The Mystery at Stowe

by Vernon Loder

  Tollard looked at him eagerly. ‘I don’t care for myself. Let me hear your question, Carton.’

  Carton looked at him straightly. ‘Were you on bad terms with your wife?’

  Tollard flushed, glared, and burst out. ‘This is intolerable!’

  Carton played his last card; he moved towards the door. ‘I thought you were not very much in earnest about saving Elaine,’ he sneered. ‘Very well. I need not detain you any longer.’

  Tollard bit his lip, and restrained himself with an obvious effort. ‘Stay! Wait a moment, Carton. Was that the only question you wanted to ask?’

  ‘There might be a few more.’

  Tollard pondered, his frown marked, but his eyes turned away from his visitor. Gloom settled on his face.

  ‘I think I may say I was not on bad terms with my wife,’ he said at last.

  Carton nodded. ‘Put it another way; was your wife on bad terms with you?’

  Tollard did not reply, but his eyes sought Carton’s face again, and remained there with transparent dislike.

  ‘I refuse to answer questions of that kind.’

  Jim Carton shrugged. ‘Very well. You refuse. You have done nothing all along, but try to hamper me; and, incidentally, the police, for some reason of your own.’

  ‘I told the police what I knew.’

  ‘With reservations, Tollard. You can’t deny that! You didn’t tell them all, you won’t tell me.’

  ‘Naturally, I refuse to discuss my dead wife with a mere acquaintance.’

  ‘Let it drop. You did more than that. Out of jealousy, or some other motive, you persuaded Barley to lock up the room where the tragedy took place.’

  ‘I had a feeling about it.’

  ‘No doubt, but feelings have to give place to common-sense at times.’

  ‘The police could go in and out.’

  ‘But you were determined that I should not. Didn’t you give me any credit for common decency? Did you think I was going there out of vulgar curiosity? I discovered something from my first visit. I was trying from the first to do my best for Elaine.’

  ‘I was not jealous of you and Elaine. I loved my wife.’

  ‘Then what the devil was your real motive, Tollard? But I needn’t ask. You were always an obstinate fellow, and so long as you can preserve your petty little pride, you don’t care what happens to anyone.’

  Tollard was stung now. His face was very red, and his mouth worked a little. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Then time presses. I thought I made that clear. The trouble is that I may have not sufficient time left to do anything. The clue I gave Fisher is being investigated by Inspector Warren. He went to Birmingham by fast train today. Fisher says he may be back late tonight. If the clue is no good, then they will apply for a warrant.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Answer my questions.’

  ‘No!’

  Carton moved to the door. ‘I have had enough of you, Tollard! Good-bye. I promise to see that counsel puts you through it, if the trial comes on.’

  ‘Wait!’

  Tollard seemed broken up. He stared at Carton in silence for a few moments, when the latter came towards him. He hunched his shoulders, and clenched his hands tightly together.

  ‘I’ll let you have a note—to Barley, telling him that you may examine the room. Will that do?’

  ‘Better than nothing,’ said Jim. ‘Let me have it now. I can get back the sooner.’

  Tollard reflected. ‘No. I’ll go down with you. My car is very fast, and the trains are bad.’

  ‘You will only be in my way,’ said Carton bluntly. ‘I would sooner have the note.’

  Tollard shook his head. ‘I promise not to interfere in any way. You shall have a free hand.’

  Carton thought for a moment. ‘Right!’ he said. ‘Hurry like blazes, and get your car!’

  CHAPTER XXVI

  SUPERINTENDENT FISHER WANTS THE LADDER

  CARTON had counted on the police waiting until Warren had returned with his report from Birmingham. He had even assumed that the test of the air-gun might take some time. He had not allowed for a hasty decision, and a telegram.

  Both came. Inspector Warren had not been three hours in the city when he left the gun-works, and went to a post-office to wire his superior. Fisher got the telegram, and started for Stowe House at seven. He went in a fast car, and turned up while the dinner was on.

  When a message from him was sent in that he wished to see Mr Barley at once, the host was rather pale and disquieted. Elaine too looked disturbed.

  ‘What can he want now?’ cried Mrs Gailey.

  ‘I shall go to see him at once, Grover,’ said Mr Barley, rising.

  Fisher was in the library. He had a telegram in his hand, and passed it to Mr Barley.

  ‘This has just come from Inspector Warren, who has been in Birmingham, sir.’

  ‘But what does it mean?’ Mr Barley asked, after he had looked at it. ‘I don’t understand this at all. It simply says, “Gun rust old. Spring break not recent. Firm quite sure of this.” But what gun does he mean, Fisher? I have not heard of any guns in connection with this case.’

  Fisher explained briefly. ‘Mr Carton thought that dart could be fired from an air-gun. Jorkins had one, it seemed. We examined it, found it rusty, and with a broken spring. We had it taken to the makers for an opinion. The wire gives it clearly. They are of opinion that the gun must have been defective before the tragedy. So Mr Carton’s clue proves useless.’

  ‘I see. I see,’ mused Mr Barley, rather helplessly. ‘I see. But where are we now? What comes after this?’

  ‘We may have to take a rather unpleasant step,’ said Fisher grimly. ‘Will you ask Miss Gurdon to see me here, sir?’

  ‘Good heavens, Fisher! Do you really suggest—’

  ‘I am suggesting nothing, sir. I merely ask you if you will tell Miss Gurdon I want to see her.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Mr Barley, ‘I’ll go at once.’

  Fisher read the wire again as he sat waiting for Elaine’s appearance. Carton had been too ingenious after all. He had raked up a very plausible thing, but on examination it proved no more than a mare’s nest.

  Elaine had had time to compose herself before she went in to see the superintendent. He asked her to sit down, and then told her quietly what he had told Mr Barley.

  ‘That leaves us where we were,’ he added, ‘and I shall have to ask you some questions which may be of a painful, and are certainly of a personal, nature.’

  ‘I am not afraid of them. I hope you will not hesitate,’ she said proudly.

  ‘No,’ he remarked drily. ‘I shall not warn you in advance, as it is necessary to do in certain cases, or at a more advanced stage of the enquiry. You will appreciate that point.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, we come to the late Mrs Tollard. Prior to her death (which may have altered your feelings), you disliked her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. On what grounds?’

  ‘Because she seemed to me to be making her husband unhappy.’

  ‘Did he tell you so?’

  ‘No. I saw it.’

  ‘What business was it of yours?’

  ‘I had known him since boyhood.’

  ‘He was a friend then?’

  ‘A great friend.’

  ‘Had you any reason to believe that he disliked his wife?’

  ‘I am sure he did not. I believe he loved her.’

  ‘You say she made him unhappy.’

  ‘People you love may make you very unhappy,’ she said.

  ‘True,’ he said, and looked at her closely. ‘Having said that he was in love with his wife, you do away with the possibility of his having been in love with anyone else?’

  ‘With me, you mean?’

  ‘Since you put it so, yes. But the fact, even if proven, that he did not love you does not eliminate another possibility.’

  ‘Be frank,’ she said
quickly. ‘Say you mean that I may have been, may still be in love with him?

  ‘Your frankness helps me considerably, Miss Gurdon,’ he said quietly. ‘That is what I do mean.’

  She nodded. ‘You have only my word for it, but I assure you as solemnly as I can that I don’t love Mr Tollard. I never did love him. We were on terms of friendship, nothing more than that.’

  ‘But he was going to back you financially?’

  ‘Mr Barley made the same offer lately, but that does not prove I was in love with Mr Barley.’

  ‘No. That is a point. But to get on. As a result of this scheme to back you in a projected expedition, Mr Tollard and you had frequent, and, in some cases, private, consultations. At first they took place in his house; his wife objected. They afterwards took place elsewhere.’

  ‘Yes, I have said so before.’

  He nodded. ‘On the day before the tragedy Mr Tollard took his wife to shop at Elterham. There is evidence that an assistant in a book-shop, and a man at the garage where they put up the car, noticed that there were strained relations between Mr Tollard and his wife.’

  Elaine shrugged. ‘That may be so.’

  ‘It was so. Then when they returned here, Mrs Gailey and her friend seemed to have noticed the same thing. Mr Tollard was here on a visit, and had said nothing of leaving. Almost immediately after his return, he went to his host, and told him urgent business called him away. That urgent business was nothing more than a trip on a friend’s yacht.’

  Elaine interrupted. ‘I can understand that. If he had had a quarrel with his wife, he might wish to get away for a little, to let matters calm down.’

  ‘Well, he made an excuse, and went away. Mrs Tollard had a bedroom between two bedrooms formerly occupied by you and her husband. His was empty that night. You heard sounds, and went in. You say you found Mrs Tollard lying on the floor, either dead or dying. You believed she was dead, but the doctor thinks she must have been just on the point of death then. That is immaterial. The fact is that she had been ill, that you went in to her room before anyone else in the house. You raised her up, almost to a sitting position?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Are you prepared to deny having visited her, or having entered her bedroom in the night, or at any time between the hour when you retired and the moment when you found her?’

  ‘Absolutely; on oath when necessary. I had no occasion to go there, and did not go there.’

  ‘Very well. To go further back: you brought some darts to Mr Barley; poisoned darts, which he bought with the blow-pipe for a trophy. You had also some other unpoisoned darts which you once used to demonstrate the blow-pipe on the lawn?’

  ‘I sold six in the quiver to Mr Barley. I handed the quiver to you, pointing out that only five were left. I had already pointed it out to Mr Barley.’

  ‘You knew, of course, that the quiver would be examined by us, once it was established that Mrs Tollard had been killed by a poisoned dart of the kind Mr Barley bought.’

  ‘I assumed that, of course. I am merely explaining that I didn’t dispute the fact that the dart found in the body came from the quiver, but actually was the first to point it out.’

  He admired her lucidity as much as her courage. ‘Thank you. Now I am going to put a very pertinent question indeed; so pertinent that I shall not try to force an answer. I may put what construction I please on your refusal to reply, but—’

  ‘Let me hear it. I understand,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘Are you prepared to declare that when you entered Mrs Tollard’s room that morning, you had nothing in your hand?’

  ‘I am. My hands were empty. If you mean that my raising her up into a sitting position, or nearly, gave me an opportunity to wound her with a dart concealed in my hand, I deny it absolutely! I had nothing in my hand. I simply did what I have told you.’

  ‘She is a cool one!’ thought Fisher, studying her closely. She knew what he was after all the time, and did not refuse to meet his tacit challenge.

  ‘Thank you. You are aware, of course, that you will be asked the same or similar questions at the adjourned inquest’s resumption, and that you will then be on oath?’

  ‘Of course. I can only repeat what I have said—the truth.’

  He nodded. ‘Do you know that I have certain powers that I can exercise at once, or in a very short space of time?’

  ‘That does not affect me, superintendent. No powers can make any difference. If you arrest me tomorrow, I shall still say what I have said today.’

  ‘Who said I might arrest you tomorrow?’ he demanded sharply.

  She shrugged. ‘I am aware that you may.’

  He saw that he could not shake her. ‘Miss Gurdon,’ he observed, ‘don’t assume too much. I have put all the questions that are most likely to pain you. I need not tell you that anything I may ask after this is as likely to prove your innocence of any hand in this matter as—’

  ‘As my guilt?’ she said scornfully.

  He shrugged. ‘So I am going back to the darts, but impersonally, if you know what I mean. The quiver hung in the hall. I am of opinion that taking out one dart from that quiver could be effected easily enough.’

  ‘Yes. A native has his weapons placed so that he can use them quickly. A slip, or a bungle, to him means a lost dinner, perhaps a lost life.’

  ‘But however easily the dart was withdrawn, a ladder was needed to mount to the height of the wall-trophy?’

  ‘I got one. Mr Barley found a step-ladder in the kitchen. He told me before dinner today that the ladder was usually kept in a cupboard under the stairs.’

  ‘But he found it in the kitchen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then the person who took the dart from the quiver may have used that very ladder?’

  ‘It is quite possible.’

  ‘You are sure you never used that ladder, before you used it that morning in Mr Barley’s presence?’

  ‘Certainly not. I can assure you of that.’

  Fisher mused. ‘And it is kept under the stairs in a cupboard? I may tell now that we did not worry about that ladder because of the nature of our theory. We were working on an assumption—’

  ‘That I did it?’

  He did not answer that question, but went on: ‘But we have still plenty of time. Your fingerprints may be on it, of course, as they were on the blow-pipe. But that proves nothing. Unless we find them duplicated at about the same height.’

  ‘You won’t find that.’

  ‘If we don’t, we may find others. Wood is a rather tell-tale material, Miss Gurdon!’

  He watched her, to see if she flinched; but she shrugged.

  ‘Then it seems to me the sooner you get the ladder, and forget your erroneous assumption about me, the better,’ she observed sarcastically.

  He rose. As he got to his feet, it flashed on his mind that she might have sold Mr Barley six darts for curios, but only put five in the quiver before it was hung up. But he did not mention that possibility, reserving it for consideration later, if the step-ladder proved a barren clue.

  ‘Let us get on to Mr Barley at once, and have it out,’ he said. ‘I suppose dinner will be over by now?’

  ‘I should think so,’ she replied calmly. ‘I’ll go to the drawing-room and get him.’

  ‘I’ll wait in the hall,’ said the superintendent.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  THE LUCK OF THE LADDER

  MR BARLEY and Elaine joined Fisher in the hall a few moments later. Mr Barley was calmer again. He had feared that the superintendent had come so hurriedly that evening to make an arrest, and was much relieved when Elaine came into the drawing-room without any appearance of agitation.

  ‘What is it now, Fisher?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to see the step-ladder that usually is put in a cupboard, sir.’

  ‘It must be there now, superintendent. Mr Carton put it there while I was watching.’

  Fisher’s brow clouded. ‘Why; was he examining it?’


  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Most irregular!’ said Fisher. ‘He had no business to do that, and I shall tell him so pretty sharply.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Barley nervously. ‘Do you want to see it now? I’ll go and get the key. Miss Gurdon, I think, knows where the back staircase is. If she will take you there, I’ll join you in a minute.’

  Elaine took Fisher away, and through the swing-door that separated the servants’ quarters from the main building. Neither of them heard a car draw up at the front of the house, nor knew that Tollard and Carton had arrived from town.

  But Mr Barley met them as he came downstairs from his bedroom, where he had searched in vain for the key of the cupboard, until he had recollected that it was not that key, but the one from Mrs Tollard’s room that he had put away.

  He greeted the appearance of the two hot men with surprise, told them hastily that Superintendent Fisher was in the house, and anxious to see a step-ladder that was kept under the stairs.

  ‘He is much annoyed with you, Mr Carton, for examining it,’ he added.

  Carton started. ‘Good heavens! I had the key of that cupboard in my pocket all the time. Here it is. But don’t tell Fisher.’

  ‘I’ll take it to him at once,’ said Mr Barley. ‘You should not have done that, Mr Carton.’

  ‘I want another key now, Mr Barley,’ said Jim. ‘The key of Mrs Tollard’s room. I must see that room at once.’

  ‘I have agreed to his making an examination of it,’ said Ned Tollard.

  Mr Barley hesitated. ‘My dear fellow, Fisher may not like it. He is waiting for me now.’

  Carton frowned. ‘A lot turns on this. Let me have the key, sir. I want to look round before Fisher has time to get up.’

  ‘Please,’ said Tollard.

  Mr Barley made a nervous gesture, then ran upstairs again, and was coming down with the key, when he met Carton and Tollard ascending.