The Mystery at Stowe

by Vernon Loder

  ‘I see. This scratch was healed?’

  Browne twinkled. ‘If you think it will prove that Mrs Tollard received the scratch in trying to defend herself against an assailant, you may give up the idea! If it had been so, I should have told the coroner. That scratch was a good many hours old, perhaps a day or two.’

  Jim nodded. ‘Now that the theory of a stranger in the room is disposed of, I need not consider an inside assailant.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Browne sharply.

  ‘Why should I?’

  The doctor surveyed him thoughtfully for a few moments. ‘When you were clever enough to find out Jorkins, you killed a theory, but gave birth to another, young man! So long as we could assume that an outsider had done it, we had no need to go further.’

  ‘Have we now?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. If they cannot prove there was a man out on the lawn with a blow-pipe, and, or rather, a woman in a red gown inside, how do we account for the dart?’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ cried Carton uncomfortably. ‘You can dispose of the primary influence imparted by the blow-pipe?’

  ‘Absolutely. Several conditions are necessary—quietness on the part of the victim, of sufficient pain in another part to make a prick unfelt.’

  ‘That’s ugly.’

  ‘It is, but there you have it. If you go and upset the old, you must suffer from the new, Mr Carton. Since the dart was made for a blow-pipe, the police cannot get away from the latter. You might as well say that a hat-pin is made to thrust in a hat, so it can’t be used to thrust in a human being.’

  ‘That’s true. The dart might have been held in the hand.’

  ‘Worse than that is the fact—mind you, I am not going to put it forward yet—that a case might be built up against Miss Gurdon on the strength of that.’

  Carton nodded quietly. ‘That’s why I butted in. I saw that from the first.’

  ‘I’ll tell you how,’ said Browne, with a grave look. ‘It is all supposition, but everything connected with this case is the same. Mrs Tollard has a blinding headache, and keeps to her room the day before. She may be ill in the night, suffer in the early morning from pains, or weakness which makes her dizzy, sick, or incapable of appreciating what is going on about her.’

  ‘I see that.’

  ‘Very well, a second person—we will mention no names—hears the sound of restless tossing, and goes in. We will assume that this second person has a grudge against the sufferer. She finds the latter has got out of bed, in her state of dizziness or pain, and lain down on the floor.’

  ‘Would she do that?’

  ‘Young man!’ said Browne, ‘do you think I would state it as a possibility if it were impossible? I have had patients do it many times. But to go on: this second person has a dart concealed in her hand. She raises the only half-conscious sufferer, and, while holding her up, inserts that dart under the shoulder-blade, then lets her fall back. Next she goes for assistance, and when she is accompanied into the room, remarks with emphasis that the window is open top and bottom. This is to suggest that the dart was fired from outside.’

  As he ended, he looked at Carton, who did not appear so surprised as he had expected to see him.

  There was a momentary pause, then Jim Carton spoke. ‘That, of course, is the danger I feared. I don’t admit either the grudge, or the act. I know Miss Gurdon too well. But I could see that others might take your view—’

  ‘Don’t call it my view yet.’

  ‘Well, we may accept the hypothesis you have put forward. I noticed at the inquest that the police let her off lightly, and I inferred from that that they had suspicions. But they might be suspicious of Tollard too.’

  ‘You mean poisoning?’

  ‘Yes. He’s as likely to be guilty as she. I don’t believe either is, though.’

  ‘We shall know definitely when we hear the Home Office report. But two can play detective, young man. From your jumping so soon to this danger, I gather that you know something definite about the relations of Miss Gurdon and Mrs Tollard that I can only conjecture.’

  ‘Frankly,’ said Jim Carton, ‘I have only heard gossip, and believe that the two women were antipathetic. I am sure Mrs Tollard was jealous of Miss Gurdon. But that is as far as I will go, I don’t think Miss Gurdon cares at all for Mr Tollard, in that way. I am sure she is not in love with him.’

  ‘Passion incites a great many crimes.’

  ‘That is so. But, if you eliminate any passion here, you can find no reason for murder. Women who dislike each other merely do not kill one another.’

  ‘I agree. Look here, Mr Carton, I wish you luck in the job you have undertaken. I am too old a bird to take risks to prove myself clever. No one shall hear a word of this hypothesis of mine, until I have more warrant for believing it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But what I may keep to myself the police may light on, independently. It’s a pity you found out about Jorkins before you had other evidence to exonerate Miss Gurdon. Could you keep it dark for a little?’

  ‘I might try to,’ replied Jim Carton doubtfully.

  ‘Well, try!’

  Carton went back to Stowe House looking very grave. Tollard and the others might call him officious or fussy, or what they pleased, because none of them seemed to realise the danger. It seemed to them that they regarded innocence (such of them as were innocent) as its own protection. He knew how false that was. He had just seen how even a doctor, untrained in detective work, was able to build up a case against Elaine.

  It was a plausible case too, and one that a jury might accept. The only weak thing in it was the motive, but no motives in the case appeared strong, and jealousy or dislike might, relatively, seem as strong as any. The trouble was that Elaine had found Mrs Tollard. If it could have been proved that she had not been in the room at all, until she entered it in the company of some other member of the household, the hypothetical case against her fell to the ground.

  Another thought struck Carton as he pounded back along the hot road. Mrs Tollard’s maid had seen her mistress last, the night preceding the murder. Then, to all intents and purposes, there was no one to say that the actual prick with the dart had not been given in the night itself. She might have been asleep then, an intruder might have wounded her, and gone away. That would leave some hours for the poison to work. It would be even possible to say that the action of that poison had a soporific effect, or produced a state of partial coma, in which the victim had struggled out of bed, and lain down on the floor.

  Carton shrugged. He had not come home for this. The years of absence had only strengthened his boyish love for Elaine, and he had felt that her refusal of his proposal long ago had not been final. He had been a rather self-conscious and conceited fellow at that time; a cub, he told himself. Perhaps he had been too sure of her. At any rate, he had had hopes when he left Africa.

  He still had hopes, but this tragedy had come between them. If it was only that, he would be happy. But unwelcome doubts had crept into his mind the last few days. Was Elaine really as indifferent to Ned Tollard as she professed to be? Of course she was, he said to himself abruptly, but his words were more convinced than his mind.

  In any case he could not speak to her now. It would be indecent at this stage of affairs. But he might save her from trouble, and that he intended to do, whatever unpopularity it involved in Mr Barley’s overwrought household.

  How was he going to counter a new attack? That thought troubled him. He felt sure that he would not be able to cover up that day’s discovery. There had been too many in it—Jorkins, Mr Barley, Mrs Gailey. Then the servants might have seen something, and that old busybody Mrs Minever.

  Remembering Mrs Gailey, he recollected something she had told him. It was that Elaine had formerly decided to make some investigations herself, and not leave the whole thing to the police. Had this idea dropped out of her mind? He thought it had, since she had told him to leave things to the officers. But it was possible that she was
quietly pursuing her enquiries. He might ask her.

  The others had finished lunch when he arrived, but he sat down alone, and hurried through a meal mechanically. He went in search of Elaine afterwards, and found her for once alone, sitting in an arbour fronting the rose-garden, writing up her diary.

  ‘I hope two will be company,’ he said, as he advanced. ‘Do let the proverb rest easy this time!’

  She closed the book, put down her pen, and nodded.

  ‘Where have you been, Jim? You weren’t in to lunch.’

  ‘Didn’t Barley tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then perhaps I had better not. But I have been very busy. Your news is more important. What did the police say, if it isn’t a rude question?’

  She frowned a little. ‘I suppose I may tell you. We were not asked to keep it dark. It was simply that the Home Office has sent down the report.’

  ‘They have? Important?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends on the way you look at it. They say—that is, their toxicologist says—that the poison found in the body corresponds to that found on the tip of the dart.’

  ‘There was no other poison?’

  ‘No, none whatever. I didn’t expect to hear of any.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘They don’t know any more than I. I told you the secret was a native one. I repeated it to the superintendent today.’

  ‘Have they any idea what effect would be produced by it?’

  ‘From tests they have made with the minute quantity at their disposal they are inclined to think it would cause death quickly. I believe they talked of a possible lapse of consciousness, followed by a possible delirium, but I did not see the report, and I have a feeling that their conclusions are speculative.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Because of the minute quantity they extracted. But it does not matter much, does it? The point is that the dart caused her death.’

  In the light of the new hypothesis Carton thought it might matter a great deal, but he did not say so. ‘Perhaps not. Did they ask you and Tollard any further questions?’

  ‘They didn’t ask him any, after all. They asked me to explain the symptoms I had seen when a monkey, or bird, and, in one case, a man, was shot with these darts. There was a middle-aged man there, to whom I was not introduced. He may have been an expert of some kind—perhaps a pathologist. He said something at the end about getting back to town.’

  ‘He listened to what you said?’

  ‘Yes, very keenly. I should not be surprised if he was sent by the Home Office.’

  Carton pursed his lips. ‘Very likely. Anything else?’

  ‘They asked me if I was sure I had not gone in the night to see if Margery wanted anything.’

  He repressed an exclamation. It seemed, to him that the police might have jumped to the same conclusion as the doctor. The Home Office experts might have suggested that death had not come quickly after all, but camouflaged their observations from Elaine.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said that if I had thought she was really ill I would have gone in during the night. In fact I would have seen her before I went to bed. But I had only been told it was a headache, and I had always considered her a healthy woman in spite of her apparent fragility.’

  ‘They accepted that?’

  ‘They had to, of course.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Jim Carton, after a pause, ‘Barley told me when I first came that Tollard had pleaded urgent business when he left for London on the day before the murder.’

  Elaine looked at him quickly. ‘Are you sure he said urgent?’

  ‘I am quite sure. Barley said it puzzled him at first, for no one could call going off on a yacht urgent business. Do you know if he got a wire, or was called up on the telephone, that morning?’

  ‘I never heard of it. I don’t think so. Unless he called at the post-office in Elterham for a telegram before he left.’

  ‘Even if he had one, I say it is not urgent business. He said nothing about any kind of business in his evidence at the inquest.’

  ‘I know he didn’t.’

  ‘At any rate, he went in his car with his wife that morning to get a book for her, I think someone said.’

  ‘Yes, some books. She had ordered them.’

  ‘Did you see them come back?’

  A shade suddenly passed over her face, and he saw it and grew alert. He noticed too that she paused perceptibly before she replied.

  ‘Yes.’

  Carton studied her face closely, so closely that she flushed a little. ‘What had the row been about?’ he asked quickly. His experience abroad had shown him the value of assuming knowledge he did not possess, and posing a question abruptly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Elaine, then bit her lip. ‘Who told you there had been one?’

  ‘You,’ he said, triumphantly. ‘I saw it in your face.’

  CHAPTER XVII

  TOLLARD MAKES A SCENE

  ELAINE reddened slowly, and a little flicker of anger showed in her eyes. ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Jim,’ she said sharply. ‘I don’t like it. Detectives and people of that kind may trip one up or try to do it, but you are not a detective.’

  ‘No,’ he said rather bitterly, ‘I am only an ass, who wants to save you from trouble. I am sorry if I annoy you.’

  ‘You won’t,’ said Elaine, relenting a little, ‘if you leave this alone, Jim. I know you are trying to do what you can, but it seems to me quite futile. I had nothing to do with this dreadful business. Little as I liked Margery, I am sorry for her, and would give a great deal to have this undone. But you can’t expect an innocent person to go about in fear of the police, and exhibiting all the signs of a conscious criminal.’

  ‘I never said you should, my dear girl. Do you think this is fun for me? Do you think I covet the title of officious ass just for the love of it? Give me credit for a little sense.’

  ‘I give you credit for more intelligence than most people, Jim,’ she said softly. ‘But it ought to tell you that you are doing no good. You have been trying to discover something for some days now, but I don’t see that you have.’

  Wounded pride almost prompted him to say that he had discovered an important fact that very morning, but he choked it down.

  ‘I must do what I think best, I am afraid. If you saw me on the edge of a precipice I imagine you would give me a warning. I hope you would anyway. I might be too blind to see it, but I should credit you with good intentions.’

  ‘As I do you,’ she said, laying her hand gently on his arm. ‘Don’t let us quarrel over this. It isn’t our pidgin anyway, you know.’

  As she spoke someone came across the rose-garden, and approached them. It was Ned Tollard, and his face was black as thunder, when he saw who was sitting there with Elaine.

  The truth was that Mrs Minever had been unable to contain her store of fresh gossip, and when Tollard and Mrs Gailey went with her into the drawing-room for a few minutes after lunch, the old lady had gradually entered on the topic of colour-blindness, winding up with that morning’s discovery of Jorkins’s visual defect.

  Tollard pricked up his ears at once. ‘But how did they find that out?’ he demanded, much perturbed.

  Mrs Gailey made one desperate attempt to get Mrs Minever away from the topic. But her well-meant pressure of the foot impinged on the old lady’s most detested corn, and drew from her an agonised howl.

  Mrs Gailey blushed to the eyes, and Tollard turned to her impatiently.

  ‘You were here this morning, Netta. Perhaps you can tell me.’

  Netta shook her head, covered with confusion. ‘Mrs Minever was going to tell you.’

  ‘If you hadn’t trodden on my poor foot,’ cried Mrs Minever reprovingly. ‘It was Mr Carton did it, Mr Tollard.’

  ‘Oh, Carton?’ said Tollard, biting his lip.

  Mrs Minever at once began to tell him what had happened, and as she went on her heedless way, his b
row grew darker. But he made no explosive comments, though a dozen boiled in his head, merely stopping her once to ask Mrs Gailey a question.

  ‘You helped Carton with this? I suppose it was not your suggestion?’

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ she cried. ‘He asked me would I help him. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘It’s done now,’ he said sternly. ‘Please go on, Mrs Minever. I want to hear the rest.’

  So she told him how Jorkins had been brought up, had crossed the park, and looked up at the window, where Mrs Gailey had shown herself in a dressing-gown.

  ‘Not my wife’s, I trust?’ said Tollard bitterly.

  ‘No,’ cried Netta. ‘Of course not. The police have it anyway, but I shouldn’t have thought of wearing this in any case, and I don’t believe Mr Carton would have asked me to.’

  ‘It seems difficult to say what he would not ask people to do, Netta. But you stood there, and Jorkins thought the dressing-gown you wore was red. Is that it?’

  ‘Yes. Quite. Yes.’

  ‘What colour was it?’

  ‘Maize—yellow. I do wish I hadn’t done it.’

  He appeared not to hear her. ‘So Carton examined Jorkins and discovered that he was colour-blind.’

  ‘I met Jorkins going out and he told me so.’

  ‘Does Elaine know this?’

  ‘I didn’t tell her.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Netta, who was startled by Tollard’s black looks.

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘She said when she came in first that she thought of writing up her diary in the garden after lunch. She may be in the rose arbour.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tollard drily, and marched to the door.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Minever,’ said Netta, when he had gone, ‘I do wish you hadn’t told him. I can see he is frightfully angry.’

  ‘Is that why you trod on my foot? Don’t do that again, please. It was positive agony.’

  Mrs Gailey expressed sorrow. ‘I hope there won’t be a row.’

  ‘If Mr Carton will only mind his own business, there won’t be any rows,’ said Mrs Minever distinctly. ‘Why can’t he leave it alone?’