Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

by J. J. Connington

  “And then, a few days later, he’d have managed to get into the museum on some excuse—he’s a friend of the family—and he’d have had no difficulty in taking the real medallions from under the case where he’d left them. He’d have to take the chance that they’d been overlooked. The false trail would help in that. He’d hardly expect a close search of the museum after the man in white had got clear away. And by running the business on these lines, he’d avoid any chance of being caught with the stuff actually in his pocket at any time.”

  “But in that case, why did he hand over the real things to me like a lamb as soon as I challenged him?”

  The inspector was ready for this.

  “Because as soon as he came into the museum last night, he found that you apparently knew everything—or a good deal more than he’d counted on. Anyhow, he didn’t know how much you knew; and he felt he’d got into a tight corner. He just let the whole thing slide and made up his mind to get out before things got too hot. So he pretended that so far as he was concerned, the practical joke was the thing; and he gave up the real medallions and kept the replicas in his pocket.”

  “Why? He might as well have given up the lot.”

  “No,” the Inspector contradicted. “He’d got to keep the false trail going, for otherwise there would have been awkward questions as to why he diverged from the prearranged programme. I mean the shooting out of the light, the lies about the man in white, and so forth. So he stuck to the replicas and made out that there was an outsider mixed up in the affair. But thanks to the practical joke, the outsider had missed the real stuff; and Polegate was really the saviour of the Leonardo set.”

  Sir Clinton seemed to be pondering over Armadale’s version of the affair. At last he gave his own view.

  “A jury wouldn’t look at that evidence,” he pointed out.

  “I don’t suppose they would,” Armadale admitted. “But there may be more to come yet.”

  “I expect so,” Sir Clinton agreed.

  He rose as he spoke, and, followed by the Inspector, went down to the edge of the lakelet.

  “No luck yet?” he inquired.

  “None, sir. It’s a very difficult bottom to work a grapnel over. It sticks three times out of four.”

  Sir Clinton watched the line of the drag which they were making.

  “It’ll take a while to cover the ground at this rate,” he commented, noting the smallness of the area they had searched up to that moment.

  As he turned away from the water-side, he noticed Cecil Chacewater approaching round the edge of the lakelet, and leaving the Inspector to superintend the dragging, he walked over to meet the newcomer. As he came near, he could see that Cecil’s face was sullen and downcast.

  “’Morning, Sir Clinton. I heard you were here, so I came across to say good-bye before I clear out.”

  Sir Clinton could hardly pretend astonishment in view of what he knew about the state of affairs at Ravensthorpe; but he did not conceal his regret at the news.

  “There was a row-royal between Maurice and me this morning,” Cecil explained, gloomily. “Of course this medallion business gave him his chance, and he jumped in with both feet, you know. He abused me like a fish-wife and finally gave me permission to do anything except stay at Ravensthorpe after to-night. So I’m off.”

  “I wish you hadn’t got mixed up with that silly practical joke,” Sir Clinton said in some concern. “I can’t forgive that young blighter for luring you into it.”

  Cecil’s resentment against his brother was evidently too deep to let him look on the matter from this point of view.

  “If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. Any excuse would have served his turn, you know. He’d have flung me out sooner or later—probably sooner. I’ve felt for long enough that he was itching to clear me off the premises. Foxy’s little show only precipitated things. The root of the trouble was there long before.”

  “Well, it’s a sad business.” Sir Clinton saw that it was useless to dwell on the subject. “You’re going up to town? Any address you can give me?”

  “I’ll probably put up with a man for a day or two. He’s been inviting me to his place once or twice lately, but I’ve never been able to fit it in; so I may as well take him at his word now. I’ve got to look round for something to do, you know.”

  “If you want someone to speak for you, Cecil, refer them to me when you apply for anything. And, by the way, if you happen to run short, you know my address. A letter will always find me.”

  Cecil thanked him rather awkwardly.

  “I hope it won’t come to that,” he wound up. “Something may turn up sooner than one hopes.”

  Sir Clinton thought it well to change the subject again.

  “By the way, Cecil,” he asked, “do you know anything about this man Foss? What sort of person is he?”

  It seemed an unfortunate topic. Cecil’s manner was anything but gracious as he replied:

  “Foss? Oh, you know what sort of a fellow he is already. A damned eavesdropper on his hosts and a beggar with a tongue hinged in the middle so that he can talk with both ends at once. I’d like to wring his neck for him! What do they call the breed that runs off and splits to the police? Copper’s narks, isn’t it?”

  “It wasn’t exactly that side of him that I wanted to hear about, Cecil. I’m quite fully acquainted with his informative temperament already. What I want to know is the sort of man he is socially and so forth.”

  Cecil curbed his vexation with an effort.

  “Oh, he seems to have decent enough manners—a bit Yankee, perhaps, in some things. He must do well enough out of this agent business of his, acting for Kessock and the like, you know. He arrived here with a big car, a chauffeur, and a man. Except for his infernal tale-bearing, I can’t say he’s anything out of the ordinary.”

  Sir Clinton, apparently feeling that he had struck the wrong vein in the conversational strata, contented himself with a nod of comprehension and let Cecil choose his own subject for the next stage in their talk. He was somewhat surprised when it came.

  “Have you heard the latest from the village?” Cecil demanded.

  Sir Clinton shook his head.

  “I’ve had very little time to collect local gossip this morning, Cecil. I’ve been busy getting things started for this bit of work in the lake, you see.”

  “If you’d been down in Hincheldene village you could hardly have missed it. I went down this morning to get some tobacco and I found the whole place buzzing with it. That was before I’d seen Maurice, luckily.”

  “Suppose you tell me what it is,” Sir Clinton suggested, drily.

  “Do you remember my telling you about the family spectre, the White Man?” Cecil asked. “Well, it seems that the village drunkard, old Groby, was taking a short cut through our woods last night—or rather this morning, for he’s a bit of a late going-to-rooster—and he got the shock of his life in one of the glades. He swears he saw the White Man stealing about from tree to tree. By his way of it, he was near enough to see the thing clearly—all white, even the face. What a lark!”

  “You seem to take your family spectre a bit lightly, Cecil. What’s the cream of the jest?”

  Cecil’s face took on a vindictive expression.

  “Oh, it gave me a chance of getting home on Maurice, after he’d given me the key of the street. I told him all about it and I rubbed in the old story. You know what I mean? The White Man never appears except when the head of the family’s on his last legs. Maurice didn’t like it a bit. He looked a bit squeamish over it; and I came away leaving that sticking in his gills.”

  Sir Clinton hardly concealed his distaste for this kind of thing.

  “You flatter yourself, I expect. Maurice is hardly likely to waste any thought over superstitions of that sort.”

  Cecil’s expression still showed a tinge of malice.

  “You’d wonder,” he said. “It’s all very well for you to sneer at these affairs; but it looks a
bit different when you yourself happen to be the object of them, I guess. It’s easy to say ‘Superstition’ in a high-minded way; but if there’s a one per cent, chance that the superstition’s going to hit you personally, then, you know, it rankles a bit. Anything to give pain is my motto where Maurice is concerned.”

  Quite oblivious of Sir Clinton’s rather disgusted expression, he laughed softly to himself for a moment or two.

  “And the funniest thing in the whole affair,” he went on, “is that I know all about this White Man. Can’t you guess what it was?”

  Sir Clinton shook his head.

  “Why, don’t you. see?” Cecil demanded, still laughing. “What old Groby came across must obviously have been Maurice himself in his white Pierrot dress, coming back from the burglar-hunt! That’s what makes it so damned funny. Fancy Maurice getting the creeps on account of himself! It’s as good a joke as I’ve heard for a while.”

  He laughed harshly.

  “You don’t seem to see it. Well, well. Perhaps you’re right. And now I must be getting back to the house. I’ve a lot of stuff to collect before I go off.”

  He shook hands with Sir Clinton and moved off towards Ravensthorpe. The Chief Constable gazed after him for a moment or two.

  “That young man’s in a most unpleasant frame of mind,” he commented to himself. “He’s obviously quite off his normal balance when he’d make a point of that kind of thing. I can’t say I take much stock in brotherly love; but this is really overdoing the business. Both of them seem to have taken leave of ordinary feelings. It’s just as well they’re parting, perhaps.”

  Rather moodily he retraced his steps to where the Inspector was directing the operations by the bank of the lakelet; but by the time he reached the group his face had taken on its normal expression.

  “Fishing still poor?” he demanded, as he came up.

  “Nothing so far, sir,” the Inspector confessed. “These rocks are the very deuce to work amongst. I’ve been running the grapnel over the same track two or three times, just in case we miss the thing the first shot. We’ve had no luck at all—unless you count this as a valuable find: a bit of limestone or something like that.”

  He kicked a shapeless mass of white stone as he spoke. Sir Clinton stooped over it: a dripping mass about the size of a man’s fist. The Inspector watched him as he examined it; but Sir Clinton’s face suggested neither interest nor satisfaction.

  “Might be a bit of marble that got swept over the top when they were putting up the balustrade in the old days,” the Inspector hazarded.

  Sir Clinton looked at it again and shook his head.

  “I doubt it,” he said. “However, since it’s the only thing you’ve fished up, you’d better keep it, Inspector. One never knows what may be useful. I might make a paper-weight out of it as a souvenir.”

  The Inspector failed to see the point of the joke, but he laughed as politely as he could.

  “Very well, Sir Clinton, I’ll see that it’s put aside.”

  He glanced over the Chief Constable’s shoulder.

  “Here’s Mr Clifton coming, sir.”

  Sir Clinton turned round to find that Michael Clifton had approached while he was engaged with the dragging operations. Leaving the group by the bank, he walked slowly to meet the advancing figure.

  “Good morning, Mr Clifton. Come up to see how we’re getting on, I suppose. There’s nothing to report, I’m afraid.”

  “Drawn blank?” Michael inquired, needlessly. “There ought to be something there, all the same.”

  “It may have been only a stone,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “You heard a splash; that’s all we have to go on. And a stone would make that as well as anything else.”

  “That’s true,” Michael admitted. “None of us saw the thing hit the water, so we’ve no notion what it was like. It might have been a stone for all we can tell. But why should the fellow pitch a brick into the water? That’s what puzzles me.”

  Before Sir Clinton could reply, a shout came from the bank, and the Inspector waved to them to come down.

  “We’ve got something, sir,” he called, as they drew nearer.

  Followed by Michael, Sir Clinton hurried up to the group at the water’s edge. The Inspector was kneeling down, carefully disentangling the grapnel from something white. At last he rose and held out his capture. Michael gave an exclamation.

  “A white jacket!”

  A little further shaking of the material showed that it was a complete white Pierrot costume, except for the cap and shoes. The Inspector spread it out on the grass to dry, after holding the jacket outspread in the air so that they could gauge its size by comparison with his own body.

  “That’s what I’ve been hoping to get hold of, Inspector,” Sir Clinton said. “I doubt if you’ll find much more in the pool. But perhaps you’d better go on dragging for a while yet. Something else might turn up.”

  He examined the costume carefully; but it was quite evident that there were no identifying marks on it. During the inspection, Michael showed signs of impatience; and as soon as he could he unostentatiously drew Sir Clinton away from the group.

  “Come up here, Mr Clifton,” the Chief Constable suggested, as he turned towards the hillock he had chosen earlier in the morning. “We can keep an eye on things from this place.”

  He sat down and Michael, after a glance to see that they were out of earshot of the dragging party, followed his example.

  “What do you make of that?” he demanded eagerly.

  Sir Clinton seemed to have little desire to discuss the matter.

  “Let’s be quite clear on one point before we begin,” he reminded Michael. “I’m a Chief Constable, not a broadcasting station. My business is to collect information, not to throw it abroad before the proper time comes. You understand?”

  Rather dashed, Michael admitted the justice of this.

  “I’m a public servant, Mr Clifton,” Sir Clinton pointed out, his manner taking the edge off the directness of his remarks, “and I get my information officially. Obviously it wouldn’t be playing the game if I scattered that information around before the public service has had the use of it.”

  “I see that well enough,” Michael protested. “All I asked was what your own views are.”

  Sir Clinton smiled and there was a touch of mischief in his eye as he replied.

  “Seeing that my conclusions are based on the evidence—at least I like to think so, you know—they’re obviously part and parcel of my official knowledge. Hence I don’t divulge them till the right moment comes.”

  He paused to let this sink in, then added lightly:

  “That’s a most useful principle, I find. One often makes mistakes, and of course one never divulges them either, until the right time comes. It’s curious, but I’ve never been able yet to satisfy myself that the right time has come in any case of the sort.”

  Michael smiled in his turn; and Sir Clinton went on:

  “But there’s no reason why you shouldn’t draw your own conclusions and give me the benefit of them. I’m not too proud to be helped, you know.”

  For a moment Michael kept silence, as if considering what his next move should be. Sir Clinton had given him what might have looked like a snub; but Michael had acuteness enough to tell him that the matter was one of principle with the Chief Constable and not merely a pretext devised on the spur of the moment to suppress inconvenient curiosity.

  “It just occurred to me,” he confessed, “that there’s a possible explanation of that thing they’ve fished up. Do you remember that I found Maurice in the Fairy House up above there”—he indicated the cliff-top with a gesture—“and when I left him there he was still wearing a white costume like this one?”

  “So you told us last night,” Sir Clinton confirmed.

  “Now when Maurice turned up in the museum later on,” Michael continued, “he was wearing ordinary evening clothes. He’d got rid of the Pierrot dress in the meantime.”

  “Th
at’s true,” Sir Clinton agreed.

  “Isn’t it possible,” Michael went on, “that after I left him, Maurice got over his troubles, whatever they were, and pitched his disguise over the edge here. This may quite well be it.”

  “Rather a rum proceeding, surely,” was Sir Clinton’s comment. “Can you suggest any earthly reason why he should do a thing like that?”

  “I can’t,” Michael admitted, frankly. “But the whole affair last night seemed to have neither rhyme nor reason in it; and after swallowing the escape of that beggar we were after, I’m almost prepared for anything in this neighbourhood. I just put the matter before you. I can’t fake up any likely explanation to account for it.”

  Sir Clinton seemed to be reflecting before he spoke again.

  “To tell you the truth, I was rather disappointed with the result of that drag. Quite obviously—this isn’t official information, for you can see it with your own eyes—quite obviously that Pierrot costume must have been wrapped round some weight or other, or it wouldn’t have sunk to the bottom. And in the dragging the weight fell out. I could make a guess at what the weight was; but I wish we’d fished it up. It doesn’t matter much, really; but one likes to get everything one can.”

  Michael, unable to guess what lay behind this, kept silent in the hope that there was more to come; but the Chief Constable swung off to a fresh subject.

  “Did you take a careful note of the costumes of the gang who helped you in the attempt to round the beggar up? Could you make a list of them if it became necessary?”

  Michael considered for the best part of a minute before answering.

  “Some of them I could remember easily enough; but not all, I’m sure. It was a bit confused, you know; and some of the crew turned up pretty late, when all my attention was focused on the final round-up. I really couldn’t guarantee to give you an accurate list.”

  Sir Clinton’s nod indicated approval.

  “That’s what I like,” he said. “I’d rather have a definite No than a faked-up list that might mean nothing at all. But there’s one point that’s really important. Did you notice, among your assistants, anybody in white like the man you were hunting?”