by Roy Vickers
Deciding to take a long shot he was in Hemel the following afternoon.
‘Yes, I made that for the poor girl,’ said Miss Amstey. ‘It was a present from Miss Watlington. She designed it and the yellow underbodice to wear with it, and I must say it looked very well.’
Journey from London for nothing, thought Rason. Out of mere politeness he asked: ‘And you made this jumper, too, to go with it?’
‘No, I didn’t! That’s a knitted line – came out of a factory. Besides, it wasn’t poor Rita’s. It was Miss Watlington’s. I saw her wearing it the very day of the murder. And I must say I thought it frightful. Apart from its being made of wool. The underbodice I made was silk.’
‘Then this jumper and this dress don’t go together – they belonged to different women? But you could wear the one with the other if you wanted to, couldn’t you?’
‘Well, you could,’ admitted Miss Amstey, ‘but you’d look rather funny. For one thing, being a polo jumper, it has a high collar. For another, there’s the length – particularly the length of the sleeves. With one thing and another, people would laugh to themselves, even if they didn’t turn round and stare.’
That left Rason with the now simple riddle of the bloodstains. The two garments worn together would produce a ridiculous effect. Yet there were bloodstains on both, deemed to have been made by Cudden’s hand, at the same time. And Cudden had identified both dress and jumper at the inquest.
Rason took it all down and got Miss Amstey to sign it.
Ruth decided that they could without impropriety arrive at the registrar’s in the same taxi – nor need they be ashamed to carry the suitcases that had established the legality of their address. In outward appearance she had changed. The talent for dress she had formerly exercised for another was now successfully applied to herself.
In the hall of the registrar’s office, Rason accosted Herbert and introduced himself.
‘I am sorry, Mr Cudden, but I must ask you both to accompany me to headquarters. A serious discrepancy has been discovered in the evidence you gave in the coroner’s court.’
They were taken to the Chief Superintendent’s room. Three others were with him. Ruth was invited to sit.
Herbert was reminded of his evidence regarding the dress. Then the pale green sleeveless dress was handed to him.
‘Is that the dress?’
‘To the best of my belief – yes.’ He turned it. ‘Yes – there’s the bloodstain.’
The yellow jumper was passed to him. After a similar examination he again answered:
‘Yes.’
‘Miss Watlington, do you agree that these two garments, formerly belonging to the deceased, were worn by you that night?’
‘Yes,’ said Ruth, though she could guess what had happened and knew that there could be but little hope.
The Chief Superintendent spoke next.
‘You will both be detained on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Rita Steevens.’
‘No!’ snapped Ruth. ‘Mr Cudden has told the truth throughout. He knows nothing about women’s clothes except their colour. The colour of that jumper was near enough for him to think it was the same. They were passed to him separately at the inquest.’
‘Ruth – I can’t follow this!’ protested Herbert.
‘Miss Watlington is making a gallant attempt to get you out of your present difficulty,’ said the Chief. ‘But I’m afraid it will be futile.’
‘It will not be futile,’ said Ruth. ‘Will you all remain just as you are, please, and let me go behind the Chief Superintendent’s chair. And can I have that dress?’
Behind the superintendent’s chair she whipped off her fashionable walking suit. Then she put on the jumper and the pale green sleeveless dress.
Then, looking as ridiculous as Miss Amstey had prophesied, she stood where all could see her. The officials had been awed into silence.
‘Herbert, you have only to answer me naturally to clear up the whole absurd mistake. Was I, or was I not, dressed like this that night?’
‘No, of course not! Your neck was bare. So were your arms. And you looked properly dressed. That thing doesn’t seem to fit.’
Ruth turned to the Chief and his colleagues.
‘You see – he is obviously innocent.’ She added: ‘You may think I am not.’
The Case of the
Social Climber
Chapter One
In England, on the rare occasions when the present Lord Haddenham figures in the social news – and often when he does not – people will hash up the murder of the young man’s father in 1935. Some will tell you that Stentoller, the wealthy banker, was really innocent – that the gold snuff-box, inscribed with the royal cipher, was planted on an already dead body. They would have you believe that Stentoller’s confession and subsequent execution were part of a plot to deceive the public.
The objective facts were few and simple. On a spring evening, Lord Haddenham was crossing the Green Park on foot. He was on a tree-lined path, some three hundred yards from Buckingham Palace, when he was stabbed in the throat. There was no robbery from the person. After a few false scents, the trail petered out.
A year later, the Department of Dead Ends stumbled on evidence which convicted Stentoller, the head of a century-old financial house of unblemished reputation. Add that Haddenham’s son had become engaged to Stentoller’s daughter, to the satisfaction of both parents whose friendship dated from their schooldays – and you will see why the public was puzzled.
The talk outlasted the first world war. Over drinks, the locale of the murder tended to shift ever nearer to Buckingham Palace. ‘Practically in the Palace Yard and almost under the very nose of the sentry who, you can be sure, had been told to see nothing!’ Names of various foreign royalties were whispered. If Stentoller had defended himself in court, the war would have started in 1936 – for reasons, however, that would have astonished Hitler. And so on.
The fact that the Prosecution put forward no motive for the murder made the public suspect that there was something behind it. And so there was, of course. Something fundamental. But there was no mystery that could have made the front page – no foreign royalties or secret women or this-that-and-the-other. Indeed, the clue to the mystery – if such it can be called – might be sought in the preamble to the American Declaration of Rights – in the passage touching the equality of man. Or in the quaint ceremony by which, at the boundary of the original City of London, the Sovereign surrenders his sword to the Lord Mayor as a reminder that the King may not enter the City under arms, save at the invitation of the citizens.
But at the tragic moment of the murder, Stentoller was thinking of a cheque for a thousand pounds which he had given Haddenham thirty years previously when they were undergraduates at Oxford.
Chapter Two
Oxford, preceded by four important years at Charchester School, represented a revolutionary change in the Stentoller tradition. Stentoller I was a trusted agent of the Rothschilds at the time of the Napoleonic wars. When Rothschild accepted ennoblement, the friendship terminated, because Stentoller felt that the old City families, being a kind of aristocracy in their own right, should hold aloof from the nobility. In the eighteen-fifties, Stentoller III became Lord Mayor of London and was deeply offended when Queen Victoria offered him a baronetcy. Stentoller IV decided that this attitude was no longer tenable. In the late nineties, therefore, young Cuthbert Stentoller was sent to Charchester with instructions to fit himself to occupy a prominent place in what the fashion papers call Society.
In the City family tradition, in so far as it still survived, the children ‘lived soft’. At thirteen, that highly intelligent but inexperienced boy left the stately eighteenth-century mansion, left his home tutors and his personal servant, for the bear-pit of a public school – which in England means a special kind of private school. The more insular types will assure you that there are only six public schools in England, two in Scotland, and none at all anywhere else in t
he world.
In his first year he learnt – like the other younger sons of the nobility and gentry – the rudiments of cookery, how to clean out somebody else’s study, how to whiten somebody else’s buckskin cricket boots, how to endure injustice without making a song about it. He was comparatively ill-fed and ill-housed. He discovered that quite a number of elder boys had authority to beat him publicly for slackness at games and whatnot. In short, though he suffered no individual bullying, the system subjected his person to an indignity which, if it had been authoritatively applied to the son of a labourer, would have provoked something akin to civil war.
He made a personal friend of Charles Hendon, his ‘avunculus’ – that is, a boy senior by one year, appointed to guide a new boy through his maze of duties.
‘I say, Stentoller! My mater’s coming down on Saturday. You can come along if you like. She’ll give us a blowout at the Angel.’
‘Thank you, Hendon.’ Stentoller had not yet learnt to keep formality in its proper place. ‘Shall I join you and Mrs Hendon at the Angel?’
‘No. We’ll both meet her at the station. And I say, mind you don’t call her “Mrs Hendon”. My guvnor’s called Lord Haddenham and she’s called Lady Haddenham. Come on. We’ve got to help roll Lower Green before tea.’
Lady Haddenham perceived that Cuthbert Stentoller was more intelligent and more sensitive than the normal young public school tough. When Stentoller temporarily absented himself she asked her son:
‘I like Stentoller. Who is he?’
‘I dunno, Mother. I’ll ask him when he comes back.’
‘Don’t be silly, Charles! That would be an abominable thing to do.’
Stentoller had overheard. When the boys were returning together he asked:
‘What did your mater mean when she asked who I was? She got my name right.’
‘You’re not supposed to ask that sort of question,’ said Hendon, then relented. ‘She meant who was your mother before she married your father. Women are always totting up people’s relations.’
Stentoller was puzzled. His mother never totted up people’s relations. He was an undergraduate before he understood what Lady Haddenham had really wanted to know, and he acquired the understanding with literal tears of humiliation.
In the intervening years he had learnt a good deal – notably that the fashion papers wrote of a world that anyone could enter who had conventional manners, a respectable record, and a sufficiency of money – that the power and influence of this crowd was virtually limited to the racecourse and to the tradesmen of the West End. True that it was besprinkled with high sounding titles – but he had discovered, even in Charchester days, that a title was no index of a man’s position. Through his friend, Charles Hendon, he had glimpsed the existence of an inner core, and was surprised to learn that his own father knew much about it.
‘Winning the Derby and that sort of thing wouldn’t get you anywhere with the real people. We have been doing business with them for generations and know something about them. Now and again they enter the political Government – the Cecils, the Churchills, and a few others. But mostly they confine themselves to the Administration. Their influence is paramount in the Navy, the Army, the Civil Service, and the Diplomatic Corps. They trust our firm, in their own way, which is not the way of the City. That is why I think they might admit you to their circle.’
His father had told him too much or too little. Possibly his father had never heard of the Radlington Club – the small social club of ‘the real people’ – the inner core – at Oxford. Hendon, of course, was a member. Stentoller at first hoped, and then intended, to become one. His first academic year went by without result, then his second. He was personally popular, and was well known through his rendering of the part of Laertes in the Dramatic Society. For the duelling scene he had studied fencing seriously for six months, thereby acquiring a skill which was to be the means of destroying two valuable lives.
The Radlington incident occurred in his second year, which was Hendon’s third. Lord Haddenham had recently died. The eldest son had gone straight from Eton into the Army and had been killed in the South African War, so Charles Hendon inherited the earldom and estate, which was heavily encumbered with death duties.
Hendon had contrived that they should have the same tutor. One afternoon, when Stentoller entered the tutor’s room, he heard Hendon saying:
‘It’s the death duties, of course. The Bank doesn’t seem eager to let me have another thousand before things are straightened out, so I’ve decided I shall have to “go down” at the end of this term. Hullo, here’s Stentoller. Don’t go, old man. We’ve finished.’
Immediately after dinner that night, Stentoller went to Hendon’s rooms and found him alone.
‘I heard what you said to Wallingham about your “going down”.’
‘That’s all right. I don’t mind in the least. Only, it’s not for immediate publication. There’s a Radlington dinner next Saturday, and I shall explain then that I’m going down for family reasons. It’ll mean the Army for me instead of the Diplomatic – that’s about all, really!’
‘Hendon, let me lend you the thousand.’
‘I say, Stentoller!’
Stentoller was not certain how the other was taking it, felt his own heart thumping, and lurched on:
‘If you’re offended, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. If you were to “go down” because I hadn’t the nerve to ask you to let me help –’
‘I’m not offended, you dear old nanny-goat! You took my breath away. Sort of going to throw my arms round your neck! But I’ll tell you what’s sticking in my gizzard. If the Bank is shy, it probably means they know the estate won’t be able to pay it back for the devil of a time.’
‘I don’t want it paid back for the devil of a time.’
‘Don’t you! Oh, well then it’s all right, and thanks most awfully! And I needn’t say anything at the Radder dinner.’
Stentoller took out his cheque book. ‘Pay –’ he nearly wrote ‘Charles Hendon’ –‘– Pay Lord Haddenham One Thousand Pounds. Cuthbert Stentoller.’
He handed the cheque to his friend.
‘Thanks! The Bank’ll throw a fit to-morrow and serve ’em right!’
‘I say, Hendon!’ In those days, young men rarely used first names unless they were related. ‘How does one get into the Radlington?’
‘Oh, I dunno! When you come “up”, somebody you know asks you if you’d like to be a member, and the other members know you, or your relations have told ’em to look out for you, and then the secretary sends you a chit.’
Stentoller waited. But there was no more about the Radlington Club. ‘Pay Lord Haddenham One Thousand Pounds –’ – for nothing at all! Relations again. Back six years. ‘Women are always totting up people’s relations.’
Not only women, apparently.
Back in his own rooms, Stentoller wrote to his father, asking him to instruct the Bank to honour the cheque, giving his reason. Almost as soon as he had posted the letter, a college messenger brought him a note in Haddenham’s hand-writing:
Dear Stentoller. It was wonderfully kind of you to give me that cheque, and it is impossible to tell you how deeply this act of yours has affected me. All the same, I feel on reflection that I must let events take their own course. So I am returning your cheque herewith. Yours ever, Charles Hendon.
‘God, what a fool I am!’ Stentoller buried his face in his hands. In that first ghastly year at Charchester his courage had been
sustained, his path smoothed, by Hendon. Hendon had been waiting with a welcome at Oxford and had opened many doors. He had given and accepted favours. The friendship was genuine beyond doubt.
‘I like Stentoller. Who is he?’
Hendon was his friend. Yet sooner than propose him for membership of the Radlington, Hendon had thrown up his career.
The next morning he took a one day exeat to London to tell his father why he no longer wanted the thousand.
&n
bsp; ‘That’s where their strength lies,’ said his father. ‘The individual is always ready to efface himself to avoid imperilling the others.’
‘The peril to the others being my membership of the club?’
They were in the study, a room that could seat thirty without discomfort. On a vast chimney piece stood an ormolu clock under a glass dome. Chippendale writing table, chair, cabinets – the selection of Stentoller I.
‘Not your membership of the club, but his perception that you wanted something, in return for your loan, which touched his relationship with the others. But, my dear boy, it’s a storm in a teacup. It won’t even affect your friend’s career. The Bank have approached us on his behalf. We have dealt with the family before, and we shall give the Bank a guarantee.’
‘I don’t understand, Father. We aren’t literal moneylenders, are we? And if the Bank won’t touch it –’
‘Come here, Cuthbert.’ He opened a showcase like a showcase in a museum and took out a gold snuff-box, inscribed with the royal cipher on one side and the Haddenham arms on the other, with a legend in dog-Latin.
‘A gift, of that profligate buffoon who was unfortunately George IV of England, to your friend’s great-grandfather. Haddenham had been commanded to borrow ten thousand pounds for one of George’s disreputable little troubles. “I will not lend the King a penny, because I don’t trust him,” said your great-grandfather, “but I will gladly lend your lordship that amount.” “Your words touch the edge of treason, Mr Stentoller,” said Haddenham. But I gather there was a twinkle in his eye, because he pulled out this snuff-box and added: “I pledge the King’s honour with the King’s gift.”
‘Well, the King had no honour, which meant that we paid ten thousand for this snuff-box. But we had helped Haddenham out of a difficulty, and he told his crowd all about it. A year later we were commissioned to underwrite a Colonial loan of ten millions – and made a hundred thousand out of it in a few days. Ever since then, business of that kind has tended to drift to us without effort or expense on our part. We have probably made a couple of millions out of that snuff-box.’
