“Killed or blinded. Not very cozy. Go and ring up the Moreford police at once, like a good chap.”
The floor was littered with paper, string, packings. Nigel suddenly realized his mouth was bone-dry, as if he’d had a near miss by a bomb. He gulped a glass of water, then knelt down amid the debris.
When Charles Blick returned, he found Nigel holding a half sheet of paper in one hand, in the other the cardboard box.
“Read this,” said Nigel. “No, don’t touch it. I found it under the tissue paper in the box.”
Charles’s face turned sick as he looked. In capital letters, on that piece of cheap stationery, were the words:
Read this now, Bright Eyes, if you can.
Charles Blick poured himself out some whisky from the sideboard, and tossed it back neat. “Did that contraption come by post?”
“By hand, apparently. No postmark. Name and address in capitals, as with the anonymous letters,” said Nigel, holding up the brown paper.
“Good God, it’s the same joker, is it?”
“Possibly. Possibly not. No, use this handkerchief if you want to look at them,” Nigel said quickly, as Charles stooped to pick up the binoculars. “Not but what the prints’d be smeared by now, if your joker left any.”
Charles Blick gingerly touched the range finder and the projecting needles. “Damned neat little job by somebody. Faked up so that the screw released two springs, presumably, with these needles on the end. Eyepieces removed and plastic substituted, the needle points lying flush with holes bored in the plastic.”
“Yes, quite a precision-tool job.”
“What the devil do you mean by that?” Charles’s mouth went thin and hard as his father’s.
“Exactly what I say. Only a highly-skilled man, with specialized tools, could have done it.”
“If you really think I could do a thing like that to Rosebay—”
“I never suggested you did. And you’re forgetting—the binoculars were sent to her sister.”
“Sorry. I spoke out of turn. It’s shaken me up. If that screw hadn’t been a bit stiff to move . . .” Charles whistled, turning up his eyes. “The needles struck like a damned cobra.”
“Which reminds me. Go and disinfect that puncture at once. No, do as I tell you. We can’t take any risks.”
“Oh, draw it mild. Poisoned needles? That’s Borgia stuff.”
“And ask the maid to—oh, it’s you.” Rosebay had entered the room, to say that her sister wanted to see Charles. Nigel could almost hear the unspoken question in Charles’s eyes as he turned to the girl. She gave a barely perceptible shrug.
“No, I’m sorry, but I damn well can’t.” Charles Blick muttered it to himself, in a voice so strained that the vicar, now standing in the doorway, gazed at him with consternation. The next moment he was brushed aside by Charles, who lunged out of the room and out of the house. Nigel saw him hurrying past the windows, in full flight from whatever it was that had driven him forth.
“What on earth—?” began Mark Raynham.
“Please go back to Miss Chantmerle,” said Nigel. “She mustn’t be alone.”
“She doesn’t want me.” Mark’s expression was nakedly sad. “I think Bay had better go up again.”
“No, I’ve got to talk to Bay at once. Send up the maid. Now,” said Nigel slowly and gently, when the vicar had gone out, “sit down and tell me just how this parcel got here.”
Rosebay’s green eyes regarded him mistrustfully, but she obeyed. “It must have been left on the ledge outside the front door. I just brought it in with the other parcels.”
She seemed to have herself remarkably well under control, though she twisted a handkerchief, and her eyes kept swiveling back to the binoculars which Charles had left on the table. Nigel’s questions elicited the following information: the village postman quite often left parcels outside on the ledge, instead of waiting for the front door to be opened. This morning Rosebay had gone out from breakfast, on hearing his knock, and taken three off the ledge. She had noticed that one of them was unusually heavy for its size, but not that it had no postmark. She put all three on the side table in the dining room, together with those which had arrived previously, all ready for the birthday lunch.
“And did you notice it there last night, when you came back from the Hall?”
“Came back? Oh, no. No, I didn’t.”
“Or hear anyone moving about outside during the night, or early morning?”
“No. But—”
“But?”
“Well, you said you saw Daniel Durdle walking away from here last night.”
Nigel gazed at her noncommittally, saying nothing.
“I mean, it does seem queer, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. But wouldn’t it be queerer still for Durdle to want your sister dead?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t quite—”
“You’d have no need to pay him any more blackmail money. You were paying to protect her, not yourself.”
“Oh, I see.” The girl’s eyes flinched away from Nigel, then returned to him. “Well, as a matter of fact—I didn’t tell you this morning, but last time I paid him I said I wasn’t going to pay any more.”
“You’ve not had much practice, have you?” murmured Nigel.
“Practice?”
“In lying.”
Rosebay Chantmerle went up like a battery of rockets. Pacing the room, with that louch, loping stride, her red hair blazing, her self-distrust forgotten, she gave Nigel a thorough dressing-down for his rudeness, his impertinent curiosity, insensitiveness, etc., etc. She might be a bad liar, he thought, but she had the makings of a superb actress. He had the impression that this outburst was a relief to her—that she was giving vent to some smoldering chagrin which had nothing to do with his own provocative remark. As she flung round at the door, to give him a last fine angry glance, he was reminded of Charles Blick’s exit, so notably less dignified. Was the girl’s deep chagrin due to Charles’s having somehow failed her? He had cut a poorish figure, certainly, skittering out of the house rather than going up to see Celandine. The domestic “difficulties” Stanford had mentioned were not chiefly centered upon Daniel Durdle, Nigel now realized. However, the arrival of Inspector Randall and a police sergeant prevented him from prolonging these speculations.
Randall was a clean-shaven, pink-faced man, with a farmer’s deliberation of speech and the shrewd, steady gaze of his own profession. Nigel took to him at once. When he had given a full account of the happenings after lunch and his other observations, the Inspector eyed him meditatively for a few moments, then said:
“So it looks like this. A skilled man, with access to the right tools. Probably someone in the neighborhood, since this boobytrap”—he poked a finger at the binoculars—“was delivered by hand. First job—jot this down, Harry—trace the field glasses. Won’t be so easy, as the chap has filed off the trademark and serial numbers; and I don’t reckon he’ll have left prints for us. The box and wrapping paper won’t help much; it looks like an egg box with the compartments removed. Buy ’em anywhere. Well, then, the obvious places where the job could have been done are Mr. Stanford Blick’s workshop and the Moreford factory. Take the former. Job done by Mr. Blick or Durdle. Durdle seen walking down from this direction last night. He has the skill, and the run of Mr. Blick’s workshop. He has a grudge against Miss Chantmerle. But, as you say, sir, why kill the goose that laid the golden eggs for ’n? Suppose Mr. Blick did the job. He has no motive we know of, but never mind. He gives it to Durdle or Miss Rosebay to deliver, or delivers it himself. Can’t rightly see him and Durdle in a conspiracy together. The servants at the Hall would have got back from the flicks at Moreford soon after you left the Hall last night. Find out from them if Mr. Stanford was at home when they returned, or did the dogs bark later that night, signifying that he’d gone for a liddle walk.”
Inspector Randall gave Nigel a sly, humorous smile. “Am I doing all right so far?”
“A masterly
analysis.”
“Miss Rosebay, then. She was up at the Hall last night. She’s on very friendly terms with Mr. Stanford. Maybe she’s got good reason for wanting to kill her sister. She’s in a nervy state during lunch. Well, now, ’tes all very pretty. But first, why adopt such an outlandish method? I can imagine Mr. Stanford thinking it up—he has some comical notions—but not Miss Rosebay. But would Mr. Stanford go those lengths for a woman who’s in love with somebody else? Suppose he did. Say it was a plot between them. Then why the hell should Miss Rosebay snatch the glasses away from her sister just at the critical moment?”
“She might have lost her nerve.”
The Inspector pulled dubiously at his lower lip. “I suppose that’s possible. What about the other line? Mr. Charles had the means and the skill. He’s been working late at the factory. We’ll check up on his movements last night. Say he planted the binoculars. He sees Miss Rosebay take them from her sister and put them to her own eyes. So he tries to knock them out of her hands. Why should he, unless he knew they were deadly?”
“He said he had ‘a sort of premonition that something was wrong.’”
“Very convenient. No, I don’t like theorizing so early, but Charles Blick fits the facts best at present.”
“Motive?”
“He’s in love with Miss Rosebay. Her sister’s creating difficulties—perhaps she wants Mr. Charles for herself and is determined not to let Rosebay have him.”
“That’s pretty thin, you know. But if it is true, it opens another possibility. Suppose Celandine wants to get rid of her sister, hates her for having snatched her old love. She has an accomplice, X, to doctor the glasses and address them to her, which turns suspicion right away from herself. She opens the parcel, tries to focus the glasses—”
“But you say Miss Rosebay snatched them from her.”
“That was my impression. But things happened very fast. You must remember everyone falls over backward to anticipate Celandine’s lightest wish. She could bank on that. When she says plaintively, ‘This screw’s awfully stiff,’ and perhaps gives her sister an appealing glance, it’d be second nature for Rosebay to take the glasses from her. And it’s natural to put glasses to your eyes when adjusting the range finder.”
The Inspector eyed him doubtfully. “Ye-es, I suppose that’s possible. Well, I must go and see Miss Celandine. The usual routine. Does she know of anyone who might wish to do her an injury? Blah, blah. It’s going to be a bothersome business.”
“There’s one little thing bothers me particularly.”
“Oh, yes?”
“I’d have thought a chap who had the skill to rig up this Grand Guignol device would have been able to make it foolproof. Why was the screw so stiff?”
7 The Manager’s Misgivings
INSPECTOR RANDALL’S INTERVIEW with Celandine Chantmerle was short and unproductive. As he put it to Nigel afterward, she was “a bit mazed still but plucky enough.” She couldn’t quite credit that an attempt had been made on her life, didn’t believe she had any enemies (“Thoughtful look at the back of her eyes just then, though,” said Randall), tended to dismiss it all as a practical joke. She had asked where Charles was, and what success the Inspector had had over the anonymous letters. “But she didn’t really seem much interested in what I was saying. Acted as though her mind was on something else,” the Inspector summed it up.
Randall had then interviewed the maid, Charity Cooper. She was rather deaf, and had heard nothing untoward in the night. Miss Rosebay had locked the front door at about nine-twenty, when she came in from her walk, and told Charity she could go to bed. The maid swore that Rosebay had no parcel with her when she came in; but this meant nothing, the Inspector considered, for she could easily have left it on the ledge before entering. Herbert Petts, the gardener, thought he remembered seeing a parcel there, early this morning, before the postman came.
Nigel in the meanwhile was talking to the young Moreford doctor, whom the vicar had sent for. He was evidently a bit disgruntled at having been summoned for a mere case of fainting. Miss Chantmerle had only become a patient of his a couple of years ago.
“I’ve given her a sedative. She’s back in the drawing room—insisted on it. Had a bit of a shock, I gather. Wouldn’t tell me what it was. The vicar was cagey too.”
Nigel enlightened him. The doctor whistled: “What a filthy trick! On top of these anonymous letters, too. You’ve got a case of morbid pathology loose in Prior’s Umborne all right.”
“What’s wrong with Miss Chantmerle? Hysterical paralysis?”
“I should say so. My predecessor diagnosed a tumor of the spine at the time. Suggested an operation, I believe; but she wouldn’t have one. Don’t think they’d have found it. The shock of finding her father dead, plus mental and physical exhaustion after weeks of nursing him, plus a hereditary predisposition to nervous disease—the old boy went off his rocker, you know—they would be more than enough to do the trick.”
“She really is a cripple, though?”
The doctor gave him a piercing look. “What’s on your mind? Think she’s been posting these letters herself?”
“No, but I’d like the possibility eliminated.”
“Well, for all practical purposes you can eliminate it. The body speaks for you. You’re helpless because you want to be helpless. That’s the truth of hysterical paralysis. And Miss Chantmerle has made a very good thing out of it. Why should she want to recover?”
“People do, don’t they, from this condition?”
“Sometimes. Lourdes has cured such cases. Violent spiritual experience? Faith? We doctors don’t know all the answers, believe me.”
“You can have a cure long after the thing has set in?”
“Years after. Any time. There’s little or no muscular wasting, you see. The machine’s out of practice, of course, but it’s all ready to start again. Just the spark needed. Which is what Miss Chantmerle hasn’t got. If she had, she’d have been walking years ago. But she’s created a pattern of life out of her disability, which is highly satisfactory to her. I tell you, the proof of the pudding’s in the eating. If she wanted to walk, she’d walk. If she doesn’t walk, it means she can’t walk.”
“Have any of her friends or relations consulted you?”
“Yes, her sister did when I took over the practice. But I couldn’t tell her any more than I’ve told you.” . . .
Inspector Randall, with his fresh face, his plodding walk and the appraising eye he cast upon the pasture grass as they took the field path down to the Hall, looked more than ever a farmer.
“I wouldn’t mind settling down here when I get my pension. Pretty little place. Do a bit of market gardening. I’d like to get the taste of crime out of my mouth.”
“These poison-pen letters have a particularly nasty taste. Have you got any further with them?” asked Nigel.
The Inspector told him that the Special Branch at Scotland Yard, at his request, were looking into the records of sabotage cases in 1940, to see if anyone answering to John Smart’s description had been convicted or suspected.
“There’s another thing I’d suggest,” said Nigel. “Get the Notts police to ask Smart’s mother if she had a letter from him, probably soon after getting his job at the Hall, making some reference to what happened in 1940.”
The Inspector gave Nigel his innocent, crafty, countryman’s smile.
“I’ve done that already. Seems our minds are working on the same line.”
“It seems Sir Archibald’s wasting his money sending me down here.”
Randall made him an ironic little bow. “He’s got money to burn. Don’t you worry about that, sir. And I reckon Mr. Stanford’s burning it up for him fast enough,” he added, as the roar of the racing-car engine suddenly burst out from the Hall ahead, shaking the rooks out of their trees.
Stanford wiped his hands on a piece of oily waste when he saw them entering the workshop. His brown eyes sparkled at them.
“I’ve got it!
I’ve really got the answer this time, boys! Oh, you sweet thing!” He patted the cylinder block affectionately. “Come and let’s have a drink on it.”
The weird figure of Daniel Durdle elongated itself from a bench at the far end of the workshop.
“Come on, Durdlepots,” cried his employer enthusiastically. “Pluck off that Blue Ribbon and have a small cider-and-water!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Blick, but I’m here on official business,” said the Inspector. He took the binoculars from the cardboard box he was carrying, and held them out, lying on his handkerchief, on the palms of his hands. “Do you recognize these, sir?”
“What make are they?” Stanford expelled a breath through his blackened, stumpy teeth. “Oh, lor! Look at those needles. Naughty, naughty.”
“You haven’t answered my question, sir.” The Inspector was looking coolly at Stanford like a farmer appraising fat stock.
“My dear old top, give me time. I don’t think they’re mine. There are several pairs about the place somewhere. I took up bird-watching once. But these’d be too high-powered for that, wouldn’t they?”
“I must ask you to check them presently. I want to know if a pair is missing. Would you have any objection to my men searching your workshop when they arrive? I can obtain a warrant, of course, but—”
“Only too delighted,” said Stanford, in an absurdly social tone. “Durdlepots, what have you been up to? Making infernal machines when my back was turned. Fie upon you.”
Daniel Durdle, who was stooping over the binoculars as if fascinated, gave a deferential giggle which sounded quite horrible in Nigel’s ears.
Inspector Randall’s West-Country voice burred slower still.
“Infernal machine. Ye-es. The person it was sent to was lucky not to be blinded by it.”
“I know. But Celandine is lucky.”
The Dreadful Hollow Page 8
