Crystal Beads Murder

by Annie Haynes

  She had expected to find Saunderson waiting for her – she told herself that he must be – but there was no one to be seen, and somewhat to her surprise the door of the summer-house was nearly closed. She stopped opposite; there was something sinister, almost terrifying, to her in the sight of that closed door, in the absence of any sound or movement. At last very slowly she went forward, halting between every step. Surely, surely, Saunderson must be waiting for her?

  “Mr. Saunderson,” she whispered hoarsely, “are you there?”

  There came no faintest sound in answer; yet surely, surely she could catch the faint smell of a cigarette?

  Very softly, very gingerly she pushed open the door.

  “This,” said Inspector Stoddart, tapping a paragraph in the evening paper as he spoke,” is a job for us.”

  Harbord leaned forward and read it over the other’s shoulder.

  “Early this morning a gruesome discovery was made by a gardener in the employ of Lord Medchester at Holford Hall in Loamshire. In a summer-house at the back of the flower garden he found the body of a man in evening-dress. A doctor was summoned and stated that the deceased had been shot through the heart. Death must have been instantaneous and must have taken place probably eight or nine hours before the body was discovered.”

  “Look at the stop press news.” Stoddart pointed to the space at the side.

  “The body found in the summer-house at Holford has been identified as that of a Mr. Robert Saunderson, who had been one of Lord Medchester’s guests for the races at Doncaster but had left Holford the following day.”

  “Robert Saunderson,” Harbord repeated, wrinkling his brows. “I seem to know the name, but I can’t place him. Isn’t he a racing man?”

  “He would scarcely be a friend of the Medchesters if he wasn’t,” Stoddart replied, picking up the paper and staring at it as if he would wring further information from it. “Regular racing lot they belong to. Oh, I have heard of Saunderson. A pretty bad hat he was. He had a colt or two training at Oxley, down by Epsom. Picked up one or two minor races last year, but he’s never done anything very big. Medchester’s horses are trained at Burford’s, East Molton. Lord Medchester’s a decent sort of chap, I have heard. Anyway, a victory of his is always acclaimed in the North. He generally does well at Ayr and Bogside, and picks up a few over the sticks. Rumour credits him with an overmastering desire to win one of the classic races. His wife is a funny one – I fancy they don’t hit it off very well. His trainer, Burford, is a good sort. His engagement to a cousin of Lord Medchester’s was announced the other day.”

  “Not much of a match for her, I should say.”

  “Oh, quite decent. Burford makes a good thing out of his training. He’s a second son of old Sir William Burford and half-brother of the present baronet. This Saunderson was pretty well known in London society too, and I have heard that he was one of Lady Medchester’s admirers. I believe he was an American.”

  “Anyway, so long as he wasn’t English, he wouldn’t have much difficulty in getting on in London society,” Harbord remarked sarcastically. “A bachelor too, wasn’t he?”

  “As far as anyone knows,” Stoddart answered.

  A copy of “Who’s Who” lay on the table. He pulled it towards him. “‘Saunderson, Robert Francis,’” he read. “‘Born in Buenos Aires 1888. Served in the Great War as an interpreter on the Italian frontier. Invalided out in May 1917. Clubs, Automobile, Junior Travellers.’”

  “H’m! Not much of a dossier – wonder why they put him in?” Harbord remarked.

  “No; more noticeable for what it leaves out than for what it puts in,” Stoddart agreed.

  “Well, I have received an S.O.S. from the Loamshire police, so you and I will go down by the night express to Derby. From there it is a crosscountry journey to Holford. Take a few hours, I suppose.”

  “I wonder what Saunderson was doing in that neighbourhood when he had left the Hall?” Harbord cogitated.

  Stoddart shrugged his shoulders.

  “I dare say we shall find out when we get there.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “This is the principal entrance, I suppose,” Stoddart said, stopping before the lodge at Holford, and looking up the avenue of oaks that was one of the chief attractions of the Hall.

  As he spoke a small two-seater pulled up beside them and two men sprang out. One of them Stoddart had no difficulty in recognizing as the local superintendent of police; the other, a tall, military-looking man, he rightly divined to be the Chief Constable, Major Logston.

  The Major looked at the two detectives.

  “Inspector Stoddart, I presume. I was hoping to catch you. I missed you at the station – had a break-down coming from home. This is a terrible affair, inspector.”

  “I have only seen the bare account in the papers,” Stoddart said quietly. “Before we go any further I should very much like to hear what you can tell us.”

  “I shall be glad to give you all the details I can,” Major Logston said, entering the gates with him and leaving the superintendent to bring up the rear with Harbord in the two-seater.

  “Of course we have had quantities of those damned reporters all over the place.” the Major began confidentially. “But we have told the beggars as little as possible, and now we are not allowing them within the gates.”

  The inspector nodded.

  “Quite right, sir. Reporters are the very devil, with what they pick up and what they invent. They’ve helped many a murderer to escape the gallows.”

  “I entirely agree with you.” The Chief Constable paused a minute, then he said slowly, “This Robert Saunderson had been staying at Holford quite recently. He had been one of the house-party for the races, you know, inspector, for the St. Leger. But he left the next day like most of the other guests, and deuce knows why he came back. An under-gardener – Joseph Wilton by name – was clearing up rubbish and such-like for one of those bonfires that always make such a deuce of a stink all over the place at this time of the year. He was round about the summer-house and, glancing inside, was astounded to see a man lying on the floor. He went in, as he says, to find if one of the gentlemen had been ‘took ill,’ and discovered that he was dead and cold. He gave the alarm to his fellow-gardeners and then he and another man went up to the Hall to acquaint Lord Medchester with his discovery; Medchester went back with them, imagining Wilton had exaggerated, and was amazed and horrified to find not only that Wilton’s story was too true, but that the dead man was no other than Robert Saunderson, who had so recently been his guest. Of course they got the doctor there as soon as possible. He said the man had been dead for hours, had probably died the night before the discovery.”

  “Presumably I should not be here if the case was one of suicide?”

  “Out of the question,” Major Logston said decidedly. “I can’t give you the technical details, but the fellow had been shot through the heart. Death must have been instantaneous. And the revolver cannot be found.”

  “H’m!” The inspector drew in his lips. “Pretty conclusive, that. Any clue to the murderer?”

  The Chief shook his head.

  “Not so far. The summer-house is a favourite place for tea with Lady Medchester, so there’ll be a maze of finger-prints and what not. Oh, it won’t be an easy matter to find out who fired the fatal shot, as things look at present. I don’t know whether Dr. Middleton will be any help to you, but he is up at the Hall now. He is attending General Courtenay, an uncle of Lord Medchester’s, who had a stroke last night, so you will be able to hear what he has to say at once. Lord Medchester wants to see you too.”

  “I shall be glad to see him,” Stoddart said politely. “But first about the body – I presume you have had it moved?”

  “Yes. As soon as the doctor had seen it we had it taken to an outhouse near the churchyard, which has to serve as a temporary mortuary.”

  “Well, naturally you could do nothing else,” the inspector said, staring up at the windows of Holford Hall. �
��This Saunderson, now, what was he like to look at?”

  “Alive, do you mean?” the Chief Constable questioned. “I saw him at Doncaster. Didn’t care much for the look of him myself. Big haw-haw sort of brute, don’t you know. Pretty bad lot from all accounts – always after the skirts. Well, here we are!”

  Stepping inside the big portico that was over the front entrance to the Hall, his ring was answered instantly. The two-seater stood before the door. A young footman flung the door open and announced that his lordship was expecting them. Stoddart joined Harbord and the two went in together.

  Lord Medchester received them in his study. The walls were lined with books, but a little inspection showed that the two shelves which had the appearance of being the most used were devoted to racing literature. Lord Medchester was a tall, thin man in the early forties; perfectly bald in front and on the crown, the ridge of hair at the back was unusually thick and had the appearance of having slipped down from the top. He glanced sharply at Stoddart as the detectives entered, and came forward to meet them.

  “I am delighted to see you, inspector. This – this is an appalling thing to happen in one’s grounds. And our local police don’t seem able to grapple with it at all – we look to you to find out who killed the poor beggar.”

  “I will do my best, Lord Medchester. Will you tell me what you know of Mr. Saunderson?”

  “That will be precious little,” said his lordship, subsiding into a chair near the fireplace and motioning to Stoddart and Harbord to take chairs close at hand. “I have met him out and about for years. He was staying at Merton Towers for the Derby, and when we were talking about putting a bit on Harkaway he gave me a tip for Battledore for the Cup. The colt ran away with it, you know, and I made a tidy pocketful over him. So, times being what they are, and these damned Socialists not content with screwing every penny they can out of you when you are alive, but dragging your very grave from you when you are dead, I was deuced bucked with my luck and on the spur of the moment I asked Saunderson here for the St. Leger. He rather jumped at it, I thought, and turned up all right. Of course we all put our shirts on Battledore and he let us all down and ran nowhere. So I lost most of what I won at Goodwood. I was a bit rattled, I can tell you. Not that it was Saunderson’s fault.”

  “Did he lose?” Stoddart asked quickly.

  “Well, he went down on Battledore of course,” his lordship answered, “but he’d hedged on Goldfoot, lucky beggar! At least, I thought he was lucky until this happened.”

  “He left Holford the day after the races, I understand?” Stoddart pursued.

  Lord Medchester nodded. “Yes, he went up to town with Colonel Wynter, another of the men who were staying here.”

  “And you had no reason to expect him at Holford again?”

  “Good Lord, no!” his lordship said impatiently. “You might have knocked me down with a feather when I heard he had been shot in the summer-house; matter of fact, he had no encouragement from me to come again. On further acquaintance I didn’t exactly take a fancy to Saunderson. Thought he was a bit of a bounder. Still, I don’t want to talk about that now the poor chap’s been done in. But you are asking.”

  “Precisely.” The detective glanced at his notes and made a hieroglyphic entry. “Now, I want to know whether he had any sort of a quarrel with any of your other visitors – any woman got a down on him?”

  Glancing at him as he answered, Harbord caught a curious, momentary gleam in Lord Medchester’s eyes.

  “He wasn’t exactly a favourite, but they all seemed friendly enough together,” he replied, ignoring the latter half of the question. “Besides, most of ’em had gone away. If they had wanted to murder one another, they could have done it in town; no need to come down here.”

  “Any possible love-affair with anyone at Holford?”

  “Oh, Lord, I should think not!” he said with a laugh that sounded a bit forced in Stoddart’s ears. “I shouldn’t think Saunderson was that sort, getting a bit long in the tooth. Besides, there was nobody here he could have got soppy about. All of ’em married and not the kind that are looking about to get rid of their husbands.”

  “Nobody unmarried?” the inspector queried. “Not that that matters. The married ones are generally the worst.”

  “Yes, there I am with you. They are if they take that way. But you are talking about the unmarried ones. The only one in the lot was my cousin, Miss Courtenay, and she is engaged to my trainer, Michael Burford – no eyes for anyone else; damned nuisance sometimes, don’t you know! Be a bit more interesting in a year or two. I made the remark to Saunderson, I remember.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, nothing much. Merely laughed. There wasn’t much he could say. Anybody could see it.”

  Stoddart got up. “Well, marriage doesn’t make much difference to some of them. I think the best thing I can do is just to have a look round at the summer-house and then at the body. Perhaps you would let me have a list of the house-party later on?”

  “I’ll have one made,” Lord Medchester promised, getting up and taking a position before the fireplace. “And if there’s anything else we can do you’ve only to let us know. It’s no joke having a man murdered at the back of your own garden.”

  That seemed to be all there was to be got out of Lord Medchester and, as Stoddart observed to Harbord, it was not very illuminating.

  The doctor could only tell them two things – first, that death had probably occurred some nine or ten hours before the body was discovered, which would place the time round about ten o’clock the preceding evening; and that, secondly, the automatic had not been fired close at hand. The murderer, according to Dr. Middleton, had probably stood outside the summer-house and fired through the open doorway.

  Stoddart drew his brows together as he and Harbord walked across the lawn to the Dutch garden.

  “Queer case!” the younger man ventured.

  The inspector nodded.

  “We’ll just have a look at the summer-house before it gets too dark, and interview the local superintendent. And then it strikes me we may as well toddle back to town in the morning and investigate Saunderson’s doings. I fancy we are more likely to hit on the clue there than here.”

  “I don’t know,” Harbord said slowly. “Of course he came here to meet some one.”

  “Naturally!” the inspector assented. “One hardly imagines that he travelled down for the sole purpose of being murdered. But the two questions that present themselves, and which I fancy we shall have some difficulty in answering are these: who did Saunderson come to meet, and why did he come to Holford for the meeting?”

  They were crossing the Dutch garden now. Harbord looked all round before he answered.

  “Through that gate at the side I suppose our way lies, sir. With regard to your first question, I think it is pretty obvious the person Saunderson came to meet must be some one in the Hall, either a resident or a visitor. And he came, I should imagine, with some very definite object. If it should be a love-affair it must have been an illicit one. Therefore I should make a few careful inquiries about any married women who may be in the house. As far as I have ascertained they have a pretty good houseful now, as large, if not larger, than the one they had for the St. Leger. If there should be anyone here at the present time who was included in the Doncaster party, I should look up that person’s antecedents.”

  “Well reasoned, Alfred. But” – the inspector looked at him with a wry smile – “we have no proof that the murderer was a woman. As a matter of fact I should say it is quite as likely, if not more likely, to have been a man. Money or love, and in love I include jealousy. As far as my experience goes nine-tenths of the murders committed are committed for one or other of these motives. In this case I think financial difficulties are just as likely to have led to the death as an illicit love-affair.”

  “I wonder if they searched the place thoroughly?”

  Stoddart shrugged his shoulders.

  “You don�
�t need me to tell you that when a place is used for tea fairly often anything may be found there. Might be a dozen clues that mean nothing. This is our way, I presume.”

  He unlatched the gate at the right-hand side of the Dutch garden. They heard voices as they went along the path to the summer-house.

  The inspector frowned as he saw the downtrodden grass.

  “Done their best to destroy any clue there might have been, of course.”

  The summer-house stood on a little knoll in the midst of the clearing; all around it the rhododendrons that formed the sides of the Dutch garden had spread and were pressing closely.

  Superintendent Mayer and another man, apparently occupied in staring at the summerhouse, turned as the detectives approached.

  “I am pleased to see you, Inspector Stoddart,” the superintendent began. “This is a terrible job. We can’t make anything of it ourselves. ’Tain’t believable that anybody hereabouts would have done a thing like this.”

  “It is pretty obvious that somebody did, superintendent,” the inspector said dryly. “Still it is more than likely it was not a native of Holford. This is where the body was found, I suppose. Can you show me just how it lay?”