The lawyer produced a paper and handed it across to Sir Clinton.
“This is the letter,” he explained.
Sir Clinton glanced through it and then put it down on the table.
“That’s a pretty production,” he commented. “I can understand your feelings, Mrs. Fleetwood. Please go on.”
Cressida glanced across at the couch.
“Naturally I consulted Mr. Fleetwood,” she continued. “We decided that the best thing to do was to arrange a meeting with the man and try to get him to let us put matters on some bearable kind of footing.”
“What we wanted,” Stanley Fleetwood interrupted, “was to persuade him to allow a divorce to go through quietly. Then we could have regularised matters with as little fuss as possible. From what I’d heard of him, he didn’t seem the sort who would refuse a bribe, if it was big enough——”
He caught the lawyer’s warning eye and halted abruptly.
“I understand,” Sir Clinton interposed smoothly. “You wished to come to some agreement with him. We needn’t discuss the terms. Will you go on, please, Mrs. Fleetwood?”
“I wrote him a letter,” Cressida pursued, with rather more courage in her tone as she saw that Sir Clinton was obviously not directly hostile, like the inspector. “Mr. Fleetwood took it across to Flatt’s cottage that afternoon—Friday afternoon—and dropped it into the letter-box. You’ll understand in a moment that I didn’t wish Mr. Fleetwood to meet this man face to face.”
The inspector looked up from the note-book in which he was making a shorthand report of the interview.
“You might identify the letter we found on the body,” he suggested.
Sir Clinton produced the letter, and Cressida examined it.
“Yes, that’s it. I arranged to meet him at Neptune’s Seat late in the evening, when no one was likely to be on the beach. I didn’t want to have him coming about the hotel, naturally.”
She halted for a moment or two, as though she felt she was coming to the difficult point in her tale.
“Perhaps you won’t understand what I’ve got to say next. If I could let you know what sort of man he was, you’d understand better. There are some things one can’t tell. But I want you to know that I was really in physical fear of him. I’m not easily frightened; but during the month or so that I lived with him he stamped fear into me—real physical fear, downright terror of personal violence, I mean. He drank; and when he had been drinking he seemed to grow almost inhuman. He terrified me so much that I left him, even before he went back to the Front.”
Her face showed even more clearly than her words what it had meant to her. She halted for a space, unintentionally letting her effect sink home on her audience.
“When it came to meeting him,” she went on, “Mr. Fleetwood insisted on going with me.”
“Naturally,” Stanley Fleetwood broke in. “I wanted to go alone to meet the fellow; but she wouldn’t let me go either alone or along with her.”
Cressida nodded.
“If they had met, nothing could have prevented a quarrel; and that man would stick at nothing. I was afraid of what he might do. Anything was better than letting them meet. But I was horribly afraid of meeting him alone, without any protection. I’d had enough experience of him already. So I borrowed a pistol from Mr. Fleetwood and took it with me to Neptune’s Seat. I thought it would serve to frighten that man if he showed any signs of going over the score.”
“What sort of pistol was it?” Armadale interjected, looking across at Stanley Fleetwood.
“A Colt .38. I have the number of it somewhere.”
“I’ll get you to identify it later on,” Armadale said; and with a gesture he invited Cressida to continue.
“Mr. Fleetwood gave in about going with me to meet the man,” Cressida went on, “but he insisted on taking me down to the shore in our car. I let him do that. I was glad to know that he’d be at hand. But I made him promise not to interfere in any way. He was to stay with the car while I went down alone to Neptune’s Seat.”
“I think the inspector would like to know exactly what you did before you left the hotel,” Sir Clinton intervened.
“Mr. Fleetwood went round to the garage to get out the car. Meanwhile I went down to the ladies’ dressing-room, where I keep my golfing things. I changed my slippers for my golfing-shoes—I was in an evening frock—and I slipped on my golfing-blazer. Then I went out through the side-entrance and joined Mr. Fleetwood in the car. He drove me down to the point on the road nearest Neptune’s Seat. I left him there, got out of the car, and went across the sands to the rock.
“The man was there, waiting for me; and at the first glance I could see he’d been drinking. He wasn’t drunk, you understand, but he wasn’t normal. When I saw that, I was terrified. I can’t explain these things, but he—— Oh, I used to shiver at times even at the very thought of what he’d been like in that state; and when I met him down there, face to face, I was really in terror of him. I pulled the pistol out of my pocket and held it in my hand, without letting him see it.
“Then I spoke to him and tried to persuade him to come to some arrangement with me. It was no use—none whatever. You’ve no idea of the kind of man he was. He wanted money to keep his mouth shut. He wouldn’t hear of any divorce, because that would loosen his hold on me if it went through, he said, and he meant to keep me in his grip. And then he said—oh, I’m not going to repeat what he said about Mr. Fleetwood and myself—horrible things, meant to hurt me and degrade me in my own eyes. And the worse he got in that way, the angrier he grew. You know what a drunken man’s like? I know it only too well.”
She made an involuntary gesture which betrayed even more than her words.
“At last he went beyond all bounds. I was trembling all over, partly from fear and partly from pure rage at the things he said. It was quite clear that I could do nothing with him in that state; so I turned to go. Then he muttered something—I’m not going to repeat it; you can imagine it for yourselves—and he pounced forward and gripped me when I wasn’t expecting it.
“I lost my head completely. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was almost beside myself with terror of him. Somehow the pistol went off in my hand, and down he fell at my feet and lay there without a movement. It was too dark to see anything clearly, and I was absolutely taken aback by what had happened. I said to myself: ‘I’ve shot him!’ And at that my nerves got the upper hand completely, and I turned and ran up the beach to the car. I told Mr. Fleetwood at once what had happened. I wanted him to go down and look at the man, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He drove me back to the hotel, and we left the car in one of the side-alleys. I went in through the dressing-room, took off my blazer, and changed my golfing-shoes for my slippers. I was so much upset that I forgot to take the pistol out of the blazer pocket. And when I came out into the hotel corridor, I heard that Mr. Fleetwood had tripped on the stairs and hurt himself badly. That put the pistol out of my mind at the moment; and when, next day, I remembered about it, and went to get it, someone else had taken it away. That terrified me, for I knew someone was on my track.”
She paused for a moment, and then added:
“That’s really all I have to tell. It was the purest accident. I didn’t mean to kill him. When I took the pistol with me to the shore, I only meant to frighten him with it. But he’d been drinking, and I wasn’t ready for him when he attacked me. I was terrified, and my finger must have twitched the trigger without my knowing what I was doing. I’d never have shot him in cold blood, or even intentionally in a fit of anger. It was the merest accident.”
She stopped there, evidently having said everything that she could bring herself to tell.
“One moment, Clinton,” Wendover interposed as the chief constable turned to question Stanley Fleetwood in his turn. “There’s just one point I’d like to have cleared up. Would you mind telling me, Mrs. Fleetwood, whether you can recall how Staveley was dressed when he met you?”
Cressida, looki
ng up quickly, seemed to read the sympathy in Wendover’s face, for she answered readily enough.
“It wasn’t a very good light, you understand? He wore some sort of lounge suit, but I couldn’t tell the colour of it. And when I got down to Neptune’s Seat he was carrying a light coat of some kind over his arm; but as I came up he tossed that down on the rock beside him.”
“He didn’t put it on again, did he?” Wendover demanded.
“Not so far as I can remember,” Cressida replied, after some effort to recall the point.
“You were caught in the rain before you got back to the hotel, weren’t you?” Wendover pursued.
“Yes. It came down hard just after the car started.”
Wendover’s satisfaction at these answers was too plain to escape Cressida’s attention. She looked at him with a faint gleam of hope in her expression, as though expecting him to come to her help; but her face fell when he turned to the chief constable and indicated that he had nothing further to say. Sir Clinton took his cue.
“Now, Mr. Fleetwood,” he inquired, “you didn’t stay by the car as you had arranged, did you?”
Stanley Fleetwood looked suspiciously at his interlocutor.
“As it happened, I didn’t,” he admitted, rather with an ill grace. “It was bad enough to let my wife meet that scoundrel at all. You couldn’t expect me to stand off at a distance, could you? I’d promised her not to interfere, but that didn’t hinder me from getting as near them as I could, just in case of accidents. I went down to the shore, keeping behind a groyne that runs down towards Neptune’s Seat.”
“So we supposed,” Sir Clinton commented. “You haven’t a second Colt pistol, have you?”
“No. One’s all I have.”
“So you didn’t fire a shot from behind the groyne, by any chance?”
Both Fleetwood and Cressida seemed completely taken aback by this question. They glanced at each other; and then Stanley Fleetwood answered:
“No, of course I didn’t. How could I, when I hadn’t a pistol?”
“Of course not,” Sir Clinton admitted. “Occasionally one has to ask questions as a matter of form, you know. Now, what happened after Mrs. Fleetwood’s pistol went off? I mean, what did you yourself do?”
“I saw her hurrying up the beach towards the road, where she expected to find me; so naturally I bolted up the way I’d come and joined her at the car.”
“And then?”
“She told me she’d shot Staveley. I shed no tears over him, of course; but I wanted to get my wife away as quick as I could, in case anyone came along, attracted by the noise of the shot. So I drove up towards the hotel. I didn’t put on the lights of the car, because they might have been noticed by someone in the distance; and I didn’t want to be traced through the car if I could help it. I’m being quite frank with you, you see.”
“I wish we could persuade everybody to be quite frank,” Sir Clinton confessed. “It would lighten police work considerably. What happened next, please?”
“As I was driving up, it suddenly struck me that we’d left all these tracks on the sand, and that when everything came out our footprints would be evidence connecting us with the business. So I made up my mind—I’m being perfectly frank with you—I made up my mind that after I’d dropped my wife at the hotel I’d take the car back again and see if Staveley was alive. If he wasn’t, then I’d make hay of our tracks—rub ’em out somehow and get clear away if possible. Then it occurred to me that Staveley alive would be better than Staveley dead. If he was only hurt, then the whole affair might be hushed up somehow. Apart from that, frankly, I’d rather have had him dead. Anyhow, when I got to the hotel I bolted upstairs to my room to get a flask of brandy I keep for emergencies. I meant to revive him if he was alive, you see? And in sprinting downstairs again I slipped and crocked myself, and that finished any chance of getting down to the beach again. I’d left the car outside, of course, meaning to take it to the garage later on, after I’d been down to fix things up on the beach.”
“That seems clear enough,” Sir Clinton said in a tone which suggested that he had got all the information he wanted. “Have you any questions to ask, inspector?”
“There’s just one point,” Armadale explained. “Did you see anyone except Staveley between the hotel and the rock, either going or coming?”
Stanley Fleetwood shook his head.
“I saw nobody at all. Naturally I kept a sharp lookout on the way home.”
Sir Clinton indicated that, so far as he was concerned, the matter was ended. As if to make this still clearer, he turned to the lawyer, Calder, who had taken practically no part in the proceedings.
“Are you by any chance Mr. Fordingbridge’s lawyer?”
Calder seemed somewhat surprised by the question.
“My firm has had charge of the legal affairs of the Fordingbridge family for more than a generation,” he explained a little stiffly. “But I don’t see what that has to do with this business.”
Sir Clinton ignored the stiffness.
“We’re investigating Mr. Fordingbridge’s disappearance just now,” he explained, “and I would like you to give us some information which might help us. Can you spare a moment or two?”
Calder, though evidently not prepared for the move, made no objection; and, when Sir Clinton and his companions left the room, the lawyer followed them.
As soon as they had reached a place where there was some chance of privacy, Sir Clinton made his purpose clear.
“One possible explanation of Mr. Fordingbridge’s disappearance has been suggested, Mr. Calder. He had iarge funds belonging to other people within his control under a power of attorney. Unless we can learn the state of these funds, we are rather at a loss to know what we’re looking for. Now, quite unofficially, have you any information on the point, or can you make a guess as to the state of affairs? Every moment may count, you understand; and we don’t want to bark up the wrong tree, if it is the wrong tree.”
The lawyer evidently had no desire to implicate himself.
“There’s always a possibility of malversation,” he admitted, “in every case where a man has control of someone else’s money.”
“You were familiar with the affairs of the Fordingbridge estate, I suppose, before Paul Fordingbridge took them out of your firm’s hands not long ago? I mean that, if I got hold of his papers, you could tell roughly if there had been any hanky-panky?”
“I think it’s possible.”
Sir Clinton considered for a time before speaking again.
“Suppose I get permission to examine his papers, either from the family or from the authorities, you could put your finger on any malversation if you had time to look into things?”
“Very likely, though it might take time.”
“Then I’ll get permission, one way or another. I suppose any papers will be at his house in London?”
“Probably.”
“Then I’ll go up to town with you this afternoon, Mr. Calder, and we’ll look into things with your help.”
The lawyer made no comment on the suggestion, and, as Sir Clinton showed no desire to detain him further, he went back to his clients. As soon as his back was turned, Armadale swung round on Wendover.
“I see what you’re driving at now, sir,” he declared in a rather scornful tone. “You think she’ll get off on a manslaughter charge instead of a murder case. And, of course, if it’s merely manslaughter, she’s a nice-looking girl with a hard-luck story ready, and you’re counting on a sympathetic jury to bring in a verdict that’ll amount to an acquittal. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Wendover was genuinely amused.
“That’s deuced ingenious of you, inspector,” he admitted. “I hadn’t thought of it in that light at all.”
“Oh, hadn’t you?” Armadale replied. “Well, in any case, you needn’t count much on it. What’s the evidence in favour of it? Nothing but a prepared statement by the accused and her accomplice, backed by a sharp lawyer. Any p
rosecutor would make hay of it in five minutes so far as credibility goes.”
“I’m not depending on her statement, inspector. I had the whole affair cut and dried in my mind before she opened her lips. All that her statement did was to confirm my ideas on every point. Your case is a complete wash-out.”
Armadale seemed quite unshaken by this blunt assertion.
“I’ll be glad to listen to your notions, sir,” he replied, in a tone which he would have used towards a spoiled child whom he wished to conciliate. “It’ll be most instructive to hear what a layman thinks of this affair, sir.”
Wendover was slightly nettled—as the inspector meant him to be—by the faint but unmistakable emphasis on the word “layman.”
“Sometimes the looker-on sees most of the game,” he retorted sententiously. “It’s true enough in this case. You’ve missed the crucial bit of the evidence, inspector. Didn’t you hear Mrs. Fleetwood tell you that, while she was interviewing him, Staveley had no overcoat on? And yet he was shot through his coat. The hole in the coat corresponded to the position of the wound on the body. Does that convince you?”
“You mean that he must have been shot later on, after he’d put on his coat? No, sir, it doesn’t count for a rap, so far as convincing me goes. She and Fleetwood have had plenty of time to concoct their yarn and put in nifty little touches like that. What’s that evidence worth? Nothing, when it comes from the criminals and when there’s nothing to back it up independently.”
Wendover’s smile broadened into something resembling an impish grin.
Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 20
