Death Comes to Cambers

by E. R. Punshon

  CHAPTER 9

  TEN SUSPECTS – THREE QUESTIONS

  This was all Sterling had to say, so his examination did not last long. As he himself explained, he had only arrived on the scene that morning. But one point of importance did emerge at the end of the interview.

  ‘I think that’s all we have to ask you at present,’ Colonel Lawson had said, and then, remembering, added: ‘Oh, by the way, yes. I understand you are your aunt’s heir?’

  ‘I don’t know. She told me once she intended to make her will in my favour,’ Sterling answered slowly. ‘I have no idea whether she did or not. Of course, even if she did, she might have altered it again.’

  ‘Had you any reason to think she might do that?’ the chief constable asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know; she rather seemed to think it gave her a right to tell me what I had to do. She got a bit shirty if you didn’t do just what she thought you ought,’ answered the young man. ‘Of course, it was awfully good of her, thinking of leaving me everything, and I was very grateful and all that, but I wasn’t going to do the tame-lap-dog act all the same. There are limits.’

  ‘Was there any special point you disagreed upon?’ Sterling hesitated, flushed, looked as if he would refuse to answer, changed his mind and said: ‘Oh, well, I suppose it was that she rather wanted to pick out a girl for me to marry, and I didn’t see it. I dare say we both got a bit ratty.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know exactly. Quite recently. She was always bringing it up.’

  ‘Did she actually say anything about changing her will?’

  ‘No. Yes. Well, in a way. I thought once she was hinting she would, and I told her straight out when I married I should please myself. It wasn’t only that. I knew jolly well she wanted Uncle Albert to come back. She was very bitter about him and very keen on him at the same time. I knew he only had to make it plain he was turning down the Bowman girl for good and all, and aunt would have jumped at the chance of making it up with him. Then, of course, she would have had to make her will over again. Well, that’s all right, of course, but I didn’t see her making me marry some bally girl I knew nothing about just so she could fix it up with Uncle Albert again.’

  ‘How? In what way? I don’t follow that quite,’ Lawson said.

  ‘Oh, well, it’s like this. The girl she wanted me to marry is one of the Cambers family, only another branch. Had the same ancestor somewhere about the Wars of the Roses or thereabouts. Uncle Albert had some sort of sentimental idea of perpetuating the family name by passing on the estate here to these other Cambers. Aunt thought she could kill several birds with the same stone: work a reconciliation with Uncle Albert, get me safely married, settle the destination of both the family estates and her own private money, all together. I did see the girl once. Quite a kid. We bored each other stiff at first sight. I told my aunt right out I wasn’t having any.’

  ‘Was that what you had come to see her about?’

  ‘Oh, no. I was just running down to see how she was and all that.’

  Colonel Lawson consulted his notes, asked one or two more quite unimportant questions, and then the young man was allowed to depart. But he was asked to remain in the vicinity for the present, and at any rate not to leave without letting his intention to do so be known.

  ‘What about this young Dene?’ the chief constable asked next, but had to be told that all efforts to find him had proved unavailing so far.

  Apparently he was neither at his father’s shop nor anywhere else in the village. No one had seen him, and the chief constable scowled and frowned very much on receiving this information. Then Farman appeared, to report that Sir Albert Cambers had rung through to say he was on the way and would arrive shortly. The news of the tragedy had reached him while he was in bed with an attack of influenza, but he got up at once and would have started before, only that he had been obliged to wait so long for the car he had ordered from the Jubilee Garage. Then, too, a message had been received from Scotland Yard agreeing to Detective-Sergeant Owen’s services being placed for the time at the disposal of Chief Constable Lawson, in accordance with the request made. Colonel Lawson was very pleased on receiving this message, and beamed approval on Bobby. No one now could blame him for not calling in the help of Scotland Yard and yet the direction of the case would remain entirely in his own – as he felt – very capable hands: because to Colonel Lawson a sergeant was a person who stood to attention and waited for orders, not moving an inch till he got them.

  ‘Better make a fair copy of your notes, sergeant,’ he said to Bobby.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said Bobby. ‘I was wondering, sir,’ he added carelessly, ‘if I might potter about the village a little first and see if I can pick up any gossip. They all know I was staying here, so they’ll think it natural enough, and they may talk more freely to me than they would to you, sir, or to Mr. Moulland.’

  ‘Oh, by all means,’ agreed Colonel Lawson, thinking no harm of ‘pottering’, ‘and see if you can get any hint of what’s likely to have become of that young Dene fellow. I dare say there’s no connection, but it seems curious that two people should vanish immediately like this – Dene and the man reported as having roused suspicions by asking questions in the village.’ He paused, hesitated, and added: ‘There’s one thing perhaps you ought to know, but you understand it is for information solely; it is not to be taken into account or allowed to prejudice the inquiry in any way.’

  ‘Yes, sir; no, sir,’ said Bobby, wondering what this meant.

  Instead of speaking, the chief constable glanced at his superintendent, who cleared his throat and said: ‘We have it on record that Farman served three years’ penal servitude for robbing his employer just before the war. He was in prison when the war broke out, was released earlier than usual in order to join up, served till the armistice, and has had a good character ever since.’

  ‘I understand, sir,’ said Bobby. ‘I won’t let it influence me in any way.’ And, indeed, it hardly seemed likely to him that this twenty-year-old story was of any importance.

  He departed, therefore, and when he had gone the chief constable added to Moulland: ‘What’s the betting young Dene’s bolted?’

  ‘You think he’s guilty, sir?’ Moulland asked.

  ‘Looks like it. Great mistake to take up a young fellow of that class. Gives them ideas. Puts notions in their heads. Did you notice that, after the butler let Dene out, no one seems to have seen Lady Cambers alive? What about this for a working theory? Dene knows all about the jewellery. He strangles the poor woman, opens the safe with her keys he takes from her hand-bag, where he knows she keeps them, pushes the body through the window in order to conceal it later, and fills his pockets with the jewellery. He himself rings the bell for the butler to let him out, goes off without any suspicion being raised, and, instead of going home, slips round the house to recover the body. He carries it as far as where it was found, but then it gets too much for him and he abandons it there. He drops his pen by accident at the same time; he hides the jewellery and goes off to recover his nerve and wait for the discovery to be made. That accounts for all doors and windows being found fast in the morning, as they were apparently.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Moulland dutifully but a trifle doubtfully. ‘The maid says she was with Lady Cambers in her bedroom after Dene left.’

  ‘She’s Dene’s sweetheart,’ the chief constable pointed out. ‘If a girl’s in love with a man she’ll say anything to save him. She may have been in it from the first, for that matter. There’s something I don’t understand about that girl, and that I don’t like.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Moulland, who, indeed, had reached his present eminence in the county police force chiefly through the zeal, fervour, and frequency with which, all through his career, he had said, ‘Yes, sir.’

  But Bobby, well on his way by now to the village, was considering many other theories and possibilities, and presently, perched on a five-barred gate, he produced hi
s pocket-book and began to make a list of the points that seemed to him to require special attention.

  There was Mr. Bowman, for instance, to begin with.

  Was there anything in the various hints and rumours that his sister was the cause, knowing or unknowing, of the recent breach between Lady Cambers and her husband? At any rate, it would be interesting to find out, if possible, how far Sir Albert was seriously entangled with Miss Bowman. A man infatuated with a girl might do strange things to rid himself of the wife who stood between.

  What was Mr. Bowman’s financial position? (He had recently sold his car and had not bought a new one.)

  Was there anything about his discovery of the body to suggest he had seen it because he knew already it was there? (There was a high hedge, and the field sloped, and young Ray Hardy had apparently gone close-by without noticing anything. But, then, he might have been more absorbed with his own affairs and Mr. Bowman might have sharp eyes.)

  Was his apparent nervous collapse after the discovery genuine or assumed? It had been so marked that he had felt able neither to stay on the spot nor go on to business, but had been obliged to return straight home. If it was genuine, was it a result of guilty knowledge? If it was assumed, why?

  ‘Plenty there to keep a fellow busy,’ Bobby told himself.

  Then there was Eddy Dene.

  How did his pen come to be on the scene of the murder?

  An obvious clue, certainly, but perhaps a little too obvious. Still, obvious clues were sometimes good clues, too. There was that case in Chicago, for instance, where two young degenerates planned the perfect crime, and then one of them proceeded to leave his spectacle-case on the scene of the murder.

  Was it significant that Dene had had so prolonged an interview with Lady Cambers so short a time before the murder? But, then, she was his friend and patron on whom apparently he depended for obtaining the money for carrying on his archaeological researches – and there had been something about an American millionaire, an introduction to whom she had apparently promised. One does not usually kick down the ladder by which one is climbing upwards.

  And then the girl he was engaged to – Lady Cambers’s maid, Amy Emmers – who had explained away with such gentle assurance the story of the quarrel with her mistress. Certainly there was something about her that was hard to understand, and one of the deepest instincts of human nature is to regard with marked suspicion all that is not easily understood. Then, of course, she had every opportunity of securing the missing jewellery, so far as that went. How suavely and easily, too, she had explained the washing-up of the glass and plate whereon such valuable finger-prints might have been found – or might not. After all, the girl’s action could easily have been quite innocent, and in that morning’s excited, overwrought, slightly hysterical atmosphere it was conceivable she had found it a relief to perform an ordinary piece of commonplace household routine.

  His thoughts turned to the vicar of the parish, Mr. Andrews. Far-fetched, perhaps, to suspect him, a clergyman of blameless life; but Bobby had seen his eyes of the fanatic, and he had threatened judgement and judgement had arrived. Bobby found himself reflecting that prophets have been known occasionally to take steps to make their prophecies come true.

  Perhaps, of all those concerned, young Tim Sterling had the most obvious motive. He inherited his aunt’s fortune, which by common rumour was substantial, and he was aware that the will whereby he benefited was subject to alteration at any moment. Then, too, pressure he evidently strongly resented was being brought on him to marry where his inclinations did not lie; and what had brought him down so late this Sunday night to visit his aunt? A week-end visit would have been more easily comprehensible than this dash down from town late on Sunday, complicated by his failure to reach his destination and the spending of the night at a Hirlpool inn.

  There rose before Bobby a memory of Sterling’s thin, dark, vivid face, a face, Bobby thought, of one of strong emotions, of many possibilities. Nor was Bobby altogether satisfied that Sterling’s manner under examination had been quite normal. There had been, he thought, a hint of restraint, of carefulness not altogether natural in one of so vivid and eager a personality. But then, again, one had to remember the circumstances that perhaps made such an attitude not so much natural as inevitable.

  Bobby shook his head impatiently, hoped he was not growing fanciful, and turned to the next on his list of suspects – Sir Albert Cambers himself – for Bobby felt he deserved not to be forgotten. There was not only the complication with Miss Bowman to be considered, but also the fact that there had undoubtedly been serious disputes over money matters. It sounded as if his losses in the City had given his wife the opportunity to take a high hand with him, and that she had succeeded in securing full control of the family estates. Then there had been a quarrel about the missing jewellery, Sir Albert claiming at any rate some of it as his own, and Lady Cambers insisting that it was all her property.

  Could it be possible that he had attempted to enforce his claim with violence that had had tragic results? It would be necessary, Bobby thought, to inquire very closely into the movements of Sir Albert Cambers on this Sunday night.

  Also there was the unknown visitor to the village about whom no one seemed to know anything but about whom everyone had something to say. Was it of any significance that with the news of the murder he had vanished in such haste?

  Yet, if he had been guilty of the murder, would he not have vanished sooner? A disappearance after it had become generally known suggested dismay and fear rather than previous guilty knowledge.

  It had to be remembered, though, that he had managed to get himself suspected of burglary by the marked interest he had shown in Cambers House, and that now the Cambers jewellery had disappeared!

  There jerked into Bobby’s memory the story Amy Emmers had told of the disappointment and anger of the American millionaire, Mr. Tyler, at Lady Cambers’s refusal to part with her Cleopatra pearl. Did the truth lie somewhere there – in an attempt by an agent of Mr. Tyler to secure by theft the desired pearl – and had it resulted more tragically than had ever been contemplated? Another suspect, then, to be added to the list. For collectors have been known to go very far indeed in their efforts to secure the objects they have set their hearts on.

  Finally there was the butler, Farman, and this story of the old far-off conviction, that should now have passed into oblivion after so many years of honest war and domestic service. But now it had to be remembered, Bobby supposed, only he would be very careful not to give it too much importance.

  A complicated affair, it seemed, and carefully Bobby set down in order the names of the chief suspects, and the motive that it seemed might have urged them to the crime.

  1. Sir Albert Cambers.

  Motive: Freedom to marry Miss Bowman. Money disputes. Rival claims to possession of the missing jewellery. (N.B.: Check movements on Sunday night.)

  2. Mr. Bowman.

  Motive: Financial (reported hard-up), and wish to see his sister married to Sir Albert, with consequent advantages to his own business and social position.

  3. Mr. Tyler.

  Motive: The Cleopatra pearl.

  4. Farman.

  Motive: Doubtful; might be theft of jewellery on own account or to secure the Cleopatra pearl for Mr. Tyler.

  5. The Stranger from London (suspected of burglarious intentions).

  Possibly in Mr. Tyler’s pay. Must be traced.

  6. Eddy Dene.

  Motive: Doubtful. Apparently a protégé of Lady Cambers, but then protégés and their patrons sometimes quarrel. Apparently a young man of unusual character, known to have been in Lady Cambers’s company late on the Sunday night. The pen found on the scene of the murder now identified as his.

  7. Amy Emmers, Lady Cambers’s personal maid.

  Motive: If any, probably a desire to help or shield someone else. Engaged to Eddy Dene, a fact to remember, but apparently no great keenness on either side.

  Note: Almost c
ertainly knows more than she has told. Various small suspicious circumstances observed.

  8. The vicar of the parish, Mr. Andrews.

  Motive: Objection to Dene’s archaeological investigations, and fear of conclusions that might be drawn from them. Threats used from pulpit and now materialized.

  9. Tim Sterling.

  Motive: His aunt’s heir, but position precarious. Resentment at attempt to force a wife on him.

  Note: His visit so late on Sunday curious in the extreme, especially as he didn’t reach his destination.

  10. Ray Hardy (hardly worth including).

  Motive: None apparent.

  Note: His behaviour seemed vaguely suspicious. Was out early that morning and passed near body without seeing it. Nothing much in that, and behaviour to be quite easily accounted for in the circumstances.

  With considerable distaste, Bobby surveyed this long list. It seemed to him almost certain the murderer’s name was there. Only how to identify it?

  By careful, painstaking work it might be possible to eliminate the names one by one till only one was left, and then it would be fairly certain that that one was the murderer’s.

  In the meantime he supposed there were three special points to clear up: