Death Comes to Cambers

by E. R. Punshon

  Colonel Lawson said: ‘Looks as if they had found something over there.’

  With the other two following him, he walked across to where the three men stood by the rhododendron-bush. Both the butler and the chauffeur knew who he was, and Farman said: ‘There’s been someone hiding here, sir. There’s matches and cigarette-ends.’

  ‘Soon as I came along,’ explained the gardener, O’Hara, ‘I saw someone had been at the rhododendrons – and no stray dog nor cat, neither. You can see for yourself, sir. It’s as plain as the nose on your face there’s been someone hiding there – all night long, in my humble opinion.’

  In fact, a clearly defined depression in the soft mould provided sufficient evidence that someone had been lying there, concealed, for a considerable time. A number of matches and cigarette-ends were lying about, and their condition, and that of the ground, showed plainly that position had been taken up after, and not before, the heavy rain of the previous night. But careful search failed to reveal anything else of significance.

  ‘Looks like burglary. Looks like someone watching for a chance to get inside,’ Colonel Lawson remarked. ‘One of the gang, hiding and waiting here. Another of them commits the murder and bolts. First fellow waits here till he gets tired, and then clears off, too. Only, what made Lady Cambers go out, and what had she in her suit-case?’ Bobby thought this obsession about what the suit-case had contained was unfortunate and more likely to confuse than help. But still he supposed he might be all wrong in holding that belief. He had been examining the cigarette-ends, and now he said: ‘Bulgarian Tempo, sir. There’s one here only half smoked, with the name quite plain on it. Expensive things; not the sort a burglar would be likely to smoke – not unless he was very flush. And then he wouldn’t be out on a fresh job.’

  ‘I don’t think that follows,’ observed Colonel Lawson. ‘I suppose big jobs are often planned months ahead; it doesn’t follow a job is taken on because of being hard-up. Or expensive cigarettes might come from some other burglary – part of the loot.’ He turned to Farman: ‘You don’t know anyone here who smokes that brand of cigarette, do you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir; not that I ever noticed, sir,’ Farman answered, his face so wooden and expressionless Bobby felt certain that he lied.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE MISSING JEWELLERY

  For a little time longer they all lingered, staring, wondering, guessing, all oddly affected by this idea of the unknown watcher who had stayed in hiding here, watching and waiting after murder had been committed elsewhere.

  ‘Did he know?’ Colonel Lawson said, half to himself. ‘If he knew, why did he stay? If he didn’t know, why did he come?’

  But these were questions to which none of those present knew the answer.

  Except for the scattered match-stalks, the numerous cigarette-ends, the depression in the damp mould so clearly marked as to prove that the person making it had been lying there some considerable time, and for one or two plainly defined footprints, there was nothing to suggest who that personage had been, or what the object and intention of so prolonged a vigil. And footprints in these days of the mass-production of boots and shoes are seldom of much value, nor did these present any characteristic likely to be of use in tracing their owner.

  ‘Number eight size, I think,’ Bobby remarked. ‘No hobnails or anything like that. But that doesn’t go for much. Every farm-labourer to-day has his heavy boots he wears at work and his light shoes for afterwards.’

  ‘There had better be plaster casts taken,’ Colonel Lawson said.

  Jordan was left on guard to see that nothing was disturbed, and the chief constable, accompanied now only by Moulland and by Bobby, so freely had he been obliged to shed his retinue, went on to the house, where, at the front door, all its inmates were gathered to await him.

  For the discovery that some unknown person had for some unknown reason been hiding among the rhododendrons had completed their disarray. Only Lady Hirlpool, upheld by a sense of responsibility, and Amy Emmers, Lady Cambers’s own maid, upheld by her own strength of character, retained their self-control. The cook was in tears; the kitchenmaid in flight; the parlourmaid in something like hysterics; the first and second housemaids in each other’s arms; the tweeny in a chair, hovering between an instinct to faint and a presentiment that no one would take any notice if she did. The arrival of the chief constable and his two followers did little to reassure them. Apparently the least they anticipated was immediate arrest, and not until they had all been shepherded back into their own special domain, behind the green-baize service door, could Colonel Lawson begin his task.

  ‘All lost their heads,’ he grumbled, ‘except that tall girl. Who is she?’

  ‘Amy Emmers,’ Lady Hirlpool explained. ‘She was poor dear Lotty’s own maid; and of course they’ve lost their heads. Their mistress has lost her life.’

  ‘Oh, yes, well,’ conceded Lawson, admitting, as it were, that possibly a murder in a quiet country house is more disturbing, and even terrifying, than it appears to the calm official mind.

  ‘Besides,’ Lady Hirlpool went on, pressing her advantage, ‘it’s simply awful to think of poor Lotty’s murderer hiding in the rhododendrons, waiting for her to go out. I feel like screaming, myself, when I think of it.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ agreed the chief constable, somewhat hurriedly, for he was by no means sure that the threatened screams were not on the point of production.

  Indeed that very nearly happened, for Lady Hirlpool, upheld before the household staff by a certain sense of responsibility, had lost that feeling in this official presence. What saved the situation before she finally yielded and let herself go was that Bobby moved forward and whispered ferociously into her ear: ‘Buck up, grandmother. Buck up, I tell you.’

  ‘Yes, Bobby, I’ll try,’ she answered, as meekly as though never had she applied her slipper to the appropriate portion of his anatomy, and with a sigh of relief for the crisis he saw averted, Colonel Lawson went on: ‘Puzzling feature of the case, that is. Looks as if the fellow had been there nearly all night. Yet it seems the murder was committed somewhere before midnight – soon after that heavy rain there was. If he was the murderer, what was he waiting for? And if he was someone else, what was the motive?’

  ‘Waiting to get into the house,’ explained Lady Hirlpool, ‘and then, most likely, he would have murdered us all.’ She caught her grandson’s stern warning eye and gulped down the trembling sob of fear she had not quite been able to repress. ‘Poor Lotty kept all her jewellery in the house. I told her it wasn’t safe,’ she added.

  ‘Nothing’s been disturbed, I hope?’ Lawson asked. ‘I want to examine her rooms very carefully.’

  ‘Oh, no, nobody’s touched anything,’ Lady Hirlpool assured him. ‘Nobody would have, even without Bobby’s message. Everyone was too frightened. Bobby’s my grandson, you know. He’s at Scotland Yard. It’s so lucky he’s here. He’ll be able to tell you just what you ought to do.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, quite so,’ agreed the chief constable, with a baleful glance at the unlucky Bobby, on whom, too, Superintendent Moulland fixed a cold, menacing gaze, so that shivers ran up and down that young man’s back as he miserably drooped and wished with ardour that grandmothers were both less partial and less outspoken.

  But Lady Hirlpool beamed on him, quite sure that now she had retrieved her position in his eyes she knew her near approach to a breakdown had slightly compromised.

  ‘But he needn’t have worried about anything being touched,’ she went on. ‘After we knew what had happened, none of us dared move. We all just held each other’s hands and tried to think it wasn’t true – all except Emmers. She’s braver. And then O’Hara called Farman outside, because he had found that someone had been hiding in the rhododendrons. After that,’ said her ladyship frankly, ‘we’ all made up our minds we were all going to have our throats cut immediately. Even Emmers, too.’

  ‘Could you take us to Lady Cambers’s room?’ Lawson asked, just
as, more than a little to the relief of Lady Hirlpool, Farman appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, here’s Farman. He’ll show you everything,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and sit with the maids. They won’t be so frightened if I’m with them. Bobby can come and tell me if you want anything more.’

  As no objection was made, she vanished through the baize door with some precipitation, and probably it was not only the maids who found themselves less afraid in company. The chief constable beckoned to Farman.

  ‘Which is Lady Cambers’s room?’ he asked. ‘I understand there is one sitting-room she used more than the rest.’

  ‘Yes, sir. This way, sir,’ Farman answered, and led them down the passage leading from the hall to the garden door out of which opened the room required. The door was closed but not locked, and for that Farman apologized.

  ‘The bedroom door I locked myself, sir,’ he explained, ‘but I hadn’t the key for this. Lady Cambers kept it herself. She used to lock the door sometimes when she was busy with letters or business. But I told the staff no one was to touch anything, and I’m sure none of them did. None of them moved out of the hall, I think, sir. Very upset, sir. Naturally, sir, if I may say so.’

  ‘Where did Lady Cambers keep her keys?’ Lawson asked.

  ‘In her hand-bag. She was very particular about them,’ answered the butler.

  The chief constable turned to Moulland and Bobby.

  ‘I can’t remember there were any keys found on her,’ he remarked.

  Neither Bobby nor Moulland had seen any keys, though it was Sergeant Jordan who, while waiting the arrival of his superior officers, had checked the possessions of the dead woman.

  They all entered the room. It was of only moderate size, comfortably and plainly furnished, in good taste, and with touches of daintiness and refinement, but also with a show of severity that proclaimed its use for the business of the estate. By the window stood a writing-table; on it a blotting-book, pens, and ink. There was a larger table in the middle of the room, with two chairs drawn up between it and the fire-place, as if two persons had been sitting there and talking. In one corner was a small safe, built into the thick outer wall of the old house. Lawson went across to the writing-table, looked at the leather-bound blotting-book lying there, opened it with some vague idea of finding important information on the blotting-paper, observed that it was quite clean and new except for a row of figures that did not interest him, and then began to open in turn the drawers of the table. Bobby took the opportunity of saying to Farman: ‘Do you know if Lady Cambers ever used a fountain-pen? I don’t think I ever saw her with one.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Farman answered. ‘Not that I know of.’

  Moulland had been putting down on the writing-table various objects he had been carrying. Among them was the fountain-pen Bobby had found on the scene of the murder. While Moulland was saying something to the chief constable, Bobby turned down the handkerchief in which it was still enveloped and showed it to Farman.

  ‘This wasn’t hers, was it?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. That’s Eddy Dene’s,’ the butler answered at once. ‘A present from her ladyship, I believe.’

  His tone as he said this was so markedly non-committal that Bobby glanced at him sharply, but, before he could say anything, Colonel Lawson turned round.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘The pen – belongs to young Dene, you say?’

  ‘Well, sir, I couldn’t be sure, sir,’ Farman answered. ‘But it looks very like it, sir – very like it indeed; very much like one her ladyship gave him herself, sir, for a present.’

  His tone was still so markedly non-committal that both Lawson and Moulland seemed to notice it. They exchanged glances, and Lawson, after a moment’s hesitation, said: ‘We’ll go into that later. I would like to hear what you know, first, of what happened last night.’

  It was not much Farman had to tell. He had locked up after Eddy Dene left at half-past ten. He was quite clear that he had securely locked and bolted every door. He had finished his task a little after eleven. He was quite sure Lady Cambers was then in her room, and he had seen her go up to bed about eleven, while the rain was still falling heavily. She had commented on the downpour to him, as she passed him in the hall, and he thought, now, she seemed a little worried or bothered over its being so unusually heavy. After that he had not seen her again. He had gone to his own room on the ground floor, next the pantry. Lady Cambers liked him to sleep there, as a kind of safeguard for the silver against burglars. He had not gone to bed at once. He had sat at his open window, reading the paper and smoking his pipe, till quite late – one o’clock perhaps. He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t noticed the time. But he had neither seen nor heard anything out-of-the-way, and when he had gone to bed he had gone to sleep at once, and not wakened till his usual time in the morning. It had all been a tremendous shock to him, and he couldn’t understand it in the least.

  Lawson asked one or two questions, and inquired about Lady Cambers’s keys. Did she always keep them herself, or did she ever trust them to anyone else?

  Farman was quite clear and emphatic in his assertion that his mistress was always most careful with them and never let them out of her possession. If they had not been found in her hand-bag, he could not imagine what had become of them. The chief constable opened a drawer of the writing-table, and took a bunch of keys that he had seen lying just within.

  ‘What about these?’ he asked.

  Apparently very much surprised, Farman came nearer to look at them more closely.

  ‘That’s them, sir, all right,’ he declared, blinking at them in the same surprised manner. ‘I don’t know what they are doing there, sir.’

  Bobby, too, drew closer to look, and thought that he also recognized them as those of Lady Cambers he himself had noticed she was always careful to keep in her own possession. He remembered that string or column of figures that had caught Colonel Lawson’s attention, and, going across to the safe, had a look at the combination lock. Farman was still expressing surprise over the keys.

  ‘Her ladyship was always most careful and particular about them, sir,’ he was saying. ‘I’ve never known her put them in a drawer – never.’

  ‘It seems she did this time, for some reason,’ Lawson remarked. ‘Do you know which is the key of the safe? Or the combination? It’s a combination lock in figures, I think, not letters.’

  Farman seemed equally uninstructed on both points.

  ‘Key no good unless we know the right combination,’ observed Lawson, and Bobby ventured to make a suggestion, indicating the leather-bound blotting-book as he did so.

  ‘There’s a row of figures someone jotted down there,’ he said. ‘Always five figures, and all struck out except the last. I was wondering if they could be the numbers of the combination Lady Cambers put down in case she forgot?’

  ‘It’s just a chance, we might try,’ agreed Lawson, and Farman remarked: ‘There was a difficulty, sir, about a year ago, when her ladyship did forget. We had to get a man down from the makers, and I remember her ladyship saying, afterwards, she would always make a note of the number when she changed the combination.’

  ‘Just like a woman trying to be businesslike,’ commented the chief constable, with considerable injustice. ‘Gets a first-class safe and sets the lock all right, and then leaves the key and a note of the combination all handy.’

  ‘I never knew her leave her keys about before, sir,’ Farman said again. ‘Her ladyship was always most particular.’

  ‘Well, she did this time,’ repeated Lawson, impatiently, fitting the keys one after the other to the lock of the safe till he found the right one. ‘The jewellery is kept here, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Her ladyship liked to have it where she could get it when she wanted.’

  ‘Was it valuable?’

  ‘I understood it was worth twenty or thirty thousand pounds, sir,’ the butler answered cautiously. ‘Especially the Cleopatra pearl there was so much talk abou
t.’

  The chief constable whistled softly as, having by now hit on the right key, he opened the safe. Within he found a good many papers and documents of one kind and another, a cash-box, containing twenty or thirty pounds in notes and change, but no sign of any jewels.

  ‘Are you sure the jewellery was kept here?’ Lawson asked the butler.

  ‘Yes, sir. It was always understood so, sir. Everyone knew that was where it was kept,’ Farman answered. He was looking over the chief constable’s shoulder. It seemed he could not believe his eyes. He muttered, half to himself: ‘Now then... now then... it’s been took.’

  With a touch of animation in his generally somewhat stolid manner, Moulland exclaimed: ‘That’s what the suitcase was for. That’s why it was empty when it was found.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lawson. ‘Yes. Yes. Only we can’t be sure... dashed odd.’

  ‘What for should she take all her jewels out in a suit-case at that time of night?’ Farman burst out suddenly.

  ‘Well, if they aren’t here, and if they were here, same as you say, where are they?’ retorted Moulland.

  ‘May have something to do with that fellow in the rhododendrons,’ mused Colonel Lawson. ‘Suggests the motive for the murder, of course, only how... who... why...?’

  He was looking hard at the butler as he spoke, and it was easy to see what suspicions were running in his mind. Farman, more obviously agitated and disturbed even than before, was beginning to perspire gently. He said: ‘Begging your pardon, sir, I think I ought to say I came, when Emmers told me she couldn’t find her ladyship, to see if she was here, and she wasn’t, and there was a tray on the table with a plate and glass, as if someone had been partaking of refreshment. The glass smelt of brandy, which her ladyship never took, so at first I thought perhaps Eddy Dene had had some, only, if he had, her ladyship must have served him herself, which isn’t likely, and, besides, she would have had to go and find the brandy. If I may say so, sir, it looks to me as if someone else was here late, and her ladyship let him in and let him out again herself, without any of us knowing.’