Nemesis at Raynham Parva (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

by J. J. Connington

  “I see,” Ledbury hastened to interject. “Go on, sir. What happened next?”

  “As it chanced, there was no hitch of that sort. The first car that came along was Quevedo’s. Everything happened according to plan: Mr. Jones ran his car out, blocked Quevedo’s car, and made Quevedo pull up. That was what he wanted. He left his own car still blocking the road, got out, and walked over to Quevedo’s car as if he wanted to ask something. There would be no great difficulty in keeping out of the direct line of Quevedo’s headlights—at any rate, he could keep his face from being thrown up clear by the glare. He walked over, then, quite naturally; and Quevedo would suspect nothing. Mr. Jones, I think, had in his hand the bottom of a bottle with the upper part broken away to leave a cutting edge.”

  Sergeant Ledbury brought his open hand down on his knee with a slap.

  “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “But I never came near seeing it till you pointed it out, sir.”

  “This is only a bit of fiction, remember, sergeant. I can’t guarantee that it’s accurate. I think I ought to have mentioned that Mr. Jones had taken some trouble to avoid being recognised by Quevedo. That’s a very shaky bit of theorising, however, so don’t lay too much stress on it. Some people have normal sight in one eye and weak sight in the other; and consequently they wear spectacles with a lens on one side and a plain glass on the other. Possibly the murderer was like that. But horn-rimmed spectacles change a man’s appearance markedly, specially if you shave off a moustache as well; and, on the facts of the case, I’m inclined to think that the spectacles were a bit of disguise. The murderer wanted to be able to pass muster as a stranger for a few seconds—all the time that he needed for his work.”

  “You mean Quevedo knew him well, sir?”

  “It might be a case of a homicidal maniac, of course,” Sir Clinton admitted. “If it were, then the first motorist who came along would have served as a victim and there would be no point in disguise. But, on the facts of the case, I think it’s safer to leave the homicidal maniac as a last resource and to assume that it was a case of Mr. Jones paying off a score. In that case, it’s most probable that Quevedo knew him and would be on his guard if he recognised Mr. Jones at the first glance. Hence the need for a disguise which would pass muster for just a a few seconds, even if it wasn’t good enough to stand lengthy examination.”

  Ledbury showed his agreement by a nod.

  “And what happened next, sir? I think I can guess.”

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, provided you swallow the initial hypothesis? Mr. Jones walked up to the side of Quevedo’s car, bent over as if to say something—and then a single slash of the sharpened edge of the broken bottle opened Quevedo’s jugular neatly. A glass-cut, you see.”

  “A razor would have done the job just as well, and it’d be a handier thing to use, sir,” the sergeant objected.

  “Yes,” Sir Clinton conceded, “but a razor has a nasty knack of keeping blood-stains round about the handle—round about the pivot of the blade, where you can’t clean them away without breaking the whole thing to bits. A microscopic examination would show up the blood corpuscles. So, if you happened to be caught with that kind of razor in your possession, you’d be in Queer Street. And if you threw it away immediately, a razor lying by the roadside is a thing that might attract notice. Mr. Jones was cleverer than that, I think. He meant the whole affair to look like an accident, pure and simple; and he wasn’t going to leave any link with himself, such as a weapon.”

  “I see your point, sir. By the way, I think I’ll have a look round about the lodge gate and see if I can’t pick up that broken bottle. It ought to have blood on it.”

  Sir Clinton interjected a caution.

  “Don’t under-estimate your man, sergeant. Would you yourself just pitch a blood-stained bit of bottle over the hedge at the very point where people would look for it?”

  Ledbury’s face fell.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” he admitted. “But there’s no harm in being thorough, is there?”

  “Of course not. But, if I’d been Mr. Jones, I’d have had a thermos flask in my car, and I’d have washed the bottle before throwing it away, say, a mile or so up the road. As it was, poor Mr. Jones had hard luck with his bottle.”

  “You mean it broke when he was cutting Quevedo’s throat, sir, and that chip with the bubbles in it got snapped off—the bit I found on the floor-boards?”

  “I don’t profess to know exactly how the chip got split off. It may have been as you say; or Quevedo may have struggled and the bottle got knocked against the side of the car. The certain thing is that the chip was left behind. You must remember, sergeant, that Mr. Jones was in a hurry. That’s obvious, or he wouldn’t have left part of his spectacle glass lying about. But when you’re standing on a public road with a murdered victim beside you, and a chance that someone may come along any moment, I don’t suppose you can spare time to do everything you’d like to.”

  “That’s so, sir. He must have been a smart lad, even with these little slips in his scheme.”

  “Very smart indeed to invent a new line in murders,” Sir Clinton agreed, with something suspiciously like admiration in his tone. “I expect Quevedo struggled a bit and accidentally knocked the spectacles off Mr. Jones’s nose. In falling, they must have hit the gear-lever, or something; and the plain glass got smashed. Mr. Jones was hurried. He had to get the rest of his little play staged before anyone came along. So he grabbed the spectacle-frame, felt one of the glasses intact, and perhaps hadn’t time to bother about the rest. It was going to be covered up and lost in a pile of smashed glass anyhow, later on; and I expect he just let it go at that, rather than waste time hunting about. By the way, did anything occur to you about the wound, sergeant?”

  “The wound? You mean the cut in the jugular? No, sir. Nothing particular.”

  “Do you think the man in the street could put his finger on his own jugular vein straight away?”

  “Well, no, sir, perhaps not. You mean Mr. Jones was an expert? He certainly got straight on to the right place.”

  “One can’t lay too much stress on it, I’m afraid. Mr. Jones may have been Dr. Jones with a good knowledge of anatomy; or he may merely have been someone who took the trouble to find out exactly where the jugular could be cut with least fear of bungling. One can’t say.”

  “It does look like expert work, now I come to think of it,” Ledbury admitted doubtfully. “But, as you say, sir, this Jones might have studied it up beforehand. He’s taken great pains in other things, apparently. And what happened after that?”

  “I don’t know, sergeant. I’m only telling you a pretty story, remember. Don’t take it too seriously. Here’s the final instalment. Once Quevedo was done for—and, by the way, the blood inside the car was an unfortunate item, though I don’t see how it could have been helped—once Quevedo was done for, Mr. Jones set about staging the accident. He ran his own car back out of the way, up the avenue as we saw. Then he stood on the footboard of Quevedo’s car—no, he must have got inside to get the clutch out and in—and he started. The engine would be running, of course. Quevedo wouldn’t have switched off. Once the car started, Mr. Jones got on to the running-board and closed the door—if he’d opened it to get in, that is. He leaned over and steered, and at the same time he changed gear. He got up to third, and by that time the car was travelling at a fair rate. He couldn’t afford to get on to top, because he had to jump off; and he wasn’t going to risk a tumble at high speed. So he put in the third speed, opened the throttle full, so as to brisk up the car during the rest of its run and ensure a fine smash at the end. Then he put the wheel as straight as he could, jumped off, and left the car flying up the road at increasing speed. It was bound to take the ditch on one side of the road or other before long; and there was a stone wall on each side which would ensure a good smash-up of the windscreen. I expect he’d counted on Quevedo being left in the driving-seat instead of being thrown out. Then the blood on the floor-boards wo
uld have been neatly accounted for.”

  “He must have been a bit mucked up with the blood when he got into the car beside Quevedo’s body,” the sergeant reflected unpleasantly.

  “I expect he was wearing a light driving-coat or one of these linen overall things. That would shield his own clothes, and when he got well away in his own car he could get out and burn the blood-stained coat with the help of a little petrol. And he could wash his hands in some stream or other. Now, I think that finishes my effort in fiction, sergeant. What do you make of the villain of the piece?”

  Ledbury pondered for a full half-minute before taking up the challenge.

  “If you’re right, sir, then I’d say he was very likely something like this. He was somebody who knew Quevedo before. That might mean a foreigner. Or again it mightn’t. H’m! That’s not much help, is it?”

  “Not if you put it that way,” Sir Clinton admitted, with a broad smile. “But go on, sergeant.”

  “He must have known Quevedo was going to London last night, so he must have had some sort of information about Quevedo’s movements. If he had a grudge against Quevedo, he’d hardly have shown up much before the murder for fear of putting Quevedo on his guard. That means there’s a confederate somewhere, perhaps. This Jones must have had pretty up-to-date news.”

  Sir Clinton hesitated a moment as though about to interrupt. He was not quite sure whether he should divulge the facts about Staffin and Teddy Barford to the sergeant. One point which might be of importance later was involved; but, at the moment, a knowledge of it would hardly help Ledbury, so Sir Clinton decided to say nothing about it at that juncture.

  “Yes?” he prompted the sergeant.

  “He might be wearing horn-rimmed glasses with one plain glass and one lens,” Ledbury pursued. “Or, again,” he added regretfully, “he mightn’t wear glasses at all.”

  “True,” Sir Clinton confirmed solemnly.

  “Then he might be a medical man. But perhaps he wasn’t. Really, sir,” Ledbury commented in an aggrieved voice, “these notions of yours sound all right, but they don’t somehow seem to lead anywhere particular, do they?”

  “He has a car,” Sir Clinton suggested.

  “Yes, he has a car all right,” Ledbury admitted, “but its tyres are worn smooth and that doesn’t help much, does it? How many people in this country are running round in cars with well-worn tyres, sir?”

  “Quite a lot, I suppose,” Sir Clinton said, laughing at the sergeant’s expression. “Poor Mr. Jones! He’s had hard luck. If it hadn’t been for Peel’s grudge against Barford, no one would have dreamed for a moment that it was a case of murder. Mr. Jones would have got clear away with it. Everyone would have put it down as a purely accidental smash. Hard lines on poor Mr. Jones.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting you hadn’t cleared things up a lot, sir,” Ledbury hastened to explain. “As you say, it’d have passed as a plain motor-smash easily enough. But I don’t somehow seem to have much to take hold of, with it all. I get no sort of notion of what this Jones was like, if you understand me. If this is the sort of thing one finds in a murder case, then I hope this one’ll be my last. I don’t seem to make much of a fist of it, and that’s the truth.”

  “You’re under-estimating yourself, sergeant. You didn’t expect to lay hands on Mr. Jones in ten minutes, surely?”

  “Well, sir, they say that if a murderer gets twenty-four hours start, it’s mighty difficult to prevent him getting away with it.”

  “It depends on what you mean by ‘twenty-four hours start,’ sergeant. That might mean one thing to some people and quite a different thing to other people. Don’t get discouraged. You’ve gone the right way to work, so far, if that’s any satisfaction to you. It’s more than a good many people can say for themselves.”

  Ledbury seemed slightly cheered by this compliment.

  “Well, sir,” he said, as he rose to leave the room, “I suppose something may turn up that’ll suggest something, perhaps. I’ll have a hunt round for that broken bottle, anyhow; and I’ll see if I can get word of any burnt place where this Jones man could have been destroying his coat. That might point to which road he took when he went off, at any rate; and that would always be something done.”

  He moved over towards the door, but suddenly came back again.

  “It slipped my memory, sir,” he explained. “There’s a young gentleman staying at the Black Bull just now. A Mr. Brandon. He was talking to me—very pleasant-spoken, he is—and it seems he knows you. He asked me to let you know he was in the village when I saw you.”

  “Tall, clean-shaven, fair-haired, blue eyes?” Sir Clinton inquired, making certain of the identity.

  “Yes, sir. That’s him.”

  “Thanks, sergeant. I’ll ring him up and leave a message if he’s out.”

  “Then that’s all, sir,” Ledbury said, turning again towards the door. “I’ve just got to see Mr. Francia again, to make sure of one or two little points.”

  Sir Clinton nodded; and, as Ledbury left the room, he walked across to where the telephone stood on a small table close to the door.

  Chapter Seven

  THE AGENT 7-DH

  The freshness of the air tempted Sir Clinton to halt under the porch of Fern Lodge when he came out of the house next morning on his way to keep an appointment with Rex Brandon at the Black Bull Hotel. For a moment his glance swept over the lawns, from which a heavy dew had just been lifted by the sun; then he turned towards the water. The surface of the little lake was untroubled in that still air, save where Johnnie’s boat left its long ripple-track; and, as Sir Clinton watched, even this died away. Johnnie shipped his oars, fitted a rod together, and began to fish.

  Sir Clinton watched his nephew’s efforts for a while with sympathetic interest, making mental notes for some hints for improvement in the boy’s technique. The minutes slipped past unnoticed, for Sir Clinton lingered on in the hope that Johnnie might fluke a catch while he was watching. At last, however, a glance at his watch showed him that he had idled longer than he had meant to do; by that time it was too late to walk into Raynham Parva if he meant to keep his appointment. He had still time enough in hand to be punctual if he took his car; so, abandoning his original plan, he turned towards the garage.

  Rex Brandon was evidently on the qui vive; for, as the car slowed down at the entrance to the Black Bull, he was standing on the steps of the hotel in conversation with a dark, clean-shaven stranger. Catching sight of Sir Clinton, Rex parted from his acquaintance with a hurried apology, to which the stranger responded with a punctilious gesture of farewell.

  “Jump in, Rex,” Sir Clinton invited, opening the door of the car. “I’d meant to stroll down and take you for a healthy walk; but I was a bit late in starting and had to drive. It’ll always give you a breath of fresh air. By the way, who’s your foreign friend?”

  “Referring to his flamboyant style of taking farewell, sir? I can give you the life-history of our friendship in a few words, because I met him for the first time last night and for the second time this morning,” Rex explained, settling himself comfortably in his seat.

  “We’ll go along this road and see where we get to,” Sir Clinton suggested, as he started the car. “So he isn’t your long-lost Uncle Jeremiah from Australia, or anything of that sort?”

  “No, sir. The only kindness he’s done me was to introduce me to a new cocktail and to give me his card. His name’s Roca—Dr. E. Roca. My Spanish was grossly neglected at school, so I can’t say definitely whether he calls himself Esteeban or Esty-ban, but he spells his first name E-s-t-e-b-a-n on his card, I remember.”

  Sir Clinton nodded with apparent indifference.

  “A stranger in a strange land? Decent sort, or otherwise?” he inquired.

  “Oh, quite decent, sir. I rather took to him, in fact. Except in gestures, he’s not the overflowing kind of foreigner.”

  Sir Clinton seemed favourably impressed by this verdict.

  “If we happen to r
un across him on the way back you might introduce me,” he suggested. “He must feel rather a fish out of water in a place like this.”

  Rex acquiesced with a gesture; and for a time Sir Clinton drove on in silence. It was too early to think of drawing any inferences yet; but the presence of a third foreigner in a tiny place like Raynham Parva seemed to furnish food for thought. There would be no harm in cultivating Dr. Roca’s acquaintance, since chance had thrown him into Sir Clinton’s way.

  For some minutes, Rex Brandon seemed to have fallen into a taciturnity which was foreign to his normal character; but at last, with an obvious pretence of indifference, he threw out a question.

  “Elsie’s at Fern Lodge, sir?”

  Sir Clinton had no particular desire to guide the conversation in this field. He contented himself with a confirmatory nod. Rex relapsed again into silence for a while.

  “What sort of a man is her husband, sir?” he asked at length, in a casual tone which seemed to cost him something of an effort.

  “About your height, dark, brown eyes, rather suave voice,” Sir Clinton answered, with a deliberate avoidance of the real purport of the question.

  “H’m!”

  Rex seemed doubtful whether to regard Sir Clinton’s answer as a snub or not. He gazed down the road in front of the car, evidently hesitating about pursuing the subject. Sir Clinton examined him with a swift side-glance and felt a twinge of discomfort. Rex Brandon was so obviously the sort of man Elsie ought to have married, instead of picking out that foreign fellow with his feline softness and his expertness in handling women. Rex, possibly, was not a deep person; his character had few reserves. But at least he could be trusted to pick a sound line of behaviour and stick to it through thick and thin. He had tenacity of the comprehensible kind. Sir Clinton had known him before he was in his teens and had tested him, as he tested most people. Sound stuff. Somehow, compared with him, Francia came out of it badly. His air of reticence contrasted so markedly, with Rex’s frankness.