The Castleford Conundrum Read online

“Well, miss, that was a narrow shave, that really was,” Mrs. Haddon declared. “What a bit of luck it didn’t hit you. Really, he didn’t ought to be allowed to have that gun, when he’s so careless.”

  “I don’t think you need worry any more about that,” Miss Lindfield said, in a tone which betrayed an anger only half-suppressed. “I’ll see that he gives up that rook-rifle tonight.”

  Miss Lindfield glanced at her watch.

  “It might be as well to take it away from him now,” she said aloud.

  Then her instinct for thoroughness betrayed itself.

  “I’d like to see that bullet you said you’d found,” she explained. “I prefer to have something definite to go on, even when I’m dealing with a child.”

  Mrs. Haddon hurried into the cottage and came out with a tiny misshapen mass of lead in her palm. “That’s it, miss.”

  “That’s certainly one of his bullets,” Miss Lindfield confirmed. “Well, I’ll see that he pays for the damage to your window. Let me have a note of what it costs to put in a new pane. That’s only fair, and it may teach . . .”

  Another report from the plantation broke into her sentence, and she stopped abruptly.

  “Did you hear that?” she demanded anxiously.

  “What, miss? The shot? Yes, I heard that all right.”

  “No, something just after the shot—like a faint cry, I thought it was.”

  “Perhaps he’s hit a rabbit, miss. There are a few rabbits in the plantation. Sometimes they give a squeal when they’re hit, you know.”

  Miss Lindfield shook her head impatiently.

  “I know a rabbit’s squeal well enough. It wasn’t that.”

  She bit her lip as though she were trying to identify the sound she had heard. Mrs. Haddon, faintly perceiving something sinister in the atmosphere, strained her ears in vain to catch any further noise.

  “Do you think, miss . . .?”

  “Sh!”

  They listened intently for some moments, but nothing came to them except the whistle of a bird in the plantation.

  “There!”

  Miss Lindfield unconsciously lifted her hand.

  “I didn’t catch it, miss,” Mrs. Haddon confessed. “My ears aren’t just what they used to be, somehow. I’m not deaf, really, or anything like that; but Jack often hears things when I can’t.”

  Miss Lindfield paid no attention to the explanation. Another gesture demanded silence; and again they pricked up their ears. In vain, however, for only the ordinary wood-sounds came to them.

  “I don’t like that,” Miss Lindfield said at last. An idea seemed to strike her. “Was Mrs. Castleford at the Chalet this afternoon?”

  “I don’t know, miss. She didn’t come this way, if she is.”

  Miss Lindfield paused irresolutely before speaking again.

  “I don’t like this. We’d better go over to the Chalet, I think. There may have been an accident and . . .”

  She took Mrs. Haddon’s acquiescence for granted and led the way out of the tiny garden. Once on the edge of the plantation, Mrs. Haddon asserted herself.

  “This is the shortest way, miss,” she explained, diving into one of the numerous paths which opened before them. “This is the way I always go myself, when I’m going to the Chalet to wash up.”

  Miss Lindfield surrendered the leadership and allowed herself to be conducted through the labyrinth. There was a thick undergrowth which prevented them from seeing any distance ahead, and the path wound in and out, avoiding the clumps of bushes.

  “You don’t think, miss . . .” Mrs. Haddon panted apprehensively as she hurried along.

  “I may have been mistaken,” Miss Lindfield admitted.

  Her tone betrayed both doubt and misgiving, as though she had begun to regret her impetuousness.

  “I thought I heard something after the shot,” she continued in a still more dubious tone, “but it may have been just imagination. We may as well go on, now we’ve come this length.”

  They emerged from the spinney immediately behind the Chalet. It was a one-storeyed erection, about thirty feet in length; and the style of its architecture was just sufficiently Swiss to justify the name which had been given to it. Its single floor was divided unequally into a large lounge or sitting-room and a tiny scullery with a sink fed from a rain-water tank on the roof. There were no windows in the wall facing the spinney. On the south side, fronting the view, was a concrete-floored verandah, hardly elaborate enough to be described as a loggia; and onto this opened the single door of the summerhouse. From the verandah, the ground sloped gently away for a hundred yards or so; then came a sudden dip, at the bottom of which wound the road, so that the Chalet itself was invisible to passers-by on that route.

  Mrs. Haddon, still leading, rounded the corner of the building, and as she did so, Miss Lindfield heard her exclaim sharply. A moment later, Miss Lindfield herself turned the corner of the house and came in sight of the verandah. With its back to them stood a rustic armchair with a woman’s figure in it; and a trickle of blood descended to a pool on the concrete floor.

  Urged by that curiosity which the refined deem morbid, but which is more probably merely animal, Mrs. Haddon scuttled forward and gazed eagerly at what she saw.

  “It’s Mrs. Castleford, miss,” she exclaimed, mingling awe and excitement in her tone. “She’s been shot, miss. Look, she’s been shot in the back. Oh, dear, miss, this is a dreadful business. What ought we to do? She’ll be dying under our eyes, miss, unless we do something, quick.”

  She looked up at her companion, as though demanding instructions; but for once Miss Lindfield’s efficiency had met a situation beyond its scope. The fallen jaw of the body, the dreadful transmutation of the complexion, the lack-lustre eyes, all told their story beyond misapprehension. Constance Lindfield need have no fear that Winnie would ever again come between her and Dick Stevenage.

  Mrs. Haddon, her world already shaken by the discovery of the body, was flabbergasted to find that she was relying on a broken reed. Instead of issuing orders, Miss Lindfield broke into an hysterical laugh; and then, seeing Mrs. Haddon’s thunder-struck expression, she hurried into the Chalet and slammed the door behind her. Through the window, Mrs. Haddon heard sounds of conflicting emotions which she was hard put to it to interpret. She herself was excitable but not hysterically-inclined; and the idea that Miss Lindfield’s nerves had given way was almost as disturbing to her as the body in the chair before her.

  “Lord! If she’s cracked up like that, what’ll I do?” was her unspoken and terror-shot comment.

  Utterly incapable of initiative in the circumstances, she stood on the verandah waiting for something to happen. She averted her eyes from the body and gazed round her in an attempt to put herself again in touch with a familiar world. There was the easel, with its half-finished picture. On the ground beside it lay the wooden sketching-box with its array of squeezed and distorted oil-colour tubes. The palette had been propped against one of the legs of the easel, and the open japanned tin brush-case had been put down close at hand.

  Mrs. Haddon stared at the uncompleted sketch on the canvas. When she took up her old fad once more, Winnie had enlisted in the non-representational school of artists; and Mrs. Haddon’s artistic education had not advanced sufficiently to let her appreciate this style of painting.

  “I could draw about as well as that myself, I’m sure,” was her uncultured mental criticism.

  Her eye passed from the artist’s materials to something which she understood better: the little square cane table which carried the tea things. That, at any rate, had a homely, normal appearance. There had been a visitor, evidently, for there were two used teacups and plates with biscuit-crumbs on them. Opposite one place, a cane armchair had been pushed back a little when its occupant rose from the table. That would be where the stranger sat, Mrs. Haddon surmised; for the teapot, spirit kettle, and slop-basin were beside the other cup and plate. There was no chair opposite them. Mrs. Castleford had apparently shif
ted her chair when she had finished her tea. Mrs. Haddon observed a fly gorging itself in the sugar-basin and with a mechanical movement of her hand she chased it away.

  The sounds from within the Chalet had died down. She heard steps crossing the floor. The water-tap of the sink ran for a short time. A minute or two later, Miss Lindfield reappeared at the door, her eyes slightly reddened in spite of bathing, but apparently her own cool, collected self again.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Haddon. I couldn’t help it, you understand?”

  “Yes, miss, I’m sure . . .”

  Miss Lindfield had evidently no desire to dwell upon her momentary weakness.

  “One of us must stay here. The other will have to go for assistance at once.”

  Mrs. Haddon found no difficulty in making the implied choice. She was not afraid of staying alone with the body, of course—not in broad daylight, she assured herself She wasn’t one of your superstitious ones. Still . . . it seemed “more like the thing” that Miss Lindfield should remain on guard over the Chalet. If anyone happened to come along, she could explain things better. And besides, at the back of Mrs. Haddon’s mind was a vision of herself, a really important person for once, breaking the tragic news in Thunderbridge village.

  “I’ll go, miss,” she volunteered.

  Much to her relief, Miss Lindfield accepted the proposal without demur.

  “Very well, then. You must hurry as fast as you can. Get hold of the constable in Thunderbridge. He’s very stupid, but that can’t be helped. Tell him to ring up the nearest inspector, or superintendent, or whoever it is he ought to notify. See that he does that immediately. And make him ring up Carron Hill, too, and tell the people there what’s happened. And then bring him back here with you. Can you remember all that? Sure of it?”

  Mrs. Haddon nodded, though her brain was rather in a whirl with all these instructions.

  “I’ll see to it, miss.”

  She turned away and moved along the verandah, repeating under her breath the list of things she had to do. As she walked, her foot encountered a tiny object lying on the concrete.

  “Here’s something, miss,” she exclaimed excitedly as she glanced down and recognised what it was. “Here’s the bullet, miss. Look!”

  “Where? Don’t touch it!”

  Miss Lindfield came to her side, stooped down, and examined the tiny missile.

  “That’s just the very same as the one that came through my window, miss, just the very spit of it.”

  Miss Lindfield stared at the little bullet for a few seconds without replying, and Mrs. Haddon saw a puzzled frown on her face.

  “Leave it there,” she said at last. “You’d better tell the constable you found it. But if I were you, Mrs. Haddon, I’d say nothing about it to anyone else. You understand? Sometimes it suits the police to keep things to themselves for a while, and they might want to say nothing about this. So the less gossip, the better.”

  Mrs. Haddon, rather annoyed at having this titbit of her own discovery treated in this way, acquiesced reluctantly.

  “Well, then, get away now. Be as quick as you can.”

  Mrs. Haddon retreated in the direction of the path which would take her down into Thunderbridge village. She looked back once, and found Miss Lindfield covering the face of the body with something white. Mrs. Haddon wondered why she had not thought of that herself, and then continued her walk, hurrying as best she could over the rough path.

  Chapter Six

  Constable Gumley’s Suspicions

  Owing to certain well-marked personal peculiarities, Police Constable Christopher Ebenezer Gumley led a drab and isolated existence, disjoined from the normal social life of Thunderbridge. His openly-expressed misogyny deprived him at a single stroke of the sympathy and companionship of half the available adult population. A staunch teetotaller, with unconcealed leanings towards Prohibition, he had wholly alienated the convivial section of the community and had cut himself off from the informal club which met nightly in the bar of the Pheasant Inn to discuss local happenings and the way of the world generally. From the sporting set he had earned undying dislike by swooping down and impounding betting slips on the one occasion when practically every client had backed the winner. True enough, they had got their stakes returned eventually, on the basis that “if you can’t win, you can’t lose”; but the incident had left a grievance rankling in the mind of everyone concerned, except the bookmaker. His gratitude, though warmly expressed, was lost on the constable. As to the local farmers, P. C. Gumley’s activities failed to give them satisfaction. They described him as “fussy” (qualified by an adjective or an adverb according to the state of education of the speaker) on account of his proceedings in connection with straying cattle, lights on farm-vehicles, barbed wire, the Diseases of Animals Act, and innumerable other matters in which he did not see eye to eye with them. Finally, he attended no church functions except when summoned to them in his official capacity; so that even the clergy looked askance at him.

  It was symptomatic of his Ishmaelite condition that no one in the village ever called him Gumley. Even in plain clothes he was branded with official rank. “The policeman,” or some handier synonym, was the only description employed.

  Thus on the surface, P. C. Gumley’s life seemed to exemplify Gilbert’s dictum. In actual fact, however, this was not so. Under his drab exterior, P. C. Gumley nursed a passion which consoled him for his estrangement from social life. He was an enthusiast for literature.

  Literature is an elastic term; but in the case of P. C. Gumley it meant two things, and two only: a manual of Police Law and the cheaper type of crime stories. From each of these he extracted peculiar delights and equally peculiar regrets. His Police Law had been conned until its binding showed signs of disintegration; but an acute observer would have noted that the finger-prints had accumulated to an abnormal extent on those pages which dealt with Treason, Treason Felony, Sedition, the Official Secrets Act, and Piracy. These were the special joys of P. C. Gumley. The accompanying sorrow arose from the facts that the inhabitants of Thunderbridge village knew Treason only in connection with Guy Fawkes, that Sedition was beyond their ken, that they had no opportunity of acquainting themselves with any Official Secrets, and that Piracy is a vain dream in an inland village. No scope here for a zealous but unpracticed detective.

  What life failed to provide, he sought in print. His day’s duty done, he retired to his bedroom at his lodgings and, after thumbing over the long row of tattered paper-bound volumes on his shelf, he plunged with zest into a re-perusal of the rounding-up of Thick-Eared Mike or the tracking-down of Slim Harry, the International Crook. From time to time he would pull out the stub of a pencil, thoughtfully moisten the lead with his tongue, and add yet another to the series of lines which called attention to exceptionally ingenious inferences drawn by the master-sleuths.

  P. C. Gumley, in fact, was a typical specimen of the unoriginal romantic. Incapable of inventing dramas, he had just enough imagination to see himself in the shoes of the hero-detective. “Give me a body,” said Detective Sergeant Gumley, “and I’ll know what to do.” Or, in a more dashing vein: “Hands up!” ordered Inspector Gumley, whipping a stubby automatic from his pocket. Or, again, in the role of controller of destinies: “This is where we finish with Slim Harry,” said Superintendent Gumley as he picked up the desk-telephone. These vivid little episodes were just as much a part of P. C. Gumley’s life as the weary hours spent in patrolling his beat.

  And now, as he stood in the village street, ruminating disgustedly on the dullness of his lot, opportunity approached him in the guise of a flurried, hatless, and rather unattractive woman, wearing old slippers and a house-apron.

  “Lost her wits, and expects me to find them for her,” grumbled P. C. Gumley under his breath, as he caught sight of the untidy figure. “Ugh! These women!”

  Mrs. Haddon, breathless with haste and excitement, fished up to him.

  “Mrs. Castleford’s been shot. You know, Carron
Hill. At the Chalet. In the verandah on a chair, the body is. Miss Lindfield’s there. She says you’re to ring up and get an Inspector or somebody at once. You’re to ring up Carron Hill and tell them about it, as quick as you can. And you’re to come along with me this minute and take charge till someone comes who can do something.”

  Those dramas played out on his mental stage had fortunately fitted P. C. Gumley for just such a situation as this. By a great effort, he guarded himself against any outward display of surprise; for by the canons of his fiction the star detective was never surprised by anything. He nodded ponderously, as though he had expected news of this kind just about that time; and then he turned over in his mind the instructions which had been transmitted to him, in the hope of striking out a fresh line for himself. Unfortunately, he could think of nothing. Miss Lindfield had covered the ground.

  “Just like that wench’s nerve to give me orders,” he reflected crossly, as he made his way to the post-office telephone box. “She takes a lot too much on herself.”

  He completed his telephoning and came out into the street again to find Mrs. Haddon broadcasting an account of the tragedy to a small but increasing crowd.

  “Here! None o’ that!” he commanded, scowling upon her. “You keep your mouth shut and come along o’ me.”

  Mrs. Haddon, her brief spell of glory thus cut short, shrieked a few final details to the crowd and then followed him dejectedly up the street. When they were clear of the village, he turned to her.

  “Now that you’ve had a good bit o’ gossip with your friends,” he said, severely, “p’raps you’ll be so good as give the Authorities your tale, if you’re not too tired. The Authorities is represented by me, at present,” he added, lest there should be any misunderstanding. “And anything you say may be taken down in writing and given in evidence.”

  Mrs. Haddon, deprived of her larger audience, was eager enough to pour out her narrative into the only available ear; and in a short time P. C. Gumley had gathered all she had to tell. He listened in silence, interpreting the data according to the rules impressed upon him by his study of crime fiction.