, sir,” he explained, turning to Francia. “Isn’t it a grey two-seater Alvis with the number JX. 7079?”

  The sergeant’s query stirred Sir Clinton’s recollections. He recalled that Johnnie had drawn attention to the absence of Francia’s car from the garage that morning; and this linked itself in his mind with the two-seater which had played a part in the affair by the roadside on the previous night. Though apparently indifferent, he was watching Francia keenly; and he detected a fleeting expression of surprise and uneasiness on the face of the Argentiner when the sergeant put his question.

  “Yes,” Francia admitted, “that is a description of my car.”

  The sergeant waited for a moment, evidently in the hope tha
t Francia might be drawn into something further if he were given time; but, finding that nothing was volunteered, he assumed an expression of condolence.

  “I’m sorry to say, sir, that it’s met with an accident. The radiator’s smashed and one of the wheels is badly buckled. You weren’t driving it yourself, of course?”

  Sir Clinton mentally gave the sergeant a good mark. Ledbury knew, of course, that Quevedo had been driving the car and had been killed; but in all probability he had ascertained from the servants that Francia was still in ignorance of the tragedy; and he was keeping this card up his sleeve until the proper moment arrived for playing it. Evidently the sergeant believed in giving himself every chance of eliciting information before he was forced to be frank himself.

  The effect of the news upon Francia was what might have been expected from any man who learns that he has had a valuable car smashed up.

  “That is a bad business,” he ejaculated. “I hope no one was hurt?”

  Ledbury’s face showed that his hand was being forced.

  “Well, sir,” he said, “might I ask who was driving your car last night? I take it that it hasn’t been stolen.”

  “No,” Francia admitted, after a pause so slight that it might easily have passed unnoticed, “it wasn’t stolen. I lent it to an acquaintance of mine. He had to get to London in a hurry, and he borrowed it.”

  “Ah, just so,” said Ledbury, producing a notebook. “I’ll take the particulars, sir, if you don’t mind. One likes to have things ship-shape, and I never trust my memory. Now, would you let me have the name of the driver?”

  “Quevedo is his name—Pedro Quevedo.”

  Ledbury, slightly accentuating the dullness of his expression, requested Francia to spell the name, and then took it down in his notebook after laboriously moistening the tip of his pencil.

  “Pedro Quevedo,” he said at last ruminatively. “A friend of yours, sir, I suppose?”

  “An acquaintance,” Francia amended.

  “Ah, just so,” Ledbury corrected himself. “An acquaintance.”

  He moistened his pencil once more and made a note. Sir Clinton watched him amusedly. He was afraid that the sergeant was overdoing things a little; but possibly a foreigner might not see through the acting. As Ledbury looked up from his notebook, Sir Clinton glanced at him with a twinkle in his eye; but the sergeant stared owlishly at him with no answering flicker in his face.