Crystal Beads Murder

by Annie Haynes

  “I wonder if there is?” Harbord hesitated.

  They had no time for more. Lady Medchester came quickly across the hall and into the room.

  “You want to speak to me?” she said abruptly.

  “If you please, Lady Medchester.” Stoddart placed a chair for her and closed the door. A glance told him that she was not looking well. Her make-up was not sufficient to disguise the pallor of her face or do away with the dark circles round her eyes, and her lips, scarlet with lipstick, were visibly trembling.

  “You remember the night of Thursday?”

  Lady Medchester nodded and put her handkerchief up to her trembling lips.

  “Of course I do. I – I wish I could forget it. But I can’t. I never shall.”

  “You had a dinner-party that night, I understand?”

  “Of course we had. You know that. Lord Medchester told you about it,” Lady Medchester returned impatiently. She put down her handkerchief, on which two dabs of lipstick were plainly visible, and started twisting it about in her fingers.

  “Could you tell us all you know about Mr. Saunderson?”

  “Well, it wasn’t so much really,” she began, and Harbord wondered whether he was mistaken or whether there really was the shadow of a great fear in the big, pale eyes with their bistre-tinted eyelashes and eyebrows. “I met him in town this last season fairly often, and we stayed in the same house for Goodwood.”

  “He was an agreeable, pleasant sort of man, I understand?”

  “Oh, very. I was quite pleased when my husband asked him to join our party for Doncaster.”

  Inspector Stoddart consulted his notebook.

  “I take it that you found him quite an agreeable visitor? But that when he left you had no particular reason to expect to see him in the neighbourhood again?”

  “No, not the least.” Lady Medchester’s tone was growing more assured now. “I simply could not believe it when I heard he had been found dead in the summer-house,” she added.

  “You have not the least idea what brought him to Holford?”

  “I cannot imagine. The only thing I can think of is” – she stopped and swallowed something in her throat – “that he had some important news for my husband, something about the horses, perhaps, and came down to see him. Perhaps he knew of the short-cut from the village that brings you out by the rosery. Then perhaps some poacher met him and shot him.”

  “But why should Saunderson be in the village?” Stoddart questioned.

  Lady Medchester shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t know. I do not pretend to explain everything. That is the only thing I have been able to think of.”

  “I see.” The inspector consulted his notes again. “Now, Lady Medchester, I am sure you will understand that this is merely a formality – can you tell me just what you were doing between nine and ten o’clock on the night of Thursday?”

  Once more there was that odd trembling of the lips, the curious light eyes avoided his.

  “I was with my visitors, of course. I don’t know that I can tell you any more.”

  “Perhaps you played bridge?” Stoddart suggested.

  “No, I didn’t. As a matter of fact, I had rather a headache and I didn’t feel quite up to cards. We had some music in the drawing-room and I was there most of the evening. But of course I went backwards and forwards to the card-room and the hall two or three times just to see how people were getting on.”

  “I wonder whether you could tell me if Mrs. Williamson and Miss Courtenay were playing cards?”

  Lady Medchester hesitated.

  “I – I think Mrs. Williamson was. Miss Courtenay I know was not. She said” – with a perceptible hesitation – “she had a headache and went up to her room immediately after dinner.”

  The inspector made an entry in his notebook.

  “And Mr. Courtenay?”

  Lady Medchester wrinkled her eyebrows as if trying to remember.

  “I don’t remember seeing much of him. He was playing bridge for some little time. But not, I think, all the time you mention. Probably he was in the billiard-room.”

  “In the billiard-room, I thank you,” Stoddart said politely. He waited a minute, then he dived into his pocket and produced the crystal beads. “Have you ever seen this before, Lady Medchester?”

  She leaned forward and looked at it, hiding her eyes.

  “I don’t think so,” she said slowly, her mouth setting in a hard line. “I am not sure, though. It seems somehow familiar. But, then, so many people wear this sort of thing nowadays.”

  “It is not yours?”

  “Certainly not!” Lady Medchester smiled with regained composure. “It is not at all valuable,” she added with a certain contempt in her tone.

  “So I imagined.” The inspector dropped the beads in his pocket. “Thank you, and I shall be obliged if you will say nothing about the beads. That is all for this morning. I should like a few words with Miss Courtenay.”

  Lady Medchester got up. “I will send her to you. She is expecting the summons. Lord Medchester told us both you wanted us. But Miss Courtenay will not have much time to spare,” she added as the inspector opened the door. “Her grandfather, whom you may have heard of, had a stroke, and the doctors do not give us much hope. He is not so well this morning.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” the inspector said politely. He waited until she had got out of hearing. “Rather a daisy, isn’t she? I don’t know that I envy Lord Medchester his wife.”

  “I don’t, anyway,” Harbord said bluntly. “I don’t envy anybody his wife. Mostly a damned nuisance, it seems to me.”

  The inspector looked at him.

  “What! Turning misanthrope? This business is enough to make one of any man. Some damn fool of a woman is always at the bottom of it.”

  Anne Courtenay did not keep them waiting. She looked a curious contrast to Lady Medchester in her plain, black frock, which just left her pretty, rounded throat bare. Yet a curious look came into Stoddart’s eyes as he set a chair for her so that her face was well in the light, while he himself remained in the shadow nearer the fireplace.

  “I am very sorry to trouble you in the circumstances, Miss Courtenay,” the inspector began. “But I am sure you will understand that I have no choice in the matter. I will keep you only a few minutes.”

  Anne bent her head.

  “It is no matter,” she said quietly. “The nurses are with my grandfather. I am only allowed to see him for a few minutes at a time.”

  “Then I will begin at once by asking you to tell me how much you knew of Mr. Saunderson.”

  “Very little,” Anne returned, raising her eyes to the inspector’s face. “He was kind to my brother and they were very friendly, but I am very little in town and naturally did not see much of him.”

  “He never visited the General?” Stoddart hazarded.

  Anne shook her head. “My grandfather receives very few visitors, only quite old friends.”

  “I take it that you and Mr. Saunderson were strangers when you met at the house-party here for the Doncaster races?”

  “No, not quite that. I believe” – Anne hesitated a minute – “that I first met Mr. Saunderson when I was staying with Lady Medchester last spring, but I saw very little of him.”

  “And at the house-party here?”

  “Well, naturally I saw more of him then.” She paused and then went on more quickly. “I may as well say at once that it was as little as I could help, for I did not like Mr. Saunderson at all, though he was a friend of my brother’s, and though perhaps I ought not to say so now he is dead.”

  “Oh, I quite understand,” the inspector said sympathetically. “Mr. Saunderson does not seem to have been a general favourite. I suppose you did not expect to see him again when the party for the St. Leger broke up?”

  “I hoped I should not,” Anne said candidly. “I did not think Mr. Saunderson’s influence did my brother any good.”

  “Will you tell me just wha
t you were doing after dinner last Thursday night?” As he spoke the inspector produced his notebook and laid it on the table.

  Anne considered a moment.

  “I had a headache,” she said slowly, “and it was hot downstairs, and all the talking at dinnertime made it worse. So I went up to my room and lay down.”

  “Did you stay upstairs all the evening?” the inspector asked quickly.

  A subtle change in Anne’s expression did not escape him. For one moment her eyes wavered, then the girl said quietly:

  “I came down for a few minutes. My head seemed to be worse and I thought the air would do me good. I went out by the side door and walked on the terrace.”

  “How long were you there?” The inspector’s tone was sharper now.

  “Oh, not long. There were too many people about.”

  “Too many people,” the inspector repeated. “Miss Courtenay, did you meet Robert Saunderson?”

  Suddenly Anne shivered from head to foot, but her voice was steady enough as she answered:

  “Certainly not. In fact, I do not think I went out until after the time at which he – died.”

  The inspector apparently consulted his notebook again. Harbord, watching, saw that his fingers were merely making meaningless strokes, and wondered.

  Anne waited too, her brown eyes looking scared.

  The inspector drew out the crystal beads and held them up. “Have you ever seen these before?”

  “Why!” Anne uttered an exclamation of astonishment as she leaned forward and took them in her hand. “They are just like some beads I have that I am rather fond of. Where did you get them from?”

  The inspector countered her question by another:

  “Is this your chain, Miss Courtenay?”

  “Certainly not,” Anne said decidedly. “I saw mine in my dressing-case only a few minutes ago.”

  The inspector dropped his on the table.

  “Would you allow me to see your chain, Miss Courtenay?”

  “Of course I will.” Anne got up. “I will fetch it at once.”

  The inspector opened the door for her and waited while she went across the hall and ran lightly up the stairs.

  At the top, in the wide corridor that led to the principal rooms, she paused and her breath came quickly. She pressed her handkerchief to her lips and when she brought it away there were two little spots of blood upon it.

  “What does it mean?” she whispered to herself. “What can it mean?”

  Stoddart and Harbord did not speak. Their eyes met significantly as she came back, dangling in her hand the crystal beads.

  She laid them beside those the inspector had thrown down.

  “You see they are really awfully alike. There is rather more chain between each bead in mine, and the stones are cut differently – and there is a bead missing in yours, look at the gap – but you have to look very closely to see the difference.”

  “You do, indeed,” said the inspector, holding up the two chains together. “Does your chain break easily, Miss Courtenay?”

  Anne’s pale lips smiled.

  “I don’t know. I have never broken it, but I should think it wouldn’t be difficult to do so. Why do you ask?”

  “I asked,” the inspector said slowly, “because, as you see, this one is broken, and three of the beads from this chain” – tapping it – “were found in the pocket of Robert Saunderson’s overcoat.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Saunderson’s flat is on the ground floor,” the inspector said as he and Harbord paused before the Polchester Mansions – a new palatial block in the immediate neighbourhood of Piccadilly. “It has been locked up and the old housekeeper sent away, and Venables has been on guard ever since last Friday, when we were summoned to Holford. I fancy we shall find the clue to the mystery here.”

  “If there is one,” Harbord interposed.

  Stoddart raised his eyebrows.

  “Certainly there is one. It is scarcely like you to be so pessimistic, Alfred.”

  “I ought to have said if there is one that can be found,” Harbord corrected. “We are up against a criminal who knows how to hide his traces. And really Saunderson might have been trying his best to help him.”

  “Or her,” the inspector interjected.

  “Or her,” Harbord acknowledged the correction. “I can’t help feeling, sir, that the clue, if there is one, is connected with those crystal beads.”

  “Well, you may be right or you may be wrong,” the inspector said judicially as he led the way into the hall.

  The porter touched his hat and the lift-boy stood in readiness. The inspector passed them and turned up a couple of steps to a door at the side. A man stood before it, easily recognizable as a policeman in plain clothes. He saluted as the inspector took a key from his pocket.

  “Anything to report, Venables?”

  “No, sir. Nobody has been here but the postman. And he has only been twice. Of course the housekeeper came just now. She said you told her to be here to-day.”

  “I did,” the inspector assented. “But of course she could not get in. What has become of her?”

  “She has gone down to the caretaker’s, sir. I expect they are having a good old gossip. I was to tell her when you wanted her.”

  “Well, I think we will have a look round first,” the inspector said as he opened the door and glanced about him curiously.

  The hall was luxuriously carpeted. The inspector raised his eyebrows as he felt the softly padded divans at each side, and then glanced into the two good-sized rooms, one on each side of the door. Both were well furnished, one as a sitting-room, the other as a bedroom. Behind were a small room evidently used for smoking, a bathroom, and a kitchen which was scrupulously neat and tidy.

  “Did himself well, Saunderson, I should say,” the inspector remarked. “No servants but the old housekeeper, apparently; but in these service flats they do not want much waiting on.”

  “Servants might have been in the way sometimes,” Harbord grinned. “It might have been tolerably easy to manage the housekeeper.”

  “Quite! Now I wonder where we had better begin. I think this looks as if it had been the most used,” turning into the smoking-room.

  A big, padded arm-chair, leather-covered, stood near the electric fireplace; a square, solid-looking table beside it held an open box of cigars and a jar of tobacco. There was an array of pipes in a rack on the wall on the other side. On another table against the wall was a tantalus, a couple of glasses, and a siphon of seltzer water.

  “Looks as if he expected to come back all right, poor chap,” Harbord commented.

  The inspector did not answer; his keen eyes were searching every detail of the room and the furniture. At last he walked over to the table against the wall and took up a small morocco leather box that stood behind the tantalus.

  “Locked, of course!”

  He shook it, then he set it back on the table and took a curious-looking little steel implement from his pocket and applied himself to the task of forcing the lock. In a very few minutes it was done and the box lay open before them.

  The inspector pounced at once upon a small, thick book about the size of a pass-book, labelled outside “Memorandum”.

  “Just what I was hoping for.”

  Then, while he was bending his brows over it, Harbord glanced over the other contents of the box. They were a heterogeneous collection: a bundle of old letters tied together, a cheque-book, a couple of miniatures – a fine-looking man, a girl with a sweet wistful face – then more letters; lastly a long envelope containing an application for income-tax.

  The inspector uttered a sharp exclamation.

  “This memorandum-book tells a curious story. Listen, Alfred. ‘Six hundred from Lady F. paid in to Usher & Snell. Two fifty Colonel O’Brady – Usher & Snell.’ And so it goes on. Different sums paid in to Usher & Snell, varied occasionally by ‘Paid in to account in Imperial and Overseas.’ What do you make of it?”

  “Blackmai
l,” Harbord said laconically.

  “Quite!” the inspector agreed. “So much the different initials make certain. But it is Usher & Snell that I am thinking of.”

  “Usher & Snell!” Harbord repeated thoughtfully. “Money-lenders, aren’t they? I have heard of them, but –”

  “Money-lenders and sharks,” the inspector said emphatically. “What I am asking myself now is, what was Saunderson’s connexion with them? Was he in their power or was he a member of the firm, or connected with it? More probably the latter, I imagine, though –”

  “If he had borrowed from them as a young man and let the debt accumulate, he would have found it a pretty hard job to get out of their clutches,” Harbord remarked.

  “Yes, he would,” Stoddart assented. “But from what I have heard of Saunderson I should suspect he was the spider, not the fly. However, we must pay Messrs. Usher & Snell a visit, then we shall know more than we do now. At any rate, there can be no doubt from this book that a great part of his income was derived from blackmail. I’ll just have a squint at the cheque-book now.”

  Harbord took up the memorandum-book while Stoddart turned the counterfoils over rapidly.

  “Business cheques these, all of ’em. One or two biggish ones to Owler & Vigors, the jewellers in Bond Street. Some of Saunderson’s lady friends doing him in the eye, I suppose.”

  “Several cheques paid in lately are from T,” Harbord remarked. “Paid in to Usher & Snell, I mean. I wonder who T is? There is one from C. C might stand for Courtenay.”

  “Also for Cox and Carter and a few others,” the inspector remarked sarcastically. “No use, Alfred. Things can’t be fitted in like that. That book is simply a record of blackmailing transactions, and it probably supplies a motive for the crime. The person blackmailed may have turned, like the proverbial worm, and shot the blackmailer instead of paying up. I think we will take a look at the bedroom now. There may be letters there.” He led the way across the hall. Harbord followed.