Death Comes to Cambers

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘Why?’ asked Sterling. ‘In the first place, they may easily be mistaken. It was a dark night. I was travelling at a fair pace. Certainly no one stopped me or spoke to me. Everyone about here knows I often run down on my motorbike. Any motor-cyclist seen near here would very likely be taken for me. Secondly, I told you I lost my way and had two breakdowns.’

  ‘If you come so often, surely you know the way well enough?’ interposed Lawson.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Sterling; ‘that is, when I can see it. After I got the bus running again, I tried a short-cut. That was pretty fatal. Short-cuts generally are. I got completely fogged. And then the rain came till I didn’t know south from north. It is quite possible I buzzed right by here without knowing it.’

  Lawson said nothing for a time. He was staring at the ceiling, scowling and breathing harder than ever. Moulland had, as usual, an air of listening with a kind of stolid official attention. Bobby was busy again with his shorthand, in an aggrieved mood taking special care with his loops and angles as he put them down.

  ‘Any ass will be able to read this,’ he thought, and then: ‘Pretty thin yarn. Something behind it. Only what?’ Lawson brought down his eyes from the ceiling, gave the cigarette another dissatisfied poke with his finger, and said: ‘I suppose you didn’t often choose late on Sunday evening to visit your aunt? You would have had to leave again first thing Monday morning, I take it?’

  Sterling hesitated. They all waited. Lawson seemed unable to keep himself from fidgeting with that incriminating cigarette before him, and Moulland’s air of attention grew more stolid, more official, every moment. Bobby found himself thinking: ‘Is he making up his mind to tell the truth? Or is he taking time to invent a plausible lie? But, then, he ought to have had one ready.’

  ‘I don’t see that my private affairs come in,’ Sterling said at last, ‘but it’s like this. I’ve got a dodge for improving short-length reception. I used to be with Ballantyne & Watson, the big wireless-manufacturers. I expect you know their advertisements – Ballantyne and Watson as two handsome, earnest young men talking to each other confidentially over big pipes about how good their stuff is. As a matter of fact, Ballantyne’s seventy and Watson’s a widow. Well, when I hit on this dodge of mine, Aunt lent me a bit to start a small show of my own. It’s been going pretty well. Developments and all that. Only getting going fairly eats capital. There’s an overdraft at the bank. If Aunt had wanted her money back, it would rather have put the lid on.’

  ‘You mean you were expecting she might do that? You had some reason for thinking so?’ demanded Lawson, while Moulland, wakening from his attitude of profound attention, an attention so profound indeed it might have seemed somnolent, proceeded to make another entry in that formidable pocket-book of his.

  ‘Only that she had this idea of wanting me to marry. Aunt was a bit like that. She would do anything for anyone, but afterwards she rather felt she had bought you, body and soul. Of course, she didn’t mean it. I suppose she felt she had helped you once and so she was jolly well going on helping you, whether you liked it or whether you didn’t. What I wanted was to rub into her that the girl herself wasn’t keen, for the jolly good reason that she was sweet on another chap – good luck to him. I hoped when Aunt knew that she would let up worrying me.’

  ‘It still seems a late hour to choose for your visit,’ Lawson persisted, and Moulland startled them all by not exactly speaking, but by uttering a grunt that sounded as if it were meant for strong agreement with this view.

  ‘I had been busy all day with accounts, and making plans and all that,’ Sterling explained. ‘You haven’t much time to spare when you’re starting for yourself.’ He was perspiring gently. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead, while they still all watched him in grave scrutiny. He said with a certain desperation: ‘Oh, I dare say it looks rotten, but it was either then or waiting goodness knows how long.’

  ‘I wish you had told us all this before,’ Colonel Lawson observed severely. ‘I don’t feel you were altogether frank with us in the first place, Mr. Sterling.’

  Sterling got to his feet and threw his cigarette-stump into the fire-place.

  ‘There you are,’ he said remorsefully. ‘If I had done that before, poor old Aunt would have been down on me like a ton of bricks. Sorry and all that if you think I was keeping anything back, but how was I to tell you wanted to know all about my private business affairs? I don’t suppose you’ll believe me, but I’m just as keen as any of you on spotting who did Aunt in.’ He paused and faced them, upright and tall, very pale, little drops of perspiration again on his forehead. For a moment Bobby had an impression of a bull tied to the stake and awaiting the onslaught of the straining dogs soon to be loosed. Abruptly Sterling said: ‘Well, there it is. I didn’t know I was suspected myself.’

  ‘Nothing has been said about suspicions,’ Lawson protested once more. ‘We are seeking explanations.’

  ‘No,’ retorted Sterling, though a little more quietly, ‘you don’t say suspicion because, if you did, you would have to caution me, instead of all this third-degree business.’

  ‘There has been no third-degree, whatever that may be,’ declared Lawson angrily, in his best ‘marked for punishment’ voice. ‘We have information, too, that after a young man named Dene left Lady Cambers someone else visited her room, and that she gave him refreshment there. Also that apparently someone was in hiding in the rhododendron-bushes in front of the house, as if he were on watch there.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Sterling interposed.

  ‘Oh, you do?’ snapped Lawson. ‘May I ask how?’

  ‘It’s common knowledge,’ Sterling retorted impatiently. ‘Everyone knows. They are all talking about it here, and most likely it’s all over the village by now. I should have thought you could have guessed that much.’

  ‘It doesn’t do any good to adopt that tone, Mr. Sterling,’ said Lawson, looking angrier than ever. He gave the cigarette on the table before him another poke, and then went on: ‘About these Balkan cigarettes? You say you don’t often smoke them?’

  ‘No, I don’t. We buy them to offer clients. We keep several different kinds. People like it if you remember and offer them the sort they fancy. It may mean bringing off a deal. That’s all.’

  ‘I suppose,’ suggested Lawson, ‘you have a supply in your office, then, at the moment?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Sterling admitted, ‘we’ve run out’; and Colonel Lawson looked as if he had only just stopped himself from saying ‘Ah’ very significantly. ‘Is that important? There were only a few left at the bottom of the box when I looked the other day, so I put them in my case. I didn’t mean to get any more. They’re expensive, and no one seemed keen on them. You can find out from Sanders, the tobacconist near our place, that he did supply a box, if that’s what you’re after.’

  ‘The point is not in doubt,’ Lawson answered dryly, ‘since we can see you’re smoking them. There’s one thing more. Had you any knowledge of the state of Lady Cambers’s finances?’

  ‘No; only that she had taken over Uncle Bert’s liabilities, and they were pretty heavy. I gathered she was a bit worried. If it’s true someone’s gone off with her jewellery, there mayn’t be an awful lot left. It was jolly valuable – the jewellery, I mean.’ He added: ‘That’s common gossip, too. Everyone knows the jewellery’s missing, and everyone knew before that Uncle Bert had let Aunt in pretty badly.’

  Colonel Lawson consulted his notes, frowned and scowled, and pursued his customary deep-breathing exercise, and then told Sterling that was all for the present and he could go, but would he please remain in the vicinity for the present.

  ‘It looks bad,’ declared the chief constable when the door had closed upon the young man, though he spoke with reluctance, for he did not wish to abandon his first belief that Eddy Dene was the guilty man. ‘It sounded to me as if he knew perfectly well he had been close by here last night.’

  ‘He might have known that and not wished
to admit it, without being actually guilty,’ Bobby pointed out. ‘He may have realized it would look bad, and have hoped he hadn’t been noticed and needn’t say anything. I suppose he might think it wouldn’t do a young business any good to have its owner suspected of murder.’

  ‘Then it looks as if he were afraid Lady Cambers meant to claim back the money she had advanced him,’ Colonel Lawson continued, ‘though that hardly seems a motive for murder. There’s the stolen jewellery, of course. We have to remember that. And he was on the spot and denied it; and then there’s this business of the cigarettes.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Bobby, ‘only what was the idea of this hiding in the rhododendrons? Apparently that happened after the murder.’

  ‘But not after the burglary, perhaps,’ Lawson remarked. He went on: ‘I think we must make a few inquiries about the rabbit-trap business. Not that I think there’s likely to be much in it. Still, if this Ray Hardy used threats we had better see him.’

  ‘Shall I send for him, sir?’ Moulland asked.

  ‘I think we’ll take a stroll that far,’ Lawson said. ‘It might be as well to have a look at the place and the people – and I’m tired sitting so long.’

  ‘There’s Eddy Dene,’ Bobby ventured to remind them. ‘I expect he is waiting.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Lawson, vexed at having forgotten Dene for the moment and looking sternly and rebukingly at all in the room. ‘Certainly. We must hear what he has to say. Tell them to send him in.’

  CHAPTER 19

  EDDY DENE GIVES ADVICE

  There came, as the chief constable was speaking, a knock at the door, and one of the maids appeared. Would the gentlemen like tea? she asked. The gentlemen accepted the suggestion with alacrity, and the girl at once brought in a tray with the tea, cakes, scones and so on she had in readiness.

  A smart, good-looking girl, Bobby thought, as he watched her with the concentrated interest he felt should be directed upon all the inmates of this house till the mystery was solved. A little better-looking she might have been, though, had her nose been a trifle less long, her chin a trifle less pointed. Her eyes, a light grey, were small, alert, and bright, and on her side she was evidently very much interested in them all, and greatly impressed. It was, Bobby supposed, the first time she had ever seen real live detectives actually at work, and he reflected that the dull slow stolid routine he knew so well had somehow got invested in the popular mind with an extraordinary halo of romance.

  He smiled ruefully as he turned from his tea to his shorthand notes. Not much romance in writing those cabalistic signs, fit product in their lines and angles of a utilitarian age, and he remembered that this girl was the Miss Robins described by Farman as such an expert in the psychology of love. It might, he told himself, be worth while to try to find an opportunity for a chat with her. She might have something interesting to say on the characters and the motives of the people engaged in this complicated and confused drama.

  Again the door opened, and Eddy Dene came in. On the threshold he paused and stood looking at them. They were all relaxing over their tea. Moulland was thoughtfully chewing scone as though beyond chewing scone he hadn’t a thought in the world. Colonel Lawson was lying back in his chair, lazily making smoke-rings from the cigarette he had just lighted. It was a pastime in which he had much skill. Behind, his two or three expert assistants had their heads together, chuckling over a faintly improper story one of them had just related. It was a peaceful, friendly scene that merited in no way the extraordinary – indeed, magnificent – disdain wherewith Dene regarded it. To Bobby there came a ridiculous memory of his school-days, when his housemaster had intruded upon a surreptitious dormitory supper.

  Colonel Lawson straightened himself, letting his last and most successful smoke-ring float unheeded ceilingward. Moulland put down the piece of scone he was conveying to his mouth, and looked as if he and scone were strangers for evermore. The experts in the background hurriedly resumed their usual air of grave authority, and the little chubby-faced youngster in the doorway, with that odd air of arrogant authority with which he seemed to be able to clothe at will his at first sight unimpressive physique, Bobby almost expected to hear him ordering them all to bring him five hundred lines by next Wednesday evening. Instead he said: ‘Oh, sorry. If I had known you were so busy I wouldn’t have interrupted.’

  ‘Mr. Dene, I believe,’ said Colonel Lawson, visibly deciding to ignore this as a piece of impudence beneath notice.

  ‘There’s one thing I want to ask you,’ Dene went on, ignoring this in his turn. ‘I thought it might be as well to have a look round Lady Cambers’s room – the one she used to call her den, so she could feel she had one, too. Some fathead in uniform out there told me no one was allowed in.’

  ‘The room was locked by my orders,’ said Colonel Lawson, in his most severe voice – a voice calculated, indeed, to make most tremble in their shoes, so instinct was it with ‘shot at dawn’ and ‘confined to barracks’ and ‘pay docked’ and other similar dooms. He went on: ‘When you refer to members of the force I have the honour to command, I will ask you to choose your words more carefully.’

  ‘I do – jolly carefully,’ retorted Eddy, quite unabashed. ‘I won’t ask you what authority you have to lock doors in other people’s houses. But it meant I had to get in by the window.’

  ‘You – you – what?’ gasped Lawson, his gasp echoed all round the room, except by Bobby, who was so startled he knocked his note-book over and had to stoop to pick it up, thus being able to indulge in a quick little smile all to himself.

  ‘Get in by the window,’ repeated Eddy, with a touch of impatience in his voice, and apparently quite unaware of the sensation he had caused. ‘Luckily it was open. Easy enough to hop in.’

  ‘Against my strict orders,’ interposed Lawson, heavy menace in every inflexion of his voice.

  ‘My dear sir,’ retorted Eddy. ‘Your orders don’t affect me. I’m not one of your policemen. I take orders from no one.’ And lounging there in the doorway, from which he had not yet moved, his whole body seemed again instinct with that strange, deep, almost involuntary arrogance of his. ‘Have you people any idea what Lady Cambers’s jewellery was worth?’

  ‘Sir Albert is getting us the inventory,’ Lawson replied, almost meekly.

  ‘Thirty thousand,’ Dene said. ‘That counts. She showed it me once or twice. She liked to play with it. And when I say thirty thousand, I mean selling price. What you could pick up for it anywhere, any day.’

  Colonel Lawson had recovered himself slightly by now.

  ‘We are fully aware of the value of the missing jewellery...’ he began, and once more Eddy interrupted him.

  ‘Stolen jewellery,’ he corrected sharply. ‘Are you fully aware, too, that if the stuff’s gone, then it was the murderer took it, and, once you’ve found it, then you can bet your last copper the murderer won’t be far off.’

  ‘Mr. Dene,’ Colonel Lawson tried again, but still Eddy was not listening.

  ‘What’s more,’ he said, ‘it’s a darn sight more important. Death’s death, and nothing to be done about it. Common enough, too.’ He pointed from the window towards Frost Field. ‘I can show you there the bones of men and women who died half a million years ago. I dare say it seemed important at the time. Personal prejudice. But thirty thousand pounds – that means life; that means power. And life and power they count – not death.’

  He seemed to dismiss death with a shrug of the shoulders – an incident in the cosmic process, no more. The others watched him in silence, puzzled and impressed, too, by a kind of force that seemed to emanate from him. With his round chubby face, his slight stooping figure, his staring eyes, he looked insignificant enough, and yet there was this power about him, too. The first to break the brief silence, he said: ‘That’s what you want to concentrate on – finding the jewellery. And when you’ve found that, you’ll have found the murderer, too.’

  ‘Mr. Dene,’ said the chief constable, rallying
somewhat, ‘when I want your advice, I’ll ask for it...’ and once more Dene interrupted.

  ‘Yes, I know. When it’s too late,’ he said. ‘That’s why I wanted to have a look round that room you’ve locked before everything was messed up. Of course, I knew you people had had a look round, but I expect you thought of nothing but finger-prints and clues of that sort. As if to-day every two-year-old starting out to raid the jam-cupboard doesn’t put on gloves first.’

  There was enough truth in this remark about the fingerprints to make Colonel Lawson angrier still.

  ‘Mr. Dene,’ he thundered, so loud and so fast that this time you could no more have interrupted him than you could have an express train, ‘your attitude is most improper, and is making a most unfavourable impression on me.’

  ‘My good sir,’ retorted Dene, ‘I always make an unfavourable impression – one can’t help it except when one is talking to one’s intellectual equals.’

  ‘I don’t want,’ pursued Lawson, ‘to be forced to take extreme steps...’

  ‘Extreme steps sometimes mean actions for damages,’ retorted Eddy; and the poor Colonel winced, for that shot went home, since one was at the moment pending against him. ‘By the way, what’s this about that pen of mine?’

  ‘Your – pen?’ repeated Lawson, rather helplessly, so much again was he taken aback.

  ‘Well, I’ve lost mine, and I heard you’ve found it,’ answered Eddy. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘How did you know we had found it?’ interrupted Moulland this time, so anxious to make what he thought a good point he forgot to wait for his superior officer to ask the question.

  Eddy surveyed him with an almost infinite pity. He gave the impression of bending gently, quietly, a little sadly, over the cradle of a new-born babe, regretting all it had yet to learn.

  ‘There isn’t a thing,’ Eddy explained very gently, ‘you people have done or said, or thought even, that isn’t known and gossiped about all through the village. Everyone knows about that pen. Some people seem to think I choked the poor old girl with it. What about it? Can I have it back? It happens to be my property, you know.’