Crystal Beads Murder

by Annie Haynes

  “I unnerstand.” The man got on his feet and stood turning his cap about. “Ain’t there no reward given for me tellin’ you all this what happened that there night?”

  “There is no reward offered at present,” the inspector answered, glancing at his case-book.

  “Then I calls it a shame,” Garwood said truculently. “I’d ha’ kep’ my mouth shut if I’d ha’ known – ’er ladyship might ha’ paid me to do that. A man’s got his wife and chillen to think of. I’ve allus heard there was reward given for them as helped to find out who done things.”

  “For them as helped to find out who done things –” the inspector repeated. “I don’t think you have quite done that, my man. But, as you say, there are rewards – sometimes. There are also punishments if a man is mistaken, or people think he is. I fancy Lord Medchester might remember that.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The stable at East Molton was well known in the racing world. It had been bought from a famous North Country trainer by Sir William Burford for his younger son. A farm-house in the immediate vicinity which had served as a residence for his predecessor had been altered and improved by Michael Burford, for his bride, almost beyond recognition.

  A big semicircle of lawn in front big enough for croquet or tennis had a drive running round to the door, which was flanked on each side by big stone vases filled with different flowers in their season. At the back of the house ran a low terrace with a stone balustrade. What had been the farmyard in the old days was now a wide, flagged court; on the other side of it were the loose boxes and the stables that housed Burford’s precious charges. On the west side of the house and stables was the paddock and the loose rails where much of Burford’s work was done. Beyond that again stretched the moor where the morning gallops were taken. The grooms and stable-boys were housed near the stables.

  It seemed a very harbour of refuge to Anne Burford as she stood on the steps at the front door. Though she had only been at East Molton a week, already her eyes had lost much of their frightened look. Her nerves, too, were steadier; no longer did she start and glance round nervously at the faintest sound. Surely, she said to herself, she would be safe here, safe and forgotten – no sign of any other house was in sight. And, though every now and then some sound from the busy life of the stable reached her ears, it was all pleasant and familiar and home-like. As she stood there, rejoicing in the peace of her surroundings, there came to her no premonition of how short-lived it was to be – no faintest suspicion that even now it was at an end.

  The white gate at the end of the drive banged noisily. Anne looked up. Some one – a woman – was coming towards her. As the new-comer drew nearer, she saw that it was a tall girl, well, even fashionably, dressed. As Anne glimpsed the red hair, peeping out from the small pull-on hat in curls over each ear, noted the small white face, looking almost too small for the big blue eyes, she had a sense of familiarity, a certainty that somewhere she had encountered that distinctly hostile gaze before.

  Anne felt an odd desire to run away, to refuse to see this girl whose lips were smiling, though her eyes looked hard and defiant.

  But Anne’s desire was hardly definite enough to have become an intention, and it was frustrated. Her visitor did not trouble to go round by the walk, but came straight across the lawn to her.

  “I expect you don’t remember me, Mrs. Burford. And yet I know your brother so well that I don’t feel like a stranger to you,” she said in a slow, drawling voice that roused some faint memory in Anne. “I thought you wouldn’t remember me,” the drawling voice went on. “But I am going over to East Molton to see, I said to Minnie Medchester. I am spending a few days at Holford, you know. I am Sybil Stainer, Maurice Stainer’s sister. You will have heard Harold speak of me.”

  “Yes, I have heard Harold speak of you,” Anne found herself repeating mechanically. An icy fear gripped her heart, paralysed her. Certain memories were coming back to her: the red-haired girl who had been with Harold in the paddock looking at the St. Leger horses; the voice, Saunderson’s voice – what had he said? – “The Stainers are bad companions for Harold. The man is a spend-thrift, a rotter, and the girl – well, the less said about her the better.” And now this same girl stood before her smiling impudently in her face.

  “Well, I suppose you are going to ask me in?” Miss Stainer proceeded with a laugh and a slight forward movement.

  Instinctively Anne stepped aside.

  The other apparently accepted this as an invitation to enter. She walked in and gazed round the wide, low hall with interest. The quiet austerity of it, the dark-panelled walls, the old oak chest and settle appealed to her as little as did the polished floor and the faded colours of the prayer rug in the centre.

  “Your house looks pretty highbrow considering all things,” she remarked. “I shouldn’t have thought this would be the style of thing Mike Burford would go in for.”

  Anne was not inclined to be effusive with her unwelcome visitor, but she did not want Sybil Stainer there in the hall when any minute Michael might appear, with some of the men who were continually coming to see him on business.

  She opened the door of the drawing-room, the prettiest room in the house in her eyes. Like most of the house it was panelled. The big windows and the glass door on to the lawn occupied most of one side of the room; a piece of tapestry hung at the end opposite the fireplace. There was a big modern chesterfield and a couple of capacious armchairs and an old spinet stood near the fireplace. For the rest the chairs and tables were plain and solid, and the short curtains were of blue casement cloth. There were no knick-knacks or pictures, but a great pink chrysanthemum stood in one corner and a log fire burned cheerily on the well hearth.

  “Now, this is something like!” Miss Stainer remarked, going up to the fire and holding out her hands to the blaze. “There’s a tidy breeze coming across the moor, and I hadn’t got my fur coat on. I found it pretty cold walking up.”

  “Why did you walk up?” Mrs. Burford’s tone was not encouraging.

  “Because I wanted to see you. I’ve told you so, and I thought on the whole it would be as well we should have our first interview without any third person,” Miss Stainer returned with a loud laugh. “At least that was why I came to that little one-eyed station of yours. As for walking up – well, there weren’t exactly any taxi-cabs about. I got an old motor-bus that set me down at a deserted hole they called the Four Corners. I rather hurried off, for I knew if she had any idea where I was coming Minnie Medchester would have insisted on sending me over in the car, and perhaps have come over with me, and that might have been a little awkward, don’t you think so?” She drew one of the big easy chairs up to the fire as she spoke and dropped into it. “You see, I am making myself at home, Mrs. Burford.”

  Anne herself did not sit down, did not move nearer that cheerful blaze on the hearth. She looked with unsmiling, sombre eyes at the insolently defiant face opposite.

  “Why did you come at all?” she asked, her hands clasped together before her, gripping one another tightly as she waited for the answer.

  Miss Stainer’s lips, red with lipstick, smiled on still, but the menace in the blue eyes grew more definite.

  “It isn’t very friendly of you to ask that, Mrs. Burford.” The hard voice was growing softer now, a silkier note was creeping into it that somehow made Anne shiver more than the hardness.

  “I came because I wanted to tell you a certain bit of news myself. Harold would have written, but I said, ‘No, better let me go, woman to woman – we shall understand one another better,’ I said. Don’t you agree with me?”

  “I don’t know,” Anne said dully. The icy fear that had gripped her heart a few minutes ago had her in its clutches now body and soul together.

  “Oh, I think we shall,” Miss Stainer said confidently, in that new purring voice of hers. “We really must, you know, because” – her eyelids flickered – “I am engaged to Harold. We shall be sisters, you and I.” She looked down with an affec
tation of coyness.

  “Never!” The words burst from Anne’s white I lips. “You shall not!” she cried. “I will stop it. I –”

  “How?” questioned Miss Stainer softly, yet with the ring of steel beneath the softness. Somehow the fact that she was sitting down while Anne stood, instead of placing her at a disadvantage, seemed to put her in a position of authority.

  “How will you stop our marriage?” she inquired again. “Harold has always been fond of me. He is a friend of my brother’s. Formerly he had no money to marry on, no position, but now everything is altered. Isn’t it natural that he should stick to his old love?”

  “He shall not marry you,” Anne reiterated.

  Miss Stainer’s eyes narrowed like those of a cat about to strike. “I think he will. I fancy you will not be able to prevent it. No, the only thing for you to do now is to bow to the inevitable. You are going to tell people you are delighted with the engagement. You are going to ask me to stay with you so that you may become better acquainted with your future sister-in-law.”

  “What!” Anne laughed scornfully. “Certainly you are not going to stay here. What do you suppose my husband would say if I suggested such a thing?”

  Miss Stainer shrugged her shoulders.

  “I have not the slightest idea. Wouldn’t he think it the most natural thing in the world that you should ask your brother’s fiancée to pay you a visit?”

  “It would depend on the fiancée,” Anne said with brutal frankness. “In this case you must remember that my husband knows you.”

  “Ah! So he does – poor Mike Burford!” Stainer said with a slightly contemptuous accent that brought the blood hotly scarlet to Anne’s cheeks, a flush that ebbed as swiftly as it came as the cruel voice went on: “Then perhaps – why not? – it will be best to tell him the truth.” The amusement in the cold blue eyes grew and strengthened. “Who was it said the truth is always the safest?” the mocking voice went on. “Shall we try it? Will you tell him? What do you say?”

  “Say?” Anne cried with sudden passion. “Say I would die first.”

  “Ah, die!” Miss Stainer said softly in that slow, drawling voice. “We all say we should like to die when everything does not turn out just as we have planned it should. But there are different ways of dying. Have you ever thought of them, Mrs. Burford?” She put up her hands and clasped her firm white throat. “One way is to have something tight put round here – to choke and choke and never get one’s breath. It must be pretty bad that. And they do hang a lot of people nowadays. And a man wouldn’t like to have his brother-in-law hanged.”

  “Stop!” Anne raised her clasped hands above her head, then brought them down heavily.

  For a second the girl before her quailed; then in a moment she recovered herself.

  “So I think he might wish you to welcome your sister-in-law, Mrs. Burford.”

  Anne pulled herself together. After all, she told herself, this girl must be talking at random. It was – it must be – the merest guess-work.

  “I cannot prevent my brother doing what he likes,” she said quietly, “but I can at least choose my own friends.”

  “Your own friends!” Miss Stainer laughed; aloud. “I don’t want your friendship,” she said scornfully. “I should probably be bored to extinction. But I don’t mean to marry a man and have his family look down on me. So you had better make up your mind to accept me as Harold’s wife without any more bother. You will have to do it in the end whether you like it or not.”

  Anne did not speak. One look she gave the sneering face before her – a look that spoke of contempt unutterable. Then her eyes dropped. She turned towards the door.

  Miss Stainer’s face went faintly red beneath its powder. She stood up. For a moment she looked as if she were going to pass Anne, to go out of the house. Then she stopped, she gazed straight into the white, haughty face before her and said in a voice that shook with anger:

  “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. Saunderson’s death was a godsend – to somebody! Wasn’t it, Mrs. Burford?”

  CHAPTER 11

  “’Pon my soul, Minnie, I can’t understand you.” Lord Medchester stared at his wife I and then rubbed his domed forehead with his hands, forgetful of the fact that he had no hair. His baldness was a continual marvel to Lord Medchester.

  Lady Medchester sighed. It was obvious in spite of her make-up that she had grown considerably paler of late. She was thinner, too, and her eyes had a haunted, terrified look as she gazed round.

  “How much longer is this girl Stainer going to stay here?” Lord Medchester pursued.

  Lady Medchester did not look at him; she turned her head away.

  “Oh, not long. She is going on to Anne very soon.”

  “I wonder whether Burford will stand her,” his lordship commented.

  “Well, she is going to marry Harold,” Lady Medchester said gravely.

  Her husband shrugged his shoulders.

  “Because Harold is going to make a fool of himself is no reason for the rest of the world to put up with her. I should have thought you, and Anne too, would have been moving heaven and earth to prevent such a disastrous marriage. The girl’s a rotter if ever I saw one.”

  Still Lady Medchester did not look at him. Her eyes, gazing straight through the window, watched the tall rhododendrons at the side of the Dutch garden; the group of pines beyond that stood round the summer-house where Robert Saunderson was murdered.

  “You are not fair to her,” she said in a muffled tone. “She is not a bad sort, Sybil.”

  “Isn’t she?” his lordship scoffed unbelievingly. “Then I don’t know a bad one when I see her. That’s all there is to that. Who’s paying for all these clothes she’s buying?”

  Lady Medchester gave an affected little laugh.

  “How funny you are, Medchester. How should I know? Her brother, I should imagine.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t, then,” his lordship retorted bluntly. “Stainer’s pretty well down on his uppers, I can tell you that. The girl couldn’t squeeze a penny out of him.”

  “Well, perhaps the tradespeople are giving her credit as she is going to marry a rich man. I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do,” Lord Medchester returned.

  “Rich man, indeed! Let me tell you that Harold will be a lucky fellow if he manages to turn himself round this next year. These damned death-duties take every penny you have. It’s bad enough when the estates pass from father to son. But when it’s a matter of cousins about six times removed such as Harold and old Lord Gorth, why it is a case of skinning the eel. But I can’t believe Harold will make such a fool of himself as to marry Sybil Stainer yet.”

  “I am sure he means to,” Lady Medchester said positively. “He is going to get a special licence and the wedding will be very soon. I should like to have it here.”

  “What!” His lordship stuck a pair of eye-glasses on the bridge of his Roman nose. “Well, then, I can tell you I won’t have it. Married here, indeed! I think I see myself marching up the aisle with that Stainer girl hanging on my arm! and the choir singing the ‘Voice that breathed o’er Eden,’ or whatever it is they do sing. It’s no go, Minnie. And you can tell her I say so. Or I will myself, if you like.”

  “Ah, no!” The interjection was so loud and decided that it sounded almost like a shriek. “You must not, indeed you must not! I won’t have her feelings hurt.”

  “Sybil’s feelings! She ain’t got any,” scoffed his lordship. “Rhinoceros hide, I should think, or she’d have been out of here before now. Hello! What’s this chap after? Seems in a deuce of a hurry!”

  Lady Medchester turned her head. Her husband was looking through the end window, which gave a view of the drive.

  Superintendent Mayer had just come into sight, swinging along at a trot which made his red face and rotund figure look ludicrous.

  “Bless my life! I wonder what he wants. I think I’ll go and see. Getting a bit fat for trotting, I shall tell him.”

/>   Lady Medchester stared at him.

  “Why do you suppose he is hurrying like that?”

  “Lord! How can I tell?” her husband responded. “Looks as if he were a bit balmy. Anyway, I will toddle down and meet him. He may have found something that will show who did Saunderson in.”

  “I wonder –” Lady Medchester drew a deep breath as she strained her eyes on the hurrying figure. “I – I don’t see how he could, do you?”

  “Don’t see who could what?” his lordship responded vaguely. “Oh, I see. Mayer couldn’t find out who did Saunderson in, you mean? I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Mayer ain’t such a fool as he looks, not by any means.”

  He dashed out of the room as he spoke, banging the door to behind him.

  Lady Medchester’s eyes widened and darkened as she stared after him. She drew her handkerchief across her lips, rubbing off the scarlet lipstick. “Has he found out anything? Merciful heavens, what has he found out?”

  Meanwhile, downstairs, his lordship strolled out at the hall door just in time to meet Superintendent Mayer.

  “Hello, Mayer,” he began genially. “Doin’ the double fox-trot, aren’t you? A bit warm, I should say?”

  “Well, yes, my lord.” The superintendent mopped his perspiring face. “A warmish day it is, too, for the time of the year. I’m in a bit of a hurry, my lord.”

  “The devil you are! Must say I thought you looked like it,” responded his lordship. “What’s up, Mayer? Spotted the blighter that did Saunderson in?”

  The superintendent went on mopping himself for a minute or two without speaking. At last he said slowly:

  “No-a! I can’t say I ha’ done that, my lord. Not exactly, that is to say. But I ha’ foun’ out that as may help to find it out.”

  “I’m damned glad to hear it,” said his lordship heartily. “What is it, Mayer?”

  The superintendent eyed him doubtfully.

  “I don’t know as I ought to say, my lord, not just now like. It mayn’t mean anything. Then I again it may. But, my lord –”