The Castleford Conundrum

by J. J. Connington

  “Ingenious,” Dr. Glencaple commented, drily.

  “I think you’ll admit that Inspector Westerham has worked up the case very well,” Sir Clinton returned, with equal dryness. “Now there was another attempt to suggest accidental death. A bullet of .22 calibre was found on the verandah. Inspector Westerham identifies it as having been fired from the rook-rifle. The markings on it correspond. Further, on its point were certain impressions corresponding with the pattern of the canvas covering of an old target which the boy Frank used to shoot at in the harness room. Obviously that bullet must have been extracted from the straw of the target by the murderer and dropped on the verandah to reinforce the false idea that the fatal shot was from a .22 weapon. That hardly helps us much, except that such a bullet must have been procured by someone, or from someone, here at Carron Hill.”

  Wendover shot a swift glance round the group before him. Castleford had dropped his eyes and was staring at the carpet. Hilary was gazing at Sir Clinton as though he were some dangerous animal crouching for its spring. Miss Lindfield’s attitude suggested a certain detachment from the whole scene, but under her brows Wendover could see a very alert pair of eyes watching the scene. Dr. Glencaple seemed to be following Sir Clinton’s reasoning with the closest attention.

  “Now I come to a rather peculiar incident,” Sir Clinton continued. “About half-past four that afternoon, a telegram was delivered at the Chalet to Mrs. Castleford. It had been received through the post, having been dropped into the pillar-box nearest here. Owing to the initiative of Inspector Westerham and one of his subordinates, I am able to say that it was in a very simple code and it urged Mrs. Castleford to send Mr. Stevenage away immediately, as they were likely to be spied on by Mr. Castleford. On the face of it, this was a device to get Mr. Stevenage off the premises and to leave the field clear for the murderer. There is another possible explanation, but I need not go into that. The point is that this wire was worded in a very simple code; and Mr. Castleford has informed me that he and his wife, in earlier days, used a similar code for some of their communications.”

  “I know nothing about it. I never sent any wire, I never heard of it until this moment. I know nothing whatever about it,” Castleford protested shrilly, his words tumbling over each other in his excitement.

  “I never said that you did,” Sir Clinton pointed out, coldly. “I don’t even say that you destroyed that telegram—for destroyed it was, by somebody. That person must have had good reason for destroying it—perhaps to conceal the fact that it contained a simple code message. But you seem something of an agnostic, Mr. Castleford. You know nothing, it appears. There’s one thing you do know, however. What were the contents of the anonymous letter you found waiting for you at the clubhouse?”

  Castleford seemed to wilt under this.

  “I don’t remember exactly,” he protested feebly.

  “It sent you post-haste to the Chalet, whatever it was,” Sir Clinton said in a tone which seemed to brook no denial.

  “That’s not true,” Hilary interjected harshly. “My father was never near the Chalet that afternoon. I can prove that.”

  Sir Clinton eyed her with obvious disfavour.

  “I advise you to wait till you’ve heard about something which Inspector Westerham unearthed. He found that someone had been on the verandah that afternoon and had tramped on a wet paint brush. A corresponding patch of paint was found on Mr. Castleford’s shoe. Also, Mr. Castleford was seen going up to the Chalet and coming away from it, just about the time of the murder. We can bring witnesses in support of that. Do you still wish to prove what you said?”

  Hilary leaned forward as though to answer, but Castleford made a sudden gesture which silenced her. “Don’t say anything, Hilary,” he cried. “It’s no use, dear. You’d only harm yourself and do me no good.”

  “I’m glad to see you’ve taken my warning,” said Sir Clinton to Castleford. “Neither of you can prove an alibi for the other, in the face of the evidence we have. And now I come to the final points. The murder was done with one of the .32 automatics from Carron Hill. That pistol is covered with finger prints, so that we can make nothing out of that evidence. Who had direct access to the weapon? Miss Lindfield, Miss Castleford, Mr. Castleford, and possibly the boy Frank. That’s all we can say with regard to that.”

  “I never touched those pistols after I put them away,” Castleford asserted, though his tone was rather hopeless.

  “You protest too much, Mr. Castleford,” Sir Clinton retorted sharply. “There’s a final piece of evidence which Inspector Westerham brought to light. The sleeve of the jacket which you wore that afternoon has a bloodstain on it. It’s human blood. You haven’t offered any explanation of how it came there.”

  “I don’t know,” Castleford said wearily. “I can’t think how it could have come there.”

  Sir Clinton nodded unsympathetically.

  “I didn’t expect that you could.”

  He glanced round the group.

  “That would be the police case against Mr. Castleford. As you can see, it’s well-constructed and holds together. The motive is plain enough; the opportunity is accounted for; the weapon and the method have been dealt with; and Mr. Castleford’s alleged alibi has broken down. Would you care to make a clean breast of it, Mr. Castleford?”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  In Re Maybrick and Crippen

  Wendover’s hopes had been shrinking throughout Sir Clinton’s exposition of the case, but they rose again suddenly at the conclusion. “The tragedy of Hamlet, with the character of the Prince of Denmark left out.” The very things to which Sir Clinton had attached most importance during his investigation had been omitted from his survey; and Wendover knew him too well to suppose that mere inadvertence had dictated this course. Fingerprints, bloodstains, library lists, the peculiarities of the various riflings, and the Maybrick case, all had gone unmentioned. Plainly there was more to come. And, whatever this was, it could hardly be meant to tell against the Castlefords or Sir Clinton would have used it in its proper sequence.

  Under the spur of Sir Clinton’s blunt invitation, Castleford seemed to pull himself together with a certain energy of desperation.

  “You’ve twisted the whole of that evidence,” he broke out, “distorted it to fit your case and make it tell against me. Now I’ll tell you the truth, for it can’t make things worse for me. I’m sick of lying, and I haven’t made much of a success of it, since nobody believes me. I did get a letter at the clubhouse, a vile thing that threw me off my balance. I went up by Ringford’s Meadow; but instead of going on to the copse, I turned to the left and made for the Chalet. I’d no plans in my mind, I hadn’t even considered what I’d do when I saw my wife. I was clean off my balance and couldn’t think clearly at all. I simply wanted a final settling-up of things between us and an end to a state of affairs that had got beyond all bearing. I knew about the will she was going to make, and I’d nothing to lose. I was worked up. I’d had years of that kind of thing—she was a standing disgrace to me—and I simply couldn’t stand any more of it, now that there was nothing to gain by turning a blind eye on her doings.”

  “Had you a pistol with you?” Sir Clinton interjected, coolly.

  “No, I hadn’t a weapon of any sort, not even a stick. I came out from among the trees, and there on the verandah I saw my wife sleeping, as I thought, in a chair. I went up the steps, and I saw blood on the concrete. Then, when I came nearer, I saw she was dead. It staggered me. And then I lost my head altogether.”

  He paused and gulped painfully once or twice.

  “You see, the day I got the first anonymous letter I’d been so shaken by it that I’d toyed with the idea of threatening her with a pistol, scaring her to death. I’d dwelt a bit on that in my imagination, and I’d seen myself shooting her. Of course I never meant to do it; it was just blowing off steam in my mind. And when I was faced with her dead body, suddenly I saw the rest of the thing—the arrest, the trial . . . I ought to h
ave given the alarm, but instead of that my whole idea was to slink away unnoticed. Then, nobody could connect me with the business, you see? But if anyone found me there, I knew what people would think. I’d looked up the position in the Encyclopædia from curiosity. If by any chance she died intestate, then I came in, before anyone else. That would be enough to make people suspect me. I’d lost my head altogether; I really was hardly responsible for my actions at the moment. Finding her there, like that, was a terrific shock to me. Of course, it’s easy enough to see now what a mistake I made. But suppose the pistol had been thrown down near at hand, who was to say I hadn’t used it? Anyone would have seen I’d a motive for killing her. I simply made off. And as soon as I’d done that, of course there was no going back. I had to see the thing through, somehow, and stick to my story that I’d never been near the Chalet at all. I persuaded my daughter to back me up in my lies. There was nothing else for it, once the mistake had been made. And that’s how it happened,” he ended lamely.

  If it was acting on Castleford’s part, it was good enough to deceive Wendover. There had been a ring of hysteria in the confession; but after all, Castleford was a weak creature. And a weak creature might quite well have acted just in the way which he had described. He couldn’t know that the pistol was missing; and if he had been found there, with a used firearm nearby, he would have been in a very awkward fix. Circumstantial evidence is a terror when there are no witnesses to rebut it.

  And behind all this, Wendover saw a solution of another puzzle. Hilary, believing her father innocent, had sent out her S.O.S. for Sir Clinton. After all, the case against Mrs. Fleetwood in the Lynden Sands affair had seemed even more deadly than this one against Castleford. Then she had told her father what she had done; and he had taken fright and had infected her with his panic. Naturally she had regretted her move and had shown that plainly when Sir Clinton appeared on the scene.

  Sir Clinton, to Wendover’s surprise, made no comment on Castleford’s statement.

  “I said, a few minutes ago,” he pointed out, “that the case I elaborated was a well-constructed one. It’s too well-constructed, in fact, to be the result of mere accident. One can’t help seeing the hand of an author in it. Or, better, perhaps, one can’t help seeing the chess-player moving the pieces on the board to suit his game. The boy in the spinney, the arrival in the nick of time of that code telegram which takes Stevenage off the scene, the letter waiting at the clubhouse to drive Mr. Castleford to fury and bring him up to the Chalet, the shot that puts Mrs. Haddon on the alert, the other shot that startles Miss Lindfield: the whole series of events suggests a plan of campaign and not a jumble of accidents. I gave you what I called ‘a well-constructed case’; but it was the murderer who constructed it, not I. It’s a case within a case, intended to involve Mr. Castleford up to the neck. And, as usual, the murderer was a shade too clever. If the pistol had been left beside the body, things would have looked even blacker for Mr. Castleford, perhaps.”

  Wendover, glancing at the Castlefords, saw a sudden relaxation in their previous strain. Castleford was listening with an expression which showed that he could hardly believe what he heard. Hilary, leaning back in her chair, seemed to have gone limp in her relief; and her big hazel eyes were fixed on Sir Clinton as though she were seeing him for the first time.

  “I’ll take some points in the evidence,” Sir Clinton Went on briskly. “First of all, the letter at the clubhouse. It was on different paper from the others, wasn’t it, Mr. Castleford? Did you compare the writing with that of the other anonymous letters?”

  Castleford shook his head.

  “It was on white paper, I remember; but I didn’t pay any heed to the writing. It was illiterate, like the other writing and looked much the same to me. I never thought of comparing it—I couldn’t, in fact, because I’d burned the others. And I burned it, too.”

  “Did it mention a time when you could go to the Chalet with advantage?”

  “Yes, it said that if I went there about a quarter past five . . .”

  He stopped abruptly and Sir Clinton did not press him.

  “You see? The hand of the chess-player moving the piece to suit the game,” Sir Clinton observed. “And quite obviously that letter came from someone who knew more than the original anonymous writer could: Mr. Castleford’s habit of going to the clubhouse once a week to read the papers, and also the fact that Mrs. Castleford and Stevenage would be at the Chalet that afternoon. As to the writing, any illiterate scrawl would do, in these circumstances. No expert forgery was needed.

  “Then there’s the code telegram. Mr. Castleford certainly didn’t send that. It was the chess-player again, moving Mr. Stevenage out of the way. But if it wasn’t Mr. Castleford, it must have been someone else who was deep in Mrs. Castleford’s confidence; for she could read the code at once. The murderer knew that other people could read it also—hence the disappearance of the telegram from the verandah. That was another slip, I think.

  “Take the morphine-saccharin business. That again points to someone perfectly familiar with the state of things at Carron Hill. And again, you have the slip—the loading of the dice against Mr. Castleford by putting morphine in the hypodermic syringe.”

  Wendover stole a glance round the group before him. The two Castlefords, now evidently completely reassured, were watching Sir Clinton with close attention. Dr. Glencaple’s expression puzzled Wendover, with its faint show of suspicion mingling with scepticism. Miss Lindfield, with slightly lowered head, was regarding the Chief Constable under knitted brows, as though intent on following his argument.

  “Mrs. Castleford bought the alum which was used to fireproof the sheet of paper used by the murderer. She also inquired at the post-office for some information which the murderer needed in order to synchronise events. That was most ingenious, making the poor creature collect the very things which were to be used against her and thus blocking the trail for a detective. But from what I have gathered about the relationships at Carron Hill, Mrs. Castleford did not run errands for Mr. Castleford or her stepdaughter. It was the other way about. If she did these errands, it must have been for someone who had influence with her, I think.”

  “She bought the alum for me,” Miss Lindfield interrupted in a dispassionate tone. “She had a recipe for an alum eye-wash which she insisted on my trying. I let her get the alum for it, but I didn’t think much of it.”

  “Thanks,” Sir Clinton said. “And the post-office inquiries?”

  Miss Lindfield shook her head.

  “No, that had nothing to do with me.”

  Sir Clinton made a faint gesture, as though vexed with himself for having forgotten a point.

  “Of course! I remember I asked you about the hours of collection from the nearest pillar-box, and you couldn’t tell me. I was surprised at that, Miss Lindfield, for you’ve such a reputation for efficiency generally. You staggered the Inspector here by your minute legal knowledge about intestacy and its results. He hadn’t expected it.”

  If Miss Lindfield suspected a side-thrust here, she did not show it. She gave the Inspector a friendly smile and then turned her eyes back to Sir Clinton.

  “One picks up that kind of information by chance, and somehow it sticks in one’s mind,” she explained.

  “Sometimes, of course, one has to refresh one’s memory,” Sir Clinton suggested. “I had to do that myself, lately, and I went to the Strickland Regis Public Library. And that reminds me that you people at Carron Hill seem to read a very peculiar selection of books.”

  Miss Lindfield glanced up sharply at this, but her features betrayed no sign of perturbation.

  “I looked into Smith and Glaister’s Recent Advances in Forensic Medicine, for instance,” Sir Clinton went on in a casual tone, “and curiously enough, on page 13, I found the statement that a wound is smaller than the bullet which causes it, in some circumstances. The same thing is to be found on p. 166 of Smith’s Forensic Medicine. And in both books there is a discussion of powder-ma
rkings on the victim’s skin. It’s all in the way of business with me; but these books seemed peculiar reading for say, Miss Castleford or Miss Lindfield or Mr. Castleford. I don’t think Mrs. Castleford was very likely to have looked into them.”

  Wendover saw Hilary glance suddenly towards Miss Lindfield and then look away again before she caught her eye. Castleford kept his eyes fixed on Sir Clinton, but seemed rather puzzled by the turn of the talk. Miss Lindfield was evidently following with keen attention.

  “Another book on the Carron Hill list was less extraordinary,” Sir Clinton continued. “It’s a large work called The Standard Physician—a popular book on medical matters. At the end of the first volume there’s one of these cardboard mannikins which open out and show the relative positions of the bones, nerves, muscles, and so on in the body. Curiously enough, there’s a pinhole through that mannikin. And, more curious still, the pinhole almost exactly reproduces the track of the bullet through Mrs. Castleford’s heart.”

  He turned to Dr. Glencaple.

  “You’re accustomed to auscultation and palpation in your practice, doctor. You know where the heart is, exactly, in the human body. Naturally you wouldn’t need the help of a mannikin to tell you where to shoot. But what about a layman? Wouldn’t he find the mannikin indispensable?”