The Crimson Rambler

by John Russell Fearn

  As he re-entered Bexley village high street, the four lamps that illuminated it had just been lit.

  Thirty yards ahead of him was a larger shining black car, striking an incongruously modern note in the rural scene. The chauffeur had got out and the inspector recognized him as Preston, in dark blue livery.

  Silently Gossage moved to one side and took up a position in the doorway of a shop. As it was Sunday, the shop lights were off and hardly anybody was about. Not that he expected anything unusual, but he took the activities of the Darnworth family as part of his curriculum. Anything they did was worth observing.

  Perhaps ten minutes passed, then to his astonishment a small figure in black, a veil covering her face, emerged from one of the small thatched-roof cottages farther up the street. With a slow, deliberate movement she walked to the car and Preston saluted deferentially as he opened the car’s rear door.

  “Mrs. Darnworth, as I live and breathe!” Gossage muttered to himself. Jessica Darnworth—walking.

  The car moved away, and Gossage resumed his walk through the village, glancing at the cottage Mrs. Darnworth had left. Although it had a thatched roof it was better than the average type of cottage dwelling, cleanly whitewashed outside and with a newly painted green front door. Otherwise there was nothing that could give him a clue.

  The chief inspector had hardly entered the hall before Sergeant Blair emerged from the lounge with an air of suppressed eagerness. Seeing Elaine and Gregory Bride were also present he bottled up whatever was in his mind and turned to the staircase, where he stood waiting for Gossage as he ascended en route for his bedroom.

  “Glad you’re back, sir,” he breathed. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “You have, eh? Good enough.” They went to the chief inspector’s bedroom and Blair said:

  “While you were away, sir, I took it upon myself to have another look through the boxroom—thoroughly and completely.”

  “I sort of guessed you might,” Gossage murmured. “What did you dig out?”

  “I didn’t actually dig anything out. I left it where it was. Thought it might be safest. I opened the deed boxes and trunks with a master key.”

  “You had no right, Harry. I never gave you any such instructions.”

  “Neither did you say that I shouldn’t. And I think you guessed that I’d do just that, and let me do it so that you’d be able to find out something without overstepping your own authority.”

  “There are times when I see a gleam of the psychologist in you,” Gossage said. “What did you discover?”

  “Three things that don’t make sense, as far as I can see. In one deed box was a bundle of letters, decidedly lovey-dovey, written by someone named Clinton to Jessica Trant. Obviously the old girl herself before she got married. They’re dated over thirty years ago and all postmarked Bexley. Be about a dozen of them. Clinton was certainly crazy about our Jessie.”

  “That’s interesting, though not unexpected. She said at dinner yesterday that she should have married Clinton Brown instead of Warner Darnworth. Love letters, eh? Secret number one emerges from boxroom. Anything else?”

  “Yes, sir. In a second deed box I found a black leather case about six inches long by two wide, lined with scarlet satin. In it arc six blonde curls and a small note which said, ‘Darling Sheila, two years old.’ In a similar case were six dark curls and a similar note saying, ‘Darling Elaine, two years old’!

  “And there are bundles of manuscript, handwritten and much corrected, and also a couple of pages of the letters of the alphabet executed in a child’s hand. I read some parts of the manuscripts and they’re thrillers. Pretty good, too. No doubt Sheila wrote ’em.”

  “And these were with the curl cases?” Gossage asked.

  “Yes, sir, none of which I can understand. It seems pretty clear that Mrs. Darnworth knows exactly what is in the boxroom and yet, according to Sheila and everybody else, she is utterly contemptuous of Sheila’s literary efforts, and even of the girl herself. Yet there are those manuscripts of hers, carefully preserved. Why?”

  “Why, indeed?” Gossage murmured, returning into the bedroom. “And that was all you found? No sign of an air rifle?

  Blair shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

  Gossage said: “I had a word with Craddock, and the boxroom floor was clear of dust when they entered. They didn’t examine the trunks and boxes because, as I’d surmised, the dust on them was sufficient guarantee that they hadn’t been disturbed. They looked behind them, though, and found no traces of the weapon. They also looked under the floor where the electrolier cavity is but found nothing. They saw nothing significant about the electrolier fittings. So it’s obvious that somebody did clean up the floor dust before the police got there—and it’s also obvious that it was done to remove all footprint traces.”

  “Did the inspector notice those pencil marks?” Blair asked.

  “He didn’t refer to them, and I certainly didn’t.” Gossage turned to the mirror and adjusted his tie. “And now, Harry, you’d better hang on to your eyebrows. I’ve found out that Mrs. Darnworth can walk—as well as you or I.”

  “She can what?”

  Gossage repeated the statement and briefly added the details of his experience in the village.

  “Holy mackerel!” Blair said woefully. “That certainly does shift the centre of gravity. If she can walk she could have gone into the boxroom and then back into her own room and nobody would be any the wiser.

  “That’s certainly a possibility,” Gossage admitted. “But if we are to believe the stories we’ve been told up to now, somebody would have been the wiser—and I mean Preston: He was waiting in the corridor.”

  Suddenly Sergeant Blair snapped his fingers.

  “I think I have it, sir! Mrs. Darnworth did it, and Preston knows she did, which is one reason why he’s so damned unpleasant to us and so loyal to her. He means to protect her and her phony paralysis secret at all costs. Either that or else Preston did the trick at Mrs. Darnworth’s behest…. On the other hand, Mrs. Darnworth has seemed anxious to help us in the belief that her very frankness would throw us off the track.”

  “Mmm…,” Gossage said, and didn’t look convinced.

  “Is there anything wrong with that theory, sir?”

  “On the face of it, no. I suppose anything’s possible.”

  Blair said: “I tackled Preston about the ladders and he tells me—in fact showed me after some prompting—that they’re kept in a shed. There is a set of three extension ladders. Not only are the ladders themselves padlocked together but the shed is locked, and Preston has the key.”

  “Has he, by gosh?” Gossage murmured. “Well, Harry, you’ve missed one person out of the reckoning—Louise. She knows where the boxroom key is.”

  “She wouldn’t do it. sir; hasn’t got the nerve.”

  “Well—anyway. I have at least worked out how the shot was fired and the meaning of the pencil marks, and I believe I know how Warner Darnworth was killed. But I—”

  He paused as there were sounds in the corridor. Since he had been on the verge of a revelation Blair looked disappointed. Silently Gossage moved to the bedroom door and opened it. It was Preston, who had come upstairs and taken up a position a little distance along the corridor, leaning against the wall. He was still in his chauffeur’s uniform.

  Gossage went into the corridor and approached him.

  “You here for your usual evening sentry duty, Preston?”

  “I am,” he answered coldly.

  “Mrs. Darnworth in her room?” Gossage continued, and the man nodded.

  “I want a word with her,” Gossage said. “And with you. Come along.”

  For just a moment there was a defiant gleam in Preston’s eyes, but he followed Gossage to Mrs. Darnworth’s bedroom door. Blair remained in the doorway of the chief inspector’s bedroom.

  As usual Louise opened Mrs. Darnworth’s bedroom door—a few inches.

  “I’d like to see Mrs.
Darnwortli,” Gossage told her. “It’s most important.”

  Mrs. Darnworth’s voice declared emphatically. “Come in, inspector.”

  Gossage jerked his head to Preston and entered. The handyman stood by the door with a stern, unyielding face and Gossage went forward slowly. Mrs. Darnworth was seated at the dressing table, dressed as ever in black. She was tidying her hair. When she caught sight of Preston in the mirror’s reflection she frowned and turned.

  “What are you doing here, Preston? I didn’t send for you.”

  “I sent for him,” Gossage said. “This is confidential, Mrs. Darnworth.” His eyes went to Louise.

  With a. movement of her hand Mrs. Darnworth dismissed the companion, and Gossage was satisfied that with Blair watching the corridor, the girl would not attempt to listen at the keyhole.

  “Now, inspector?” The harsh little lines were back around Mrs. Darnworth’s jaw and her eyes were sharp.

  “Why do you pose as a paralytic, Mrs. Darnworth?”

  The question came in Gossage’s best straight-to-the-shoulder fashion.

  “I beg your pardon?” she asked.

  “This afternoon, madam. I saw you walking to your car from a cottage in Bexley.”

  Cold acidity was in Mrs. Darnworth’s voice. “I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about, Inspector. As for your doubts as to my disability, perhaps you’d care to see the medical reports? Each one ends with ‘prognosis negative.’ Incurable.”

  “You deny that you are able to walk as easily as I?” Gossage snapped.

  “Emphatically. And I’d be obliged if you would leave this room, Mr. Gossage.”

  He nodded. “Very well. Later on I shall have to call at the cottage in the village where you visited this afternoon. I’ll hazard a guess that I’ll find Clinton Drew inside it. I’m prepared to leave everything in abeyance until tomorrow in the hope that by then you’ll have decided to tell me the truth yourself.”

  He turned to the door and then looked back, his face grim.

  “You’ve been most co-operative so far, Mrs. Darnworth Why spoil it now?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHECKING MOTIVE FOR MURDER

  After dinner Gossage and Blair retired to the study.

  Blair leaned forward and became nearly inaudible.

  “While you were in the bedroom blowing things up with Mrs. Darnworth, did you ask her about my findings in the boxroom?”

  “No I didn’t, chiefly because I gave my word that unless necessity demanded it I wouldn’t go that far. If the need arises I’ll question her quickly enough. Anyway, forget that side for the moment. Let’s see if I’m right in my guess at the way Darnworth was killed. We know that the tube of the electrolier, once the rosette is taken away, is hollow, that the two flex wires lie flat at its sides because they are pulled through the right-angled arms near the bottom of the tube. In other words, there is a clear passage through the centre tube enabling us to see this study carpet here from above.”

  “Right, sir,” Blair agreed.

  “As it is now,” the chief inspector went on, “with the top rosette flush with the panelled ceiling, the electrolier cannot be moved from the perpendicular. But what happens if it is lowered by say two or three links of the chain?”

  Blair looked up at it.

  “Then it would be possible to swing it out of the perpendicular, but I don’t see how that would be possible without something to do it with.”

  “The metal cylinder across which the chain-bar is placed is four times as wide as the tube—in fact nearly as wide as the rosette,” Gossage continued. “Let us assume that we have lowered the electrolier by three links, leaving a space of two inches between top rosette and ceiling, which would never be noticed from down on the floor here. Then what do we do to get leverage? We put a stick into the tube and push the stick in the opposite direction to which we want the electrolier to move. Push left and the electrolier rises to the right—en bloc, the fulcrum being where the bar goes through the chain. The supporting hook has been forced to one side. It’s bent. Why? To make room for the ‘lever’ to fit without impedance.”

  “Why a stick?” Blair asked. “It could have been the barrel of the B.S.A.”

  “In the final stages it was. The shot was, I think, fired through the electrolier tube, itself wider than the rifle barrel. The very short length of tube left before the slug escaped would not interfere with the slug’s line of flight. It was a continuation of the

  rifle barrel if you like.”

  He sat considering for a second or two and then went on:

  “First, though, our killer had to be sure of his aim. There just could not be any room for a mistake or the whole thing was doomed, and the potential killer with it. The killer had to fire blind because the electrolier tube was the only means he had of seeing his objective. Once the rifle was in place he couldn’t see below. Our killer, I repeat, had to be certain. The only way to be that was to make trial shots until he got the right position.”

  “We don’t know that he did,” Blair objected.

  “We do.” Gossage pointed to the desk edge where the notches were visible in the polished wood. “Remember how I looked at these when we started to examine this study? I’m pretty sure now that they fit into place in the puzzle as the marks of test shots. Now, if we get in line with the centre notch….”

  Gossage hauled himself out of the chair and went over to the desk, kneeled down so that he was looking at the vertical electrolier in almost a straight line.

  “If we do this,” he explained, “we see that if the electrolier were tilted about a foot out of the perpendicular, a shot from it would strike the back of Darnworth’s head.”

  Blair was nodding eagerly now: “So far, so good, sir.”

  Gossage stood up again.

  “I imagine that the killer fired the first time purely by guesswork, but marked the floor upstairs with a pencil line to denote the angle at which he had the rifle tilted. Then, by trial and error, he finally got the right position and to that line he added a crosspiece to denote which line was the one he wanted. When the rifle was tilted to that position it must hit the same spot again below. He could make the test shots at his—or her—leisure. Once the shot had been fired the killer had only to let the electrolier resume its normal position, draw it up two links, and go away. That, I’m sure, is how it was done, and obviously it opens up a lot of possibilities.”

  “I can name a few,” Blair said. “It means that somebody knew Darnworth’s habits to the last detail, knew that he never changed the position of the furniture in here.”

  “Exactly, and this same somebody had ample time in which to prepare the scheme, for it must have taken many weeks to make the test shots, choose the right times for seeing the effect of the slugs before they were found, and so on. Thus we narrow the field. It’s definitely somebody in the house that we’re looking for and not an outsider. And we are also looking for somebody with a mighty ingenious mind.”

  Then worry came and settled on Sergeant Blair like a cloud.

  “We missed something, sir,” he said moodily. “Something that kills the whole theory.”

  “We have?” Gossage snatched his pipe from his teeth. “Let’s hear it....”

  “When that electrolier moved a foot out of the perpendicular to aim at Darnworth the lights were still on, I take it?”

  “Certainly they were. We have Craddock’s assurance on that.”

  “These twin lights would change the shadows in the room as they moved. Don’t tell me Darnwortb wouldn’t notice the shadows shifting, because he would. Anybody would.”

  Gossage returned his pipe to his mouth.

  “Gosh, Harry, for a moment you had me really worried. I should have mentioned that I worked out that point. Darnworth wouldn’t notice the shift in shadows—which I grant would take place—because his desk light was full on, another fact of which the killer was evidently aware. Look!”

  Gossage sat in the swivel ch
air at the desk and a double shadow of his bead and shoulders was thrown on the blotter from the electrolier above and behind him. But when he switched on the desk light the white brilliance across .the paper in front of him destroyed the shadows completely.

  “Maybe it’s time to check up on motives,” he decided. “Let’s see what we have. Louise? We know precious little about her. She had a chance to get the boxroom key. The wit to think out the plan? Never can tell with her sort. Crafty as a fox sometimes behind the cringing. Let’s put her down as a ‘possible’ and leave it at that.”

  Blair pulled out his notebook and wrote swiftly, then he sat and waited.

  “Next,” Gossage went on, “we have Preston, who also had the opportunity and, I don’t doubt, the brains to think it all out. Excluding Mrs. Darmworth for the moment, I cannot see why, on some suitable occasion, he didn’t get the boxroom key from Mrs. Darnworth’s handbag and have a. wax impression and then a key made from it. Since he has to be in the corridor every evening—and by his own admission, was certainly in it between seven and eight on the fatal evening—he looms as ‘highly probable’. Motive? Very good one, I’d say. We know that he’s fiercely loyal to Mrs. Darnworth, and from what we can gather, by Mrs. Darnworth’s own admission amongst other things, she loathed and was loathed by her husband for the accident in which he involved her. An enemy of hers would therefore, I think, be an enemy of Preston’s.”

  “Do you believe that accident story is true, sir?” Blair asked. “I mean, now you’re sure she really isn’t paralyzed.”

  “I don’t know, Harry; I just don’t, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t like her husband, or he her. Which brings us to the old girl herself. Did she do it?”

  “I can’t help but think so,” Blair said.

  “I’m inclined to think,” said Gossage, “that Mrs. Darnworth was really paralyzed by the accident to which she referred, but somehow she got better and never revealed the fact for reasons of her own. Anyway, let’s put her down also as ‘probable’, though not ‘highly’. These three—Louise, Preston, and Mrs. Darnworth—are all the strongest suspects because of their opportunity to have the key to the boxroom, but in each case there arises the question of what became of the rifle.