Jack cleared his throat. ‘Hold on a minute, Wood. When, exactly, did you steal the sapphires?’
‘I ... er ...’
‘Last night,’ spat out Evie. ‘It must have been last night.’
Jack shook his head. ‘That would’ve been awfully tricky. Granted the safe is no great shakes, when did you see the necklace in order to copy it? Mr Bloomenfield has told us what excellent work it is. A necklace of this quality isn’t produced in a matter of a half hour or so. It’d need careful planning and some considerable skill.’
‘Both of which I own up to,’ said Wood. ‘I knew the necklace was going to be re-set, so I had a substitute necklace made. Easy, really.’ He turned to Ashley. ‘If you are going to arrest me, would you mind hurrying up? This isn’t the easiest social situation I’ve ever found myself in.’
‘No,’ muttered Frank Leigh. ‘No, I can’t let that happen.’ His face was ghastly. ‘I stole the wretched jewels.’
‘Frank, don’t!’ said Wood quickly, but Frank Leigh shook his head.
‘No.’ He stared at the fascinated, horrified faces around him, then held up his hand to ward off Wood’s protests. ‘I can’t let you be blamed for something I did.’
Evie, her eyes fixed on her husband, groped her way to a chair. ‘Why?’ she breathed.
Frank shrugged. ‘Can you ask? I needed the money. Celia needed the money. She and Ted Marchant wanted to buy a farm. They could have had it. You had your necklace. You didn’t know the difference. You should’ve been happy.’
‘Happy?’ repeated Evie. ‘Happy!’
Frank raised his hand feebly. ‘Don’t worry. The stones are safe. They’re in a box in my dressing room.’
Celia gave a little cry. ‘You did it for me, Dad?’
Frank nodded. ‘If it wasn’t for Duggleby spotting them, it would’ve worked.’ He looked from Celia to Duggleby then back again. ‘Marchant’s a good man. I ... I was worried.’
‘Give me my sapphires,’ said Evie. ‘I want my sapphires.’
Frank Leigh sighed heavily and stood up. ‘I’ll get them for you.’
As soon as he had gone, an outburst of noise filled the room. Mary Hawker turned on Evie, Duggleby was stammering he hadn’t meant any harm and everyone was talking at once.
Celia burst into tears. ‘Dad did it for me!’ she sobbed.
Moved by a sudden fear, Jack caught at her arm. ‘Celia,’ he hissed. ‘I need you. Now!’
Celia dried her eyes. ‘What is it?’ she asked in a choky voice.
Jack didn’t answer but ushered her to the door. ‘Bill!’ he called in a low voice. ‘Come on.’
‘Well?’ asked Bill, once the three of them were in the hall. Frank Leigh was nowhere to be seen.
‘Celia, I saw your father’s face,’ said Jack urgently. ‘He’s a desperate man.’ He reached out and held her hand, speaking very quietly. ‘I think he might attempt his own life.’
Celia gazed at him in horror.
‘Does he keep a gun in his dressing-room?’
‘He ... He might.’
‘Are there guns in the house? A gun room, perhaps?’
Celia gulped and pointed wordlessly down the hall. ‘It’s along there. The end of the hall.’
‘Fine. He might have gone upstairs, of course.’ He stared at her earnestly, willing strength into her. ‘Take Bill to your father’s dressing room. Go on. Quickly!’
As if suddenly galvanised, she started along the hallway to the stairs, Bill after her. Jack turned and sped off in the direction of the gun room.
At first he thought the room was empty. Three tall glass-fronted cabinets, with shotguns and sporting rifles, stood closed, the glass reflecting the dazzling sun. Over the mantelpiece, a sabre on a green baize board, with its sheath beneath, glinted in the light.
Jack turned away and caught his breath. Frank Leigh, pistol in hand, was slumped into a dark corner of the room, rigidly still.
‘Mr Leigh?’
Frank Leigh shuddered. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t see me,’ he said in a dried-up voice. ‘It’s over.’
‘Mr Leigh, give me the gun.’
Frank Leigh looked blankly at the gun in his hand, then his face contorted. Bringing the gun up, he aimed it at Jack’s chest, his finger on the trigger. ‘Leave me alone! It’s over, I tell you!’
Jack froze. At that moment, he didn’t think Frank Leigh was completely sane. ‘Mr Leigh,’ he said, keeping his voice very level, ‘you saved my life last night.’
Leigh made a noise like a sob.
‘I’m going to reach out,’ said Jack steadily, and slowly stretched out his hand, palm upmost. ‘I want you to put the gun into my hand.’
Frank Leigh’s eyes were fixed on Jack’s. Jack dragged his eyes away, focusing on the gun in Frank Leigh’s hand. The wavering black muzzle seemed huge and Jack could see Leigh’s knuckles turn white.
‘Get away,’ said Leigh shakily. ‘Get away or, by God, I’ll kill you!’
For a fraction of a second, his finger tightened on the trigger.
Jack’s muscles tensed, ready to spring. The silence lengthened. Jack risked another step forward, reached out and took the gun from Leigh’s unresisting hand.
Leigh crumpled against the wall, his hands to his face.
As his fingers closed round the cold metal, Jack breathed a huge sigh of relief. That had been horribly dangerous. He broke open the gun, took out the bullets, and put both gun and ammunition on the table.
Leigh lowered his hands, his breath coming in huge gulps. ‘You shouldn’t have stopped me,’ he said distantly. ‘I was going to do the decent thing.’
He looked up, his eyes fixed on the sabre on the wall. ‘That was won at Waterloo. There’s ... there’s traditions. Family traditions. Reputation, you know? Get it wrong and pay the price.’
‘Family?’ repeated Jack sharply. He wanted to jolt Mr Leigh back to reality. ‘You are your family. Besides that, what about your father? What about his reputation? That wasn’t so hot, from what I’ve heard.’
Frank Leigh’s eyes blazed with anger, then he suddenly relaxed. ‘D’you know, you’re right.’ His voice had, thank God, lost that distant, dreamy note. ‘He was a good man in his own way, you know? Generous to a fault, but he just couldn’t keep away from the gaming tables.’
He sighed deeply. ‘He wasn’t a thief, though.’ His mouth twisted. ‘I am. It seemed such a good idea. All that money, tied up in a few sparkling stones.’ He shrugged. ‘I thought of them as mine.’ He nearly laughed. ‘That’s family traditions again, I suppose.’ He was quiet for a few moments. ‘You knew, didn’t you? I saw you look at me in the dining room.’
Jack nodded. ‘I thought it was very likely.
‘How? How did you guess?’
Jack shrugged. ‘The way you reacted, of course. Add to that, the fact that the necklace only arrived yesterday. It could only have been copied by someone who knew the new design and had the skill to do it. Paste copies are often made to protect the original, so I thought the obvious people to produce a fake were the jewellers, working on your instructions.’
‘That’s it,’ agreed Frank Leigh. ‘I only thought of it after Evie had approved the new design. I asked Seddon and Coles to make me a paste necklace while I kept the original. They never dreamt there was anything wrong. It seemed such a simple solution. Wrong, of course. I know that.’
He heaved a deep sigh, then, shaking himself, straightened his shoulders and, walking past Jack, went to one of the glass-fronted gun cabinets. Opening it, he took down a twelve-bore shotgun.
‘Rabbits, you know,’ he said with the faintest of smiles, taking some cartridges from the drawer. He broke open the gun and slipped the cartridges into the breech. ‘I think I’ll have a crack at the rabbits.’
‘Mr Leigh!’ Jack’s voice was firm. ‘Don’t do it, sir.’
‘I know what I’m doing, young man.’ A spark of anger showed in his eyes. ‘When I need your advice, I’ll ask for it.’
‘Give me s
ome more time, sir,’ Jack pleaded.
‘What the devil difference will more time make?’
‘I need to find out what happened last night. If you had an accident, say, it would make it very awkward for me to investigate.’
Frank Leigh dropped the shotgun onto the table out of sheer surprise. ‘My word, you’ve got some brass neck, I’ll give you that. You honestly expect me to ... to rearrange my affairs so you can go ghost hunting?’
‘I hope so.’
Frank Leigh’s face flushed and he was about to answer when the door was flung back on its hinges. Celia, with Bill close behind, rushed into the room. She looked from the shotgun to her father, then, with a yelp, flung herself at him.
‘Dad! Oh, Dad, I’ve been so worried!’ She buried her face in his shoulder, arms around his neck. ‘I don’t care about the money, I care about you. I don’t want to marry Ted. I don’t care about him. All I care about is that you’re safe.’
‘Everything okay, Jack?’ asked Bill in a low voice.
Jack nodded at the pistol on the table. ‘He nearly had a pop at me with that,’ he said quietly. Bill whistled softly. ‘He’s not safe. We can’t leave him loose. There’s no saying what he’ll do and he knows a great deal more than what he’s told us, I’ll swear to it. Will you back me up?’
‘All right,’ said Bill.
Jack cleared his throat loudly. Celia Leigh broke away from her father and turned to face him. ‘Jack! Thank God you got here in time.’
‘Don’t be too grateful, Celia,’ said Jack warningly. ‘Your father’s guilty of some serious crimes.’
‘Crimes!’ stuttered Frank Leigh. ‘What the devil d’you mean, sir! What crimes?’
‘Attempted suicide,’ said Jack icily. ‘That’s a crime. You threatened to kill me. That’s attempted murder, which is another crime.’
Frank and Celia Leigh gazed at him speechlessly. ‘Jack, don’t,’ said Celia helplessly. ‘You know Dad didn’t mean to shoot you. You know it was just the heat of the moment. You can’t blame him for that.’
‘Oh, can’t I?’ said Jack.
‘There’s the theft of the sapphires as well,’ said Bill. ‘That’s grand larceny.’
Jack nodded. ‘Very grand, indeed, considering how much they’re worth. Mr Leigh made a full confession to me of how he’d stolen the sapphires.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Celia desperately. ‘You know why he did it!’
‘All in all, Mr Leigh,’ said Bill, ‘I think it would be as well if you accompanied me to the station.’
Frank Leigh darted a glance round the room, then made a dive for the shotgun, but Bill was there before him.
‘Don’t do it, sir!’ Bill handed the shotgun to Jack. ‘And, incidentally, sir, you’ve just resisted arrest, which is another offence. Ring the bell, will you Jack? I could do with Ashley in here.’
SIXTEEN
Jack paused on the edge of the dining room. He could hear Celia, her voice thin with tears, giving high-pitched vent to her feelings, Mary Hawker’s bass rumbles of disapproval and Evie’s sharp questioning. Listeners, he reflected ruefully, never heard good of themselves.
‘... and Jack said Dad tried to kill him. Kill him! As if Dad would do such a thing. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. I think Jack was just being vindictive. It was horrible!’
‘But your father did have a gun?’ That was Isabelle, trying to pour a bit of oil on these extremely choppy waters.
‘Well, what if he did? Dad was upset. He ... He ... Jack said Dad was going to shoot himself but he wouldn’t have done, not really.’
‘Dear God,’ said Mary Hawker. ‘So that’s why Major Haldean went off like a scalded cat. He was trying to stop him.’ She sighed, obviously deeply moved. ‘I should have known that would be Frank’s reaction once the truth was out. He’s an honourable man.’
‘Honourable!’ yelped Evie. ‘Honourable! He stole my sapphires.’
‘Yes, well, perhaps he shouldn’t have done,’ conceded Mary, ‘but the main thing is that Frank’s all right. I think you’ve got to give Major Haldean credit, Celia. I know this arrest is beastly, but at least it’s stopped Frank from taking the final step. Your father’s a difficult man to argue with. Once he gets his teeth into something, he won’t drop it.’
Jack froze. The voices in the dining room seemed suddenly faint, as if the volume on a wireless set had been turned down.
‘Doesn’t anyone care?’ shrieked Evie from very far away. ‘He stole my sapphires!’
Teeth! Once he gets his teeth into something, he won’t drop it ... He’d thought about teeth in the portrait gallery before lunch. What the hell was it about teeth?
Evie had small, white, even teeth. Mrs Hawker had rather horsey teeth, Duggleby had a chipped tooth, Frank Leigh had a gold tooth, Celia had straightened teeth so they weren’t rabbit teeth like the girl’s in the portrait ... Mrs Welbeck had rabbit teeth. Celia’s teeth must have been like Mrs Welbeck’s ...
Teeth. Get his teeth into something. Biting off more than he could chew ... The voices in the dining room swelled back to full volume.
Mrs Welbeck’s teeth!
‘Did Frank have my sapphires?’ demanded Evie.
‘Of course not,’ bit back Celia. ‘He said they were in a box in his dressing room. Is that all you care about? What about Dad?’
Evie’s voice had ice in it. ‘My dear girl, your father is under arrest. What’s more, he only has himself to blame. In the most underhanded way he brought a man into the house who would certainly not have been welcome under his own name, told a pack of lies from start to finish and ended up by stealing from me, his own wife. I cannot be expected to be dripping with sympathy. I am going to retrieve my sapphires.’
Jack heard her heels clicking across the parquet flooring to the door. He dodged down the hallway and out of sight behind a heavy velvet tasselled curtain. The last thing he wanted at the moment was to confront the seething Mrs Leigh. He watched her march up the stairs, fury radiating from every stiff line
of her body.
His mind was racing. He had an idea. Mrs Welbeck’s teeth, last night’s séance, the murder on the train, Evie Leigh’s sapphires – everything came together and made sense.
And yet ... an idea remained just an idea without any proof.
How on earth could he prove it? Dr and Mrs Mountford would know. He looked across the hall at the telephone in its cabinet. It would be easy enough to pick up the phone. Easy enough to drive over to Topfordham, to speak to the Mountfords, and then ... Then what? Part of the mystery might be solved but he couldn’t be certain. Besides that, it would all take time. Was there anything he could do now?
The cave. Yes. He was sure he was on the right lines with the cave. He clicked his tongue. He, Ashley and Isabelle had searched the cave very thoroughly before lunch. The cave held its secret closely. He needed a guide.
Jack drew his breath in and nearly laughed out loud. Throckmorton’s book! Of course! That earnest Victorian vicar, that persistent antiquarian, that learned man, with his knowledge of Tacitus and Sidonius Apollinaris, probably knew more about the cave than any man ever had and the results of his labours were contained in a dumpy little volume which had sat on a library shelf for the last eighty-odd years, unread and unregarded until Duggleby picked it up.
Was it in the library or was it in Duggleby’s room? He glanced up the stairs.
Mrs Leigh’s footsteps had clicked away into silence. The arguments still rumbled on in the dining room. It sounded as if Celia was being comforted by Duggleby. Unlike Evie Leigh, he was being very sympathetic indeed. Now was his chance.
Keeping a wary eye on the open door of the dining room, Jack ran lightly up the stairs.
Duggleby’s room wasn’t far from Jack’s own and, if Jack’s bedroom was anything to go off, shouldn’t take long to search. Bachelor guests were not expected to take up a lot of space and were given correspondingly small rooms. After trying a couple of unoccupied rooms, Jack fou
nd Duggleby’s. Throckmorton’s book was in plain sight on the dressing table.
Brilliant! Picking up the book – it was too big for his pocket – he closed the door quietly behind him and headed down the stairs.
This time he wasn’t so lucky. As he drew level with the dining room, Isabelle, Celia and Duggleby came out of the room.
At the sight of him, Celia drew back with a sort of revolted gasp, regarding him with deep and haughty loathing. ‘You! I suppose you’re proud of yourself, Major Haldean!’
‘Come on, Celia,’ pleaded Jack, adjusting the book so the title on the spine wasn’t visible. ‘Get off your high horse. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that, Jack,’ snarled Celia. ‘How you’ve got the nerve to look me in the face, I don’t know.’
‘That’s better,’ said Jack cheerfully. ‘What on earth should I have done? Your father was an absolute menace to himself and everyone around him, waving that gun around. Absolute danger to traffic, I tell you. I managed to stop him loosing off with a revolver and the next thing he did was grab hold of a shotgun. Blinkin’ nasty weapon, a shotgun.’
‘He wouldn’t have harmed you,’ sniffed Celia. Duggleby put an arm round her shoulders. ‘You know he’s good and kind and ... and ...’
‘A bit of an idiot,’ finished Jack. ‘And, although I’m not looking for adulation or anything, thanks to me, still alive.’
‘What’s that book you’re holding?’ asked Duggleby over Celia’s shoulder. ‘Throckmorton?’
There was nothing for it but to come clean.
‘That’s right,’ said Jack as casually as he could manage. ‘I thought I’d go in the garden and read.’
‘But I left it in my room. I’m sure I did.’
‘This is another copy. I found it in the library.’
‘Oh? I didn’t realise there was another copy,’ said Duggleby, his eyes glinting with sudden interest. ‘Can I see? There might be some additions to the text. Marginalia, perhaps.’
Celia drew in her breath in exasperation. ‘What does it matter which stupid book it is? I can’t imagine anyone thinking of books at a time like this. Don’t let us stop you, Jack. You can relax now my father’s in prison.’ She shook herself free of Duggleby’s arm. ‘Come on, Len. I want to go and see him.’
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