The Castleford Conundrum

by J. J. Connington

  Miss Lindfield’s lips contracted momentarily at this home-thrust, but she recovered herself almost instantly.

  “Yes,” she admitted, in a level tone, “it’s been rather a facer, as you can guess. I didn’t expect to be left penniless; and that’s the result as things have worked But I expect that it must have come as a worse shock to the Glencaple family; for they imagined that Mrs. Castleford had signed the new will and that therefore they would come into most of her money if anything happened to her.”

  She seemed to be taking the matter stoically, the Inspector reflected. Not at all a nice prospect to be pitched out into the world to pick up a living after years in charge of Carron Hill. He rather admired her for that. Most women would have been inclined to make a song about it. Or at the least, they would have shown some spite against the people who had come in front of her for the money.

  “I’d like to put one or two more questions to Mr. Castleford,” he explained, by way of showing that the interview was now ended. “Could you ask him to come here and see me?”

  He opened the door for Miss Lindfield, and she passed out with a faint display of that efficient smile which had helped her to cover many difficulties.

  “Keeps a very stiff upper lip,” the Inspector commented to himself. “Well, if the worst comes to the worst, there’s always the marriage market, open to her, with looks like hers. I wouldn’t mind having her myself, if I could afford to keep her.”

  His unofficial reflections on this theme were interrupted by Castleford. Quite evidently, this fresh summons had perturbed him, and he faced the Inspector with an expression at once hang-dog and suspicious.

  “Just one point,” Westerham began briskly. “As you came up from Ringford’s Meadow that afternoon, did you notice young Mr. Stevenage anywhere about?”

  Castleford kept a fairly firm front; but the Inspector noted a blink when the name was mentioned.

  “Stevenage? . . . No . . . I don’t recall seeing him then.”

  Here again Westerham was left in doubt, just as he had been in Hilary’s case. He could not be sure whether this assertion was true or not. Nothing was to be gained by persisting, he decided. Instead, he sprang a mine with his next question.

  “You didn’t tell me you received a letter at the clubhouse that afternoon.”

  Actually this discovery had been made by the indefatigable P. C. Gumley, who had elicited it by cross-questioning the woman who looked after the clubhouse. The Inspector had obtained it independently from her and had every reason to wish he had been first in the field; for P. C. Gumley had reduced the witness to a state of almost hopeless confusion of memory by his elaborate inquiries. Westerham had refrained from using this information in his earlier interview with Castleford. He calculated that it would catch Castleford in the reaction of relief, just when he imagined that the rain of questions was over and done with; and in these conditions he hoped to extract more from the incident.

  “A letter?” Castleford repeated, with a very poor assumption of surprise. “I did get a letter, certainly. It was in the rack, waiting for me. But it had nothing to do with this case, so I didn’t mention it, naturally.”

  All the same, as the Inspector knew, that letter had produced a marked effect on Castleford when he read it. “Seemed as if he’d got a bit of a shock, like,” the woman had said, when she described the episode to Westerham.

  “Come, come,” said the Inspector impatiently. “You needn’t try to fence with me. It was another of these anonymous letters, wasn’t it?”

  This was rather a risky shot, as the Inspector knew. The woman had described the envelope to him—an ordinary white one, which did not match the yellowish kind that Haddon used—but Westerham felt pretty sure in his own mind that such a disturbing document could only be of that type.

  “It was another of the same sort,” Castleford admitted after a pause of apparent desperation.

  “Abusing you? Or accusing Mrs. Castleford of something?”

  “I didn’t read it through,” Castleford explained lamely. “As soon as I saw what it was, I stuffed it into my pocket. Later on, I burned it without reading any more.”

  Again the Inspector was certain that this tale was false. The woman at the clubhouse had been quite definite in her evidence on this point. “He stood there and read it, going redder and redder in the face; and then he read it again right through; and then he went back to the front page and read it over, as if he couldn’t stop. And it didn’t do him any good, either time. I could see that by the look of him.”

  “Well, Mr. Castleford, I’m not going to conceal that I don’t think you’ve been frank with me,” Westerham said bluntly. “That’s plain enough, and you must know it. And when people aren’t frank in a case of murder . . . well, they’ve got themselves to blame for any opinion one may form about their motives. I’d strongly advise you, in your own interest, to go back on some things you’ve said. You can guess what I mean, easy enough. I’m giving you a fair chance. Of course, if you don’t like to take it . . . I can form my own opinion without help from anyone. Now, what about it?”

  Castleford stared at him with the expression of a wounded animal which sees no hope. He did not trust himself to make a verbal answer. He shook his head and made a gesture with his hands, as though to suggest that the Inspector was misjudging him.

  “Very well,” said Westerham curtly, as he began to collect his various prizes for removal. “We know where we stand. You may regret this, I warn you. I know a good deal more than you think.”

  And leaving this ancient barb to rankle in Castleford’s mind, he took his departure with as much dignity as his laden condition allowed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Appeal to Wendover

  Mr. Wendover, squire of Talgarth Grange and Justice of the Peace for his district, had a character combining qualities which seemed in some ways antithetical. He prided himself on moving with the times; but in practice his outlook on life was tinged with a certain old-fashionedness. He liked to think the best of everybody; but nevertheless one of his chief interests centred in crime and its detection. On the Bench, he was always torn between the fulfilment of his oath and his desire to treat offenders as decent, though misguided, human beings. A confirmed bachelor, he had a soft spot for a pretty girl; and he was ever ready to extend a sort of chivalrous protection to any woman in difficulties. Women occasionally recognised this by describing him as “rather an old dear”; but it is doubtful if he would have been wholly gratified if he had overheard the comment.

  Sitting at breakfast in a room overlooking the broad lawns of the Grange he was working his way through a pile of letters which had come by the morning post. When he had read them, and not before, he would turn to The Times which lay, warmed and aired for him, on the table—at his elbow.

  He ran through a couple of letters from friends; then he turned over the remainder, seriatim, until among them he came across one addressed in a feminine hand which he failed to recall. With a faint curiosity, he opened the envelope, extracted the contents, and began to read:—

  Carron Hill

  Thunderbridge

  Monday

  Dear Mr. Wendover,

  I’m afraid you won’t remember me. I met you at Lynden Sands Hotel three or four years ago, and we played golf together more than once, but most likely you have forgotten all about me. Perhaps the enclosed snapshot of the two of us on the last green may help to recall me.

  Wendover picked up the snapshot. It represented himself in the act of taking the line of the hole, whilst beyond him, facing the camera, a slim fair-haired girl stood in an easy attitude with her putter in her hand. He remembered her quite well: a nice kiddie of sixteen or seventeen. Sensible of her to send the snapshot, he reflected; for he had quite forgotten her name. He turned over the pages, read “Hilary Castleford” at the end, and then went back to where he had left off.

  You may remember my father, Mr. Philip Castleford. We are in dreadful trouble here. Someone
has shot Mrs. Castleford, and the police have practically accused my father of having done it. They have made it quite plain that they don’t believe a word we say, and we don’t know which way to turn. It is a terrible position.

  When we were at Lynden Sands, your friend, Sir Clinton Driffield, cleared Mrs. Fleetwood of a charge just like this, when things looked very black against her. That’s what makes me write to you. We did not get to know Sir Clinton well; in fact I hardly spoke to him, so it would be no good my going to him direct and asking him for his help. He wouldn’t recall us, I’m sure.

  But if you remember us, and would persuade him to look into this terrible affair, I feel sure that things would come out all right in the end. And just now I am most horribly afraid of what may happen, for undoubtedly things do look very black indeed.

  I know I’ve no claim whatever on your kindness, but I simply felt that I couldn’t leave any stone unturned to help my father; and I made up my mind to write to you and beg you to do what you can for us. Please do help us.

  Yours sincerely,

  Hilary Castleford

  The signature came at the foot of the page but Wendover mechanically turned the leaf and found in a postscript an even plainer indication of the writer’s panic:

  “P.S. Please, please help us if you can.”

  Wendover re-read the letter; then he picked up the snapshot and studied it for a moment or two. He remembered her well enough now: a cool, quiet little thing with a nice voice. He had played a round or two with her and rather liked her; but he admitted to himself that without the photograph he would have had difficulty in recalling her. Again he was favourably impressed by the common sense she had shown in enclosing the snapshot. That detail showed that she had kept her head even in the worst kind of trouble.

  He put down the letter and snapshot and began to consider his best line of action. Already he had made up his mind to help. Wendover never mentioned the word chivalry and never thought of himself as a knight-errant; but his attitude towards people in distress had a generousness which verged at times on the quixotic.

  He recognised, however, that there might be difficulties in the way. One cannot descend abruptly on a Chief Constable and expect him to put aside his normal routine merely because a pretty girl thinks she can whistle you in to help her. That kind of appeal would meet short shrift. Despite this, Wendover was not unhopeful. Sir Clinton liked to pit his wits directly against those of a criminal; and it was on this penchant that Wendover was counting for the achievement of his object. If the thing could be done without detriment to the public service, Sir Clinton would probably be quite glad to play detective once again.

  After breakfast, Wendover put a trunk call through to the Chief Constable. He refrained from giving any details, but merely invited himself to lunch at Sir Clinton’s house, as he had something which he wished to talk over in privacy. Later in the morning, he ordered his chauffeur to bring his car round.

  During lunch, he kept to ordinary topics. It was not until they went into the Chief Constable’s study that he broached the real subject of his visit.

  “Do you remember our staying at Lynden Sands a year or two ago—the time you took a busman’s holiday over the Foxhills case?”

  Sir Clinton nodded without comment.

  “Remember that girl, there?” Wendover asked, handing the snapshot across as he spoke.

  The Chief Constable examined the photograph for a second or two, as though putting his recollections in order.

  “Yes. Castleton or Castleford was her name, wasn’t it? She was staying at the hotel with a father and a stepmother, if I’m not wrong. The father was a little shrimp of a man, the sort that apologises to you profusely if you tread on his toes. He’d lost a finger or two, and I used to wonder how he ever managed to play golf at all. The stepmother—let’s see—she was a brainless creature with some pretensions to good looks of a sort and a perfect genius for vapid chatter. Still, she seemed to have the other two well under her thumb. Is that the crowd?”

  “Those are the people,” Wendover confirmed.

  He was not surprised that Sir Clinton’s memory proved better than his own, although Sir Clinton had come much less into direct touch with the Castlefords than he had. The Chief Constable had a knack of noticing the salient characteristics of even uninteresting people, so Wendover knew that this thumb-nail sketch did not prove any special interest in the Castlefords. To Sir Clinton they were merely specimens of humanity whom he had noted in passing.

  “They seem to have got themselves into trouble,” Wendover continued, passing Hilary’s letter across in its turn.

  Sir Clinton read it deliberately, but his face showed nothing of his impressions as he did so. He folded up the letter, replaced it in its envelope, and handed it back.

  “Well?” Wendover inquired eagerly.

  “Well?” Sir Clinton responded with a slight caricature of Wendover’s tone.

  “Can you do anything for them, Clinton? It seems a bad kind of position.”

  “What do you expect me to do, Squire? Call off the police, or what? There are limits, you know.”

  “Well, I think it’s a pretty awkward position for them, Clinton; and . . . well, one doesn’t like to think of it. I’ve enough imagination to understand how that girl’s feeling . . .”

  “That’s where you get ahead of me, Squire. My imagination isn’t strong enough. I’ve just got to go on my recollections. And what do they amount to? I remember this girl. She was good-looking, and she’d a nice, firm jaw. I remember her father. He was a miserable little worm with a few redeeming points. And I remember enough about the stepmother to save me any tears at the news of her demise. Is there anything there which ought to tempt me into interfering with the normal course of events?”

  “Oh, if you’re going to take that line . . .” said Wendover, rather hurt, “I suppose it’s no good saying any more.”

  “I’m not taking any line, just yet,” Sir Clinton pointed out, somewhat to Wendover’s relief. “I’m merely stating a fact or two. I’m not going to set my imagination to work merely because somebody happens to get into a hole of some sort. I know nothing about these people. They may be guilty for all we know. Or they may be innocent. I’m certainly not going to put my normal work aside in order to act as their private defender. They seem dissatisfied with the local experts, and they propose to appeal over the local people’s heads to Caesar—if you don’t mind my putting it modestly like that. But suppose Caesar happens to be busy?”

  “They wouldn’t call you in unless they were innocent,” Wendover declared, with the air of a man advancing an incontrovertible thesis.

  “Why not?” Sir Clinton asked blandly. “They’re suspected already. If they’re guilty, they stand to lose little by dragging me in. From that girl’s letter it’s plain that she wants me only if I’m working to clear her father. I don’t dance in leading-strings like that, Squire. If I go down there—I might manage a long weekend just now, as it happens—I go without any prejudices. I’m merely going to look into a case. Is that quite clear?”

  “You’ll come? That’s the main thing.”

  “Oh, I suppose I may as well go down and see what the local people are making of it. That could be reckoned as a pursuit of one’s duty. But if my interference makes things worse for friend Castleford, it’s their own lookout, remember. This isn’t a Rescue-of-Damsels-in-Distress Syndicate with you as Don Quixote and me as Sancho Panza. They’ve asked for it; and you’re not to turn peevish if they get more than they asked for. That’s understood, Squire?”

  “Oh, of course that’s quite understood,” Wendover agreed gratefully.

  He was still quite convinced by the force of his own argument. Hilary Castleford, as her letter showed, had vivid recollections of Sir Clinton’s work in the case at Lynden Sands. She would never have dared to ask him to take up her father’s affairs unless she had a clear conscience. Then a sudden thought made him uncomfortable. The girl hadn’t said that her fath
er backed her appeal. She hadn’t even made clear whether he knew about it at all. And it was Castleford who was the suspect, not she.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Motives

  When the Chief Constable descended out of the blue, Inspector Westerham examined him covertly with curiosity and a faint touch of resentment. As was only natural, he chafed a little at this incursion from higher spheres. It suggested that his competence was being called in question.

  At the first glance, he classified Sir Clinton as “a very ordinary-looking man”—a verdict which would have delighted his subject if it had been uttered aloud, for the Chief Constable took special pains to refrain from anything which would make his appearance notable. All that he offered to Westerham’s cataloguing eye was a tanned face, a close-clipped moustache, fine teeth, and well-tended hands. His age the Inspector guessed to be in the early forties.

  Sir Clinton sensed the faint but repressed vexation of the Inspector; and, by manner more than by words, he set himself to dispel it. Almost at once, Westerham began to feel that he was going to get fair treatment; and in a very short time he completely lost any suspicions which he harboured. Sir Clinton was so obviously a person who would “give a man a square deal,” as the Inspector phrased it to himself.

  Wendover, to whom Sir Clinton introduced him without explanation, was something of a puzzle to the Inspector. “Typical country gentleman of the good sort,” he decided. “But what’s he doing, mixed up in this business?”

  “I’ve read these reports of yours,” Sir Clinton explained, as though to set the Inspector more at ease. “Very clear and full. You must have had a busy time gathering your information.”

  “I can stand over every bit of them, sir. There’s nothing there that I can’t give you definite evidence for.”

  “So I gathered from reading them. Now let’s have something else equally clear. I’m not taking this case out of your hands. You’re responsible for it. If there’s any credit at the end of it, that goes to you. If it’s muddied . . . well, we’ll not consider that possibility. You understand me? I’m interested in the case; I may want to poke about and look into things; but it’s your case, not mine.”