The Boathouse Riddle Page 7

  “Well, he was between the devil and the deep sea, there,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “If he left his fingerprints, then he ran a big risk; but if he cleaned them off, he left something that wouldn’t fit in with the accident theory at any price.”

  “What do you think was the motive, sir?” the Inspector asked hopefully.

  “You can’t think of the motive? We’re in the same boat, then, for neither can I. Had Horncastle any disagreements with people likely to be wearing town boots?”

  “Well, sir,” the Inspector was obviously embarrassed, “Mr. Keith-Westerton had just discharged him the other day, and Horncastle made a song about it, from all I’ve heard. But that’s neither here nor there.”

  “Then where is it?” Sir Clinton inquired quizzically. “It’s your business to hunt up anything that may be connected with this affair, Inspector, quite regardless of social standing or things of that sort. Remember that.”

  The Inspector digested this rebuke without remark. Sir Clinton, having reminded his subordinate of his responsibility, turned the talk at once.

  “I think we’d better be thorough while we’re at it. There may be some more matches lying about down there and we may as well pick up what we can. Two or three samples will be more convincing than a single specimen.”

  He moved off and began to search diligently among the shingle. As the others were following his example, he suddenly stooped and picked something out of a cranny between two stones.

  “Here’s a pretty thing,” he said, holding out a tiny object on the palm of his hand.

  The Inspector was the first to reach his side.

  “A pearl from a necklace?” he said, after a glance at the object. “One of these Woolworth things, I expect. A lot of the girls around here are wearing them.”

  “I’m afraid you’re wrong, Inspector. This isn’t one of the fish-scale and ammonia productions. I don’t know enough about pearls to put an exact price on it, but it’s a good pearl and a necklace of them would be worth a few hundreds at least.”

  He bent down again and picked a second pearl from among the pebbles. Severn joined in the search and two more pearls were discovered.

  “You’d better turn some one on to make a thorough search round about here,” Sir Clinton suggested to the Inspector. “There may be a few more lying among these stones. We’ve got enough for our present purposes.”

  He examined the pearls on the palm of his hand for a few moments, as though trying to estimate their value.

  “Things like these are hardly likely to go missing without somebody making a stir about it,” he said to Severn. “You haven’t had any burglary hereabouts lately?”

  “No, sir,” the Inspector said. “At least, none’s been reported to us as yet. But if the things were stolen last night, there’s hardly been time for the news to come in.”

  Chapter Four

  The Boathouse

  “WE may need an accurate map of these trails, if it ever comes to a trial,” Sir Clinton pointed out, as he handed the pearls to the Inspector for safe keeping. “You’d better get one made as soon as possible, in case the wind rises and disturbs these papers.”

  “I’ll do that myself, sir,” Severn assured him. Then, seeing Sir Clinton look rather doubtful, he added, “I was an instructor in map reading and field sketching during the War, sir. I’ve had plenty of practice in traversing; and with a six-inch ordnance map, there’s nothing in it. I’ve got a good prismatic compass at home.”

  The Chief Constable nodded his approval of the proposal.

  “With cross bearings from the map, it won’t take long,” he admitted. “But you’ll be fairly busy with other sides of the case, I expect.”

  The mention of the trails brought Wendover’s mind back to an obvious fact in connection with them.

  “The murderer left a track away from Horncastle’s body, but we haven’t found his incoming trail yet. He must have got here somehow.”

  “By land, or sea, or in the air, as the prayer book says,” Sir Clinton suggested gravely. “I think we can leave the air out of it. No aeroplane could have landed here without crashing; and the chance of a helicopter being in the neighbourhood seems small.”

  “Since there’s no trail on the grass,” Wendover pursued, unperturbed by Sir Clinton’s irony, “the murderer must have come along the shingle, where he would leave no track.”

  “He might have come across the lake in a boat,” Sir Clinton pointed out.

  Wendover shook his head.

  “The only boats are in my boathouse over yonder, and that’s under lock and key.”

  “And you have the key, if I remember?”

  “Yes, here, on my chain.”

  Wendover dived into his trouser pocket and fished out a bunch of keys from which he selected a Yale key and held it up.

  “But if I’m not mistaken,” Sir Clinton reminded him, “you used to lend keys of the boathouse to a lot of people round about here, so that they could use your boats when they felt inclined.”

  Wendover could not repress a smile. It was not often that the Chief Constable fell into his trap.

  “That’s quite true,” he admitted. “But as a matter of fact, those keys are useless now. There’s been an epidemic of small thefts hereabouts of late, and as the keys of the boathouse had been handed around rather freely, I was afraid they might have got into wrong hands, so I changed the lock a few weeks ago. The old keys are no good. And as nearly everybody is away from home just now, I didn’t trouble to issue the fresh set to my neighbours.”

  “Then how did it happen that three or four days ago I saw the Keith-Westertons take a boat out? They didn’t come to the Grange to ask for your key, I noticed at the time.”

  “Oh, I gave them a key each,” Wendover explained, in a rather nettled tone. “Mrs. Keith-Westerton sometimes goes up in the afternoon to sit on the balcony above the lake. I don’t suppose you’re going to attach any importance to that? What I meant was that no irresponsible person could have a key of the boathouse in his possession.”

  “I’d just like to be clear about this, Mr. Wendover,” the Inspector put in. “There’s nothing in it; but still we have to be sure of our ground, you understand. You’ve got a key; Mr. Keith-Westerton’s got a key; and Mrs. Keith-Westerton’s got a third key? And you haven’t lent any other keys? Where do you keep the rest of your duplicates? Could any one get access to them?”

  “Not unless they picked my pocket of my safe key,” Wendover answered rather crustily. “All the remainder of the duplicates I keep in my safe, and no one can get into that without my key. It’s on my chain here—see! And I haven’t lent any one a new key except those two that I gave to the Keith-Westertons. It’s out of the question that the murderer could have used one of my boats. He must have come along the shingle.”

  Something in Sir Clinton’s attitude seemed to give the Inspector a bias against Wendover’s opinion. He considered for a moment or two before speaking.

  “I’m not doubting for a moment what you say, Mr. Wendover,” he said reluctantly, “but you know I’ll be asked all sorts of questions if it comes to a trial, and I think I’d like to be on firm ground on this point. There’s just the chance that some one may have used a boat and, with your permission, I’d like to have a look at your boathouse, so as to be able to say that I’ve left no stone unturned. One never knows what a prosecuting barrister may want to use, and if we get the murderer, his counsel’s dead certain to ask if we examined the boat question thoroughly. If I don’t look into it, it leaves an opening for him to suggest that an alternative route was available to the murderer and to throw doubt into the jury’s mind about the rest of the evidence on the strength of it.”

  “Oh, well, you can poke about the boathouse to your heart’s content,” Wendover agreed, without enthusiasm. “You’ll find nothing there, I’m sure. My key and the Keith-Westertons’ keys are the only ones that will open the door.”

  Sir Clinton, having let the Inspector act as
his cat’s-paw, intervened with a suggestion.

  “If the murderer came along the shingle, it’ll take a long time to find his tracks at the far end, probably. He may have walked on the beach the whole way around the lake, for all one can tell. The dew would be off the grass long before we could cover the ground. Since the Inspector wants to look over the boathouse, let’s go there first; and if there’s nothing there, then we know the murderer must have come by the lakeside. That’s the quickest way of dealing with the thing.”

  He glanced at Horncastle’s body.

  “The constable had better wait here till he’s relieved. We can stop at the Grange, and you can telephone to make your arrangements about removing the body, Inspector. You’ve made all the measurements you need, I think? I saw you jotting them down in your notebook. Anything more? Well, then, we’d better go up to the car.”

  A few minutes took them to the Grange, where Severn got in touch with the police station and gave his orders; then once more they got into the car and drove to the boathouse.

  It was a two-storeyed erection. The upper floor projected over the lake, while part of the space below this formed a dock for the pleasure boats. As the ground sloped steeply up from the water at this point, the only entrance was a door on the side remote from the lake, and this gave access to the upper-storey rooms.

  Sir Clinton stepped out of the car and went up to the door.

  “A bar handle, unfortunately,” he pointed out to the Inspector, “so that’s one chance less of getting fingerprints if we need them. A man grips a bar with his palm and not with his finger tips. And the milled head of a Yale handle on the inside won’t give much help either. Just a moment, though.”

  He walked in turn to the various windows which could be reached from the ground and examined the fastenings.

  “All fast,” he reported. “If any one got into the place they must have gone through the door. Now I think we’ll look inside.”

  Wendover, with an ill grace, produced his key and opened the door. The Inspector stood aside to let Sir Clinton enter first.

  “You’ve never been in here before, Inspector?” the Chief Constable asked, as he led the way. “Well, this door on the right leads into a cloakroom, you see?” He threw open the door as he spoke. “This spiral stair on the left of the front door leads down to the lower flat; and the door on the left, beyond the stair, opens into a sort of store and workshop. That door straight in front of us leads into a lounge, with a balcony beyond which overhangs the lake. Suppose we start with the workshop and work around, room by room.”

  Wendover, hardly able to conceal his contempt for what he regarded as a pure waste of time, followed his visitors into the little room. He noticed, with a certain malicious delight, that Severn seemed rather taken aback by Sir Clinton’s desire for thoroughness. Evidently the Inspector saw little chance of picking up clues in that locality. Wendover had an innate fondness for order and neatness in his arrangements; and this room was always kept spick and span. Every tool had its special hook or rack to which it was restored as soon as it had been used; nails and screws were kept in tiers of drawers, each of which had a sample clipped outside to facilitate a search; and the power lathe might have been exhibited in a shop window, so well was it kept.

  Wendover’s eye passed approvingly over his little arsenal, reviewing the hammers, saws, chisels, gimlets, spokeshaves, planes, and try-squares, rank above rank, on the wall. Suddenly, as his glance ranged from row to row, it was arrested by an empty clip. Something was out of place. With a slight gesture of vexation, he turned to the carpenter’s bench, expecting to find the missing article there. But the tool was on neither the bench nor the work table.

  “Something gone astray?” demanded Sir Clinton, who had been watching Wendover as he reviewed his implements.

  “Only a small turnscrew. It must be lying about somewhere, but I don’t see it.”

  “What size is it? Eight or nine inches long? Can you see a screwdriver of that size anywhere, Inspector? We’ll have a look around for it.”

  Wendover wished to brush the matter aside, but Sir Clinton persisted in searching, much to the Inspector’s disgust. Severn hadn’t come there to look for screwdrivers, he reflected in mute protest. Clues were what he wanted to be after; and he could not understand why the Chief Constable should be wasting his time on trivialities. It seemed futile to spend precious minutes in hunting for a mere mislaid turn-screw.

  Wendover, when he saw the thoroughness with which Sir Clinton set about the search, was better able to gauge the ultimate object of it. Sir Clinton knew his host’s fondness for orderly arrangement. If the tool had gone astray, then evidently its owner had not been the last to use it. Some one else must have found a need for it, and failed to return it to its proper clip after the work was done. Mrs. Keith-Westerton would be most unlikely to need a screwdriver. Young Keith-Westerton might have used it. Or else some unauthorised person. . . . But an unauthorised person was exactly what they were looking for. And a screwdriver would take fingerprints nicely. Wendover, though still sceptical of any connection between his boathouse and the murder of the keeper, was nevertheless drawn to take part in the search by a curiosity which spurred him on despite his incredulity.

  It took a very short time to ransack so orderly a place, and before long Sir Clinton was satisfied that the missing tool was not there. He seemed, if anything, pleased with this negative result, and still more so when a search of the cloakroom failed to bring the screwdriver to light.

  “We can keep our eyes open for it as we go through the rest of the place,” he said, as he opened the door of the lounge.

  If the Inspector hoped to find any obvious traces of an intruder in that apartment, he must have been disappointed. Some comfortable cane chairs stood in a random arrangement about the room; a couple of tables, with ash trays and matchboxes, occupied the centre of the expanse of planked floor; a third table with an old-fashioned table grand model gramophone was placed in a corner; while the whole side of the room opposite the door was glazed and gave access through a French window to the balcony which overhung the lake. The blinds on all the windows were down.

  Sir Clinton stepped over and examined the ash trays, in which some cigarette stubs had been left.

  “Proceeding à la Sherlock,” he said, with an expressionless face, “I find that these stubs were once State Express cigarettes. You smoke Abdullahs, Wendover. You know my methods. You didn’t smoke these, so somebody else did. I presume it was Keith-Westerton?”

  “Yes, I remember he smokes State Express.”

  “Nice and tidy you keep this lounge,” Sir Clinton commented, glancing around it approvingly. “You must spend quite a while each week in sweeping and dusting it, not to speak of washing up and cleaning the ash trays. When do you do it?”

  “What are you talking about?” said Wendover indignantly. “I don’t clean up this place. One of the maids looks after it, of course.”

  “And you give her a key when she comes up?”

  “Naturally, I give her my key.”

  “Ah, then there is a chance of an unauthorised person getting hold of a key, after all?”

  “The maid’s perfectly reliable,” Wendover protested.

  “I don’t say she isn’t. Still, there it is. Your key has been in other hands.”

  Sir Clinton, having reminded Wendover of this, seemed averse to further discussion of the point. He and the Inspector began to search the lounge, a fairly easy task, owing to the bareness of furnishing.

  “No screwdriver here, sir,” Severn reported, after a tour of the place.

  Sir Clinton made a gesture of agreement, but as he did so he stepped forward and scrutinised the plaiting of one of the chairs. Taking a penknife from his pocket he used it to extract something which had apparently sunk into a little hollow among the canes.

  “What’s that?” Wendover demanded.

  “Another pearl,” the Chief Constable answered, holding the tiny object out for thei
r inspection. “I think we can take it that the murderer must have been here sometime—that is, if he was the person who dropped the other specimens beside Horncastle’s body.”

  “I suppose he must,” Wendover admitted, with a slightly crestfallen air. “And that probably means that he did take one of my boats across to Friar’s Point.”

  “And then the boat kindly brought itself back again to this side, all alone?” Sir Clinton inquired. “Well, we can inspect this accomplished skiff in a minute or two.”

  He turned to the Inspector.

  “What do you make of this distribution of these pearls?”

  Severn seemed for a moment unable to catch the drift of the question. Then his face brightened.

  “I think I see what you mean, sir. He must have had them loose in his pocket when he came here. He sat down in that chair, I suppose, and somehow or other one of the pearls slipped out of his pocket and lodged in that cranny among the canes. Then he went over and murdered Horncastle; and while he was stooping over the body, lifting it from the shingle up to the bank, some more of the pearls dropped out.”

  “It’s possible,” Sir Clinton admitted. “A millionaire might carry valuable pearls about with him, loose in his pocket and ready to drop out. Still, I’d think again, if I were you. But the pearls can stand over for the present. It’s the screwdriver that’s worrying me just now. You’ve looked everywhere on this flat.”

  “Even inside the gramophone, sir.”

  “What do you want with a gramophone up here?” Sir Clinton inquired idly, turning to Wendover. “I see you’ve got a pile of records as well.”

  “It’s an old one I had in the house, before I put in wireless,” Wendover explained. “Some youngsters who were staying with me a month or two ago brought it up here to play fox trots. The floor’s good enough for dancing, and a couple of the girls were keen enough to dance anywhere.”

  The gramophone seemed to draw Sir Clinton. He crossed the room, opened the lid, and glanced at the turntable.