I tried my best to get out of her whether there could be any other reason for Ashmore’s disappearance; anything not connected with Father’s death. Mrs. Ashmore seemed to have an idea that he had gone away because of that, though exactly why she could not or would not say. She declared that he had no reason for leaving, nothing to do with his home or business. She maintained for a long time that she hadn’t the faintest idea where he had gone, but at last she told me that there was some place he had talked about last night, after he began “to get in a state,” a place he had often talked about before. He had been there on a day trip in his youth and he always said it was the most beautiful place in the world but she could never get him to take her there. Sometimes she was doubtful whether it ever existed, except that other people had talked of going there. She couldn’t make out what he saw in it, for he admitted that it wasn’t the seaside and there was no promenade, but just some ruins. Last night he had said he’d like to see that place again, for the last time, he had always promised himself that he’s see that place again. Could she remember the name of it? She didn’t think so; she wasn’t good at remembering names, but Ada might know. She went to consult her invalid daughter and returned with the information that it was “Tinnun.”
Considering the ruins and Mrs. Ashmore’s slurred Bristol accent, I suggested Tintern and she thought that might be it.
“Though, mind you,” she insisted, “I don’t say he’s gone there. There’s no sense in it, to me, an’ it’d cost a fair sight, though they run trips in the summer.”
Then she seemed suddenly anxious as to whether she had done wrong in giving away this clue. What was I going to do? Was I sure no harm could come to him through what she had told me?
I told her I was dead sure that Ashmore had no reason for bolting, but I thought he was run-down and in a very nervy state and must have imagined something which was preying on his mind. Mrs. Ashmore agreed that he hadn’t been at all himself for some time and was “suffering with his nerves” through worry over bad business and her own illness, about which she began a detailed history. I managed to head her off and told her that if Ashmore came back, or she got news of him, she was to telephone to Flaxmere at once and ask to speak to me. We would do all we could to find him, I assured her. “You won’t put those police on to him, will you, Miss?” she implored, and I promised that I wouldn’t, with some doubt about whether I could fully keep the promise.
The visit of the policemen in plain clothes hadn’t been mentioned, except for a vague reference by Mrs. Ashmore to “people who come nosing round for no good purpose.”
I began to say good-bye and she wanted to know how I was getting home, so I told her the car was round the corner and she came along the street with me. When we got to the corner we saw the car a few yards away, with Bingham sitting at the wheel. Mrs. Ashmore looked hard at him and then plunged forward in a sort of half run. Bingham saw me and got out to open the door, so Mrs. Ashmore caught him on the pavement.
“So it’s you, Mr. Bingham! And so I thought!” she raged at him shrilly. “An’ I’d like to know what you have to say for yourself, you who took away my husband’s job and now you’ve taken away his senses, you with your cock-and-bull tales, whatever they may be, that have sent him, as good a husband and as good a father as ever there was, off to goodness knows where.”
People passing by on the pavement were beginning to stare and pause to see what was going on. I got quickly into the car. Bingham behaved very well, saying he was sorry if anything had happened to Ashmore but he knew nothing about it, and so on. He didn’t lose his temper but answered her quietly and then got into his driving seat. I opened a window and asked what was the matter.
“Just you ask him!” she cried. “Ask Mr. Bingham! Ask him what he told my poor husband on Boxing Day! That’s what I’d like to know!”
I dreaded being involved in a scene in the street and I thought the woman had lost her senses and was putting the blame on Bingham because probably she had always felt bitter about him since he got her husband’s job at Flaxmere. I assured her that Bingham had nothing to do with the affair and implored her not to get so upset about it or to jump to conclusions too quickly. Then I told Bingham to drive on and we left Mrs. Ashmore standing on the pavement, shaking her head of straggling hair.
When we were clear of Bristol again, Bingham drew up and said he would like to explain what Mrs. Ashmore had meant, before we got back to Flaxmere. So I went and sat in the front and we drove on.
He told me that yesterday—Boxing Day—he had to drive Mr. Crewkerne, the solicitor, from Twaybrooks back to Bristol and after dropping him Bingham decided to call at Ashmore’s house and break the news to him. Bingham explained that it was hardly at all out of his way and although Colonel Halstock had instructed him to return to Flaxmere at once he thought there was no harm in stopping for a moment. The Ashmores, he realized, wouldn’t have heard what had happened at Flaxmere and he thought he could save them the shock of reading it in the papers next day. Bingham said he was rather “come for” at the way Ashmore received the news. “All broke up, he was, seemed to take it to ’eart somethink orful. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man ’as done isself a mischief.”
“But why?” I asked. “Even if he were upset at hearing of Father’s death, I don’t see why he should behave like that.”
Bingham said mysteriously, “There’s no knowin’ what a person’ll do,” and I could get no more out of him. He was worried about his own position. He had disobeyed Colonel Halstock’s orders because he thought it would be a kindness to old Ashmore to break the news gently to him and he had never dreamt that his visit would cause such a to-do. He understood that the police now wanted to get hold of Ashmore and if they found out that Bingham had seen him just before he went away, Bingham would be for it, he was afraid. He would take it as a great favour if I could forget to mention to Colonel Halstock that Bingham had ever been there. He reasoned very ingeniously that it was simply the news of Father’s death which had sent old Ashmore off the deep end, and if Bingham hadn’t happened to deliver that news the day before, Ashmore would have got it from the papers this morning, so his visit was really of no importance.
I wasn’t going to make any promises to Bingham, but I decided that I wouldn’t bring him in to the story at all if I could avoid it. I did tell him, however, that the police didn’t really want to get hold of Ashmore, not in the way he implied. They had wanted an explanation of why he was at Flaxmere, but they understood now that he had a perfectly good reason for coming and it was Carol and I who were anxious to find him because we were worried about him, though we were perfectly certain that he had nothing to do with what had happened or any knowledge about it.
Bingham replied that he would venture to suggest that we left any search for Ashmore to the police, who knew how to manage things. It mightn’t be a very nice business for young ladies to mix themselves up in.
I don’t quite know what he was implying and thought it was rather cheek of him, though I suppose Ashmore’s behaviour did look so queer that no one could be blamed for suspecting him of at least some guilty knowledge.
Chapter Nineteen
Carol and Oliver
by Col. Halstock
While Jennifer was driving to Bristol I talked to Philip Cheriton. He is a shortish, rather stocky young fellow, generally a bit untidy in his dress, although he had shown enough respect to the mourning atmosphere of the house to appear in a grey suit in place of his usual sloppy flannel trousers and sports coats. He wears his hair too long and has an irritating habit of twirling a lock between his fingers and then leaving it on end.
He blurted out as soon as he came into the room, without waiting for me to say anything, “I know I’m in a deuced awkward position, Colonel! What I mean to say is, it’s quite obvious to anyone that this clears the ground a lot for Jenny and me. I’m sorry I didn’t spill the whole story to you right away on
Wednesday evening, but as I wasn’t in the business at all I thought it didn’t matter a row of beans to anyone just where I was that afternoon. I thought you’d have the fellow by the heels in no time.”
I told him, pretty severely, that we had small chance of clearing up the affair until people in the house told us the truth.
“Oh, of course; I see that now. I’m ready to come clean. I was sitting in Jenny’s room, talking to Carol, trying to persuade her to be an accomplice—in our plans for eloping, you know!”
I questioned him, but his story was simple. He left the library with the others and gave Clare, George’s youngest child, a pick-a-back round the hall. That led to some words with Patricia, who thought he was exciting the child too much, and he talked to her for a bit, or rather listened to her exposition of the right way to treat children, to put her in a good humour again. He saw Santa Klaus go out of the door at the back and he saw Carol run after him and then Santa Klaus returned with crackers and he pulled some of these with the children. When all the cracker-pulling was over and he had helped Kit to get his train running, he looked round for Carol, thinking this might be the opportunity to have a quiet word with her. He didn’t see her and it occurred to him that she hadn’t come back to the hall, so he went off to see what she was up to. The natural place to look was in Jenny’s room, since the door was so near the door of the hall through which he had seen her go.
There she was, looking a bit flustered, he thought.
At that point he pulled himself up. “Good Lord! What have I said? I don’t know what made me say that! Carol was all right and she sat down quite calmly and listened to my plans and we discussed how she could help, by getting her mother installed here, and there we were when Parkins came in, very solemn, with the message from Ashmore and some rather confused remark about an accident in the study, which sent us both off to see what had happened.”
“And when you found out what had happened you realized that the need for an elopement, with its probably unpleasant financial consequences, was gone?” I suggested.
“Naturally it occurred to me before long that Jenny and I were now on velvet, but a lot of other things occurred to me first. Really frightful for the family, it would be. Something so sordid about murder! It’s one of the things that you think can never happen in your own family. Nasty shock for Jenny, too. I noticed the minute I got in to the library that she looked pretty well knocked out.”
I told him I didn’t think he had really explained why he did not tell me the truth about his whereabouts during the afternoon, when I had particularly asked each one of them to describe their movements accurately.
“To tell the truth, by the time you began asking your questions I had begun to wonder—I suppose all of us had—just how the affair had happened and who had done it. I’d been rather out of it, away there in Jenny’s room and there was only Carol to say that I had really been there. You were obviously suspecting all of us and I thought you might well suspect me if I admitted I hadn’t been with the rest of the party, but with the kids racing about in the hall and crackers popping and people going to and fro between hall and drawing-room, I thought no one would notice I hadn’t been there. It does sound a bit thin, I know,” he finished apologetically. “But there is it.”
“The thinnest part,” I pointed out, “is that Miss Wynford might have given you away, unintentionally. How could you be sure that she wouldn’t tell the truth?”
“You do put your finger on the spot, every time,” Cheriton remarked, in a sort of mocking complaint. “I have to admit, I suppose, that I passed the word to Carol not to say we left the hall and she seemed to think that was all right. Poor girl, she couldn’t do much but agree, for she hadn’t any opportunity to argue and she was smart enough to see that at all costs our stories must tally.”
He didn’t seem to realize that they had been perjuring themselves and obstructing the police and all—according to his story—because they thought it might sound better to say they were in the hall rather than in Jenny’s room. It wasn’t a good story and yet there was nothing tangible against the man except this untruthfulness.
***
Meanwhile Rousdon had pursued his search into the walled kitchen garden, which adjoined the servants’ quarters of the house and came close up to the windows in the side of Jenny’s room. It was entered by a gate in its wall on that side and also by a door from the house near the kitchen. There was a potting-shed and other outbuildings in this garden but, being used by the gardeners, they were unlikely hiding places and they had yielded nothing.
He had explored all the gardens round the house and found that from Jennifer’s windows there was no direct way to the garage yard; you had to go round the front of the house and along the path on the other side, unless you went through the kitchen garden and the back part of the house. So if the Santa Klaus costume had to be conveyed to Ashmore’s car in the garage yard, the study window was a more practical outlet than the windows of Jennifer’s room.
Rousdon was confident that his men had thoroughly examined all possible hiding places in the grounds which were within easy reach of the house and he was coming round again to the idea that Ashmore had taken the Santa Klaus outfit away in his car. That seemed to implicate Jennifer or Carol, for we could not discover that anyone else, excepting the domestic staff, knew of Ashmore’s presence. Philip Cheriton, I thought, might have heard of it from Jennifer, but it was unlikely that she would tell anyone else.
Rousdon had also made sure that there was no typewriter about the place except Miss Portisham’s and that had, as we feared, yielded no clue to the person who may have used it on Tuesday afternoon, or perhaps even earlier.
He had also, at my suggestion, set inquiries on foot about the delivery of parcels at Flaxmere before Christmas. They came in the mail van and the back drive was used because that happened to be the more convenient route. The post office people would make inquiries but they did not hold out much hope of being able to tell us whether a box from Dawson’s, containing the Santa Klaus outfit first ordered, had really been delivered at Flaxmere, and if so on which day, and who had taken it from the postman. So many parcels had been sent up and there were so many temporary postmen, who did not know the houses nor the residents, that it was unlikely they could give us any definite facts, unless something unusual had happened to that parcel before it left their hands.
Jennifer returned from Bristol while we were reviewing the situation and I sent for Carol to hear what she had to tell us.
She reported that Mrs. Ashmore was confused in her statements but had made it pretty clear that Ashmore went off early this morning, long before the first plain clothes man called. She maintained that Mrs. Ashmore was very worried and, although the woman apparently knew of no reason why Ashmore should want to disappear, yet obviously thought that he had gone for good.
As soon as Jennifer finished her story, Carol burst out furiously: “You must find him! It’s horrible! We’re all responsible! He must be found, I say!”
Whilst Jennifer gave her account of the interview, I had watched Carol closely. She sat listening eagerly, her eyes fixed on Jennifer’s face, biting her lip.
“I agree that we must find him,” I told her seriously. “We must know the reason why he has run away.”
“The only reason,” Carol cried emphatically, “is that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Mother and I saw that he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown when he drove us on Saturday. And then on Christmas Day Jenny knows what he was like.”
We all looked at Jenny. “Yes,” she said; “it’s difficult to explain but he was so frightfully grateful just for an ordinary Christmas hamper. It was—well, rather ghastly— that anyone could be so—so abjectly grateful for that and for being asked to stay and have tea. It made me feel ashamed. He—he was almost in tears. I told Carol afterwards.”
“Look here!” Carol announced. “I’ll tell
you everything, the whole beastly story, if only you’ll let us look for Ashmore. I think he means to do away with himself and if we follow him at once we may be in time to save him.”
“Can you tell us where to follow him to?” I asked.
“I can!” Jennifer volunteered, and told us rather a fantastic story of Mrs. Ashmore’s belief that the man had gone to Tintern. It sounded very unlikely.
“There! That shows you he’s half crazy!” Carol declared. “And if you put your police on his tracks, plain clothes or not, that’ll be the last straw. Now listen; I’ll tell you every blessed thing I know and perhaps then you’ll believe me!”
We settled down to hear this extraordinary confession. Jennifer looked uneasy and I caught a questioning look from her, but signed to her to stay.
“To begin with,” said Carol; “I never went to Jenny’s room to fetch my handbag. I followed Oliver Witcombe when he left the hall because it occurred to me that he would see Ashmore in the servants’ hall and might ask who he was when he found there was no present for him, and would then tell grandfather. He’s rather officious, you know, and it would be just like him to go butting in. So I ran out after him and found him in the passage admiring himself in the mirror, though there wasn’t much light. I told him about Ashmore and how grandfather mightn’t like the man being here, when he hadn’t invited him, and asked Oliver to keep quiet about him. Oliver looked very prim and made some idiotic remark about it being unwise to run counter to grandfather’s wishes. I was fed-up and told him that if he wasn’t a cad he just wouldn’t see Ashmore in the servants’ hall. Oliver very solemnly took me by the arm and led me into Jenny’s room. Then he unhooked his beard and threw off his red hood, but evidently forgot all about his rouged cheeks and the white eyebrows, which made him look a perfect ass. He gave me a solemn lecture about the importance of keeping in with grandfather. Said that grandfather thought a lot of me, and hinted that I should probably come in for a lot of money under his will if only I behaved like a good girl. I told him I thought it was immoral to play for anyone’s money after their death by being nice to them in their lifetime. Then he came over all sentimental and said he was very fond of me himself and he couldn’t bear to see me throwing away my chances. He said: if I was honest with myself I’d admit that it would mean a lot to me to have enough money to follow my career; made out that I was being proud about it because I didn’t believe him. He said he knew what he was talking about, though he hadn’t breathed a word of it to anyone else and only told me because he was fond of me. It was nauseating!
The Santa Klaus Murder Page 20
