Crystal Beads Murder

by Annie Haynes

  Lord Medchester nodded assent. “And how did you get on to Sybil Stainer?”

  Stoddart smiled. “That’s where this man comes in.”

  He turned to Harbord, who shook his head, being of a retiring disposition and nothing of a spokesman. The inspector resumed:

  “He had toothache one night, as I was telling you’’ – he indicated his companion – “and went off next morning to see a dentist in Medchester. As no appointment had been made he had to kick his heels in the waiting-room till his turn came. And now this is, we must admit, where chance gave a hand rather than grey matter.”

  He paused impressively. Inspector Stoddart was not wanting in a sense of the dramatic.

  “Harbord picked up one of the papers lying on the table at random: an old one – a date in July. One of those illustrated papers about people in Society. In it he came on a full page portrait and under it was printed – ‘Miss Sybil Stainer, one of the stall-holders at the Duchess of Merebank’s bazaar.’ And” – he paused, to give due effect to the words – “round her neck was hanging the crystal bead necklace, the gap on the chain, the broken bead next to it, hitting you, so to speak, in the eye!”

  Lord Medchester, his interest keenly aroused, bent forward eagerly.

  “Lord! What a bit of luck! and Harold within an ace of marrying her!” he added under his breath.

  “Harbord was so pleased he forgot all about his toothache, made a dash for the door, and a bee-line for me. And that’s how we first got on to Miss Sybil Stainer.

  “But it was only a first step,’’ he continued. “It proved she had been on the scene of the tragedy that night, but there didn’t seem to be any motive.’’

  “How the devil did the woman know Saunderson was to be at Holford that night?” Lord Medchester put in.

  For an almost imperceptible moment Stoddart hesitated.

  “Might have arranged to meet him there for aught we know,” he answered, and turning to Harbord added, “she was on the spot all right, for, if you remember, we took the very rooms at the ‘Medchester Arms’ she and her brother had vacated that morning – the day after the murder. We knew Robert Saunderson was a bit of a blackmailer, and where that comes in you never know where you are, low-down blackguards that they are! But we searched his papers and not a trace could we find of any transactions with Miss Sybil Stainer.”

  The inspector added the incident of the finding of the stray bead by the little gate; no doubt it had lodged in her dress or bag when the necklace broke and fell in the road as she passed through the gate.

  “But we hadn’t seen the tramp then,” he added.

  “Not justified in making an arrest and didn’t want to question her for fear of putting her on her guard?”

  “That’s so; and while we were hesitating about forcing the situation Providence again played into our hands.”

  The inspector proceeded to relate the story the red-haired tramp had had to tell, confirming the silent testimony of the crystal beads, that Sybil Stainer had been in the gardens that night; of the paper she had dropped, of how it had lain in his pocket, and of his meeting with Superintendent Mayer on the morning he was shot.

  “Then we were up against the problem of what Mayer had done with the slip of paper handed to him by the tramp, and vanished apparently into the blue, the contents of which Mayer had considered too important to be divulged either to you or to Mrs. Yates, and that had sent him posthaste to the nearest telephone. And then,” he said slowly, “Mrs. Mayer came on the scene. She came to see me at the ‘Medchester Arms.’”

  “What had she to say?”

  Stoddart smiled whimsically. “She was half out of her mind, poor woman, with grief at the loss of her husband and remorse at having cheated the law. The truth was, she had found poor Mayer’s cap lying among the bushes near the spot where he was killed, and taken it home and hidden it, and an hour before she arrived breathless at the ‘Medchester Arms’ in search of me had discovered there was a bit of paper slipped in behind the strip of lining that goes round inside – without a doubt the paper handed to Mayer by the tramp, and that he must have placed there for safety.”

  “Good Lord! It’s like putting a puzzle together! Get on with the story – what had the paper to do with the murders?”

  “It put the lid on the evidence against Miss Stainer. I always said the two murders were done by the same hand. I take it Miss Stainer overheard Mayer talking to you and what he said at the telephone through the open window – you remember you found her brother loafing about outside, though we don’t connect him with the crime. She nipped down by the short cut to intercept the superintendent before he reached the lodge, inveigled him into the bushes by pretending to be hurt – any pretext would have done – and shot him with the automatic she carried in her bag, as we now know, for use should any desperate emergency arise. She silenced Mayer, but she didn’t allow for the bit of evidence hidden in his cap.”

  “What was the nature of that bit of evidence?”

  “It was a copy of a marriage certificate,” the inspector replied, “a marriage that took place about four years ago in South America, between Sybil Stainer and a man called Guido Baruta. He seems to have vanished into the blue, but there is no record of his death – we cabled for information. The certificate is in order right enough, and” – he paused impressively – “the name of Robert Saunderson was on it as witness! That was good enough!”

  Lord Medchester stared at the speaker, his slowly working mind labouring to put two and two together.

  “There was motive, good and plenty!” Stoddart repeated. “Nothing more wanted. Motive enough, with a brilliant marriage hanging in the balance and Saunderson with the game in his hands so far as she was concerned – and motive was all we wanted. A woman who had committed one murder to gain her ends,” he finished slowly, “wasn’t likely to stick at a second – and Miss Sybil Stainer meant to be Lady Gorth in spite of all the devils in hell! She was that sort of woman.”

  “There are two points in this case that need never come out, Alfred,” Stoddart remarked as they walked down the drive towards the “Medchester Arms.” “One of them is – What made Anne Courtenay go to the summer-house that night? Had she an assignation with Saunderson or was it pure accident? Do you remember the bit of paper found on Saunderson’s body – ‘I accede because I must’? I always thought that was written by Anne Courtenay. But she was shielding that young cub of a brother of hers. I’ll bet that was it, though we may never know now. Miss Stainer, of course, got a glimpse of her in the garden, guessed her brother Harold was financially involved with the murdered man, and played one against the other, making each think the other had done it.”

  “Just so,” Harbord agreed, “and neither of them knew how much she knew, and both of them had something to hide.” he said thoughtfully. “The truth about that doesn’t matter now.”

  “The other fact about which we may exercise a bit of suppressio veri,” the inspector went on with the suspicion of a twinkle in his eye, “is the letter from Lady Medchester to Saunderson we found in Miss Stainer’s bag, taken no doubt from the dead man’s pocket-book when she took the marriage certificate – a letter fit to scorch the hair off your head! No wonder Miss Stainer had the writer of it under her thumb! That need never come out, for Lord Medchester’s sake; his wife can tell him her own story. He’s had his suspicions about the relations between them all through – he was always nervous what might come out in evidence – anybody could see that.”

  “Funny what some women will do for money and position, and what chances they’ll take!” Harbord remarked thoughtfully. “Then she found herself in a tight place, and took the simplest way out.” And he added solemnly, “She paid the price.”

  THE END

  About The Author

  Annie Haynes was born in 1865, the daughter of an ironmonger.

  By the first decade of the twentieth century she lived in London and moved in literary and early feminist circles. Her first crime
novel, The Bungalow Mystery, appeared in 1923, and another nine mysteries were published before her untimely death in 1929.

  Who Killed Charmian Karslake? appeared posthumously, and a further partially-finished work, The Crystal Beads Murder, was completed with the assistance of an unknown fellow writer, and published in 1930.

  Also by Annie Haynes

  The Bungalow Mystery

  The Abbey Court Murder

  The Secret of Greylands

  The Blue Diamond

  The Witness on the Roof

  The House in Charlton Crescent

  The Crow’s Inn Tragedy

  The Master of the Priory

  The Man with the Dark Beard

  The Crime at Tattenham Corner

  Who Killed Charmian Karslake?

  ANNIE HAYNES

  The Man with The Dark Beard

  “Nobody would have murdered him,” Miss Lavinia cried. “Everybody liked John!”

  “I’m afraid it is evident that someone did not.”

  The note left beside Dr. John Basted's corpse simply read: “It was the man with the dark beard.”

  Dr. Basted hadn't approved of his daughter Hilary’s fiance. So when Hilary’s father is found shot dead inside his own office, the door-key turned from the inside, the fiance Basil Wilton becomes a chief suspect for Scotland Yard. Yet how could the crime have been engineered?

  Now an important lacquered box is missing; a former colleague of Basted’s has suddenly shaved his beard; and the doctor’s ex-secretary has come mysteriously into money. Before Inspector Stoddart of the Yard can form conclusions, another murder takes place, again credited to the “Man with The Dark Beard”...

  The Man With the Dark Beard is the first of Annie Haynes’ Inspector Stoddart mysteries, originally published in 1928. It is a sparkling lost classic from the early golden age of crime fiction.

  “Miss Haynes, I think, improves steadily – this is the best detective story she has yet written.” Time and Tide

  CHAPTER 1

  ‘The fact of the matter is you want a holiday, old chap.”

  Felix Skrine lay back in his easy chair and puffed at his cigar.

  “I don’t need a holiday at all,” his friend contradicted shortly. “It would do me no good. What I want is –”

  “Physician, heal thyself,” Skrine quoted lazily. “My dear John, you have been off colour for months. Why can’t you take expert advice – Gordon Menzies, for instance? You sent old Wildman to him last session and he put him right in no time.”

  “Gordon Menzies could do nothing for me,” said John Bastow. “There is no cure for mental worry.”

  Felix Skrine made no rejoinder. There was an absent look in his blue eyes, as, tilting his head back, he watched the thin spiral of smoke curling upwards.

  The two men, Sir Felix Skrine, K.C., and Dr. John Bastow, the busy doctor, had been friends from boyhood, though in later life their paths had lain far apart.

  Skrine’s brilliance had made its mark at school and college. A great career had been prophesied for him, and no one had been surprised at his phenomenal success at the Bar. The youngest counsel who had ever taken silk, his name was freely spoken of as certain to be in the list for the next Cabinet, and his knighthood was only looked upon as the prelude to further recognition. His work lay principally among the criminal classes; he had defended in all the big cases in his earlier days, and nowadays was dreaded by the man in the dock as no other K.C. of his time had been.

  Dr. John Bastow, on the other hand, had been more distinguished at college for a certain dogged, plodding industry than for brilliance. Perhaps it was this very unlikeness that had made and kept the two men friends in spite of the different lines on which their lives had developed.

  John Bastow still remained in the old-fashioned house in which he had been born, in which his father had worked and struggled, and finally prospered.

  Sometimes Bastow had dreamed of Wimpole Street or Harley Street, but his dreams had never materialized. Latterly, he had taken up research work, and papers bearing his signature were becoming fairly frequent in the Medical Journals. Like his friend, Felix Skrine, he had married early. Unlike Bastow, however, Skrine was a childless widower. He had married a wife whose wealth had been of material assistance in his career. Later on she had become a confirmed invalid, but Skrine had remained the most devoted of husbands; and, since her death a couple of years ago, there had been no rumour of a second Lady Skrine.

  In appearance the two friends presented a remarkable contrast. Bastow was rather beneath middle height, and broad, with square shoulders; his clean-shaven face was very dark, with thick, rugged brows and large, rough-hewn features. His deep-set eyes were usually hidden by glasses. Skrine was tall and good-looking – the Adonis of the Bar he had been called – but his handsome, ascetic-looking face was almost monk-like in its severity. Many a criminal had felt that there was not a touch of pity in the brilliantly blue eyes, the firmly-closed mouth. Nevertheless the mouth could smile in an almost boyish fashion, the blue eyes could melt into tenderness, as Dr. John Bastow and his motherless children very well knew.

  The two men smoked on in silence for some time now.

  John Bastow sat huddled up in his chair, his rather large head bent down upon his chest, his eyes mechanically watching the tiny flames spring up and then flicker down in the fire that was burning on the hearth.

  From time to time Skrine glanced across at him, the sympathetic curiosity in his eyes deepening. At last he spoke:

  “John, old chap, what’s wrong? Get it off your chest, whatever it is!”

  John Bastow did not raise his head or his eyes. “I wish to Heaven I could.”

  “Then there is something wrong,” Skrine said quickly. “I have thought several times of late that there was. Is it anything in which I can help you – money?”

  Bastow shook his head.

  “A woman, then?” Skrine questioned sharply. “Whatever it may be, John, let me help you. What is the good of having friends if you do not make use of them?”

  “Because – perhaps you can’t,” Bastow said moodily, stooping forward and picking up the poker.

  Felix Skrine shot a penetrating glance at his bent head.

  “A trouble shared is a trouble halved,” he quoted. “Some people have thought my advice worth having, John.”

  “Yes, I know.” Bastow made a savage attack on the fire with his poker. “But – well, suppose I put the case to you, Felix – what ought a man to do under these circumstances – supposing he had discovered – something –”

  He broke off and thrust his poker in again.

  Felix Skrine waited, his deep eyes watching his friend sympathetically. At last he said:

  “Yes, John? Supposing a man discovered something – what sort of discovery do you mean?”

  Bastow raised himself and sat up in his chair, balancing the poker in his hands.

  “Suppose that in the course of a man’s professional career he found that a crime had been committed, had never been discovered, never even suspected, what would you say such a man ought to do?”

  He waited, his eyes fixed upon Skrine’s face.

  Skrine looked back at him for a minute, in silence, then he said in a quick, decided tone:

  “Your hypothetical man should speak out and get the criminal punished. Heavens, man, we are not parsons either of us! You don’t need me to tell you where your duty lies.”

  After another look at his friend’s face, Bastow’s eyes dropped again.

  “Suppose the man – the man had kept silence – at the time, and the – criminal had made good, what then? Supposing such a case had come within your knowledge in the ordinary course of your professional career, what would you do?”

  “What I have said!”

  The words came out with uncompromising severity from the thin-lipped mouth; the blue eyes maintained their unrelaxing watch on John Bastow’s face.

  “I can’t understand you, John. You must k
now your duty to the community.”

  “And what about the guilty man?” John Bastow questioned.

  “He must look after himself,” Skrine said tersely. “Probably he may be able to do so, and it’s quite on the cards that he may be able to clear himself.”

  “I wish to God he could!” Bastow said with sudden emphasis.

  As the last word left his lips the surgery bell rang loudly, with dramatic suddenness.

  Bastow sprang to his feet.

  “That is somebody I must see myself. An old patient with an appointment.”

  “All right, old fellow, I will make myself scarce. But one word before I go. You have said ‘a man.’ Have you changed the sex to prevent my guessing the criminal’s identity? Because there is a member of your household about whom I have wondered sometimes. If it is so – and I can help you if you have found out –”

  “Nothing of the kind. I don’t know what you have got hold of,” Bastow said sharply. “But, at any rate, I shall take no steps until I have seen you again. Perhaps we can discuss the matter at greater length later on.”

  “All right, old chap,” Sir Felix said with his hand on the door knob. “Think over what I have said. I am sure it is the only thing to be done.”

  As he crossed the hall, the sound of voices coming from a room on the opposite side caught his ear. He went quickly across and pushed open the half-closed door.

  “May I come in, Hilary?”

  “Oh, of course, Sir Felix,” a quick, girlish voice answered him.

  The morning-room at Dr. John Bastow’s was the general sitting-room of the family. Two of its windows opened on to the garden; the third, a big bay, was on the side of the street, and though a strip of turf and a low hedge ran between a good view could be obtained of the passers-by.

  An invalid couch usually stood in this window, and Felix Bastow, the doctor’s only son, and Skrine’s godson and namesake, lay on it, supported by cushions and mechanical contrivances. Fee, as he was generally called, had been a cripple from birth, and this window, with its outlook on the street, was his favourite resting- place. People often wondered he did not prefer the windows on the garden side, but Fee always persisted that he had had enough of grass and flowers, and liked to see such life as his glimpse from the window afforded. He got to know many of the passers-by, and often, on a summer’s day, some one would stop and hold quite a long conversation with the white-faced, eager-looking boy.