Murder at the Manor

by Martin Edwards

  As I passed out of the front door I looked at my watch. The time was three minutes to twelve. It had been twenty-one minutes to the hour within a few seconds, when I left the body. I walked back at a good pace and the journey took me about twelve minutes. In all, then, I was absent from the centre of Horne’s Copse for about half-an-hour. The importance of these figures will be apparent later.

  I am not sure what motive prompted my return alone to the spot where I had left the body. I think I wanted, in some vague way, to keep guard over it, almost as if it might run away if left to itself. Anyhow I certainly had the feeling, as I had mentioned to Gotley, that this time I would take no chances.

  I had my torch with me now and I turned it on as I reached the copse. It threw a powerful beam and as I turned the corner on to the straight I directed the light along to the further end. The whole dozen yards of straight path was thus illuminated, the undergrowth at the sides and the dense green foliage beyond the twist at the end. But that was all. Of Frank’s body there was no sign.

  Incredulously I hurried forward, thinking that I must have been mistaken in my bearings; the body must have lain round the further corner. But neither round the corner was there any sign of it, nor anywhere along the path right to the further edge of the copse. Filled with horror, I retraced my steps, sweeping the surface of the ground with my beam. It was as I feared. Again there was not even a litter of spent matches to show where I had knelt by Frank’s remains.

  In the middle of the path I halted, dazed with nameless alarm. Was my reason going? The thing was fantastic, inexplicable. If I had had my suspicions about the reality of my former experience, I had none concerning this one. I knew there had been a body; I knew I had handled it, physically and materially; I knew it was Frank’s—Frank who was supposed to be that moment in Rome. I knew all these things as well as I knew my own name, but…But the alternative simply did not bear thinking about.

  But for all that, hallucinations…

  And yet I felt as sane as ever I had been in my life. There must be some ordinary, simple, logical explanation…

  I was still trying to find it when the police and Gotley arrived together.

  I turned to meet them. “It’s gone!” I shouted. “Would you believe it, but the damned thing’s gone again. I saw him as plainly as I see you, with the dagger in his chest and the blood all round the wound—I touched him! And now there isn’t a sign that he was ever there at all. Damn it, the very matches have disappeared too.” I laughed, for really if you looked at it one way, the thing was just absurd.

  Sergeant Afford eyed me austerely. “Is that so, sir?” he said, in his most wooden voice.

  He was going to say more, but Gotley brushed him aside and took me by the arm.

  “That’s all right, Chappell, old man,” he said, very soothingly. “Don’t you worry about it any more tonight. I’m going to take you home and fill you up with bromide and tomorrow we’ll go into it properly.”

  Gotley thought I was mad, of course. After all it was only to be expected.

  Chapter VI

  “Ought I to marry, then?” I asked drearily. I had been trying for some minutes to summon up the courage to put this question.

  It was the next evening and Gotley and I had been talking for over an hour. He had succeeded in convincing me. I had seen nothing, felt nothing, imagined everything. To pacify me he had telegraphed that morning to Frank in Rome; the answer, facetiously couched, had left no room for doubt.

  Gotley had been perfectly open with me during the last hour. It was better, he said, to face this sort of thing frankly. The thing was not serious; I must have been overworking, or suffering from nervous strain of some kind. If I took things easily for a bit these hallucinations would disappear and probably never return. Above all, I must not brood over them.

  “Ought I to marry, then, Gotley?” I repeated.

  “Oh dear, yes. In time. No need to hurry about it.”

  “You mean, not in September?”

  “Well, perhaps not quite so soon. But later, oh, yes.”

  “Is it fair? I mean, if there are children.”

  “My dear chap,” Gotley said with great cheerfulness, “it’s nothing as bad as that. Nothing but a temporary phase.”

  “I shall tell Sylvia.”

  “Ye-es,” he agreed, though a little doubtfully. “Yes, you could tell Miss Rigby; but let me have a word with her too. And look here, why not go away somewhere with her and her mother for a bit of a holiday? That’s what you want. Drugs can’t do anything for you, but a holiday, with the right companionship, might do everything.”

  And so, the next day, it was arranged.

  I told Sylvia everything. She, of course, was her own loyal self and at first refused to believe a word of Gotley’s diagnosis. If I thought I had seen a body, then a body I had seen, and felt, and examined. Even Frank’s facetious telegram did not shake her. But her private talk with Gotley did, a little. She was not convinced, but she went so far as to say that there might be something in it, conceivably. In any case there was no reason why I should not have a holiday with herself and her mother, if that was what everyone seemed to want; but neither Sir Henry nor Lady Rigby were to be told a word about anything else. To this, though somewhat reluctantly, I agreed.

  Nevertheless, rumours of course arose. Not that Gotley said a word, but I cannot think that Sergeant Afford was so discreet. When we got back, in August, from Norway, I was not long in gathering, from the curious looks which everywhere greeted me, that some at any rate of the cat had escaped from its bag.

  I saw Gotley at once and he expressed his satisfaction with my condition. “You’ll be all right now,” he predicted confidently. “I shouldn’t go to that place at night for a bit yet, but you’d be all right now really, in any case.”

  A couple of days later I had a letter from Frank. It was in answer to one I had written him from Norway, asking him, just as a matter of curiosity, exactly what he had been doing just before midnight on the 3rd of July, as I had had rather a strange dream about him just at that time. He apologised for not having answered earlier, but the hotel in Rome had been slow in forwarding my letter, which had only just now caught him up in Vienna, from which town his own letter was written. So far as he could remember, he was just coming out of a theatre in Rome at the time I mentioned: was that what I wanted? My recovery had been so far complete that I could smile at a couple of very typical spelling mistakes and then dismiss the matter from my mind.

  That was on the 9th August. The next morning was a blazing day, the sort of shimmering, cloudless day that one always associates with the month of August and, about once in three years, really gets. I made a leisurely breakfast, read the newspaper for a little and then set off to keep an appointment with a farmer, a tenant of mine, concerning the re-roofing of his barn. The farm adjoined the Bucklands estate and lay about three miles away by road, but little over a mile if one cut through Horne’s Copse. It was a little hot for walking and I had intended to take the Dover, but a message reached me from the garage that something had gone mysteriously wrong with the carburetor and a new float would have to be obtained before I could take her out. Rather welcoming the necessity for exercise, I set off on foot.

  As I approached Horne’s Copse I reflected how complete my recovery must be, for instead of feeling the slightest reluctance to pass through it I positively welcomed its prospect of cool green shade. Strolling along, my thoughts on the coming interview and as far as they well could be from the unhappy memories that the place held for me, I turned the last corner which hid from me the little length of straight path which had played so sinister a part in those memories—even, I think, whistling a little tune.

  Then the tune froze abruptly on my lips and the warmth of the day was lost in the icy sweat of sheer terror which broke out all over me. For there at my feet, incredibly, impossibly, lay the body of Frank, t
he blood slowly oozing round the dagger that projected from his heart.

  This time I stayed to make no examination. In utter panic I took to my heels and ran. Whither, or with what idea, I had no notion. My one feeling was to get away from the place and as soon and as quickly as possible.

  Actually I came to my senses in a train, bound for London, with a first-class ticket clutched in my hand. How I had got there I had no conception but the vaguest. It had been a blind flight.

  Fortunately the compartment was an empty one and I was able to take measures to control the trembling of my limbs before trying to take stock of the situation. I was not cured, then. Far from it. What was I to do?

  One thing I determined. I would stay a few days in London now that I was already on the way there and, when I felt sufficiently recovered to tell my story coherently, consult some experienced alienist. Obviously I was no longer a case for Gotley.

  It was no doubt (as I reflected in a strangely detached way), a part of my mania that I did not go to my usual hotel, where I was known, but sought out the most obscure one I could find. In an effort to shake off my obsession and complete the process of calming myself I turned after the meal into a dingy little cinema and tried to concentrate for three hours on the inanities displayed on the screen.

  “Shocking murder in a wood!” screamed a newsboy almost in my ear, as I stood blinking in the sunlight outside again. Mechanically I felt for a copper and gave it to him. It was in a wood that I had seen…

  And it was an account of the finding of Frank’s body that I read there and then, on the steps of that dingy cinema—Frank who had been found that morning in Horne’s Copse with a dagger in his heart.

  “The police,” concluded the brief account, “state that they would be grateful if the dead man’s cousin, Mr. Hugh Chappell, who was last seen boarding the 11.19 train to London, would put himself in touch with them as soon as possible.”

  Chapter VII

  I turned and began to walk quickly, but quite aimlessly, along the pavement. The one idea in my mind at the moment was that nobody should guess, from any anxiety I might display, that I was the notorious Hugh Chappell with whom the police wished to get in touch as soon as possible. It never occurred to me to doubt that I was notorious, that my name was already on everyone’s lips and that not merely every policeman but even every private citizen was eagerly looking for me. Such is the effect of seeing one’s name, for the first time, in a public news sheet.

  By and by my mind recovered from this temporary obsession and I began to think once more. So this time my hallucination had not been a hallucination at all. Frank had been killed—murdered, almost certainly: it was his body I had seen that morning. But what, then, of the two previous times I had seen that same body and even handled it? Or so I had fancied at the time. Obviously they were not the meaningless delusions that Gotley and, finally, I myself, had believed them to be; they really were definite pre-visions of the real event. It was most extraordinary.

  In any case, be that as it might, my own immediate action was clear. I must return at once to Ravendean and offer Sergeant Afford any help in my power.

  It did not take me much over half-an-hour to ring up my hotel, cancel my room and make my way to Paddington. There I found that a train was luckily due to start in ten minutes and, having taken my ticket, I strolled to the bookstall to see if any later edition with fuller details was yet on sale. As I approached the stall I noticed a figure standing in front of it which looked familiar to me. The man turned his head and I recognised him at once as a fellow who had been on my staircase at Oxford, though I had never known him well: his name was Sheringham and I had heard of him during the last few years as a successful novelist with an increasing reputation, Roger Sheringham.

  I had not the least wish, at the present juncture, to waste time renewing old acquaintances, but as the man was now staring straight at me I could hardly do less than nod, with what pleasantness I could muster and greet him by name.

  His response surprised me enormously. “Hullo, Hugo!” he said warmly, indeed with a familiarity I resented considering that we had never been on terms of anything but surnames before. “Come and have a drink.” And he actually took me by the arm.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, a little stiffly, “I have a train to catch.” And I endeavoured to release myself.

  “Nonsense!” he said loudly. “Plenty of time for a quick one.” I was going to reply somewhat peremptorily when, to my astonishment, he added in a hissing sort of whisper without moving his lips: “Come on, you damned fool.”

  I allowed him to lead me away from the bookstall, completely bewildered.

  “Phew!” he muttered, when we had gone about thirty yards. “That was a close shave. Don’t look round. That man in the grey suit who was just coming up on the left is a Scotland Yard man.”

  “Indeed?” I said, interested but perplexed. “Looking for someone, you mean?”

  “Yes,” Sheringham said shortly. “You. One of a dozen in this very station at this very minute. Let’s get out—if we can!”

  I was surprised to hear that so many detectives were actually looking for me. Evidently the police considered my evidence of the first importance. I wondered how Sheringham knew and asked him.

  “Oh, I’m in touch with those people,” he said carelessly. “Lord,” he added, more to himself than to me, “I wish I knew what to do with you now I’ve got you.”

  “Well,” I smiled, “I’m afraid you can’t do anything at the moment. If you’re in touch with Scotland Yard, you’ll have heard about my poor cousin?” He nodded and I explained my intentions.

  “I thought so,” he nodded, “seeing you here. Well, that confirms my own opinion.”

  “What opinion?”

  “Oh, nothing. Now look here, Chappell, I don’t want you to take this train. There’s another a couple of hours later which will do you just as well; there’s no particular urgency so far as you’re concerned. In the interval, I want you to come back with me to my rooms at the Albany.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I want to talk to you—or rather, hear you talk. And I may say I was about to travel down to your place by that same train for just that purpose.”

  This was the most surprising news I had yet received. I demurred, however, at missing the train, but Sheringham was so insistent that at last I agreed to accompany him.

  “We’d better get a taxi, then,” I remarked with, I fear, no very good grace.

  “No,” Sheringham retorted. “We’ll go by tube.”

  And by tube we went.

  Sheringham took me into a very comfortable paneled sitting-room and we sat down in two huge leather armchairs.

  “Now,” he said, “don’t think me impertinent, Chappell, or mysterious, and remember that I’m not only in touch with Scotland Yard but I have on occasions even worked with them. I want you to tell me, from beginning to end, in as much detail as you can, your story of this extraordinary business of your cousin’s death. And believe me, it’s entirely in your own interests that I ask you to do so, though for the present you must take that on trust.”

  The request seemed to me highly irregular, but Sheringham appeared to attach such importance to it that I did, in fact, comply. I told him the whole thing.

  “I see,” he said. “Thank you. And you proposed to go down and give the police what help you could. Very proper. Now I’ll tell you something, Chappell. What do you think they want you for? Your help? Not a bit of it. They want you in order to arrest you, for killing your cousin.”

  “What!” I could only gasp.

  “I have it from their own lips. Shall I tell you what the police theory is? That your two false alarms were the results of hallucinations, which left you with the delusion that you had a divine mission to kill your cousin and that, meeting him accidentally in the flesh in that same place you, under the
influence of this mania, actually did kill him.”

  Chapter VIII

  For a minute or two Sheringham’s revelation of this hideous suggestion left me quite speechless with horror. I was beginning to stammer out a repudiation when he waved me into silence.

  “My dear chap, it’s all right: I don’t believe anything of the sort. I never did and now I’ve seen and talked to you I do still less. You’re not mad. No, I’m convinced the business isn’t so simple as all that. In fact, I think there’s something pretty devilish behind it. That’s why I was on my way down to try to find you before the police did and ask you if I could look into things for you.”

  “Good heavens,” I could only mutter, “I’d be only too grateful if you would. I’ve no wish to end my days in a madhouse. This is really terrible. Have you any ideas at all?”

  “Only that those first two occasions were no more delusions than the last. You did see something that you were meant to see—either your cousin or somebody made up to resemble his. And the plot which I’m quite certain exists is evidently aimed against you as well as against your cousin. For some reason a certain person or persons do want you locked up in an asylum. At least, that seems the only possible explanation, with the result that the police are thinking exactly what they have been meant to think. Now, can you tell me of anyone who would benefit if you were locked up in a madhouse?”

  “No one,” I said in bewilderment. “But Sheringham, how can it possibly be a deliberate plot? It was only by the merest chance on all those three occasions that I went through Horne’s Copse at all. Nobody could possibly have foreseen it.”

  “Are you sure? On each occasion, you remember, you had to pass from one point to another, with Horne’s Copse as the nearest route, provided you were on foot. And on each occasion, you also remember, your car just happened to be out of action. You think that’s coincidence? I don’t.”

  “You mean—you think my car had been tampered with?”

  “I intend to have a word or two with your chauffeur; but I’m ready to bet a thousand pounds here and now what the implications of his answers will be—though doubtless he won’t realise it himself. What sort of a man is he, by the way? Sound?”