Murder in the Maze (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

by J. J. Connington

  Sir Clinton made no comment on Ernest’s methods. He had got all the information he needed, apparently, for now he turned to Stenness and suggested that they should go upstairs and look at the scene of the burglary.

  Neville Shandon’s room bore out Stenness’ description of it. Everything seemed to have been turned over and left higgledy-piggledy. The floor was littered with a confused mass of clothes, papers, contents of drawers, and other things. It seemed as though the whole place had been searched in frantic haste for some object or other; but whether the seeker had succeeded or not was apparently an insolvable problem.

  Sir Clinton stepped over to the still open window and examined the sill.

  “The marks of the ladder-ends are there, clear enough,” he pointed out to Wendover, “and there’s the ladder itself down on the ground.”

  He beckoned Stenness to his side.

  “One of your own ladders, I suppose?”

  Stenness examined it.

  “Yes, I happen to recognise it. The gardeners use it and it’s kept somewhere about the place.”

  “Some soil on the window-sill,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “They must have picked it up on their boots from the flower-bed where the end of the ladder rests.”

  “There’s some on the floor here, as well,” Stenness pointed out.

  “So I see,” Sir Clinton confirmed, “but that might have been brought up by Mr. Shandon when you and he came in here. One can’t attach much importance to it.”

  He said nothing and contented himself with a careful inspection of the room.

  “I think I’ve seen all I want to see,” he said at last. “By the way, you haven’t a key of the Maze, have you? I noticed the iron gates at each entrance had locks on them. I want to go down there now and look round.”

  “I can get you a key, I think,” Stenness said, doubtfully, “but the place is always left open. It’s never been locked at any time, to my knowledge.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, then,” Sir Clinton hastened to say. “Now, Wendover, I think we’ll be getting along.”

  A thought seemed to strike him at the last moment.

  “If you’re afraid of being worried by any more burglars, Mr. Shandon, I’ll detach a couple of constables to look after Whistlefield. But I really don’t think it’s the least likely that you’ll have any further attempts of the sort. They seem to have made a thorough business of this one, to judge by the state they left the place in.”

  Ernest seemed rather shamefaced at the Chief Constable’s proposal. Quite obviously he recognised that he had not shone as a hero in the business of the night.

  “No,” he replied, “I don’t think we need them, Sir Clinton. I think we’ll manage without them, really. Of course, one feels a little nervous. I think it’s quite understandable, when things have been happening all together like this. But still, I don’t think we really need a guard. If you think it’s not likely to happen again, I’m quite ready to take your view of it, quite ready, I assure you. As you say, there’s no reason why they should come back at all. They must have got what they wanted. They’re sure to have got it, I think. No, they’re hardly likely to come back again.”

  As they made their way downstairs Sylvia Hawkhurst met them.

  “I’ve been looking for you, Sir Clinton. Guess what you left behind you last night.”

  Sir Clinton shook his head doubtfully.

  “I never succeed in these guessing competitions, Miss Hawkhurst. What was it?”

  “The box of darts! You put it down on the mantelpiece of the museum; and I happened to notice it this morning when I went in.”

  Sir Clinton’s face betrayed his annoyance at his blunder. It was obvious that no one cared to say anything on the subject.

  “I’ll get it for you in a moment,” Sylvia said, as she hurried off.

  Stenness looked at the Chief Constable, and it seemed as if his estimate of Sir Clinton was undergoing revision. Wendover was completely taken aback by the turn of events.

  “Here it is,” Sylvia said, as she came back to them again. “It was just where you left it. You’d better count the darts to make sure I haven’t lost any—though I haven’t opened the box at all. I was too much afraid of them.”

  Sir Clinton obeyed and found the total correct. He shut the box carefully and stowed it away in his pocket.

  “Thanks, Miss Hawkhurst. It was very careless of me. But there’s no harm done, since you’ve taken care of them for me.”

  And after a few words about the affairs of the night, he took his leave.

  “Take the road to the East Gate, Squire,” he requested, as Wendover let in the clutch.

  “You’re a bright detective,” his friend retorted scornfully. “Here you’ve been racing and chasing to cut off a possible source of curare; and in the middle of the job you leave a whole tin of lethal darts lying about for Tom, Dick or Harry to pick up. The limit, I’d call it!”

  “It was very careless,” Sir Clinton admitted, biting his lip.

  “Careless!” Wendover echoed, contemptuously. “I can’t think how you managed to do it. My godfathers! Leaving stuff like that on a mantelpiece!”

  Sir Clinton flushed.

  “Look here, Squire, I can say ‘You’re a damned fool,’ just as often as I need to hear it just now, without your help. You can’t guess how I feel about it. Don’t rub it in, there’s a good chap.”

  Wendover had never seen his friend so disturbed before. He stopped his denunciations at once. In a few moments they reached the Maze, and both left the car. Sir Clinton led the way to the entrance through which they had gone on the previous afternoon.

  “I’d better take the lead,” said Wendover. “I know the Maze and you don’t. Just follow me.”

  Sir Clinton paid no attention but kept in front. To Wendover’s surprise he showed no hesitation, but threaded his way through the labyrinth without difficulty. When he reached the centre he turned to his companion.

  “That’s merely to show you that anyone can find their way through here if they keep their heads. I memorised the thing as Stenness was guiding us yesterday—first right, third left, and so on. So you see the murderer could have got it up easily enough if he had someone to show him the ropes at the start.”

  He glanced into the centre and then passed round to the position of the loophole in the outer hedge. As he did so he gave an exclamation of disgust and passed his hand over his face.

  “Ugh! Spider’s web got across my mouth! There’s any amount of gossamer about here. These hedges must be full of spiders. Beastly things!”

  Coming to the loophole, he examined it carefully as though to discover the range of view from it. Then he made his way to the loophole commanding the second centre, which he inspected with equal interest.

  “Now we’ll go outside and have another look at the track my dog picked up,” he announced, curtly.

  Wendover followed him once more, and they emerged from the entrance near the river. Sir Clinton walked over to the tree to which the dog had led them; and then, using the scraps of paper scattered on the previous day as his guide, he crossed the grass. Once on the road, he stopped and turned to Wendover. He seemed to be still smarting under the annoyance of his blunder with the darts.

  “That’s the murderer’s route, you see? He came out of the Maze obviously. Then he climbed that tree, I think you said. No doubt he was well out of danger there. No one would think of looking for him up amongst the leaves. And after that he came over here, got into his private aeroplane, and flew off—since the trail stops short.”

  He glanced up and down the road.

  “Just the one place where he could have done it, notice. This bit of road is concealed from nearly every direction by these banks of rhododendrons round about.”

  Wendover took no notice of the irony. He sympathised with Sir Clinton’s feelings; it required no great stretch of imagination to appreciate how a man would feel after making a mistake like that. They walked over to the car and t
ook the road to the East Gate.

  As he drove, Wendover began to fit together the new facts in the Whistlefield case. The more he recalled the state of Neville Shandon’s room, the more obvious it grew that the burglar had been searching for a document of some sort. This linked itself in his mind with the torn fragment of Neville’s notes which had been found in his hand after death. And Roger’s room had not been burgled.

  “It looks like Hackleton at work,” he uttered, half-unconsciously.

  Sir Clinton seemed to come out of a savage reverie at the words.

  “Hackleton? Oh, you mean the burglary? It fits neatly in, doesn’t it?”

  Then, in a more friendly voice than he had used since the dart incident:

  “I’m sorry if I rubbed you on the raw, Squire. But you know how I hate to look like a fool; and that’s exactly what I do look like just now.”

  Wendover was eager to accept the advance. He had no desire to irritate his friend. After all, every one makes mistakes sooner or later. But as they fell into talk again a fresh idea shot through his mind; and this time he did not utter it aloud:

  “Clinton hustled me off early to bed last night. He was washed-out-looking this morning. He hinted he’d done something or other that was risky. What if he was the burglar himself?”

  But though he puzzled over this view of the case, it yielded very little help to him. At last he put it to the back of his mind, ready for future reference if needed.

  Sir Clinton had one further surprise for him as they reached the Grange:

  “Would you mind, Squire, if somebody brings a glass of boiling water, some vinegar, and some washing soda to my room as soon as possible? I’d like to have them now.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Third Attack in the Maze

  When Sir Clinton came down from his room Wendover noticed that he had mastered his vexation. During lunch, both of them avoided the Whistlefield case by tacit consent; but the Squire was relieved to see that his friend’s face showed less anxiety in its expression than had been obvious at the breakfast table. Sir Clinton usually had complete control of his features and showed no more than he wished the world to see; and Wendover guessed that behind the mask the Chief Constable was still too sensitive to make the affair at Whistlefield a safe subject of conversation.

  When lunch was over Sir Clinton smoked a cigarette for a minute or two in silence. Then he turned to his host.

  “You might lend me your car, Squire. I ought to go down to the police station this afternoon and get some reports from the man in charge. It isn’t worth your while to come with me. They’ll only be formal affairs, I suspect; and if there’s anything striking, I’ll tell you about it when I get back.”

  Wendover consented. His tact suggested that Sir Clinton would probably prefer to be alone until the first edge of his irritation had worn off.

  When the Chief Constable returned, however, he had little news of importance.”

  There’s no sign of the burglars so far,” he admitted. “I rang up the police from Whistlefield in the morning and put them on the alert; but they’ve picked up nothing that looks like the shadow of a clue. One could hardly expect it. Thanks to friend Ernest’s lethargic habits, a burglar could have got to the Midlands before my men even knew of the Whistlefield affair.”

  “I suppose they’ve done all they can?”

  “For a local lot handling a thing of this sort, they’ve really done very well. They’ve made inquiries at all the railway stations in the neighbourhood and drawn blank. No suspicious person can be traced there. They’ve done their best in the matter of motors, too; but that, of course, was rather a wash-out. One can’t expect them to keep tally of every car that might pass along the road. And they’ve had a regular hunt through the Whistlefield gardens to find out how the burglary was done. But there again they struck a blank end.”

  “Footmarks on the flower-bed?” inquired Wendover.

  “One or two beautifully rectangular impressions—that’s all. The fellow evidently tied bits of cardboard under his shoes. One hasn’t even an idea of the size of his foot. And of course friend Ernest had been stamping about all over the bed in his efforts to remove the ladder with least trouble to himself. He didn’t exaggerate when he said he was nervous. It seems he just gave the thing a push and let it fall anyhow—smashed some flowers to bits in the collapse. If the burglars were still in the room above the row must have put them on the alert at once.”

  “You think they may have got away into the house and been hidden there while Stenness and Co. were breaking into the room?”

  “Well, you can lock a door from either side, can’t you?”

  Wendover reflected for a moment.

  “It’s a pity Stenness didn’t think of searching the house when they found no one in the room.”

  “Much too late by that time, Squire. No hunted burglar would wait on the premises a second longer than he could help. He’d be off downstairs at once and get out of the ground floor windows on the opposite side of the house.”

  “But then he’d leave an unlatched window behind him.”

  “So he may have done. No one can swear that all the windows were made fast yesterday evening. They’re a careless lot up at Whistlefield.”

  Wendover’s mind fastened upon the thing which seemed to him of most importance.

  “What did the burglar want? What was he after, Clinton?”

  Sir Clinton’s face became inscrutable, though Wendover could not help seeing irony in his reply:

  ‘“What Song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.’” he quoted. “Sir Thomas Browne knew what he was talking about. What thing the burglar sought, though puzzling, is not beyond conjecture, Squire. The field’s open, if you wish to enter for the competition.”

  Wendover accepted the irony as a proof that Sir Clinton had got over his fit of annoyance completely.

  “Well, then, I conjecture that the burglar was in Hackleton’s pay—like the murderer—and that he was hunting for more of Neville Shandon’s notes for the case. Look how everything was turned upside down. Look at the fact that the money was left intact. That wasn’t what one expects from a normal burglar.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Sir Clinton agreed. “But I’m not going to be drawn. Go on with your conjecturing, Squire; and if that fails you might take to surmising or speculating as a change of occupation. Thinking exercises the brain, so you won’t really lose in the end.”

  “You’re an exasperating beast at times, Clinton,” Wendover affirmed, without a trace of irritation.

  “If that’s the first result of thinking, I don’t think I’d take it up as a hobby,” Sir Clinton responded cheerfully. “It might lead to peevishness among the neighbours.”

  He walked over to the window, possibly to conceal his expression, before communicating his next piece of information.

  “I had time to drop in on your friend Ardsley, too, on my way home.”

  Wendover rose to the bait at once.

  “Oh, indeed! I hope he showed you his best specimens; a pithed frog, perhaps, or a mangled dog? It’s no good lifting these eyebrows of yours, Clinton. I don’t like the fellow.”

  “One could almost guess it from the way you talk. But bear in mind, Squire, that even the meanest of God’s creatures may have its uses. I’ve got a use for Ardsley,” he added carelessly, “so don’t go making things too unpleasant if you come across him any time.”

  Wendover gave a half-suppressed growl.

  “One rubs up against a lot of queer fish when one begins mixing with the police, it seems,” he complained, half in fun and half in earnest.

  Before Sir Clinton could reply, the bell of the telephone rang sharply.

  “Bet you nine to four that’s Whistlefield ringing up,” the Chief Constable offered. “Here, I’ll go myself.”

  He left the room and Wendover waited uneasily for the result of the conver
sation. It took a minute or two, and he knew from this that it must be something relating to Whistlefield, for Sir Clinton had no friends in the neighbourhood. When the Chief Constable returned, Wendover looked up with a certain foreboding. News from Whistlefield of late had never been encouraging; and he feared that something more might have happened.

  “Did you take that bet?” inquired Sir Clinton. “If so, you owe me a note or two. It was Whistlefield at the other end of the line, just as I expected. If this goes on, we may as well tell the Exchange to leave their plug in our hole permanently and save bother to all hands.”

  “What’s happened now?” demanded Wendover, anxiously.

  “An attempted murder this time. Your friend Ernest rang up to tell me about it. They’ve tried to get him next; but he fled like a lamb from the slaughter and seems to have saved his bacon. But he’s in a pitiable state,” Sir Clinton went on, a tingle of contempt coming into his tone. “Quite blue with funk, I should judge. He nearly wept into the mouth-piece, and I could hear him gasping for breath at the other end of the wire. Quite a shock to his nerves, it appears. We’ll have to go across and comfort him. Come along.”

  “You don’t seem much worried over his troubles,” Wendover commented.

  “I’ve no great use for a cowardly little beast. You should have heard him on the ’phone, Wendover. Sounded like one of those things they used to run in the Grand Guignol.”

  “Even the meanest of God’s creatures may have its uses,” Wendover quoted, sarcastically.

  Sir Clinton’s temporary cheerfulness seemed to have passed away.

  “That’s a true word spoken in jest, no doubt. You’re perhaps right after all. We may find a use for even friend Ernest before we’re done. But on the face of it, it doesn’t look probable, does it?”

  When they reached Whistlefield they were shown at once into the study where they found Ernest in a state of nervous collapse. A syphon and a decanter stood on a tray at his elbow; and the moving surface of the whiskey showed that he had just finished pouring out a drink. As they came in, he poured some more liquor into his empty tumbler.