Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 7

  “Peter Hay told someone it was valuable,” the inspector broke in.

  “Oh, so it was, in a way,” Miss Fordingbridge replied. “It was a present to me from an old friend, and so it had a sentimental value. But in itself it’s worth next to nothing, as you can see.”

  Evidently Peter Hay had misunderstood something which he had heard. Armadale, rather disgusted by the news, carried the article back to the chief constable’s car.

  “We’ll need to keep that and the other things in our charge for a time,” Sir Clinton said apologetically. “They were found at Peter Hay’s cottage. Perhaps you could suggest some reason for their removal from Foxhills?”

  “There’s no reason whatever that I can see,” Miss Fordingbridge replied promptly. “Peter Hay had nothing to do with them, and he’d no right to take them out of the house. None at all.”

  “Possibly he mistook them for things of value, and thought they’d be safer in his cottage,” Wendover suggested.

  “He had no right to touch anything of mine,” Miss Fordingbridge commented decidedly.

  “Suppose we go up to the house?” Paul Fordingbridge suggested in a colourless voice. “You’ll take your own car? Good. Then I’ll go ahead.”

  He pressed the self-starter and took his car up the avenue. Sir Clinton and his companions got into their own car and followed.

  “You didn’t get much out of him,” Wendover commented to the others.

  Sir Clinton smiled.

  “I don’t think he got much chance to volunteer information,” he pointed out.

  They reached Foxhills as Paul Fordingbridge was opening the main door of the house; and he invited them with a gesture to come in.

  “I suppose you merely wish to have a general look round?” he asked. “Do just as you like. I’ll go round with you and answer any questions that I can for you.”

  Miss Fordingbridge attached herself to the party, and they went from room to room. Sir Clinton and the inspector examined the window-catches without finding anything amiss. At last Miss Fordingbridge noticed something out of the common.

  “We left a few silver knick-knacks lying about. I don’t see any of them.”

  Inspector Armadale made a note in his pocket-book.

  “Could you give me a list of them?” he asked.

  Miss Fordingbridge seemed taken aback.

  “No, I couldn’t. How could you expect me to remember all the trifles we left about? I daresay I could remember some of them. There was a silver rose-bowl; but it was very thin, and I’m sure it wasn’t worth much. And a couple of little hollow statuettes, and some other things. They weren’t of any value.”

  “What room is this?” Sir Clinton inquired, cutting her eloquence short, as they paused before a fresh door.

  “The drawing-room.”

  She went in before the others and cast a glance round the room.

  “What’s that?” she demanded, as though her companions were personally responsible for a sack which stood near one of the windows.

  Armadale went swiftly across the room, opened the mouth of the sack, and glanced inside.

  “It looks like the missing loot,” he remarked. “I can see something like a rose-bowl amongst it, and the head of one of your statuettes. You might look for yourself, Miss Fordingbridge.”

  He stood aside to let her inspect the contents of the sack.

  “Yes, these are some of the things,” she confirmed at once.

  Sir Clinton and Wendover in turn examined the find. The chief constable tested the weight of the sack and its contents.

  “Not much of a haul,” he said, letting it settle to the floor again. “Taking pure silver at eight shillings an ounce, and allowing for alloy, there’s less than twenty pounds’ worth there—much less.”

  “I suppose this means that the thieves must have been disturbed, and left their swag behind them,” Paul Fordingbridge suggested.

  Sir Clinton seemed intent on an examination of the window-fastenings; but Inspector Armadale curtly agreed with Paul Fordingbridge’s hypothesis.

  “It looks like it.”

  The chief constable led the way to a fresh room.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  Miss Fordingbridge seemed suddenly to take a keener interest in the search.

  “This is my nephew’s room. I do hope they haven’t disturbed anything in it. I’ve been so careful to keep it exactly as it used to be. And it would be such a pity if it were disturbed just at the very moment when he’s come back.”

  Sir Clinton’s eye caught an expression of vexation on Paul Fordingbridge’s face as his sister spoke of her nephew.

  “He’s been away, then?” he asked.

  It required very little to start Miss Fordingbridge on the subject; and in a few minutes of eager explanation she had laid before them the whole matter of her missing relation. As her narrative proceeded, Sir Clinton could see the expression of annoyance deepening on her brother’s features.

  “And so you understand, Sir Clinton, I kept everything in his room just as it used to be; so that when he comes back again he’ll find nothing strange. It’ll just be as if he’d only left us for a week-end.”

  Wendover noticed something pathetic in her attitude. For a moment the normal angularity and fussiness seemed to have left her manner.

  “Poor soul!” he reflected. “Another case of unsatisfied maternity, I suppose. She seems to have adored this nephew of hers.”

  Paul Fordingbridge seemed to think that enough time had been spent on the family’s private affairs.

  “Is there anything more that you’d care to see?” he asked Sir Clinton, in an indifferent tone.

  The chief constable seemed to have been interested in Miss Fordingbridge’s tale.

  “Just a moment,” he said half-apologetically to Paul Fordingbridge. “I’d like to be sure about one or two points.”

  He crossed the room and examined the window-catches with some care.

  “Now, Miss Fordingbridge,” he said, as he turned back after finding the fastenings intact like the others, “this is a room which you’re sure to remember accurately, since you say you looked after it yourself. Can you see anything missing from it?”

  Miss Fordingbridge gazed from point to point, checking the various objects from her mental inventory.

  “Yes,” she said suddenly, “there’s a small silver inkstand missing from his desk.”

  “I saw an inkstand in the sack,” Armadale confirmed.

  Sir Clinton nodded approvingly.

  “Anything else, Miss Fordingbridge?”

  For a time her eyes ranged over the room without detecting the absence of anything. Then she gave a cry in which surprise and disappointment seemed to be mingled. Her finger pointed to a bookshelf on which a number of books were neatly arranged.

  “Why,” she said, “there’s surely something missing from that! It doesn’t look quite as full as I remember it.”

  She hurried across the room, knelt down, and scanned the shelves closely. When she spoke again, it was evident that she was cut to the heart.

  “Yes, it’s gone! Oh, I’d have given almost anything rather than have this happen! Do you know what it is, Paul? It’s Derek’s diary—all the volumes. You know how carefully he kept it all the time he was here. And now it’s lost. And he’ll be back here in a few days, and I’m sure he’ll want it.”

  Still kneeling before the bookshelves, she turned round to the chief constable.

  “Sir Clinton, you must get that back for me. I don’t care what else they’ve taken.”

  The chief constable refrained from making any promise. He glanced at Paul Fordingbridge, and was puzzled by what he read on his features. Commiseration for his sister seemed to be mingled with some other emotion which baffled Sir Clinton. Acute vexation, repressed only with difficulty, seemed to have its part; but there was something also which suggested more than a little trepidation.

  “It’s a rather important set of documents,” Paul
Fordingbridge said, after a pause. “If you can lay your hands on them, Sir Clinton, my sister will be very much indebted to you. They would certainly never have been left here if it had not been for her notions. I wish you’d taken my advice, Jay,” he added irritably, turning to his sister. “You know perfectly well that I wanted to keep them in my own possession; but you made such a fuss about it that I let you have your way. And now the damned things are missing!”

  Miss Fordingbridge made no reply. Sir Clinton interposed tactfully to relieve the obvious strain of the situation.

  “We shall do our best, Miss Fordingbridge. I never care to promise more than that, you understand. Now, can you see anything else that’s gone a-missing from here?”

  Miss Fordingbridge pulled herself together with an effort. Clearly the loss of the diary had been a severe blow to her sentiment about her nephew’s study. She glanced round the room, her eyes halting here and there at times when she seemed in doubt. At last she completed her survey.

  “I don’t miss anything else,” she said. “And I don’t think there’s anything gone that I wouldn’t miss if it had been taken away.”

  Sir Clinton nodded reflectively, and led the way in an examination of the rest of the house. Nothing else of any note was discovered. All the window-fastenings seemed to be intact; and there was no sign of any means whereby thieves could have entered the premises. An inspection of the contents of the sack in the drawing-room yielded no striking results. It was filled with a collection of silver knick-knacks evidently picked up merely because they were silver. Neither Paul Fordingbridge nor his sister could recall anything of real intrinsic value which might have been stolen.

  “Twenty pounds’ worth at the most. And they didn’t even get away with it,” Sir Clinton said absentmindedly, as he watched the inspector, in his rubber gloves, replacing the articles in the sack in preparation for transporting them to the car.

  “Is that all we can do for you?” Paul Fordingbridge asked, with a certain restraint in his manner, when the inspector had finished his task.

  Sir Clinton answered with an affirmative nod. His thoughts seemed elsewhere, and he had the air of being recalled to the present by Paul Fordingbridge’s voice.

  “Then, in that case, we can go, Jay. I’m sure Sir Clinton would prefer things left untouched at present, so you mustn’t come about here again, shifting anything, until he gives permission. Care to keep the keys?” he added, turning to the chief constable.

  “Inspector Armadale had better have them,” Sir Clinton answered.

  Paul Fordingbridge handed over the bunch of keys, made a faint gesture of farewell, and followed his sister to the car. Sir Clinton moved across to the window and watched them start down the avenue before he opened his mouth. When they had disappeared round a bend in the road, he turned to his two companions again. Wendover could see that he looked more serious even than at Peter Hay’s cottage.

  “I may as well say at once, inspector, that I do not propose to extend my bus-driver’s holiday to the extent of making a trip to Australia.”

  Armadale evidently failed to follow this line of thought.

  “Australia, sir? I never said anything about Australia.”

  Sir Clinton seemed to recover his good spirits.

  “True, now I come to think of it. Shows how little there is in all this talk about telepathy. I’d made certain I’d read your thoughts correctly; and now it turns out that you weren’t thinking at all. A mental blank, what? Tut! Tut! It’s a warning against rushing to conclusions, inspector.”

  “I don’t see myself rushing to Australia, anyhow, sir.”

  “H’m! Perhaps we’ll get along without that, if we’re lucky. But think of the platypus, inspector. Wouldn’t you like to see it at home?”

  The inspector gritted his teeth in an effort to restrain his temper. He glanced at Wendover, with evident annoyance at his presence.

  “It’s going to be a pretty problem, evidently,” Sir Clinton continued in a more thoughtful tone. “Now, what about the evidence? We’d better pool it while it’s fresh in our minds. Civilians first. What did you see in it all, squire?”

  Wendover decided to be concise.

  “No signs of entry into the house. Bag of silver odds and ends in drawing-room, as if ready for removal. Set of volumes of diary removed from nephew’s study. Strange story of missing nephew turning up. That’s all I can think of just now.”

  “Masterly survey, squire,” said Sir Clinton cordially. “Except that you’ve left out most of the points of importance.”

  He nodded to Armadale.

  “See anything else, inspector? The credit of the force is at stake, remember.”

  “Mr. Fordingbridge didn’t seem overmuch cut up by Peter Hay’s death, sir.”

  “There’s something in that. Either he’s a reserved person by nature, or else he’d something of more importance to himself on his mind, if one can judge from what we saw. Anything more?”

  “Mr. Fordingbridge and Miss Fordingbridge seemed a bit at cross-purposes over this nephew.”

  “That was more than obvious, I admit. Anything else?”

  “Whoever packed up that silver must have come in with a key.”

  “I think that goes down to Mr. Wendover’s score, inspector. It follows directly from the fact that the house wasn’t broken into in any way.”

  “The silver here and the silver at Peter Hay’s link up the two affairs.”

  “Probably correct. Anything further?”

  “No more evidence, sir.”

  Sir Clinton reflected for a moment.

  “I’ll give you something. I was watching Mr. Fordingbridge’s face when the loss of the diary was discovered. He was more than usually annoyed when that turned up. You weren’t looking at him just then, so I mention it.”

  “Thanks,” Armadale responded, with some interest showing in his voice.

  “That missing diary would be a useful weapon,” Sir Clinton continued. “You could check statements by it; or you could produce false statements from it, if you were a swindling claimant.”

  “That’s self-evident,” Wendover interjected.

  “So it is,” Sir Clinton admitted blandly. “I suppose that’s why you didn’t mention it yourself, squire. To continue. There’s one point which strikes me as interesting. Supposing that Miss Fordingbridge hadn’t come up here to-day, do you think we’d have discovered that the diary was missing at all?”

  “No, unless Mr. Fordingbridge had noticed the loss.”

  “Naturally. Now I’ll give you a plain hint. What is there behind Mr. Fordingbridge’s evident annoyance? That seems to me a fruitful line for speculation, if you’re thinking of thinking, as it were.”

  Wendover reflected for a moment.

  “You mean that the diary would be invaluable to a claimant, and hence Fordingbridge may have been angry at its loss. Or else you mean that Fordingbridge was mad because the loss had been discovered. Is that what you’re after, Clinton?”

  Sir Clinton’s gesture in reply seemed to deprecate any haste.

  “I’m not after anything in particular, squire,” he assured Wendover. “I simply don’t see my way through the business yet. I merely recommend the subject for you to browse over. As they say about Shakespeare, new perspectives open up before one’s eyes every time one examines the subject afresh. And, by the way, hypophosphites are said to be sustaining during a long spell of intense cogitation. I think we’ll call at the druggist’s on the way home and buy up his stock. There’s more in this affair than meets the eye.”

  The inspector picked up the sack. Then, apparently struck by an after-thought, he laid it on the floor again and took out his note-book.

  “Would you mind giving me any orders you want carried out immediately, sir?” he asked. “Anything in the way of information you need from the village?”

  Sir Clinton looked at him in mock surprise, and answered with a parody of the “Needy Knifegrinder”:

  “Orders! Go
d bless you! I have none to give, sir. This is your case, inspector, not mine.”

  Armadale succeeded in finding a form of words to turn the flank of his superior’s line:

  “Well, sir, suppose you were in my place, what would you think it useful to find out?”

  “A deuce of a lot of things, inspector. Who killed Peter Hay, for one. Who stole the diary, for another. When I’m likely to get any lunch, for a third. And so on. There’s heaps more of them, if you’ll think them up. But, if I were in your shoes, I’d make a beginning by interviewing young Colby, who found the body; then I’d investigate the sweet-shop, and find out who bought pear-drops there lately; I’d make sure there are no fingerprints on any of the silver; I’d get the P.M. done as quickly as possible, since amyl nitrite is volatile, and might disappear if the body’s left too long; and I think I’d make some very cautious inquiries about this long-lost nephew, if he’s anywhere in the vicinity. And, of course, I’d try to find out all I could about Peter Hay’s last movements yesterday, so far as one can discover them from witnesses.”

  Inspector Armadale had been jotting the chief constable’s advice down in shorthand; and, when Sir Clinton finished speaking, he shut his note-book and put it back in his pocket.

  “Peter Hay puzzles me,” Wendover said thoughtfully, as they made their way to the car.

  “Perhaps Peter Hay knew too much for his own safety,” Sir Clinton answered, as he closed the door of Foxhills behind them.

  A fresh line of thought occurred to Wendover.

  “This missing nephew came from Australia, Clinton. I’m playing golf to-morrow morning with that Australian man who’s staying at the hotel. He isn’t the missing heir by any chance, is he?”

  “I shouldn’t think so, from Miss Fordingbridge’s story. This claimant was pretty badly disfigured, whereas Cargill’s rather a nice-looking chap. Also, she’s sure to have come across Cargill in the hotel; he’s been here for a week at least; but the claimant-man only presented himself to her last night, if you remember.”

  Chapter Six