The Castleford Conundrum

by J. J. Connington

  “Humph!” he ejaculated at last, when he had weighed the evidence. “This Lindfield . . . What’s her other name? Constance, you say? Well, this Constance Lindfield seems to have managed things very well, if you ask me. V-e-r-y well, indeed,” he laid marked emphasis on the words, converting what seemed a tribute into an insinuation. “She lets you discover the body—you was on the spot first, eh? She leaves you outside and goes into the Chalet where you couldn’t see her. And what was she doing in there, I ask you?”

  “She was having hysterics,” said Mrs. Haddon simply. “I told you that. I heard her having them, laughing and sobbing and carrying on.”

  “I’m trying to establish the facts,” said P. C. Gumley vexedly. “And you keep butting in with silly talk like that. She had a fit of hysterics then—or so you say—and then she came out again onto the verandah. And what did she do then, tell me? She sent you to the rightabout, straight off, didn’t she? She got you off the premises, didn’t she? Leaving herself a free hand to do anything she liked: destroy evidence, or arrange things to suit herself, or cover her tracks. If she was the criminal, you couldn’t have helped her better nor what you did.”

  Mrs. Haddon disdained to defend herself against this charge.

  “Haven’t I been telling you it was an accident?” she demanded in exasperated tones. “It was that young whelp with his rook-rifle. Didn’t I tell you I found the bullet on the verandah, the very identical same as the one he put through my cottage window not long before? And besides that, wasn’t Miss Lindfield standing right beside me in my own garden when the shot was fired?”

  P. C. Gumley assumed the expression of weary superiority which he thought suitable to the occasion.

  “Here am I trying to consider this affair from every side, and you start in to try to muddle me up with your notions. If you’d studied crime the way I have, you’d know that the first thing a murderer needs is a good alibi; and the better alibi a person’s got, the more I’d suspect him. For why? An ordinary innocent person isn’t thinking of getting up an alibi. He has to take his chance of one. But a murderer’s planning for a good alibi all the time. It’s plain enough. You’re talking just like what one expects from the ignorant public; I’m telling you what experts think.”

  Mrs. Haddon was silenced, but not convinced. They hurried on, side by side; and P. C. Gumley, in his mental theatre, rehearsed the role which he meant to play when he reached the Chalet. His first speech, he decided, should be on the lines of: ‘I am Hawkshaw, the Detective.” That would give the criminal a jar, straight off; and one could then follow it up with something incisive, with a double meaning if possible, which would make the guilty party blench or wince or cower, as in the books. He was not quite sure how one blenched, but he expected to recognise the symptom when he saw it.

  Despite his mental preparation, the scene shaped itself quite differently in reality. In the first place, as they hurried up the wood-path, they came suddenly upon Miss Lindfield walking to and fro among the trees with her eyes on the ground. P. C. Gumley’s mental scene had been staged on the verandah itself, and this change of venue disconcerted him. Besides, he was taken unawares.

  “I’m Police Constable Gumley.”

  Somehow, even to his own ears, it had hardly the same ring as: “I am Hawkshaw, the Detective.”

  Miss Lindfield appeared quite unimpressed. She did not cower or wince; nor could P. C. Gumley see anything which might have been blenching. She looked him up and down coolly; and P. C. Gumley felt that here was the very type of the ruthless women criminals whom he had met so often in his studies. Then she spoke, and his self-importance wilted while his suspicions and animosity increased.

  “I know that. Have you done what Mrs. Haddon told you to do? Rung up someone in authority? Given the Carron Hill people the news? Very good. Then you can go over these”—she nodded towards the Chalet which was visible among the trees—“and sit down on the verandah till someone comes. Don’t touch anything, you understand?”

  P. C. Gumley did not cower, but he unmistakably winced under this treatment.

  “I’m in charge here now,” he pointed out in what was meant for the grand manner but which was not a markedly successful assumption. “I’ve got to get the evidence ready for the Inspector, when he comes.”

  He fished a battered notebook from his pocket and searched for his pencil. Miss Lindfield watched his efforts unsympathetically.

  “I can lend you a pencil, if you’ve lost yours,” she said impatiently. “If you want to do something, you’d better take down Mrs. Haddon’s account of the affair. You can sit on the verandah steps, if you like. Don’t sit on the chairs. They mustn’t be shifted. And don’t bother me. I’m worried. I’ll see the Inspector when he comes.”

  Things had hardly worked out as P. C. Gumley had planned. He felt that he was losing his grip on the situation. All the woman-hater in him rose to his assistance. He gripped his notebook firmly, licked his pencil, and stood his ground.

  “I’ll just have to ask you a few questions,” he said in what he hoped was a stern tone.

  Miss Lindfield shrugged her shoulders and her eyes sparkled dangerously.

  “You can’t force me to answer questions. You ought to know that. I’m going to wait here until your Inspector comes. I’ll give him all the necessary information, then.”

  She paused. Then an afterthought struck her, and she added:

  “And don’t go trampling about that verandah. Keep off it altogether. There’s a bullet lying there. You might crush it with those boots of yours.”

  Without awaiting a response, she turned away from him and resumed her pacing among the trees.

  P. C. Gumley watched her for a few moments, but for all the notice she took of him he might have been still in Thunderbridge village. His lips moved as he repeated under his breath: “Ugh! These women!” This time, however, his intonation betrayed less superiority and much more resentment than when he had used the phrase before. P. C. Gumley had been thoroughly snubbed; and not all the resources of his mental theatre could disguise the fact.

  A half-turn brought Mrs. Haddon within range of his eye, and he found her staring at him curiously. He bethought himself of his dignity and resolved to assert himself in her case.

  “I’ll begin with you,” he announced. “You come along o’ me, and I’ll take down your story. I’ve got to draw up my Report for the Authorities.”

  He led the way towards the verandah.

  “Now you sit yourself down there”—he pointed to the bottom of the broad flight of steps leading from the verandah to the grass—“and I’ll sit here”—choosing the top step—“and then we can talk.”

  P. C. Gumley was a tall man and had learned by experience what an advantage is gained in an interview by superior elevation. He opened his notebook again, sucked his pencil thoughtfully, and began his investigation.

  “You was in your garden and you saw this Lindfield coming out of this spinney on the far side, alongside your cottage. Was she coming from this Chalet? Are there two ‘l’s’ or only one in Chalet?”

  “There’s only one,” Mrs. Haddon assured him. “It’s a Swiss word.”

  “It don’t look right, somehow,” P. C. Gumley said doubtfully after writing it down. “However, be that as it may. Was this Lindfield coming from this Chalet, that’s what I want to know.”

  “No, she wasn’t,” Mrs. Haddon said, positively.

  P. C. Gumley made a movement to jot this down and then hesitated.

  “How d’you know that?” he demanded,

  “Because she told me so, herself,” rejoined Mrs. Haddon, triumphantly.

  P. C. Gumley was falling back into the Hawkshaw pose. He lifted his eyebrows slightly.

  “She tells you that, and you tell me that again. That’s hearsay, that is—like what the soldier said. It ain’t evidence. Where would she have been coming from if it wasn’t from this Chalet?”

  Mrs. Haddon turned half-round and waved her hand towards an out
lying spur of the plantation which ran down towards the sunken road.

  “She was taking the short cut to Carron Hill when I called her: I told you that before. There’s a path runs up from the road down there, through these trees into the spinney, and then it goes on over the fields in front of my cottage. That’s where she was going.”

  P. C. Gumley shook his head, murmured “Hearsay” a contemptuous tone, and jotted down a note.

  “Had this Lindfield a pistol in her hand, or a gun of any sort, when you saw her first?” he demanded.

  “No, she hadn’t. I’ve got eyes in my head, haven’t I?”

  “I suppose your eyes are the kind that can see into people’s pockets?” he inquired with delicate irony. “She might have been carrying a dozen pistols, and you no wiser for it.”

  But here he was challenging an expert on her own ground.

  “If you’d gone and got married, you’d have known more than to talk silly like that,” Mrs. Haddon retorted. “She was wearing a golfing-skirt, as you can see for yourself if you cast your eyes over there. Ladies don’t have pockets in their skirts. And there was nothing in the pockets of her cardigan either, for she spread it out to let me see the bullet-hole in it. So there!”

  “I’ll put it down that you saw no pistol in this Lindfield’s possession at that time,” said P. C. Gumley judicially. “That’s all the evidence warrants. Now, what time was it when you saw her come out of the spinney?”

  Mrs. Haddon made a gesture which suggested that the answer was beyond her.

  “How do I know? The kitchen clock’s the only one I’ve got, and it stopped last week.”

  P. C. Gumley nodded wearily. Just what one might have expected from an ill-trained mind, he reflected. No powers of observation, no accuracy. Hopeless. He sucked his pencil, seeking for inspiration but finding none. Then he glanced back at the verandah and noticed the tea table.

  “This Mrs. Castleford, she had a visitor this afternoon.”

  Mrs. Haddon’s nerves were beginning to weaken under the strain of the afternoon’s events; and she had lost her awe of P. C. Gumley.

  “I can see two teacups myself,” she said, tartly.

  “Then this Lindfield was having tea with her?”

  “That she wasn’t,” said Mrs. Haddon, positively.

  “Now, wait a bit,” said P. C. Gumley with ponderous alertness. “You was at your cottage until this Lindfield came there, you say. You wasn’t at this Chalet. And yet you say you’re sure it wasn’t this Lindfield that was having tea here. I warned you before about hearsay. How can you make out that you know whether she was or she wasn’t having tea here?”

  “Because I keep my eyes open, of course. I’ve washed up the cups here for years. Mrs. Castleford’s dropped sugar; she takes some stuff called satsharin or something like that for her health. Miss Lindfield never touches sugar in her tea. One of those cups has sugar in it, ’cause I saw it myself when I looked at the tea table a while ago. That’s how I know.”

  P. C. Gumley tried to find a flaw in this reasoning, but failed. He jotted down a fresh note, attributing the deduction to himself. Then he cudgelled his brains for fresh questions which seemed hard to devise.

  “This boy with the rook-rifle—has he a firearm certificate and a gun licence?”

  Mrs. Haddon quite rightly regarded this as outside her scope.

  “You’d better ask at Carron Hill about that. Miss Lindfield could say, maybe.”

  “This boy’s been shooting off his gun round about here this afternoon you say. Has he been firing a lot?”

  Mrs. Haddon seemed to regard this question as of greater importance than some of its predecessors, probably because it touched her more personally.

  “I didn’t pay much attention to him at first,” she said carefully. “I heard him firing now and again, but that’s about all I can remember. Then he was quiet for a bit, and I thought he’d gone away. And then a shot broke my window-pane, and I was just thinking about going out to check him when he stopped firing for a bit. Then there was another shot or two, and there was more while I was standing talking to Miss Lindfield. At least, that’s how I seem to remember it.”

  P. C. Gumley laboriously noted down these statements and was about to carry his inquiries further when his eye caught two figures coming over the edge of the dip at the sunken road. He recognised them and rose to his feet.

  “That’s Inspector Westerham and Sergeant Ferryhill,” he informed Mrs. Haddon. “They’ve come up in a car, I expect.”

  The two figures drew near to the Chalet. P. C. Gumley’s hour of opportunity had run its course.

  Chapter Seven

  Inspector Westerham’s Inquiry

  Inspector Westerham, though a bachelor, had none of the morose misogyny which distinguished P. C. Gumley. As a private individual, he liked pretty girls better than the other kind, and never scrupled to tell them so. When acting in his official capacity, however, he pursued his inquiries with equal thoroughness, whether the witness was good-looking or ill-favoured. Or rather, to be more accurate, he suffered a mental dichotomy when dealing professionally with a pretty girl. One part of his mind registered and reviewed her physical attractions, whilst another part, wholly uninfluenced by these, stolidly devoted itself to the collection of the facts necessary for his case. Thus, at no cost to his efficiency, he managed to make the best of both worlds.

  As he came up the grass slope from the road, followed by the sergeant, he took in the verandah with the still figure in the chair, the easel, the tea table, Mrs. Haddon on the steps, P. C. Gumley on his feet, ready to salute; and then his glance passed to Miss Lindfield who, at the sight of him, had come out from among the trees and was approaching him without haste.

  “Fine girl, that,” commented the unofficial half of his mind approvingly. The official part of his brain registered the fact that here was an educated witness who might, if she kept her head, be able to give him a plain story unencumbered by wholly irrelevant details.

  Stuffing his notebook into his pocket, P. C. Gumley came forward hurriedly and saluted his superior.

  “I’ve got the main facts ready for you, sir. Acting on information received, I . . .”

  Inspector Westerham knew something about P. C. Gumley’s exterior personality. In his opinion, P. C. Gumley was a dull fellow, thoroughly honest, but with an unfortunate way of handling affairs. The Inspector was wholly incognizant of the Hawkshaw side to the constable’s character. If it had been revealed to him, he would have been excusably amused.

  “I’ll hear your report by-and-by,” he said. “The surgeon will be here before very long. Go down to the road there and stop him if he doesn’t know where we are.”

  P. C. Gumley, with an effort, concealed his annoyance at being temporarily shunted off the main scene and trudged away in the direction of the sunken road. The Inspector turned to meet Miss Lindfield, who had now come up to him.

  “I’m Inspector Westerham,” he introduced himself. Then after a slight and natural pause he added: “I’m new to the district, and I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

  “My name’s Lindfield—Constance Lindfield. I live with Mrs. Castleford at Carron Hill, over yonder. This is a dreadful affair, Mr. Westerham. She’s dead, you know.”

  She bit her lip and nodded in the direction of the verandah. The official section of Inspector Westerham made an entry in his mental ledger: “Had a bad shock, this girl. Plucky, though. Holding herself down well. Needs careful handling, or her nerves may go to bits all at once.” He made an understanding sound helped out by a reassuring gesture, and waited for her to continue.

  “It’s a gun-accident,” Miss Lindfield explained, in a voice which she had evidently some difficulty in mastering. “We found her here, dead—Mrs. Haddon and I—and I sent for you at once. I don’t know whether that’s right or not. It was the first thing that came into my mind after I pulled myself together.”

  “That was quite right,” the Inspector reassured her. “V
ery wise of you to bring us in at once.”

  With a word of apology, he left her for a moment or two and made a brief examination of Mrs. Castleford’s body. When he returned, he was still more doubtful about the state of Miss Lindfield’s nerves. The sight of some rustic chairs at the nearer end of the verandah suggested his next move.

  “It’s been a bit of a shock to you,” he said, kindly. “I think you’d better sit down, while you tell me about it. You’re hardly fit to stand.”

  The sergeant, at his orders, brought down a couple of chairs, and Inspector Westerham unobtrusively manoeuvred Miss Lindfield into the one which had its back to the Chalet. She sank into it gratefully and rewarded his thoughtfulness with a rather pathetic smile.

  “Now, Mr. Westerham, if you’ll ask your questions . . .”

  The Inspector gave a swift appraising glance at her face and concluded that over-much badgering might precipitate the nervous collapse which he feared. If that came, he would have to postpone his examination, lose time, and have the whole affair to go over again on some future occasion.

  “I’d rather you told me in your own words what you know about it,” he suggested. “If anything occurs to me as you go along, I’ll ask a question or two.”

  Miss Lindfield nodded to show that she understood his point.

  “I’m in a horrible position, Mr. Westerham,” she said, frankly, leaning forward in her chair and looking him in the face. “I can’t help feeling that I’m responsible for this dreadful affair, to some extent; and you can guess how that makes me feel. The fact is, some days ago I gave a boy who’s staying with us at Carron Hill a rook-rifle as a present. Of course he was warned to be careful with it. I looked on it as a mere toy, myself. It never entered my head that it might be really dangerous, you understand?”

  “A rook-rifle? That would be a .22?” interjected the Inspector.

  “Yes, I think that’s what it said in the advertisement when I ordered it.”

  “What about a firearms certificate and a gun licence?” Westerham inquired casually.