Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)
Page 27
“He manages to escape, and the escape is put down to Derek’s credit. But, of course, Derek never turns up again; and naturally people suppose that he must have died of exposure in his last attempt, or been shot at the frontier, or something of that sort. Meanwhile Staveley, once out of Germany, drops his borrowed identity, probably changes his name, and disappears. I suspect he was in very hot water with the military authorities, and was only too glad of the chance to vanish for good.
“After the war, he evidently got in amongst a queer gang, and lived as best he could. Billingford’s evidence points to that. And somewhere among this shoal of queer fish he swam up against our friend Cargill. My reading of the thing is that somehow Staveley gave away—perhaps in his cups—something of what I’ve given you as my guess; and Cargill, remembering his disfigured brother, saw a grand scheme to be worked by putting forward his brother as claimant to the Foxhills property.
“It wasn’t half so wild a plan as the Tichborne business, and you know how that panned out at the start. So the three of them set to work to see the thing through. Staveley, I suspect, got hold of Aird, who had invaluable information about all the affairs at Foxhills in the old days. Then they went to work systematically with their card-index and noted down everything that Aird and Staveley could remember which would bear on the case.
“That accounts for the delay in the claimant turning up. It probably was quite recently that Staveley fell in with Cargill. And evidently the delay points to the fact that Staveley wasn’t the originator of the notion, else he’d have got to work much earlier. It was only when he fell in with Cargill, who had a brother suitable to play the part of the claimant, that anything could be done. Then they must have spent some time in unearthing Aird.
“Well, at last they’re ready. They come down to Lynden Sands with their card-index handy. Now, the claimant doesn’t want to appear in public more than he can help, for every stranger is a possible danger to him. He might fail to recognise some old friend, and the fat might be in the fire. Nor does Staveley want to show himself; for his presence might suggest the source of the claimant’s information. Aird’s in the same position. And when they learn that the Fordingbridges are at the hotel, Cargill is detached there to keep an eye on them. Thus they need a go-between; and Billingford is brought down to serve that purpose. Also, as soon as the claimant makes his first move there will be sure to be a lot of gossip in the village, anecdotes of the claimant’s history floating round, and so forth; and Billingford will be able to pick them up and report them to the rest of the gang. They’d have been safer to leave Staveley and Aird in London; but I suppose they were afraid something might be sprung on them and they wanted their references handy.
“Peter Hay, I suspect, they fastened on as being the most dangerous witness. Probably Aird made an appointment for the claimant, and they called at the poor old chap’s cottage at night. He evidently refused to have anything to do with them; and he was too dangerous to leave alive; so they killed him. Then they went after the diary—probably Aird knew about that, or else Peter may have let the information out somehow—and they took Hay’s keys to get into Foxhills. The silver plant was an obvious muddle. They hadn’t Cargill at the back of them at the time, and they made that mistake on the spur of the moment.
“By that time they’d got in touch with Miss Fordingbridge. Aird would know all about her spiritualistic leanings, and they played on that string. But soon they learned they were up against Paul Fordingbridge; and they began to see that it would be easiest to put him out of their road.
“Meanwhile Staveley took it into his head to work on his own by trying to blackmail the Fleetwoods. And you know what came of that. The rest of the gang thought they could kill two birds with one stone—at least, the gang minus Billingford, for really I don’t think Billingford was much more than a tool.
“Now, inspector, how far does that square with all the confidences you extracted last night from that precious pair of scoundrels? Do I get a box of chocolates or only a clay pipe in this competition?”
The inspector made no attempt to suppress the admiration in his tone.
“It’s wonderfully accurate, sir. You’re right on every point of importance—even down to what happened in the war.”
“That’s a relief,” the chief constable admitted with a laugh. “I was rather afraid that I’d
. . . summed it so well that it came to far more
Than the witnesses ever had said!
And now I think I’ll go back to the hotel and try to make my peace with the Fleetwoods. I like them, and I’d hate to leave a false impression of my character on their minds. Care to come along, squire?”
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By J. J. Connington
Sir Clinton Driffield Mysteries
Murder in the Maze
Tragedy at Ravensthorpe
The Case with Nine Solutions
Mystery at Lynden Sands
Nemesis at Raynham Parva
The Boathouse Riddle
The Sweepstake Murders
The Castleford Conundrum
The Ha-Ha Case
In Whose Dim Shadow
A Minor Operation
For Murder Will Speak
Truth Comes Limping
The Twenty-One Clues
No Past is Dead
Jack-in-the-Box
Common Sense is All You Need
Supt Ross Mysteries
The Eye in the Museum
The Two Tickets Puzzle
Novels
Death at Swaythling Court
The Dangerfield Talisman
Tom Tiddler’s Island
Murder Will Speak
The Counsellor
The Four Defences
J. J. Connington (1880–1947)
Alfred Walter Stewart, who wrote under the pen name J. J. Connington, was born in Glasgow, the youngest of three sons of Reverend Dr Stewart. He graduated from Glasgow University and pursued an academic career as a chemistry professor, working for the Admiralty during the First World War. Known for his ingenious and carefully worked-out puzzles and in-depth character development, he was admired by a host of his better-known contemporaries, including Dorothy L. Sayers and John Dickson Carr, who both paid tribute to his influence on their work. He married Jessie Lily Courts in 1916 and they had one daughter.
An Orion ebook
Copyright © The Professor A. W. Stewart Deceased Trust 1928, 2012
The right of J. J. Connington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook first published in Great Britain in 2012
by Orion
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
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An Hachette UK company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4719 0598 8
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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