Puzzle of the Silver Persian

by Stuart Palmer

  On the mantel were several models of sailing ships, and one steamer cut in soft pine. She studied the latter for a time and nodded. Then she hurried back to the street, and the Sailors’ Refuge relaxed into its immemorial peace.

  Still there was no sign of the bus that could take her along the shore to the village and Dinsul. She began walking, and before she had reached the curve in the road she was overtaken by the limousine.

  “Get in!” shouted Leslie Reverson.

  Miss Withers hesitated—for what was almost an impolite lapse of time. Then she stepped into the car and was whisked away so swiftly that she plumped down between the two youngsters. She found a place for her feet between the golf bags.

  “How did the match go?” she inquired.

  “Great,” said Leslie. “I beat Candy 88 to 94.”

  “I was a little off my game,” said Candida. “How can anybody play golf when you insist on—well, you know.”

  “It’s no secret,” said Leslie. He was bubbling, buoyant and youthful. “I want her to set the day, you know. Aunt’ll come around—I know she’d forgive us if we ran off to a registrar’s office and got it over with. But Candy won’t say no and she won’t say yes.” He laughed. “I’m afraid I don’t know the proper way to propose. I’m thinking of calling in some help.” He turned to Miss Withers, gayly. “You ask her why,” he said.

  “I don’t need to ask Candida why she won’t set the day,” said Miss Withers. “Because I happen to know.”

  “What? Why?” Leslie leaned forward wonderingly.

  Miss Withers smiled rather oddly. She turned to Candida. “Shall I tell him?”

  “I suppose—” Candida stopped short and stared.

  “Shall I tell him the real reason?” repeated Hildegarde Withers calmly.

  Candida said nothing. The car was approaching the causeway, now black as the receding tide splashed against it. Then the girl shook her head slowly.

  She felt in the pocket of her overcoat. “Good heavens,” she said. “Stop the car!”

  They paused on the slope. “Leslie,” she said, “I’ve left my jeweled vanity on the golf course. I used it when we stopped at that bench near the seventh green, you remember. Where you—I mean, where we rested. Would you mind terribly—”

  “Of course not!” Reverson was all politeness. “I’ll drop you at the castle, and then run back for it.”

  “Never mind, I’d enjoy the walk across the causeway,” said Candida.

  The young man was driven away in the ancient Buick, and Miss Withers and Candida set out, on the narrow black lane above the water, toward Dinsul. For a while they walked in silence.

  “How long have you known?” asked Candida finally.

  “Since I came down from London,” Miss Withers told her. “But what are we going to do about it?”

  Candida didn’t know.

  “We’d better have a good talk,” Miss Withers decided. “Meeting of the ways and means committee, you know. It’s not a simple problem.”

  “Simple!” cried Candida.

  Treves admitted them to the castle. “I hope there are no tourists about,” Miss Withers observed.

  “No, madam. The last party just left. But there was a certain unpleasantness, madam. I’m afraid the mistress will be very upset about it when she finds out. One of the visitors, you see, made an attempt to visit the top floor of the castle, which is strictly against the rules. When stopped, he was very unpleasant about it.” Treves rubbed his jaw, which Miss Withers noticed was a trifle swollen. “He was—er—persuaded to leave quietly. You know these Yankees, ma’am.”

  “He was a tall young man with a mustache, wasn’t he?” inquired Miss Withers.

  “Oh,” said Treves, “you must have met him on the causeway.”

  But Miss Withers and Candida were already mounting the stairs. As they approached her room, Miss Withers thought how lucky they were not to run into the Honorable Emily. She would be no help at the interview which was ahead of them.

  Miss Withers locked her door, while Candida sank upon the bed. The school teacher took a chair, while Tobermory rubbed against her ankles affectionately.

  “The meeting stands open for suggestions,” said Miss Withers. But there were no suggestions. Candida could but wouldn’t, and Tobermory would but couldn’t.

  Finally the school teacher said what was in her mind. The two women talked for a long, long time.

  At one o’clock Treves knocked on the door. “Luncheon will be served in twenty minutes in the mistress’s sitting room.”

  “We’ll be there,” Miss Withers told him. “Oh, Treves! Will you telephone for the limousine and have it waiting in time to catch the four-thirty train for London.”

  “Right away, ma’am. Shall I help you pack?”

  “The car is for me,” said Candida Noring. “No, thank you, I can manage.” Treves departed in the direction of the telephone.

  “Don’t worry,” said Miss Withers to Candida. “I won’t use what you have given me unless it is a matter of life or death for someone. Now, run along and freshen up for dinner. It will all come straight in the end.”

  Candida stopped in the doorway. “But the police! Suppose they suspect me?”

  Miss Withers smiled a faint smile. “They won’t. Police are all alike. They can’t see the forest for the trees.”

  The school teacher washed her hands and face in the bathroom. In spite of the excellent hot-water system of Dinsul, about which the Honorable Emily had bragged so much, the water was barely warm.

  Miss Withers then headed for the wing of the castle which was sacred to its mistress. Treves hailed her in the hall, announcing that a gentleman was calling downstairs.

  She hurried down and found Sergeant John Secker, very strained and official, in the drawing room. “Sorry to burst in on you,” he said.

  “Well?”

  He took a slip of paper from his pocket. “You’re in at the death,” he advised her. “It’s all over—and I’ve missed the target clean. I just got this from Chief Inspector Cannon at the Yard. It was sent last night, though some fool of a boy at the hotel shoved it under my door and also under my rug, so I just found it.”

  The message was brief enough. It read:

  KEEP NORING UNDER OBSERVATION UNTIL I ARRIVE WITH WARRANT IF SHE TRIES TO ESCAPE ARREST HER FOR THE MURDERS OF PETER NOEL AND ANDREW TODD.

  “For heaven’s sake,” said Miss Withers. She stared at the young man. “But—this is impossible!”

  He shrugged.

  “How could Candida get Noel to swallow poison? How could she force Todd to jump down a lift shaft? Even if you believe that she would be capable of exposing herself to the danger of dying with a cyanide cigarette in her mouth, will you answer me this one question—if Candida came down here with the Honorable Emily, as we know that she did, how could she have a black-bordered letter mailed from London two days later?”

  “Search me,” said the sergeant. “I think Cannon is crazy myself. But I’m just a cog in the wheel, you know. Mine not to do or die, mine but to reason why, or something…”

  “Police!” said Hildegarde Withers. “Ugh!”

  “I’ve got my job to do,” said the sergeant. “We don’t have to wait for a warrant, but we like to, in cases where there’s likely to be a trial with a defense attorney accusing us of all sorts of sharp practice. In the meantime, I’ve got to keep this Miss Noring in sight.”

  Miss Withers nodded slowly. “You’d better think up some excuse for hanging around the castle. Come on—we’ll call on the Honorable Emily.”

  Leslie Reverson threw two golf bags near the door and was introduced to the detective. “What a time,” he told Miss Withers. “Went over the whole course, and couldn’t find Candy’s vanity. Guess I’ll have to get her another.” He was more worried about the lost vanity case than about the advent of the young detective.

  Treves was in the upper hall, looking rather uneasy. Miss Withers asked him if luncheon was ready.

&n
bsp; “Yes, madam,” he said. “I’ve laid luncheon in the mistress’s sitting room. But—” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of it, I don’t. She never did it so long before.”

  “Who did what?” Miss Withers demanded.

  “The mistress, ma’am. She loves to read and doze in her bath, but she’s never stayed there all morning before. The water is still running, but she doesn’t answer a knock.” He shook his head doubtfully. “The doors to the bath are locked…”

  “Come on!” ordered Miss Withers. They came.

  Four times Secker flung his weight against the door of the room in which John of Pomeroy had let his lifeblood ebb forth so many years ago. But the door held fast. Miss Withers pushed him away and bent over the keyhole.

  “Bolted on the inside,” she decided. She led the way into the hall and around to the other entrance.

  “That door is always kept locked,” said Treves.

  But Miss Withers was doing things with a bent hairpin. After a moment she straightened up and turned the knob. The door swung inward, and they looked at the woman in the bathtub.

  Water still ran from the “hot” faucet—water that was cool. The Honorable Emily lay in the soapy water of the big old-fashioned tub, with her knees arched and her head beneath the surface.

  The sergeant knelt beside her. “She’s still warm,” he cried. “There’s a chance…”

  Throwing a near-by bathrobe over the figure, he carried the woman in through the door which Miss Withers unlatched, into the bedroom. Putting her down on the bed, he began frantically to apply artificial respiration.

  Miss Winters watched, her face an expressionless mask. But all the blue seemed to have drained from her eyes, leaving them murky gray pools.

  The sergeant stopped at last, out of breath. “It’s no go,” he said, apologetically.

  Miss Withers stared at him. “You’re sure she’s quite dead?”

  “Certain positive. But it hasn’t been for long, I’d say. Of course, the police surgeon will be better able to tell than I. Where’s the telephone? I’ll turn in the alarm—no, you’d better do it. Rules are that the officer stands guard over the body.”

  She nodded but she did not move. “You think it’s foul play, then—as they say on the stage?”

  Sergeant Secker shrugged. “No odor of bitter almonds on her mouth, if that’s what you mean. And not a mark on the body. But it’s not for us to say.”

  Miss Withers stared down at the singularly calm and self-satisfied expression of the dead woman. In the last few weeks she had come to have a great liking and respect for the brisk and good-natured person who now lay so warm and yet so still, victim of life’s last practical joke.

  “We shall see,” she promised. “We shall very soon see!”

  Chapter XIV

  The Reticence of Tobermory

  MISS WITHERS MET LESLIE Reverson on the top landing of the stairs. “I say, what’s the row about? Good old Treves just rushed past me with his face a nasty green color.”

  She told him what the row was about. He blanched.

  “No,” insisted Leslie Reverson. “That couldn’t happen to Aunt—”

  “It happened,” Miss Withers snapped. “I’m sending for the proper authorities. Where’s Candida?”

  “Candy? She’s in her room. Said something about packing, and that’s something I wanted to ask you about. Why—” He stammered wildly.

  “Not now, at any rate,” Miss Withers told him. “Get Candida and take her down to the drawing room. There will be questions asked.”

  “But I don’t understand—”

  Miss Withers did not think it necessary that he should. She was going down the stairs two steps at a time.

  The telephoning took almost no time at all, but when she came into the high-ceilinged drawing room of Dinsul she found Candida on a davenport and Leslie beside her making vague and nervous gestures toward cheering her up. Almost immediately there came a thundering upon the main door of the castle.

  “The police!” gurgled Leslie. “I’ll go—”

  Miss Withers waved him autocratically back to his seat. “If it is the police, I want to talk to them,” she said. “But unless the country authorities are practically instantaneous, I don’t see—”

  Treves, still an unhealthy green in color, was already at the door. Here was no detachment of police. Into the hall, pushing wrathfully past poor Treves, came Loulu Hammond. She had bought a new and very becoming hat in Paris, but she was wearing a very unbecoming expression. Loulu Hammond was, as she would have put it, boiling mad.

  “You!” she cried, as soon as she caught sight of Miss Withers. “Of all the colossal crust!”

  She plunged on into the drawing room and stopped short as she saw that Miss Withers was not alone.

  “Good-afternoon,” said the school teacher calmly. “I believe we all know each other?”

  “Bother that!” Loulu blurted out. She snapped open her pocketbook and produced a cablegram. “I want an explanation of this!”

  Miss Withers took the bit of paper, though she knew very well what message it contained. “Signed with my name,” she observed. She read aloud:

  “GERALD INJURED SERIOUSLY COME AT ONCE.”

  She smiled. “Of course, the injury was only to his sensibilities. But my intentions were of the very best.”

  “Intentions?” Loulu gasped. “Do you know that I dropped everything I was doing in Paris and flew across the Channel at the ungodly hour of six this morning—and then found that the only quick way to get down here was to take another plane to St. Ives? It cost me a small fortune, and I found Gerald in a disgustingly healthy condition. The man at the school hinted that I might find you over here. What is this, a practical joke? Didn’t we have enough of that on board ship?”

  Loulu stopped for breath, and just then four men, two in blue uniforms, marched into the hall past the butler.

  “Where’s the body?” demanded the foremost, a gruff person in a worn raglan overcoat.

  Sergeant John Secker came to the head of the stairs and beckoned. “Up here, sir.” The squadron tramped upward noisily.

  “Body!” whispered Loulu Hammond. “Did he say body?”

  Miss Withers gave a brief explanation. “Believe me, I did not plan to bring you here under such circumstances,” she said. “But there was something I had to say to you, and I could not mention it in a cable.”

  Loulu’s eyes were very wide. “Never mind that. What happened to the Honorable Emily? Was it another—?”

  “That,” said Miss Withers, “is what we are waiting to find out.”

  Loulu turned to Leslie Reverson. “This is your place, isn’t it? Well, will you forgive me for bursting in at a time like this?” Leslie murmured something vague about being delighted, he was sure. But Loulu went on. “I’ll be at the Queen’s in Penzance until tomorrow,” she advised Miss Withers. “In case you care to give me an explanation of this—this stupid trick. I suppose Tom got round you somehow. But it’s no use your playing Miss Fixit, and you can tell him so for me!”

  “Your husband had nothing to do with it,” Miss Withers began. But Loulu was heading for the door, evidently anxious to get out of the place before something more happened. Instead of Treves, a six-foot young constable with rosy cheeks stood against the door, his arms folded.

  “Sorry, miss,” he said, “but you’ll have to wait.”

  “But I just came here!” protested Loulu. “I don’t live here!”

  “Then you shouldn’t mind waiting,” said the red-cheeked constable without offense. “It’s the show place of all Cornwall, and well worth a bit of study.”

  “Ugh!” was the only bit of repartee Loulu could think of at the time. She came back into the drawing room and plumped herself in her chair. There was an interminable silence, for even Candida and Leslie had nothing to say to each other now.

  “If somebody doesn’t say something before the clock strikes again, I shall scream and roll on the floor,�
� Candida promised herself through her teeth.

  She was saved by the barest fraction of a minute, as the great-grandfather clock in the corner under the stairs began to whir inwardly in preparation for the striking of half-past two.

  There were heavy footsteps descending the stair. It was one of the policemen. He nodded toward Leslie Reverson.

  “The chief constable would like a word with you, sir.”

  It was apparent from his tone that the policeman realized that he was addressing the new lord of the manor, and that Dinsul with all its parapets, blackened oak, tapestries, portcullis, gulls, and tourists was the property of this frightened young man.

  With a last despairing look toward Candida, Leslie Reverson stalked out of the room and up the stairs in the wake of the constable. He was back in ten minutes, looking as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from his sloping shoulders.

  Candida was called, and likewise returned looking considerably more care-free.

  “You next, ma’am,” said the constable. Miss Withers almost trod on his heels as she went up the stairs.

  She prepared herself to face again that poor clay upon the bed, but she was shown into the sitting room of the Honorable Emily’s suite. The man in the raglan coat was seated at the writing desk, with an open notebook before him. Sergeant Secker stood beside him. “This is the lady I told you about,” he said. “Miss Withers—Chief Constable Polfran of the Duchy Police.”

  She was bursting with questions, but her attempt at securing information was nipped in the bud. Short, sharp queries came from the lips of the man at the desk, queries that dealt purely with the events in the Dinsul household that morning. As she finished her story of the locked doors and the discovery of the body in the bath, the bedroom door opened, and a man emerged who could be nobody but a provincial doctor. He carried a glistening top-hat, and looked very grave.

  “Well, Doctor?”

  “I knew this would happen some day,” said the medico. “As you know, besides being police surgeon, I’ve had a private practice here on the Cape for twenty years, and most of that time I’ve been Miss Pendavid’s medical man. She had a leaky valve in her heart, and a few months ago I gave her some smelling salts. She complained of seizures of giddiness and worse—they were nothing in themselves to endanger her, at least, not for some years yet—but I warned her not to attempt driving a car or swimming or anything where an attack might do real harm. She must have had a seizure while soaking in a full bathtub and drowned. All evidences of death by drowning.”