The Castleford Conundrum

by J. J. Connington

  Then it occurred to Westerham that the hints he had gathered might point to that very state of affairs. A man married to a rich wife “who wasn’t as much in love with him as she used to be,” might quite likely become a cipher in the household, especially with a person like Miss Lindfield in the offing. A sideglance at the other two confirmed this idea. Laurence Glencaple was standing by the window, his hands in his jacket pockets, and on his face, as he watched Castleford, the Inspector saw a look in which enmity and contempt seemed to be blended. Miss Lindfield, still with her chin on her hand, had bent forward a little and was studying Castleford intently under knitted brows. There was no mistaking the hostility in the air. And if this was the sort of atmosphere in which Castleford spent his life, his demeanour was just what might be expected.

  Still, the Inspector docketed in his mental pigeonholes the judgment that Castleford’s initial nervousness hardly accounted for, even by these factors. “If he fell into a funk like that, every time he’s had to meet those two, he’d have had a nervous break-down years ago.”

  Nothing further could be done, he decided, until he got the results of Dr. Ripponden’s post-mortem examination. It was quite on the cards that all these suspicions of his might be entirely groundless; and it behooved him to go warily for the present.

  At the earliest opportunity, however, he took the precaution of jotting down every detail of the conversations be had had—and his verbal memory was an extremely good one. He had an uneasy feeling that he had only touched the fringe of something and that he might yet need every scrap of evidence.

  Chapter Ten

  The Telegram

  Relieved at last from his guard over the Chalet, P. C. Gumley returned to his lodgings and sat down to a belated supper. He had schooled his landlady to let him devour his meals without interruption; but on this evening he made no objection when she broke through the ordinary routine. She hovered about him, striving to elicit titbits of news which she could retail to her friends. P. C. Gumley was embarrassed by the fact that he had no fresh information to disclose; and he took refuge in an attitude which suggested that he knew a good deal more than he could impart. He met her inquiries by grunts and suggestive nods such as he supposed Hawkshaw the Detective would have found useful in this situation.

  Failing to extract anything of interest from her lodger, his landlady fell back upon her own stores, and provided him with a full account of the reactions of the tragedy upon village gossip. P. C. Gumley listened without manifesting any concern until, while he was busy with his third cup of tea, she dropped a sentence which made him prick up his ears. With great restraint, he finished his meal while she babbled on. Then, putting on his cap, he sallied out into the street. This was something that would make that jack-in-office Inspector sit up, he reflected complacently. He’d find that all the brains and alertness weren’t amongst the higher ranks.

  As he passed along the village street, he saw a little knot of farm labourers congregated about a boy who was evidently a centre of interest. P. C. Gumley strode to the group with an official air and addressed the youngster, who was the local telegraph messenger.

  “Here! You come along o’ me!” he ordered gruffly.

  By an adroit movement, he cut his prize out from under the guns of the company and carried him off up the street, followed by growls from those bystanders who had not yet secured all the information which they thought their right. When P. C. Gumley and his captive had reached a quiet spot, the constable condescended to open his mouth again.

  “Acting on information received,” he began impressively, “I’ve got to ask you a few questions. You got a telegram to deliver at the Chalet this afternoon?”

  “Well, what if I did? What’s it got to do with you? You attend to your job and I’ll look after mine.”

  “You’ll be getting yourself into trouble, bad trouble, if you go on like this,” P. C. Gumley assured him. “This is a serious affair, this is; and anything you say may be taken down in writing and used in Court. So you’d better be a sight less cheeky and just tell the truth. See?”

  “Well, I’ve nothing to be afraid about,” the boy protested in a rather less cocky tone . “Delivering telegrams is my job, isn’t it?”

  “You got a telegram to hand in at the Chalet this afternoon,” P. C. Gumley pursued. “When did you deliver it at the Chalet, eh?”

  “About half-past four. I gave it to Mrs. Castleford herself.”

  “That telegram hasn’t turned up,” said P. C. Gumley, drawing a bow at a venture. “What have you got to say to that?”

  “Well, I delivered it all right,” the boy answered sulkily. “Mr. Stevenage could speak for that. He was there when I handed it over.”

  “Was he so,” P. C. Gumley replied in a sceptical tone.

  The information was both welcome and unwelcome to him. It was gratifying, because it meant that he had elicited a bit of information which the Inspector had not got. On the other hand, it seemed to tell against P. C. Gumley’s firm conviction that “this over-bearing wench Lindfield” was responsible for the tragedy. With Stevenage hanging about the Chalet, her job would be a lot stiffer to pull off.

  For a moment, P. C. Gumley wavered in his assurance. He tried to keep an open mind, and he could not quite dismiss the plain fact that Stevenage was actually in the dead woman’s company immediately before her death whilst “that hoity-toity jade” was obviously elsewhere. Then in a flash of illumination he glimpsed a further possibility. Suppose Stevenage and that doxy were in it together?

  He turned to the boy with a marked accentuation of the “official” demeanour which he assumed when engaged on investigations.

  “Now, this may be highly important, see? Just you tell me exactly what happened up there. Where was they, when you arrived? What was they doing? What did they say to you? Things like that, you understand?”

  The telegraph boy had no difficulty in setting out all the details. He had already told his story at least twenty times in the village, and it had settled down into a continuous narrative through frequent repetition. P. C. Gumley had only to interject a question here and there.

  “I took the wire up on my bicycle and when I got to the road just below the Chalet I left my machine by the roadside and I climbed up the bank to go to the Chalet and when I got over the top of the bank I seen the two of them, her and him, sitting out on the verandah having their teas at a table there. Yes, she was sitting on my left and he was on the right of the table, just as you say, and they looked up when I came in sight and they didn’t seem overpleased to see me, ’s far as I made out, but that was no business of mine, so I just went forward and handed her the telegram.”

  He paused a moment for breath and then rattled on:

  “She took the telegram and opened it and read it and she seemed struck all of a heap, like, and she looked at it again and then she crumpled it up in her hand and dropped it on the floor and she looked at him as if she was going to say something, but she didn’t, and he seemed like as if he was going to ask a question, only she looked at me and then he looked at me and he shut up. So then she said: ‘Give him sixpence’ and he fished out a tanner and give it me and I came away.”

  “And you looked back, I bet,” hazarded P. C. Gumley.

  “What’s the harm in that? I happened to look back when I was climbing down the bank to the road and I seen them with their heads together over the table, talking eager-like and looking this way and that, as if they expected someone; and that’s all I know about it as you’ll hear if you ask anyone I’ve told it to before.”

  “Just let’s have one thing,” P. C. Gumley demanded. “You say that they was both sitting at the table when you left them? Is that right?”

  “Didn’t I tell you about them talking to each other across the table when I looked back? Of course they were both at the table, sitting having their teas.”

  P. C. Gumley reflected deeply for a moment or two. It seemed very difficult to rake up further questions.


  “Did you hear them say anything else at all, except what you’ve told me?”

  The telegraph boy pondered for a short time; then in a tone of irony he amplified his evidence.

  “Now you mention it, they did say something else. When I give her the telegram she said thank-you and just as I was coming up to them she put her hand on the teapot and asked: ‘Will you have another cup, Dick?’ and he said ‘No, thanks; what about you?’ And she shook her head and said something about liking her tea coldish; and I noticed, because of that, that she hadn’t drunk any of hers at all although he’d finished his cup and I hope that’s going to be important, ’cause I’d like my picture in the papers just like you.”

  P. C. Gumley, who was not wholly guiltless of such an aspiration, made a snarling sound expressive of indignation and contempt. He cudgelled his brains for other questions, but only one more occurred to him.

  “By your say, the telegram produced some sensation?”

  “Give you my word, it did. Fair took ’em in the dumpling-depot, I could see, with half an eye. Sensation, says you—and no lie, either. She was took aback rightly, at any rate.”

  P. C. Gumley made a prolonged effort to excogitate a few more questions, but he could think of nothing to the point.

  “You run along, then,” he said in dismissal. “And don’t you go gabbing so free about these things. So far you’ve p’raps done no harm; but the less that’s said, the better. Just you keep that jaw of yours shut for twenty-four hours. See?”

  Twenty-four hours, P. C. Gumley reckoned, would give him time to complete his inquiries; and in the meanwhile the boy would not be likely to go to the Inspector with his news, after this warning.

  P. C. Gumley retired to his bedroom, took down his well-thumbed manual of Police Law and plunged into study of the section dealing with telegraphs.

  “It is an offence,” he read, “for any person connected with the Post Office to disclose, contrary to his duty, the contents of any message entrusted to the Postmaster-General for transmission.”

  P. C. Gumley ran his fingers through his hair in a perplexed fashion, and re-read the passage. Then he sat for a while, deep in thought.

  “‘Contrary to his duty,’” he said at last in an undertone. “It ain’t contrary to anyone’s duty to assist the police. It’s just the other way round, o’ course. So that’s that. An’ if they raises any row afterwards, why, it’s their own funeral. You can be dealt with summary for disclosing messages but it says nothing about there being any harm in having messages disclosed to you. There’d be no fault to find with me, over it, so far as that Act goes. Anyway, I’m going to get a look at that message somehow; and if I can’t frighten that slip of a girl in the post-office into showing me it, I’ll eat my hat.”

  He took this good resolution to bed with him; and next morning, as soon as the local post-office opened, he went in. Ten minutes later, P. C. Gumley was copying out a message, while a flurried and nervous girl watched him in obvious perturbation.

  “You’d better say nothing about this,” he cautioned her as he departed. “It might be serious for you, if it happened to come out. Just keep a still tongue, and I’ll take the responsibility myself.”

  The slight grumpiness of his tone arose from disappointment. The telegram, when he had at last got his hands on it, conveyed nothing to him. He had hoped to find the key to the problem in it at the first glance, and it had turned out to be some silly message about a presentation to somebody or other. He pulled his notebook out of his pocket and read it over once again:

  “Mrs. Castleford. The Chalet. Thunderbridge. Be punctual on Thursday. The presentation watch that Phyllis bought is not keeping time. A new watch needed on Thursday. You exchange this tomorrow afternoon. Dont send for your Welsh friend if away, but whenever convenient you should get together this party.”

  P. C. Gumley grunted in some vexation.

  “If my handwriting was no better than what that was, I’d get back to school again. What a scrawl!” he commented contemptuously. “I’d have thought Miss Joan Heskett”—he had studied the name and address on the back of the form—“could have written better than that. And sending it by post, too, instead of handing it in at the office.”

  The telegram had not proved the talisman which he had expected; but at least it would serve to impress that jackanapes Westerham and show him that P. C. Gumley was a man of alertness and initiative. He decided to submit the matter to the Inspector.

  The Inspector was a busy man that morning. He was throwing his net wide to sweep in all the information he could obtain with regard to the movements of the folk of Carron Hill on the fatal afternoon. And casting your net wide in a district where you have only a few scattered subordinates is equivalent to doing most of the work yourself. Thus when P. C. Gumley approached the Inspector, he was received rather cavalierly.

  “Well, what is it you want?”

  P. C. Gumley, with some pride, explained what he had done, and produced his copy of the telegram.

  “Ah!” said the Inspector, sarcastically. “I haven’t had time to read the newspaper today and see about the Cabinet crisis. So you’re the new Home Secretary? You must be. He’s the only person who can authorise post office officials to divulge the contents of telegrams. Or perhaps you’ve been made a Judge? Well, since you’ve put your foot in it, we may as well profit if we can. Let’s see this telegram.”

  He took P. C. Gumley’s notebook and studied the wording of the copied telegram.

  “Miss Joan Heskett, Winterlea House. That was on the back of the form? Who’s Miss Heskett?”

  “She’s a girl about twenty or so, a friend of young Miss Castleford,” P. C. Gumley explained. “She’s a sporting sort of piece, sir. Always has a dog or two at her heel when she goes for a walk.”

  “Fond of pets, evidently,” the Inspector commented. “To judge by your description of her writing, she has a tame spider that she dips in the inkpot when she wants to write a letter and it crawls over the paper to her dictation. I don’t, somehow, think that she’s responsible for this telegram. You can ring up and ask if she sent a wire yesterday. But if I were you, I don’t think I’d mention you’ve seen the contents of it.”

  He glanced at the wording of the telegram again.

  “Know of any presentation that’s due about now?” he demanded. “Anything in connection with a golf-club, or a tennis-club, or that sort of thing?”

  P. C. Gumley shook his head.

  “Ever hear of anyone called Phyllis in the neighbourhood among the Carron Hill grade of people, I mean?”

  Again the constable had to admit ignorance.

  The Inspector conned over the copied telegram once more, and as he did so, P. C. Gumley saw a fresh expression dawn on his face.

  “I’ll take a copy of this thing,” he said, pulling out his notebook. “You needn’t bother making inquiries about fêtes, or golf-clubs, or that kind of thing. I don’t think that matters.”

  He copied out the telegram and returned P. C. Gumley’s notebook.

  “This telegram came to the post-office, ready stamped through the post?” he asked. “I suppose they didn’t keep the envelope?”

  “No, sir,” P. C. Gumley assured him. “I asked about that, and they hadn’t got it. Threw it in the wastepaper basket or into the fire this morning—their kitchen fire, I mean.”

  “Well, that can’t be helped. Don’t you bother further in the matter. I’ll look after this part of the business, except that you can ring up Miss Heskett and ask if she sent any wire at all yesterday.”

  P. C. Gumley saluted and retired to ponder over the mysteries surrounding this incident of the telegram. When he had gone, the Inspector consulted his notebook once more, to satisfy himself of the exact tenor of the real message which he had unearthed by the simple process of omitting alternate words from the telegram:

  “Be on the watch. Phyllis is keeping a watch on you this afternoon. Send your friend away whenever you get this.”


  That certainly served to clear up some points in connection with the affair. It explained, for one thing, Mrs. Castleford’s perturbation when the boy handed her the wire. Further, an innocent woman is not likely to be disturbed by a warning of that sort; so it was a fair inference that her meeting with Stevenage was not altogether above-board. Again, some well-informed person had her interests at heart and went out of the way to give warning; and yet that person had no desire to be traced by means of the telegram, since otherwise the wire would have been handed over the counter in the usual way. And that well-informed person was using a cipher which Mrs. Castleford could evidently read without difficulty, for it was absurd to suppose that the dead woman had instantaneously solved an unknown cryptogram.

  Who was “Phyllis”? Stevenage, the Inspector had elicited from P. C. Gumley, was an unmarried man—not even engaged to anyone. “Phyllis” could hardly be a woman associated with him, so far as public knowledge went. Besides, the wire was to Mrs. Castleford, not to Stevenage. Who was the “Phyllis” who might have a grudge against Mrs. Castleford? The Inspector considered for a short time before a solution broke on his mind. “Phyllis”? Phil. Philip Castleford. That might be it. If there was any hanky-panky between Mrs. Castleford and Stevenage, Castleford was the very person against whom they might be warned. That fitted in quite neatly.

  Whether Miss Joan Heskett was the sender of the wire, or whether her name had been borrowed by someone else, remained to be seen. Her connection with Carron Hill through Hilary Castleford was suggestive in some ways, though it did not lead very far.

  Chapter Eleven

  Prelude to Tragedy

  Dick Stevenage lived in his mother’s house and—it was generally believed—at her expense. In earlier days, an uncle had done his best to entice Dick into the ranks of the world’s workers. A desk had been provided for him in a private room in the office, a clerk had been specially told off to instruct him in business methods, and from Olympian heights his uncle had kept a benevolent eye upon him. This lasted for a twelvemonth, during which the avuncular eye grew less and less benevolent. Finally, Dick returned home with a store of amusing anecdotes about commercial affairs. Retailed to his girl friends, these anecdotes had the effect of suggesting that Dick was too clever for a mere business career. To male acquaintances they were no less amusing since they artlessly revealed the frantic efforts made by the office staff to dislodge a wholly useless creature from the organisation, without giving offence to his patron.