by Molly Thynne
The big crystals ran like a stream of sugar candy over the dark cloth, and with them, slim, glittering and serpentine, slithered, coil after coil, the emerald girdle, until it lay in a scintillating heap in the middle of the pile of bath salts.
There was a little gasp of sheer admiration from Angela Ford and Mrs. Orkney Cloude, and what amounted to a shout of triumph from Mrs. van Dolen.
Arkwright interposed a massive arm between her and the table.
“One moment, madam,” he said.
Constantine was contemplating the girdle.
“And they left that, day after day, unprotected in the bathroom,” he said, with a note of real admiration in his voice. “The one place in which they guessed the thief would never look for it. The sheer nerve of it!”
“How did you tumble to it, sir?” asked Arkwright.
Constantine separated the bath crystals with his finger.
“Look,” he said.
Arkwright bent over the table. In the clear space where the crystals had been piled was a little mound of bran.
CHAPTER XVIII
If Stuart and Soames had hoped that by lingering in Constantine’s room after the rest of the party had dispersed they would get the old man to talk, they were disappointed.
As the last excited voice died away along the passage, and the closing of doors showed that the “Noah’s Ark” had at last retired to rest, he rose and knocked out his pipe.
“Bed,” he announced. “And, for the first time since I entered this place, I can feel certain of staying there.”
“But, I say, aren’t you going to tell us how you did it?” objected Soames childishly.
“Do you know what time it is?” demanded Constantine.
“So near breakfast-time that we may as well make a night of it,” was Soames’s answer. “Have mercy, doctor.”
But Constantine shook his head.
“I’m going to try and sleep to forget it,” he said, his voice weary and dispirited. “And I advise you to do the same.”
“You’re tired out, sir,” exclaimed Stuart. “It’s a shame to bother you.”
Constantine’s face softened.
“I believe you’ll understand when I say that it’s not my body that’s tired,” he said slowly. “The hunt was good fun while it lasted, but it’s fallen a little flat at the end. I liked those two women, and, of all the qualities, I think pluck is the one I admire most.”
“They seemed very small, somehow,” agreed Stuart thoughtfully, “when one saw them with their backs to the wall. Their helplessness in their role of Adderley had been so absurdly convincing, that it was difficult to rid one’s mind of it.”
Constantine sighed.
“Good material wasted,” he said, “and I hate waste. They’re clever enough, too, to know that they’ve chosen not only the worst but the silliest and least profitable profession in the world. They’ll work harder all their lives than many a more honest woman, and probably die penniless. The world’s a queer place, and, for to-night, I would prefer to forget it.”
Stuart understood him even better when, as he was undressing, he found his mind straying to the empty room next door. He, too, had liked Miss Amy, and, from the beginning, had been conscious of an absurdly protective feeling towards her—a feeling that he now knew to be entirely unwarranted. If ever there was any one perfectly able to look after herself it was the woman they had surprised in the barn that night. As he got thankfully into bed, he told himself, and it was no doubt the truth, that it had flattered his masculine vanity and soothed that inherent sense of inferiority that had always been his stumbling-block, to play knight-errant to a pathetic little old lady. But, as he fell asleep, he knew that he would miss Amy Adderley, and that, had she existed outside Belle Gearie’s imagination, he would probably have looked her up, sooner or later, in her neat little retreat at Tunbridge Wells.
He and Soames were present at the interview between Constantine and Arkwright next morning.
The inspector was quite frank about his own attitude towards the crime.
“Walker killed Major Carew,” he said decisively. “You agree with me there, sir?”
Constantine nodded.
“I should say there was no doubt about it,” he answered. “I’m sure the two women had nothing to do with it. But how you propose to prove it I can’t imagine.”
“Neither can I,” admitted Arkwright ruefully. “I am morally certain that he committed the murder; but, barring the fact that he undoubtedly was trying to get into the box-room when Bates scared him away, and that his only reason for wishing to go there could have been to remove the spanner, I’ve nothing against him whatever. I can charge him with ‘breaking and entering’ all right, but beyond that I am helpless. He came into Mrs. van Dolen’s room, as I guessed he would, through the window, but he spotted me earlier than I had intended, and his pockets were empty when I took him.”
“What made you hide in Mrs. van Dolen’s room last night?” asked Soames. “I mean, why take it for granted that he would choose that particular night to make the attempt?”
Arkwright smiled.
“I had the advantage over all of you there,” he said. “I knew my man. Walker has most of the qualities that go with brutality. He’s stupid, very pertinacious, and, up to a point, singularly courageous, though I think lack of imagination rather than bravery is at the root of this. Twice he has been arrested as the result of his own foolhardiness. I laid a trap for him last night, and risked his falling into it. I argued that, seeing he had lost the emeralds and failed in his attempt to get Mrs. Orkney Cloude’s jewels, he would have a shot at something before he made his get-away. He’d already wasted his time trying to locate the emeralds, and he knew that his tether was getting shorter every day. Mrs. van Dolen still possessed a tempting enough haul, and I hoped he would try her. I told Bates to let drop among the servants that a Scotland Yard detective was due this morning, and the news was of course passed on to Walker, who was in the habit of questioning the maid who took up his food as to how things were going. He must have realized that it was imperative that he should get away that night, and, as it turned out, I was right in thinking he would not go empty-handed.”
“It was extraordinarily foolhardy of him to have attempted such a thing with the whole house on the alert,” said Constantine.
Arkwright agreed.
“It was insane, but absolutely characteristic of the man; and remember, if it hadn’t been for my presence, he would probably have brought it off. No one in this house suspected him of being anything but bed-ridden, and the back passages here made it comparatively easy for him to dodge any one who was watching. Also, lie was able to find out from the servants exactly what every one was doing. He probably knew, for instance, that Mr. Soames here was in the habit of using the bathroom as an observation-post. All Walker had to do was to watch his chance and get to the window on the stairs. Coming back would have been his main difficulty. The balcony was his only means of egress, owing to the excellence of both the locks and the doors in this house.”
“Why didn’t he have a try earlier?” asked Soames.
“For two reasons. One was that, as I have said, his mind was centred on the recovery of the emeralds, and, unfortunately for him, he had already succeeded in putting every one on the alert by his efforts to find them. The probability is that he did try, later, and was frustrated by one or other of the watchers. Also, you must take into account the fact that, so long as the snow persisted, he could not get away, and he had had one lesson already as to the risk of hiding anything on the premises here. No, the obvious moment for him to make his attempt would be the actual night on which he intended to leave.”
“Have you got the movements of the two separate parties at all clear in your mind?” asked Constantine. “I’ve been going over the events of the past week or so, and it’s a ticklish business trying to decide which was responsible for the various things that have happened.”
“I’ve got the
advantage of you there too,” Arkwright admitted. “The two Gearies have been quite frank as to the part they played. The truth is that they are scared to death of being implicated in the murder and are only too anxious to come clean, so far as they themselves are concerned. They stick to it, by the way, that they only saw Walker twice, and each time too indistinctly to identify him. This is the only part of their statement I do not believe, but it is impossible to get more out of them.”
“Did the masked man exist? Or was he a fiction of our friend Miss Amy?” asked Constantine. “My own impression is that Melnotte was speaking the truth when he said that he was visited by him that night.”
Arkwright looked up quickly.
“You’ve raised rather an interesting point,” he answered. “Belle Gearie admits to having invented him. As a matter of fact, she was after Mrs. van Dolen’s emeralds that night herself. She did not believe for one moment that they would be snowed up for any length of time together, and was anxious to take advantage of the opportunity the Fates had sent her. She had actually opened the window on the stairs when she was disturbed by some one bound, as she realized almost at once, on the same errand. This person was undoubtedly Walker, though she sticks to it that she never saw his face. She heard him, however, and beat a hasty retreat, but had not time to shut the window. It appears that he did not see her. She watched him from the flight of stairs at the end of the passage, but only saw his back. When she saw him make for the window and prepare to get out, she realized that there was some one else on the job, and, with a quick-wittedness that did her credit, spiked his guns by knocking up Mr. Stuart with her story of a masked man. Girling’s man, Joe sleeps downstairs, and Walker, afraid he might have been roused by the ringing of one of the bedroom bells, did not dare attempt to escape in the direction of the lower regions, and was driven to turn out the light so as to get across the passage unperceived. But Belle Gearie, who has not been quite well enough primed by her mother, gave away the fact that he was not wearing a mask. On the face of that, I don’t quite know what to make of Melnotte’s story.”
“All this talk about a masked man may have put the idea into Walker’s head, and he may have taken advantage of it on the occasion of his visit to Melnotte,” suggested Stuart.
“It’s possible,” agreed Arkwright. “But Walker has always worked in a way singularly true to type, and this isn’t like him.”
“Then Miss Connie’s story of the man she saw crossing the yard on the night of the murder was a fake?”
Arkwright shook his head.
“She says not, and I’m inclined to believe that she is speaking the truth there The Gearie women not only saw him, but waited till they had watched him back into the house and then slipped over to the barn, pretty well wrecked the cars in their efforts to find the girdle, and eventually discovered it in the sack of bran. From that moment it never left their possession. The mother took to her bed, and, from then on, their room was never unprotected. But they got scared, and fell back on the bath salts. It was a brilliant stroke, as they knew that Mr. Stuart was keeping an eye on that part of the passage from his bedroom opposite the bathroom door. It was the one place in which Walker literally could not look, even if the idea had occurred to him.”
“And Walker never spotted them?”
“He never saw them at any period of the whole affair. If he had, it is doubtful if he would have jumped to them. They have not worked in England for years, and would not be known to a thief of his calibre. I refuse to believe, however, that they did not see him sufficiently clearly to identify him.”
Constantine gave a reminiscent chuckle.
“Do you remember Miss Amy’s innocent suggestion that you should lock the doors before you settled down to watch?” he asked Stuart. “You fell for it like a child, and she knew that, for the time at least, the emeralds would remain undisturbed. I nearly gave the show away when you told me what you had done.”
“You knew then where they were?” demanded Stuart. “I had my suspicions of you that night.” Constantine nodded.
“I knew,” he said. “And, incredible as it seemed, I knew that one of the Misses Adderley must have put them there. When you told me of her suggestion I felt quite certain of it.”
“What first put you on their track, sir?” asked Arkwright.
“I started by eliminating certain people, such as the Romseys and Stuart. They simply seemed to be outside the pale of suspicion. I don’t defend my method, but it did, at least, prevent my wasting my time on the most unlikely people. Later I ruled out Soames, for the simple reason that we were together practically all the time on the night in question. It was nearly half, past two when he left my room. About fifteen minutes later I saw the rope outside Carew’s window, and ten minutes or so after that I woke him. I admit that he could conceivably have committed the murder or the robbery during that period, but it seemed to me so unlikely that I dismissed him from my mind. I tumbled to the connection between Geoffrey Ford and Mrs. Orkney Cloude almost immediately, and, though I did not know exactly what it implied, it was enough to clear her, from my point of view. Young Trevor seemed to me to be genuinely interested in Miss Hamilton, though I took the precaution of having a look round his room one day when he was out. When I discovered that he had been trying to solve the mystery himself, and had even got so far as to work out his theories on paper, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, at any rate for the moment. Miss Hamilton I never suspected. She had had far too many opportunities to steal Mrs. van Dolen’s jewels to be likely to choose such an unpropitious moment. Unless she were working under the influence of Trevor, there seemed no reason to suspect her. So far as the sick chauffeur was concerned, I knew nothing about him, though I do remember hearing that Bates had had him out of bed and had searched his mattress. This left me Melnotte and the Misses Adderley. Of the two, Melnotte seemed the darker horse, but from the little I knew of him, I could not believe him capable of carrying through such an enterprise. I kept an open mind about him, however. The Gearie impersonation was so perfect that I should have dismissed all idea of their guilt as incredible if it hadn’t been for one thing, a slight incident that occurred on the second day of our stay here. I thought little of it at the time, but, later, it recurred to me. We were in the lounge discussing Miss Amy’s story of the masked man she had seen the night before. Soames turned to me and suggested, in a voice so low that I should have said that no one but myself could have heard it, that the corridor window over the stable-yard was the most likely place for an intruder to use. Miss Connie heard him, however, and gave a little cry of horror. She started to say something about their bedroom looking on to the yard, and then was cleverly silenced by her sister. At the time I was inclined to put this down to one of those strange freaks of hearing peculiar to deaf people, and certainly did not take it seriously. Later, as I say, it came back to me with an added meaning. So far as I know, that was the only serious oversight either of them made during the whole of their visit, and I can see now that it was entirely due to the almost exaggerated thoroughness with which Miss Connie was playing her part. On the night the tyres were slashed in the barn, I noticed that the locks, both of the barn and the door into the yard, had been carefully oiled, and, once more, a flash of memory came to my aid. I remembered that Miss Amy had addressed some remark to me, and I had started to get up from my chair. She had expostulated and placed a hand on my shoulder. Now, I’ve got a very keen sense of smell, and that hand had smelt strongly of oil—a small thing once more, but one that fitted in with the discovery which had put me on their track. I refer, of course, to the bath salts. Those bath salts had always both amused and perplexed me, they were so out of keeping with the Misses Adderley and their ways. Orange water or lavender I could have understood, but I could not see either of the Misses Adderley spending, at the least, thirty shillings on a Bond Street production of that sort. On the other hand, many elderly ladies have extravagant nephews who pay them these little attentions, and the inc
ongruity had no real significance, though I must confess that I used to lie in the bath and stare at that jar, and invent quite innocent little stories to account for it. That, I suppose, was how I came to notice what the others missed, a little scattering of bran wedged between the salts and the side of the glass jar. The girdle was beautifully packed. The job must have taken a long time, and been a very difficult one, and I had the deuce of a time in locating it without disturbing the salts unduly. I did, however, manage to verify the fact that it was there; after which, as I say, several small incidents came back into my mind and served to confirm my suspicions. One was the fact that on Christmas night I had seen Miss Connie’s head and shoulders leaning out of her sister’s window, and had noticed that she was, apparently, fully dressed. Ordinarily it would have struck me as a foolish thing for an old lady with bronchitis to do, but, in the light of the discovery I had made, it all fitted in nicely. Once I had located the girdle it simply remained for me to keep watch on the jar of salts and wait till some one materialized from Scotland Yard. I was afraid to put the affair into the hands of Bates. I had a conviction that they would prove too clever for him. Meanwhile, they couldn’t get away, and I could afford to bide my time, though I admit that I grew a little jumpy when the snow stopped.”
“And the oil was borrowed from the chambermaid by Miss Amy, to rub her sister’s chest with,” remarked Stuart. “I must say, they were an ingenious couple.”
“And then, by sheer chance, I managed to burn my hand at the crucial moment. I was amused when I discovered where the oil had come from,” said Constantine. “By the way, it was my little friend, Miss Amy, who punctured the tyres that night, I suppose?”
“And I lent her my torch and waited for her outside while she did it!” groaned Stuart. “I suppose she really did find Mrs. Cloude’s jewel-case? Or had she planted it there herself?”
