Murder at the Manor

by Martin Edwards

  “‘How does she know that she is the one?’ I asked. There aren’t many Aynosfordes, but I knew that there were some others.

  “To this Swarbrick maintained a discreet ambiguity. It was not for him to say, he replied, but I can see that he, like most of the natives round here, is obsessed with Aynosfordism.

  “‘And for that matter,’ I objected, ‘your mistress is scarcely entitled to the distinction. She will not really be an Aynosforde at all—only one by marriage.’

  “‘No, sir,’ he replied readily, ‘Mrs Aynosforde was also a Miss Aynosforde, sir—one of the Dorset Aynosfordes. Mr Aynosforde married his cousin.’

  “‘Oh,’ I said, ‘do the Aynosfordes often marry cousins?’

  “‘Very frequently, sir. You see, it is difficult otherwise for them to find eligible partners.’

  “Well, I saw the lady, explaining that I had not been altogether satisfied with her condition on the Tuesday. It passed, but I was not able to allude to the real business. Swarbrick, in his respectful, cast-iron way, had impressed on me that Sir Philip Bellmont must not be mentioned, assuring me that even Darrish would not venture to do so. Mrs Aynosforde was certainly a little feverish, but there was nothing the matter with her. I left, arranging to call again on the Sunday.

  “When I came to think it over, the first form it took was: Now who is playing a silly practical joke, or working a deliberate piece of mischief? But I could not get any further on those lines, because I do not know enough of the circumstances. Darrish might know, but Darrish is cruising off Spitzbergen, suffering from a nervous breakdown. The people here are amiable enough superficially, but they plainly regard me as an outsider.

  “It was then that I thought of you. From what Jarvis had told me I gathered that you were keen on a mystery for its own sake. Furthermore, though I understand that you are now something of a dook, you might not be averse to a quiet week in the country, jogging along the lanes, smoking a peaceful pipe of an evening and yarning over old times. But I was not going to lure you down and then have the thing turn out to be a ridiculous and transparent hoax, no matter how serious its consequences. I owed it to you to make some reasonable investigation myself. This I have now done.

  “On Sunday when I went there Swarbrick, with a very long face, reported that on each morning he had found the stain one step higher. The patient, needless to say, was appreciably worse. When I came down I had made up my mind.

  “‘Look here, Swarbrick,’ I said, ‘there is only one thing for it. I must sit up here to-night and see what happens.’

  “He was very dubious at first, but I believe the fellow is genuine in his attachment to the house. His final scruple melted when he learned that I should not require him to sit up with me. I enjoined absolute secrecy, and this, in a large rambling place like the Tower, is not difficult to maintain. All the maidservants had fled. The only people sleeping within the walls now, beyond those I have mentioned, are two of Mrs Aynosforde’s grandchildren (a girl and a young man whom I merely know by sight), the housekeeper and a footman. All these had retired long before the butler admitted me by an obscure little door, about half-an-hour after midnight.

  “The staircase with which we are concerned goes up from the dining hall. A much finer, more modern way ascends from the entrance hall. This earlier one, however, only gives access now to three rooms, a lovely oak-panelled chamber occupied by my patient and two small rooms, turned nowadays into a boudoir and a bathroom. When Swarbrick had left me in an easy-chair, wrapped in a couple of rugs, in a corner of the dark dining hall, I waited for half-an-hour and then proceeded to make my own preparations. Moving very quietly, I crept up the stairs, and at the top drove one drawing-pin into the lintel about a foot up, another at the same height into the baluster opposite, and across the stairs fastened a black thread, with a small bell hanging over the edge. A touch and the bell would ring, whether the thread broke or not. At the foot of the stairs I made another attachment and hung another bell.

  “‘I think, my unknown friend,’ I said, as I went back to the chair, ‘you are cut off above and below now.’

  “I won’t say that I didn’t close my eyes for a minute through the whole night, but if I did sleep it was only as a watchdog sleeps. A whisper or a creak of a board would have found me alert. As it was, however, nothing happened. At six o’clock Swarbrick appeared, respectfully solicitous about my vigil.

  “‘We’ve done it this time, Swarbrick,’ I said in modest elation. ‘Not the ghost of a ghost has appeared. The spell is broken.’

  “He had crossed the hall and was looking rather strangely at the stairs. With a very queer foreboding I joined him and followed his glance. By heavens, Wynn, there, on the sixth step up, was a bright red patch! I am not squeamish; I cleared four steps at a stride, and stooping down I dipped my finger into the stuff and felt its slippery viscidity against my thumb. There could be no doubt about it; it was the genuine thing. In my baffled amazement I looked in every direction for a possible clue to human agency. Above, more than twenty feet above, were the massive rafters and boarding of the roof itself. By my side reared a solid stone wall, and beneath was simply the room we stood in, for the space below the stairway was not enclosed.

  “I pointed to my arrangement of bells.

  “‘Nobody has gone up or down, I’ll swear,’ I said a little warmly. Between ourselves, I felt a bit of an ass for my pains, before the monumental Swarbrick.

  “‘No, sir,’ he agreed. ‘I had a similar experience myself on Saturday night.’

  “‘The deuce you did,’ I exclaimed. ‘Did you sit up then?’

  “‘Not exactly, sir,’ he replied, ‘but after making all secure at night I hung a pair of irreplaceable Dresden china cups in a similar way. They were both still intact in the morning, sir.’

  “Well, there you are. I have nothing more to say on the subject. ‘Hope not,’ you’ll be muttering. If the thing doesn’t tempt you, say no more about it. If it does, just wire a time and I’ll be at the station. Welcome isn’t the word.—Yours as of yore.

  “Jim Tulloch.

  “P.S.—Can put your man up all right.

  “J. T.”

  Carrados had “wired a time,” and he was seized on the platform by the awaiting and exuberant Tulloch and guided with elaborate carefulness to the doctor’s cart, which was, as its temporary owner explained, “knocking about somewhere in the lane outside.”

  “Splendid little horse,” he declared. “Give him a hedge to nibble at and you can leave him to look after himself for hours. Motors? He laughs at them, Wynn, merely laughs.”

  Parkinson and the luggage found room behind, and the splendid little horse shook his shaggy head and launched out for home. For a mile the conversation was a string of, “Do you ever come across Brown now?” “You know Sugden was killed flying?” “Heard of Marling only last week; he’s gone on the stage.” “By the way, that appalling ass Sanders married a girl with a pot of money and runs horses now,” and doubtless it would have continued in a similar strain to the end of the journey if an encounter with a farmer’s country trap had not interrupted its tenor.

  The lane was very narrow at that point and the driver of the trap drew into the hedge and stopped to allow the doctor to pass. There was a mutual greeting, and Tulloch pulled up also when their hubs were clear.

  “No more sheep killed, I hope?” he called back.

  “No, sir; I can’t complain that we have,” said the driver cheerfully. “But I do hear that Mr Stone, over at Daneswood, lost one last night.”

  “In the same way, do you mean?”

  “So I heard. It’s a queer business, doctor.”

  “It’s a blackguardly business. It’s a marvel what the fellow thinks he’s doing.”

  “He’ll get nabbed, never fear, sir. He’ll do it once too often.”

  “Hope so,” said the doctor. “Good-day.” He sh
ook the reins and turned to his visitor. “One of our local ‘Farmer Jarges.’ It’s part of the business to pass the time o’ day with them all and ask after the cow or the pig, if no other member of the family happens to be on the sick list.”

  “What is the blackguardly business?” asked Carrados.

  “Well, that is a bit out of the common, I’ll admit. About a week ago this man, Bailey, found one of his sheep dead in the field. It had been deliberately killed—head cut half off. It hadn’t been done for meat, because none was taken. But, curiously enough, something else had been taken. The animal had been opened and the heart and intestines were gone. What do you think of that, Wynn?”

  “Revenge, possibly.”

  “Bailey declares that he hasn’t got the shadow of an enemy in the world. His three or four labourers are quite content. Of course a thing like that makes a tremendous sensation in a place like this. You may see as many as five men talking together almost any day now. And here, on the top of it, comes another case at Stone’s. It looks like one of those outbreaks that crop up from time to time for no obvious reason and then die out again.”

  “No reason, Jim?”

  “Well, if it isn’t revenge, and if it isn’t food, what is there to be got by it?”

  “What is there to be got when an animal is killed?”

  Tulloch stared without enlightenment.

  “What is there that I am here to trace?”

  “Godfrey Dan’l, Wynn! You don’t mean to say that there is any connection between—?”

  “I don’t say it,” declared Carrados promptly. “But there is very strong reason why we should consider it. It solves a very obvious question that faces us. A pricked thumb does not produce a pool. Did you microscope it?”

  “Yes, I did. I can only say that it’s mammalian. My limited experience doesn’t carry me beyond that. Then what about the entrails, Wynn? Why take those?”

  “That raises a variety of interesting speculations certainly.”

  “It may to you. The only thing that occurs to me is that it might be a blind.”

  “A very unfortunate one, if so. A blind is intended to allay curiosity—to suggest an obvious but fictitious motive. This, on the contrary, arouses curiosity. The abstraction of a haunch of mutton would be an excellent blind. Whereas now, as you say, what about the entrails?”

  Tulloch shook his head.

  “I’ve had my shot,” he answered. “Can you suggest anything?”

  “Frankly, I can’t,” admitted Carrados.

  “On the face of it, I don’t suppose anyone short of an oracle could. Pity our local shrine has got rusty in the joints.” He levelled his whip and pointed to a distant silhouette that showed against the last few red streaks in the western sky a mile away. “You see that solitary old outpost of paganism—”

  The splendid little horse leapt forward in indignant surprise as the extended whip fell sharply across his shoulders. Tulloch’s ingenuous face seemed to have caught the rubicundity of the distant sunset.

  “I’m beastly sorry, Wynn, old man,” he muttered. “I ought to have remembered.”

  “My blindness?” contributed Carrados. “My dear chap, everyone makes a point of forgetting that. It’s quite a recognised form of compliment among friends. If it were baldness I probably should be touchy on the subject; as it’s only blindness I’m not.”

  “I’m very glad you take it so well,” said Tulloch. “I was referring to a stone circle that we have here. Perhaps you have heard of it?”

  “The Druids’ altar!” exclaimed Carrados with an inspiration. “Jim, to my everlasting shame, I had forgotten it.”

  “Oh, well, it isn’t much to look at,” confessed the practical doctor. “Now in the church there are a few decent monuments—all Aynosfordes, of course.”

  “Aynosfordes—naturally. Do you know how far that remarkable race goes back?”

  “A bit beyond Adam I should fancy,” laughed Tulloch. “Well, Darrish told me that they really can trace to somewhere before the Conquest. Some antiquarian Johnny has claimed that the foundations of Dunstan’s Tower cover a Celtic stronghold. Are you interested in that sort of thing?”

  “Intensely,” replied Carrados; “but we must not neglect other things. This gentleman who owned the unfortunate sheep, the second victim, now? How far is Daneswood away?”

  “About a mile—mile and a half at the most.”

  Carrados turned towards the back seat.

  “Do you think that in seven minutes’ time you would be able to distinguish the details of a red mark on the grass, Parkinson?”

  Parkinson took the effect of three objects, the sky above, the herbage by the roadside, and the back of his hand, and then spoke regretfully.

  “I’m afraid not, sir; not with any certainty,” he replied.

  “Then we need not trouble Mr Stone to-night,” said Carrados philosophically.

  After dinner there was the peaceful pipe that Tulloch had forecast, and mutual reminiscences until the long clock in the corner, striking the smallest hour of the morning, prompted Tulloch to suggest retirement.

  “I hope you have everything,” he remarked tentatively, when he had escorted the guest to his bedroom. “Mrs Jones does for me very well, but you are an unknown quantity to her as yet.”

  “I shall be quite all right, you may be sure,” replied Carrados, with his engagingly grateful smile. “Parkinson will already have seen to everything. We have a complete system, and I know exactly where to find anything I require.”

  Tulloch gave a final glance round.

  “Perhaps you would prefer the window closed?” he suggested.

  “Indeed I should not. It is south-west, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a south-westerly breeze to bring the news. I shall sit here for a little time.” He put his hand on the top rail of a chair with unhesitating precision and drew it to the open casement. “There are a thousand sounds that you in your arrogance of sight ignore, a thousand individual scents of hedge and orchard that come to me up here. I suppose it is quite dark to you now, Jim? What a lot you seeing people must miss!”

  Tulloch guffawed, with his hand on the door-knob.

  “Well, don’t let your passion for nocturnal nature study lead you to miss breakfast at eight. My eyes won’t, I promise you. Ta-ta.”

  He jigged off to his own room and in ten minutes was soundly asleep. But the oak clock in the room beneath marked the quarters one by one until the next hour struck, and then round the face again until the little finger stood at three, and still the blind man sat by the open window that looked out over the south-west, interpreting the multitudinous signs of the quiet life that still went on under the dark cover of the warm summer night.

  “The word lies with you, Wynn,” remarked Tulloch at breakfast the next morning—he was twelve minutes late, by the way, and found his guest interested in the titles of Dr Darrish’s excellent working library. “I am supposed to be on view here from nine to ten, and after that I am due at Abbot’s Farm somewhere about noon. With those reservations, I am at your disposal for the day.”

  “Do you happen to go anywhere near the ‘Swinefield’ on your way to Abbot’s Farm?” asked Carrados.

  “The ‘Swinefield’? Oh, the Druids’ circle. Yes, one way—and it’s as good as any other—passes the wheel-track that leads up to it.”

  “Then I should certainly like to inspect the site.”

  “There’s really nothing to see, you know,” apologised the doctor. “Only a few big rocks on end. They aren’t even chiselled smooth.”

  “I am curious,” volunteered Carrados, “to discover why fifteen stones should be called ‘The Judge and Jury.’”

  “Oh, I can explain that for you,” declared Tulloch. “Two of them are near together with a third block across the tops. That’s the Judge. Th
e twelve jurymen are scattered here and there. But we’ll go, by all means.”

  “There is a public right-of-way, I suppose?” asked Carrados, when, in due course, the trap turned from the highway into a field track.

  “I don’t know about a right,” said Tulloch, “but I imagine that anyone goes across who wants to. Of course it’s not a Stonehenge, and we have very few visitors, or the Aynosfordes might put some restrictions. As for the natives, there isn’t a man who wouldn’t sooner walk ten miles to see a five-legged calf than cross the road to look at a Phidias. And for that matter,” he added thoughtfully, “this is the first time I’ve been really up to the place myself.”

  “It’s on Aynosforde property, then?”

  “Oh yes. Most of the parish is, I believe. But this ‘Swinefield’ is part of the park. There is an oak plantation across there or Dunstan’s Tower would be in sight.”

  They had reached the gate of the enclosure. The doctor got down to open it, as he had done the former ones.

  “This is locked,” he said, coming back to the step, “but we can climb over easy enough. You can get down all right?”

  “Thanks,” replied Carrados. He descended and followed Tulloch, stopping to pat the little horse’s neck.

  “He’ll be all right,” remarked the doctor with a backward nod. “I fancy Tommy’s impressionable years must have been spent between the shafts of a butcher’s cart. Now, Wynn, how do we proceed?”

  “I should like to have your arm over this rough ground. Then if you will take me from stone to stone—”

  They paced the broken circle leisurely, Carrados judging the appearance of the remains by touch and by the answers to the innumerable questions that he put. They were approaching the most important monument, the Judge—when Tulloch gave a shout of delight.

  “Oh, the beauty!” he cried with enthusiasm. “I must see you closer. Wynn, do you mind—a minute—”