Death Comes to Cambers

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘What? What’s that? That’s something new,’ interposed the chief constable. ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘I have date and place,’ Bobby answered. ‘If Miss Emmers herself is in any way guilty, her motive would be to protect her husband. Farman’s motive would be the vulgar one of robbery. His character is not too good; he knew all about the Cleopatra pearl; he knew there would be a good market for it with Mr. Tyler. Mr. Tyler himself is said to have shown an unreasonable anxiety to secure the pearl, and to have been seen twice in the vicinity of the house when he had no obvious reason for his presence. Mr. Andrews and Ray Hardy had both uttered threats, and Mr. Andrews is accused of a fanaticism that would stop at nothing. Mr. Bowman, again, had a strong interest in seeing his sister become Lady Cambers. The scandal hadn’t done him any good in his business, which wasn’t very flourishing anyhow. If his sister had become Lady Cambers, both his business and his social position would have been much improved – and very likely he would have come in for the estate business as well. Eddy Dene...’

  ‘I suspected him from the first,’ put in Lawson, ‘but you can’t get away from two things – first, he lost in Lady Cambers his chief financial support; and, secondly, there is a very strong alibi. His mother swears she knocked at his door at about half-past eleven that night. She didn’t see him, but she heard him moving about, and when she knocked and asked what was the matter he told her through the door that he had the toothache and she wasn’t to worry him. She says – it’s a homely touch – he was always ready to bite her head off when he had toothache, and we know that next day he had a tooth pulled out by a Hirlpool dentist. Also our own man, Constable Norris, confirms that he heard Dene moving about in his room till about three, when he saw him put his light out. And he can’t very well have been prowling about his room with an attack of toothache and murdering Lady Cambers at the same time. You see,’ added the chief constable with a touch of complacence, ‘we’ve been doing a bit of investigating ourselves down here – and, by the way, we have found out something rather curious about Mr. Bowman.’

  ‘Indeed, sir. May I ask what it is?’ Bobby asked. ‘There’s an unexplained time-gap between his discovery of the body and leaving the shed in Frost Field about a quarter to eight or so and his return to his house at nine. The actual hour – nine – is fixed by the evidence of his cook. What was he doing during that hour? It may mean something.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Bobby, ‘but I understood from the cook that she sat up till midnight, doing some sewing, and is certain Mr. Bowman could not have left the house without her knowing.’

  ‘Can’t be sure of that,’ declared Lawson. ‘He might have managed it somehow. Anyhow, what do you want us to do? Arrest the lot? You seem to have proved they all had good reasons for wanting to be rid of the poor soul.’

  ‘Strong reasons, sir, not good ones,’ Bobby ventured to say. ‘If you will allow me, I’ll take one by one the people I’ve mentioned. If I can show we must, by force of fact and logic, rule them all out but one, then I submit that one must be guilty. And some can be ruled out easily enough. Farman’s story is that he was smoking at his window at the time of the murder. There is corroboration by a witness, and further corroboration in that he was smoking his employer’s cigars, a fact he tried to keep to himself. Mr. Andrews and Ray Hardy provide each other with an alibi; they saw each other some considerable distance from Frost Field at the time of the murder. Their evidence is independent, and is corroborated by details about a book Air. Andrews lost and about his lighting his pipe. Besides, Ray Hardy is a sloppy, weak-willed youngster not at all likely to commit a murder of this kind, and Mr. Andrews may be fanatical, but would hardly push fanaticism as far as murder. In any case, their joint alibi is a good one. There is proof Mr. Tyler was nowhere near Cambers the night of the murder – he was in Paris, in fact. Miss Bowman was in London. The time unaccounted for in Mr. Bowman’s case is the next morning, several hours after the murder. Besides, why should he commit murder to get rid of Lady Cambers when Sir Albert was talking about getting a divorce? Air. Sterling and Amy Emmers must be considered together. Their story is that they were in Lady Cambers’s “den”, as she called it, at the time of the murder. Their story depends on each other’s evidence, and is so far unsatisfactory, but it is consistent and is corroborated by small details. It agrees with what in the cipher advertisement Sterling suggested they should do. It explains why the garden door was locked after Lady Cambers had gone out. They had knowledge of Sir Albert Cambers’s presence at three Monday morning, and it is difficult to suppose that, if Sterling had committed the murder at half-past twelve, he would hang about till three. It explains why Miss Emmers left the glass and plate Sterling had used on the table without troubling about them, since she expected to have plenty of time to see to them in the morning. It was only when news of the murder arrived that she seems to have thought of finger-prints, seen they might be dangerous, and washed the things. If she had known of the murder before, surely she would have carried out such a simple precaution much earlier?’

  Bobby paused, and the chief constable looked at him.

  ‘You haven’t said anything about Sir Albert Cambers or about Eddy Dene yet,’ he remarked.

  ‘No, sir, I am coming to them now,’ Bobby answered, closing his note-book, for now he had come to a part of his narrative that he knew by heart.

  CHAPTER 33

  ANALYSIS CONTINUED

  ‘In a case of this kind,’ Bobby went on, talking now nearly as much to himself as to the others, ‘there are three lines of approach: motive, material clues, personal character. They all have their difficulties. Motive may not produce action. Material clues may be absent – not every murderer is kind enough to leave his card, or even the usual laundry-mark he can be traced by, and the saying that every murderer makes a mistake only means that every murderer who is caught has made one. Those who don’t make mistakes get away with it – as in the Croydon poisoning case. As for character, only God knows our real character, or what opportunity and circumstance may bring out in any one of us.

  ‘All the same, I don’t see Sir Albert Cambers as the murderer type. He is neither violent enough nor cunning enough, and he is far too conventional – convention is a greater safeguard than fear of God or fear of the consequences.

  ‘It is true he wished for a divorce, and that he believed there was an intrigue between his wife and Dene entitling him to one. But I don’t think there’s anything to show he either believed or wished with passion enough to lead to murder; and his private detective, Jones, entirely failed to find any evidence to justify his belief – largely because there was none, since nothing of the kind existed. Jones believed that it did, however, because he was the kind of person always ready to believe in any story like that, and when he got an anonymous message to say Lady Cambers and Dene were meeting secretly in the Frost Field shed late Sunday night, he never thought of doubting. It was what he had expected. I think there’s no doubt the message came from Dene himself, and I know Jones thought he recognized Dene’s voice, and thought Dene was arranging the exposure in order to force a scandal and a marriage with Lady Cambers. Jones always interpreted everything that happened in the light of his own mentality. He let Sir Albert know he could provide the required evidence, and Sir Albert borrowed Miss Bowman’s car and came along accordingly, having first written to Miss Bowman what might seem a rather compromising note. On his way he was caught in the rainstorm, drew up for shelter in a dip of the road, at the West Leigh turning, that was soon flooded, and was badly splashed by a passing Rolls-Royce car. As that was late at night, there was a good chance the Rolls-Royce belonged to someone living near – and to some wealthy person, as it was a Rolls-Royce. I asked the Yard to try to trace it, and Lord Lynton’s chauffeur remembers passing a small car at that time, in that spot, and thinking it would soon get flooded out. Sir Albert says that then he drove on to Cambers, left his car parked by the roadside, waited in, or by, the rhododendron-bushes till
three, and then gave it up and went home. His story is corroborated by the fact that he knew it was his own pet cigars Farman was smoking, while Farman says he heard sounds coming from the rhododendrons, and Sterling saw someone he thought was like Sir Albert going away about three a.m. Even the number of cigarette-ends picked up by the rhododendrons suggest a fairly long time spent there – and Sir Albert has developed the bad cold and touch of pleurisy you would expect if his story was correct.

  ‘On the whole, it seems to me he is fairly well cleared.’

  ‘Jones was ready to swear he was an eyewitness,’ growled Colonel Lawson. ‘I’ll prosecute for – for – attempted perjury?’

  ‘Public mischief,’ suggested Moulland hopefully.

  ‘It’s more than that,’ said Colonel Lawson sternly. ‘He very nearly – very nearly indeed – made me make a public fool of myself!’

  Moulland looked shocked, and was evidently trying to think, though without much success, of an appropriate penalty. Bobby continued: ‘That leaves Eddy Dene. He has a strong alibi. I’ll ignore that for the moment, if I may. Take character first. The most marked feature of his is an extreme arrogance, partly natural, partly a morbid growth in defence against his poverty and surroundings, his daily work behind the counter, his resentment against what he was weak enough and silly enough to consider his inferior social position. Even when his work attracted attention at Oxford, and people came along from the University to see what he was doing, most likely only anxious to help him, he seems to have snubbed them. He was so self-confident he did not want help, only admiration; and probably he thought the Oxford dons wanted to steal his facts and theories he intended for his book he thought was going to startle the world. Also he had a very strong, resolute will – he knew what he wanted, and he meant to have it.

  ‘That is where he clashed with Lady Cambers. She was equally determined on having her own way, equally persuaded her way was the only right way. But she had nothing like Dene’s clear-sighted intelligence, and I think it is easy to understand Dene’s secret resentment at finding himself and his work, and all his future hopes, entirely dependent on her good-will. I think that resentment festered within him till it turned to hate.

  ‘One could call that the psychological position – Lady Cambers blandly heaping benefits on Dene, but exacting the payment of an implicit obedience. She seems to have made a rule, for instance, that there was to be no work of any kind done by him on Sundays – a trifle, but it made Dene as angry as trifles often do. He got to be like a tin of petrol, ready to explode at any spark.

  ‘That came – though it was more than a spark – when Lady Cambers informed him he was to take a job as valet practically, with Mr. Tyler, and was to marry Miss Emmers. He had never wanted to marry her, for one thing, and, for another, he knew she was married already, and that when Lady Cambers found out, she was likely to make things pretty warm all round and without too much discrimination. I expect, too, he felt Lady Cambers’s suggestion as a mortal insult – it showed her real understanding and appreciation of him and his work. Most likely, to her one archaeological investigation was just like another; but Dene cared nothing, and knew less, about the Maya question, and was giving his whole knowledge and experience to the question of the emergence of man from the animal – he believed his book about that would make as big a sensation as Darwin’s Origin of Species, he had already settled his was to be The Origin of Man. Obviously the Tyler idea and the Maya expedition would have meant abandoning that and all his hopes of speedy fame and recognition.

  ‘He knew, also, that Lady Cambers had made a will making Sterling her heir, and I’ve no doubt myself he was quite right in calculating that if Sterling inherited, Mrs. Sterling – Amy Emmers, that is – would see that the help he had been receiving from the Cambers estate would be continued. She seems to have promised him as much, quite innocently. To him, Lady Cambers had come to seem a useless, dictatorial old woman, full of whims and crotchets, it would be an advantage all round to replace by the Sterlings. Further, I think he was really fond of Amy in a brotherly kind of way, and genuinely distressed at the thought of her having to stand the brunt of Lady Cambers’s anger – her foolish and unreasonable anger, he thought, and possibly he liked, too, the idea of a cousin reigning at Cambers House.

  ‘As regards motive, then, it seems he had everything to gain and disaster to avoid, both for himself and for his cousin, Amy.

  ‘As regards character, he had worked himself into a mood of mingled arrogance, contempt, resentment, that would make good rich breeding-ground for thoughts of murder.

  ‘Now to come to facts, the actual physical clues.

  ‘Jones states that the voice over the phone, telling him of the imaginary appointment with Dene in the Frost Field shed, was that of Dene himself. I suggest that was really part of a plan to get Sir Albert on the spot that night, and so confuse investigation. I am inclined to think it was Dene, again, who confirmed Lady Cambers’s suspicions that Amy Emmers and Tim Sterling were attracted to each other. He knew they were communicating by cipher, and it is fairly certain he would be able to make it out if he tried. It was simple enough, and he went out of his way to tell Miss Emmers he had tried and failed, which I don’t believe. I think he planned, too, to get Sterling on the spot that Sunday night, to confuse things still more.

  ‘In his arrogance and self-confidence, I don’t suppose he thought it would be very difficult to baffle police investigation.

  ‘But he had to consider how to carry out the murder he most likely thought of merely as the removal of another obstacle, as he had already removed many in winning opportunity to devote himself to his chosen work. To carry out his intention inside the house would have been both dangerous and difficult. But suppose he could induce her to come out alone late at night? It must have seemed difficult, at first, to think how to manage that, but he knew she was much disturbed by the denunciations and protests made by the vicar, Mr. Andrews. He had warned her, for instance, that she would be responsible for souls led astray. I think Dene hit on this plan. He told Lady Cambers he had found fossils that proved his theories, but that to make this proof more obvious and convincing he intended to improve it a little by making a few alterations and additions – faking in fact – before showing the fossils to the world. And I think he pretended to be very excited – that would not be difficult – he would be excited by his secret intentions – and that he managed to convey to Lady Cambers that the only way of preventing him from producing this faked evidence was for her to go herself to take possession of the fossils for independent examination.’

  ‘But this is all theory,’ interposed Colonel Lawson. ‘You can’t put theory in the witness-box.’

  ‘I am trying to outline the probable course of events, sir,’ Bobby answered. ‘And it is hardly all theory, for I am depending on what Miss Emmers told me when she thought that Jones’s claim to have been an eyewitness of the murder proved Sir Albert’s guilt and exonerated Dene, and so left her free to tell me what she knew. What I have just said, Dene outlined to her as a sort of joke he intended to play on Lady Cambers – possibly that was how the idea first occurred to him – to show up her ignorance, and make her less anxious to interfere with him. It got to be serious. He calculated that if she did visit the hut she would do so without saying anything to anyone, because, for one thing, she wouldn’t want gossip about her visiting Frost Field alone and late at night, and then there was no one she could take with her except Amy, who was Dene’s cousin, or the butler, Farman, whom I don’t suppose she much wanted. She was a strikingly self-reliant woman, but if she did take a companion, or if she didn’t go at all, it would only have meant thinking out another plan. Nothing would have been lost.’

  ‘Dene has his alibi still. And the pen found near her body, Dene lost some days before,’ Lawson remarked.

  ‘It was the pen that finally convinced me of Dene’s guilt,’ Bobby said. ‘Or rather the ink in it.’

  ‘The ink?’ repeated Lawson. �
�Why? How?’

  ‘The ink was identified at the laboratory as being the “Perennial” brand. Dene claims he missed the pen on Wednesday, and he sent in his advertisement about its loss on Friday. But all that may only prove careful preparation. As it happens the “Perennial” brand of ink is entirely new – it was only on public sale last Monday, and there was none of it in the village till a traveller left a sample at Mr. Dene’s shop on the Friday and urged him to try it himself. Mr. Dene took it into his little private office with that idea. It follows, therefore, that the pen must have been filled with “Perennial” ink on or after the Friday, and no one but Eddy Dene and old Mr. Dene had access to the ink. Old Mr. Dene may be safely left out of the question, and there seems, therefore, a clear inference that Eddy Dene was using the pen two days after he claims to have missed it. I think it is fairly certain he hit on the idea of leaving the pen on the spot to draw on himself the instant suspicion he knew he could not wholly avoid, with the idea that when he could show he had missed the pen three days earlier, suspicion would be turned away, and therefore be all the slower, once proved unfounded, to attach itself to him again.’

  ‘There’s still the alibi – the proof he was in his room at the time,’ Colonel Lawson said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Bobby. ‘I’ve asked Station-Sergeant Weatherby to help me there, and I think there’s a room used for stores at the top of the building, but otherwise empty. If you could come up there with me, sir, I think I could show you how that might have been worked. Only I would like to point out one thing first. Both Norris and Mrs. Dene confirm Dene’s alibi and support each other. But neither actually saw Dene, and Mrs. Dene’s statement that he spoke to her through the closed door is an afterthought. In her original statement she signed she says clearly and plainly that he made no answer when she knocked the first time. It was on the second occasion, a couple of hours later, when he responded.’