Death at Swaythling Court

by J. J. Connington

  “There might be something there,” he reflected; and he moved slowly down the avenue, examining the surface of the road as he went.

  “Let’s get the two motor-cycles eliminated first of all,” he said to himself. That task presented no difficulty. The trail of Cyril’s tyres ran back, clean-cut, from where his cycle stood on its stand behind the Colonel’s own car. Two other tracks he put down to the butler’s machine.

  “But surely there ought to be three of his trails?” the Colonel speculated. “First of all, he went off to that dance: one track. Then he came back this morning: a second track. And finally, he went off again after Mickleby.”

  Very little consideration, however, served to clear up the matter.

  “Of course! The only tracks here were made after the shower last night; and that was about ten o’clock. So on his way to the dance his tyres made no impression. That leaves only two sets of marks: just what I found. And what’s more, when the Court car went off with the chauffeur and the maids, it would leave no traces either. So we can eliminate it from the problem. That’s all right. Now for the car tracks.”

  He attacked the business with increasing satisfaction. Really, he felt, he was getting into his stride. Now that Cyril’s half-ironical eye was removed, he was able to give his whole attention to the affair; and he thought that so far he had done very well indeed.

  The car trails strengthened his self-confidence, for the problem presented by them turned out to be very simple. Once he had identified his own car’s traces, only a double trail was left unexplained. There was no possible mistake about it; for his own car carried ordinary rubber treads, whereas this unidentified motor had been shod with steel-studded, non-skid tyres.

  “So some time between ten o’clock last night and the time we arrived this morning, a car’s been at the front door: made the journey up from the lodge and down to the road again, as the double track shows. And the man who drove it represents yet another factor in this infernal tangle!”

  Colonel Sanderstead knelt down and scrutinized the ribbon of circular pittings imprinted on the road surface; and as he did so, his eye was caught by an irregularity in the pattern. An examination of some yards of the track satisfied him:

  “One of those tyres has lost a steel stud. Now that’s always a possible clue to the car. It would identify the track well enough if one could come across it.”

  As he turned up the avenue again, he saw Cyril Norton coming down the steps of the house. At the sight of his nephew, a certain innocent craftiness crept into the Colonel’s expression.

  “I’ll keep this to myself,” he decided. “Cyril’s been trying to pull my leg all the time; and I think I’m justified in keeping my own discoveries for my own use. Let him find it out for himself. I don’t mind telling him that there’s an extra car to be accounted for; but we’ll see if he spots the way of identifying it.”

  With this resolution, the Colonel approached his nephew.

  Chapter Six

  The Map and the Compass

  AS it happened, Colonel Sanderstead failed to secure an opportunity to make even the incomplete revelation which he had projected. Cyril, it seemed, was not troubling his head about his uncle. In fact, as the Colonel came up, his nephew looked past him with a gathering scowl on his face, intent upon something which he saw further down the avenue.

  “Here’s that damned ass Flitterwick coming up on his push-bike,” he announced, when the Colonel was near enough for conversation. “He’s likely to be a lot of use to us this morning, getting in everybody’s road and chattering drivel when one wants peace to think this affair out quietly. What the devil brings him here now, of all times?”

  “Well, I suppose we’ve got to put up with it,” commented Colonel Sanderstead gloomily. He quite agreed with Cyril as to the state of the case. Both of them stood watching the approaching Flitterwick with the air of men awaiting a guest to whom they cannot, with politeness, close their door.

  “We needn’t precisely gush with information,” Cyril pointed out; and his uncle glumly acquiesced in the implied policy. He knew only too well that anything Flitterwick gleaned would soon become common property in the village. The vicar would surpass himself on this occasion. What a chance for gossip! He would take a special pride in having been on the very scene of the murder long before anyone in the village had any idea that a crime had been committed.

  Flitterwick laboriously pedalled up to where Cyril and his uncle were standing; and his first words, as he dismounted, reminded them that as yet no news of Hubbard’s death had got abroad.

  “Good morning, Colonel. Good morning, Captain Norton. It promises to be a most beautiful day; and I took advantage of a leisured forenoon to avail myself of our good friend Hubbard’s invitation to inspect his entomological collection. You seem to have been tempted to do the same. But where is our host?”

  “His body’s inside,” said Cyril grimly, before the Colonel could speak, “but where the rest of him is I’ve no idea. It’s a point that lies in your province, perhaps.”

  Flitterwick’s inquisitive eyes brightened as he glanced from one face to the other, scenting a mystery.

  “Davus sum, non Oedipus; I am no worthy disciple of Sherlock Holmes: and you speak in riddles. What has happened to our good friend Hubbard? Nothing serious, I trust?”

  “Nothing out of the common,” snapped Cyril Norton, impatiently. “He’s dead. It might happen to anyone.”

  Flitterwick’s face betrayed complete astonishment blended with a rising curiosity; but in a moment he recovered himself and assumed his professional air of condolence.

  “Dead, you say? Strange, very strange, indeed. He seemed good for many years of life when I saw him the other day. Ah, well, debemur morti, nos nostraque, as Horace has it; we, and all that is ours, are given over unto Death. By the way, is it infectious?”

  “Is what infectious?”

  “I mean,” explained Flitterwick, “did our good friend pass away in consequence of some infectious disease? Is it safe to approach the house?”

  “Unless you call a knife in the back infectious, I should say that it was perfectly safe.”

  Flitterwick’s eyes grew round.

  “You don’t mean to say he’s been murdered?”

  Cyril Norton’s method of conveying information had jarred on the Colonel. He decided to intervene himself.

  “The fact is, Flitterwick, someone—we have as yet no clue to his identity—someone evidently had a grudge against Hubbard and some time last night he seems to have got into the house and stabbed him. We came here this morning on business and discovered Hubbard’s body. But remember, it’s inadvisable to say much about it down in Fernhurst Parva just now. The less information leaks out, the bigger chance there is of getting hold of the murderer. So please be as reticent as you can about the business.”

  “I think you may rely upon my discretion, Colonel. I agree with you that nothing should interfere with the course of justice. But are you sure that it was not a case of suicide?”

  The Colonel thought for a moment or two as if struck by an unexpected idea. He bent his right arm behind his back and tapped himself below the left shoulder-blade, much to Flitterwick’s astonishment. Then he communicated the results of his experiment.

  “Hubbard might have stabbed himself in the back, certainly; but the weapon that made the wound was not in his hand or anywhere near him; and there were other points that seem to negative any suggestion of suicide. On all counts, murder seems to be the only possible explanation of the affair.”

  Flitterwick was evidently preparing to push his curiosity further; but the Colonel, fearing that he might be led into indiscreet revelations, proposed that they should go into the house.

  “We have a few further investigations to make on the scene of the crime, Flitterwick; and time is getting on. Perhaps you would care to go into the study for a few moments—you may find something in your own line to do, while we are busy with our affairs.”

&n
bsp; A gleam of morbid curiosity passed over Flitterwick’s face at this suggestion. He assented eagerly; and they made their way to the chamber of death. The Colonel passed in first, and as he did so, his foot came into contact with some small object on the carpet which had escaped him in the previous search. Stooping, he picked up the thing his boot had touched and took it to the window to examine it.

  “I wonder what this is: two bits of metal hinged together with a couple of small nutted bolts let into it.”

  Cyril Norton stepped across the room and glanced at the little contrivance.

  “That’s a belt-fastener for a motor-cycle belt. Just the ordinary pattern; nothing distinctive about it. They’re turned out by the thousand. Everyone who rides a belt-driven machine carries one or two as spares. It may have fallen out of the butler’s pocket or it might even have dropped out of mine when we were stooping about in our search this morning. If it belongs to the butler, it may have been here for days—since the carpet was swept last, anyway. It may fit into the jig-saw eventually, of course, but so far there’s nothing to connect it with anything, since we don’t know that it was actually dropped since last night.”

  The Colonel felt a return of his faint resentment at Cyril’s critical attitude. Whenever anything was discovered, his nephew seemed interested only in destructive reasoning; and he took care never to offer a serious constructive suggestion which the Colonel in his turn might attack. There was a certain irritating air of superiority about his methods, as though he himself were fitting everything together in his own mind and deliberately refraining from offering any help to his fellow-investigator.

  “Well, we needn’t trouble about it just now.” He slipped the fastener into his pocket. “Let’s get on with our investigations. We’ll leave you here, Flitterwick,” he added, seeing that the vicar was preparing to follow them.

  At the study door, they had no difficulty in taking up the trail. Spot after spot of grease showed up clearly in a line across the floor of the hall; and they followed the direction of the track as it led towards the back premises of the house.

  “Now for your fuse-box,” said the Colonel, ironically. But his faint sarcasm missed fire.

  “I said the fuse-box was the last place I expected it to lead to,” Cyril reminded him.

  The trail led them along a tiled passage and eventually reached a closed door, which the Colonel opened. Cyril Norton glanced round the room.

  “The butler’s pantry, evidently. And the whole window’s smashed in. Somebody seems to have burgled the place last night.”

  The Colonel’s attention had been attracted by something nearer at hand.

  “Look here, Cyril! This is evidently the breakfast-tray that Leake spoke about. But look at the state it’s in. See the bits of cold chicken strewed all about the floor? The sugar-basin’s upset too. What a mess!”

  Cyril Norton examined the débris carefully without touching anything.

  “Another bit of insanity thrown into the business! One would think the whole affair had been specially devised so as to be incomprehensible. It beats me. Do you notice that these bones have been gnawed? And that breast part has been torn away. Look, neither the knife nor fork has been touched. It looks as if the visitor, whoever he was, had taken the thing up in his hands and worried the meat off the bird. . . . Worried . . . By Jove, that’s a possible explanation!”

  Without paying any attention to the mystified Colonel, Cyril went over to the broken window and looked out.

  “That’s probably what happened,” he commented. “You remember that dog we found outside the front door this morning? It’s the key to this part of the business, possibly.”

  In his turn the Colonel approached the window and, glancing out, he found it overlooked a stone-paved walk which passed along the side of the house, the broad window-sill being only a couple of feet above the ground level.

  “Now,” Cyril went on, “suppose our friend with the candle broke into the house through this window, went on to the front, shutting this door behind him as he passed. Then, later on, that dog roams round the building, trying to get in. It sees the broken window—the whole lower pane’s smashed clean out—and it jumps up on the sill and gets inside. It’s probably hungry; and it smells the chicken on the tray. It jumps up, upsets everything; pulls down the fowl and gnaws most of the meat off it. Then it gets a scare in some way, or else it suffers from its conscience; and off it goes through the window again. That fits well enough.”

  “It fits, certainly,” the Colonel admitted, “but it doesn’t seem to matter a rap when it does fit.”

  He was not sorry to be able to minimize Cyril’s contribution; so he took the opportunity of playing critic.

  “It doesn’t explain several things; and they happen to be the really important bits. First of all, it doesn’t explain why the burglar knocked in the whole of the glass instead of cutting out a bit and lifting the catch of the window by putting his hand through the hole.”

  He looked through the window again for a moment:

  “There’s the very stone he did the thing with, lying on the paved path there. Then again, your theory doesn’t explain why Hubbard wasn’t roused up by the noise; for that whole pane falling in must have made the deuce-and-all of a clatter. And, finally, it doesn’t help us to identify the burglar. I don’t say you aren’t right. I think you are. But so far as solving this puzzle goes, I think I can make you a present of your dog and not lose much by doing it.”

  Cyril Norton took the Colonel’s comments in good part.

  “Well, let’s crawl through this window and see if we can find anything on the outside,” he suggested, setting the example.

  But the most careful examination revealed nothing except the burnt end of a match lying on the paved path, evidently the remains of the match with which the burglar had lighted his candle. Foot-marks of any kind were not to be found; the stone flags had allowed the housebreaker to approach the window without leaving a trace.

  Just as they had completed their inspection of the ground, a car ran slowly round the corner of the house and made its way to the garage.

  “That must be the house car coming back with the maids and the chauffeur,” the Colonel suggested. “Suppose we go over to the garage and put a few questions to them before they get to know anything about the state of affairs.”

  Cyril agreed; and together they made their way to the garage in time to intercept the servants before they entered the house. So far as verbal inquiries went, they elicited nothing new. The stories of the two maids and the chauffeur tallied completely with the evidence already given by the butler. But Colonel Sanderstead, though he said nothing about it to Cyril Norton, acquired a fresh piece of information. A glance at the car showed that it, like his own, carried rubber tyres; so the extra tracks of armoured wheels must undoubtedly have been made by a third motor, which was still unidentified.

  “Mickleby ought to be putting in an appearance soon, if Leake managed to get hold of him,” said the Colonel, as he and Cyril walked round to the front of the house after leaving the garage. “Ah, there he comes in the Ford. We’d better wait for him here.”

  Almost immediately the doctor drove up, followed by Leake on his motor-cycle. Colonel Sanderstead went forward.

  “’Morning, Mickleby. Nasty business for you here, I’m sorry to say. Hubbard’s been murdered, apparently; and we want you to look into the matter from the medical point of view. There’ll have to be an inquest, of course, and they’re sure to want expert evidence.”

  Dr. Mickleby was a taciturn young man with a faint air of pomposity which impressed his village patients. He nodded gravely at intervals during the Colonel’s exposition of the affair; but refrained from any comments. When he had gathered all the information which he considered necessary, he took a leather bag from his car and asked to be shown the body. Cyril Norton led him to the study and left him there, in company with Flitterwick, who seemed intensely interested in the proceedings.

 
When he rejoined his uncle, Cyril Norton’s face showed that he was pondering over something which was giving him trouble. With a vague gesture, he invited the Colonel to walk with him down the avenue for a short distance; and as soon as they were out of earshot of the Colonel’s chauffeur, who was still waiting beside his car, Cyril apparently decided to bring out what was on his mind.

  “Black affair, this, uncle. Complicated business. I don’t understand anything like the whole of it. But I prefer to play fair with you. No use being anything but straightforward among the family, I think. I’ve seen enough to make me anxious; and I expect you’ve seen about as much.”

  The Colonel was somewhat taken aback by his nephew’s earnestness; and he failed to see the line of thought which suggested it. Cyril, examining his face closely, saw his bewilderment; and decided to be quite frank in his language:

  “You don’t know what’s at the back of all this; and I don’t know, either. But I can see awkward possibilities ahead if people begin muck-raking and putting two and two together. And there’s one thing I can tell you. If Jimmy Leigh’s name is brought into this affair, you needn’t expect me to testify against him.”

  The last sentence switched the Colonel back to a line of thought which had been overlaid during the later steps in the investigation. He had almost forgotten about the blackmail case which had been the origin of the discovery of the murder. Somehow, step by step, he had edged away from it in his mind, until it had passed out of immediate consideration. But Cyril’s words, with their ugly underlying suggestion, brought the whole thing back into the foreground. After all, the only person definitely known to have good reasons for removing Hubbard was—Jimmy Leigh. Hubbard had blackmailed him; and as Cyril had let slip, Jimmy Leigh was wrought up to a pitch that might well have led him into violent action. There had been that mysterious interview after dinner on the previous evening, an interview to which Jimmy had gone—as the Colonel knew—in a very abnormal frame of mind. What had taken place between the blackmailer and his victim, only one living soul knew now.