Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

by J. J. Connington

  The constable paused for a moment, then, a little shamefacedly, he added:

  “Peter was a good friend to me; and I wouldn’t like to see his pets fall into anybody’s hands that might be cruel to them or neglect them. He was real fond of them.”

  Wendover’s eye fell upon a small white paper bag on one of the dresser shelves. He stepped across, opened the parcel, sniffed for a moment, and then handed the thing to Sir Clinton.

  “Here’s where the perfume comes from, Clinton—a bag of pear-drops, just as the constable said. He must have been eating some just before he died.”

  The chief constable looked at the crumpled paper.

  “Not much chance of getting any fingerprints on that, even if we wanted them. You’d better hand the bag over to the inspector. We may as well get them analysed. Poison’s always a possibility—— Ah, inspector, you haven’t been long over that.”

  Inspector Armadale emerged from the bedroom and stolidly made his report.

  “Nothing that I can see on the body, sir, except the marks we noted already. No wounds of any sort, no bruises—nothing suspicious whatever. It almost looks like a mare’s nest, except for these four marks.”

  Sir Clinton nodded as though he had received confirmation of some very doubtful hypothesis. He moved across the room and seemed to become engrossed in a study of the squirrel’s antics. In a few moments he turned to the constable.

  “You knew Peter Hay well, constable. I want some notions about his habits and so forth. What did he do with himself all day?”

  The constable scratched his ear, as though to stimulate his memory by the action.

  “To tell you the truth, sir, he didn’t do much. He was only caretaker here, you understand? When the weather was fine, he’d go up to Foxhills and open some of the windows in the morning, to air the rooms. Then he’d take a look round the grounds, likely, just to see that all was as it should be. He might have to go down to the village for tea, or butter, or something like that. Then he’d come home and take his dinner. In the afternoon he’d have a bit of a sleep for a while—he was getting on in years—and then perhaps he’d dig a while in his garden here; look after his flowers; then he’d have his tea. Some time or other, he’d go up and look round Foxhills again and shut any windows he’d opened. And then he’d come back here; water his garden, most likely, if it needed it. And perhaps some of us would drop in for a chat with him. Or else he might take a walk down to see me or somebody else in the village. Or sometimes he’d read.”

  Sir Clinton threw a glance round the barely furnished room.

  “He had books, then? I don’t see any.”

  “He read his Bible, sir. I never saw him read anything else.”

  “There’s a Bible in the bedroom, Sir Clinton,” Armadale confirmed.

  “An uneventful life, apparently,” the chief constable commented, not unkindly. “Now I want to hear something about what sort of man he was. Polite in his manners, you said?”

  “Very polite,” Sapcote insisted. “I remember hearing some visitor once saying that Peter was a natural gentleman, sir.”

  “They do exist, here and there, even nowadays,” Sir Clinton admitted. “Now let’s come down to dots, constable. I want to get a picture of him in my mind and you seem to have known him well enough to help. Let’s see, now. Suppose I’d met him somewhere and offered to come and see him—or that he’d asked me here. What would happen? I suppose I’d knock at the door and he’d come and let me in. Which chair would he give me?”

  “Whichever you liked best, sir. They’re much the same. If there’d been any difference he’d have given you the best one.”

  “Quite so. I’m beginning to see him better. Now go on, constable. He’d have been easy and natural, too, if I can gauge him. He’d just have met me in his shirt-sleeves as he used to meet you? No fuss?”

  “He’d have made no fuss, sir. But he’d have put on his jacket for you, you being a strange gentleman coming to his house on a special visit; and perhaps he’d have offered you a cup of tea if the time was right for it.”

  “And if it was later in the evening? Some whiskey, if he had any?”

  “No, sir. Peter was a strong teetotaller.”

  Sir Clinton glanced over the dresser on which all the dishes were neatly stacked.

  “He was a tidy man, I see?”

  “Very, sir. Always had everything ship-shape. He never could bear to have things lying about. Sometimes he used to anger me because he’d wash up his tea-things when I wanted to talk to him. Of course, if it had been you, I expect he’d wait till you’d gone. It wouldn’t have been polite to wash up with a stranger there.”

  “You’re helping me a good deal, constable,” said Sir Clinton encouragingly. “Now, another thing. I suppose he must have saved some money. He seems to have lived very simply—no expenses to speak of?”

  “That’s right, sir. He put all he could spare into the savings-bank at the post office. All he kept in the house was what he needed to buy things in the village.”

  “So I expected. You see how well you’ve pictured him, constable. Now where did he keep his money—his loose cash?”

  “In that drawer in the dresser,” the constable said, pointing to one of the larger drawers which had a lock on it. “He carried the key about with him.”

  “See if you can get the key, inspector, please. You’ll find it in his pocket, I expect.”

  Armadale produced the key almost at once, and Sir Clinton opened the drawer. As he did so, the constable uttered a cry of astonishment. Wendover, leaning forward, saw that the drawer held more than a little money—some silver articles were in it as well.

  Sir Clinton warned them back with a gesture.

  “Don’t touch. We may have to look for fingerprints here. These things seem to have a crest on them,” he continued, after scrutinising them.

  “That’s the Foxhills’ mark, sir,” the constable hastened to explain. “But it beats me what Peter Hay was doing with these things. That one there”—he pointed it out—“comes from the Foxhills’ drawing-room. I remember seeing it, one time Peter and I went round the house when he was shutting the windows for the night. It’s valuable, isn’t it, sir? Peter told me these things were worth something—quite apart from the silver in them—and I suppose he’d learned that from somebody or other—one of the family, most like.”

  Sir Clinton left the silver articles alone and picked up the money which lay in one corner of the drawer.

  “One pound seven and fourpence ha’penny. Would that be more or less what you’d expect to see here, constable?”

  “Somewhere round about that, sir, seeing it’s this time in the week.”

  Sir Clinton idly picked up the savings-bank book, looked at the total of the balance, and put the book down again. Evidently it suggested nothing in particular.

  “I think you’d better take charge of these ornaments, inspector, and see if you can make anything out of them in the way of fingerprints. Handle them carefully. Wait a moment! I want to have a look at them.”

  The inspector moved forward.

  “I may be short of chalk, sir, but I’ve got a pair of rubber gloves in my pocket,” he announced with an air of suppressed triumph. “I’ll lift the things out on to the table for you, and you can look at them there.”

  Slipping on his gloves, he picked up the articles gingerly and carried them across to the table. Sir Clinton followed and, bending over them, subjected them to a very careful scrutiny.

  “See anything there?” he demanded, giving way at last to the inspector.

  After Armadale had examined the silver surfaces from every direction, Wendover had his turn. When he raised himself again, he shook his head. Sir Clinton glanced at the inspector, who also made a negative gesture.

  “Then we all see the same,” Sir Clinton said finally. “One might assume from that, without overstraining probability, one thing at least.”

  “And that is?” demanded Wendover, forestalling
the inspector.

  “That there’s nothing there to see,” Sir Clinton observed mildly. “I thought you’d have noticed that for yourself, squire.”

  Behind Wendover’s back the inspector enjoyed his discomfiture, thanking providence the while that he had not had time to put the question himself. The chief constable turned to Sapcote.

  “I suppose Peter Hay kept the keys of Foxhills—those that he needed, at any rate—somewhere handy?”

  “He kept them in his pocket always, sir; a small bunch of Yale keys on a ring, I remember.”

  “You might get them, inspector. I think we’d better go up there next and see if we can find anything worth noting. But, of course, we can’t go rushing in there without permission.”

  He turned back to Sapcote:

  “Go off now, constable, as soon as we’ve locked up this place, and get hold of some of the Foxhills people who are staying at the hotel. Ask them to come up here. Tell them we want to go over Foxhills on account of something that’s been taken from the house. Explain about things, but don’t make a long yarn of it, remember. Then leave a message for Dr. Rafford to say that we’ll probably need a P.M. When you come up here again, you’d better bring a cart to take away these beasts in their cages.”

  He gave Sapcote some further instructions about the disposal of Peter Hay’s body, then he turned to the inspector.

  “I suppose, later on, you’d better take Peter Hay’s fingerprints. It’s only a precaution, for I don’t think we’ll need them; but we may as well have them on record. There’s nothing more for us to do here at present so far as I can see.”

  He led the way out of the cottage. The constable locked the door, pocketed the key, produced a bicycle from behind the house, and cycled off in haste down the avenue.

  Sir Clinton led his companions round to the back of the cottage; but an inspection of the dead man’s menagerie yielded nothing which interested any of them, so far as the matter in hand was concerned.

  “Let’s sit down on the seat here,” the chief constable suggested, as they returned to the front garden. “We’ll have to wait for these people from the hotel; and it won’t do any harm to put together the facts we’ve got, before we pick up anything further.”

  “You’re sure it isn’t a mare’s nest then?” Armadale inquired cautiously.

  “I’m surprised that Dr. Rafford didn’t go a bit further with his ideas,” Sir Clinton returned indifferently. “In any case, there’s the matter of that Foxhills’ silver to be cleared up now.”

  Chapter Four

  What Happened in the Night

  Sir Clinton took out his cigarette-case and handed it to his companions in turn.

  “Let’s have the unofficial view first,” he suggested. “What do you make of it all, squire, in the light of the classics?”

  Wendover shook his head deprecatingly.

  “It’s hardly fair to start with the amateur, Clinton. According to the classical method, the police always begin; and then, when they’ve failed ingloriously, the amateur steps in and clears the matter up satisfactorily. You’re inverting the order of Nature. However, I don’t mind telling you what I think are the indisputable points in the affair.”

  “The very things we want, squire,” declared Sir Clinton gratefully. “Indisputable points will be no end of use to us if the case gets into court. Proceed.”

  “Well, to begin with, I think these marks on his wrists and round about his ankles show that he was tied up last night. The wrist-marks are deeper than the marks on the shins; and that’s more or less what one would expect. The ligatures would rest on the bare flesh in the case of the wrists; but at the ankles the cloth of his trousers and his socks would interpose and make the pressure less direct.”

  Inspector Armadale nodded approvingly, as though his opinion of Wendover had risen a little.

  “Suppose that’s correct, then,” Wendover continued, “it gives the notion of someone attacking Peter Hay and tying him up. But then Peter Hay wasn’t a normal person. He suffered from high blood-pressure, the doctor told us; and he’d had one or two slight strokes. In other words, he was liable to congestion of the brain if he over-exerted himself. Suppose he struggled hard, then he might quite well bring on an attack; and then his assailant would have a corpse on his hands without meaning to kill him at all.”

  Armadale nodded once more, as though agreeing to this series of inferences.

  “If the assailant had left the body tied up, then the show would have been given away,” Wendover proceeded, “so he untied the bonds, carried the corpse outside, and arranged it to look as if death had been caused by a heart attack.”

  He paused, and Sir Clinton put a question.

  “Is that absolutely all, squire? What about the silver in the drawer, for instance.”

  Wendover made a vague gesture.

  “I see nothing to connect the silver with this affair. The assailant may have been after it, of course, and got so frightened by the turn things took that he simply cleared out without waiting for anything. If I’d gone to a place merely to rob a man, I don’t think I’d wait to rob him if I saw a chance of being had up on a murder charge. I’d clear out while I was sure I was safe from discovery.”

  “Nothing further, then? In that case, inspector, it’s your turn to contribute to the pool.”

  Armadale had intended to confine himself strictly to the evidence and to put forward no theories; but the chance of improving on the amateur’s results proved too much of a temptation, as Sir Clinton had anticipated.

  “There’s not much doubt that he was tied up,” the inspector began. “The marks all point that way. But there was one thing that Mr. Wendover didn’t account for in them. The marks on the legs were on the front only—there wasn’t a mark on the back of the legs.”

  He halted for a moment and glanced at Wendover with subdued triumph.

  “So you infer?” Sir Clinton inquired.

  “I think he was tied up to something so that his legs were resting against it at the back and the bands were round the legs and the thing too. If it was that way, then the back of the legs wouldn’t have any marks of the band on them.”

  “Then what was he tied up to?” asked Wendover.

  “One of the chairs inside the cottage,” the inspector went on. “If he’d been sitting in the chair, with each leg tied to a leg of the chair, you’d get just what we saw on the skin.”

  Sir Clinton acquiesced with a nod.

  “Anything more?” he asked.

  “I’m not quite through,” Armadale continued. “Assume he was tied up as I’ve explained. If it had been a one-man job, there would have been some signs of a struggle—marks on his wrists or something of that sort. Peter Hay seems to have been a fairly muscular person, quite strong enough to put up some sort of show if he got a chance; certainly he’d have given one man enough trouble to leave some marks on his own skin.”

  “More than one man, then?” Sir Clinton suggested.

  “Two, at least. Suppose one of them held him in talk while the other took him by surprise, and you get over the difficulty of there being no struggle. One man would pounce on him and then the other would join in; and they’d have him tied up before he could put up any fight that would leave marks on him.”

  “That sounds all right,” Wendover admitted.

  Sir Clinton put an innocent question.

  “If it had been a one-man affair and a big struggle, then surely Peter Hay would have had his attack while the fight was going on, and if he’d died during the struggle there would have been no need to tie him up? Isn’t that so, squire?”

  Wendover considered the point and grudgingly agreed that it sounded probable.

  “Go on, inspector,” Sir Clinton ordered, without taking up the side-issue any further.

  “I can’t quite see what they did when they’d got him tied up,” the inspector acknowledged. “They don’t seem to have done much in the way of rummaging in the cottage, so far as I can see. Whate
ver it was that they were after, it wasn’t the cash in the drawer; and it wasn’t the two or three bits of silver, for they left them intact, although they could easily have got them if they’d wanted them. That part of the thing beats me just now.”

  Wendover showed a faint satisfaction at finding the inspector driven to admit a hiatus in his story.

  “However it happened, Peter Hay died in his chair, I think,” Armadale went on. “Perhaps it was the excitement of the affair. Anyhow, they had a dead man on their hands. So, as Mr. Wendover pointed out, they did their best to cover their tracks. They untied him, carried him outside, laid him down as if he’d fallen unconscious and died there. But they forgot one thing. If he’d come down all of a heap, as they wanted to suggest, his face would have been smashed a bit on the stones of the path. They arranged him with his hands above his head, as if he’d fallen at full length. In that position, he couldn’t shield his face as he fell. Normally you fall with your hands somewhere between your face and your chest—under your body, anyhow. But his hands were above his head; and yet his face hadn’t a bruise on it. That’s not natural.”

  “Quite clear, inspector.”

  “Then there’s another point. You called my attention to the moisture on the front of his clothes, under the body. Dew couldn’t have got in there.”

  “Precisely,” Sir Clinton agreed. “That dates the time when they put the body down, you think?”

  “It shows it was put down on top of the dew, therefore it was after dew-fall when they brought him out. And at the other side you’ve got the fact that his bed wasn’t slept in. So that limits the time of the affair to a period between dew-fall and Peter Hay’s normal bedtime.”

  “Unless he’d sat up specially late that night,” Wendover interposed.

  Armadale nodded a rather curt acknowledgment of this suggestion, and continued:

  “Two points more. They’ve just occurred to me, sir. The silver’s the first thing.”

  “Yes,” Sir Clinton encouraged him, since the inspector seemed to feel himself on doubtful ground.

  “I’m not sure, sir, that robbery can be ruled out, after all. It may be a case of one crime following on another. Suppose Peter Hay had been using his position as caretaker to get away with any silver left at Foxhills, and had got it stored up here for removal at a convenient time. The men who did him in last night might quite well have nailed the main bulk of it and overlooked those stray bits that he’d put away in his cash-drawer. For all we can tell, they may have made a good haul.”