Sir Clinton’s eye was trained to catch minor details; and he had noticed that the girl’s ring-finger was bare. But that in itself meant very little. A married woman leaving her husband might very well take off her wedding-ring, even if the removal of it was a mere emotional gesture.
The foreign-looking fellow in the car seemed an obvious interloper. If he had been posing as a lover of the girl, the pretence had been stripped bare by his actions at the last moment; for all the emotion which he had shown was easily to be accounted for on other grounds, and his manner to the girl had been anything but lover-like. He had behaved like a bad loser confronted by an unexpected disaster.
The second man’s doings presented an even greater puzzle. If he was the girl’s husband, why had he left her by the roadside? Village manners would suggest quite another line of action for him. If he were either a lover or a brother, why had he not waited until the other man drove away and then settled matters to his own satisfaction, if possible? There must have been some fairly strong motive in his mind if it impelled him to leave the girl stranded on the road with a suitcase at that hour of the night, especially when he had a car in waiting round the corner.
The girl’s behaviour furnished yet another problem. Her voice, Sir Clinton recalled, had not suggested any local accent, though she obviously did not belong to his own class. She spoke nicely—with an intonation quite different from that of the second man. But in country places it is not uncommon to find a girl with a cleaner accent than that of the men in her circle.
One thing was fairly apparent. She had arranged to meet the foreigner at an hour when the coast was clear; and she had brought a suitcase. The whole affair was obviously clandestine; and on this basis it was clear enough that she could not be picked up by the car at the very door of her own house. On the other hand, if the car was available, there would be no point in letting her carry her suitcase for any considerable distance from her home. The conclusion seemed to be that she must live somewhere close to the point where Sir Clinton had left her by the roadside; and this, in addition to other possible reasons, would account for her refusal of a lift in his car.
Finally, there was the question of her recognition of himself, which at first sight seemed the most puzzling point of all. Very brief consideration gave Sir Clinton a possible explanation of that side of the problem; and, as he thought it over, he found that it fitted neatly into the rest of the affair.
While he was thinking, the car had run for the best part of a mile, and yet there had been no sign of the bridge which was one of his landmarks; and he had almost come to the conclusion that the girl had misdirected him when he saw the stone parapets lining the road. And when he had crossed the stream, there was no sign of any road leading off to the right. He held to his instructions, however, though he knew that by this time he had left Raynham Parva far behind; and at last he came to a hairpin corner formed by the expected tributary road.
Sir Clinton had a good head for locality; and after he had gone a mile or so along this fresh route, it became obvious to him that he was now returning on a line which would bring him back to the vicinity of the village. When he realised this, a faint smile crossed his face; for it was just what he might have expected, if his guess at the situation had been correct.
“Very smart, on the spur of the moment,” he confessed to himself. “She’s evidently got her wits about her even when she’s shaken up a bit.”
His suspicion that he had been entirely misdirected died away; and his faith in his interpretation of the affair by the roadside was strengthened when the gates of Fern Lodge appeared in the beam of his lights, unmistakable with the carved lions surmounting the pillars.
The way was clear, and he turned his car into the entrance. Before him, a short drive opened up; and at the end of this Fern Lodge itself appeared, a substantial house decked with creepers, which gave it an old-established air. Light streamed from the hall door across the gravel sweep; and the windows of one room glowed in the night. Except for this, the building was dark against the sky.
A glance at the clock on the dashboard showed Sir Clinton that the détour he had made since leaving Raynham Parva had been longer than he had supposed. Evidently the Fern Lodge household had gone to bed, with the exception of someone who was sitting up to await him on his arrival. He sounded his horn gently as he drew near the door; then, pulling up his car, he got out and entered the house without ceremony.
Chapter Two
THE MAN FROM THE ARGENTINE
As Sir Clinton entered the hall, he heard a light step; a door opened, and Mrs. Thornaby came forward to welcome him. Though she was slightly older than her brother, few people would have realised this at first acquaintance. Her looks did not betray it; and she had a personality which seemed to take her out of the normal limitations of age and to let her mix with young people as easily as with those of her own generation. A marked capacity for making allowances for the prejudices of others was one of her most salient characteristics; and it made people turn to her for sympathy in their difficulties with a certainty that they would go away again with fresh courage.
“I heard your horn,” she said, after they had exchanged greetings. “Just as well you telephoned. I’d have been worried about you if you hadn’t turned up at dinner-time.”
She turned to the door.
“You’d better put the car into the garage now. It’ll save going out again later on. Drive down that path there, and you’ll find the place.”
She watched him start the engine, and then turned back into the house. Sir Clinton put his car into the garage, locked the front door of the house as he returned, and took off his overcoat.
“Come in here, Clinton,” he heard his sister directing from the room out of which she had appeared on his first arrival.
As he crossed the threshold, he threw a quick glance of inquiry round the room; but if he was surprised to find his sister alone, he did not let it appear in his expression.
“You must be cold after that long drive. There’s whiskey and soda over yonder. If you’d rather have coffee, I can make it in a minute or two; I’ve got the machine here. When you telephoned that you’d be late, I didn’t keep the maids up; and I expect they’re off to bed long ago.”
Sir Clinton nodded, declined the coffee, and helped himself to some whiskey and soda. With a gesture, Mrs. Thornaby invited him to take a comfortable chair near her own. Part of her charm lay in the fact that she always seemed more interested in other people than in herself; and it was characteristic that now, although she had news which concerned her deeply, she put it aside for the moment and questioned her brother about his own doings.
“Had a good holiday, Clinton?”
“Not bad.”
Sir Clinton also had the habit of suppressing his own affairs and showing a greater interest in other people’s.
His sister laughed gently.
“Really, Clinton, this police work of yours seems to be converting you into a sort of human oyster, so far as your own doings are concerned. One would think you were losing the gift of expression. I suppose it’s all this official secrecy business; but surely, after a couple of months on the Continent, you might come back with something more detailed than ‘Not bad’ as a report. It sounds a trifle bald, somehow.”
Sir Clinton laughed in his turn at this thrust.
“What do you expect? Detailed descriptions of Dutch windmills? You’ve seen ’em yourself. The Eiffel Tower’s still standing, and I don’t see much change in the view from the Lucendro Pass. I just wandered about and met a lot of interesting human specimens, here and there.”
“And left no address behind you.”
“How could I? I didn’t know, one day, where I’d go on the next. I wanted a real holiday, not a Cook’s tour with a time-schedule. When I got tired of a place, I just moved on to a fresh one that took my fancy.”
He drew a case from his pocket, chose and lighted a cigarette. In some indefinable way he made the gesture put
a closure on the discussion of his own affairs.
“Now what about yourself?” he demanded, as he laid down the spent match. “Johnnie’s in bed long ago, I suppose; but where’s Elsie? I thought she’d have stayed up to see me.”
His quick eye detected a faint tinge of trouble in Mrs. Thornaby’s face at the mention of her daughter’s name; but when she spoke, it was evident that she was trying to treat the matter lightly.
“If you insist on cutting yourself off from your family for weeks, Clinton, you can’t complain of surprises when you turn up again. I’ve got one for you. Elsie’s married.”
Sir Clinton seemed less astonished than she had expected.
“Married, is she? Well, Rex Brandon’s a sound young cub as cubs go; and he certainly deserved to win. I’ve seldom seen any youngster so keen on a girl.”
Mrs. Thornaby shook her head.
“It isn’t Rex Brandon. It’s someone you’ve never heard of, Clinton.”
The tone of distrust in his sister’s voice was faint but unmistakable. Sir Clinton’s careless manner fell from him at the sound of it; and the face which he turned to Mrs. Thornaby was that of the official Sir Clinton.
“That’s rum,” he said slowly. “Tell me about it, Anne. You’ve managed to spring a surprise on me all right.”
Those who knew Sir Clinton only as an efficient and somewhat cynical Chief Constable would have been surprised if they had seen him with his nephew and niece. They would have discovered an entirely fresh side of his character; for since the death of his brother-in-law, ten years before, he had taken the two children under his wing and made an effort to fill the gap left in their lives by their father’s death.
Mrs. Thornaby made a gesture which seemed to suggest that she herself knew very little about the matter.
“I was never very keen on Elsie’s going to London, you know,” she explained. “I’d much rather have kept her beside me, though perhaps I’m a bit old-fashioned in that. But one can’t deny that she’s good with her violin. She’s quite worth the best training I could afford for her. And when she wanted to go to the R.A.M., I hadn’t the heart to refuse, once I found she was really eager about it. You know how one feels, Clinton. If she had her chance, then there was no grievance; but if I had objected to her going, she’d always have felt she’d missed something that might have made a big difference to her playing. She wouldn’t have groused about it; but I’d have felt all the time that I’d stood in her way. Let her have the experience, I thought, and then she won’t feel she’s missed an opportunity, even if nothing comes of it in the end. Besides, I felt that in a case of that sort, one’s better to weight the scales against oneself—just to make sure. I wanted to keep her; and I had a sort of notion that I was being selfish and disguising it by telling myself I was prudent. You see what I mean?”
Sir Clinton nodded, but said nothing. He and his sister understood each other; and this problem was one which Mrs. Thornaby had settled for herself. Comment was needless.
“Well, I’m afraid it didn’t turn out quite as I’d hoped,” Mrs. Thornaby went on. “Elsie didn’t neglect her work—trust her for that. She’s too keen on her fiddling. But she seems to have got among a rather weird lot of people in London. Some of the musical set introduced her to people outside, and they introduced her to others, and so on.”
Again Sir Clinton nodded without speaking.
“What I didn’t like about it was that she seemed to pick up a lot of futile ideas from these people; and if one didn’t agree at once that these notions were the last touch in up-to-dateness, then one was classed as mid-Victorian. I don’t mind being called Edwardian, but really mid-Victorian is a bit unkind, at my age.”
Sir Clinton’s face relaxed in a smile.
“They seem to have stirred you out of your senile torpor, anyhow. What sort of notions were they?”
“Oh, all about freedom, and living your own life without bothering about other people’s feelings, and so forth. Getting away from all the petty restrictions that hampered the older generation.”
Sir Clinton’s smile deepened.
“That comes well from people who can’t buy a cigarette or a box of chocolates in a shop after 8 p.m. without running the risk of being run in. We weren’t quite so hampered as all that in King Edward’s days.”
“Most of their notions seem mixed up with the sex question,” Mrs. Thornaby continued, disregarding the interjection. “Some of them seem to me simply silly. For one thing, they don’t believe in a girl getting engaged to a man; it seems that’s a case of a petty restriction. A man and a girl go about together for a while; and then, one day, they decide to get married—if they take even that trouble—and they drop into a registry office and fix it up without telling anyone. And that’s that. It may be a new way of doing things, but I don’t think much of it.”
Sir Clinton made no effort to conceal his amusement.
“It’s none so new, you know, Anne. When I was a boy, it was the ordinary method of getting married which servant-maids used. ‘Walking out’ they called it. I don’t see much novelty in that. Mid-Victorian’s no name for it. They must be a very unsophisticated bunch if it’s fresh to them.”
“It’s no laughing matter to me, Clinton. That’s just what Elsie did.”
The “official” expression returned to Sir Clinton’s face.
“Let’s hear about this, Anne.”
Mrs. Thornaby seemed to find relief in putting the matter into words. She was not the type which discusses its private affairs with friends; and the return of her brother had given her an outlet which hitherto she had lacked.
“Well, it seems that a man Francia was one of the circle she drifted amongst.”
“Francia? What is he? Spanish?”
“South American, I believe. He comes from the Argentine, Elsie told me. It seems that he fell in love with Elsie—violently in love.”
She paused for a moment, as though the subject grated on her indefinably.
“You’ll see him to-morrow,” she continued, as Sir Clinton made no comment. “Perhaps it’s jealousy on my part—quite likely. You know how much Elsie is to me, Clinton, and naturally I don’t like the idea of her going away to South America. It’s selfish, perhaps, but there you are. I can’t help it.”
She halted again, as though expecting some remark from her brother. Sir Clinton threw away the stub of his cigarette and chose another from his case, as though to fill the pause. He was evidently following his sister’s story closely, but had no intention of interrupting the narrative.
“Elsie attracted this man’s attention,” Mrs. Thornaby continued with some hesitation, as though she were picking her words in dealing with a disagreeable subject. “They seem to have gone about together a good deal. He managed to make her care for him—she’s quite keen on him, I can see. And the result was that they put these modern notions into practice: arranged everything and went off one day to a registrar’s and got married without a word to anyone beforehand. She’s of age of course, and it’s all in order; but they didn’t even tell me about it till it was all over. That cuts one a bit, you know, Clinton.”
Sir Clinton nodded gravely. He had had a different picture of his niece’s wedding in his mind. Elsie’s excitement over an announced engagement; her surprises over her wedding-presents; all the fun of choosing a trousseau; a pretty wedding, with her friends as bridesmaids and herself as the star; and, instead of all that, a visit to a dingy registrar’s office, a business with as much romance in it as taking out a dog-licence.
“H’m! She’s missed a lot of harmless pleasure,” he commented, as though to cover his sister’s emotion. “The new method doesn’t seem to offer the same opportunities as the old one, to my mind. However, if she’s fond of him, that’s always something.”
He seemed to ponder for a moment.
“A bit rum to come home and find the kiddie married. It seems not so long ago since she was climbing on to my knee clamouring for fairy tales. And now s
he’s the wife of a fellow I’d never even heard of. I can appreciate your feelings, Anne.”
Mrs. Thornaby had recovered herself.
“Elsie wired me after it was all over,” she went on. “They went off for a week-end together. Then Elsie brought him down here, and they’re staying till they go out to Buenos Ayres. I’ve done my best, Clinton. I was quite prepared to take second place, now. But he’s foreign—not our sort. His manners are all right, you know, only too much so, if you see what I mean. Somehow, I feel as if I’d never get to know the man.”
For his sister’s sake, Sir Clinton tried to put the best face on things.
“Spanish?” he said thoughtfully. “After all, Spaniards aren’t necessarily dagoes, you know, Anne. Some of them are sound stuff. One mustn’t get too prejudiced merely because a man doesn’t come from our own part of the country. Though I admit I’d have been better pleased if Elsie had kept to her own people and left foreigners alone. Rex Brandon was the man I was betting on. He may be a bit sharp-tempered at times, but he’s a likeable cub. Pity!”
“Well, perhaps I’m prejudiced,” Mrs. Thornaby admitted, with a tired smile. “I expect this wrench of Elsie going off to the other side of the world may have a good deal to do with my feelings. One can’t help that. It’s only natural.”
Sir Clinton seemed to be following a fresh train of thought.
“He can’t have married Elsie for money,” he said at last. “She hasn’t a penny of her own, and she knows that quite well.”
“Oh, that had nothing to do with it,” Mrs. Thornaby admitted frankly. “He seems to have plenty of money, so far as one can see. Elsie’s dropped one or two things which point that way. I gathered that he’s got quite big interests in the Argentine.”
“What’s his line?” Sir Clinton inquired.
Nemesis at Raynham Parva (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 2
