The Boathouse Riddle

by J. J. Connington

  “Here’s something interesting, Squire,” he said. “It’s a cutting from an American newspaper. Just listen:

  “DEATHS: KEITH–WESTERTON.—On January 3, 1925, at Sunnybank Hospital, Ormidale O., Ellen Amy Keith-Westerton, wife of Colin Keith-Westerton of Silver Grove, Talgarth, England. English papers please copy.”

  “That seems very illuminating.”

  “That’s something I never guessed,” said Wendover, after a moment or two. “So the young beggar was married before? He kept his thumb on that pretty tightly. I never heard a whisper of it.”

  He reflected for a moment before adding:

  “But I don’t see much in it. His first wife was dead long before he got engaged to his present one. The only queer thing is that he should be carrying the cutting about in his overcoat pocket at this time of day.”

  Sir Clinton stared at the cutting for a few moments.

  “Yes, that’s very curious,” he said in a dry tone, as he stowed it away in his pocketbook.

  “You think it’s got some bearing on this affair?” Wendover questioned.

  “It confirms a couple of suspicions that I had, certainly,” Sir Clinton admitted. “But I was pretty sure I was right on these points, even without this. It doesn’t get me much nearer a plan of campaign, though; and that’s what’s on hand at present. It’s a question of how much one should stake on a bluff; and I don’t want to hurt people who are really innocent and yet have got dragged into the affair.”

  He considered for a moment or two, then added:

  “I must ring up Severn and let him see this bit of paper. If there’s something on it, then I’m all at sea; but if the thing isn’t on it, then I think the way’s clear and we may be able to put some one under lock and key within twenty-four hours, if I can steer things right.”

  “Fingerprints?” asked Wendover.

  “Or the lack of them,” Sir Clinton corrected.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Pearl Necklace

  SEVERN and I are going to the Dower House again this morning,” Sir Clinton announced after breakfast on the following day. “Care to come along, Squire? I think it would be a sound idea. No one could suspect you of having an axe to grind in the affair, which is more than can be said for any of the rest of us. Besides, you’d be a guarantee to young Keith-Westerton that his evidence won’t be distorted for police purposes.”

  Wendover knew that Sir Clinton had not the slightest intention of twisting any evidence he might elicit; but still, a friendly face might serve as a moral backing to Keith-Westerton. There was something to be said in favour of his going with the officials; yet the position was an awkward one. He hesitated for a few seconds before making up his mind.

  Sir Clinton saw that he was undecided.

  “You’d better come,” he urged. “My friend, the Abbé Goron, will be there too, I believe; so you won’t be the only disinterested spectator.”

  “Oh, if it’s to be a general meeting,” Wendover said, in a faintly sarcastic tone, “then there’s no harm in my attending.”

  At the gate of the Dower House they picked up Severn, who was waiting for them.

  “You’ve had a look at that advertisement?” Sir Clinton inquired.

  “They’re not there,” the Inspector answered tersely. “It seems rum.”

  Sir Clinton made no comment and Wendover was left to puzzle over these cryptic remarks.

  When they reached the Dower House, the maid, evidently forewarned, showed them at once into a room where the Keith-Westertons and the Abbé Goron were waiting for them. Wendover began to wish that he had acted on his first thoughts and refrained from coming. Now that he was actually on the spot, he felt acutely that his intrusion was tactless; and inwardly he cursed Sir Clinton for having, in mistaken kindness, insisted on his seeing this particular move in the game.

  Keith-Westerton stiffly introduced Sir Clinton to his wife. Wendover, to distract his mind from uncomfortable thoughts, forced himself to examine the three people. Keith-Westerton had the look of a man who sees himself being driven into a corner. It was plain that he had something to conceal and that he was more than doubtful if he could avoid detection. The same shadow lay on the girl’s face; but from a glance which she threw at her husband, Wendover imagined that her anxiety was less on her own account than on his. She looked as though she had spent sleepless nights, for her whole carriage seemed to have lost its spring; and when the introduction was over, she sank back into a chair as if she could face things better with its support. And still, under her physical weariness, she was evidently gathering up her resources to face this new ordeal. The Abbé Goron, frigidly courteous, seemed to have cast himself for the rôle of a pure spectator; and Wendover noticed that when he sat down, he chose a chair from which he could get a clear view of both Sir Clinton and Mrs. Keith-Westerton. Keith-Westerton fidgeted for a moment or two and then seated himself in such a position as to range the two opposing sides opposite to each other: the officials and Wendover in one group, the Dower House trio facing them.

  Sir Clinton seemed determined to ignore the obvious strain of the situation. To Wendover’s surprise, he opened his campaign in what seemed a friendly tone; and he addressed himself to Mrs. Keith-Westerton instead of to her husband.

  “I know you’ve had a distressing time, these last few days; and, if I could avoid it, I shouldn’t trouble you now. Unfortunately, there’s no way out of it. We need certain information which only you can give us, and which I hope you’ll give us. You can refuse it, of course, if you choose. There’s no compulsion to give evidence at this stage.”

  The Chief Constable’s sympathetic manner obviously surprised Mrs. Keith-Westerton as much as it did Wendover. Apparently she had braced herself for the interview, expecting to be handled roughly; and Sir Clinton’s kindly tone seemed a relief to her. Almost imperceptibly she relaxed the tenseness of her attitude.

  “I merely want you to check some points for us,” Sir Clinton explained. “If you don’t care to say anything on some specific details, then you needn’t do so.”

  His glance swung for a moment towards Keith-Westerton’s face as he added:

  “We’d prefer to have no evidence rather than misleading statements.”

  Wendover could see that this shot went home. Keith-Westerton’s face betrayed his feelings only too plainly; but he evidently thought that it was unsafe to notice the innuendo.

  “I’m going to ask as few questions as possible, Mrs. Keith-Westerton,” Sir Clinton pursued. “I don’t want to worry you more than we can help. You quite understand that? Good.”

  Wendover could not quite follow the line which Sir Clinton had taken. Was this sympathetic manner genuine, or was it assumed merely in order to entrap the girl into some incautious statement? If it was meant to put her more at her ease, it was certainly succeeding. Her eyes, though still betraying her nervousness, had lost something of the acute mistrust they had carried at the opening of the interview. She leaned her chin on her hand and awaited Sir Clinton’s next move.

  Without giving her time to speak, the Chief Constable went on:

  “On the night when you left home, you had dinner with your husband as usual; and after that, you and he went into your sitting room, I think. You were wearing a pearl necklace that evening.”

  Mrs. Keith-Westerton gave a slight involuntary nod in confirmation of this.

  “About nine o’clock, your husband left the house,” Sir Clinton continued. “Some time after that, you found you had mislaid your bag, I believe; and you discovered that you needed it for some reason or other.”

  Mrs. Keith-Westerton seemed surprised.

  “I don’t know how you learned that,” she said, with a faint misgiving in her tone.

  Then she glanced across at the Abbé Goron, as though in search of guidance.

  “It’s quite true, though,” she went on. “I meant to write a letter—to order something—and I found I’d left my note of the address in my bag. A friend gave me
the address a day or two before that, and I wrote it down on a scrap of paper and slipped it into my bag at the time. And when I came to look for it, I couldn’t find it—my bag, I mean.”

  “I thought so,” Sir Clinton continued. “And then, I think, you remembered that you’d been out on the lake in the afternoon and had perhaps left your bag behind then by mistake. That was how it was?”

  Mrs. Keith-Westerton’s confirmatory nod was delayed for a moment or two, but when it came at last it was quite decided.

  “You wanted that address immediately, I gather; and the boathouse is not far away. Your car was in the garage. The chauffeur was not on the premises, but you drive yourself; so you decided to run up to the boathouse and see if you could find your bag. It was only a matter of five minutes in the car.”

  Wendover, with a certain sardonic satisfaction, noted how at the word “boathouse” the whole attitude of the girl altered. Sir Clinton’s finely woven structure of mutual confidence dissolved away, as though at the touch of a magician. They were back at the very start again, as the girl’s face showed only too clearly. She half-turned in her chair and shot a glance towards the Abbé Goron, as though she were accusing him of some breach of faith. But the priest, his eyes intent on Sir Clinton’s face at the moment, failed to catch her glance. Young Keith-Westerton was equally perturbed and it was only with a strong effort, evidently, that he restrained himself from interrupting.

  “When you reached the boathouse,” Sir Clinton continued, taking no direct notice of the byplay, “I suppose you were surprised to see it lit up. But as no one has a key of the boathouse except yourselves and Mr. Wendover, you probably assumed that he had gone across there for some purpose; and, of course, you had no hesitation in going up to the door. You had your key with you.”

  There was no question of confidence now, Wendover could see. Panic was written clear on the girl’s pale face, on her parted lips and startled eyes. Keith-Westerton moved sharply as though to rise from his chair and go to his wife’s side; but a gesture from Sir Clinton arrested him. The Abbé Goron, with an inscrutable face, seemed to wait philosophically on the turn of events. Severn, a side glance of Wendover showed, was intent on the unfolding of Sir Clinton’s narrative of the night’s doings; and it was plain that he was fitting the tale to the evidence which he had.

  When Sir Clinton broke the silence, it was in an unexpectedly soft tone.

  “I know how distressing this must be to you, Mrs. Keith-Westerton. I’ve a fair idea of what you went through; and unless it were absolutely necessary, I shouldn’t remind you of it. Frankly, I’d rather get it over and done with. I merely want you to check what I say and tell me if I’m right or wrong at any point.”

  Keith-Westerton half rose from his chair.

  “I can tell you that myself,” he said heatedly.

  Sir Clinton’s voice lost all its kindliness and took on an incisive tone as he replied.

  “You weren’t at the boathouse at that time. We must have first-hand evidence, and only Mrs. Keith-Westerton can give us it. I prefer a reliable witness, such as she is. I’ll have some questions to put to you later on, when I hope you’ll be perfectly frank.”

  Wendover had no difficulty in seeing the double-edged thrust here. Without emphasising it, Sir Clinton had shown he knew that Keith-Westerton himself had been at the boathouse and he also made clear that he had not believed his previous statements about his movements on the fatal night.

  “You went into the boathouse,” the Chief Constable continued, turning again to the girl, “and in the lounge you found a woman whom you had never seen before, I think. She was about your own height, handsome, with chestnut hair, and she was dressed in unfashionable clothes which must have struck you at the first glance. She asked who you were, or you asked her who she was and volunteered your own name. In any case, she learned that you were Mrs. Keith-Westerton; and probably when she heard your name she betrayed some feeling or other, surprise and possibly an unpleasant satisfaction.”

  Mrs. Keith-Westerton made a gesture of repulsion which confirmed Sir Clinton’s tale more conclusively than any verbal statement could have done. Quite clearly, the mere recollection of her interview with the stranger was sufficient to horrify her.

  “You needn’t be afraid,” Sir Clinton put in hastily. “I’ll not say more than I need to do. We know all about her. She was a notorious criminal. She knew something which affected you intimately and she sprang it on you brutally. She blackmailed you, in fact. That’s all I need say. She demanded money—a large sum.”

  Mrs. Keith-Westerton seemed almost grateful to find that Sir Clinton had passed so lightly over this point. Her manner changed, as though this had been the thing which she was afraid would come to light.

  “That’s exactly what happened,” she admitted, in a shaky voice. “You . . . you might have been there yourself, from the way you tell it. She was a horrible woman.”

  Sir Clinton showed clearly that he had no intention of dwelling on that particular matter at any length.

  “She demanded money, as I said. Of course you had no money in hand at the moment. She looked you up and down and her eye caught the necklace you were wearing. She was a good enough judge to know that it was worth something—perhaps she asked you its value—and she proposed to take it as security for the money she demanded.”

  Mrs. Keith-Westerton seemed to realise for the first time the surprising accuracy of Sir Clinton’s story of the affair; and Wendover, from this, got the impression that, so far as she was concerned, the worst part of the evidence was over.

  “I don’t know how you guessed that,” she said, in a wondering tone. “It’s perfectly true, though. She insisted on my giving her the necklace. I was . . . It had come as such a shock to me, the whole thing, like a thunderbolt, you know; and I was ready to do almost anything to keep her quiet. You’ve no idea what sort of woman she was. I felt quite sick with the surprise of it all, and I was ready to do anything to shut her mouth at the moment. I took off the necklace and she smiled—maliciously, you know, for I don’t think she’d quite expected me to give in so easily. And then she put the necklace on herself with some remark about that being the safest way to carry it. And then she ordered me out of the place. She was . . . oh, she was contemptuous, as if I were a mere child who had to do as I was told. And she warned me that I would have to raise the money somehow without telling Colin. ‘And now you can go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got you where I want you, Mrs. Keith-Westerton.’ I was glad to get away from her. I think I must have been nearly hysterical, for the whole thing was so unexpected and so dreadful, I hardly knew what I was doing.”

  “We needn’t dwell on it,” Sir Clinton said soothingly. “I don’t want to bring it back to your mind. Let’s go on. You got into your car and drove straight to your confessor.”

  A tinge of distrust crept into the girl’s face and she threw a troubled glance at the Abbé.

  “You made your confession,” Sir Clinton went on hastily, as though to avoid any misunderstanding. “I’ve nothing to do with that.”

  Obviously Mrs. Keith-Westerton had been afraid of questions on this point, for relief showed on her face at Sir Clinton’s words.

  “He gave you some good advice,” Sir Clinton continued, with a side glance at the Abbé’s imperturbable face. “You drove back to the Dower House, packed a suit case with a few necessaries, wrote a letter to your husband, telling him that you had been to your confessor and that you were going away at once. And then you drove to Ambledown and caught the last train up to London where you went to the convent which, I suppose, the Abbé recommended to you. That, I think, is a fairly accurate account of your doings on that night?”

  Now that the ordeal was obviously at an end, Mrs. Keith-Westerton seeemed to recover her balance.

  “That was almost exactly what happened,” she admitted frankly. “I don’t see how you know these things; but you’ve described everything I did, just as if you’d been watching me.”


  The major part of Sir Clinton’s reconstruction was plain sailing to Wendover, who already knew the evidence on which it was based. Two of the Chief Constable’s points, however, gave him qualms of conscience: the incident of the vanity bag and the matter of the pearl necklace. All along, he had insisted on his belief in Mrs. Keith-Westerton’s complete innocence. And yet, deep down in his thoughts, he had been more than uncomfortable about the part she had played in the affair. Try as he would, he had not been able to get the vanity bag and the pearls out of his mind. With all his prejudice in favour of Mrs. Keith-Westerton, these things had looked very black to him. And now Sir Clinton, who had never made any show of sympathy with the girl, produced a simple explanation of both items, an explanation which made the whole transaction appear innocuous. Now that they were banished, Wendover realised how deep his suspicions had been; and he cursed himself for having allowed them to take root in his mind.

  Sir Clinton rose and moved towards the door.

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” he said pleasantly. “I’m sorry we had to trouble you, Mrs. Keith-Westerton; but it was essential to have the facts clear. I know it’s been very irksome for you, but I’m sure you realise that we needed your help.”

  He opened the door and stood aside for her to go out. As she seemed to hesitate, he added in a casual tone:

  “I’d like to have a few moments’ talk with your husband and Monsieur L’Abbé, here; but there’s no need for you to stay. You’ve helped us very considerably and we mustn’t keep you on the strain any longer.”

  The dismissal was perfectly courteous in tone, but plain enough in substance. For a moment longer, Mrs. Keith-Westerton hesitated; then, with a brave attempt to appear at ease, she passed out of the room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Prologue at the Boathouse

  AS Sir Clinton closed the door behind Mrs. Keith-Westerton, all the friendliness vanished from his expression and when he turned towards the little group, his face was hard.