“Here’s the point,” he explained. “I can’t be expected to stand aside while you try to make the police ridiculous. I’ll admit that Armadale hasn’t been tactful with you; and perhaps you’re entitled to score off him if you can. If you do your scoring in private, between ourselves, I’ve nothing to say; but if you’re bent on a public splash—why, then, I shall simply enlighten the inspector myself and spike your gun. That will save him from appearing a fool in public. And that’s that. Now what do you propose to do?”
“I hadn’t looked at it in that way,” Wendover admitted frankly. “You’re quite right, of course. I’ll tell you what. You can give him a hint beforehand to be cautious; and I’ll show him the flaw afterwards, if he hasn’t spotted it himself by that time.”
“That’s all right, then,” Sir Clinton answered. “It’s a dangerous game, making the police look silly. And the inspector’s too good a man to hold up to ridicule. He makes mistakes, as we all do; but he does some pretty good work between them.”
Wendover reflected that he might have expected something of this sort, for Sir Clinton never let a subordinate down. By tacit consent they dropped the subject.
Half way through breakfast they were interrupted by a page-boy with a message.
“Sir Clinton Driffield? Miss Fordingbridge’s compliments, sir, and she’d like to see you as soon as possible. She’s in her private sitting-room upstairs—No. 28, sir.”
When the boy had retired, Sir Clinton made a wry face.
“Really, this Fordingbridge family ought to pay a special police rate. They give more trouble than most of the rest of the population of the district lumped together. You’d better come up with me. Hurry up with your breakfast, in case it happens to be anything important.”
Wendover obviously was not much enamoured of the prospect opened up by the chief constable’s suggestion.
“She does talk,” he said with foreboding, as though he dreaded the coming interview.
They found Miss Fordingbridge waiting for them when they went upstairs, and she broke out immediately with her story.
“Oh, Sir Clinton, I’m so worried about my brother. He went out last night and he hasn’t come back, and I don’t really know what to think of it. What could he be doing out at night in a place like Lynden Sands, where there’s nothing to do and where he hasn’t any reason for staying away? And if he meant to stay away, he could have left a message for me or said something before he went off, quite easily; for I saw him just a few minutes before he left the hotel. What do you think about it? And as if we hadn’t trouble enough already, with that inspector of yours prowling round and suspecting everyone! If he hasn’t more to do than spy on my niece, I hope you’ll set him to find my brother at once, instead of wasting his time.”
She halted, more for lack of breath than shortage of things to say; and Sir Clinton seized the chance to ask her for some more definite details.
“You want to know when he went out last night?” Miss Fordingbridge demanded. “Well, it must have been late—after eleven, at any rate, for I go to bed at eleven always, and he said good night to me just before I left this room. And if he had meant to stay away, he would have told me, I’m sure; for he usually does tell me when he’s going to be out late. And he said nothing whatever, except that he was going out and that he meant to take a walk up towards the Blowhole. And I thought he was just going for a breath of fresh air before going to bed; and now it turns out that he never came back again. And nobody in the hotel has heard anything about him, for I asked the manager.”
“Possibly he’ll put in an appearance shortly,” Sir Clinton suggested soothingly.
“Oh, of course, if the police are incompetent, there’s no more to be said,” Miss Fordingbridge retorted tartly. “But I thought it was part of their business to find missing people.”
“Well, we’ll look into it, if you wish,” Sir Clinton said, as she seemed obviously much distressed by the state of things. “But really, Miss Fordingbridge, I think you’re taking the matter too seriously. Quite possibly Mr. Fordingbridge went for a longer walk than he intended, and got benighted or something; sprained his ankle, perhaps, and couldn’t get home again. Most probably he’ll turn up safe and sound in due course. In the meantime, we’ll do what we can.”
But when they had left the room, Wendover noticed that his friend’s face was not so cheerful.
“Do you notice, squire,” the chief constable pointed out as they went downstairs, “that everything we’ve been worried with in this neighbourhood seems to be connected with this confounded Fordingbridge lot? Peter Hay—caretaker to the Fordingbridges; Staveley—married one of the family; and now old Fordingbridge himself. And that leaves out of account this mysterious claimant, with his doubtful pack of associates, and also the suspicious way the Fleetwoods are behaving. If we ever get to the bottom of the affair, it’ll turn out to be a Fordingbridge concern entirely, either directly or indirectly. That’s plain to a village idiot.”
“What do you propose to do in this last business?” Wendover demanded.
“Get hold of a pair of old Fordingbridge’s shoes, first of all. We might need them; and we might not have time to come back for them. I’ll manage it through he boots, now. I could have got them from Miss Fordingbridge, I expect, but she might have been a bit alarmed if I’d asked her for them.”
With the shoes in an attaché-case, Sir Clinton set out for the Blowhole, accompanied by Wendover.
“Not much guidance, so far,” he commented, “so we may as well start at the only place she could mention.”
When they reached the Blowhole, out on the headland which formed one horn of the bay, it was only too evident that very little trace was to be expected there. The turf showed no marks of any description. Sir Clinton seemed rather resentful of the expectant manner of Wendover.
“Well, what do you expect me to do?” he demanded brusquely. “I’m not an Australian tracker, you know. And there don’t seem to be any cigar-butts or cigarette-ash or any of these classical clues lying around, even if I could use them if I’d found them. There’s just one chance—that he’s gone down on to the sands.”
As he spoke, he stepped to the cliff-edge and gazed down on the beach.
“If those tracks on the sand happen to be his,” he said, “then we’ve got at least one bit of luck to start with.”
Wendover, coming to the chief constable’s side, saw the footprints of two men stretching clean-cut along the beach until they grew small in the distance.
“We’ll go down there and see what we can make of it,” Sir Clinton suggested. “I’ve telephoned to Armadale to come out from Lynden Sands and meet us. It’s handy that these tracks stretch out in that direction and not into the other bay.”
They descended a steep flight of steps cut on the face of the cliff for the convenience of hotel visitors; and when they reached the sands below, they found the footprints starting out from the bottom of the stair. Sir Clinton opened his attaché-case and pulled out Paul Fordingbridge’s shoes, which he had procured at the hotel.”
The boots told me that Fordingbridge had two pairs of shoes, both of the same pattern and both fairly new; so it should be easy enough to pick out his tracks, if they’re here,” he said, taking one shoe and pressing it into the sand to make an impression of the sole. “That looks all right, squire. The nail pattern’s the same in the shoe and the right-hand set of footmarks.”
“And the mark you’ve just made is a shade larger than the footprint,” Wendover commented, to show that he had profited by Sir Clinton’s lesson of the previous day. “That fits all right. By the way, Clinton, it’s clear enough that these two fellows met up at the top of the stairs and came down together. If they’d met here, there would have been a second set of tracks for Man No. 2, which he’d have made in coming towards the foot of the stairway.”
Sir Clinton nodded his agreement with this inference, put the shoes back in his attaché-case, and set out to follow the tracks acros
s the sands. In a short time they passed Neptune’s Seat, where Sir Clinton paused for a few moments to inspect the work of his diggers.
“That seems an interminable job you’ve set them,” Wendover commented as they walked on again.
“The tides interfere with the work. The men can only work between tides, and each incoming tide brings up a lot of sand and spreads it over the places they’ve dug out already.”
“What are you looking for, Clinton, damn it? It seems an awful waste of energy.”
“I’m looking for the traces of an infernal scoundrel, squire, unless I’m much mistaken; but whether I’ll find them or not is another question altogether. It’s a pure grab in the dark. And, as I suspect I’m up against a pretty smart fellow, I’m not going to give any information away, even to you, for fear he infers something that might help him. He’s probably guessed already what I’m after—one can’t conceal things on the open beach—but I want to keep him guessing, if possible. Come along.”
The tracks ran, clearly marked, across the sands of the bay in the direction of the old wreck which formed a conspicuous landmark on the shore. The chief constable and his companion followed the trail for a time without finding anything which called for comment.
“They don’t appear to have been hurrying,” Sir Clinton said, examining the tracks at one point. “They seem just to have sauntered along, and once or twice they’ve halted for a moment. I expect they were talking something over.”
“The second man must have been a pretty big fellow to judge by the size of the footmarks,” Wendover ventured cautiously. “Apart from that, there’s nothing much to see.”
“No?” Sir Clinton retorted. “Only that his impressions are very shallow—much shallower than Fordingbridge’s ones. And his stride’s not longer than friend Paul’s, either. Also, the impression of the sole’s quite smooth—looks like crêpe-rubber soles or something of that sort. If so, there’s nothing to be got out of them. That kind of shoe’s sold by the thousand.”
Wendover made no reply, for at this moment he caught sight of the inspector plodding along the road above the beach. Sir Clinton whistled shrilly, and Armadale, catching sight of them, left the road and descended to the sands. In a few minutes he reached them, and Sir Clinton gave him a summary of the facts which had come to light since he had telephoned.
“There’s just one thing that’s turned up since I saw you last, sir,” the inspector reported in his turn. “I’ve had Flatt’s cottage watched, as you ordered; and there’s a third man there now. He keeps himself under cover most of the time; but I gave Sapcote a pair of good field-glasses, and he recognised the fellow as soon as he saw him—knew him quite well. His name’s Simon Aird. He used to be valet at Foxhills, but he got fired for some cause or other, and hasn’t been near Lynden Sands since. Then I asked the fishermen if they’d recognised the man who opened the door to them when they went to borrow the boat, and they recalled that it was Aird. They hadn’t thought anything about it, of course, until I questioned them.”
“Now, that’s something worth having,” Sir Clinton said appreciatively. “But let’s get on with the job in hand. That tide’s coming in fast; and, if we don’t hurry, it’ll be all over these tracks. We never seem to get any time to do our work thoroughly in this place, with all that water slopping up and down twice a day.”
They hurried along the beach, following the trail. It seemed to present nothing of particular interest until, as they drew near the old wreck, Sir Clinton’s eye ranged ahead and picked up something fresh.
“See that new set of tracks—a third man—coming out from behind the old wreck’s hull and joining the other two?” he asked, pointing as he spoke. “Keep well to the landward side as we come up to them, so as not to muddle them up with our own footprints. I think our best line would be to climb up on top of the wreck and make a general survey from above.”
They followed his advice; and soon all three had climbed to the deck of the hulk, from which vantage-point they could look down almost straight upon the meeting-point of the three trails.
“H’m!” said Sir Clinton reflectively. “Let’s take No. 3 first of all. He evidently came down from the road and took up a position where the hull of the wreck concealed him from the other two. The moon must have risen three or four hours before, so there would be light enough on the beach. You’d better make a rough sketch of these tracks, inspector, while we’re up here. We shan’t have much time before that tide washes everything out.”
The inspector set to work at once to make a diagram of the various tracks on the sand below [see Diagram II.], while Sir Clinton continued his inspection.
“No. 3 evidently hung about behind the wreck for a long while,” the chief constable pointed out. “You can see how the sand’s trampled at random as he shuffled around trying to keep himself warm during his waiting. Now we’ll suppose that Fordingbridge and No. 2 are coming up. Look at their tracks, squire. They came up almost under the lee of the wreck; and then they turned right round, as if they intended to retrace their steps. It looks as though they’d come to the end of their walk and meant to turn back. But they seem to have stood there for a while; for the prints are indistinct—which is just what happens if you stand long enough on wet sand. The water oozes, owing to the long displacement of the sand particles, and when you lift your foot it leaves simply a mass of mushy stuff where you stood, with no clean impression.”
He glanced again over the tracks before continuing.
“I’d read it this way. While they were standing there, with their backs to the wreck, No. 3 started into activity. He came out from the cover of the hull and walked up to where they were standing. He must have gone quietly, for they don’t seem to have turned to meet him. You see that, squire? Do you see anything else?”
Wendover was staring at the tracks with a puzzled look on his face. The inspector, who had just reached this point in his diagram, gave a smothered exclamation of surprise as he examined the sand below him. Wendover was the first to find his voice.
“Where’s the rest of Fordingbridge’s track?” he demanded. “It simply stops short there. He didn’t turn; he didn’t walk away; and—damn it, he can’t have flown away. Where did he go to?”
Sir Clinton ignored the interruption.
“Let’s take the tracks as we find them. After No. 3 came up behind the others, it’s clear enough that No. 2 and No. 3 went off side by side, down towards the sea. Even from here you can see that they were in company, for sometimes the tracks cross, and No. 2 has his prints on top of No. 3, whereas farther on you see No. 3 putting his feet on top of No. 2’s impressions. Have you finished with that jotting of yours, inspector? Then we’ll go and follow these tracks down the beach to the tide edge.”
He dropped neatly down from the wreck as he spoke, and waited for the others to rejoin him.
“Both No. 2 and No. 3 must have been wearing crêpe-rubber shoes or something of that sort,” the inspector remarked, stooping over the tracks. “And they’ve both got fairly big feet, it seems.”
“No. 3 seems to have been walking on his toes,” Wendover pointed out. “He seems to have dug deeper with them than with his heels. And his feet are fairly parallel instead of having the toes pointing outwards. That’s how the Red Indians walk,” he added informatively.
Sir Clinton seemed more interested in the general direction of the tracks. Keeping to one side of them, he moved along the trail, scanning the prints as he went. Armadale, moving rather more rapidly on the other side of the route, came abruptly to a halt as he reached the edge of the waves. The rest of the trail had been obliterated by the rising tide.
“H’m! Blank end!” he said disgustedly.
Sir Clinton looked up.
“Just as well for you, inspector, perhaps. If you’d hurried along at that rate at low tide you’d have run straight into the patch of quicksand, if I’m not mistaken. It’s just down yonder.”
“What do you make of it, sir?”
; “One might make a lot of it, if one started to consider the possibilities. They may have walked off along the beach on the part that’s now swamped by the tide. Or they may have got into a boat and gone home that way. All one really knows is that they got off the premises without leaving tracks. We might, of course, hunt along the water-line and try to spot where they came up on to high-and-dry ground; but I think they’re fairly ingenious, and most likely they took the trouble to walk on shingle above the tide-mark if they came ashore. It’s not worth wasting time on, since we’ve little enough already. Let’s get back to the meeting-point.”
He led the way up the beach again.
“Reminds one a bit of Sam Lloyd’s ‘Get off the Earth’ puzzle, doesn’t it?” he suggested, when they came back to the point where the three tracks met. “You can count your three men all right, and then—flick!—there are only two. How do you account for it, squire?”
Wendover scrutinised the tracks minutely.
“There’s been no struggle, anyhow,” he affirmed. “The final tracks of Fordingbridge are quite clear enough to show that. So he must have gone voluntarily, wherever he went to.”
“And you explain his going—how?”
Wendover reflected for a moment or two before answering.
“Let’s take every possibility into account,” he said, as his eyes ranged over the sand. “First of all, he didn’t sink into the sand in any normal way, for the surface isn’t disturbed. Secondly, he didn’t walk away, or he’d have left tracks. That leaves only the possibility that he went off through the air.”
“I like this pseudo-mathematical kind of reasoning, squire. It sounds so convincing,” Sir Clinton commented. “Go ahead. You never fail to combine interest with charm in your expositions.”
Wendover seemed untouched by the warmth of this tribute.
“If he went off through the air, he must have managed it either by himself or with the help of the other two; that’s self-evident. Now it’s too far for him to have jumped backwards on to the wreck and climbed up it; we can rule that out. And it’s hardly likely that he was enough of a D. D. Home to manage a feat of levitation and sail up into the air off his own bat. So that excludes the notion that he vanished completely, without any extraneous assistance, doesn’t it?”
Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 18
