Murder in the Maze (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

by J. J. Connington

  “You know what happened next. I left the sham darts on the mantelpiece of the museum purposely; and the murderer lifted them. Now as Ardsley didn’t touch them—he went out of the room in front of me and they were still lying there—and as Wendover wasn’t the murderer, that left only you, Stenness, and Miss Hawkhurst, young Hawkhurst and Ernest Shandon, as possible thieves. If the tin vanished, then I had got down to pretty narrow limits.”

  “I see you’d ruled me out by that time,” Ardsley said.

  “Oh, practically,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Of course my convictions were quite fluid still. I was quite prepared to reconsider things at any time. The next point was to go over the alibis as well as I could. Wendover gave me a hand with that. Once one got into that matter, it was clear enough that the only possible suspects were yourself, Stenness, young Hawkhurst, you, Ardsley—because I knew nothing about your doings that day—and finally, somebody with a bicycle. But once you bring in the bicycle, Ernest Shandon’s alibi falls to bits. I’ll show you how.

  “This is my reconstruction of the murders in the Maze: I don’t say it’s correct in every detail—only the main outlines are really important. Ernest Shandon went off with Miss Hawkhurst in the car. I suspect that he knew his brothers were going to the Maze that afternoon. He’d already taken his bicycle along and concealed it in a little plantation near the East Gate; and he’d hidden the air-gun there as well.

  “He got off the car at the East Gate, walked along the road quickly, and got through the hedge into the plantation. He took out his bicycle and the air-gun and pedalled as hard as he could go for the Maze. His one risk was meeting someone on the road. If he’d done that, he’d have had to postpone his affair until another day. He met no one—it’s a road hardly anyone walks on, I believe. He got to the Maze, went in to his loophole commanding Helen’s Bower. There he saw someone whom he took to be Neville Shandon. I suspect that he had the Hackleton case at the back of his mind during the planning; and he meant to make it appear that Neville had been killed on that account. You know yourselves what a troublesome false trail it turned out to be at the start.

  “My belief is that he was sweating like a pig owing to his sprint up to the Maze—you must remember that his whole alibi depended in the time factor and he hadn’t a moment to waste. Very likely his nose was greasy and he had trouble with his glasses. You remember they were always going askew or falling off? However, it happened, he didn’t recognise Roger from behind and he shot him first of all. He shot him in the neck; and I am led to suppose that Roger didn’t cry out, because the heavy dose of curare paralysed his vocal muscles almost immediately.

  “Then, as Roger fell, Ernest recognised that he’d blundered. He’d killed the wrong man; and the Hackleton business wouldn’t serve to complicate this case. I expect he got flustered—and no great wonder. I suppose he dropped the darts, his glasses fell off, and altogether he was in a pretty state of confusion. And there was still Neville to finish off.

  “At that moment, he’d no idea that the Maze wasn’t empty except for Neville in the other centre. So he abandoned his darts after grabbing three from the ground; and he went off to kill his other brother before anything more happened. Bear in mind that speed was everything to him, and you’ll get some idea of the flurry he must have been in. I expect he meant to come back for the spilt darts and the tin as soon as he’d finished Neville.

  “We know from the evidence of Torrance and Miss Forrest that the first murder passed unnoticed so far as they were concerned. They didn’t even pay any attention to the reports of the air-gun in Roger’s case. Considering the queer acoustics of the Maze, there’s nothing wonderful in that. But I think it’s likely enough that Neville Shandon had heard something; and Ernest just got him as he was standing up and wondering if he shouldn’t hunt about for the cause of the funny noise he had heard.

  “Whatever the details were, Ernest got him all right; but he shot him in the body and Neville was able to give a yell or two before he collapsed. That accounts for the cries that Miss Forrest heard and also for the air-gun noises. And with that, Friend Ernest’s little troubles suddenly increased; for he heard voices in the Maze as these two called to each other, and he must have known he was up against it.”

  Sir Clinton’s voice became grave.

  “It was a bit of sheer luck that he came across neither of those two on his way out. He’d have shot them without any hesitation if he could. My reading of it is that he was hindered in two ways. First, he’d used up all his darts and daren’t waste time and risk detection by going back for those that he’d spilt. Secondly, he was losing time—and time was the essence of his alibi. So he dodged about, no doubt suffering agonies of terror, and at last he got out of the Maze safely, and undetected. He pitched his gun into the water at once and went for his bicycle. In lifting it, he scraped the tree with the brake-handle, I think. He wouldn’t be in a state to do things cautiously. That was the mark Wendover noticed. He carried his bicycle across the grass so as not to leave the track of crushed stems that he’d have made if he’d wheeled it. And then, once on the road, he mounted—and his trail stopped, so far as the dog was concerned.

  “He sprinted down the road to near the East Gate, carried his machine into the plantation, and concealed it. I set my men to hunt for it; but they didn’t find it. It’s pure theory; but I think it’s quite likely he had some tackle ready and hoisted the thing up into a tree. No ordinary country constable would ever think of looking up into the air for a bicycle, and it would be well hidden among the leaves. But that’s mere conjecture.

  “Once clear of the bicycle, he got through the hedge again on to the public road, hurried along it as far as he could and then sat down by the wayside to wait for the postman’s cart, which he knew was due to pass along at a fixed time. When the postman came, he had his yarn ready about his sore toe and all the rest of it.”

  “That’s remarkably neat,” said Ardsley. “But if I’d been in your shoes I wouldn’t have given Ernest Shandon credit for as much brains as all that.”

  “You must remember that I knew nothing about his brains,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “I’d only seen him in circumstances where one doesn’t expect brains to come out very strong in most cases. I kept an open mind about him. All I admitted to myself was that Ernest Shandon hadn’t a cast-iron alibi after all.”

  “Very sound,” Ardsley commended. “You ought to be in the scientific line, Driffield. Some of us aren’t so cautious.”

  “Then came the burglary,” Sir Clinton went on. “On the face of it, it was possibly genuine, possibly a fake. It might have been a real attempt to get at something connected with the Hackleton case; or it might have been the usual blunder of a murderer trying to strengthen the case against someone else. I didn’t know at the moment. But when Miss Hawkhurst gave me back the tin of darts that morning and when I’d found by testing them that they weren’t my faked darts, then I had a pretty fair notion how things stood. The murderer had been careful not to steal the tin of darts outright. He’d given me back some darts right enough; they had been faked like mine, only they hadn’t my litmus in them.

  “That told me two things straight away. The murderer was one of the people in the museum that night and—much more important than that—he had work still to do, for he wanted those darts at any price. That gave me some worry, I can tell you; for I couldn’t be absolutely certain that his teeth were drawn. He might have had a deadly dart or two in reserve for all I knew. It was a stiff business to be up against; and really I didn’t feel comfortable.”

  “Was that the time you were so perplexed?” Wendover asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t wonder at it now.”

  Sir Clinton brushed this aside.

  “Now I’m coming to Ernest Shandon’s first big mistake. In telling me the story of the burglary, he dragged in a tale about some transactions relating to his late brother.”

  Stenness showed no outward sign of perturbation, but Si
r Clinton could see he was uneasy as to the next stage of the narrative. With a glance, the Chief Constable reassured him. Stenness, realising that his affairs would not be brought in, leaned back again in his chair.

  “I needn’t go into details about the thing,” Sir Clinton continued. “All I need say is that it would take a pretty smart man to spot what Ernest had spotted. And so, naturally, I reconsidered my ideas about Friend Ernest. He wasn’t an ass after all—not by any means. That set me thinking hard. And what made me think harder was his evident desire to throw suspicion on you, Stenness. He tried to persuade me—indirectly—that he was in fear of his life from you.”

  “From me?” Stenness asked in amazement.

  “I’m telling you the facts,” Sir Clinton contented himself with pointing out. “Well, the next business was the news that Ernest himself had been attacked in the Maze. And at that point I began to feel pretty sure of my ground. It was the most obvious line he could have taken to divert suspicion from himself. And, what made me more uneasy, it was a possible preliminary to an attack on someone else. He’d killed his two brothers. If a third attack was made, he might come under suspicion—and a breath of suspicion might be enough. So he boldly faked up an attack on himself next. Then, if still another attempt was made, who would suspect the poor victim who had nearly lost his, life just a few days earlier?”

  “One has to admit he showed some acuteness,” Ardsley said, drily.

  “At that point the case began to clear up a little in my mind. Assuming Ernest to be the murderer, what was he after? The more I thought about it the clearer it seemed that cash must be at the bottom of the affair. He wanted money. He’d never worked in his life. How could he lay his hands on cash? And of course it was as plain as anything then. If he could kill off his brothers he’d inherit part of their money—I learned that pretty easily from the fact that there were no near relations except himself, Arthur and Miss Hawkhurst. But the craving for money isn’t easily satisfied. Obviously, if he could eliminate his nephew and niece, he’d be left with not only the whole of his two brothers’ fortune, but the Hawkhurst money as well.

  “If you look into criminology, you’ll find that the murderer for money reasons is a fairly definite type. He’s usually clever enough to devise a fresh method of murder, or of disposing of the body. Apart from that, he’s not a very brainy type. And he has a terrible knack of repeating the same method in successive crimes. Suppose you have to cross a boiling torrent by stepping from stone to stone. You get across the first time in safety. If you have to cross again, you’ll choose the same stones as before. You’ve proved them to be safe. Any other stones may be insecure and may bring you down. Now that’s the state of mind of the mass-murderer when he goes in for his work. He carries out his first crime by a novel method. He isn’t detected. So when he tries his hand again he follows his first procedure slavishly in all its mean details. These are the safe stepping-stones for him. Look at the case of Smith, how he repeated all the minutiæ of his bath-business time after time. Deeming used to put down a fresh cement floor in a room to cover the bodies of his victims. He did that more than once. He’d found it safe the first time, you see. If you read up Burke and Hare’s doings, you’ll find them a steady repetition of the same method applied without variation. It’s the mark of the mass-murderer.

  “So naturally, I expected the poisoned darts and the air-gun to come into play again, if Ernest carried his work to a further stage. And I made up my mind that I’d choose his next victim for him. He made two deadly slips in that interview he had with us, Wendover. Perhaps you noticed them?”

  Wendover shook his head.

  “You told me after our talk with him that I ought to know who the murderer was; but I didn’t guess it. What slips did he make?”

  “The first slip was when he volunteered that he had a bicycle and had used it to get down to the Maze. Once I had information that he owned a bicycle, his alibi with the sore toe disappeared instanter from my mind. His second slip was a worse one. He said to us that he hadn’t been down to the Maze since the murders. And then he let out that he knew the position of the loophole through which Roger Shandon was shot. Speaking of his mythical assailant he said: ‘He was at the same loophole as he’d used when he killed Roger.’ If he’d never been near the Maze, how could he have known where that loophole was? Perhaps you think he might have picked up the information from those who were there. But if he had, I doubt if he’d have phrased the thing as he did. He seemed to me to pitch on that description of its position simply because it was the easiest that came to hand—which meant that it conveyed something definite to his own mind.

  “That finished him, so far as I was concerned. But I took the trouble to go down to the Maze, just for my own satisfaction. I’d been there that morning; and I’d noticed gossamer all over the hedge at the loophole—some of it actually stretching across the hole in the hedge. When I went down, after interviewing Friend Ernest, those gossamer threads were still there. No gun could possibly have been shoved into the hole without snapping them. I put my hand in, just to see; and of course I got it covered with spider’s web.”

  “So that was why you cleaned your hand on the hedge and made such a fuss about spiders!” Wendover exclaimed. “I thought you were simply fooling—”

  “I was certainly in high spirits,” Sir Clinton confessed blandly. “I think I’d every right to be. I’d got complete confirmation of my suspicion—though really I didn’t need the confirmatory evidence. Let’s get on with the story. We picked up Friend Ernest’s cigar-case there; and I kept it. I had a notion that he hadn’t left it there without some ulterior purpose. And besides, I thought his fingerprints might come in useful some time. We didn’t need them, as it turned out. It was merely a precaution on my part. You see, there was very little to be done with finger-prints on these air-guns. It seems Friend Ernest had carefully organised a grand air-gun shooting competition on the morning of the day he killed his brothers. He’d had the guns passed from hand to hand, so that the fingermarks of nearly every one were printed on them in addition to his own. Of course, I had the tin box containing the spurious darts. He’d handled that. But I hardly troubled to examine it for fingermarks. I was sure he’d use gloves in touching it.

  “Then I found another thing which I half-expected. I’d dropped the hint about Ariadne’s clue and the possibility of an outsider having to resort to something of the kind. Well, Wendover and I found some yards of black thread carefully placed where we couldn’t help seeing it. No black thread was found when the Shandons were murdered. But after I’d dropped that hint in Ernest Shandon’s presence, behold! we get the clue which is meant to suggest an outside murderer. Wasn’t that evidence, on the whole, quite enough to raise some suspicions about him?

  “Wendover, I may tell you, thought I treated our friend Ernest rather brutally in our interview after the mythical attack on him. I certainly told Wendover afterwards that I thought Ernest had had a bad half-hour. What I meant, Squire, was the bad half-hour he had when he was laying off his tale to us and wasn’t sure what I thought about it. That was a stiff time for him. As a matter of fact, I took no pains to conceal from Friend Ernest that I thought his yarn was a mere pack of lies. I wanted him to feel afraid of me, afraid of what I was getting at in the Whistlefield case. Then, I felt sure, he’d have a shy at knocking me out before I became really dangerous.

  “To help on that good work, I arranged to play bridge one night at Whistlefield, so as to let him operate on his own ground. In case of accidents, I had arranged that Ardsley should come over and take charge of the casualty. I’d taken most things into account—I had to—and in case Friend Ernest hit anyone else in his flurry, I arranged with Ardsley that the injured person was to ‘die’ nominally; so that Friend Ernest might be convinced of the efficacy of the faked darts I’d put into his hands, and might go on to further crimes.

  “I needn’t go into that affair. I’m not proud of it. I never intended to risk Miss Haw
khurst in that way. Of course, I knew at once she hadn’t been poisoned with curare. But though I’d done my best to sterilise the faked darts, I was afraid of blood-poisoning setting in. I spent a bad time over it, I can tell you. One can never be sure in a case like that.

  “Well, there we were. He’d managed to nip back into the winter-garden before Wendover got after him. He believed Miss Hawkhurst was dead and only Arthur’s life stood between him and the whole of the Shandon-Hawkhurst money. By this time, like all successful mass-murderers, he’d begun to feel a complete contempt for the risk of detection. See Burke and Hare.

  “So young Hawkhurst was marked down. And this time, friend Ernest meant to have a perfect alibi. He must have guessed that I suspected his other one; and he’d made up his mind to avert even a shadow of suspicion. He’d stay under my eye at the very time that murder was being done in the Maze; nearly a mile away. That was a master-stroke, I admit.”

  “He used his cigar-case to bait the trap—got Arthur’s back up very skilfully on the point of cowardice. And beforehand he’d set a booby-trap. He’d fixed the air-gun in position to shoot at the right level; and he’d arranged a thread to the trigger. When young Hawkhurst came to the entrance to the Maze he stepped against the thread stretched across the opening; the gun went off; and the dart hit him near the heart. So simple! And then Ernest came down with us; stumbled ‘accidentally’ over the air-gun; tore away the thread from the trigger before handing the gun to us. And then he ‘found’ Ariadne’s clue for us—the thread he’d laid down as a blind, to make us think it was a stranger at work, someone operating from the river.”

  “He was cleverer than I gave him credit for,” Stenness confessed, rather grudgingly. “I always thought him a dull brute.”

  “The contents of Roger Shandon’s will took away my last doubts,” Sir Clinton went on. “Besides that, I’d tested the dart he’d used against Miss Hawkhurst and found it was one of the faked lot stolen from the museum that night. So by then the only question was: ‘What should be done with Friend Ernest?’”