“ ‘He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue’—Ruskin,” quoted Sir Clinton, with the air of reading from a collection of moral maxims. “You’ve made the thing crystal-clear to me, squire, with the exception of just one or two trifling points. And these are: First, why did that very solid and unimaginative Mr. Paul Fordingbridge take to romping with his—presumably—grown-up pals? Second, why didn’t he return home after these little games? Third, where is he now? Or, if I may put it compendiously, what’s it all about? At first sight it seems almost abnormal, you know, but I suppose we shall get accustomed to it.”
Armadale had been examining the tracks on the sand without paying Wendover even the courtesy of listening to him. He now broke in.
“If you’ll look at No. 3’s tracks, sir, you’ll find that they’re quite light up to the point where he came directly behind Fordingbridge; and then they get deeply marked on the stretch leading down to the sea.”
“That’s quite correct, inspector,” Sir Clinton agreed. “And if you look again you’ll find that when they’re light, the toes turn out to a fair extent; but on the heavier part of the track No. 3 walked—as Mr. Wendover pointed out—like a Red Indian. Does that interest you?”
The inspector shook his head.
“I don’t quite get it, sir.”
“Ever been in France, inspector?”
“Just for a trip, sir.”
“Ah, then you may not have chanced to come across Père François, then. If you’d met him, he might have helped you a bit in explaining these levitation affairs.”
Wendover pricked up his ears.
“Who’s your French friend, Clinton?”
“Père François? Oh, he was one of the pioneers of aviation, in a way; taught men to fly, and all that. ‘Get off the Earth’ was his motto.”
“There’s not much of the strong, silent man about you, Clinton,” said Wendover glumly. “I never heard anyone to beat you for talking a lot and saying nothing while you’re doing it.”
“Père François not mentioned in the classics? Well, well. One can’t drag in everything, of course. But don’t let’s dwell on it. What about the business in hand? We must have a theory to work on, you know. How do you account for Mr. Paul Fordingbridge’s quaint behaviour, squire? That’s really of some importance.”
Wendover pondered for a time before taking up his friend’s implied challenge.
“Suppose that No. 3 had a chloroformed pad in his hand when he came up behind Fordingbridge,” he suggested at last, “and that he clapped it over Fordingbridge’s mouth from behind; and then, once he was unconscious, they both carried him down to a boat.”
“You can chloroform a sleeping man without any struggle,” the inspector commented acidly, “but you can’t chloroform a normal man without his making some sort of struggle. There’s no trace of a struggle here.”
Wendover had to admit the flaw.
“Well, then,” he amended, “I suppose one must assume that he voluntarily allowed himself to be lifted down to the boat.”
Armadale hardly troubled to conceal his sneer.
“And what earthly good would that be?” he demanded. “Here are his tracks stretching back for the best part of a mile over the sands. Lifting him for twenty yards or so at the end of that doesn’t seem much use. Besides, as I read the tracks, that’s an impossibility. No. 2’s tracks are mixed up with No. 3’s in the second part of the trail, and sometimes one was ahead and sometimes the other of them. Two men don’t waltz round like that when they’re carrying anyone, usually. It’s impossible, for their footmarks show they were both walking straight ahead all the time; and if they were carrying a man between them they’d have had to reverse somehow if the front man changed round to the rear. That’s no good, Mr. Wendover.”
“What do you propose then, inspector,” Wendover inquired, without troubling to repress a nettled tone in his voice.
“I propose to take casts of their footprints and hunt up shoes to match, if I can.”
“I shouldn’t trouble, inspector,” Sir Clinton interposed. “Look at the marks. They seem to me to be about the biggest size of shoe you could buy. The impressions are light; which seems to suggest a medium weight distributed over an abnormally large foot-area. In other words, these shoes were not fits at all; they were probably extra-sized ones padded to suit or else, possibly, put on above normal shoes. Compare the lengths of the steps, too. If these men had heights anything in proportion to the size of their shoes, they would be six-footers on any reasonable probability, whereas their pace is no longer than mine. There’s no certainty, of course; but I’m prepared to bet that you’ll get nothing by shoe-hunting. And by this time these shoes have been destroyed, or thrown away in some place where you’ll never find them. These fellows are smarter lads than you seem to think.”
Rather lenified by the inspector’s failure, Wendover tried to draw the chief constable.
“What do you make of it yourself, Clinton?”
Somewhat to the surprise of both his hearers, Sir Clinton extended the range of the subject under discussion.
“Motive is what interests me at present,” he confessed. “We’ve had the Peter Hay case, the Staveley affair, the shooting of Cargill, and this vanishing trick of Fordingbridge’s. There must have been some incentive at the back of each of them. Eliminate Cargill’s affair for the present, and the other three are all concerned with one or other of the Foxhills people. The odds against that happening by accident are a bit too heavy for probability, aren’t they?”
“Obviously,” Wendover admitted.
“Then it’s reasonable to look to the Foxhills affairs for motives, isn’t it?” Sir Clinton continued. “What’s the big thing in the Foxhills group about which they might come to loggerheads? It stares you in the face—that old man’s will. You’ve seen already that it’s led to friction. Paul Fordingbridge won’t recognise the claim of this nephew of his—we’ll call him the claimant for short. He sat tight with his power of attorney and refused to abdicate. That suggests a few bright thoughts to me; and probably you feel the same about it.”
He glanced at his watch, and with a gesture invited them to walk over the sands.
“By the way, though,” he suggested, just as they were moving off, “you might note on your diagram, inspector, the difference between the light and heavy tracks of No. 3’s feet. Make the trail of the deep footprints a bit darker” [see Diagram II.].
The inspector did as he was requested.
“If you start with that assumption,” Wendover pointed out, as they began to move across the sands, “then it ought to lead you to the idea of two camps in the Fordingbridge lot.”
“Who’s in your camps?” Sir Clinton asked.
“The claimant, Staveley, and Miss Fordingbridge would be in the one, since Staveley was living at the cottage and Miss Fordingbridge identifies the claimant. The other camp would be Paul Fordingbridge, with Mr. and Mrs. Fleetwood.”
Sir Clinton nodded thoughtfully, and put a further question.
“On that basis, squire, can you find a motive for each of these affairs?”
“I think one might find some,” Wendover contended confidently. “In the first place, Peter Hay had known the claimant very well indeed in the old days. Therefore his evidence would be invaluable to either one side or the other; and whichever side he did not favour might think it worth while to silence him. It was someone well known to Peter Hay who murdered him, if I’m not mistaken. In any case, it was someone in our own class. That was implicit in the facts.”
“It’s not beyond possibility, squire. Continue the analysis.”
“Supposing Paul Fordingbridge were out of the way, who would oppose the claimant?” Wendover pursued.
“The Fleetwoods,” said the inspector. “They’re next in the succession. And Staveley was a witness of some value to the claimant, too, so he was put out of the way. Everything points to the same thing, you see, sir.”
Wendover, bearing in mind the coming fall of the inspector’s case, took this side-thrust amiably.
“Let’s go on,” he suggested. “There’s the Cargill affair.”
“I’ve got my own ideas about that,” the inspector interjected. “Though I haven’t had time to work them up yet.”
“Cargill’s about the same build as the claimant,” Wendover continued, without noticing the interruption.” It seems to me quite on the cards that the attack on him was a case of mistaken identity. Or else—of course! He was a good witness for the claimant! He’d met him in the war, you remember. Perhaps that was why he was attacked.”
“I think more of your first notion, sir,” the inspector interrupted, with more than a tinge of approval in his tone. “As I said before, everything points the same way. You find Mrs. Fleetwood mixed up in the whole affair from start to finish.”
Sir Clinton ignored this view of the case, and turned to Wendover.
“Doesn’t it seem rather out of proportion when you assume that Paul Fordingbridge would go the length of murder merely in order to keep the claimant out of the money and out of Foxhills?” he inquired gently. “It really seems carrying things a bit too far when you take that as a premise.”
“Well, what better can you suggest?” Wendover demanded.
“If I were set to make a guess, I think I’d hazard something of this sort,” the chief constable returned. “Suppose that friend Paul has been up to some hanky-panky under his power of attorney—malversation of some kind. He wouldn’t dare to sell Foxhills; but he might safely dispose of securities. There was no audit, remember; the competent fellow managed it all himself. And so long as no claimant turned up he was all right; for none of the rest of them seemed to need money badly, and no one protested against the estate being left hanging in the wind. But as soon as this claimant hove in sight, friend Paul looked like being ‘for it’ if the claimant could establish his case. Everything would come out then. That would be a good enough motive, wouldn’t it?”
“There’s more in it than that, sir,” the inspector broke in. “If he’d got himself into Queer Street, it might be handy if he could disappear when things looked like getting too hot for him. Perhaps the whole of this”—he turned and waved his hand towards the mysterious footprints—“is simply a blind to cover his get-away. Perhaps it’s just something left for us to scratch our heads over while he gets under cover, sir.”
Sir Clinton seemed slightly amused by the picture the inspector had drawn.
“I never held with head-scratching, inspector. It’s a breach of good manners, and not even friend Paul shall tempt me to make a habit of it. I don’t think he’s very far away; but I doubt if you’ll get your hands on him in a hurry. My impression is that he’s gone to ground in a very safe hole.”
The inspector seemed to be reminded of something.
“By the way, sir, that new fellow who’s turned up at Flatt’s cottage must have come down by car, probably during the night. They’ve got the car in the boat-house beside the cottage; I saw its bonnet sticking out as I passed this morning.”
“Very sensible of Mr. Aird, inspector, since he seems to shun being recognised by his old friends round about here. If he’d come by train, someone would have spotted him at the station.”
Without paying further attention to the matter, Sir Clinton changed the subject.
“When we get back to the hotel, inspector, I think we’ll interview the Fleetwood family. They’ve had quite long enough to polish their speeches by this time. But I’ll give you one hint—and I mean it, inspector. Don’t be too sure about that case of yours. And don’t let your zeal run away with you when you come to question the Fleetwoods. You’re on very slippery ice; and, if you get their backs up too much, we may fail to get a piece of evidence out of them which is essential.”
The inspector considered this in silence for a few moments. Quite obviously he did not like being handled in this fashion.
“Well, sir,” he conceded at last, “if you think I’m likely to bungle something because I don’t know what it is, why not give me a hint?”
“Mr. Wendover could do that, I think, if you cared to ask him, inspector.”
Armadale turned round to Wendover with ill-concealed sulkiness.
“Have you something up your sleeve, sir?”
Wendover took no notice of the ungracious tone. He saw his way to achieve his end without the difficulties he had feared.
“You’ve got no case at all, inspector,” he said roundly. “Sir Clinton told you long ago that there was a flaw in it. The whole thing’s a wash-out. Now I don’t want to have you walking straight into a mess, you understand; and you’ll do that if you aren’t careful. Suppose we let Sir Clinton do the talking at this interview? He’ll get what he wants. You and I can ask any questions we choose after he’s done. And after it’s all over I’ll show you the flaw in your case. Agree to that?”
“I really think Mr. Wendover’s suggestion is sound, inspector,” Sir Clinton interposed, as Armadale hesitated over accepting the situation. “It’s a fact that you can’t prove your case on the evidence available.”
“Oh, very well, then,” Armadale agreed, rather resentfully. “If you want it handled so, sir, I’ve no objection. But it seems to me that case will take a lot of breaking.”
“It’s quite on the cards that this interview will stiffen you in your opinions, inspector; but you’re wrong for all that,” Sir Clinton pronounced, in a voice that carried conviction to even the inspector’s mind.
Chapter Thirteen
Cressida’s Narrative
Reassured by the knowledge that Sir Clinton had taken the examination of Cressida out of the inspector’s hands, Wendover was eager to know if anything fresh would be elicited from the Fleetwoods which might help him to carry his theories to a further stage. Feeling sure that he could clear Cressida from the murder charge, he had difficulty in restraining his impatience during the half-hour which elapsed before they were shown into the Fleetwood suite.
His first glance at Cressida showed him that the strain of the last day or two had told heavily upon her. Her darkened eyes and the weariness of her whole attitude spoke for themselves of the long hours of tension and anxiety; and on her face he could read clearly the apprehension which she was vainly striving to conceal. What puzzled him most was an impression of conscious guilt which he sensed in some mysterious way without being able to analyse it clearly.
Stanley Fleetwood, lying on a couch with his leg in splints, seemed to present almost as difficult a problem. On his face also the strain had left its traces; and his whole expression inevitably suggested the bearing of an accomplice who, seeing that all is lost, still determines to brazen things out in the hope that some turn of the wheel may yet bring him into a safer position.
The third occupant of the room was the lawyer, a pleasant, keen-faced man, who was seated at a table with some papers before him. His face betrayed nothing whatever as to his views on the case.
“Mr. Wendover has no locus standi here, of course,” Sir Clinton explained when the lawyer had been introduced to them, “but I think it might be advantageous to have a witness at this interview who is not officially concerned in the case. Have you any objection, Mr. Calder?”
The lawyer mutely consulted Cressida and her husband, and then gave his consent without ado. Stanley Fleetwood nodded his assent.
“I’ve consulted Mr. Calder,” he said, when this matter had been settled, “and we’ve come to the conclusion that frankness is the best policy. We’ve nothing to conceal. Now, what is it that you want to know?”
Wendover’s glance, travelling from one to the other, reached Cressida’s face; and he could see plainly that she was in dread of the coming ordeal. It seemed as though she had made up her mind for the worst, and could see no hope of coming safely through the inquisition.
“Perhaps Mrs. Fleetwood could tell us what she knows about this affair?” Sir Clinton suggested. “Then,
after we’ve had her account, Mr. Fleetwood could amplify her story wherever he came into the matter directly.”
Cressida nerved herself for the task, but she seemed to find difficulty in controlling her voice. At last she pulled herself together with an obvious effort and began.
“If I’m to make the thing clear to you,” she said, looking distrustfully from one to another in the group, “I’ll need to go back a bit, so that you can understand the state of affairs properly. You know, of course, that I married Nicholas Staveley in 1917, when he was convalescing after a wound he got. It’s common property that my marriage was a complete failure. It couldn’t have been worse. In less than a month he’d shattered almost every ideal I had; and I loathed him more than I’d thought it possible for one person to loathe another. And he terrified me, too.
“He went back to the Front again; and the next we heard was that he’d been reported killed in action. It sounds dreadful to say it, I know, but I can’t pretend I was anything but glad when I heard the news. He was a horrible creature, horrible in every way. Life with him, even for that short time, had been a waking nightmare; and it was an infinite relief to find myself free of him. Then, in 1926, I married Mr. Fleetwood.”
She paused and glanced at the lawyer, as though to draw some encouragement from him. Evidently the sequence of her narrative had been concerted between them beforehand. Wendover’s glance passed from her to Stanley Fleetwood; and he could see from the expression on Fleetwood’s face how much he must have hated the dead man on Cressida’s account.
“Last week,” Cressida continued, in a slightly more controlled tone, “I got a letter signed ‘Nicholas Staveley.’ It was a dreadful shock to see that handwriting again. It seems that the report of his death had been a mistake; but he had let it pass for purposes of his own. It had suited him to disappear then. Now it suited him to reappear—so far as I was concerned. You can guess what that meant to me. It invalidated my second marriage; and it threw me into the hands of that brute. Or, at least, if it didn’t actually put me into his hands, it gave him a weapon against me which he could use for his own ends. He was a selfish beast, and vindictive, too; and I saw that he meant to stir up all the trouble he could. His letter hinted quite plainly that blackmail was his object in reappearing at this moment. He knew I’d married again, and he saw his chance.”
Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 19
