The Castleford Conundrum

by J. J. Connington

  With a question on his lips, he turned to Miss Lindfield; but at that moment the drawing-room door opened and a clean-shaven man in grey tweeds came in.

  “Ah! You’re here, Connie,” he began. Then his glance caught the figure of the Inspector, and he stopped abruptly.

  “This is Inspector Westerham,” Miss Lindfield explained. “This is Dr. Glencaple. You’ve heard what’s happened, Laurie?”

  Laurence nodded.

  “One of the maids rang up from here as soon as the news came through, and my girl has been chasing me on the ’phone from one patient’s house to another till she ran me down. I came on here at once, of course. Well, this is a bad business.”

  To Westerham’s ear the tone sounded much like that of a man commenting on a newspaper account of a railway accident. It seemed plain enough that Laurence Glencaple had not been deeply attached to his sister-in-law. But then, of course, doctors were inured to sudden death, and were bound to look at it from a standpoint of their own.

  “How did it happen?” Laurence demanded, after a pause.

  Constance Lindfield, after an exchange of glances with the Inspector, gave a concise account of the discovery of the body.

  Laurence listened attentively to the details but made no comment. When she had finished, he turned to the Inspector.

  “What do you make of it?”

  Ten minutes earlier, Westerham would have been inclined to say: “An accident” without more ado; but with that new financial factor still obscure, he felt anything but cocksure. He contented himself with shrugging his shoulders as if to suggest that the matter was out of his province at present.

  “Dr. Ripponden is going to make a P.M. examination,” he explained. “Until that’s finished, we know nothing definite, except what Miss Lindfield has given you.”

  “Just so,” Laurence assented. “That reminds me, I’d better get in touch with Ripponden. She was a diabetic, you know; and he’d better know that. He’ll find the needle-punctures of the hypodermic and they might mislead him unless he’s told she was getting insulin.”

  Constance Lindfield seemed to be struck by an idea, as Laurence made this remark.

  “I shall be back in a moment,” she said to the Inspector, and she left the room.

  Laurence turned to the Inspector.

  “You think the shot came from young Frankie’s rook-rifle? That’s bound to come out before the coroner, I suppose. A bit awkward from some points of view, that. However, it can’t be helped. Of course there’s no idea of bringing a charge of manslaughter in the case of a kid of that age?”

  “That’s hardly my province,” Westerham pointed out.

  “No, I suppose it would be settled higher up,” Laurence agreed. “Still, I hope nothing will come of it. There’ll be enough talk in the neighbourhood without that; and it’ll be rather unpleasant for the family.”

  The Inspector did not feel called upon to make any comment on this concern of the doctor about the public reactions of the case. He was saved from an awkward break in the conversation by the return of Constance Lindfield. She handed him a little, nickel-plated case.

  “This is the hypodermic syringe that Mr. Castleford used for giving Mrs. Castleford the insulin injections,” she explained. “Dr. Ripponden may want to have it, perhaps, so that he can see for himself that the needle is the one that made the marks on the skin.”

  “I hardly think he’ll want it,” the Inspector said indifferently. “However, since it’s here, I’ll see that he gets it.”

  Laurence glanced at Constance Lindfield, as though he thought she was showing herself over-zealous.

  “I think I’d better mention, Mr. Westerham,” he pointed out, “that Miss Lindfield, my brother, and I, are the trustees and executors for my sister-in-law’s estate. That may . . .”

  “We aren’t, Laurie,” Constance interrupted, with a catch in her voice.

  “Of course we are,” Laurence retorted sharply. “Didn’t I tell you that was the arrangement in the will?”

  Constance Lindfield gave a half-hysterical laugh.

  “Yes, Laurie. But she didn’t get that new will drawn up. She put it off. And now she’s dead. And the old will’s destroyed.”

  Laurence was manifestly thunderstruck by this news. “Didn’t sign it? What do you mean? She was going to sign it. She told me so. Why didn’t you . . .”

  He pulled up quickly and glanced at the Inspector. As nearly as possible, he had let slip something—the suggestion of undue influence on the dead woman.

  “Whether the old will’s destroyed or not, isn’t a matter of much consequence now. Her lawyers had her instructions that she meant to rescind it; and that makes it so much waste paper, I should think. Good Lord, Connie! This is the devil of a mess! I wonder what Kennie will say, when he hears about it.”

  He walked over to the window and looked out for a few moments.

  “I wonder,” he said doubtfully, when he came back again, “if the Court would take our word for her intentions. She explained them to us—fully. There’s only the informality of the will not having been properly drawn up . . .”

  Miss Lindfield had recovered her self-control, and now her usual efficiency came to the surface again.

  “Nonsense!” she said decisively. “You and Kennie? The principal legatees under the new scheme? You don’t imagine any Court would take your word for these intentions, now that she’s died intestate? You don’t imagine that Castleford would stand by and let that slip through his fingers without a struggle, especially as the costs would come out of the estate? No, Laurie. We’ve just got to put up with it.”

  “Damnation!” Laurence ejaculated bitterly. “I expect you’re right. And does that beggar get the lot?”

  “Every penny. It goes to ‘the surviving spouse’ before anyone else. I’m worse off than you. You’ve got your practice. But I’m penniless now. I won’t even be allowed to stay on, at Carron Hill, if I know the Castlefords.”

  Laurence apparently had not seen this side of the problem.

  “Hard lines on you, Connie,” he said, rather indifferently.

  They seemed to have forgotten the Inspector, forgotten the tragedy, forgotten even the dead woman, in their concentration upon this financial disaster which had befallen them.

  Westerham had a skin sufficiently thick to prevent him from feeling de trop in the midst of this scene. He was there on business, and it appeared that there was something to be picked up by simply remaining where he was. These financial revelations threw a fresh light upon the whole tragedy. Obviously, if these people had lost something, then somebody else must have gained. That somebody, he gathered, was the deceased woman’s husband, a character who had not yet appeared on the stage, so far as the Inspector was concerned. Evidently, Westerham reflected, he had better learn as much as he could while these two people were still perturbed by the shock.

  “I’m afraid I must trouble you with some more questions,” he said. “I don’t suggest that these matters have any bearing on the death of Mrs. Castleford. But questions might be put to me, and I must have the materials for answers to these questions, if they are asked.”

  “Does that mean that the whole of our family affairs are to go into your report and be read by Tom, Dick, and Harry?” Laurence demanded.

  “So far as I can see,” Westerham returned, “they won’t need to go into my report—that is, unless they turn out to be relevant to the case.”

  Laurence seemed disinclined to say anything, and Constance Lindfield threw herself into the breach instead.

  “This is the state of affairs, Mr. Westerham. Mrs. Castleford’s maiden name was Lindfield. She married Mr. Ronald Glencaple—Dr. Glencaple’s brother. When he died—he was a rich man—he left everything to his wife. Later on, she married again. Her second husband was Mr. Castleford, a widower with one daughter.”

  “That’s quite clear,” the Inspector commented, as she paused.

  “Very well,” Miss Lindfield continued. “Mrs
. Castleford made a will—I’ll call it Will No. 1. to be clear—in which she left all her property to her husband, Mr. Castleford. You see what that meant? The money was originally Mr. Glencaple’s money; but by this Will No. 1. it would pass into the hands of a complete stranger, while Dr. Glencaple and his brother, Mr. Kenneth Glencaple, would get nothing whatever. Under Will No. 1., I was to get £5,000, I ought to say, and my sister Doris was to get £200. My sister died some time ago, so her legacy doesn’t come into the affair.”

  “I think you said you were a half-sister of Mrs. Castleford?” the Inspector inquired.

  “Yes. Her mother died when she was a baby. Her father married again, and my sister Doris and I were the second family. Both my father and mother are dead, like my sister. Mrs. Castleford and I are the only survivors in the family. After Mr. Glencaple died, I became a sort of companion-secretary to my half-sister, which accounts for the difference in the legacies to myself and my sister. Besides that, my sister Doris had a pension. Her husband was killed in the War. But all this is rather beside the main point. I merely mention it so that you can see your way through the relationships in the family. They’re more complicated than usual.”

  “You’ve made them perfectly clear,” the Inspector assured her.

  “For some time back,” Constance Lindfield went on, “Mrs. Castleford has been a little troubled about having made Will No. 1. She began to see that it was hardly fair to Dr. Glencaple and his brother; and besides that, Dr. Glencaple earned her gratitude by taking her in hand when she fell ill with diabetes. A week or so ago, she decided to take action. She rang up her lawyers and told them she had changed her mind and wanted to cancel Will No. 1. She also brought Dr. Glencaple and his brother here and communicated to them the gist of the new will she proposed to draw up. I’ll call it Will No. 2., though it was actually never put on paper so far as I know. My information about it comes from Dr. Glencaple.”

  She turned to Laurence, who gave a curt affirmative nod.

  “By Will No. 2., she proposed to leave me £7,500. The rest of her property was to go back to the Glencaple family, where it came from originally.”

  “Some provision was made for Mr. Castleford and his daughter as well,” Laurence pointed out.

  “I didn’t know what had been done about that,” Miss Lindfield admitted. “Then I may have given Mr. Castleford a wrong impression. I thought it well to mention to him that a new will was going to be made . . .”

  “Oh, you did, did you?” Laurence interrupted in a tone of disapproval. “You needn’t have taken that on yourself, Connie.”

  “Well, it’s done now and it didn’t seem of much importance to keep him in the dark about it. What I want to make clear, Mr. Westerham, is the result of all this. Since Will No. 1. was cancelled and probably actually destroyed—cancelled, certainly, by her instructions to her lawyers; and since she did not draw up a new will before she died, she’s intestate, and her estate will be fixed up under the Administration of Estates Act which was passed a few years ago. In that case, since there was no issue of the marriage, Mr. Castleford gets a life interest in the whole of her property. I get nothing. Dr. Glencaple and his brother get nothing. That is the state of affairs now, and you can guess what a shock it has been—to myself in particular.”

  Behind Miss Lindfield’s bald recital of facts, the Inspector thought he detected something in the background.

  “May I put one blunt question?” he asked. “Did Mr. Castleford hit it off well with his wife—and with the rest of the family?”

  “That’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it?” Laurence suggested drily, as Miss Lindfield obviously hesitated.

  Westerham refused to be content with this and turned to Miss Lindfield in obvious interrogation. She thought for a moment or two, as though choosing her words before she spoke.

  “I should say that she wasn’t as much in love with him as she used to be. But isn’t that a fairly common result of marriage?” she added cynically.

  “I’m not married myself,” said the Inspector, hastily disclaiming any expert knowledge.

  He did not need to force his inquiries further. If people are on good terms, it is not necessary to pick phrases carefully in order to describe their mutual relations. Quite obviously the Carron Hill group was not a harmonious one.

  “Who administers this estate, if we don’t?” asked Laurence, who had evidently been following a different line of thought.

  “Oh, I suppose the Court appoints someone to carry on,” Miss Lindfield suggested, carelessly. “That’s what would happen, isn’t it?” she asked the Inspector.

  “I’ve no idea,” he admitted. “That’s hardly in my province.”

  Miss Lindfield crossed the room, sat down on a chesterfield, and dropped into her favourite attitude: chin in hand and elbow on her knee. She glanced incuriously round the room, as though it had suddenly grown strange to her. Laurence watched her in silence for a moment or two and then moved over to her side.

  “A bit of a shock for you, Connie,” he said, in a more sympathetic tone than he had hitherto used. “After running the whole place for years, and dashed efficiently, too, it’s hard lines to be left stranded like this. I don’t know what poor Winnie would have done without you. Well, I suppose this is the last of Carron Hill for us.”

  “I suppose so,” Constance Lindfield acquiesced, dully.

  Inspector Westerham thought he could understand their feelings. Dr. Glencaple did not interest him, as a personality; but Miss Lindfield did. It was seldom that one came across a woman with the triple advantage of looks, coolness, and brains. Good looks, she certainly had. Her coolness under strain he had seen for himself that afternoon. As for brains, the Inspector knew from personal experience the difficulty of telling a plain tale about a complicated subject; and her exposition of the relationships of the Carron Hill group had impressed him markedly. It had been concise and, rather surprisingly, almost impersonal. And not only that, but she had given them the law on the situation quite correctly, so far Westerham could check her statement. Not many women knew anything about the law. She must have been in her element as factotum at Carron Hill; and he could appreciate what a wrench it would be for her to hand over the reins to other people and go off to earn her own living somehow or other. He had no doubt that she’d get on all right. With her ability, she’d get a secretaryship or something like that. Still, that wouldn’t be quite the same thing; for here, apparently, she had a very free hand.

  His musings were interrupted by the opening of the drawing-room door; and he swung round to see a little man dressed in a dark lounge suit and a black tie. The Inspector’s first impression was of a man wholly ill at ease, unsure of himself and of his reception. A closer scrutiny suggested something further.

  “That fellow’s in a quivering funk about something or other,” was Westerham’s expert diagnosis. “I wonder why.”

  “H’m! Turned up at last, Phil?” Laurence demanded. “I sent the maid to you with a message when I came in.” The little man swallowed rather convulsively before replying.

  “I was changing,” he answered at last, with a glance down at his sombre suit.

  Laurence obviously repressed some cutting remark. Instead he turned to Westerham.

  “This is Mr. Philip Castleford,” he explained abruptly. Then to Castleford: “This is Inspector Westerham. He’s up here to find out what he can about this affair.”

  Castleford nodded mechanically, but did not open his mouth. Once again the Inspector got the impression that the loss of Mrs. Castleford in itself was not causing the kind of emotion which one would normally expect. He had no difficulty in amplifying Miss Lindfield’s hint about the relations in the Castleford ménage.

  “I’m trying to trace out Mrs. Castleford’s movements this afternoon,” he said briskly. “Perhaps you can help me?”

  Castleford seemed to consider carefully before answering.

  “She was going to the Chalet this afternoon, to paint,” be said at
last in a weak voice. “I was going over to the golf-course; so we started off together. That would be about three o’clock. It’s about three-quarters of a mile to the turnoff where our roads parted. I think it would be about a quarter past three when I left her.”

  “And you went on to the club house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t see her again?”

  “No!”

  The Inspector caught a change in the tone at that monosyllable. It was rather louder and more decided than the “Yes” which had preceded it. Natural enough, in a way. But only . . . only if Castleford had reason to suspect that his wife’s death was not an accidental one. So evidently here was someone else beginning to think that there might be more in it than accident. Funny, that.

  “You were playing golf?” he asked casually.

  “No, I merely dropped in to read the papers. I always go over there on this day of the week to look at the weekly reviews.”

  “Meet anyone you knew?”

  “One or two people,” Castleford said, with an accentuation of the air of suspicion with which he had been regarding the Inspector.

  Westerham rapidly considered his tactics. Quite obviously, if he pushed the matter further at this moment, it would be equivalent to a tacit accusation against Castleford; and he had not the faintest grounds for such a thing. It would be a better course to postpone an examination of Castleford until he himself had time to collect evidence by which he could check things independently.

  “Did you meet anyone else on the road?”

  “My daughter.”

  A thought crossed the Inspector’s mind: “Now, why doesn’t he resent my badgering him? Most people would have fired up at questions like that, and wanted to know what I was getting at.” Then something in Castleford’s attitude suggested a possible explanation. “He looks as if he’d no spunk left in him—as if he’d been browbeaten or henpecked, or something like that.”