Diabolic Candelabra

by E. R. Punshon

  “Oh, but that’s silly,” protested Olive, “when he’s been murdered himself as near as can be.”

  “Doesn’t prevent him,” retorted Bobby, “from having murdered someone else first, does it?”

  “Oh, well,” said Olive and wrote down the name.

  “The nephew, Dick Rawdon,” Bobby continued.

  “Oh, but that is really silly this time,” declared Olive. “Why, he’s head over heels in love with Mary Floyd.”

  “Can’t murderers be head over heels in love?” asked Bobby. “Sometimes that’s why they are murderers.”

  “Oh, well,” said Olive again, and put down Dick’s name below his uncle’s.

  “Mary Floyd,” Bobby continued.

  Indignantly Olive laid down pencil and paper.

  “That’s worse than silly,” she declared. “Why, she’s ever so sweet.”

  “She may be, but she is capable of keeping a man in a cellar for a week,” Bobby pointed out, “and I don’t suppose ‘sweet’ was the word he used. You saw her yourself that Sunday. Touch and go whether Coop didn’t get a whole dollop of boiling soup over him. Justifiable homicide perhaps, but homicide all the same and that’s not so far from murder.”

  “Well, it would have served him right,” said Olive, and, under protest as it were, put down Mary’s name.

  “Crayfoot next,” said Bobby.

  “Bobby! Really!” Olive exclaimed, looking quite bewildered. “Why, we’ve been getting our bread from him almost ever since we came.”

  “Not a reason,” pronounced Bobby, and Olive shrugged her shoulders and set down that name too.

  “Dr Maskell,” said Bobby next.

  “Oh, well,” agreed Olive, “I could believe anything of him. I think he’s perfectly horrid and awfully rude as well,” and she hurried to add his name to the growing list before Bobby could change his mind.

  “Sammy Stone,” Bobby continued.

  Olive smiled with a certain contempt.

  “Soft and fat,” she commented. “Cheat, yes. Murder, no.”

  “Cheating sometimes leads to murder when the cheat’s afraid of being found out,” Bobby reminded her, and so down went his name.

  “Mr Weston,” Bobby said next, and once more Olive’s pencil hung suspended in protest.

  “Bobby,” she said, “that nice little man. Why, I had tea with Mrs Weston in town the other day and she was telling me where you could buy as many tomatoes as you liked—only,” added Olive sadly, “a policeman’s wife has to be so careful—so beastly careful.” The pencil came down to the paper but still did not write. “You can’t mean,” she argued, “that perhaps I’ve had tea with the wife of a murderer?”

  “Might happen to practically anyone,” Bobby told her. He added thoughtfully: “Weston had a violent quarrel with Crayfoot. Might mean a lot or nothing, but it’s got to be remembered”; and so yet another name was entered on the growing list.

  “Is that all now?” Olive asked, and Bobby shook his head and said:

  “Lindley Finn next.”

  So then it was Olive’s turn to shake her head.

  “Financial shark,” she pointed out. “Not the murderer type, just a shark.”

  “Sharks are killers,” Bobby said. “What is the murderer type?”

  “Big and brutal and jaws sticking out,” said Olive, “and—oh, well, you know.”

  “I don’t,” Bobby declared emphatically. “The murderer type is you and me and the next man. Murderers aren’t always the worst criminals, though murder is the worst crime. Curious. Contradictory, too. But then so is the world—curious and contradictory, I mean. I think pretty nearly anyone might commit murder—given circumstance and provocation and opportunity. And motive.”

  Olive said nothing, but wrote down Lindley Finn’s name.

  “Montague Hart,” said Bobby next.

  “Who is he?” asked Olive. “Oh, the lawyer. Well—a lawyer,” she admitted.

  “There’s a certain amount of evidence,” Bobby observed. “His hat. Nothing much in that. Easy explanation. Blown off while he was taking a walk in the forest and so he had to buy a new one. I expect he’s the man Marriott saw the old hermit chasing away. But Marriott can’t identify him. Dick Rawdon says he smoked cigars—generally Dick’s, apparently—and someone smoked a cigar at the hut. It looks to me as if Hart visited the hut, found the place empty, decided to wait, smoked his cigar while doing so. That may have put the old man’s back up—he didn’t smoke himself, apparently. At any rate, nothing’s been said about his buying tobacco. Touchy old boy, too. Perhaps that’s what started him persuading his visitor to retire. Theory again, but it fits.”

  “Yes, but had he any motive?” Olive asked, as she added his name to her still growing list.

  “The El Grecos,” Bobby answered. “They’re the standard motive. Big cash value and possession proof of ownership.” He went on: “Next, that Coop chap.”

  Olive looked contemptuous, but made no protest till she had written the name. Then she said with authority:

  “It’s not Coop. If he had done it, he would have been hiding in a panic, not bullying his wife and fighting Mary.”

  “Is that psychology?” Bobby asked.

  “Common sense,” retorted Olive.

  She looked at her long list of names and shook her head disapprovingly.

  “You’ve made me put down everyone you can think of just at random,” she complained, and ignoring Bobby’s interjected “Oh, no,” she added: “Well, anyhow, it’s everyone you know ever went near the poor old man or had anything to do with him—except Mrs Coop and little Loo.”

  “I was coming to them,” Bobby said. “We had better have them on the list as well—both of them.”

  Too astonished to protest, Olive obeyed. Then she blinked at the two names as if she didn’t believe it and said “Well”, and it was a ‘Well’ that in one syllabic said as much as whole dictionaries could have conveyed.

  “I’ve no proof,” Bobby explained, “that Mrs Coop is really a helpless invalid, and Loo is so strange a child that with her one can be sure of nothing. Remember how she left that unlucky school inspector woman to lose herself in the forest? One can get lost and die of cold and exposure even in an English forest. Remember those Derbyshire hikers some years ago? Remember, too, it was Loo who knew where the old man’s body had been hidden, and I’ve a very strong idea she knows even now a good deal more than she has told us. Or why did she spend those nights in the forest and why did she take food from the cottage?”

  CHAPTER XL

  TWELVE NAMES

  BOBBY LEANED OVER Olive’s shoulder, reading absently that long list of names she had written down and letting his mind dwell upon each one in turn.

  “There’s always the chance,” he said presently, “of its turning out to be someone we’ve never even heard of—some tramp or another. There seems to have been a lot of gossip going on about a hoard of sovereigns he was supposed to have hidden somewhere.”

  “You don’t think so, though,” Olive asserted. She added: “I don’t.”

  “It all points to one of those names,” he agreed; and this time ran his finger down the list and then brought it back and let it rest, pointing to one name.

  “Bobby,” Olive breathed, and she had gone a little pale. “Bobby, do you mean—you know?”

  “No good thinking that you know,” he answered, “till you can show the evidence—and I can’t. Not yet.”

  “There are two little incidents you’ve told me of,” she reminded him thoughtfully.

  “Yes, but any clever counsel would simply enjoy himself sweeping them into the dustbin.”

  “If that’s the one who is guilty,” Olive said uneasily, “it means there’s a trap waiting.”

  “I suppose so,” Bobby agreed. “I didn’t mean it at the time, but it struck me at once it was like that—I mean, it meant the trap was there for anyone to walk into who wanted. Probably no one will. They might.”

  “There’
s still nothing to show,” Olive mused, “who the old hermit really was—and nothing to show whether Mr Crayfoot has gone away on his own affairs, or run away in a panic, or whether he’s still out there somewhere in the forest.”

  “I think he’s there still,” Bobby said. “One thing we’ve got to remember is that the old man, whoever he was, whatever his identity, and to us it doesn’t matter whether he was a Rawdon and rightful holder of the title and the property, or whether he was the ex-footman, or whether he was neither the one nor the other, he still had a violent temper and was inclined to chase off visitors with that axe of his.”

  “Doesn’t that suggest,” Olive put in, “that if he found one of his tramp friends in his hut trying to get the money he was supposed to have hidden, it might have meant a fight or something, and the poor old man getting killed, and nothing to do with any of these people?”

  “I feel pretty sure myself,” Bobby said, “that he knew enough about the sort of people he met on the road to have taken precautions. Very likely that sort of thing happened all right, more than once perhaps, but I think we may be certain he had prepared. It is one of the reasons why I feel so certain he had a second abiding place somewhere in the forest. You remember he bought oil he can only have wanted for cooking and heating, but there was no sign of lamp or oil stove at the hut. All cooking done outside apparently and firewood used for fuel. An oil stove would be much less likely to give him away than any fire. A fire would show light by night and smoke by day, whereas an oil stove would give neither. That may be why he wanted the Diabolic Candelabra the Rawdons talked about. He may have used candles sometimes or kept them in reserve in case the oil ran out.”

  “I suppose there is that,” Olive agreed. “An oil stove would be much more secret. Only why did he want to be so very secret?”

  “Genuine hermit impulse,” Bobby suggested. “Some people love solitude. At the hut he was always on tap, so to speak, and if he wasn’t there, it could be thought he had gone wandering or was just out for the time. Whereas really he was snug in his second refuge. Also it seems likely he had possessions he didn’t want known or talked about. If he took the Diabolic Candelabra for convenience, he may have taken the El Grecos to remind him of the life he had left. Or because they appealed to him in a way they did to no one else. You know, I can imagine anyone getting an almost mystical passion for an El Greco. As they used to say in the advertisements, El Grecos have something others haven’t got. I know the first time I saw an El Greco it seemed to get up and hit me in the eye.”

  “I don’t care,” observed Olive thoughtfully, “for pictures that do that. I like one, like ‘The Shrimp Girl’, you can sit and look at and feel lovely and peaceful, not hit about.”

  “Question of taste,” Bobby observed. “Anyhow, we aren’t discussing art. What I’m getting at is, I think he needed some secret place where he could go and be sure of being alone and where he could keep things he didn’t want seen or known about. And yet he had to have another place as well everyone could know of. Otherwise people might have got wondering and started to hunt him up. Some of the lot he hobnobbed with on his tramps would certainly be curious. Especially at first there would be lots of talk about him. Tramps and gipsies and vagabonds generally soon get to know as much about each other as you do in any other closed professional society. They are as curious as monkeys and as thievish as monkeys and I’m sure they were soon trying to find out all they could about him. It wouldn’t be long before they were paying him visits and having a look round his hut when he wasn’t there. All his possessions of any value he would need to keep somewhere else or they would soon have been stolen. And he would be specially anxious to keep them hidden if in any way they suggested his past he had tried to cut loose from.”

  “It’s the El Greco paintings you are thinking of?” Olive said.

  “The Diabolic Candelabra as well,” Bobby answered. “Silver and more obviously valuable. The El Grecos might mean nothing to some people. Bits of coloured canvas. But silver is always silver.”

  “If he has them,” Olive said, “that means he really is a Rawdon and a baronet—or was, rather, the poor old thing, living all alone like that.”

  “His own choice,” Bobby said. “Possibly it suited him better—possibly he wanted to be let alone, not tied up with titles and property and all that. One way of life and he chose it. He seems to have kept himself busy with herbs and things. Discovering a new flavour mayn’t count for much.”

  “Oh, but,” Olive interrupted, “it was so—so Nice.”

  “So it was,” admitted Bobby. “There’s the cancer cure, too. You can’t be sure it was really worth while, in spite of any success it had, because sometimes cancer vanishes of its own accord. But even if he were merely on the track of something good—well, it would have made it all worth while, all his life, I mean.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Olive agreed, “and it’s all lost now.”

  “A few blows with a hatchet to let out knowledge that might have meant so much to all the world,” Bobby said. “I suppose we shall never know.” After a long pause, he added: “It’s one reason why the second hideout has got to be found. You see, it’s just possible he may have kept some of his cancer cure there and, if so, it could be analysed.”

  “If the El Grecos are there, too,” Olive said, “that will prove—I suppose it won’t though,” she added doubtfully; “he might still be either the baronet or the footman.”

  “I don’t suppose we ever shall know,” Bobby remarked. “I suppose in a sense it doesn’t matter. What I’ve got to do is to see a murder doesn’t go unpunished—and find out what’s happened to Crayfoot. Quite possibly he is the murderer and quite as likely he is the murderer’s second victim if by bad luck he chanced to see what was going on—and the murderer knew it.”

  “Poor Mrs Crayfoot,” Olive said softly, “it must be awful—not knowing.”

  “Can’t be sure,” Bobby repeated, “till he’s found—or his body. Anyhow, there’s the set-up, beginning from Mrs Weston’s liking for chocolates that started as tangled a story of death and disappearance and hidden treasures as anyone could wish for.”

  “I shall never,” declared Olive firmly, “want to taste chocolates ever again.”

  “One thing leads to another,” Bobby said. “If Mrs Weston hadn’t enjoyed her chocolates so much, Weston wouldn’t have talked about them to his pals in the pub. Then Stone would never have heard of the old hermit or spoken to Finn, and Finn would never have looked up the Rawdon family, and Sir Alfred wouldn’t have known inquiries were being made about the lost El Grecos involving a hint that his title wasn’t secure. And then he wouldn’t have consulted his lawyer, and Dick Rawdon wouldn’t have been called in as heir, and wouldn’t have gone off to question Crayfoot and start him wondering in his turn who the hermit really was. Nor would Dick have visited Coop’s cottage and most likely set Coop guessing as well. It all hangs together, everything leading on from one thing to another, the perfect blue print of a crime.”

  “You’ve forgotten Dr Maskell,” Olive said.

  “No,” Bobby said. “No. He is not a man to forget. Finn visited him, too. Certainly his quarrel with the hermit was old enough.”

  He began to pace the length of the room again and then paused to stare once more at the long list of names that Olive had set down, one below the other. He read aloud;

  “Sir Alfred Rawdon.

  “Dick Rawdon.

  “Dr Maskell.

  “Mr Crayfoot.

  “Mr Weston.

  “Sammy Stone.

  “Lindley Finn.

  “Montague Hart.

  “Coop.

  “Mrs Coop.

  “Mary Floyd.

  “Loo.”

  He paused, began to make cryptic marks against each name, and then threw down his pencil with an impatient gesture.

  “Twelve names,” he said, “and which one is the right one? Of twelve, one, and nothing to show which. It might quite well
be Sir Alfred himself. He had a pretty strong motive. He had to face the possibility of becoming a pauper, liable to a strict accounting for every penny spent during all the time he had been in possession. There’s the El Greco motive, too. If he could have got hold of them he could have sold them right away and most likely they would have brought enough to pull him clear from his financial difficulties. Not much chance of recovering them either except by violence or something like that. Legal proof of ownership was almost impossible.”

  “Do you think Mr Crayfoot had them all the time?”

  “It’s on the cards,” Bobby said musingly. “No proof again. Perhaps he had and perhaps he hadn’t. But anyone on their track might think it a good idea to try to find out. Coop, for instance. Dick Rawdon claims it was the Floyd portrait he went there to look at. Perhaps it was really the El Grecos he was after. He stood to lose his position as next heir and he admits he needed money for his factory development. He was getting advances from the bank, or so he says—of course, that can be checked if necessary—but, anyhow, they would have to be paid back, and a few thousands extra capital no doubt he could turn to very good use. Getting hold of the El Grecos would have given him a very useful lump of fresh capital, and there never was a business yet couldn’t do with that. Motive and opportunity. Both Rawdons had it, uncle and nephew, too. Also they don’t seem to trust each other too much. Rightly or wrongly, I’m pretty sure uncle suspected nephew of trying to get ahead of him with those El Grecos. Or why did Sir Alfred go hot foot after nephew Dick to the Crayfoots’ place the night he got shot?”

  “I don’t see that they had more motive or more opportunity than anyone else,” Olive commented.

  “Oh, they hadn’t,” Bobby agreed. “All the same, they had it. So had others, certainly. There’s Crayfoot’s card I found at the hermit’s hut. Suggests he had been there. Good evidence though not conclusive. Someone else might have got hold of a card of his and left it there to incriminate him. Not likely but possible. Again, the evidence he was seen near Boggart’s Hole isn’t conclusive—witness not too trustworthy. Lindley Finn we saw ourselves—and who can tell if the blood on his hands was old and dry as he says or fresh and new? He admits he handled the axe, so fingerprints are no use. Stone’s evidence that he saw Weston following Crayfoot may be accepted as he admits he followed Weston. How do we know which of them got there first or what happened when they did? For what it’s worth there’s Finn’s statement that he saw Dr Maskell’s car standing near by, but Maskell denies it, and who is to decide? Maskell admits he thinks getting rid of the old man rather praiseworthy than otherwise—the day’s good deed. But people are always saying things like that.”