Death Comes to Cambers

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘Yes, m’lady,’ agreed Farman, ‘but she never does, m’lady; and then all the doors were locked.’

  ‘Her bed’s not been slept in,’ Amy said.

  Lady Hirlpool looked as if she didn’t believe it.

  ‘But that’s...’ she began, and then, without specifying what it was, she marched across the landing and along the passage to Lady Cambers’s room. She went in, and came out again almost at once.

  ‘No, it hasn’t been,’ she confirmed, and stood still in the doorway, looking at them and apparently expecting them to say something.

  By this time a certain uneasiness, a vague alarm, had begun to spread itself through the house. The maid who had taken the tray into the kitchen had reported that ‘Mr. Farman looked that upset’; the chauffeur, coming into the kitchen for his early-morning cup of tea, had smelt at the glass on the tray on the kitchen table, and inquired, with jocular envy, who had been swigging brandy already; the parlourmaid had reported that Amy had left Lady Cambers’s early-morning tray in the morning-room for her tea to grow cold. All the domestic staff – parlourmaid, housemaids, senior and junior, the tweeny, cook, kitchen-maid, chauffeur – were now hovering doubtfully on the frontier-line that cut off the family rooms from the staff apartments, and then cook, strong in the knowledge of a dignity that enabled her to hold her own even with Mr. Farman himself, came resolutely through the hall and up the stairs.

  ‘Is it burglars?’ she demanded, voicing her perennial fear. ‘And me thinking we were safe for once, with a young police gentleman in the house.’

  Lady Hirlpool had vanished into Lady Cambers’s room again, but now once more emerged. She somehow gave an impression of having just made a swift and careful search in every corner, in every drawer, behind every chair or curtain. She said: ‘It’s most extraordinary. She must be somewhere.’ She paused to see if anyone contradicted this. No one did, and finding it was a proposition generally accepted, but not carrying the matter much further, she asked: ‘Have you told Mr. Owen? If you haven’t, you had better.’

  The Mr. Owen she referred to was the young policeman on whose mere presence in the house the cook had so greatly relied. A grandson of Lady Hirlpool’s, he had chosen the police for a career, and by good luck and a certain stolid persistence of endeavour that never let him abandon any clue, however slight, had attained some success and promotion to the rank of sergeant in the C.I.D. It was through his grandmother, Lady Hirlpool, an old friend of Lady Cambers, that he had come to spend the week-end here, partly because his grandmother wanted to show him off to her friend, but ostensibly to advise Lady Cambers on precautions to be taken against the burglary whereof she shared her cook’s perennial dread that certain recent occurrences had much increased. His room was on the same floor, not far away, and when Farman entered he found the young man standing at the window, already fully dressed. He glanced round as the butler came in, and said to him: ‘Isn’t that field over there the one where Eddy Dene is doing his digging? Seems to be something up; there’s a bit of a crowd and people running about. Looks as if they had found the Missing Link all right.’

  But this jesting allusion to the archaeological investigations that were being carried on brought no response from Farman. He came to the window, too, and looked out. He said abruptly: ‘We can’t find Lady Cambers. She’s not in the house. Her bed’s not been slept in.’

  CHAPTER 2

  DISCOVERIES

  For a moment or two they remained standing in silence, the young detective and the butler, staring from the window at the little group assembled there in the sunshine in the distant field. Then Bobby said: ‘I think we had better see what’s up.’ He added: ‘Are you sure Lady Cambers isn’t in the house?’

  ‘We’ve looked everywhere,’ Farman answered. ‘Her maid says her bed hasn’t been slept in.’

  It was a piece of information that made Bobby look graver even than before.

  ‘Any doors or windows open this morning?’ he asked.

  ‘No; they were all locked and bolted same as usual,’ Farman answered.

  ‘Well, then, how did she get out?’ Bobby asked, and, when Farman only shook his head and looked bewildered, he went on: ‘Are you sure she was in the house when you locked up? I suppose you see to that?’

  ‘Last thing,’ Farman answered. ‘About eleven it was; and her ladyship wouldn’t be out at that time of night, would she?’

  They left the room together, and, on the landing outside, Bobby said to Lady Hirlpool, who was still standing there with Amy: ‘We’re going to have a look round outside. I expect she’s just gone out for a stroll before breakfast.’

  ‘No, you don’t; and don’t tell lies to your grandmother,’ retorted Lady Hirlpool. ‘Lotty never went for a walk before breakfast in her life. There’s something wrong, and you know it.’

  ‘We won’t be longer than we can help,’ Bobby answered. ‘Anyhow, there’s no sense in jumping to conclusions.’

  Followed by Farman he went into the hall, where the indoor servants had now gathered in a whispering, excited group.

  ‘May as well get on with the work,’ Bobby said to them. ‘If Lady Cambers has gone out for some reason, she’ll want breakfast when she gets back. Miller,’ he added, to the chauffeur, ‘better see that the car’s ready. It may be wanted.’

  ‘Her bed hasn’t been slept in,’ called out the parlourmaid. ‘I’ve looked myself and so it hasn’t.’

  ‘See that nothing in the room is touched till we know what has happened,’ Bobby directed. ‘Don’t touch or disturb anything in the house if you can possibly avoid it. Understand?’

  They said they did, and were plainly sufficiently frightened and impressed to make it likely they would try to obey, though sad experience had long ago convinced Bobby that always the important pieces of evidence get thrown away, because at first it seems so inconceivable they can be of any value, while irrelevant trifles are religiously preserved. Lady Hirlpool had come down the stairs now, and she and the maid, Amy, joined the little group of women-servants, while Miller retired to get the car ready in case of need, and Bobby, followed by Farman, went out by the front-door and round the side of the house, towards where, north of the building, was gathered the distant group they had observed from the window of Bobby’s room.

  Hurrying past the rose-garden and through the shrubbery above the tennis-lawns, they came soon to the boundary-fence of the grounds, where a small gate opened on a footpath leading to the village. On the other side of this path were fields sloping to the bed of a tiny stream, and then, sloping upwards again to a smooth rounded crest of grassy land known locally as The Mounts, the farm of which it formed part, going by the name of Mounts Farm. To the casual glance all this district might have seemed somewhat flat, dull, and uninspiring, but the trained geologist would have found it full of interest, such plain evidence did it show of slow rise and slower subsidence, of a time when The Mounts had been, in fact, a considerable range of hills, almost deserving the name of mountains, and when, in the place of the tiny streamlet of to-day, a great river had covered most of the valley, presently to flow into the Thames on its way to join the Rhine at some spot where now the North Sea ebbs and flows.

  Leaving the footpath that ran in an easterly direction towards the village, Bobby and his companion hurried across the fields, and saw running quickly towards them a figure that had detached itself from the group on the other side of the stream.

  ‘It’s Ray Hardy – Mr. Hardy’s son,’ Farman said uneasily. ‘He’s in a hurry about something.’

  Instinctively they paused. It was as though a sense of coming tragedy impinged upon their consciousness and held them still.

  ‘Who is Mr. Hardy?’ Bobby asked, his eyes fixed upon that coming, running figure.

  ‘Mr. Hardy’s the farmer here,’ Farman answered. ‘That’s his son, Ralph. Ray, they call him. What’s he running that way for? Some of the land’s Mr. Hardy’s own, but most he rents from her ladyship.’

  Ray Hardy
was quite close now. Though the long damp grass that still held much of the previous night’s soaking rain hampered his progress, he came at speed. He called out pantingly: ‘It’s Lady Cambers. She’s dead. In Frost Field. Mr. Bowman saw her. He told us.’

  It seemed to both Bobby and to Farman that they had already known this.

  ‘Well, now then, now then, now then,’ Farman muttered, and he would have gone on muttering those two words over and over again to himself if Bobby had not stopped him with a gesture for silence.

  Yet Bobby himself was almost as much affected by the bewildering suddenness with which this horror had leaped upon them. For a moment he had a brief vision of Lady Cambers as he had known her – brisk, energetic, authoritative – directing everybody and everything the way they should go, arranging all things to her taste, full of confidence in herself and in life. And now it seemed there had fallen upon her, without warning, a strange and dreadful doom. Recovering himself with an effort, reminding himself there was much that must need doing, he said: ‘How... I mean... what’s happened... is there anything to show...?’

  Young Ray Hardy sank his voice to a whisper. It seemed he was afraid of his own voice, of his own words. He said: ‘It’s murder... murder all right.... I don’t know who did it... none of us knew anything, not till Mr. Bowman came and told us.’

  ‘You’ve seen yourself... you’re sure...?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘I helped carry her to Eddy Dene’s shed over there,’ answered Ray. ‘Looks she’s been throttled – strangled.’ He gulped. ‘I know nothing about it, but murder that would be – murder.’

  ‘It was burglars she was afraid of,’ Farman interrupted, in a queer, high-pitched voice. ‘Burglars. If it’s murder – well, who did it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Who did it?’ Ray repeated. ‘That’s what they’re all saying, and no one knows. God knows I don’t!’

  He was evidently badly shaken, and that perhaps was little wonder. There was a heavy sweat on his forehead, and he wiped it away with the sleeve of his coat. Bobby, looking at him with close attention, did not find himself very favourably impressed. His eyes were bloodshot and heavy, his mouth loose, his chin seemed to run away from it. A weak face, Bobby thought, and with a suggestion in those bloodshot eyes of too great a fondness for beer and for strong ale; no lad of his apparent age should have eyes like that. But one had to make allowance for the shock of such a happening, and he continued in the same hurried, jerky voice: ‘It’s our field, but we didn’t know, none of us, till Mr. Bowman came running and shouting to us to come and help. Awful he looked, and running like all, he was, and you’ve only to look at her to see it must be murder. Jordan says so, too. He’s sent to Hirlpool for help. Dad says it did ought to be Scotland Yard up in London by rights, but Jordan says it’s Hirlpool first and Scotland Yard afterwards as required. Dad said he had a good mind to ring up Scotland Yard himself, only Jordan’s police, and he ought to know. It’s our field where she was, but none of us knew a thing about it till Mr. Bowman came running and calling across the turnips.’

  All this came tumbling out in one breathless spate of words. It was how the boy’s terror and excitement found relief. That Jordan was the name of the local sergeant of police, Bobby already knew. With one constable, a man named Norris, to help him, he guarded the King’s peace in this part of the country, and as a rule had nothing much more serious to deal with than the theft of a stray hen or the disputes of two quarrelsome neighbours. Bobby knew, too, that Hirlpool was the county town and the headquarters of the county police, of which the head was a Colonel Lawson. It was quite recently that Colonel Lawson had been appointed to his position by a Watch Committee convinced that discipline and organization were the chief things to consider in police work, and, though Bobby recognized that there was much to be said for that belief, he also thought that probably the newly appointed chief constable was not likely to have done much as yet to improve a detective department known to be somewhat old-fashioned in its methods and ideas, or, indeed, even so far to have realized that that task was of any great or pressing importance. Nor was he altogether sure how the county police authorities would be likely to regard any action he himself might take in this emergency. But he was on the spot; he was a sworn officer of police; he felt he could not divest himself of responsibility. He said to Farman: ‘I think you had better go back. Let them know what has happened. Better ring up Sir Albert, too. Lock the door of Lady Cambers’s room; make sure, if you can, nothing has been touched. Look after her sitting-room, too; see that’s locked as well. And don’t let anyone move about in the gardens. There may be footprints.’

  Farman, used to obeying orders, returned accordingly to carry out these he had just received, and Bobby, telling young Hardy to come with him, hurried on towards the scene of the discovery.

  At one point the little stream running down the centre of the valley was crossed by a rough bridge of wooden logs, though, indeed, in most places one could easily have stepped across it. Here, too, was a gate in the wire fence that followed the bed of the stream and divided the different fields. Through this Bobby and his companion passed, though not till Bobby had given a moment or two to a close examination of the logs forming the bridge, without, however, being able to find that they showed anything of interest.

  ‘Anyhow, she almost certainly came this way,’ he thought. ‘And most likely her murderer was waiting for her over there. Only what brought her out so late at night?’

  The field Bobby and young Hardy now entered was laid down in pasture, as was that they had just traversed. In its centre there stood a small shed, apparently of recent construction. At various other points near-by, digging had evidently been going on – as though for some reason it had been desired to sink a number of wells or possibly shallow-depth mining shafts. Beyond was a road leading to the main London highway, a mile or two on the further side of the village. Near the shed a number of people were clustered, or going in and out, and others were hurrying towards it from the direction of the village. Bobby said to his companion: ‘Who did you say found her?’

  ‘Mr. Bowman,’ Ray repeated. ‘He lives over there with Miss Bowman, only she’s gone now.’ As he spoke he pointed vaguely to where, above the shoulder of the rising ground, the chimneys of a house or two were visible. ‘He goes to get the train for Hirlpool every morning, and he saw her. He said first he thought it was someone sleeping out, and then he thought it was funny, so he went to look. It’s a wonder he saw her. I never did, only it just happens there’s a gap in the fence right in line where he was, and he saw her through it, lying there, and so he went to look.’

  ‘Do you mean you had been that way this morning?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘Yes, along the top of the field by the road over there, but I never saw her. You wouldn’t unless you looked, and I never did. Why should I?’

  ‘You were out early,’ Bobby commented.

  ‘You’ve got to on a farm,’ the other retorted. ‘We aren’t townsfolk. And I do a bit of rabbiting, too, on our land, so I go round the traps as often as I can – seeing the fuss that’s made by some if they’re heard crying out, as can’t be helped always. Of course, I’m particular to keep to our own land, and we never knew, none of us, what had happened, till Mr. Bowman came running like I told you. Dead-white he was, and father sent at once for Jordan, and the doctor, too. Like dead himself Mr. Bowman looked – upset all right. Shock, you know – the shock did it. Look, that’s where she was lying,’ he added, pointing.

  The spot indicated was about half-way between stream and shed, in a direct line from the gate in the fence by the rough bridge over the stream to the shed, and just about where the long, slow rise in the land to the grassy crest ahead first became noticeable. A glance told Bobby that much trampling and running to and fro had already quite certainly destroyed all chance of finding any helpful or significant tracks. He asked Ray to point out the exact spot where the body had lain, but evidently the young man’s idea of precision resembled that
of most other people, and for him meant merely ‘there or thereabouts’. Then, too, when Bobby tried to question him he grew confused, and presently pronounced for another spot nearly three yards away from that he had first pointed out. It was only too certain that the exact spot, in the sense in which Bobby understood ‘exact’, was not to be discovered from him, though the point was of less importance in that the long, damp grass preserved few signs, and even those it might otherwise have shown had been confused by so much trampling and running to and fro.

  ‘She was lying on her back, straight out,’ Ray said, ‘but Mr. Bowman said she was on her face when he found her, and he turned her over and she was so stiff and cold she must have been lying there all the night.’

  He went on to give a few more words of description that showed the characteristic signs of strangulation had been present, but added that Mr. Bowman had been very clear that no piece of cord, or anything else that could have been used by the murderer to effect his purpose with, had been left on the spot. Bobby, looking round about carefully himself, decided the whole field would have to be thoroughly searched to make sure of this. His shoes and trouser-ends got very wet in the long grass the previous night’s rain had so thoroughly soaked, and Ray made some passing reference to the storm and how glad he had been, as he lay in bed and heard the rain coming down, that he was not out in it. He was very amused, too, when Bobby presently discovered a match-stalk. It was of the kind called ‘book’ matches, and printed on the flat stalk were the words: ‘Hotel Henry VIII’. Bobby knew the name for that of an hotel recently opened with a great flourish of trumpets in the Mayfair district of London. The thing might be of importance or might not, and he put it carefully away, again to the amusement of his companion. One of the party, Ray explained, had been a good deal affected by the unfortunate woman’s appearance and had lighted a cigarette to steady his nerves.