The Crime at the ‘Noah’s Ark’: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  “According to her own account, she really did find it,” answered Arkwright. “Of course, she had the advantage of knowing that the original thief would try to make a get-away, and the sense to guess that he wouldn’t go empty-handed. When she heard that he had been in the act of taking Lord Romsey’s car, she knew where to look. I think she is speaking the truth there.”

  “Now that one has heard the Gearie version of what happened on the night of the murder, it is easier to reconstruct Walker’s part in it,” said Constantine thoughtfully. “It looks as though he must have chosen Carew’s room, knowing the man to be bemused with drink and less likely to wake than any other occupant of any of the rooms overlooking the balcony. Carew must have awakened at an unfortunate moment for himself, and Walker killed him. He then had the nerve to go on with his original plan, slide down the rope, get into Mrs. van Dolen’s room and take the emeralds, depart by the door, leaving it unlocked, and make his way back to his own room. Then, while we were occupied with our search for Carew, he must have slipped down the back staircase and over to the barn. Either he had amazing luck, or he chose his time with great skill, for if the Gearies really saw him at the time they say they did, he must have got there and back while we were gathered on the landing outside Mrs. van Dolen’s room, just before we sent for Girling. Once Girling and the household were roused, he would have had little chance of getting out of the yard door.”

  “I went down myself directly afterwards to see that it was locked,” Soames reminded him.

  “If this is more or less what happened, there’s one thing that I for one can’t account for,” said Constantine slowly.

  Arkwright shot him an appreciative glance.

  “I believe I know what’s worrying you,” he said. “I’ve been trying to work it out myself. My reconstruction of events is pretty nearly the same as your own. At any rate, nothing will make me believe that Walker went back up that rope to Carew’s room. It would be an almost impossible task in that weather, and there were no traces of snow on the window-ledge inside the room. It was, roughly speaking, about two-thirty when you saw the rope from your window, wasn’t it, Dr. Constantine?”

  “Yes. And the light was on in Carew’s room then.”

  Arkwright smiled.

  “That’s the snag, isn’t it? The light was out when you went into the room at five-fifteen. And Mr. Stuart didn’t notice it when he went out on the balcony at about three o’clock. I’m willing to bet that he would have seen it, and remembered seeing it, if it had been on. After all, his interest was centred on that room and its occupants. My own impression is that that light was put out some time between two-thirty and three o’clock, though, I admit, it may have been much later.”

  “And if Walker made his exit through Mrs. van Dolen’s room, how and when did he go back to Carew’s room to put out the light? And why? And if it wasn’t Walker, who did put out the light? You can’t get that out of him, I suppose; it’s an interesting point.”

  Arkwright shook his head.

  “Walker’s an old hand. He won’t open his lips until he’s seen his ‘mouth-piece,’ and, after that, we can whistle for any help he’ll give us. It’s an infernally awkward position. I’ve got my man; but, so far as the capital charge is concerned, I see every prospect of his slipping through my fingers.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  On leaving Constantine’s room, Stuart made his way downstairs, and, strolling into the coffee-room, stood in the bay window, looking thoughtfully out on to the village street.

  The thaw was well on its way, and the snow was rapidly degenerating into slush. Provided they did not freeze within the next few days, the roads should offer no obstacle to motorists. His car was in good running order, and there was nothing to keep him at the “Noah’s Ark,” but he felt a singular reluctance to leave. He had grown genuinely fond of the place, and he liked Girling and the solid, unostentatious comfort of the old inn. Now that all the alarums and excursions were over, he felt a desire to stay on and sample its hospitality under more normal conditions. But the Romseys were bound for Redsands, and so, in consequence, was he, though he told himself that he would be wiser to cut them out of his life altogether. In any case, he had every intention of returning to the “Noah’s Ark” during the summer months. It would be an ideal place in which to write, not too far from London, and sufficiently off the beaten track for peace and quiet.

  He was joined by Melnotte. In pursuance of his determination to be friendly with that young man, he pulled out his cigarette-case and offered it to him.

  “I was just thinking that we shall all be making tracks now,” he said.

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” volunteered Melnotte, in his rather mincing way. “I ought to get away as soon as possible. There’s my work, for one thing, though I’m not sure if my engagement at Redsands still holds good. Anyway, I want to get away. I hate this place!”

  He brought out the last sentence with a passionate intensity that would have surprised Stuart if he had not been accustomed to Melnotte’s almost hysterical outbursts.

  “Why don’t you go, then?” he answered soothingly. “There’s nothing to prevent you now.”

  Melnotte’s eyes shifted uneasily.

  “That fellow Bates was so offensive when I spoke of leaving that I don’t care to broach the subject again,” he said undecidedly. “But I don’t see how they can keep me, do you?”

  “Of course not. The whole thing’s cleared up and they’ve got quite a good bag. They won’t interfere with any of us now. Why don’t you see Arkwright about it?”

  Still Melnotte hesitated. Stuart had the impression that there was something at the back of his mind, and that he was trying to brace himself to reveal it.

  “Bates was a bit fussed when you spoke to him about it,” he added. “I don’t honestly think you need be afraid of any further trouble.”

  “What have they found out, Mr. Stuart?” asked Melnotte, abruptly changing the subject. “I seem to have been a bit out of things. I know that those two women had the emeralds, of course, and that the man the inspector took was after the rest of the old woman’s jewellery, but I’m a bit at sea about Major Carew’s death. Do they know who murdered him?”

  “They know, all right,” answered Stuart frankly. “It all points to its having been the man Walker. But whether they’ll be able to charge him with it is another question.”

  “You mean there’s no evidence against him?”

  “None that’s fit to take before a jury. The Gearies are just as much implicated.”

  “Will they try to pin it on to them, do you think?” Melnotte’s voice sounded husky, as though his throat had become dry. Stuart, watching him, had a sudden intuition. There was something the dancer wanted to say, but it would require more than a little tact to overcome his hesitancy.

  When he spoke it was with this object in mind.

  “The Gearies are in a very nasty position,” he said gravely, “and they know it. They’ve been absolutely frank about their share in the business, but that won’t help them much if they’re up against a clever counsel.” Melnotte swallowed convulsively. Stuart thought that he had never seen a man give himself away so badly.

  “Do you mean that they’ll be hung?” asked Melnotte shakily.

  “I suppose so,” answered Stuart with intentional callousness. “I don’t see how they can escape, if they do manage to bring the murder home to them.”

  He held out his case. For the last few minutes Melnotte had been drawing at an extinguished cigarette.

  The dancer shook his head.

  “No, thanks. I’ve got packing and things to do. Are you going to-day, Mr. Stuart?”

  “I shan’t make a move till to-morrow, at the earliest. I want to see what the weather’s going to do. By the way, if you want a lift to Redsands, I can give you one.”

  Ten minutes before he would not have made the offer. He was prepared to treat Melnotte with ordinary friendliness, but the last thing he
desired was his company on the road. Now, however, he would have done more than this rather than let him out of his sight. He was convinced that he had been concealing something.

  The move was a success. Melnotte’s face flushed with gratification.

  “That’s really exceedingly kind of you, Mr. Stuart,” he said in his most refined tones. “But I can’t say yet whether they expect me now at Redsands. I’m going to get them on the phone to-day.”

  He took himself off, and Stuart, after a moment’s thought, decided to forgo the walk he had intended to take, and establish himself in the lounge. If Melnotte had anything to say, he should find him available.

  He was doomed to disappointment. Melnotte did not materialize again, and, after lunch, Stuart was driven to make the first advances himself.

  “What about a cup of coffee in my room?” he asked as they left the table. “These two maniacs are spending the afternoon scowling over the chessboard, and everybody but myself seems to be packing furiously.”

  “Rather!” assented Melnotte, a look, half of relief, half reluctance, on his face. Constantine’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch, but all he said was—

  “I’ll drop in on you for a pipe before dinner.”

  “Trust you for that,” reflected Stuart, with an internal chuckle, as he led the way upstairs.

  He called over the banisters to the aged waiter and told him to bring up coffee, and ask Girling for a bottle of the brandy Dr. Constantine liked.

  “I’m such a poor judge of brandy that I don’t even know what to ask for,” he confessed to Melnotte with a grin. “But the others said this was something quite exceptional, and even I was able to enjoy it. I hope you’re more of a connoisseur than I am.”

  “Champagne’s the only wine I know anything about,” answered the dancer. “Not that I ever buy it myself. But it comes my way at night-clubs and so forth.”

  He had already begun to shed many of his little affectations when alone with Stuart.

  “If it wasn’t for all the beastly things that have happened in this place,” he said as he sank gracefully into the chair Stuart had drawn up to the fire, “I should have been grateful for the peace and quiet of it. I’m a domestic sort of chap, really, and I wasn’t brought up to the sort of life I have to lead nowadays. My people were the religious sort. I used to sing in the choir, and all that sort of thing.”

  He spoke bashfully, with an anxious glance at Stuart’s face, as though he dreaded to surprise a derisive smile on it. But Stuart showed no disposition to laugh at this rather unexpected self-revelation.

  “I can imagine one’s getting pretty sick of nightclubs,” he answered. “I’ve had to work too hard for that sort of thing myself, until quite lately, and, even now, I find it rather hard to play. That’s probably my Scottish blood coming out.”

  Melnotte sipped his brandy thoughtfully. Stuart waited in silence till he had finished it, then filled up his glass again.

  “Oh, I say!” expostulated Melnotte, but continued to sip with appreciation.

  Stuart watched the colour deepen on his cheekbones, noted the added lustre in his eyes, and felt ashamed of himself. A little Dutch courage was so obviously all that the man needed to bring him to the point.

  “It’s curious how much I miss those two funny little spinsters next door,” he remarked conversationally. “I know that, whatever happens, I shall never be able to think of them as anything else. Mother and daughter seems preposterous.”

  Melnotte’s face grew suddenly haggard. Under the influence of the brandy he had cast off his troubles for the moment; now they came back to him with added intensity.

  He sat hunched in his chair, staring into the fire. The grip of his hands, which hung clasped between his knees, tightened until the knuckles whitened with the strain. Then suddenly he spoke.

  “I—I’ve been wanting a word with you alone,” he said. “The truth is, I’m in a hell of a mess.”

  His voice died away. Now that he had committed himself he looked aghast. Stuart hastened to reassure him.

  “Whatever it is, it’s probably not nearly so bad as you think,” he told him. “Things are apt to look better once they are put into words.”

  “This is going to look worse,” was Melnotte’s gloomy rejoinder. “I don’t know what you’ll think of me when you hear what I’ve got to tell you, and I know what I think of myself. I’ve been a fool and worse. My only excuse is that part of it, at least, wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t felt that every one’s hand was against me.”

  He fell silent again, and Stuart did not dare to speak.

  “I can clear those women,” came Melnotte’s voice at last.

  Stuart forgot all caution and sprang to his feet. This was more than he had expected.

  “You mean you know who committed the murder?” he exclaimed.

  “I’ve known all along,” said Melnotte miserably. “I saw the chap as clearly as I can see you.”

  Stuart hesitated for a moment, then laid a hand on Melnotte’s shoulder.

  “Look here,” he said. “This is too serious a business for me. Won’t you let me fetch Arkwright? He’s an understanding sort of chap, and it’ll save your having to go through the whole thing twice. Let me fetch him.”

  But, at the mere idea, Melnotte’s nerve deserted him entirely. He wrung his hands together.

  “I can’t see him. I’ll tell you. I’ve got to get it off my chest somehow. After that, I’ll sign anything you like, if it’ll get those two women off; but I won’t see Arkwright until I have to. When you’ve heard what I’ve got to say, you’ll understand why.”

  Stuart sat down again and drew his chair closer.

  “Do you want me to write it down?” he asked. “You’ll have to answer Arkwright’s questions sooner or later, you know.”

  Melnotte flinched.

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve brought it on myself, and I suppose I shall have to go through with it. But it’ll be easier once you’ve told him the facts.”

  Stuart reached out a long arm and took a block and pencil from the table.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll jot down the facts as you give them to me, so as to pass them on correctly. Go ahead.”

  There was a moment of tense silence, during which it seemed as if Melnotte would never bring himself to the point of speech; then, with his eyes fixed rigidly on the fire, his face drawn with misery and humiliation, he plunged.

  “I wasn’t asleep on the night of the murder,” he began. “When I came out of my room I’d been awake for hours. I ought to have said so then, of course, but I couldn’t. I suppose, even when I’ve told you the whole story, you won’t be able to understand why, but, I give you my word, I couldn’t. It’s the way I’m made, I suppose,” he finished bitterly.

  Stuart said nothing, but waited in silence for him to continue. He did so almost immediately. Now that the first agonizing effort was over, he seemed inclined to luxuriate in self-revelation. “Something woke me,” he went on. “You know how you can wake and have a more or less clear idea what has awakened you, without having actually heard it. I’m pretty sure now that I was roused by the opening of the window in Carew’s room. Then I distinctly heard Carew shout. I looked at my watch and saw that it was ten minutes to two. It never occurred to me that there was anything wrong, and my only feeling was one of annoyance. I thought Carew had woke up and was on the rampage again, and that we should have the same trouble with him that we had had earlier in the evening. I wondered whether Mr. Soames and Dr. Constantine were still playing chess, and decided that, if Carew showed any signs of being on the move, I would fetch them. I lay and listened, but I give you my word that I never suspected there was anything really wrong with him. Then I heard a bump, as if some one had knocked into a bit furniture, and the very faint scrape of a chair or table. I made up my mind that I must tell some one, and got out of bed. It was then that I thought of the communicating door between the two rooms, and remembered that the key was on my s
ide of the lock.”

  Stuart looked up quickly.

  “That’s the key they couldn’t find,” he interpolated.

  “Yes. It was in my dressing-gown pocket when I came out of my room after the murder. Later, when everything was quiet, I threw it out of my window. I didn’t know what else to do with it.”

  “And Bates found it in the snow next day,” exclaimed Stuart. “But that key fitted the lock of Carew’s door.”

  Melnotte nodded.

  “I found out afterwards that the locks of the two bedroom doors and the communicating door were all alike,” he said. “If you try your communicating door-key you’ll probably find that it’s on the same plan. I don’t think any of the other keys on this landing suit my door. I tried Dr. Constantine’s, and it doesn’t. I was sweating with fear that Bates would discover that it fitted the communicating door. You see, I’d got something else he never spotted when he searched my things.”

  “I can quite believe it,” remarked Stuart. “I’ve been thinking all along how futile a search of that sort really is. Bates asked us to turn out our pockets, but he never searched them for himself. We could have kept back anything, even the girdle if we’d had it, though I believe he was much more drastic with the servants.”

  Melnotte nodded.

  “He never actually searched me,” he said. “If he had, he’d have been bound to find it. As a matter of fact, I suppose I’m the only person in the house that possesses a revolver.”

  Stuart could only stare at him. He made up his mind never again to judge by appearances. Melnotte was the very last person he would have suspected of even handling, far less carrying, such a thing.

  The dancer must have guessed his thoughts, for a dull flush crept over his face.

  “I know it seems a bit unnatural,” he went an. “But the place where I lodge in London has been burgled twice, and a fellow lodger, a man who’d been through the War, decided to rout out his old army revolver and get out a licence. Then he remembered that he’d been rather a good shot, and took to going to one of those shooting-galleries. He persuaded me to go with him, and I got quite keen. I’m fairly decent at it, too, though you wouldn’t think it,” he finished ingenuously.