by Roy Vickers
‘If anyone saw me, there is nothing to be done. If no one saw me there is no reason why I should be suspected.’
As is characteristic of murderers who are not of the criminal classes, he took an individual view of the morality of his act. He did not pretend that the murder could be justified. But he seemed to himself more sinned against than sinning. For thirty years Haddenham had amused himself by pretending friendship with a man he despised – and despised for no ethical reason. He blamed Haddenham for the murder as a man will blame a too attractive wanton for his own debauchery.
While he was dressing on the following morning, Gwen came to his room. She thrust a paper at him – the Record – not trusting herself to speak. He was not taken by surprise. There was skilful restraint in his reception of the news. But the sympathy he expressed was genuine. It would mean that the wedding must be postponed. He hated Haddenham afresh for making Gwen so miserable.
When she had gone, he skimmed the account in the Record.
‘It can be stated that robbery was not the motive. In deceased’s pockets were some thirty pounds – to say nothing of a gold watch and chain and a valuable gold snuff-box.’
That snuff-box! Stentoller had forgotten all about it.
‘That’s all right. I shall say I gave it to him over dinner,’ ran his thoughts.
His eye fell on the sword of the Order of St Severell of Antioch, standing in the corner, the coiled girdle on the floor beside it.
‘Weslake saw me take the snuff-box out of my pocket. He remarked on it, and I told him that Haddenham had left the Club. Weslake will prove that I saw Haddenham after he left the Palace. And that means I shall be hanged.’
Weslake was at that moment in the air. But copies of The Times were probably in the aircraft with him, on their way, like himself, to the Embassy.
Over breakfast he looked at The Times. It gave headlines but did not indulge in speculations nor wallow in the details, like the Record. It stated merely that there had been no robbery from the person. Papers like the Record did not penetrate to Embassies. That meant there was a reasonable possibility that Weslake’s attention would never be directed to the snuff-box.
After breakfast, he took the sword to Lady Weslake, as he had promised.
‘Yes, it’s terrible about Haddenham!’ he agreed. ‘I was dining with him at the Varsity. He was called away only a few minutes before I ran into your husband.’
When he reached his office, he found waiting for him a junior detective from Scotland Yard.
‘We understand, sir, that you had dinner with Lord Haddenham last night at the Varsity Club. Was anything said which you think might help us in our investigation?’
‘Nothing at all, I’m afraid. Our conversation was purely personal. We had been friends since boyhood. Lord Haddenham’s son and my daughter had just become engaged, and we were discussing family plans most of the time.’
The young detective glanced at the list of questions he had been instructed to ask. The next was the time at which they parted company.
‘Somewhere about ten-thirty – I’m not sure of the exact time,’ answered Stentoller. ‘But you can check that. He was with me until he received a telephone message from the Palace – you know all about that, of course – the Palace officials will tell you what time they telephoned the club. The chief steward delivered the message himself. I left the club shortly afterwards.’
Everything he said was carefully written down.
‘There’s only one more question, Mr Stentoller. Can you tell us definitely whether Lord Haddenham was in the habit of taking snuff?’
‘I can tell you that he was not.’ Stentoller smiled benignly. ‘Then why that enormous gold snuff-box, eh? I can clear up that mystery for you. I gave it him myself over dinner, although it was already in a sense his – you’ll find it has his crest on it as well as the Royal cipher.’ He told the story of the snuff-box in full – gave the reference to Kyle’s Life of George IV – so that the Yard should mark it as accounted for.
Then came the newspapermen. He gave them the same account, except that he made no reference to the snuff-box, which thereafter received no publicity, as the Yard had made clear that there was nothing pinned on to it.
At home a letter was waiting for him from Lord Tharme:
‘Dear Stentoller, I am very sorry. I have resigned from the Terracotta – I may say, in a state of deep mystification.’
Four days later came an air mail letter from Weslake.
‘Dear Stentoller, I can’t think what the devil happened at the Terracotta. Nor can Tharme. I have, of course, resigned. Haddenham’s death is a shock. I read it in The Times, going over. It must have happened almost while you and I were talking – and within a couple of hundred yards of us. I was very sorry for Gwen and Derek, as it will mean postponement. Yours ever, Reginald Weslake.’
That meant that Weslake had no suspicion. The chance of the snuff-box being mentioned at the inquest or anywhere else was practically non-existent.
He received another visit from the police, who were checking on all members of the Varsity Club. Stentoller confirmed that he had left the Club about half past ten, gone straight to the car park and driven home.
The doorkeeper at the Palace had recorded that Lord Haddenham had left at ten-forty. As Haddenham had mentioned to Colonel Hallingburn that he was going back to the Varsity Club, the murder could be timed at approximately a quarter to eleven. If Stentoller had not in fact gone straight to the car park he might have committed the murder. But so might a dozen other members who left the club about that time. As no shadow of a motive could be found against anybody, nor any clue pointing anywhere, the Yard had to advance the theory of a foreign political fanatic. In six months the log of the case drifted to the Department of Dead Ends.
Chapter Six
The wedding was postponed for a year, actually for fourteen months, as Derek, now Lord Haddenham, remained in the Diplomatic Service and had to fit it in with his leave. Gwen became virtually bi-lingual in German and Italian, and Stentoller resumed his normal life.
He avoided the ordeal of telling Hilda that he had been blackballed. There was never any publicity or chatter about the Terracotta, so he decided that she need never know. Moreover, his orientation was now somewhat different. Under his guidance, the firm had gained even greater strength. He was no longer concerned to be numbered among the inner core. When the youngsters were settled, he intended to sell out and retire. The traditions of the house of Stentoller now seemed as hollow as the traditions of the inner core.
Weslake had returned from Turkey. He had called at the first opportunity, had been very friendly but had not mentioned the Terracotta incident, or anything else of an inconvenient nature.
Hilda took over the entire arrangements for the wedding. On the following day they were going for a quiet fortnight together. ‘A silver honeymoon,’ she had called it, with generous courage.
On a bright day in June the youngsters were married from Stentoller’s house, which looked over the wooded hills and green valleys of Surrey. The reception flowed from the house to the garden. The inner core was sufficiently represented, and somehow or other there was a cross-section of the fashion-paper world. Had he been a mere snob, Stentoller would have regarded that reception as the seal on a successful social career.
Gwen and her husband were receiving their congratulations in the hall at the foot of the double staircase, with Hilda and himself in support. In the dining-room, behind him on his right, the presents were laid out. He must remember to go and look at them.
‘Reggie doubts whether he’ll be able to make it,’ Lady Weslake was saying. ‘He simply had to go to a conference this morning. But he’ll come if he can.’
A pity if he didn’t turn up. Gwen had made him an unofficial uncle and liked teasing him. She would miss him on her wedding day. His thoughts roved. Children, even Gwen, had no tact with their parents. If she had any regrets at leaving him she hadn’t shown them. Now and again
fragments of conversation in the dining-room reached his ears.
‘George IV gave it to Haddenham. And the original Stentoller had something to do with it. I know the King’s honour comes into it somehow – look, there’s the royal cipher!’
That snuff-box! Stentoller blinked. What on earth was it doing among the wedding presents? He slipped into the dining-room.
There it was, on a little table set apart which had a card clipped in a menu holder saying: ‘Traditional Presents Originated by the Second Earl of Haddenham, A.D. 1720.’ There was a necklace, a jewelled dagger, a Bible – never mind those things! the snuffbox had a ticket to itself: ‘Gift of George IV to Fifth Earl: Mortgaged to Albert Stentoller, 1825: Restored to Eighth Earl by Cuthbert Stentoller, 1935.’
Derek was the ninth Earl.
There was nothing to worry about. The police knew – and no doubt any other interested person – that he had given it to the ‘eighth earl’ over dinner. Weslake alone knew that he could not possibly have given Haddenham the snuff-box over dinner.
And Weslake might turn up later.
Obviously, Weslake had forgotten all about the snuff-box incident in the hall of the Varsity Club. But the sight of the box itself might awaken memory.
Better not risk it.
Covering his movements with a certain neatness, he removed both snuff-box and ticket. He scrunched up the ticket and put it in his trousers pocket. The snuff-box could just be concealed in his hand. He rejoined Hilda, and presently slipped the snuff-box into his tail pocket. Fresh arrivals were still queueing in the hall. Greeting them was automatic – one could make nearly the same remarks to each.
Suddenly Hilda was speaking to him in an urgent undertone:
‘Cuthbert! That man with his back to us in the dining-room doorway is a detective. Scotland Yard insisted on sending them to guard the presents, though I told them it was absurd. He says someone has stolen the Haddenham snuff-box. I said he mustn’t make a fuss and that you’d speak to him. Shut them up at all costs.’
Shut them up at all costs. Quite! But would they consent to be shut up? He signed to the detective to follow him into the little morning-room which was not in use. He wondered uneasily whether his tail pocket bulged.
‘I tell you what I think has happened,’ said Stentoller. ‘Someone has picked it up, to talk about it to someone else. It’ll be back in its place again presently.’
The detective was unresponsive.
‘When you were at that table about ten minutes ago, Mr Stentoller, was it there then? We can’t keep our eye on every item all the time.’
‘I didn’t notice. But I do suggest that you adopt my theory. Intrinsically, the thing is doubtfully worth a tenner. And besides, you can’t very well strip everybody – and I don’t see that anything short of that would be any good.’
‘We have ways of getting over that difficulty.’ To Stentoller the words sounded ominous. The detective added: ‘Funny thing – the thief has taken the ticket as well, saying what its history was.’
When the detective had left the room, Stentoller concealed the snuff-box behind the radiator. Then he burnt the descriptive ticket, holding it so that the ashes would drop into a bowl of flowers.
When he rejoined Hilda, he had a fresh shock.
‘One of those wretched detectives,’ she whispered, ‘has gone upstairs. They must mean to search the house.’
‘I’ll keep a tab on them,’ he said. He went back to the morning-room and reclaimed the snuff-box. That snuff-box must not be found until the reception was over. He went into the garden, made his way to the lily pond, stopped several times on the way to exchange pleasantries.
The lily pond, with fountain and goldfish, was part of a small Dutch garden, sunk out of sight of the house. Choosing his moment, he bent down and slithered the snuff-box under a water-lily, carefully noting the position of the lily. When he returned to the house Gwen slipped her arm through his.
‘In two hours, we shall be gone. I’m terribly sorry-glad – you know that, Daddy, don’t you!’ Bless her heart for saying that! She prattled on: ‘We’ve had a huge telegram from Sir Reginald, saying he can’t turn up, and full of such awfully good good-wishes that Derek has come over all shy.’
So Weslake wasn’t coming after all! Stentoller felt slightly indignant that circumstances had made a fool of him. He couldn’t go and fish that snuff-box out then and there. Anyhow, it didn’t matter now.
After dinner that night he went alone to the lily pond. He identified the lily, took off his dinner jacket and stripped to the waist. The pond was nearly two feet deep.
He groped and found nothing. In ten minutes he realized he was stirring up masses of mud to no purpose. The job would have to be tackled properly in daylight, with rakes and the rest of it. It could wait until after the ‘silver honeymoon’. Derek, on his honeymoon, would not be worrying about his heirlooms.
Chapter Seven
While Stentoller was holidaying with his wife on a Swiss lake, his gardener, working on the lily pond, found the snuff-box, which he promptly handed to the housekeeper, who locked it up, pending her employer’s return. That night the gardener talked about it in the village inn – which meant that the local constable got to hear about it. Two days later, by an obvious chain of events, Scotland Yard demanded temporary custody of the snuff-box.
It is characteristic of the Department of Dead Ends that Detective-Inspector Rason received a carbon of the report solely because the name of Haddenham figured in it.
Whenever some incident echoed on one of his filed cases Rason would produce some fantastic wild-goose theory, but this time he was stumped.
Someone had stolen a valuable snuff-box. Subsequently fearing detection, he had dumped it. No clear line to the murder of Lord Haddenham fourteen months previously! Annoyed with himself, he re-read the log of the murder, then re-read the report of the theft.
‘The ticket containing an historic note was also removed.’
‘Historic note! That must be the bit about the King being a crook. Wonder the old boy wasn’t bow-and-arrowed at dawn! Now, there’s some sense in stealing a gold snuff-box, if you’re that sort. But there’s no sense in stealing its ticket. Therefore the thief was crackers – which doesn’t help.
‘Turn it upside down, then. The thief was a wise guy. That means he stole the ticket because he didn’t want people to read it. But a lot of the guests must have read it already. That means he didn’t want some particular person to read it. Someone who hadn’t read it already. If that’s right, he was stealing the box for the same reason. Box and ticket. He didn’t want someone to see either of them.’
Back to the log of the murder. The snuff-box, most exasperatingly, proved nothing either way. Mr Stentoller had given it to the deceased over dinner. It wouldn’t have affected the murder if he hadn’t given it to him at all.
‘Never mind the thief. Try the fellow the thief had in mind. Somebody is to come into the room – a fairly late arrival – see that snuff-box, or the ticket without the box, and say: “Ah, a snuff-box! And a gift of George IV too, by Gad! That settles it. Now we know who killed Haddenham”.’ Rason stroked his hair. ‘That sort of thing always happens when I do a spot of deduction.’
Half-way through lunch, he made some sense of it.
‘Somebody, seeing that snuff-box on that table, would say: “Its presence here upsets some statement made at the time of the murder about the snuff-box.”
‘The only person who made any statement about the snuffbox at the time of the murder was Stentoller.
‘That makes Stentoller the murderer. He’s one of the thirteen who might have done it, according to the times they left the Club. He stabs Haddenham with his umbrella – then stuffs the snuff-box in his pocket – so that I can catch him out telling a lie!’
Rason was following a formula he had often found useful. Test an absurdity and you may stumble on a truth.
He went to the Varsity Club and interviewed the cloakroom attendant, to
whom he handed a list of the thirteen members who had left at relevant times.
‘I want you to try to remember whether any of these gentlemen was carrying an umbrella – one of those very thin ones –’
‘Them very thin umbrellas again!’ groaned the attendant. ‘I had a bellyful o’ them at the time. And I’ll tell you the same as I told the others, that as far as I can remember not one of the lot of ’em had an umbrella.’
‘In particular,’ pressed Rason, ‘was Mr Stentoller carrying an umbrella?’
‘No, he wasn’t.’ The man sniggered. ‘He was carryin’ a sword.’
‘Carrying a what!’ gasped Rason.
‘Carryin’ a sword, I tell you! His friend, Sir Reginald Weslake, had been to a Levee in the morning.’ The details followed. ‘Nearly tripped over the belt as he was going out of here. I heard Sir Reginald say he’d take the belt off for him, as they went into the hall. About half past ten that was, as near as makes no matter.’
Rason temporarily forgot all about the snuff-box. A sword! A couple of hours later he was in Surrey, checking up with Weslake, who came in from the garden and interviewed him in the dining-room.
Rason asked if he might see the sword of the Order of St Severell of Antioch.
‘That is a very extraordinary request. What is your reason?’
‘We suspect that that sword may have been used for a felonious purpose when it was not in your possession, Sir Reginald.’
Weslake glanced again at Rason’s official card, then left the room, to return with the sword.
As Rason drew the blade he noted that it was slightly bent. He examined the point – which was scarcely sharper than the point of one of those very thin umbrellas.
‘Sir Reginald, at about ten-thirty on the night Lord Haddenham was murdered, did you hand this sword to Mr Stentoller?’
‘I believe I did!’ Weslake had obviously forgotten the incident, but now remembered. ‘Yes, definitely – I did. In special circumstances not worth relating.’
