The Threefold Cord

by Francis Vivian

  “Come on, girl!” snapped Mrs. Redson. “The gentleman is not wanting to eat you or arrest you!”

  “He—he passed me on the stairs,” she stammered.

  “Going up or down?” Knollis prompted as gently as he could.

  “I was coming down, sir, and he was going up. I thought he would say something because I wasn’t using the back stairs, but he didn’t. He seemed to be thinking of something.”

  “And Miss Vaughan?”

  “She was in her room, sir, because I heard her moving about while I was downstairs.”

  “Mrs. Manchester?”

  “In the sitting-room, sir, darning socks. I wanted to do them, but she said it was my evening off, and I must not keep Smithy waiting. I’m—I’m walking out with Smithy, sir. He’s the chauffeur.”

  One of Knollis’s rare smiles appeared. “He looks a solid type of fellow. Quiet and reliable.”

  “Oh, he is, sir! He’s—he’s very good to me,” she said slowly, and there was something in her tone that caused Knollis to give her a long and curious glance.

  “So he should be to a pretty girl like you,” he said. “He probably knows when he’s lucky!”

  Freeman stared at the toes of her tan shoes. “He is—very good—to me. Oh dear!”

  “You are happy working in this house, Miss Freeman?”

  She looked up and tried to smile. “Very happy, sir. Both Mr. and Mrs. Manchester have always been very nice to me.”

  “Tell me,” said Knollis; “what was the first you heard about this—occurrence?”

  She had just taken the spoon in her hand to stir the tea. At Knollis’s question it slipped from her fingers and tinkled across the stone-flagged kitchen floor.

  “The—the first thing?”

  “Yes,” Knollis repeated patiently. “Who was the first person to tell you about it?”

  She appeared to have difficulty in framing her words. “Why, it was Smithy! Of course it was. Yes, it was Smithy!” she said slowly and jerkily.

  “Of course,” said Knollis in a cheerful tone. “Who else could it be? Smithy found him—didn’t he?” Freeman looked anxiously about her, as if for a means of escape. “He—he found him, sir! Yes, sir, who else could it be?”

  “And you went straight through to minister to your mistress? That is right?”

  “Yes! Oh yes, that is right, sir,” she replied, and appeared to snatch at the explanation rather than to agree with him.

  “How often do you go to the bogey-house?” Knollis next asked.

  “Oh, you know our name for it, sir? I go in every day—although it’s funny you should ask.”

  “Why do you go in every day, Miss Freeman?”

  “Well, those funny little plants. They are—funny! I like to watch them. I think they are quaint, but I can’t make Smithy see it. He thinks they should all be burned out of the way.”

  Knollis was silent for a minute, and Ellis scribbled on in the corner.

  “Have you any idea what it was that took Smithy through the annexe door to the cactus house if he had such a horror of cacti, Miss Freeman?” Knollis asked at last.

  Freeman stared. Her eyes seemed to grow larger and larger. At any minute now she was going to descend into hysterics. Knollis hurriedly turned to the cook, leaving the question to go unanswered.

  “Mrs. Redson, I wonder if you can tell me whether anyone heard any unusual noise about the time that Mr. Manchester was killed?”

  The cook shook her head. “I don’t know of anything like that, sir. I never heard anything myself, and nobody else said anything.”

  “No crying out, nor doors closing?”

  “This house doesn’t have echoes, sir. It’s like in a book I once read where it said that all the echoes died at birth. Everything is thick-carpeted, and there’s a lot of heavy old furniture in it. No, sir, even if the Master had cried out it wouldn’t have been heard from the house.”

  “Hm!” grunted Knollis. “That is quite an idea! The road is beyond the boundary wall?”

  “Yes, sir, and higher than the garden by a good many feet—but you can’t see over the wall into the garden from the road. It’s about seven feet high on the road side of it.”

  “You think you would hear a cry if you were on the main road? You do agree with that?”

  The cook nodded. “I should think so, sir, but you know more than I do about such things.”

  Knollis looked at Freeman. She had pushed her cup of tea on the table and was now sitting with her face in her hands, quietly weeping.

  “Thank you both,” he said as he rose. “I must see if it is convenient to have a talk with Mrs. Manchester.” As he and Ellis left by the south door they were approached by Colonel Mowbray, the Chief Constable.

  “I’ve been looking for you, Inspector. Wondered where you’d got to, y’know!”

  “Oh, I decided to have a chat with the staff,” Knollis replied airily.

  “Good lor’, man!” the Chief Constable exclaimed. “Surely it was more important to see the dead man’s wife!”

  Knollis smiled enigmatically. “At the moment, the staff hold the information I need.”

  The Chief Constable blinked. “They do? Why? What have you unearthed?”

  “Up to now,” replied Knollis, “I’ve unearthed one whacking big lie, and a little girl who daren’t tell what she knows. But she will! Oh yes, she will!”

  CHAPTER IV

  THE LADY OF BAXMANHURST

  Mrs. Mildred Manchester received Knollis in the sitting-room, a room with an Adams ceiling, an Adams fireplace, and neo-Manchester furniture. Knollis was no aesthete, but the room clashed on his senses. Manchester was everywhere, and it was impossible to escape him even now that he was dead.

  The Lady of Baxmanhurst was tall. She was thin. Her neck rose from a dove-grey dress in a gentle curve. Her whole attitude reminded Knollis of a swan which had recently scented danger and was now settling down again. She was like a tense spring that was in the process of relaxing. He was puzzled by her, for her eyes, pale blue ones, had the pained expression of a bitch which had just been thrashed—the bitch of the canine race being notoriously more sensitive than the dog. Her hands, long-fingered and yellowish, chafed against each other restlessly as if they were alive with irritation. Her general attitude, her eyes, and her hands were all contradictory, while her low, soft-modulated voice as she said “Well, Inspector?” all added to the mystery that was confusing him.

  Knollis gave a light bow. “I am sorry to disturb you at such a time as this, Mrs. Manchester, but you will of course realise the necessity.”

  “That is quite all right, Inspector,” she replied. She removed a pile of magazines from a chair and silently invited him to be seated. “You have something to say to me?”

  “At the moment I have not. I wish to ask you several questions. Have you anything to tell me which might prove useful?”

  “I am bewildered and puzzled,” she replied. “I know that many people disliked my husband, but I had no idea that anyone hated him—and hated him so much!”

  Knollis leaned forward. “I want you to go back three days, Mrs. Manchester, and tell me about the budgerigar.”

  “My poor little bird,” she murmured. “I went to my boudoir shortly after breakfast, and found his little body on my dressing-table. His neck was broken, and a short blue cord was tied loosely round his neck.”

  “You have it?” asked Knollis.

  “It is in my boudoir, Inspector.”

  “Perhaps I could see your boudoir?” suggested Knollis.

  Mrs. Manchester rose. “If you will follow me, Inspector. . . .”

  In the boudoir she pointed to a gilded cage on a tall stand. “That was Sweetum’s little home. I am certain that the door was closed when I went down to breakfast, and then—”

  “Pardon the interruption,” said Knollis, “but were all the members of the household at breakfast?”

  Mrs. Manchester considered, a finger to her lower lip. “Well, Miss Vau
ghan came down late, and Fred was fetched to the telephone during the meal, but neither of them would have—that is obvious, surely!”

  “Quite,” said Knollis. “Now the cord; may I see it, please?”

  She opened the dressing-table drawer and handed him two lengths of blue silk cord; one just over six inches long, and the other a full foot.

  “It is embroidery silk,” she said, “taken from my workbox. The shorter one was tied to Sweetums.”

  “And the longer one to the cat, of course.”

  She lowered her head in answer.

  “Tell me about the cat,” said Knollis.

  “I found Boofuls in the cactus house at noon yesterday, lying amongst Fred’s plants with his neck broken, and that longer cord tied round him.”

  “Are you in the habit of visiting the cactus house at, say, regular hours?”

  “I go in most days, usually before lunch.”

  “So that,” said Knollis, “whoever was responsible would know that you were the most likely person to find the cat. You can agree there?”

  She stared vacantly at him. “Whoever was responsible would know that either myself or my husband would find Boofuls, Inspector. Temple does no work in there, it being my husband’s especial hobby and charge.”

  “Temple? Oh yes, he is the gardener,” Knollis said quietly.

  He looked at the cords as they lay in his hands. “This evening, Mrs. Manchester; you saw your husband on his return from Trentingham?”

  “Oh yes! He came into the sitting-room and asked if Sir Giles Tanroy had called. He had an appointment with him for five o’clock. Sir Giles had arrived earlier, and Fred was later than he had expected being. He chatted with me for some minutes about the changes which Fred had made round the place, and he seemed annoyed because Fred had chopped down the vines in what is now the cactus house. He said that the old orders were changing with a vengeance, and he wasn’t at all sure that he liked it. I told him that things were perhaps not as bad as he imagined them, and that he might change his mind if he took a walk to the cactus house and viewed it with an open mind. He replied that he liked to be fair, and so he would take a look round, with my permission, and I told him that he was always as free of the estate as when it had belonged to him.”

  “Your husband went to look for him when he returned from Trentingham?”

  Mrs. Manchester nodded. “Yes, Inspector. That was the last I saw of him.”

  “Then you have no idea whether he saw Sir Giles or not? Sir Giles did not return to the house?”

  “I have no idea, Inspector—but I do hope you are not connecting Sir Giles with my husband’s death. Sir Giles is a gentleman, with all a gentleman’s instincts, and I am sure that—well, it was murder, wasn’t it? I am sure that such violence is entirely foreign to his nature.”

  “At the moment,” Knollis replied quietly, “I am not in a position to connect anyone with the murder. Now I am sure that you will forgive this question, Mrs. Manchester, but I must ask it, as a formality. Were you happy with your husband?”

  Her features assumed an expression of quiet rapture. “I was very happy, Inspector. Fred was a good man and a kind husband. I was the centre of his life, and he never ceased to tell me that I was his wife, sweetheart, and mother in one person.”

  She paused, and regarded Knollis earnestly.

  “I know what you are thinking, Inspector! Fred was badly abused on account of his business methods, and he was sneered at by the County set because of his lack of culture—but is culture everything? Did not the poet say that kind hearts were more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood? Fred was a man of the people, a man of simple faith. His code may not have coincided with that of the people with whom he tried to mix, but he had a code, and he lived according to his lights. He was a good husband, a firm friend, and would have been a wonderful father if circumstances had not made it impossible for me to bear them for him. If he had a fault—and yes, he had one!—it was his yearning to mix outside his class. He could not see that his happiness lay at hand, and not in the Mountains of the Moon.”

  She gave a dry, harsh laugh. “Oh yes, Inspector, I knew him! I had the advantages of an education, and I know that Fred felt his social inferiority very keenly. Well, I wonder what the County will say about him now!”

  Knollis coughed. “Tell me, Mrs. Manchester; whom do you suspect of being responsible for his death?”

  “How can I suspect anyone, Inspector?” she asked, gesturing with her hands. “I never even suspected that anyone hated him so much as to bring him to his death in such a horrible manner.”

  “Quite! Quite!” Knollis murmured sympathetically. “Well, thank you for your assistance, Mrs. Manchester. I will be around the house for some days, but I will not disturb you more than is absolutely necessary.”

  She bowed her head. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Inspector Knollis. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  Knollis considered. “I would be grateful if you could place a small room on the ground floor at my disposal. I shall need a temporary office, some place in which I can interview your servants, and, I’m afraid, your guests.”

  “I quite understand,” she replied. “You shall have Fred’s study. I will tell Freeman to show you to it, and to get you anything you may require.”

  On the way downstairs, Knollis rah into a plumpish man who was about to ascend, but who stood aside to allow him to pass. He was a peculiar-looking fellow with a face as full as the moon. His features were so queerly distorted that he looked rather like the man-in-the-moon, his left eye being higher than his right one by a good half-inch, and his mouth twisted across his face so that he had a permanent sardonic grin. He touched Knollis on the arm as he reached the floor of the hall. “You will be the detective from the Yard,” he said in a high-pitched voice.

  “Yes. I am Inspector Knollis.”

  “I am Desmond Brailsford, Manchester’s best friend. If there is anything I can do . . .”

  “There is,” Knollis replied. “I am at a loss for certain details regarding Manchester’s life. I would like a chat with you in the study in about half an hour’s time. Can you make it convenient?”

  Brailsford patted his arm, and leered. “I’ll be there.”

  Knollis went out into the grounds and sought Ellis in the darkness, to find him looking round the cactus house with the aid of a torch.

  “Any joy?” he asked.

  “Not in here, sir,” Ellis replied, “but I found this crammed into Manchester’s outside breast-pocket.”

  It was a third cord of the same embroidery silk, about two feet long. Knollis produced the other two and laid them on his hand. “All the same stuff, my Ellis. It came from Mrs. Manchester’s workbox. Even a blind man can see that there is a significance attached to them, but what is it? I cannot see it at the moment. Three cords, and three deaths. Good headline stuff for Fleet Street, but a most damnable riddle for us.”

  “Do you think the colour holds any significance?” asked Ellis.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Knollis replied. “Anyway, you can’t do much good out here, so I want you to come indoors and take statements. Mrs. M. couldn’t tell me much except that she was head over heels in love with her husband, that no such man ever lived before, and that he liked to be mothered.”

  “She told you all that?” Ellis asked quickly.

  “Not deliberately,” Knollis explained. “I gathered so much from what she did say. It has given me an idea. By the way, where is our Colonel?”

  Ellis grunted his disgust. “Gone back to town on urgent personal business. I suspect that he was missing his dinner.”

  They walked from the cactus house, and were turning into the house by the main door when a small sports car whipped down the drive and came to a sliding halt beside them. A good-looking man of about twenty-eight leaped out, adjusting a coloured silk scarf. He peered through the gloom, which was only relieved by his own headlights and the lamp over the doorway.
“I say!” he called. “Are you the police? I’ve got to talk to someone immediately.”

  Knollis turned back and introduced himself, adding: “Thank heavens that someone wants to talk. I take it that you are Sir Giles Tanroy?”

  “Tanroy it is. Look, Inspector, where can we talk?”

  “I am using the study. We can go there.”

  He led the way indoors, and then hesitated, realising that he did not know which was the room. Tanroy said “Excuse me!” and pushed past him, to indicate a door on the right. “This is it.”

  He stood aside for Knollis and Ellis to enter, then followed them and closed the door. The light was switched on, and a new sheet of blotting-paper lay on the writing-table.

  “I didn’t know about Manchester’s death until a few minutes ago,” Sir Giles explained. “I was in the bath when Jackson shouted through the door, but I put a jerk in it and dashed down. He was found outside the cactus house, wasn’t he?”

  “That is correct,” said Knollis, casting a professional eye over the young squire, and noting his frank features and clear blue eyes.

  “With his neck severed?”

  “That is also correct,” replied Knollis. “News travels fast, doesn’t it?”

  “This is a village,” said Sir Giles, echoing the doctor’s words. “Anyway, have you found the weapon?”

  Knollis’s chin jerked upwards. “The weapon? No, we have not. Why do you ask that, Sir Giles?”

  Sir Giles shrugged his shoulders. “That is why I hurried down. I think I know what it was done with. You do know that I was here shortly before the killing?”

  “Yes,” said Knollis. “Mrs. Manchester informed me that you had been here.”

  Sir Giles took a turn about the room, talking as he patrolled the carpet. “I was supposed to meet Manchester here at five o’clock over a spot of business. I was somewhat early, and after a chat with Milly I went out to the cactus house to see what sort of a mess Manchester had made of it. I got impatient after about ten minutes, cut round the garage, and went for a walk in the hurst, eventually making my way home by way of the meadows. You know the lay-out of this house? You have seen the door leading into the annexe?”