“Good Lord!” I said. “What an amazing way for Ledd to talk about Mrs. Brende!”
“Of course it didn’t come out quite like that,” Wharton said airily. “I asked if he’d seen anybody about, then he said he had, and so on. What’s more he says that yesterday morning he came up here early and just as he got to the top of the stairs he saw someone disappear round the far corner. He thinks that was Mrs. Brende. Just instinct, he called it.”
“But a dust-pan and brush,” I said. “What on earth should she want those for?”
“Probably couldn’t sleep, came up here, saw them lying about, where a maid had left them, and took them away,” Wharton said, but he was cocking a questioning eye as if he hadn’t much faith in his own theory.
“Maybe so,” I said, and wondered what he was really thinking. “But what about Penelope’s overnight movements? Anything interesting?”
“No.” he said. “She went out before dinner and came back here for a meal. Then she told Ledd she wouldn’t want anything, and didn’t want to be disturbed. He filled that water carafe, and that’s all. Next thing was when he found her dead this morning.”
“That tea with Mrs. Brende yesterday. Doesn’t that strike you as unusual?”
“Why should it?”
“Now, George, don’t be obstinate and mysterious,” I said. “You know as well as I do that Mrs. Brende kept herself very much to herself. That’s one reason why I sometimes wondered if there was anything between that other one and the Colonel, and she’d become aware of it. Mrs. Brende let Annie be her maid when she first came here, so you just told me. Then another maid did it, and then that stopped. Doesn’t that mark a gradual decline in relationships?”
“There may be something in it,” he said. “But you don’t think Mrs. Brende had a hand in—?” He waved a hand at the bed where the body had been.
“Of course I don’t,” I told him. “Mrs. Brende’s the last person in the world to get up to tricks like that. But supposing it was murder. Was it done by the same persons who kidnapped Brende, and did they get in in the same way?”
Wharton merely shrugged his shoulders.
“Then was it an inside job?” I persisted. “If so, and the two events are connected, the last was an inside job too, and all that wisteria stuff was camouflage.”
“How could it have been an inside job?” he said. “Colonel Brende was kidnapped, wasn’t he? He went out. And those who took him, went out.”
“But they might have gone out by the front door,” I said. “Perhaps a sentry was nobbled. A man’d find it hard to resist heavy baksheesh.” Then I was shaking my head. “I don’t think that’s likely though. But I still think it was partly an inside job. That car that Benison’s picket saw was driven by a woman. It might have been the car with Brende trussed up inside, and Penelope driving it. She might have handed him over to the people who paid her handsomely for extracts from that diary note-book.”
“I’ve got all that in mind,” he told me. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“And too many cooks spoil the broth,” I said, with a look at my watch and remembering that the lawyer would soon be at my office.
Wharton walked with me as far as main guard where I had left my car. I thought young Craye might be there, but he wasn’t. Then I thought I’d have a look at the book and see at what times he’d inspected the guard during the night.
“The book, sir? Certainly, sir,” the sergeant said, and far too briskly. He was an old-timer, red-faced and beery.
The book showed that Mr. Craye had been round the guards at twenty-one-thirty hours, which was pretty early. The next entry was at three hours fifteen. I looked up to see that sergeant watching me in a most peculiar way, and I had a sudden suspicion. So I nodded to Wharton and then asked the sergeant to follow me outside. When we halted he was looking most uneasy.
“A straight answer from you, sergeant,” I said, “or there’s going to be trouble. Did Mr. Craye visit the guards at three hours fifteen this morning, or didn’t he?”
He wouldn’t catch my eyes.
“All right,” I said. “I think I know the answer. That’s all.”
“What was young Craye doing? Playing the old game?” Wharton said.
“Looks like it. Writing the three-fifteen signature when he was here at twenty-one-thirty, and passing half a crown over to the sergeant. Probably did that everywhere and so wangled himself a good night’s rest.”
“He’s the nearest relative too,” Wharton said, and pursed his lips.
I said we oughtn’t to jump to any conclusions till I’d seen Craye personally. Then as I got into my car I remembered Passenden.
“The man’s a liar,” Wharton said. “He was ringing you up from Buxton and pretending to be in Scotland. And he wasn’t ringing from a friend’s house. He was at a hotel where he’d called in for a meal. By the time my man had been warned, he’d disappeared again.”
“Curious,” I said. “What the devil’s he up to? But suppose he rings again. Shall I mention what’s happened this morning?”
“Wait a minute,” Wharton said, and frowned in thought. “I think perhaps you might. I’d rather thought of putting an obituary notice in the papers. ‘Suddenly, at Dalebrink Hall,’ and all that. Just to throw somebody off the scent in case there was anything fishy.”
“And what are you going to do now?” I asked.
“Going over everything in that room. When I’ve finished there won’t be a square inch I haven’t run my rule over.”
“Anything you’d like me to do?”
“Well, yes,” he said, but none too heartily. “You might have one of those roving commissions. Have a talk with Ledd for one thing. You can do that better than me. Mrs. Brende too, perhaps. You know, just condole with her and so on.”
Thank heaven I’ve no intellectual arrogance, but I had to smile at George’s subtle hint that I should be lacking in artifice. But my face straightened soon enough as my hand went to the brake. It was the sudden knowledge of what I was leaving behind. For the last hour and more I had been too close to things, and at the best of times a murder enquiry is callous work.
“It’ll seem strange not having Penelope Craye here,” I said. “And it’s a damnable business, if it really is murder. What makes me feel so rotten about it is that I never had a good word for her.”
“Ah, well,” said Wharton. “But let me know what happens with that relative of hers.”
“I will,” I said, and my hand went down again. Then I realized that George had been working for three days and had given me never an idea of his progress.
“Made any headway, have you?” I said. “Got any real ideas?”
He had a quick look round and put his head inside the window.
“I don’t know that I haven’t got the key man. If I could make him talk I’d know as much as anyone.”
“The key man? Who is he? Benison? Passenden?”
He gave a snort of disgust.
“Why don’t you use your brains? You saw him this morning. Newton—that’s the man.”
“Good Lord!” I said, fingers already at my glasses. “You must be—”
But Wharton had waved a cheery hand and was making his way back to the house.
CHAPTER XIII
Wharton is Obscure
As I drove back towards the Camp I was thinking of many things, but principally about Newton. That a man like him should be mixed up with anything treacherous and unsavoury passed the bounds of even my elastic comprehension. Yet Wharton had spoken soberly enough, though with him, as I have said many a time, you never could tell. One thing then did occur to me. If the incredible had really happened, and Newton was far from what he seemed, then the nerviness and fright of Riddle and Wissler could only mean that they too were mixed up with things. Riddle was a former pupil and protégé of Newton, and Wissler would be entirely under his orders. And yet, the more closely I looked at it, that triumvirate in treachery and crime seemed so fantastic as to be ludicrou
s. William Le Queux would have blushed if he had thought of that for a plot.
I also thought of Mrs. Brende, and I wondered why Wharton had introduced her name as a kind of afterthought. That was an old trick of his, to lay scant stress on anything important. Why should he want me to see her when he was on the spot and had every excuse for asking for an interview? Indeed, he had seen her already that morning. There was Ledd too, whom he had already seen, and then suddenly I began to feel just the least bit annoyed with Wharton. If he wanted me to do a job, why couldn’t he give me details of what he wanted? In fact, but for that insatiable curiosity which would have led me to poke a finger in the pie, Wharton or no Wharton, I should have felt at that moment like throwing my own hand in.
Harrison happened to be out when I got back to Camp, but the R.Q.M.S. said there were two messages for me, and each of them made me think. The first was from the local police and said that the Huns had been collared at last, two in some woods near Buxton and the third near Sowdale. It was curious how that word kept cropping up. It was Mrs. Brende’s old home for example, and Passenden had gone there, and it was near there that he had shaken off Wharton’s man.
“I see in the paper they’ve caught those Germans, sir,” the R.Q.M.S. said.
“In the paper, is it?”
“In my paper, sir. I see how they reckon the plane they baled out of was one that came down right away over in North Wales somewhere. Looks as though they made a bloomer, sir, don’t you think? Got the wind up and baled out.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Still, I expect they had a shrewd idea they were going to crash if they didn’t jump.”
So that seemed to knock one theory on the head. And when later I read what was said in the paper—that there had been a fourth airman and he had been overcome by fumes—I knew those Huns had never been landed for the express purpose of kidnapping Brende.
As for the second message, it was from Holby, the lawyer. Other arrangements had been made, he said, and he would not need to take advantage of my kind offer. And that looked to me as if Mrs. Brende had changed her mind on account of the morning’s tragedy.
I went to my own office and signed some papers Harrison had left for me, and then, with nothing much to do, I naturally began thinking of things again, and whichever way my thoughts went, they kept coming back to Mrs. Brende. Finally I had to talk to myself seriously. Let there be no more furtiveness, I said. Mrs. Brende herself would be the first to demand the fullest enquiry into anything that might place her under suspicion. Those who are innocent have nothing to fear, so why should I not be open in my own mind as far as concerned the case for and against Mrs. Brende? And if Wharton was suspicious, all the more reason why I should continue to be her friend. And how, I somewhat speciously assured myself, could I be her friend unless I arrived at the facts?
What was there against her? Well, if she still loved her husband, she might be prepared to go to extremes to fight to retain him. It certainly seemed to me that she had become aware of some sort of intrigue and therefore she would know that Brende had planted Penelope in the house in the role of secretary and that knowledge, acquired later, would be more than galling. For Mrs. Brende seemed to me to have accepted Penelope at first at her face value, which was why Annie had been lent her as maid. Mrs. Brende might also have become aware of those other activities of Penelope. She might have warned her husband and have been rebuffed. Then when he was kidnapped she decided to take the law into her own hands. Once Penelope was dead, there could be no proof of laxity on the part of the Colonel.
What I thought might be disregarded entirely was that story Ledd had told Wharton. Ledd had not spoken in front of me, which might mean that he was trying to ingratiate himself with Wharton. I didn’t question the story itself. Mrs. Brende, it seemed to me, would gladly get up at dawn. Why should she not walk round a house, which belonged to her, and which was virtually closed to her during the day? As for the brush and dust-pan, she had most certainly known that it had been forgotten and so was taking it to the kitchen. That was just the kind of thing a precise, tidy person like Mrs. Brende would do.
But when I came to state a case for Mrs. Brende, I was startled to find how thin that case was. All I could say was that it was far from certain that a murder had been committed at all, but that was a flagrant begging of the question. All, in fact, that I could produce was the bald statement that Mrs. Brende, from even my little knowledge of her, was incapable of murder. And that, I had to admit, was nonsense. In my time I have run up against murderers—and women at that—who looked like angels of light. And, as I also had to admit, that killing of Penelope Craye by the sleeping tablets was a woman’s crime. No blow and no blood, but just a furtive business of a moment or two.
But instinct all the same is a tough thing to be up against, and I was still of the opinion that if Wharton had Mrs. Brende in mind, it must be for something other than murder. Also, there seemed a kind of treachery in my own hunt for premature suspicions, and I tried to keep Mrs. Brende from my mind. Then just as I thought of going to the Mess for a look at the paper, Harrison turned up.
“I’ve got Craye, sir,” he said. “Had an idea he might be in the town, so I borrowed a car and took a cruise round. There his lordship was, walking with a girl too.”
“He’s here?”
“Outside waiting. I called him aside—didn’t want to let him down in front of the lady—and he caught me up on his motorbike at the gate. That’s another thing. Using Government petrol and property.”
I told Harrison just what I suspected, and asked him to stay while Craye was questioned. Then he called Craye in. Craye’s salute was impeccable.
Well, I put the question to Craye very bluntly. He must have guessed what was in the wind, for there was no start of surprise at the accusation. He admitted he was out of Camp that morning in defiance of regulations, and said he was taking a chance.
“I don’t see how you could deny that much,” I told him. “But about the other question. I want a plain yes or no. Did you or did you not inspect the guard at the Park at three hours fifteen this morning?”
There was a silence of a good minute.
“Will anything happen to the sergeant, sir, if I say anything?”
“That’s no concern of yours,” I said. “I’m not driving a bargain with you. I want an answer.”
“Sorry, sir, then I’ve nothing to say.”
I gave a Whartonian grunt and glanced at Harrison. He took up the running.
“Mr. Craye, it will be the easiest thing in the world to question the men themselves and find out if any of them actually saw you this morning. The Commandant didn’t wish to do that before he’d seen you. If he does do it, then the sergeant will most certainly be for it.”
Craye thought that over.
“Very well, sir, then I didn’t inspect the guards. But it wasn’t really the sergeant’s fault, sir, I told him it was something very urgent.”
“And what was the urgent matter?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Sorry, sir, I can’t say.”
“Can’t say! But you must be mad. Do you realize what this means to you?”
His lips clamped together. I waited a few moments, then had a last attempt.
“Open confession, and a full one, may make things easier. This is my last warning.”
“I know, sir,” he said, humbly enough. “I’m grateful to you, sir, but it’s something I can’t talk about.”
I let out a deep breath.
“Very well, Mr. Craye, consider yourself under open arrest. And Captain Harrison, I’d like a word with Mr. Craye alone.”
I warned Craye again before I spoke. If he breathed a word to a soul other than his aunt, I said I’d break him if it was the last thing I did. Then I told him about his cousin. No details, of course, but that she had died suddenly during the night, and that he, as the nearest relative, had been wanted. Either he was a fine actor, or else he was flabbergasted.
“
When did you see your cousin last?” I wanted to know.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said. “To tell the truth, we didn’t get on well together. I think I saw her in the town and just spoke to her about a week ago.”
“Why didn’t you get on well?” I thought he might think that a highly personal question, so I added that I had my reasons for asking.
“Well, sir,” he said, frankly enough, “we had no use for each other. I know she told lies about me to my aunt.”
“Why?”
His lip curled.
“I think she was trying to get me out, sir, and herself in. But it didn’t work.”
“I see,” I said. “And you wouldn’t care to reconsider your decision and tell me what you were actually doing when you should have been on duty?”
Once more he shook his head.
“Sorry, sir, I’d rather take what’s coming to me.”
And that was that. I had a sneaking idea that what he had told me was the truth—that, in fact, he had some highly confidential reason for cutting duty and bribing the sergeant—but I couldn’t let things stay put. So I rang for Harrison who took Craye to his office. Then when Craye had gone, I knew I had been foolishly sentimental and I decided to get from Harrison a description of the girl with whom Craye had been walking in town that morning. Wharton could then take a hand, and if I found that Craye had been simply spending the night with a woman, then he would most certainly be for the high jump. If he had not, and Penelope had really been murdered, then Wharton would have a suspect. Penelope, I recalled, had taken tea the previous afternoon with Mrs. Brende. That seemed to me to indicate that she had succeeded in getting back to good terms with the one from whom young Craye had great expectations. In fact, a murder motive stared one in the face.
I got that information from Harrison before lunch, and gave it to Wharton over the phone. He seemed most grateful and said he would get to work at once.
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 17
