‘The figures!’ muttered Bolsover, wondering.
‘Yes,’ replied Mr. Minn, and proceeded to copy them carefully from the page to the stone, thus:
‘It is strange,’ said Mr. Minn, adding a touch to the ‘3’, ‘that the truth did not strike us at once. It did not come to me till early this morning. And yet, once we make allowance for the penmanship of a man dying quickly and in pain, struggling to write in the dark, the thing becomes as plain as day.’
‘Not to me,’ said Bolsover thickly; ‘but, as you know, I am worn out and—’
‘Only a minute more,’ said Mr. Minn gently. ‘I want just to tell you that those marks were not figures at all.’
‘Then I’m blind.’
‘We were all blind, but now we see clearly. Observe that “1” and that “3”; note how they are rather close together. But bring them quite together and we have a “B”.’ Mr. Minn drew a sprawling ‘B’ on the dial. ‘Then the nought becomes an “O”, and what we took for a six is really an “L”—see, I put them down after the “B”—and what might well pass for an eight must now be accepted as an “S”—so! Then we have another “O”, and, next, the greater part of a “V”—and there the nib broke, or the hand failed. But surely—surely enough is there, Mr. Wingard, to show you your cousin’s last thought, or message.’
On the dial, written in scarlet by Mr. Minn, appeared these two lines:
Over the face of Bolsover, gazing dumbly thereon, came a greyish shadow.
Mr. Minn, watching narrowly, raised his left hand as with an effort, while his own countenance paled.
Followed what seemed a long silence. Then, all at once, Bolsover lifted up his face, a dreadful, hunted look in his eyes. His gaze sought the gap in the upper hedge, then fled round to the gap in the lower. In each gap stood a burly man, a stranger.
The curate wiped his eyes.
‘My friend,’ he said softly, ‘I will pray for you.’
The Horror at
Staveley Grange
Sapper
“Sapper” was the pen-name used by Herman Cyril McNeile (1888–1937). McNeile was a soldier who was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1907, and fought at Ypres and the Somme; he was awarded the Military Cross in 1916. He began to write fiction during the First World War, using a pseudonym because officers on active service were not allowed to publish under their own name. In 1920, he created Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond, who became a popular action hero in a series of thrillers. McNeile had been gassed during the war, and was plagued by ill health; he died of cancer while still quite young.
“The Horror at Staveley Grange” is a rather unexpected piece of work. A personal favourite of the author, this story does not conform to the stereotypical portrayal of Sapper as a crude “blood and thunder” merchant. This is a detective story in the classic mould, offering a well-constructed “impossible crime” puzzle. Drummond is absent, and the mystery is solved by Sapper’s second-string hero, Ronald Standish.
***
I
‘A fact pointing in a certain direction is just a fact: two pointing in the same direction become a coincidence: three—and you begin to get into the regions of certainty. But you must be very sure of your facts.’
Thus ran Ronald Standish’s favourite dictum: and it was the astonishing skill with which he seemed to be able to sort out the facts that mattered from the mass of irrelevant detail, and having sorted them out, to interpret them correctly, that had earned him his reputation as a detective of quite unusual ability.
There is no doubt that had he been under the necessity of earning his own livelihood, he would have risen to a very high position at Scotland Yard; or, if he had chosen to set up on his own, that his career would have been assured. But not being under any such necessity, his gifts were known only to a small circle of friends and acquaintances. Moreover, he was apt to treat the matter as rather a joke—as an interesting recreation more than a serious business. He regarded it in much the same light as solving a chess problem or an acrostic.
In appearance he was about as unlike the conventional detective as it is possible to be. Of medium height, he was inclined to be thick-set. His face was ruddy, with a short, closely-clipped moustache—and in his eyes there shone a perpetual twinkle. In fact most people on first meeting him took him for an Army officer. He was a first-class man to hounds, and an excellent shot; a cricketer who might easily have become first class had he devoted enough time to it, and a scratch golfer. And last, but not least, he was a man of very great personal strength without a nerve in his body.
This, then, was the man who sat opposite to me in a first-class carriage of a Great Western express on the way to Devonshire. On the spur of the moment that morning, I had rung him up at his club in London—on the spur of the moment he had thrown over a week’s cricket, and arranged to come with me to Exeter. And now that we were actually in the train, I began to wonder if I had brought him on a wild-goose chase. I took the letter out of my pocket—the letter that had been the cause of our journey, and read it through once again.
‘Dear Tony,’ it ran; ‘I am perfectly distracted with worry and anxiety. I don’t know whether you saw it in the papers, and it’s such ages since we met, but I’m engaged to Billy Mansford. And we’re in the most awful trouble. Haven’t you got a friend or someone you once told me about who solves mysteries and things? Do, for pity’s sake, get hold of him and bring him down here to stay. I’m nearly off my head with it all.—Your distracted Molly.’
I laid the letter on my knee and stared out of the window. Somehow or other I couldn’t picture pretty little Molly Tremayne, the gayest and most feckless girl in the world, as being off her head over anything. And having only recently returned from Brazil I had not heard of her engagement—nor did I know anything about the man she was engaged to. But as I say, I rang up Standish on the spur of the moment, and a little to my surprise he had at once accepted.
He leant over at that moment and took the letter off my knee.
‘The Old Hall,’ he remarked thoughtfully. Then he took a big-scale ordnance map from his pocket and began to study it.
‘Three miles approximately from Staveley Grange.’
‘Staveley Grange,’ I said, staring at him. ‘What has Staveley Grange got to do with the matter?’
‘I should imagine—everything,’ he answered. ‘You’ve been out of the country, Tony, and so you’re a bit behind-hand. But you may take it from me that it was not the fact that your Molly was distracted that made me give up an excellent I.Z. tour. It was the fact that she is engaged to Mr. William Mansford.’
‘Never heard of him,’ I said. ‘Who and what is he?’
‘He is the younger and only surviving son of the late Mr. Robert Mansford,’ he answered thoughtfully. ‘Six months ago the father was alive—also Tom, the elder son. Five months ago the father died; two months ago Tom died. And the circumstances of their deaths were, to put it mildly, peculiar.’
‘Good heavens!’ I cried, ‘this is all news to me.’
‘Probably,’ he answered. ‘The matter attracted very little attention. But you know my hobby, and it was the coincidence of the two things that attracted my attention. I only know, of course, what appeared in the papers—and that wasn’t very much. Mansford senior and both his sons had apparently spent most of their lives in Australia. The two boys came over with the Anzacs, and a couple of years or so after the war they all decided to come back to England. And so he bought Staveley Grange. He had gone a poor man of distinctly humble origin: he returned as a wealthy Australian magnate. Nine months after he stepped into the house he was found dead in his bed in the morning by the butler. He was raised up on his pillows and he was staring fixedly at a top corner of the room by one of the windows. And in his hand he held the speaking tube which communicated with the butler’s room. A post-mortem revealed nothing, and the verdict was t
hat he had died of heart failure. In view of the fact that most people do die of heart failure, the verdict was fairly safe.’
Ronald Standish lit a cigarette.
‘That was five months ago. Two months ago, one of the footmen coming in in the morning was horrified to find Tom sprawling across the rail at the foot of the bed—stone dead. He had taken over his father’s room, and had retired the previous night in the best of health and spirits. Again there was a post-mortem—again nothing was revealed. And again the same verdict was given—heart failure. Of course, the coincidence was commented on in the press, but there the matter rested, at any rate as far as the newspapers were concerned. And therefore that is as much as I know. This letter looks as if further developments were taking place.’
‘What an extraordinary affair,’ I remarked, as he finished. ‘What sort of men physically were the father and Tom?’
‘According to the papers,’ answered Standish, ‘they were two singularly fine specimens. Especially Tom.’
Already we were slowing down for Exeter, and we began gathering our suitcases and coats preparatory to alighting. I leant out of the window as we ran into the station, having wired Molly our time of arrival, and there she was sure enough, with a big, clean-cut man standing beside her, who, I guessed, must be her fiancé. So, in fact, it proved, and a moment or two later we all walked out of the station together towards the waiting motor car. And it was as I passed the ticket collector that I got the first premonition of trouble. Two men standing on the platform, who looked like well-to-do farmers, whispered together a little significantly as Mansford passed them, and stared after him with scarcely veiled hostility in their eyes.
On the way to the Old Hall, I studied him under cover of some desultory conversation with Molly. He was a typical Australian of the best type: one of those open-air, clear-eyed men who came over in their thousands to Gallipoli and France. But it seemed to me that his conversation with Ronald was a little forced; underlying it was a vague uneasiness—a haunted fear of something or other. And I thought he was studying my friend with a kind of desperate hope tinged with disappointment, as if he had been building on Ronald’s personality and now was unsatisfied.
That some such idea was in Molly’s mind I learned as we got out of the car. For a moment or two we were alone, and she turned to me with a kind of desperate eagerness.
‘Is he very clever, Tony—your friend? Somehow I didn’t expect him to look quite like that!’
‘You may take it from me, Molly,’ I said reassuringly, ‘that there are very few people in Europe who can see further into a brick wall than Ronald. But he knows nothing of course, as to what the trouble is—any more than I do. And you mustn’t expect him to work miracles.’
‘Of course not,’ she answered. ‘But oh! Tony—it’s—it’s—damnable.’
We went into the house and joined Standish and Mansford, who were in the hall.
‘You’d like to go up to your rooms,’ began Molly, but Ronald cut her short with a grave smile.
‘I think, Miss Tremayne,’ he said quietly, ‘that it will do you both good to get this little matter off your chests as soon as possible. Bottling things up is no good, and there’s some time yet before dinner.’
The girl gave him a quick smile of gratitude and led the way across the hall.
‘Let’s go into the billiard room,’ she said. ‘Daddy is pottering round the garden, and you can meet him later. Now, Bill,’ she continued, when we were comfortably settled, ‘tell Mr. Standish all about it.’
‘Right from the very beginning, please,’ said Ronald, stuffing an empty pipe in his mouth. ‘The reasons that caused your father to take Staveley Grange and everything.’
Bill Mansford gave a slight start.
‘You know something about us already then.’
‘Something,’ answered Ronald briefly. ‘I want to know all.’
‘Well,’ began the Australian, ‘I’ll tell you all I know. But there are many gaps I can’t fill in. When we came back from Australia two years ago, we naturally gravitated to Devonshire. My father came from these parts, and he wanted to come back after his thirty years’ absence. Of course he found everything changed, but he insisted on remaining here and we set about looking for a house. My father was a wealthy man—very wealthy, and his mind was set on getting something good. A little pardonable vanity perhaps—but having left England practically penniless to return almost a millionaire—he was determined to get what he wanted regardless of cost. And it was after we had been here about six months that Staveley Grange came quite suddenly on to the market. It happened in rather a peculiar way. Some people of the name of Bretherton had it, and had been living there for about three years. They had bought it, and spent large sums of money on it; introduced a large number of modern improvements, and at the same time preserved all the old appearance. Then, as I say, quite suddenly, they left the house and threw it on the market.
‘Well, it was just what we wanted. We all went over it, and found it even more perfect than we had anticipated. The man who had been butler to the Brethertons was in charge, and when we went over, he and his wife were living there alone. We tried to pump them as to why the Brethertons had gone, but they appeared to know no more than we did. The butler—Templeton—was a charming old bird with side-whiskers; his wife, who had been doing cook, was a rather timorous-looking little woman—but a damned good cook.
‘Anyway, the long and short of it was, we bought the place. The figure was stiff, but my father could afford it. And it was not until we bought it, that we heard in a roundabout way the reason of the Brethertons’ departure. It appeared that old Mrs. Bretherton woke up one night in screaming hysterics, and alleged that a dreadful thing was in the room with her. What it was she wouldn’t say, except to babble foolishly about a shining, skinny hand that had touched her. Her husband and various maids came rushing in, and of course the room was empty. There was nothing there at all. The fact of it was that the old lady had had lobster for dinner—and a nightmare afterwards. At least,’ added Mansford slowly, ‘that’s what we thought at the time.’
He paused to light a cigarette.
‘Well—we gathered that nothing had been any good. Templeton proved a little more communicative once we were in, and from him we found out, that in spite of every argument and expostulation on the part of old Bretherton, the old lady flatly refused to live in the house for another minute. She packed up her boxes and went off the next day with her maid to some hotel in Exeter, and nothing would induce her to set foot inside the house again. Old Bretherton was livid.’
Mansford smiled grimly.
‘But—he went, and we took the house. The room that old Mrs. Bretherton had had was quite the best bedroom in the house, and my father decided to use it as his own. He came to that decision before we knew anything about this strange story, though even if we had, he’d still have used the room. My father was not the man to be influenced by an elderly woman’s indigestion and subsequent nightmare. And when bit by bit we heard the yarn, he merely laughed, as did my brother and myself.
‘And then one morning it happened. It was Templeton who broke the news to us with an ashen face, and his voice shaking so that we could hardly make out what he said. I was shaving at the time, I remember, and when I’d taken in what he was trying to say, I rushed along the passage to my father’s room with the soap still lathered on my chin. The poor old man was sitting up in bed propped against the pillows. His left arm was flung half across his face as if to ward off something that was coming: his right hand was grasping the speaking-tube beside the bed. And in his wide-open, staring eyes was a look of dreadful terror.’
He paused as if waiting for some comment or question, but Ronald still sat motionless, with his empty pipe in his mouth. And after a while Mansford continued:
‘There was a post-mortem, as perhaps you may have seen in the papers, and they found my f
ather had died from heart failure. But my father’s heart, Mr. Standish, was as sound as mine, and neither my brother nor I were satisfied. For weeks he and I sat up in that room, taking it in turns to go to sleep, to see if we could see anything—but nothing happened. And at last we began to think that the verdict was right, and that the poor old man had died of natural causes. I went back to my own room, and Tom—my brother—stayed on in my father’s room. I tried to dissuade him, but he was an obstinate fellow, and he had an idea that if he slept there alone he might still perhaps get to the bottom of it. He had a revolver by his side, and Tom was a man who could hit the pip out of the ace of diamonds at ten yards. Well, for a week nothing happened. And then one night I stayed chatting with him for a few moments in his room before going to bed. That was the last time I saw him alive. One of the footmen came rushing in to me the next morning, with a face like a sheet—and before he spoke I knew what must have happened. It was perhaps a little foolish of me—but I dashed past him while he was still stammering at the door—and went to my brother’s room.’
‘Why foolish?’ said Standish quietly.
‘Some people at the inquest put a false construction on it,’ answered Mansford steadily. ‘They wanted to know why I made that assumption before the footman told me.’
‘I see,’ said Standish. ‘Go on.’
‘I went into the room, and there I found him. In one hand he held the revolver, and he was lying over the rail at the foot of the bed. The blood had gone to his head, and he wasn’t a pretty sight. He was dead, of course—and once again the post-mortem revealed nothing. He also was stated to have died of heart failure. But he didn’t, Mr. Standish.’ Mansford’s voice shook a little. ‘As there’s a God above, I swear Tom never died of heart failure. Something happened in that room—something terrible occurred there which killed my father and brother as surely as a bullet through the brain. And I’ve got to find out what it was: I’ve got to, you understand—because’—and here his voice faltered for a moment, and then grew steady again—‘because there are quite a number of people who suspect me of having murdered them both.’
Murder at the Manor Page 20
