Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 6
“And the next point, inspector?”
“The next point’s the marks on the skin. They weren’t made by ropes. Well, you can tie a man up with other things—strips of cloth, handkerchiefs, or surgical bandages. The edge of a surgical bandage would leave a sharp line on the flesh if it was pulled tight enough, or if the man struggled against it once he’d been tied in the chair. You understand what I mean?” Wendover interposed:
“You mean a rope leaves its mark mainly at the middle, because it’s a cylinder and the convex curve cuts into the flesh; whereas a flat bandage gives even pressure all over except at the edge, where the flesh can bulge up alongside the fabric?”
“That’s what I mean,” the inspector confirmed.
Sir Clinton volunteered no immediate criticism of either of the inspector’s points. Instead, he seemed to be considering his course of action. At last he made up his mind.
“We’ve got a bit away from our original agreement, inspector. But, since you’ve put your cards on the table, I’ll do the same, so that we’re still level. But you’re not to take this as a precedent, remember. I don’t care about expounding airy theories formed as we go along. It’s much better to go on the old lines and consider the evidence as we pick it up, each of us from his own point of view. Pooling our views simply means losing the advantage of three different view-points. You and Mr. Wendover came to slightly different conclusions about the basic factor in the business; and, if you hadn’t put your ideas into words, then he’d have gone forward looking for one criminal, whilst you’d have been after two or more men; and so we’d have had both possibilities covered. Now, I think, the chances are that you’ve come round to the inspector’s view, squire?”
“It seems to fit the facts better than mine,” Wendover admitted.
“There you are!” Sir Clinton said. “And so we’ve lost the services of one man keeping his eye on the—always possible—case that it was a single-handed job. That’s why I don’t like pooling ideas. However, inspector, it wouldn’t be fair to take your views and to say nothing about my own, so I’ll give you mine. But it’s no precedent, remember.”
Armadale made a gesture of grudging agreement.”
Then here’s what I make of things, so far,” Sir Clinton continued. “First of all, one at least of the men mixed up in this affair was a better-class fellow. And he, at any rate, did not come on Peter Hay unexpectedly. He was paying a friendly call, and Peter knew he was coming.”
“How do you make that out?” Wendover demanded.
“Easy enough. Hasn’t the body got a jacket on? I knew that when the doctor told us he had to push up the sleeves to see the marks; and, of course, when we saw the body, there was the coat, right enough. Now men of Peter Hay’s class don’t wear jackets as much as we do. They like to feel easy when they sit down after work’s done—take off their collars and ties and so forth in the evening. The question was, whether Peter Hay varied from type. Hence my talk with the constable, inspector. I saw your disapproving eye on me all through it; but out of it I raked the plain fact that Peter Hay would never have had a jacket on unless he expected a visitor—and, what’s more, a visitor of a class higher than his own. See it now?”
“There might be something in it,” the inspector conceded reluctantly.
Sir Clinton showed no particular sign of elation, but went on with his survey.
“The next point that struck me—I called your attention to it—was the nature of the marks: the sharp edge. There’s no doubt in my mind that some strip of cloth was used in tying him up. Now, one doesn’t find strips of cloth on the spur of the moment. A handkerchief would answer the purpose; but here you had each leg tied to the chair and a fetter on the wrists as well. Unless there were three people in the attack, they’d only be able to rake up two handkerchiefs on the spur of the moment, since most people normally content themselves with a handkerchief apiece. Strips torn off a bed-sheet might answer; but I can’t quite see Peter Hay standing idly by while they tore up his sheets in order to tie him up later on. Besides, his bed-clothes were intact, so far as I could see—and he doesn’t use sheets.”
“I see what you’re driving at, Clinton,” Wendover interrupted. “You want to make out that it was a premeditated affair. They brought the apparatus in their pockets ready for use, and didn’t tie the old man up on the spur of the moment with the first thing that came handy?”
“Things seem to point that way, don’t they?” Sir Clinton continued. “Then there’s the question of how it was done. I agree with you, inspector, that it was a job for more than one man. Quite evidently they had force enough to pin Peter Hay almost instantaneously, so that he hadn’t a chance of struggling; and it would take two men—and fairly powerful fellows—to do that successfully. Also, if there were two of them, one could hold him in talk whilst the other sauntered round—perhaps to look at the squirrel—and got into position to take him unawares from the rear.”
Armadale’s face showed a certain satisfaction at finding the chief constable in agreement with him on this point.
“Now we’ll assume that they had him overpowered. If it was a case of simple robbery, the easiest thing to do would be to tie his hands together and fetter his ankles, and then leave him on the floor while they looted the place. But they tied him in a chair—which isn’t so easy to do, after all. They must have had some reason for that, or they wouldn’t have gone to the extra trouble.”
“Even if you tie a man’s hands and feet, he can always roll over and over and make himself a nuisance,” the inspector suggested. “If you tie him in a chair you have him fast.”
“Quite true,” Sir Clinton admitted. “But would you go to the extra trouble yourself, inspector, if the case happened to be as I’ve stated it? No? Neither should I. It seems as if there might be a likelier solution. Ever visit a sick friend?”
“Yes,” said Armadale, obviously puzzled by the question.
“Did you ever notice, then, that it’s easier to talk to him if he’s sitting up in bed and not lying down?”
“There’s something in that,” the inspector admitted. “I’d never paid any attention to it; but, now you mention it, sir, I believe you’re right. One gets more out of a talk with a man when he’s not lying down in bed. I suppose one’s unaccustomed to it.”
“Or else that when he’s sitting up you can follow the play of expression on his face,” Sir Clinton supplied, as an alternative.
Wendover evidently saw the drift of the chief constable’s remark.
“So you think he was tied up that way, Clinton, because they wanted to talk to him; and they wanted to see his face clearly while they talked?”
“Something of that sort might account for things. I don’t press the point. Now we come to the next item—the smell of pear-drops.”
“But that’s accounted for all right, surely. I found the bag of sweets on the dresser myself,” Wendover protested. “Peter Hay had been eating them. There’s nothing in that, Clinton.”
Sir Clinton smiled a little sardonically.
“Not so fast, squire. You found a bag of pear-drops, I admit. But who told you that Peter Hay bought them and put them there?”
“It stands to reason that he did, surely,” Wendover protested. “The constable told you he kept a bag of sweets in the house for children.”
“Quite so. And there wasn’t a second bag there, I’ll admit. But let’s confine ourselves to the pear-drops for a moment. One can’t deny that they’ve got a distinctive perfume. Can you think of anything else that smells like that?”
Inspector Armadale’s face lighted up.
“That stuff they use for covering cuts—New-Skin, isn’t it? That stuff smells like pear-drops.”
The look of comprehension faded slowly as he added:
“But I don’t see how New-Skin comes into the affair, sir.”
“No more do I, inspector,” Sir Clinton retorted blandly. “I should think New-Skin had nothing whatever to do with it.”
“It’s plain enough, if you’d kept your ears open. When I encouraged the constable to babble at large about Peter Hay, I was on the look-out for one thing. I found out that he didn’t suffer from asthma.”
“I don’t see it yet, sir,” the inspector admitted in perplexity.
Wendover had the information which Armadale lacked.
“Now I see what you’re after, Clinton. You’re thinking of amyl nitrite—the stuff asthmatics inhale when they get a bad turn? You wanted to know if Peter Hay ever used that as a drug? And, of course, now I come to think of it, that stuff has the pear-drop odour also.”
“That’s it, squire. Amyl nitrite for asthma; the solvent that evaporates and leaves the collodion behind when you use New-Skin; and the perfume of pear-drops—they’re all derived from a stuff called amyl alcohol; and they all have much the same smell. Eliminate New-Skin, as it doesn’t seem to fit into this case. That leaves you with the possibilities that the body smelt of pear-drops or of amyl nitrite.”
Inspector Armadale was plainly out of his depth.
“I don’t see that you’re much further forward, sir. After all, there are the pear-drops. What’s the good of going further? If it’s poison you’re thinking of—Is this amyl nitrite poisonous, and you think it might have been used in the pear-drops so that their perfume would cover its smell?”
“It’s a bit subtler than that, inspector. Now I admit quite frankly that this is all pure hypothesis; I’m merely trying it out, so to speak, so that we can feel certain we’ve covered all the possibilities. But here it is, for what it’s worth. I’ll put it in a nutshell for you. Amyl nitrite, when you inhale it, produces a rush of blood to the brain.”
“And Peter Hay suffered from high blood-pressure in any case,” Wendover broke in, “so an extra flood of blood rushing to the head would finish him? Is that what you mean?”
“Well, it’s always a possibility, isn’t it?” Sir Clinton returned. “Even a slight dose—a couple of sniffs—will give you a fair headache for the rest of the afternoon. It’s beastly stuff.”
Inspector Armadale ruminated for a moment or two.
“Then you think that when they’d done with him they dosed him with this stuff and gave him an apoplectic stroke, sir?”
“It could be done easily enough,” Sir Clinton said cautiously. “A teaspoonful of the stuff on a bit of cottonwool under his nose would do the trick, if he was liable to a stroke. But they didn’t do it in the cottage. They must have carried him out here, chair and all, and dosed him in the open air, or else we’d have smelt the stuff strongly in the room, even sifter this time. Perhaps that’s what suggested leaving him outside all night, so that the stuff would evaporate from him as far as possible. We’ll know for certain after the P.M. His lungs ought to have a fair amount of the nitrite in them, at any rate, if that notion’s correct.”
He paused for a time, then continued:
“Now I don’t say that it is correct. We don’t know for certain yet. But let’s assume that it is, and see if it takes us any further. They must have procured the amyl nitrite beforehand and brought it here on purpose to use it. Now amyl nitrite won’t kill an ordinary man. Therefore they must have known the state of Peter Hay’s health. And they must have known, too, that he kept some sweets in the house always. My impression is that they brought that bag of pear-drops with them and took away Peter’s own bag—which probably hadn’t pear-drops in it. You’d better make a note to look into Peter’s sweet-buying in the village lately, inspector. Find out what he bought last.”
Sir Clinton pitched his cigarette-end over the hedge and took out his case.
“You see what these things point to?” he inquired, as he lit his fresh cigarette.
“It’s easy enough to see, when you put it that way,” Wendover replied. “You mean that if they knew about Peter’s health and Peter’s ways to that extent, they must be local people and not strangers.”
“If one works from the premises, I think that’s so,” Sir Clinton confirmed. “But remember, the premises are only guesses so far. We need the P.M. to confirm them. Now, there are just three more points: the time of death; the lack of wounds on the face or anywhere; and the matter of the silver in the drawer. As to the first two, the amyl nitrite notion fits in quite well. The murderers, if it was murder, made their first slip when they laid him down so carefully and forgot to arrange the hands under the body. I suppose they thought they were giving a suggestive turn to things by the attitude they chose—as though Peter Hay had collapsed under a thunderbolt attack. As to the time of the assumed murder, all we really know was that it was after dew-fall. They may have talked for hours before they finished the old man, for all we can tell; or they may have given him the nitrite almost as soon as they got him tied up. We can’t tell, and it’s not so very important, after all.”
He flicked some ash from his cigarette.
“Now we come to the real thing that a jury would want to know about: the motive. What were they after?”
He glanced at his two companions, as if inviting an opinion.
“I suggested a possible motive, sir,” the inspector reminded him.
“Yes, but from the jury point of view you’d have to do two things to make that convincing. You’d have to prove that Peter Hay was helping himself to stuff from Foxhills; and you’d have to establish that the murderers got away with the bulk of it. That’s almost a case in itself. If you ask me, inspector, I think that silver represents the usual thing—the murderer’s attempt to make things too darned convincing.”
Armadale’s face betrayed some incredulity.
“Don’t you see the slip?” Sir Clinton continued. “What sort of man was Peter Hay? You heard me pumping the constable, didn’t you? And what did I get? That Peter Hay was a simple old chap who read his Bible and practically nothing else. Now, just recall the fact that there wasn’t a fingerprint on any of those things; and silver will take a fingerprint more clearly than most surfaces. Whoever handled these ornaments knew all about the fingerprint danger. He wore gloves, whoever he may be. You’ll hardly persuade me—after hearing the constable’s report of Peter Hay—that he was a person likely to think of a precaution of that sort.”
The inspector looked doubtful.
“Perhaps not, sir; but you never can tell.”
“Well, my guess is that Peter Hay never handled the stuff at all. It was put there by his murderers; and they took good care not to leave their visiting-cards on it. Doesn’t its presence suggest something else to you people?”
“You mean,” said Wendover, “that they may have burgled Foxhills themselves, Clinton, and put these things into Peter Hay’s drawer to lay the scent in his direction, while they got away with the main bulk of the stuff?”
Sir Clinton seemed disinclined to endorse this heartily.
“It’s a possibility, squire. We needn’t brood over it just yet, however. When we get into Foxhills, we’ll see if anything’s missing except these things.”
He glanced at his wrist-watch.
“Time’s getting on. These people might be here any minute, if the constable didn’t waste time. Let’s finish up this symposium. Suppose we eliminate robbery as a motive, then——”
He broke off abruptly in the middle of the sentence as a car came along the avenue and drew up at the entrance to the lane which led down to the cottage. Paul Fordingbridge was driving, and his sister sat beside him. Followed by his two companions, Sir Clinton walked down the lane to where the car had halted.
Chapter Five
The Diary
“I suppose the constable explained things more or less, Mr. Fordingbridge?” Sir Clinton asked, as he came abreast of the car.
Miss Fordingbridge did not wait for her brother’s reply.
“It’s really dreadful, Sir Clinton,” she broke out. “I can hardly believe that it’s true. And who could want to kill poor Peter Hay, who hadn’t an enemy in th
e world, is beyond me altogether. I simply can’t imagine it. And what made them do it? I can’t guess. I must try at my next séance to see if I can get any light on it. But perhaps you’ve found out all about it already.”
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“We’ve found out next to nothing, I’m sorry to say.”
Miss Fordingbridge regarded him with marked disapproval.
“And aren’t you going to arrest the man who killed him?”
“In the end, I hope,” Sir Clinton answered patiently. Then he turned to Paul Fordingbridge. “These are the keys of Foxhills that Peter Hay kept. I haven’t a search-warrant; but we must get into the house, if you’ll let us go over it. Would you mind showing us round the place? You see, you know all about it, and your help would be of value to us in case there’s anything wrong up there.”
At the word “search-warrant,” Paul Fordingbridge seemed to prick up his ears; and there was a perceptible pause before he answered the chief constable’s inquiry.
“Certainly, if you wish it,” he replied smoothly. “I shall be only too glad to give you any assistance that I can. But what makes you think there’s anything wrong at Foxhills? The constable told us that Peter Hay was found at his own cottage.”
At a gesture from Sir Clinton, the inspector went over to the chief constable’s car and, first drawing on his rubber gloves, he brought back one of the silver ornaments taken from Peter Hay’s drawer.
“You recognise that?” Sir Clinton asked.
“Yes, indeed,” Miss Fordingbridge replied, without hesitation. “That’s one of the things we left behind when we shut up Foxhills. It’s of no great value, and so we didn’t send it to the bank strong-room with the rest of the stuff.”