Death Comes to Cambers

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘It has been sent to Scotland Yard for examination,’ said Lawson briefly.

  ‘To find finger-prints?’ asked Eddy, looking very amused. ‘I don’t believe there’s a thing in all the world but finger-prints that you people can think of. Well, I suppose that’s your idea of your job, and anyhow I don’t want to row with you. Why should I? I want to help. I’m as anxious as you are to get to the bottom of all this. I don’t know if it’s occurred to you that my apple-cart is pretty thoroughly upset. And what I say is – that when you’ve got the stolen jewellery, you’ll have got the murderer, too. That’s why I wanted to look round in there. Sorry if it’s upset you – my going in, I mean. I don’t see why. After all, if you wanted to keep people out, you should have shut the window.’

  This was a statement so incontrovertible that no one had anything to say. Colonel Lawson realized that to pursue the subject would mean having that point raised quite frequently. He contented himself, therefore, with turning in his chair and fixing on Superintendent Moulland a baleful glare, full of the promise of things to come. Moulland looked pitifully at his superior officer and very fiercely at the door. Plainly someone out there was in for a hot time. Dene said: ‘Well, go ahead. Anything I can tell... I’ll make it as plain and simple as I can. Not so easy to tell a plain simple story, either. But you can trust me. I’ll help you along.’

  ‘Very good of you, I’m sure,’ said Lawson, with a sarcasm Eddy showed no sign of noticing.

  He repeated the story he had already told Bobby. Evidently his memory was good, for he often used almost the same words. The only difference was that several times he referred to the stolen jewellery, and repeated again that the important thing was to recover it at the earliest moment.

  ‘Thirty thousand pounds,’ he insisted. ‘That’s life, that’s power that counts. The other’s only death, and death’s – well, dead, isn’t it?’

  He told again how he had spent the night, shuffling up and down his room, since his aching tooth had not allowed him to sleep and movement had seemed to alleviate the pain; and Bobby, remembering those old carpet-slippers he had seen, wondered if even they were capable of transforming Dene’s quick, decided tread into a shuffle. But then, if someone else had taken his place, who could that have been?

  When the chief constable went on to question him about rabbit-traps, Dene, when he understood the reference, was a trifle scornful. It was a silly business all round, he thought. Rabbits had got to be kept down, and what was the sense of making a fuss about the means used.

  ‘Like mice,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to use traps, and what’s the good of getting sentimental because they squeal when they’re caught? I know Ray Hardy was wild about Lady Cambers interfering. He told me so. He thought her a confounded old nuisance. And I shouldn’t wonder if she didn’t have a prowl round at nights, just to see who was using what traps; and I dare say Ray Hardy would have liked to wring her old neck for her if he caught her doing it. But liking’s not doing. If we all did what we liked...’ He paused and smiled, the phrase and the idea evidently pleasing him. ‘Ray wouldn’t,’ he repeated, ‘and, if he had, he would never even have thought of the jewellery. If he had done a thing like that, he would just have panicked, not gone on to burglary. Stick to looking for the jewellery, that’s my advice.’ The colonel consulted his notes, whispered to Moulland, asked a question or two of Bobby, and then turned back to Eddy.

  ‘I think that’s all we require to ask you for the present, Mr. Dene,’ he said. ‘But I must warn you we shall perhaps wish to question you again.’

  He tried to make his voice ominous with unexpressed threat, but Eddy was quite unaffected.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said graciously. ‘Any time you want a tip and you think I can give it you, just let me know.’

  With that for a parting promise he retired, and Lawson said darkly: ‘A deliberately defiant attitude – most suspicious, to my mind.’

  He subsided into an outraged silence, and Bobby reflected that Eddy had never been asked if he had noticed anything in the locked room into which he had so audaciously penetrated. He decided to repair the omission as soon as he could find opportunity.

  CHAPTER 20

  A PSYCHOLOGIST ON LOVE

  The atmosphere in the Cambers library remained sultry. Colonel Lawson was magnificently retaining his self control, but no one cared to risk breaking it down by so much as moving a finger. One felt a conductor for the lightning of his wrath would have been accepted with gratitude – and alacrity.

  ‘For two pins,’ he said suddenly, ‘I’d arrest the fellow.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Moulland, and Lawson turned fiercely upon him.

  ‘Then get the evidence,’ he commanded.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ repeated Moulland, rising from his chair as if intending instantly to bustle away on the errand, and then rather helplessly sitting down again.

  ‘Shall I clear away the tea-cups, sir?’ asked Bobby.

  ‘Nothing better to do?’ demanded Lawson. ‘That your idea of your work, is it?’

  ‘Yes, sir – no, sir,’ answered Bobby confusedly; and, as if supposing he had been given permission, proceeded to collect the crockery, securing thus an excuse for escaping from a room where he felt the temperature was too high for calm concentration on the problems to be solved.

  In the hall he found, as he had hoped he might, Eddy Dene, standing idly with his hands in his jacket-pockets, apparently deep in thought.

  ‘I say,’ he said to him confidentially, ‘you’ve rather put their backs up in there.’

  ‘Have I?’ Eddy asked indifferently.

  ‘Makes them feel they’d rather like to bring it home to you,’ Bobby went on.

  ‘Very likely; but then they can’t,’ Eddy answered, as indifferently as before.

  ‘Well, of course, that’s all right,’ agreed Bobby, ‘but there is such a thing as obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.’

  ‘Run me in, eh?’ Eddy asked. ‘Rather cramp their style, wouldn’t it? Obvious bias from the start – unfair prejudice, un-English methods used – first-class line for defending counsel to take. Besides, as a matter of fact, I’m out to help.’

  ‘About the murder, or about the theft of the jewellery? Bobby asked.

  Eddy turned and stared at him.

  ‘You talk like a fool,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘you act like a fool, you look like a fool – you can’t see what’s lying there right under your nose – and yet I’m damned if I believe you are a fool.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bobby meekly. ‘Quite a nice school leaving certificate, so to speak. By the way, you didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘The answer’s both.’

  ‘But the theft rather than the murder?’

  ‘More important, isn’t it? Murder is only a name for one kind of death – hanging by law of the land, cancer by act of God, run down by car in a hurry, shot by burglar about his business – is there any real difference, apart from convention and convenience? You might think, from all the excitement, death was a rarity that hadn’t been happening every day for the last million years and won’t go on just the same for the next million. But the jewellery means money, and money means a lot.’

  ‘I suppose it does,’ agreed Bobby, ‘if it’s yours.’

  ‘You mean the jewellery isn’t mine?’ Eddy asked sharply. ‘Yes, I know. But it means a lot to me, all the same. I want money to carry on with, if I’m not to be held up just as I’m getting there.’

  ‘About establishing that theory of yours on the origin of man?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘Which happens to mean revolutionizing human thought,’ Eddy told him. ‘That’s big, you know – and it may be held up just for the want of a little money, and because one old woman’s dead. Can you wonder I’m interested?’

  ‘Not if you put it that way,’ Bobby answered cautiously, and added: ‘Did you notice anything in Lady Cambers’s room when you were looking round?’

  ‘No. I
didn’t expect to. But I left something there for you to notice – a tear in the curtain where I put my foot through it, though I was being as careful as I could, and it was broad daylight, too.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I see,’ Bobby said thoughtfully, and Eddy gave him another sharp look, as if wondering whether he did in fact ‘see’, and then abruptly turned and walked out through the front-door into the grounds.

  ‘I wonder,’ Bobby thought, a little ashamed of the idea, and yet feeling forced to consider it, ‘if this means he’s got hold of the jewellery himself somehow, and means to keep it to finance himself with – or perhaps he’s so keen because if he can find it he would be entitled to a reward big enough to keep him going. Anyhow, that’s the second useful tip he’s given me.’

  He picked up his cups and saucers and penetrated through the service-door into the back-regions, where his luck for once was good, since the first person he met was that psychologist of love, Miss Robins, by whose insight into affairs of the heart Farman had been so much impressed. It was, in fact, in the hope of meeting her that he had made his offer to clear away the used crockery.

  She seemed a little surprised by his appearance there, and even a little disappointed, as if she had been hoping in secret for another glimpse of that rare spectacle, detectives at work. But a few compliments on the excellence of the tea provided, and a few added, less impersonal perhaps in their general tenor, soon resulted in the establishment of friendly relations. When Bobby ventured to wonder if she could help their investigation in any way, she showed herself at once gravely eager to oblige.

  ‘Not that there’s so much I can tell you,’ she admitted regretfully.

  ‘There are things you may have noticed,’ he suggested. ‘Observation is a gift with some people. Most of us in the police have to be trained to it, but some seem to possess it by nature – especially ladies.’ He paused to assure himself that this had been well and thoroughly lapped up. Convinced by evident signs that was the case, he went on: ‘Now, there’s a story going about that young Ray Hardy is head-over-heels in love with Miss Emmers. Do you think that’s true?’

  ‘He’s crazy about her,’ Miss Robins asserted at once. ‘Anyone can see that with half an eye. But she won’t look at him. I will say that for her, though if she lifted a finger he would be down on his knees.’

  ‘You are sure that’s so?’

  ‘You can always tell,’ the psychologist asserted. ‘When a boy’s really soft about a girl, there’s a sort of look in his eyes – I don’t quite know how to put it...’

  ‘Sort of imbecile?’ Bobby suggested hopefully.

  ‘Well, silly like,’ she corrected him. ‘But that’s not what I meant. Every fellow looks that way when he looks at a girl. You can see it oozing out.’

  ‘And when it’s a girl looking at a boy?’

  ‘More dripping and running than oozing,’ the lady answered promptly. ‘What I mean is... well, more a “lost for ever if you don’t find me” sort of air. You can always tell it. Except,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘with Amy herself. I believe if she was going to cut her heart out for a man, or wish him “good afternoon”, she would look just the same. It makes them ever so much worse. There’s nothing pays like treading them under your foot. I wish I could. But someways I can’t. It’s them that treads on me,’ she said, sighing.

  ‘Then you think Ray Hardy is in love with her, but you don’t know about her?’

  ‘I don’t even know,’ declared Miss Robins, in a burst of candour, ‘if there’s anything to know. She’s like a box with the lid shut, and what’s inside there’s no way of telling.’

  ‘She is engaged to Mr. Eddy Dene, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. And they might be stock and stone for all the notice they take of each other. The old people fixed it up. You see, they took Amy out of the workhouse. She was sent there when her father and mother died, and then Mr. and Mrs. Dene heard and took her out, and she’s so grateful still there isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for them. No wonder, either; it’s something to be taken out of a workhouse, as you’ll know if you’ve ever been in one. But, all the same, Eddy and her don’t mix, no more than oil and vinegar do they mix. Perhaps if they marry they’ll get on all the better for that – not mixing, they won’t separate.’

  Bobby found this rather subtle. He thought it over, and then said: ‘You know Mr. Sterling?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A very nice young gentleman. Always the gentleman, and never gave any more trouble than he could help.’

  ‘Do the people in the village like Mr. Dene?’

  ‘Eddy Dene? No one likes him. He always seems to think he’s God Almighty, and you’re a blackbeetle. You can’t,’ observed Miss Robins, with some force, ‘like anyone like that. Of course, he’s very clever. He can pick a stone up out of the road and tell you just who made it, and what for and when – he says there was a time when there was elephants and such hereabout, not in a Zoo, he don’t mean, but running loose. Now Lady Cambers isn’t there to give him any more money he’ll have to look after the shop more, and mind more if he loses custom. Why, there’s some stop away just because they can’t bear to see the way he despises them. Asking him for a quarter of butter or a half of tea is like asking the King of England to come and black your boots. You don’t know how you dare.’

  ‘I suppose that does hardly attract people,’ Bobby agreed. ‘Lady Cambers’s death will mean a big loss to him, then?’

  ‘It’ll put him back where he belongs,’ she answered. ‘They’re saying that already, down in the village.’

  ‘Hard luck,’ Bobby commented. ‘There’s something else I would like to ask you. It’s not curiosity, remember. Every bit of information may help. Do you think Lady Cambers was still fond of her husband, and wanted him to come back to her?’

  Miss Robins appeared to consider this.

  ‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘she wasn’t soft about him. You aren’t once you’re married, are you? No need to be. But she wanted him back all right. Wouldn’t you? I mean, if you had a man and another woman came along and took him – well, you wouldn’t feel like putting up with it, would you?’

  ‘I suppose it depends...’ began Bobby cautiously, but she interrupted him with scorn.

  ‘It doesn’t depend at all,’ she said. ‘It’s just like that. If you’ve a man and he gets away, you’re out to fetch him back. Insulted, you feel. Of course,’ she admitted, ‘there’s many such a good riddance it almost makes up for the insult.’

  ‘How do you think Sir Albert felt about it?’

  ‘Puffed up, same as a man always does when two’s after him. Of course,’ she again admitted, though this time reluctantly, ‘a man’s always a man, otherwise what Miss Bowman saw in the master, few could tell.’

  ‘He was attracted by Miss Bowman, then?’

  ‘She made it so,’ Miss Robins answered simply. ‘And now, if you ask me, she’ll be Lady Cambers as soon as decency and law permits. I don’t know whether I’ll stop, though a good place up till now, as places go these days, but plenty better to choose from.’

  ‘Well, thank you very much for telling me all this,’ Bobby said.

  Welcome, I’m sure,’ answered Miss Robins, and a voice in the distance became audible, calling Bobby by name.

  ‘There’s Colonel Lawson. I must go. Thanks awfully,’ Bobby exclaimed, and hurried back into the hall.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ said the chief constable, who seemed now in a slightly milder mood. ‘You know the way to Mr. Hardy’s farm?’ he asked. ‘I think I’ll take a stroll that way. I don’t suppose there’s anything in this rabbit-trap business, but if he used threats we had better see him, and hear what he has to say.’

  They started off accordingly, Colonel Lawson, Superintendent Moulland, Bobby in attendance. No one spoke, for the chief constable was evidently deep in thought, and neither of the other two ventured to interrupt the current of his heavy meditations.

  ‘Possible, I suppose,’ he said suddenly, ‘that Lady Camb
ers wanted to see for herself whether spring-traps were still being used, and preferred to slip out quietly at night without letting anyone know. That would explain why she took the attaché-case with her, and why it was empty. She may have wanted to bring back the traps, if she found any of the kind she objected to. And it’s possible she met young Hardy and there was some sort of quarrel, and he – well, carried out what he had threatened. Only, then, who was hiding in the rhododendrons, and why? And what about the jewellery? We must try first to establish where he was that night.’

  ‘He mentioned specially, when he was telling me the body had been found, that he was in bed early,’ Bobby said. ‘He told me the rain woke him, and he was glad he wasn’t out in it.’

  Turning a corner, they came in sight of the farm and of the yard behind it, where they saw, hung out to dry in the sun, coat, trousers, a set of men’s underclothing, down even to the socks.

  ‘Someone at the farm seems to have been out in the rain last night,’ Bobby observed.

  CHAPTER 21

  NEAR ARREST

  Colonel Lawson made no comment, but he stood still for a moment or two, looking his hardest at those dangling garments, and then, with a very intent and resolute air, resumed his forward march, a little as though he were leading a forlorn hope. Moulland followed him determinedly. Bobby had to hurry to keep pace with them, and he told himself he was growing fanciful, so oddly, so ominously, did that dangling clothing remind him of a human body, swinging, it also, unsupported from a rope.

  Strange, indeed, he thought, if a thing so simple, so harmless, so ordinary as a rabbit-trap, was to be proved the cause and origin of so grim a tragedy, though, indeed, in the tangled, complicated, unreasoning web of human emotions and beliefs, there is no cause so great or small but it may lead to consequences immeasurably huge or tiny, and the fall of an empire mean the release of a mouse from a trap, and the cackling of geese the changing of the destiny of man.