Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

by J. J. Connington

  “Don’t be funny,” snapped Armadale. “Didn’t you get any reference from an earlier employer?”

  Billingford’s eyes twinkled.

  “Me? No. I’ve a charitable nature. Where would any of us be if we had our characters pawed over? Forgive and forget’s my motto. It’s easy enough to work on till someone does you in the eye.”

  “So you say you know nothing about him?”

  “I don’t quite like the way you put it, inspector. It seems almost rude. But I don’t know where he is now, and I’ll kiss the Book on that for you if you want it.”

  Armadale’s expression showed clearly that he thought little would be gained by accepting Billingford’s offer. He warned Derek Fordingbridge that his evidence might be needed at the inquest; then, with a cold nod to Billingford, he led the way out of the cottage. Sir Clinton maintained silence until they were beyond earshot of the door, then, as though addressing the world at large, he said pensively:

  “I wonder why they brought such a large card-index down with them from town.”

  Armadale was taken aback.

  “Card-index, sir? Where was it?”

  “I noticed it in their sitting-room as we passed the open door. It’s one of these small cabinet affairs.”

  The inspector had no suggestion to offer; and Sir Clinton did not seem to be anxious to pursue the matter. A few yards farther on he halted, and pointed to something at the edge of one of the puddles.

  “Doesn’t that footprint seem a bit familiar, inspector? Just measure it, will you?”

  Armadale’s eyes widened as he looked.

  “Why, it’s that 3½ shoe!” he exclaimed, stooping over the mark.

  “I noticed it as we were coming up, but it didn’t seem to be the best time for examining it,” Sir Clinton explained. “Now, inspector, that’s a permanent kind of puddle. The chances are that this mark was made before last night’s rain. It’s on the very edge of the water now, not the place where a girl would step if she could help it. The puddle’s filled up a bit since she made it.”

  “So she was Staveley’s visitor last night?”

  “It looks like it,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Now measure it carefully, inspector.”

  Armadale produced his tape-measure and took various dimensions of the mark. When he had risen to his feet again, Sir Clinton looked back at the cottage. Billingford and his companion were on the doorstep, eagerly gazing towards the police party.

  “Give it a good scrub with your foot now, inspector, if you’re quite finished with it. We may as well give Mr. Billingford something to guess about. He’s a genial rascal, and I’d like him to have some amusement.”

  The inspector grinned broadly as he rubbed his boot vigorously over the soft mud, effacing the print completely.

  “I’d like to see his face when he comes down to look at it,” he said derisively, as he completed the work of destruction. “We couldn’t have got much of a cast of it. anyhow.”

  When they reached Sir Clinton’s car, Armadale took leave of them.

  “There’s one or two things I’ve got to look into,” he explained, “and I’ll get some food between whiles. I’ll come along to the hotel in about an hour or so, if you don’t mind waiting there for me, sir. I think I’ll have something worth showing you by then.”

  He threw a triumphant glance at Wendover, and went off up the street. Sir Clinton made no comment on his subordinate’s remark, but started the car and drove towards the hotel. Wendover saw that nothing was to be got out of the chief constable, and naturally at the lunch-table the whole subject was tabooed.

  Armadale did not keep them waiting long. They had hardly left the lunch-table before he presented himself; and Wendover noted with dismay the jubilant air with which the inspector came forward to meet them. He carried a small bag in his hand.

  “I’d rather be sure that nobody overhears us, sir,” he said as he came up to them. “And I’ve some things to show you that I don’t want talked about in public yet.”

  He tapped the bag as he spoke.

  “Come up to my room, then, inspector. We’ll be free from interruption there.”

  They took the lift up; and, when they entered the room, the inspector turned the key in the door behind them as an extra precaution.

  “I’ve got the whole case cut and dried now, sir,” he explained with natural exultation in his voice. “It was just as I said this morning—as easy as falling off a log. It simply put itself together of its own accord.”

  “Well, let’s hear it, inspector,” Sir Clinton suggested as soon as he could edge a word into the current of the inspector’s pæan.

  “I’ll give you it step by step” the inspector said eagerly, “and then you’ll see how convincing it is. Now, first of all, we know that the dead man, Staveley, married this Fleetwood woman during the war.”

  Wendover flinched a little when he identified “this Fleetwood woman” as Cressida. This was evidently a foretaste of the inspector’s quality.

  “From what we’ve heard, one way and another, Staveley was nothing to boast about,” Armadale went on. “He was a bad egg, evidently; and especially in the way that would rasp a wife.”

  “That’s sound.” Sir Clinton agreed. “We needn’t dwell on it.”

  “He disappears; and she thinks he’s dead,” the inspector pursued. “She’s probably mighty glad to see the end of him. After a bit, she falls in with young Fleetwood and she marries him. That’s bigamy, as it turns out; but she doesn’t know it then.”

  “One can admit all that without straining things much,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Go on, inspector.”

  “The next thing is that Staveley turns up again. I don’t suppose he appeared in public. That wouldn’t be his game. These Fordingbridges have money; and, from what we’ve heard, Staveley wasn’t scrupulous about transferring other people’s money to his own pocket.”

  “Nothing that could be shaken, so far,” Sir Clinton encouraged him. “Go ahead.”

  “Very well,” the inspector went on. “He writes her a letter evidently trying to put the screw on her, and asking for an appointment on the quiet. She must have been taken a bit aback. She’d been living with young Fleetwood for the best part of a year. It’s quite on the cards that she’s— ”

  He broke off, glanced at Wendover’s stormy countenance, and evidently amended his original phrase:

  “That perhaps young Fleetwood and she weren’t the only people who might be hit by the business when it came out.”

  “So that’s your notion of the motive, is it?” Sir Clinton commented. “Well, it’s ingenious, I admit. I didn’t quite see how you were going to work up a case on the strength of a mere accidental bigamy, for nobody would think much about that. But one can’t tell how it might look from the point of view of a mother, of course. Anything’s possible, then. Go ahead.”

  “She writes him a letter making an appointment at an out-of-the-way place—Neptune’s Seat—at a time when it’s sure to be quiet—11 p.m. That was the note we found on the body. Secrecy’s written all over it, as any jury would see.”

  He paused for a moment, as though he were not quite sure how to put his next piece of the case.

  “She takes an automatic pistol with her; probably her husband had one. I’m not prepared to say that she meant definitely to murder Staveley then and there. Perhaps she only took the pistol as a precaution. Probably her barrister will try to pretend that she took it for self-defence purposes, Staveley being what he was. I don’t think that. Why? Because she took her husband along with her; and he could have looked after Staveley for her.”

  Wendover was about to interpose, but the inspector silenced him.

  “I’ll give you the evidence immediately, sir. Let me put the case first of all. She puts on her golfing-shoes, because she’s going on to the sand. She takes down her golf-blazer and puts it on over her evening dress. Then she goes out by the side-door and meets the car that her husband has brought round from the garage for her.
That must have been close on eleven o’clock. Nobody would miss her in a big place like the hotel.”

  With unconscious art, the inspector paused again for a moment. Wendover, glancing at Sir Clinton’s face in the hope of reading his thoughts, was completely baffled. The inspector resumed, still keeping to the historical present in his narrative.

  “They reach the point of the road nearest to Neptune’s Seat. Perhaps they turn the car then, perhaps later. In any case, she gets out and walks down towards the rock. Fleetwood, meanwhile, slips in behind the groyne and keeps in the lee of it as he moves parallel with her. That accounts for the kind of prints we saw this morning.

  “She gets to the rock and meets Staveley. They talk for a while. Then she loses her temper and shoots him. Then the fat’s in the fire. The Fleetwoods go back to their car and drive off to the hotel again. They don’t take the car to the garage straight away. She gets out, goes round by the entrance leading to the place where the guests keep their golfing togs. She takes off her golfing-shoes, strips off her blazer and hangs it up, and slips into the hotel, without being spotted.”

  Wendover had listened to this confident recital with an ever-increasing uneasiness. He comforted himself, however, with the hope that the inspector would find it difficult to bring adequate proof of his various points; but he could not deny that Armadale’s reconstruction manifested a higher gift of imagination than he had been expecting. It all sounded so grimly probable.

  “Meanwhile,” the inspector resumed, “young Fleetwood leaves the car standing and goes into the hotel. What he was after I can’t fathom—perhaps to establish some sort of alibi. In any case, he comes hurrying down the stairs at 11.35 p.m., catches his foot, takes a header, and lands at the bottom with a compound fracture of his right leg. That’s the end of him for the night. They ring up Rafford, who patches him up and puts him to bed.”

  Armadale halted again, and threw a superior smile towards Wendover.

  “That’s my case stated. I think there’s enough in it to apply for a warrant against the woman as principal and young Fleetwood as accessory.”

  Wendover took up the implied challenge eagerly, now that he knew the worst. This was the part for which he had cast himself, and he was anxious to play it well.

  “There’s a flaw at the root of your whole case, inspector,” he asserted. “You make out that it was fear of exposure that acted as the motive. Well, by this murder exposure became inevitable—and under its worst form, too. How do you get round that difficulty?”

  Armadale’s air of superiority increased, if anything, as he heard the objection advanced.

  “I’m afraid, Mr. Wendover, that you haven’t had much experience of real murder cases. In books, of course, it may be different,” he added, with an evident sneer. “Your real murderer may be stupid and unable to foresee the chain of events that the murder’s going to produce. Or else you may have an excitable clever type that’s carried away by strong feelings on the spur of the moment, so that all the cleverness goes for nothing and the murderer does the work in a frame of mind that doesn’t give much heed to the possible consequences.”

  “And, of course, the murderers who are neither stupid nor excitable are the ones who never get caught, eh?” Sir Clinton interjected in an amused tone. “That accounts for us police being at fault now and again.”

  Wendover considered Armadale’s thesis with care.

  “Then, as Mrs. Fleetwood isn’t stupid,” he said frigidly, “you’re assuming that she lost her head under some strong provocation?”

  “It’s quite likely,” Armadale insisted. “No jury would turn down that idea simply because we can’t state what the precise provocation was. They wouldn’t expect a verbatim report of the conversation on the rock, you know.”

  Wendover could hardly deny this in his own mind; and his heart sank as he heard the inspector’s confident declaration. He tried a fresh point of attack.

  “You said you’d definite evidence to support this notion of yours, didn’t you? Well, how do you propose to prove that Mrs. Fleetwood was there at all last night?”

  Armadale’s smile had a tinge of triumph in it. He bent over his bag and drew from it one of the wax casts, which he laid on the table. A second dip brought to light a pair of girl’s golfing-shoes. He selected the proper one and placed it, sole upward, alongside the cast. Wendover, with a sinking heart, compared corresponding parts of the two objects. Even the most carping critic could not deny the identity.

  “These are the woman Fleetwood’s golfing-shoes, sir,” the inspector announced a trifle grimly. “I found them in the lady golfers’ dressing-room. I can bring a witness or two who’ll swear to them, if need be.”

  Suddenly Wendover detected a possible flaw in the inspector’s case; but, instead of unmasking his battery immediately, he made up his mind to lead Armadale astray, and, if possible, to put him off his guard. He let his full disappointment show clearly in his face, as if the evidence of the shoes had shaken his beliefs. Dropping the matter without further discussion, he took up a fresh line.

  “And the golf-blazer? What about it? That left no tracks on the sands.”

  Armadale’s smile of triumph became even more marked. He turned once more to his bag, slipped his hands into his rubber gloves, and then, with every precaution, lifted a dusty-looking Colt automatic into view.

  “ This is a .38 calibre pistol,” he pointed out. “Same calibre as the cartridge-case we picked up on the rock, and probably the same as the bullet’ll be when we get it from the body. I’ve examined the barrel; there’s been a shot fired from it quite recently. I’ve looked into the magazine; it lacks one cartridge of a full load.”

  He paused dramatically before his final point.

  “And I found this pistol in the pocket of the woman Fleetwood’s golf-blazer which was hanging on her peg in the lady golfers’ dressing-room.”

  After another pause, meant to let the fact sink home in Wendover’s mind, Armadale added:

  “You’ll admit, sir, that a toy of this sort is hardly the kind of thing an ordinary lady carries about with her.”

  Wendover thought he saw his way now, and he prepared to spring his mine.

  “Let’s be quite clear about this, inspector. I take it that you went into that ladies’ dressing-room, hunted around for Mrs. Fleetwood’s coat-peg, and found the blazer hanging on it and the shoes lying on the floor below.”

  “Exactly, sir. Mrs. Fleetwood’s card was there, marking the peg. I’d no difficulty.”

  Wendover made no attempt to repress the smile which curved his lips.

  “Just so, inspector. Anyone else could have found the things just as easily. They were lying there, open to anyone; not even a key to turn in order to pick them up. And after dark that dressing-room is left very much to itself. No one goes there except by accident.”

  In his turn he paused before launching his attack. Then he added:

  “In fact, some other woman might have gone there instead of Mrs. Fleetwood; worn her shoes and her blazer; and misled you completely. Anyone could take the blazer from its peg and the shoes from the floor, inspector. Your evidence is all right up to a point, I admit; but it doesn’t incriminate the owner of the articles, since they were accessible to anybody at that time of night.”

  Wendover had expected to see a downfall of the inspector’s pride; but instead, Armadale’s face showed clearly that the shot had missed its mark. With a slight gesture, the inspector drew Wendover’s eyes to the pistol.

  “There are some fingerprints on this—quite clear ones, sir. I’ve dusted them, and they’re perfectly good as a means of identification.”

  “But you don’t suppose Mrs. Fleetwood will let you take her fingerprints if they’re going to tell against her, do you?”

  Armadale’s face showed the pleasure which he felt in having forestalled criticism. He gingerly replaced the pistol in some receptacle in his bag, and then drew out, with all precaution, a table-knife which Wendover recognised
as of the pattern used in the hotel.

  “This is the knife that the woman Fleetwood used to-day at lunch. The waiter who served her was told to keep it for me—he brought it on the plate without handling it. When I dusted it some of her fingerprints came up, of course. They’re identical with those on the pistol. Any reply to that, sir?”

  Wendover felt the ground cut away from under his feet. He could think of nothing to urge against the inspector’s results. But, even then, Armadale seemed to have something in reserve. He put the knife back in his bag, searched the contents again, and produced a pair of pumps, which he placed on the table.

  “I got the chambermaid to lift these while she was tidying up Fleetwood’s room this morning. Put your finger on the soles: they’re still quite damp. Naturally; for you know how water oozes from sand if you stand long on the one spot. What’s more, if you look at the place between the soles and the uppers—at the join—you’ll see some grains of sand sticking. That’s good enough for me. Fleetwood was the man behind the groyne. Now you won’t persuade me that Fleetwood was off last night helping anyone except his wife—any woman, I mean—in that affair at the rock.”

  Wendover scrutinised the pumps minutely and had to admit that the inspector’s statements were correct. Armadale watched him scornfully and then concluded his exposition.

  “There’s the evidence you asked for, sir. Fleetwood was there. His pumps are enough to prove that. I haven’t checked them with the cast yet, for there’s enough already; but I’ll do it later on. His wife was there—golf-shoes, blazer, pistol, fingerprints, they all prove it up to the hilt, when you take in the empty cartridge-case we found on the rock. Then there’s the car left standing out all night. Probably he meant to bring it in and broke his leg before he could come back to do the work. That’s enough to satisfy any jury, sir. There’s nothing to do now except apply for a warrant and arrest the two of them.”

  Sir Clinton had listened to the inspector’s recapitulation of the evidence with only a tepid interest; but the last sentence seemed to wake him up.