Dr. Ringwood shuddered slightly. Apparently he found Sir Clinton’s picture a vivid one, in spite of the casual tone in which it had been drawn.
“The girl came up, quite unsuspicious,” Sir Clinton continued. “She knew X; it wasn’t a question of a street-loafer or anything of that sort. An attack would be the last thing to cross her mind. And then, in an instant, the attack fell. Probably she turned to go into the lighted room, thinking that X was there; and then the noose would be round her neck, a knee would be in her back and . . .”
With a grim movement, Sir Clinton completed his narrative of the murder more effectively than words could have done.
“That left X a clear field. The girl upstairs was light-headed and couldn’t serve as a witness. X daren’t go near her for fear of catching scarlatina—and that would have been a fatal business, for naturally we shall keep our eye on all fresh scarlet cases for the next week or so. It’s on the cards that her scarlatina has saved her life.”
Dr. Ringwood’s face showed his appreciation of this point.
“And then?” he pressed Sir Clinton.
“The rest’s obvious. X came in here, hunting for something which we haven’t identified. Whatever it was, it was in this drawer and X knew where it was. Nothing else has been disturbed except slightly—possibly in a hunt for the key of the drawer in case it had been left lying around loose. Not finding the key, X broke open the drawer and then we evidently arrived. That must have been a nasty moment up here. I don’t envy friend X’s sensations when we rang the front door bell. But a cool head pulls one through difficulties of that sort. While we were standing unsuspiciously on the front door steps, X slipped down stairs, out of the back door, and into the safety of the fog-screen.”
The Chief Constable rose to his feet as he concluded.
“Then that’s what happened, you think?” Doctor Ringwood asked.
“That’s what may have happened,” Sir Clinton replied cautiously. “Some parts of it certainly are correct, since there’s sound evidence to support them. The rest’s no more than guess-work. Now I must go to the ’phone.”
As the Chief Constable left the room, the sick girl upstairs whimpered faintly, and Dr. Ringwood got out of his chair with a yawn which he could not suppress. He paused on the threshold and looked out across the body to the spot at the turn of the stair. Sir Clinton’s word-picture of the murderer crouching there in ambush with his tourniquet had been a little too vivid for the doctor’s imagination.
Chapter Five
THE BUNGALOW TRAGEDY
In the course of his career, Sir Clinton Driffield had found it important to devote some attention to his outward appearance; but his object in doing so had been different from that of most men, for he aimed at making himself as inconspicious as possible. To look well-dressed, but not too smart; to seem intelligent without betraying his special acuteness; to be able to meet people without arousing any speculations about himself in their minds; above all, to eliminate the slightest suggestion of officialism from his manner: these had been the objects of no little study on his part. In the days when he had held junior posts, this protective mimicry of the average man had served his purposes excellently, and he still cultivated it even though its main purpose had gone.
Seated at his office desk, with its wire baskets holding packets of neatly-docketed papers, he would have passed as a junior director in some big business firm. Only a certain tiredness about his eyes hinted at the sleepless night he had spent at Heatherfield and Ivy Lodge, and when he began to open his letters, even this symptom seemed to fade out.
As he picked up the envelopes before him, his eye was caught by the brown cover of a telegram, and he opened it first. He glanced over the wording and his eyebrows lifted slightly. Then, putting down the document, he picked up his desk-telephone and spoke to one of his subordinates.
“Has Inspector Flamborough come in?”
“Yes, sir. He’s here just now.”
“Send him along to me, please.”
Replacing the telephone on its bracket, Sir Clinton picked up the telegram once more and seemed to reconsider its wording. He looked up as someone knocked on the door and entered the room.
“Morning, Inspector. You’re looking a bit tired. I suppose you’ve fixed up all last night’s business?”
“Yes, sir. Both bodies are in the mortuary; the doctor’s been warned about the P.M.’s; the coroner’s been informed about the inquests. And I’ve got young Hassendean’s papers all collected. I haven’t had time to do more than glance through them yet, sir.”
Sir Clinton gave a nod of approval and flipped the telegram across his desk.
“Sit down and have a look at that, Inspector. You can add it to your collection.”
Flamborough secured the slip of paper and glanced over it as he pulled a chair towards the desk.
“‘Chief Constable, Westerhaven. Try hassendean bungalow lizardbridge road justice.’ H’m! Handed in at the G.P.O. at 8.5 a.m. this morning. Seems to err a bit on the side of conciseness. He could have had three more words for his bob, and they wouldn’t have come amiss. Who sent it, sir?”
“A member of the Order of the Helpful Hand, perhaps. I found it on my desk when I came in a few minutes ago. Now you know as much about it as I do, Inspector.”
“One of these amateur sleuths, you think, sir?” asked the Inspector, and the sub-acid tinge in his tone betrayed his opinion of uninvited assistants. “I had about my fill of that lot when we were handling that Laxfield affair last year.”
He paused for a moment, and then continued:
“He’s been pretty sharp with his help. It’s handed in at 8.5 a.m. and the only thing published about the affair is a stop-press note shoved into the Herald. I bought a copy as I came along the road. Candidly, sir, it looks to me like a leg-pull.”
He glanced over the telegram disparagingly.
“What does he mean by ‘Lizardbridge road justice’? There’s no J.P. living on the Lizardbridge Road; and even if there were, the thing doesn’t make sense to me.”
“I think ‘justice’ is the signature, Inspector—what one might term his nom-de-kid, if one leaned towards slang, which of course you never do.”
The Inspector grinned. His unofficial language differed considerably from his official vocabulary, and Sir Clinton knew it.
“Justice? I like that!” Flamborough ejaculated contemptuously, as he put the telegram down on the desk.
“It looks rather as though he wanted somebody’s blood,” Sir Clinton answered carelessly. “But all the same, Inspector, we can’t afford to put it into the waste-paper basket. We’re very short of anything you could call a real clue in both these cases last night, remember. It won’t do to neglect this, even if it does turn out to be a mare’s nest.”
Inspector Flamborough shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly, as though to indicate that the decision was none of his.
“I’ll send a man down to the G.P.O. to make inquiries at once, sir, if you think it necessary. At that time in the morning there can’t have been many wires handed in and we ought to be able to get some description of the sender.”
“Possibly,” was as far as Sir Clinton seemed inclined to go. “Send off your man, Inspector. And while he’s away, please find out something about this Hassendean Bungalow, as our friend calls it. It’s bound to be known to the Post Office people, and you’d better get on the local P.O. which sends out letters to it. The man who delivers the post there will be able to tell you something about it. Get the ’phone to work at once. If it’s a hoax, we may as well know that at the earliest moment.”
“Very well, sir,” said the Inspector, recognising that it was useless to convert Sir Clinton to his own view.
He picked up the telegram, put it in his pocket, and left the room.
When the Inspector had gone, Sir Clinton ran rapidly through his letters, and then turned to the documents in the wire baskets. He had the knack of working his mind by compartments when
he chose, and it was not until Flamborough returned with his report that the Chief Constable gave any further thought to the Hassendean case. He knew that the Inspector could be trusted to get the last tittle of useful information when he had been ordered to do so.
“The Hassendeans have a bungalow on the Lizardbridge Road, sir,” Flamborough confessed when he came back once more. “I got the local postman to the ’phone and he gave me as much as one could expect. Old Hassendean built the thing as a spec., hoping to get a good price for it. Ran it up just after the war. But it cost too much, and he’s been left with it on his hands. It’s just off the road, on the hill about half-way between here and the new place they’ve been building lately, that farm affair.”
“Oh, there?” Sir Clinton answered. “I think I know the place. I’ve driven past it often: a brown-tiled roof and a lot of wood on the front of the house.”
“That’s it, sir. The postman described it to me.”
“Anything more about it?”
“It’s empty most of the year, sir. The Hassendeans use it as a kind of summer place—shift up there in the late spring, usually, the postman said. It overlooks the sea and stands high, you remember. Plenty of fresh air. But it’s shut up just now, sir. They came back to town over two months ago—middle of September or thereabouts.”
Sir Clinton seemed to wake up suddenly.
“That fails to stir you, Inspector? Strange! Now it interests me devilishly, I can assure you. We’ll run up there now in my car.”
The Inspector was obviously disconcerted by this sudden desire for travel.
“It’s hardly worth your while to go all that way, sir,” he protested. “I can easily go out myself if you think it necessary.”
Sir Clinton signed a couple of documents before replying. Then he rose from his chair.
“I don’t mind saying, Inspector, that two murders within three hours is too high an average for my taste when they happen in my district. It’s a case of all hands to the pumps, now, until we manage to get on the track. I’m not taking the thing out of your hands. It’s simply going on the basis that two heads are better than one. We’ve got to get to the bottom of the business as quick as we can.”
“I quite understand, sir,” Flamborough acknowledged without pique. “There’s no grudge in the matter. I’m only afraid that this business is a practical joke and you’ll be wasting your time.”
Sir Clinton dissented from the last statement with a movement of his hand.
“By the way,” he added, “we ought to take a doctor with us. If there’s anything in the thing at all, I’ve a feeling that Mr. Justice hasn’t disturbed us for a trifle. Let’s see. Dr. Steel will have his hands full with things just now; we’ll need to get someone else. That Ringwood man has his wits about him, from what I saw of him. Ring him up, Inspector, and ask him if he can spare the time. Tell him what it’s about, and if he’s the sportsman I take him for, he’ll come if he can manage it. Tell him we’ll call for him in ten minutes and bring him home again as quick as we can. And get them to bring my car round now.”
Twenty minutes later, as they passed up an avenue, Sir Clinton turned to Dr. Ringwood:
“Recognise it, doctor?”
Dr. Ringwood shook his head.
“Never seen it before to my knowledge.”
“You were here last night, though. Look, there’s Ivy Lodge.”
“So I see by the name on the gate-post. But remember it’s the first time I’ve seen the house itself. The fog hid everything last night.”
Sir Clinton swung the car to the left at the end of the avenue.
“We shan’t be long now. It’s a straight road out from here to the place we’re bound for.”
As they reached the outskirts of Westerhaven, Sir Clinton increased his speed, and in a very short time Dr. Ringwood found himself approaching a long low bungalow which faced the sea-view at a little distance from the road. It had been built in the shelter of a plantation, the trees of which dominated it on one side; and the garden was dotted with clumps of quick-growing shrubs which helped to give it the appearance of maturity.
Inspector Flamborough stepped down from the back seat of the car as Sir Clinton drew up.
“The gate’s not locked,” he reported, as he went up to it. “Just wait a moment, sir, while I have a look at the surface of the drive.”
He walked a short distance towards the house, with his eyes on the ground; then he returned and swung the leaves of the gate open for the car to pass.
“You can drive in, sir,” he reported. “The ground was hard last night, you remember; and there isn’t a sign of anything in the way of footmarks or wheel-prints to be seen there.”
As the car passed him, he swung himself aboard again; and Sir Clinton drove up to near the house.
“We’ll get down here, I think, and walk the rest,” he proposed, switching off his engine. “Let’s see. Curtains all drawn. . . . Hullo! One of the small panes of glass on that front window has been smashed, just at the lever catch. You owe an apology to Mr. Justice, Inspector, I think. He’s not brought us here to an absolute mare’s nest, at any rate. There’s been housebreaking going on.”
Followed by the others, he walked over to the damaged window and examined it carefully.
“No foot-prints or anything of that sort to be seen,” he pointed out, glancing at the window-sill. “The window’s been shut, apparently, after the housebreaker got in—if he did get in at all. That would be an obvious precaution, in case the open window caught someone’s eye.”
He transferred his attention to the casement itself. It was a steel-framed one, some four feet high by twenty inches wide, which formed part of a set of three which together made up the complete window. Steel bars divided it into eight small panes.
“The Burglar’s Delight!” Sir Clinton described it scornfully. “You knock in one pane, just like this; then you put your hand through; turn the lever-fastener; swing the casement back on its hinges—and walk inside. There isn’t even the trouble of hoisting a sash as you have to do with the old-fashioned window. Two seconds would see you inside the house, with only this affair to tackle.”
He glanced doubtfully at the lever handle behind the broken glass.
“There might be finger-prints on that,” he said. “I don’t want to touch it. Just go round to the front door, Inspector, and see if it’s open by any chance. If not, we’ll smash the glass at the other end of this window and use the second casement to get in by, so as not to confuse things.”
When the Inspector had reported the front door locked, the Chief Constable carried out his proposal; the untouched casement swung open, and they prepared to enter the room, which hitherto had been concealed from them by the drawn curtains. Sir Clinton led the way, and as he pushed the curtain out of his road, his companions heard a bitten-off exclamation.
“Not much of a mare’s nest, Inspector,” he continued in a cooler tone. “Get inside.”
The Inspector, followed by Dr. Ringwood, climbed through the open casement and stared in astonishment at the sight before them. The place they had entered was evidently one of the sitting-rooms of the bungalow, and the dust-sheets which covered the furniture indicated that the building had been shut up for the winter. In a big arm-chair, facing them as they entered, sat the body of a girl in evening dress with a cloak around her shoulders. A slight trail of blood had oozed from a wound in her head and marked her shoulder on the right side. On the floor at her feet lay an automatic pistol. One or two small chairs seemed to have been displaced roughly in the room, as though some struggle had taken place; but the attitude of the girl in the chair was perfectly natural. It seemed as though she had sat down merely to rest and death had come upon her without any warning, for her face had no tinge of fear in its expression.
“I wasn’t far out in putting my money on Mr. Justice, Inspector,” Sir Clinton said thoughtfully, as he gazed at the dead girl. “It might have been days before we came across this affair without his h
elp.”
He glanced round the room for a moment, biting his lip as though perplexed by some problem.
“We’d better have a general look round before touching the details,” he suggested, at last; and he led the way out of the room into the hall of the bungalow. “We’ll try the rooms as we come to them.”
Suiting the action to the word, he opened the first door that came to hand. It proved to be that of a dismantled bedroom. The dressing-table was bare and everything had been removed from the bed expect a wire mattress. The second door led into what was obviously the dining-room of the bungalow; and here again the appearance of the room showed that the house had been shut up for the season. A third trial revealed a lavatory.
“H’m! Clean towels hanging on the rail?” Sir Clinton pointed out. “That’s unusual in an empty house, isn’t it?”
Without waiting for a minuter examination, he turned to the next door.
“Some sort of store-room, apparently. These mattresses belong to the beds, obviously.”
Along one side of the little room were curtained shelves. Sir Clinton slid back the curtains and revealed the stacked house-napery, towels, and sheets.
“Somebody seems to have been helping themselves here,” he indicated, drawing his companions’ attention to one or two places where the orderly piling of the materials had been disturbed by careless withdrawals. “We’ll try again.”
The next room provided a complete contrast to the rest of the house. It was a bedroom with all its fittings in place. The bed, fully made up, had obviously not been slept in. The dressing-table was covered with the usual trifles which a girl uses in her toilette. Vases, which obviously did not belong to the normal equipment of the room, had been collected here and filled with a profusion of expensive flowers. Most surprising of all, an electric stove, turned on at half power, kept the room warm.
“She’s been living here!” the Inspector exclaimed in a tone which revealed his astonishment.
The Case With Nine Solutions (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 6
