Weekend at Thrackley

by Alan Melville

  “I never thought so,” said the sleek Mr. Brampton. “But I should be the last to say that Edwin Carson is mad just because he locked you up, Lady Stone.”

  “This,” said Lady Stone, “is neither the time nor the place for attempted cleverness, Mr. Brampton.”

  “And d’you really believe that’s not your original ruby?” asked Freddie Usher.

  “Of course, it isn’t. I’m perfectly certain of that. Mind you, it’s a very clever imitation, but not clever enough to deceive me. I happen to know something about jewellery.”

  “In addition to which,” said Jim, “you happen to know that you found one of Carson’s servants rummaging about your bedroom late on Friday night. And when you had a word with him on the subject, you were very promptly made to swallow a handkerchief, and only returned to the fold at an early hour this morning. Yes, quite apart from your own very excellent knowledge of precious stones, Lady Stone, you can bet your Sunday corsets that Carson has changed that ruby for a dud.”

  “Well, if he’s done it with Lady Stone’s,” said Marilyn Brampton, “what about the other jewels in this house? How do I know he hasn’t my pearls down in his damned cellar?”

  “Not having Lady Stone’s knowledge of these things,” said Jim, “you just don’t know. Annoying, isn’t it?”

  Raoul, the dancer, made her first contribution to the discussion.

  “He has not had my jewels, this Carson,” she said slowly. “In each link of my bracelets, in a corner of my emeralds, somewhere on each piece of my jewellery, there is a monogram… a little R… so very little, perhaps only I could see it.”

  “Old man Carson seems to have all the equipment for putting little Rs on your knick-knacks,” said Freddie Usher.

  Raoul smiled at him as though Mr. Usher were a particularly distressing painting which she had been asked by the painter to admire.

  “See, I show you all,” she said.

  Her brown hands reached up to her ears; she slipped the ear-rings from beneath her jet-black hair. They were of platinum, with a small but exquisite turquoise set in each. She laid them on the table in front of her and peered down at them for a moment.

  “Well?” said Lady Stone, somewhat irritated at being side-tracked by this dancer person and her little Rs.

  “Too late,” said Raoul slowly.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “The setting is mine… the stones have been changed. There is the little R on the link of the setting—you see it?—and none on the stone…”

  The pair of ear-rings fell from her fingers with a tinkle on to her plate.

  “Well, now,” said Lady Stone in her most businesslike of voices. Inwardly Lady Stone was a little relieved to find that she was not the only person at Thrackley who had had the misfortune to be fooled by Edwin Carson. And now it needed someone blessed with a fair amount of intelligence, common sense and gifts of organization to take command of the proceedings. Catherine Lady Stone, in other words.

  “Well, now,” repeated Lady Stone, “I think you’ll all agree that Edwin Carson means what he says about the jewels belonging to his—er—I suppose we are still his guests—yes. He has managed to come into possession of my own very valuable ruby… only temporarily, I hope. He has also—er—stolen some little things of Raoul’s. For all we know, other members of this house-party may have been treated in the same way. The question is, does he mean the rest of what he says?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Henry Brampton.

  “My good man,” said Lady Stone, “you don’t honestly mean to say that you believe that we can be kept here as prisoners until this man Carson sees fit to let us go?”

  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t believe it. And I am not, and have no intention of becoming, your good man.”

  “Really, Mr. Brampton!… but the thing is so ridiculous! Here in the heart of England… I mean, one can quite well understand this sort of thing taking place in Russia or Chicago or some of those places, but here in a peaceful old country house in England…”

  Lady Stone paused, rather from lack of breath than lack of desire to go on with her monologue.

  “Well,” said Marilyn Brampton, “take a flying run out of those French windows and see what happens.”

  Lady Stone cast a rather quivering eye on the bronze handle of the French windows, and subsided into her chair.

  “All this talk!” said Raoul suddenly. “So stupid! Why do we not talk to someone who knows about this place?” She stared across the table at Mary Carson. “The daughter of this man who is so mad, so dangerous, such a criminal… why does she not speak, eh?”

  Five pairs of eyes turned to Mary Carson. She was sitting at the end of the long table, next to the vacant place which Edwin Carson had left. She had stared at him all the time he was talking, and stared again from one to the other of the guests as they talked after he had gone.

  “Why, of course,” said Lady Stone. “How silly of us! Now come along, my good girl—”

  “I can’t tell you anything. I don’t know any more than the rest of you. If you’re all prisoners at Thrackley, then I’m just as much a prisoner as any of you.”

  Lady Stone ran the tip of her tongue around her lips, and placed her elbows firmly on the table. Obviously an ally of Carson, this girl. Probably not his daughter at all. And quite obviously under orders to shut her mouth and keep it shut. Right, then.

  “You don’t expect us to believe that, do you, my dear? After all, you are Mr. Carson’s daughter? You must know something about the—er—the habits of your father…”

  “What’s the use?” inquired Henry Brampton from the other side of the table. “She’s in with the gang. Don’t expect her to give anything away, do you?”

  “Shut up, Brampton,” said Jim. “If it’s of any interest to you, Mary is not Edwin Carson’s daughter.” (“Quite,” said Lady Stone to herself. “Quite so.”) “And I believe she knows no more about this mess than the rest of us.”

  “Thank you, Jim,” said Mary. She rose and leaned over the back of her chair before crossing to the door under the stairs. “I tell you I’m in this just as deep as you are—just as deep, and no deeper,” she said; “but until you’ve quite made up your minds that I’m not a crook, you can talk the matter over without me.”

  “Some day, Brampton,” said Jim after she had gone, “something very messy will happen to you. And I hope I’m driving the car that does it.”

  “But, damn it all—”

  “Oh, go to hell!”

  Mr. Brampton shrugged his shoulders and went, if not to the place suggested, to the French windows at the end of the room. He stared moodily at the bronze handle.

  “And what happens now?” said Raoul.

  “Heaven and Edwin Carson presumably know the answer to that one,” said Jim.

  He felt in his pockets, found his case, and lit a cigarette.

  “We’re in a hole. No doubt about that. I think Lady Stone’s right when she says that Edwin Carson is mad. But he’s also a criminal… a clever one and a dangerous one. Obviously he brought you all here with the intention of adding to his collection of jewels. He’s rigged up all the latest apparatus downstairs for the making of imitation stones. All he had to do was to get hold of your jewellery, remove the specimens he wanted, put a dud in their places, and say ‘God speed’ to the lot of you on Monday morning. If the scheme had worked properly, the deception would probably not have been found out for years.”

  “But it didn’t work properly.”

  “No,” said Jim. “Thanks to you, Lady Stone, eating perhaps just a little too much quail at dinner, the scheme didn’t work out according to plan. But Carson isn’t the man to be put off by a little thing like quail. And now that he’s been found out, he intends to carry on with the whole plan as arranged. Except that he’s doing it now by force instead of by cunning. Yes, broth
ers, we’re in a hole. Good and deep.”

  “It’s all very well,” said Lady Stone irritably, “to go on saying that we’re in a hole.”

  “There’s no other way of describing Thrackley,” murmured Henry Brampton.

  “But,” continued Lady Stone, ignoring Mr. Brampton, “what do we intend to do about it? We must have a plan. It’s perfectly obvious that we must have a plan.”

  Lady Stone spat out the word in such a way that all who heard it would realize that it was spelt with a capital P.

  “I have several acquaintances at Scotland Yard… we must get in touch with them. Then we must have Edwin Carson put under arrest… though no doubt the man will be certified insane. And then we must arrange for the return of the jewels.”

  “It sounds,” said Freddie Usher, “just too simple for words. Yet I suppose you’ve got about as much chance of doing it as a drunk man with St. Vitus’ dance has of getting to the top of Ben Nevis on a pair of antiquated rollerskates.”

  Lady Stone, subdued by this flight of oratory, said weakly, “What do you mean, Mr. Usher?”

  “Well, for one thing, your plan starts with the words ‘get in touch with’…”

  “Well?”

  “You try it, Lady Stone,” said Jim. “I’m sure we all wish you luck.”

  He pressed out the stub of his cigarette. Then he rose and walked away from the table.

  “And where might you be going?” said Lady Stone.

  “I don’t expect Edwin Carson has any objections to our moving our limbs occasionally. After all, he can’t expect us to stay sitting round this table until he’s ready to let us out. If you’re really interested, I’m going to have a talk with Mary.”

  “Not a bad idea,” said Henry Brampton. “But you’ll need all your tact to get anything out of the enemy. The female of the species, remember…”

  Jim turned as he reached the door of the lounge.

  “I hope I’m not in that car when it hits you, Brampton,” he said. “I hope it’s a six-ton lorry.”

  And the door slammed behind him as a punctuation to this remark.

  He found Mary standing at the front door of the house. She looked back over his shoulder as he came out of the lounge.

  “You can come out here,” she said. “It’s not against the rules. I’ve just tried it, and not a single alarm went off.”

  Jim smiled and walked to the doorway beside her.

  “Come on out to the garden,” he said. “I suppose that’s all right? The raspberry canes aren’t wired up with dictaphones and electric currents, are they?”

  “How should I know? It’s not by any means impossible.”

  “Let’s risk it, shall we?”

  “Of course.”

  They walked round the corner of the house until they reached the strip of vegetable garden which ran along two sides of Thrackley.

  “Cigarette?” said Jim.

  “Thanks. It’ll do me good.”

  “The Prince of Wales,” remarked Jim, “was reported once to say that he knew of nothing more soothing than a good cigarette.”

  “Well, I could do with a spot of soothing; couldn’t you?”

  “Yes… I’m terribly sorry about what that ass Brampton said.”

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s only natural that they should think I’m in with the gang, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. But if ever I meet that man alone in a dark street I’ll give him one of the snappiest socks on the jaw he’s ever experienced.”

  “Thanks very much, Jim.”

  “Mary… we’ve got to get you out of here.”

  “Why me? What about the rest of the party?”

  “Oh, they’ve got to get out, too, but…”

  “Well?”

  “Well, I can’t stand the idea of you being mixed up in all this. Living here with Carson and all the rest of it. I… I’m too fond of you, Mary.”

  “Yes. I suppose that is the trouble.”

  “Trouble? What—”

  “There’s no use wasting time talking this sort of talk just now, Jim. Not that I don’t like it, you know. I do. Very much indeed, thank you. But dear old Lady Stone was right when she said we must have a plan. We’ve got to get the police in on this before Edwin Carson pulls it off.”

  “You think he’s in earnest when he says he’s going on with the business?”

  “Of course he is. That man’s life has been wrapped up in the study of jewels, Jim. He’s obsessed by them… so much obsessed that now he’d stop at nothing to make an addition to his collection. He’s mad, Jim…”

  “If only we could get in touch with Hempson…”

  “Hempson?”

  “Burroughs, I mean. The chauffeur. Of course, you don’t know. He’s our one chance. He’s no ordinary chauffeur. Scotland Yard have had their eagle eye already on your—on friend Carson. And Burroughs is the man they’ve put on the job of looking after him.”

  “But that’s not much use now. Carson probably has him under lock and key. I suppose he knows now that Burroughs is a policeman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Even if he doesn’t, he’ll be keeping him well watched after last night. I wonder…”

  “What?”

  “We’ll try the garage, Jim. I don’t expect for one minute that we’ll find Burroughs or Hempson or whatever his name is… but we might find something.”

  “How are you going to get in?”

  “I’ve got a key. The only key I was ever allowed here. I used to take the car out myself sometimes to run up to town—after promising Carson faithfully that I’d stick to the country lanes and not even go near Adderly. Wait here a minute—I’ll get it.”

  She was back in a minute, the key in her hand.

  “How are things in the house?” asked Jim. “Any signs of Carson?”

  “Not a vestige. They’re still talking nineteen to the dozen round the lounge table. Lady Stone has decided to write to the Daily Express about it all.”

  “There’ll be quite enough in the papers without any voluntary contributions from that old hen. Come on, let’s try the garage.”

  “Don’t hurry—just walk slowly. Carson has probably put Jacobson or one of the servants to watch us from the house. We’re all right once we get to the garage. I don’t think you can see it from the house through these trees.”

  They reached the small cement building. Mary put the key in the little door set in a corner of the big swing doors.

  “Come on in,” she said, “and close the door behind you. Then no one will get suspicious.”

  “Right,” said Jim. He groped about in the darkness. “Where the blazes is that damned switch?”

  “Up to the right… in that wall in front of you. Got it?”

  “No… yes I have… here we are.”

  He switched on the electric light and filled the garage with a blaze of light. Then he turned and looked round the building.

  “Jim!…” said Mary.

  “What’s the matter? My God!…”

  The big navy-coloured Lagonda had been run into the garage with its bonnet right up against the back wall of the building. Over that bonnet sprawled the limp figure of a man. His hands fell loosely over one of the mudguards. A narrow rim of bluish-black ran around his neck, just above his collar.

  Ronnie Hempson, alias Burroughs, the perfect chauffeur, was very definitely dead.

  XX

  Edwin Carson looked up from the paper over which he had been poring when a knock sounded on the door of his study. He folded the paper away in a drawer of his desk and lifted the receiver of the telephone at his elbow. He bent down over the mouthpiece of the receiver and whispered into it.

  “There’s someone at the door of my study, Jacobson. Just see who it is…”

  He waited f
or a minute, drumming his fingers on the oak top of the desk. The person at the other side of the door knocked again. A louder, more emphatic knock than the first. The sort of knock, it seemed to Edwin Carson, which definitely meant business.

  “Well?… indeed… well, just stay outside my study until he leaves, will you, Jacobson? Thank you…”

  He put back the receiver on its stand, and opened another of the many drawers in the desk. He took out the revolver which lay in a mass of papers and envelopes, and walked to the door with it gripped firmly in his hand. When he reached the door he stood for a moment, then slowly turned the key in the lock. A well-oiled lock, one of those in which keys could be turned silently and smoothly and without effort…

  Poor Burroughs!… he had always been very attentive about these things.

  And Edwin Carson walked back to his desk and sat in the chair behind it. He laid the revolver in front of him and covered it with a few sheets of notepaper. And then he said: “Come in, Captain Henderson.”

  It was evident from Jim’s manner as he entered the study that he was not in the best of moods. His lower lip was drawn tightly over the other lip, the small, dimple-like affair between his eyebrows was twitching very slightly (a danger signal, if only Edwin Carson had known it, common to the Hendersons as a clan), and his jaw was thrust out much in the manner of the bows of a ship cleaving its way through a particularly nasty sea. Edwin Carson surveyed all this through his thick-lensed glasses, and felt rather more comfortable when he remembered that under the two sheets of quarto paper in front of him lay a very businesslike weapon.

  “Well, Captain Henderson,” he said, “this is indeed a pleasure. Not having your usual game on the tennis court this morning, eh?”

  Jim looked round the room and finally settled what he hoped was his most aggressive stare on this very unpleasant specimen seated at the desk.

  “You can cut out the social stuff, Carson,” he said. “I don’t think you need worry about keeping up the perfect host attitude any longer now. It must have been a bit of a strain.”