“Rodland Hill?” Morris turned a sharp eye on his son. “Charles gave me to understand you’d gone over the common on to the Wensley Road.”
“Did he? But no, of course not! We went straight on down the hill! Did he say we’d gone over the common?”
“Yes,” replied Morris. “At least, I think he said so. That was what I understood, anyway. I met him not far from the Tram, and stopped the car to ask whether the rest of you were about. He said you’d gone on, and he’d stopped for a drink and was just following you. I suggested walking a few yards with him, as I’d got something to say to him. And we went across the common. I thought the rest of you had gone that way.” He paused a moment, looking thoughtfully at his son. “Well, that’s damned odd. I thought Lovell looked queerly at me when I said we’d followed you across the common. He might have had the good manners to tell me I’ was mistaken. But these damned policemen love secrecy.”
Blodwen laughed.
“Perhaps he felt it would be as much as his life was worth to tell you you’d made a mistake, Uncle Morris. You’re rather alarming, you know, when people start asking you questions. Hullo, Cousin Jim! Uncle Morris has returned, you see!”
She spoke to an elderly man who now appeared walking along the terrace in a rather diffident and hesitating way, with a book under his arm. A tall, slight man of between sixty and seventy, with a rather weak but handsome face and very thick grey hair parted at the side and worn rather long.
“This is Mr. Clino—Mr. Christmas. We were sorry not to see you at lunch, Cousin Jim.”
Cousin Jim smiled a friendly but rather absent-minded smile, and stood looking vaguely at an empty chair as if undetermined whether to occupy it or not. He did not look like a poor relation. In fact, there was something slightly dandified about his excellent blue suit and broad black cravat and the eyeglasses that hung from a broad ribbon round his neck. His hands, with which he fidgeted nervously, were beautifully white and slender. After an exchange of greetings, he did not speak. He looked absent-minded, shy, listless, but not in the least humble or self-effacing.
“Sit down, Clino,” said Morris, pushing forward a chair. “The inquest’s to be the day after to-morrow, at the Tram.”
“Oh, dear! Shall we all have to go?” asked Mr. Clino pensively.
“Of course.”
“Oh, dear!” said Mr. Clino again. He looked away across the grass and wall-flowers, and added simply:“Poor Charles! Poor boy!”
The simple humanity of these words, uttered at Rhyllan Hall for the first time since Charles’s death, touched John queerly. So the Hall contained one foolish simple heart which could forget injuries in the presence of death.
“Do sit down, Clino,” repeated Morris after a pause. But Mr. Clino, with a vague murmured remark about having something to see to somewhere, took his departure, walking away along the terrace as slowly as he had come. Morris looked after him with a half-impatient, half-affectionate smile.
“‘Shall we all have to go?’” he echoed ironically. “Who would think that poor old Clino was trained as a solicitor? And still regards himself as a lawyer, I believe, in his inmost heart, though he hasn’t been in practice for twenty years, and never had enough clients to pay for the rent of his offices. A lot of lawyering he’d have been able to do if Charles had lived to turn him out, as he intended to! I hope,” he added, as Christmas rose to take his leave, “that we shall see you again. You’re not going on straight away, are you?”
“Probably not for a day or two,” replied John, oblivious of Rampson’s look of silent protest. “We shall be at the Feathers for a couple of days anyhow, and if there is ever anything we can do for you you have only to let us know.” Felix and Morris Price walked with their guests to the car. Morris and Rampson strode ahead, and Felix, walking behind with John, slackened his pace slightly as if he wished to speak on some private matter. But he only asked at last in a diffident, hesitating way:
“Shall you go to the inquest?”
“Yes. I’m interested in the case.”
“Then we shall see you again,” said Felix, looking rather relieved. “You’ve been very kind—turning out last night on my account, and everything. A happening like this makes one feel so—so topsy-turvy. And we’re rather lonely here. It’s a great help to feel that one has somebody to go to for advice—if one should want it. I hope everything’ll turn out all right—I mean, I do hope they won’t be able to fix anything on poor old Letbe, or— or anyone one knows. One knows everybody round about here, that’s what makes it so dreadful. I should think it was just a passing tramp, wouldn’t you?”
“Not very likely,” said John gently. “Practically nothing was stolen, you see. And tramps don’t as a rule carry revolvers.”
“No,” agreed Felix rather gloomily.
As John started his car, he heard the elder Price speak to a young man in shirt-sleeves who was crossing the drive.
“Will you go down to the village, Halfnights, and fetch the Daimler from Lloyd’s? It’ll be ready by the time you get there.”
“Yes, Sir Morris,” replied the young man promptly and with an indescribable note of satisfaction in his voice.
“Hear that, Sydenham?” asked John as they purred down the drive. “The king is dead, long live the king, with a vengeance. I wondered who would be the heir to this delightful little kingdom. Sydenham, what strikes you most about the death of Sir Charles Price?”
“What strikes me most,” responded Rampson sadly, “is that you’re a great deal too much interested in it, John. I see we shan’t get back to London for weeks. Apart from that, the thing that strikes me most is that all the unfortunate Charles’s relations regard his death as a nuisance rather than as a tragedy. They don’t want all this publicity. They hope it wasn’t the discharged gardener who did it, because they like him. But they’re all jolly glad Charles is dead.”
John nodded.
“Not only his relations, Sydenham. His dependents, too. That young chauffeur, for instance. He said ‘Sir Morris’ in a voice like a cheer. I’m afraid Charles can’t have been a very endearing character. What do you think of Felix?”
“Rather intense. Not my style. But a nice chap.”
“Just so. But at the moment he has cause to be intense, my dear Sydenham. Unless I’m very much mistaken, he’s mortally afraid his father is a murderer.”
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed Rampson, and seemed to consider this notion for a while in silence, as they hummed along the peaceful road towards Penlow. “Well,” he remarked judicially at length, “now you come to mention it, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s right. I shouldn’t care to get on the wrong side of Morris Price.”
“Quite,” said John rather absently, slowing down to allow a flock of sheep to pass. “And he’s rude to the police. And he has a rooted objection to answering questions. If he doesn’t look out, he’ll find himself in trouble. But he’s a fine figure of a man.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
“I wonder,” said John, pulling up at the foot of Rodland Hill, “whether there’s a way across to the foot of the quarry here. This gate must lead somewhere, I should think. Let’s go across and see.”
He ran his car on to the wide, grassy stretch at the side of the road, much to the surprise of a goat tethered in the hedge, and got out. Rampson followed, remarking that in his opinion the top of the quarry would be a better place to look for clues.
“Clues!” echoed John. “Not much hope of finding any clues lying about now, I’m afraid. The police’ll have combed every blade of grass out by now.”
“Then why need we bother?”
“Because I want to get acquainted with the scene of the crime. And because it’s a lovely day for a walk. Don’t be lazy, Sydenham.”
“It’s all very well,” complained that gentleman, “but the part of Watson doesn’t suit me. I’m not in the least interested in crime. It’s a very crude and silly kind of human activity.
And I can’t admire your cold and logical intellect, because I don’t think you’ve got one. So you see you’d much better leave me at home on these occasions.”
“But I like your company,” replied John placidly. “I don’t require admiration. A little cold-water throwing now and then is much more stimulating. That’s a nice old slated cottage, and a garden full of asters, too. I love asters, don’t you?”
“No,” said Rampson with simple finality, and followed his friend across the field, where great-horned red cattle lifted their heads and stared, and rabbits in the distance showed a flash of white scuts and vanished.
Passing through a small coppice, they came out upon a rutty track which led to a small farmhouse huddled down among stacks and sheds. A thin, wild collie-dog rushed out, vociferously barking, as they approached, and a rather slatternly looking woman standing in the narrow doorway watched them sombrely. The track skirted the buildings, but it seemed scarcely polite to pass on without a greeting to the owner of the property.
“Good morning,” said John, shouting above the volley of barks. “Can you tell me where this track leads to?”
“Quiet, Rover! It goes through Lower Quarry Field to the level crossing.” The collie slunk into the house, and heavenly peace descended on the yard. Was you thinking of seeing where the murder was done, sir? It’s straight along the track. There’s been two-three people come along already this morning.” She paused, a thin, black-eyed woman with floury hair and a sharp-nosed, weary face, and then, with the hesitation of the Welsh borderer, who does not readily part with information, added: “This is Upper Ring Farm.”
“Upper Ring Farm?” repeated John. The name sounded familiar. “Oh, yes! Then—”
“It was our lodger found the body,” said the woman with a sort of mournful pride, as though she wished to assert her claim to the celebrity without boasting. “Yesterday morning. Going to work, he was, when he seed a man lying on the stones.”
“Dreadful experience for him,” murmured John sympathetically, as she paused for comment. She looked at him with lack-lustre eyes.
“Ah!” she assented unemotionally. “He didn’t think nothing of it at first, his uncle being an undertaker and used to dead folks. But he felt terrible queer when he turned him over. He’d fell on his face on them rocks, you see. Terrible queer young Hufton come over. But he ate his breakfast.” She added meditatively: “Very hearty he ate his breakfast.”
It was plain that in some dim way she felt that young Hufton had shown a lack of dramatic instinct in heartily eating his breakfast. She shook her head, and as the howling of an infant arose within the cottage, turned back into its smoky, warm recesses. John and Rampson went on down the track, with the slope of Rodland Hill on their left hand and the low wooded country stretching away to far blue hills on their right. A tumbledown shed and some truck-lines red with rust showed that they were approaching the quarry, and rounding a corner they came in full view of the high grey face of rock like a scar in the green hillside. Four or five sightseers were standing about on the track, and one of them watched John’s approach intently.
“Hullo!” A schoolboy with bleached, ruffled hair and a pleasantly freckled face greeted John with a smile of recognition. “It’s the motorists! So it was au revoir after all! Isabel, it’s the motorists we met on Rodland Hill.”
His companion, a slender girl in a blue cotton frock, smiled a self-possessed greeting.
“Good morning. Have you come to see the sights? There aren’t any, I’m glad to say. Lion would drag me here. He’s a horrid little ghoul.”
“I like that!” protested the boy indignantly. “Upon my soul, I like that!” He seemed about to enter on a lengthy refutation of this remark, but John broke in to introduce himself and Rampson.
“I’m afraid this is a sad end to your cycling tour. You all looked such a jolly party on Rodland Hill the other day I quite wished I could join you. It’s a horrible thing to have happened.”
“Beastly,” said Isabel composedly. “Though of course none of us knew Charles well. He was quite a stranger. Still, for three days he was one of us. I don’t feel I ever want to go on a cycling tour again.”
“Rats!” said Lion heartlessly. “I say, Mr. Christmas, have you heard that Charles’s bicycle is missing? It was the wrong one they found. Charles had my pump on his bicycle. I should know it again anywhere. That ought to be a clue, don’t you think?”
John smiled a little at the boy’s enthusiastic tone, but Isabel, with a sudden little shiver, said distastefully:
“Oh, it’s horrible! Come on, Lion! Let’s go home.”
Lion, however, was so obviously disposed to stay and attach himself to John and Rampson that she relented and sitting on a great boulder a short distance from the quarry, began to draw in a little sketch-book.
The rugged face of the rock rose some hundred feet above the tumbled litter of fallen boulders that lay about its base. Its weathered and mellow look and the bracken and sprawling blackberry bushes that grew among the boulders showed that the quarry had long been disused. But for the rusty lines that ran past it to the railway, this sudden hollowing of the hillside seemed the work of nature rather than of man.
“Fancy falling over there,” said Lion, voicing the common thought. “Beastly. Awfully easy, too. The grass is awfully slippery up above and the edge part slopes down.”
“How do you know?”
“Went there the other evening, while the rest of them were at tea in the Tram. I wanted to put the quarry on my map, as the inn was called after it, and of course I couldn’t put it on the map without seeing it. It wouldn’t have been fair.”
“Oh, that map!” exclaimed Isabel Donne, turning at these words with the ghost of a laugh. “Don’t let the child start talking about his map, Mr. Christmas, or you’ll never have any peace.”
Lion looked a little hurt.
“I don’t talk about my map to people who aren’t interested in maps,” he said with dignity. “I was just explaining why I went to the quarry, Isabel, not talking about my map at all. I don’t know why it is,” he added detachedly, “but girls always love to call one a child if one happens to be a year or two younger than themselves. They think it annoys one. But of course it doesn’t.”
“Of course not,” agreed John, suppressing a smile. “And as it happens, I am interested in maps. What kind of a map is this?”
Lion looked at him a trifle doubtfully, as if suspecting his good faith. He had evidently had to endure a good deal of teasing on account of his hobby. But he replied amiably:
“Well, it’s a map of our tour, that’s all, that I made myself. I put in everything that happened, with drawings and things, in coloured inks.” He added in a louder tone, looking inimically at Miss Donne’s drooped red-gold head: “I put in things like Isabel falling off her bicycle in the middle of Hereford High Street, and Isabel running away from two cows because they looked at her, and things like that.”
Miss Donne raised her head from her drawing, put out the tip of a delicate tongue, and resumed her sketching. Mollified, Lion admitted with a grin:
“I made that up, that about the cows. Isabel isn’t really frightened of cows. She isn’t frightened of anything.”
“I’m frightened of you, young Lion.”
“Rot,” said Lion briefly. “Pax. Well, now, Mr. Christmas, do you see any reason why I shouldn’t put in my map that Charles got killed? Nora says it’s a disgusting idea, and I’m not to. But if my map’s a proper map of the tour, I must put it in because it happened at the end of the tour. And after all it’s no use pretending he didn’t get killed, because he did.”
John smiled at the boy’s earnestness, and the spectacle he made of the artist confronted with a problem as old as art.
“Well,” he temporized, endeavouring to be tactful, “I should leave it for a bit until—”
“Until they’ve caught the murderer?”
“Yes, and until people have got more used to the poor chap’s
death and more or less forgotten it. Could you show me your map some time? I should awfully like to see it.”
“Rather, of course I will. I say, is Mr. Rampson looking for the ring that’s missing? Let’s go and help him.”
“Hopeless, I’m afraid, in all this welter of rocks and brambles. Besides, we don’t know that the ring’s there to be found.”
“No,” agreed Lion. “But it’s a funny thing that ring has disappeared, Mr. Christmas. Because it was awfully tight on his finger. I don’t think it could possibly have slipped off. Once when I wanted to borrow it to use as a seal I tried to pull it off and it wouldn’t come. And Charles had quite a job to get it off himself. It’s been stolen, I bet. Hullo, Mr. Rampson’s found something!”
“Coming over!” called Rampson from among the boulders, and a small object whizzed through the air. Lion caught it neatly and looked at it with an expression of disappointment.
“An apple! That’s not much of a clue!”
He was about to throw it away when John stopped him.
“Don’t do that, I want it! Where d’you find this, Sydenham?”
“Best I can do for you,” said Rampson, approaching. “Here’s another one. Picnic-party’s refuse, I should say. There are one or two rusty tins among the brambles, too. Don’t put them in your pocket, you ass. You don’t know who may have been handling them.”
“Exactly.”
Rampson laughed good-humouredly.
“Oh, they’re clues, are they, faute de mieux? Shall I go back and fetch the sardine-tins?”
“Not if they’re rusty. They must have been there some time. But these apples are perfectly fresh, though a good deal bruised.”
“Probably some picnic-party up above, gorged to the eyes with ham sandwiches and bananas, threw them at a rabbit or something. Very wasteful, of course. But picnic-parties are inclined that way.”
“It’s possible,” agreed John. “I wonder whether the worried damsel at the Tram Inn sells apples to passing picnickers. Most of the trees in her orchard are Worcester pearmains, and so are these.”
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