Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 9

  “You’re on the ’phone here? I must ring up the police in Hincheldene now and make arrangements for to-morrow. Show me your ’phone, please, Joan. And as I must get some sleep to-night, I’ll say good-bye to the rest of you now. Come along, Ariel. Lead the way.”

  Chapter Seven

  WHAT WAS IN THE LAKE

  “I WAS afraid of it,” Sir Clinton observed, as he lifted the dripping pole with which he had been sounding the water of the lakelet. “The net will be no good, Inspector. With these spikes of rock jutting up from the bottom all over the place, you couldn’t get a clean sweep; and if there’s anything here at all, it’s pretty sure to have lodged in one of the cavities between the spikes.”

  It was the morning after the masked ball at Ravensthorpe. The Chief Constable had made all his arrangements over-night, so that when he reached the shore of the artificial lake, everything was in readiness. The decrepit raft had been strengthened; a large net had been brought for the purpose of dragging the pool; and several grapnels had been procured, in case the net turned out to be useless. Sir Clinton had gone out on the raft to sound the water and discover whether the net could be utilized; but the results had not been encouraging.

  Inspector Armadale listened to the verdict with a rather gloomy face.

  “It’s a pity,” he commented regretfully. “Dragging with the grapnel is a kind of hit-or-miss job, Sir Clinton; and it’ll take far longer than working with the net.”

  Sir Clinton acquiesced with a gesture.

  “We’d better start close in under the cliff-face,” he said. “If anything came down from the top, it can’t have gone far before it sank. One of the people last night was watching the pool and he saw nothing on the surface after the splash, so it ought to be somewhere near the cave-mouth. You can pole over to the shore now, constable; we’ve done with this part of the business.”

  The constable obeyed the order and soon Sir Clinton rejoined the Inspector on the bank.

  “It’s likely to be a troublesome business,” the Chief Constable admitted as his subordinate came up. “The bottom’s very irregular and the chances are that the grapnel will stick, two times out of three. However, the sooner we get to work, the better.”

  He considered for a moment or two.

  “Tack a light line to the grapnel as well as the rope. Get the raft out past the cave and let a constable pitch the grapnel in there. Then when you’ve dragged, or if the grapnel sticks, he can pull the hook back again with the light line and start afresh alongside the place where he made the last cast. But it’s likely to be a slow business, as you say.”

  The Inspector agreed and set his constables to work at once. Sir Clinton withdrew to a little distance, sat down on a small hillock from which he could oversee the dragging operations, and patiently awaited the start of the search. His eyes, wandering with apparent incuriosity over the group at the water’s edge, noted with approval that Armadale was wasting no time.

  Having made his instructions clear, the Inspector came over to where the Chief Constable was posted.

  “Sit down, Inspector,” Sir Clinton invited. “This may take all day, you know, and it’s as cheap sitting as standing.”

  When the Inspector had seated himself, the Chief Constable turned to him with a question.

  “You’ve seen to it that no one has gone up on to the terrace?”

  Inspector Armadale nodded affirmatively.

  “No one’s been up on top,” he explained, “I’d like to go and have a look round myself; but since you were so clear about it, I haven’t gone.”

  “Don’t go,” Sir Clinton reiterated his order. “I’ve a sound reason for letting no one up there.”

  He glanced for a moment at the group of constables.

  “Another thing, Inspector,” he continued. “There’s no secrecy about that matter. In fact, it might be useful if you’d let it leak out to the public that no one has been up above there and that no one will be allowed to go until I give the word. Spread it round, you understand?”

  Slightly mystified, apparently, the Inspector acquiesced.

  “Do you see your way through the case, Sir Clinton?” he demanded. “You’ve given me the facts, but we’ll need a good deal more, it seems to me.”

  Sir Clinton pulled out his cigarette-case and thoughtfully began to smoke before answering the question. When he spoke again, his reply was an indirect one.

  “There’s an old jurist’s saying that I always keep in mind,” he said. “It helps to clarify one’s ideas in a case:

  Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando?

  That puts our whole business into a nutshell.” He glanced at the Inspector’s face. “Your Latin’s as feeble as my own, perhaps? There’s an English equivalent:

  What was the crime, who did it, when was it done, and where, How done, and with what motive, who in the deed did share?

  How many of these questions can you answer now, offhand, Inspector? The rest of them will tell you what you’ve still got to ferret out.”

  Inspector Armadale pulled out a notebook and pencil.

  “Would you mind repeating it, Sir Clinton? I’d see through it better if I had it down in black and white.”

  The Chief Constable repeated the doggerel and Armadale jotted it down under his dictation.

  “That seems fairly searching,” he admitted, rereading it as he spoke.

  “Quite enough for present purposes. Now, Inspector, how much do you really know? I mean, how many answers can you give? There are only seven questions in all. Take them one by one and let’s hear your answers.”

  “It’s a pretty stiff catechism,” said the Inspector, looking again at his notebook. “I’ll have a try, though, if you give me time to think over it.”

  Sir Clinton smiled at the qualification.

  “Think it over, then, Inspector,” he said. “I’ll just go and set them to work with the dragging. They seem to be ready to make a start.”

  He rose and walked down to the group at the edge of the pool.

  “You know what’s wanted?” he asked. “Well, suppose we make a start. Get the raft out to about ten yards or so beyond the cave-mouth and begin by flinging the grapnel in as near the cliff-edge as you can. Then work gradually outwards. If it sticks, try again very slightly off the line of the last cast.”

  He watched one or two attempts which gave no result and then turned back to the hillock again.

  “Well, Inspector?” he demanded as he sat down and turned his eyes on the group engaged with the dragging operations. “What do you make of it?”

  Inspector Armadale looked up from his notebook.

  “That’s a sound little rhyme,” he admitted. “It let’s you see what you don’t know and what you do know.”

  Sir Clinton suppressed a smile successfully.

  “Or what you think you know, perhaps, Inspector?”

  “Well, if you like to put it that way, sir. But some things I think one can be sure of.”

  Sir Clinton’s face showed nothing of his views on this question.

  “Let’s begin at the beginning,” he suggested. “ ‘What was the crime?’ ”

  “That’s clear enough,” the Inspector affirmed without hesitation. “These three electrotypes have been stolen. That’s the crime.”

  Sir Clinton seemed to be engrossed in the dragging which was going on methodically below them.

  “You think so?” he said at length. “H’m! I’m not so sure.”

  Inspector Armadale corrected himself.

  “I meant that I’d charge the man with stealing the replicas. You couldn’t charge him with anything else, since nothing else is missing. At least, that’s what you told me. He wanted the real medallions, but he didn’t pull that off.”

  Sir Clinton refused to be drawn. He resorted to one of his indirect replies.

  “ ‘What was the crime?’ ” he repeated. “Now, I’ll put a case to you, Inspector. Suppose that you saw two men in the distance and that
you could make out that one of them was struggling and the second man was beating him on the head. What crime would you call that? Assault and battery?”

  “I suppose so,” Armadale admitted.

  “But suppose, further, that when you reached them you found the victim dead of his injuries, what would you call the crime then?”

  “Murder, I suppose.”

  “So your view of the crime would depend upon the stage at which you witnessed it, eh? That’s just my position in this Ravensthorpe affair. You’ve been looking at it from yesterday’s standpoint, and you call it a theft of three replicas. But I wonder what you’ll call it when we know the whole of the facts.”

  The Inspector declined to follow his chief to this extent.

  “All the evidence we’ve got, so far, points to theft, sir. I’ve no fresh data that would let me put a new name to it.”

  “Then you regard it as a completed crime which has partly failed in its object?”

  The Inspector gave his acquiescence with a nod.

  “You think it’s something else, Sir Clinton?” he inquired.

  The Chief Constable refused to be explicit.

  “You’ve got all the evidence, Inspector. Do you really think a gang would take the trouble to steal replicas when they could just as easily have taken the three originals—that’s the point. The replicas have no intrinsic value beyond the gold in them, and that can’t be worth more than twenty or thirty pounds at the very outside. A mediocre haul for a smart gang, isn’t it? Hardly Trade Union wages, I should think.”

  “It seems queer at first sight, sir,” he admitted, “but I think I can account for that all right when you come to the rest of your rhyme.”

  Sir Clinton showed his interest.

  “Then let’s go on,” he suggested. “The next question is: ‘Who did it?’ What’s your answer to that, Inspector?”

  “To my mind, there seems to be only one possible thief.”

  Sir Clinton pricked up his ears.

  “You mean it was a single-handed job? Who was the man, then?”

  “Foxton Polegate,” asserted the Inspector.

  He watched Sir Clinton’s face narrowly as he brought out the name, but the Chief Constable might have been wearing a mask for all the change there was in his features as he listened to the Inspector’s suggestion. As if he felt that he had overstepped the bounds of prudence, Armadale added hastily:

  “I said ‘possible thief,’ sir. I don’t claim to be able to bring it home to him yet.”

  “But you think it might even be ‘probable’ instead of only ‘possible,’ Inspector? Let’s hear the evidence, please.”

  Inspector Armadale turned over the leaves of his notebook until he reached some entries which he had previously made.

  “First of all, sir, Polegate must have known the value of these medallions—the originals, I mean. Second, he learned that they would be on show last night; and he knew where they’d be placed in the museum. Third, it was after Polegate came by this knowledge that the practical joke was planned. Fourth, who suggested the sham burglary? Polegate. Then fifth, who gave himself the job of actually taking the medallions? Polegate again. Sixth, where was Polegate immediately after the robbery? We’ve only his own word for it that he was strolling about, having a smoke. He might have been elsewhere, easily enough. Seventh, he was dressed up as a Harlequin when you saw him: but he might quite easily have slipped on a white jacket and a pair of Pierrot’s trousers over his Harlequin costume. He could disguise himself as a Pierrot in a couple of ticks and come out as a Harlequin again just as quick. So he might quite well have been the man in white that they were all busy chasing last night. Eighth, he knows the ground thoroughly and could give strangers the slip easily enough at the end of the chase. And, ninth, he didn’t appear when you wanted him last night. He only turned up when he’d had plenty of time to get home again, even if he’d been the man in white. That’s a set of nine points that need looking into. Prima facie, there’s a case for suspicion, if there’s no more. And there isn’t anything like so strong a case against anyone else, Sir Clinton.”

  “Well, let’s take the rest of the first line,” said the Chief Constable, without offering any criticism of the Inspector’s statement of the case. “‘When was it done, and where?’”

  “At 11.45 p.m. and in the museum,” retorted Armadale. “That’s beyond dispute. It’s the clearest thing in the whole evidence.”

  “I should be inclined to put it at 11.44 p.m. at the latest, or perhaps 11.43 p.m.,” said Sir Clinton, with an air of fastidiousness.

  The Inspector looked at him suspiciously, evidently feeling that he was being laughed at for his display of accuracy.

  “I go by Miss Rainhill’s evidence,” he declared. “She was the only one who had her eye on her watch, and she said she pulled out the switch at 11.45 precisely.”

  “I go by the evidence of Polegate and young Chacewater,” said Sir Clinton, with a faint parody of the Inspector’s manner. “They were taken by surprise when the light went out, although they expected it to be extinguished at 11.45 p.m.”

  “Oh, have it your own way, sir, if you lay any stress on the point,” conceded the Inspector. “Make it 11.44 or 11.45; it’s all the same, so far as I’m concerned.”

  Armadale seemed slightly ruffled by his chief’s method of approaching the subject. Sir Clinton turned to another side of the matter.

  “I suppose you say the crime has been committed in the museum?” he inquired.

  The Inspector looked at him suspiciously.

  “You’re trying to pull my leg, sir. Of course, it was committed in the museum.”

  Sir Clinton’s tone became apologetic.

  “I keep forgetting that we’re not talking about the same thing, perhaps. Of course, the theft of the replicas was committed in the museum. We’re quite in agreement there.”

  He threw away his cigarette, selected a fresh one, and lighted it before continuing.

  “And on that basis, I suppose there’s no mystery about the next query in the rhyme: ‘How done?’”

  “None whatever, in my mind,” the Inspector affirmed. “Polegate could take what he wanted, once the light was out.”

  Sir Clinton did not dispute this point.

  “Of course,” he said. “And now for the next query: ‘With what motive?’ Where do you stand in that matter, Inspector?”

  But here Armadale evidently felt himself on sure ground.

  “Polegate’s a rackety young fool, sir. This is where local knowledge comes in. He’s got no common sense—always playing practical jokes. He’s been steadily muddling away the money his father left him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s hard up. That’s the motive.”

  “And you think he’d steal from his oldest friends?”

  “Every man has his price,” retorted the Inspector, bluntly. “Put on the screw hard enough in the way of temptation, and any man’ll fall for it.”

  “Rather a hard saying that, Inspector; and perhaps a trifle too sweeping.” Sir Clinton turned on Armadale suddenly. “What would be your price, now, if I asked you to hush up this case against young Polegate? Put a figure on it, will you?”

  Armadale flushed angrily at the suggestion; then, seeing that he had been trapped, he laughed awkwardly.

  “Nobody knows even their own price till it’s put on the table, Sir Clinton,” he countered, with a certain acuteness.

  The Chief Constable turned away from the subject.

  “You’re depending on there being a fair chance of Polegate getting away with the medallions without being suspected. But when young Chacewater and Miss Rainhill were in the scheme as well as Polegate, suspicion was sure to light on him when the medallions vanished. The other two were certain to tell what they knew about the business.”

  Inspector Armadale glanced once more at his notebook in order to refresh his memory of the rhyme.

  “That really comes under the final head: ‘Who in the deed did share?’” he
pointed out.

  “Pass along to the next caravan, then, if you wish,” Sir Clinton suggested. “What animals have you in the final cage?”

  The Inspector seemed to deprecate his flippancy.

  “It’s been very cleverly done,” he said, seriously. “You objected that suspicion was bound to fall on young Polegate; and so it would have done, if he hadn’t covered his tracks so neatly. He’s set everyone on the hunt for a gang at work, or at least for an outside criminal. Now I believe it was a one-man show from the start, worked from the inside. Polegate planned the practical joke—that gave him his chance. Then he forced himself forward as the fellow who was to do the actual stealing—and that let him get his hands on the medallions while young Chacewater held the keeper up for him. Without the hold-up of the keeper, the thing was a wash-out. The joke helped young Polegate to enlist innocent assistance.”

  “But still suspicion would attach to him,” Sir Clinton objected.

  “Yes, except for a false trail,” the Inspector agreed. “But he laid a false trail. Instead of waiting for the switch to be pulled out, he fired his shot from the bay, extinguished the light and then rushed out of the bay and went for the medallions.”

  “Well?” said Sir Clinton in an encouraging tone.

  “When he’d smashed the glass of the case, he took out the whole six medallions, and not merely three of them as he told you he’d done.”

  “And then?”

  “He pocketed the replicas and stuck the real things under the case with plasticine. Then he continued the false trail by bolting out of the house. He was the man in white. When he got clear of the people who were chasing him, he came back to the house again, ready to play his part as an innocent practical joker. And he had his tale ready, of how someone was beside him at the case, wearing a Pierrot costume. That stamped the notion of an outside gang on everybody’s mind. Both sets of medallions had gone. He—the innocent practical joker—could have produced the replicas from his pocket and sworn they were all that the gang had left in the case by the time he got to it.”

  “And . . .?”