Murder in the Maze (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)
Page 26
Sir Clinton paused and lit a fresh cigar before going on to the end of his narrative. When he spoke once more his audience was rather surprised by his theme.
“There’s always a good deal of talk in the newspapers from time to time about ‘unexplained mysteries,’ ‘unsolved crimes,’ ‘police inefficiency,’ and so forth. Now I’ll put a case to you. Suppose you were a detective engaged on some beastly case like the Jack-the-Ripper business. And suppose you discovered in the end that the criminal was a lunatic—as Jack-the-Ripper obviously was. And, finally, suppose that his insanity has been discovered and that he’s been put into an asylum since his latest crime. What would you do? Would you publish your results? Even if he weren’t already in an asylum, what could you do? Try him, and get him sent to Broadmoor? For you couldn’t hang him, since he’s insane. Would you do that? If you did, the net result would be that you’d spatter all his innocent relations with the mud of his crime; and you’d do no good at all. There are some sleeping dogs that are best left lying. Mind, I’m giving you merely my own private view. I don’t mean that you can take that to represent police procedure. I’m simply telling you how I feel about the business.”
Ardsley nodded in agreement.
“So long as a brute gets his deserts, it doesn’t seem to me to matter how he gets them. And I agree with you about making an innocent family suffer through no fault of their own.”
Sir Clinton acknowledged Ardsley’s support.
“That’s how I looked at the Shandon case,” he said. “I could have arrested the brute. Then we’d have had a trial. And the Hawkhursts would have been branded as relatives of a murderer. I thought things could be done just as efficiently by making Ernest Shandon his own executioner. In fact, my method was a stiffer one than mere hanging, as you know. And if it failed—well, the law would take its normal course.
“I’d found a suit-case packed ready in the Maze on the night that young Hawkhurst was attacked. I expected something of the sort and went specially to look for it. I’d a notion that he wouldn’t care to sneak out of the house with a suit-case in his hand at the last moment, if he bolted. He’d have it cached somewhere, so that he could leave with empty hands, quite unsuspicious, you know. I knew he’d need a complete change of clothes so as to be able to alter his appearance and put the hue and cry off his track. He’d shown a penchant for the Maze all along. He’d even dragged it into his story of the attack on himself; so it was clear he had it very much in mind. I banked on that when I looked there for his suit-case. It was a good enough choice. He could sneak out of the house, pick up the suit-case, go across to the boat-house, and row himself down to the village without having to be seen carrying the bag on the public road at all—quite a good plan, if you ask me.”
“I hadn’t seen why he went to the Maze, I admit,” said Stenness. “It seemed rather like a bit of magic on your part to have foreseen that.”
“Once I’d found the suit-case,” Sir Clinton went on, “all that remained was to arrange the moment for his bolt, so that I could grip him. There was no use waiting on his good pleasure to fix the time. I gave him a plain hint that I’d be glad to see him go—let him think I wanted to avoid the scandal of a trial. There was no lying in that. I certainly did want to avoid putting him in the dock.
“Now as it happened, Stenness had been realising some capital at that time; so I got him to put his cash into the study safe that night. And I told Friend Ernest that the money was there—a good round sum. That gave him the sinews of war for his bolt, free of charge, you see? He’d only to grab it in passing. And as soon as I felt he was nibbling, I telephoned a code-message to the police-station; some rot about Navy Cut tobacco. From that prearranged message, they knew they’d only to open an envelope and carry out their sealed orders which I’d left with them. They came up to the Maze during the night; watched Ernest into it about 6 A. M.—I’d been keeping an eye on his room during the night, so he couldn’t have given us the slip anyhow. Then, as soon as he went into the Maze my men closed the gates behind him—and the game was up!
“You know the rest. We had to hold an inquest, of course; but you must have seen that we gave the bare legal minimum of evidence: just enough to prove suicide. Of course there’s sure to be some talk. One can’t help that. But we’ve stifled it as far as we possibly could; and the reporters got so little that the thing was hardly talked about in the papers.”
Sir Clinton smiled with a tinge of sardonic amusement.
“I wonder what they’d have made of it if they’d known all about our methods! Perhaps I wasn’t quite orthodox. Perhaps I ought to have got him nicely hanged—and incidentally run the public in for a big bill for his prosecution. I can only say that my conscience is quite clear; it doesn’t give me a twinge. Consciences are weird things.”
He glanced across at Stenness with a glint of humour in his eye which the rest failed to see.
“And now, what about some bridge?”
››› If you’ve enjoyed this book and would like to discover more great vintage crime and thriller titles, as well as the most exciting crime and thriller authors writing today, visit: ›››
The Murder Room
Where Criminal Minds Meet
themurderroom.com
By J. J. Connington
Sir Clinton Driffield Mysteries
Murder in the Maze
Tragedy at Ravensthorpe
The Case with Nine Solutions
Mystery at Lynden Sands
Nemesis at Raynham Parva
The Boathouse Riddle
The Sweepstake Murders
The Castleford Conundrum
The Ha-Ha Case
In Whose Dim Shadow
A Minor Operation
For Murder Will Speak
Truth Comes Limping
The Twenty-One Clues
No Past is Dead
Jack-in-the-Box
Common Sense is All You Need
Supt Ross Mysteries
The Eye in the Museum
The Two Tickets Puzzle
Novels
Death at Swaythling Court
The Dangerfield Talisman
Tom Tiddler’s Island
Murder Will Speak
The Counsellor
The Four Defences
J. J. Connington (1880–1947)
Alfred Walter Stewart, who wrote under the pen name J. J. Connington, was born in Glasgow, the youngest of three sons of Reverend Dr Stewart. He graduated from Glasgow University and pursued an academic career as a chemistry professor, working for the Admiralty during the First World War. Known for his ingenious and carefully worked-out puzzles and in-depth character development, he was admired by a host of his better-known contemporaries, including Dorothy L. Sayers and John Dickson Carr, who both paid tribute to his influence on their work. He married Jessie Lily Courts in 1916 and they had one daughter.
An Orion ebook
Copyright © The Professor A. W. Stewart Deceased Trust 1927, 2012
Introduction copyright © Curtis Evans 2012
The right of J. J. Connington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook first published in Great Britain in 2012
by Orion
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4719 0592 6
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it
is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk