House in Charlton Crescent

by Annie Haynes

  “And a very queer ‘all’ it is too,” the inspector remarked. “Now was it a real man or woman at all? Or was it—could it have been an illusion caused by some arrangement of lights—thrown on the window?”

  “Not by any that I have heard of,” Bruce said at once. “No. The face looked solid enough. Besides, what reason could anyone have for—”

  “Why, they might want to do exactly what really happened. To divert your attention while the murder was committed,” the inspector proceeded, his grey eyes looking here, there and everywhere except at the young man’s face, and yet somehow noting every change of expression that flitted over it. “Might not that man, face, illusion, whatever it was, have been arranged for by someone who was waiting outside the door until the opportunity came? From what the butler says the door was not even shut.”

  Cardyn’s face did not look responsive.

  “Lady Anne was stabbed with her own dagger. No outsider could have arranged for that to have been found close at hand.”

  “That might have been seized when the murderer got there. He may have intended to use some other weapon, and been quick to see the advantage that using her own dagger would give him.”

  “Yes, he would have had to be quick indeed!” Bruce asserted satirically.

  There was another pause. Both men were listening intently.

  Though barely two hours had elapsed since Lady Anne’s death, already it seemed to Cardyn that a lifetime had passed away. Inspector Furnival on the point of setting out for Charlton Crescent, had had his steps quickened by telephone. The doctor had been summoned in hot haste, but nothing could be done. The body had been moved to the couch, so that Dr. Spencer could make his brief examination, otherwise nothing in the room had been touched. The very teacups and saucers the members of Lady Anne’s party had been using when Soames’s cry startled them all still stood as they had hastily set them down.

  At last there came the sound for which they had been waiting—a sharp knock at the door. At the same moment the passionate weeping of a woman reached them—“Oh, my lady! my lady!”

  “Pirnie—Lady Anne’s maid.” Bruce Cardyn got up. “The woman is absolutely useless. That is all she can do—she simply cries all the time. Dr. Spencer is at the door, think.”

  The inspector motioned him to wait.

  “Yes, Dr. Spencer is coming to report to us. But first I must put one question to you, Mr. Cardyn. You were the first at the window, you say. Of the other four people in the room was there anyone else close to you all the time, so that you can confidently say ‘This one could not have been the murderer.’”

  “They all seemed to be close to me all the time,” Cardyn said ruefully. “Pressing me hard, so that I could scarcely move, you understand. But I could not say that any one of them was by me all the time. The one who seemed to be perhaps the longest—”

  “Yes?” The inspector looked at him closely.

  “Well, it was, think, Mr. John Daventry,” Bruce finished. “But I could not be certain of all the time. Still, he was beside me shouting to the man below a good deal of the time, it seems to me. At the end, when I turned after hearing the groan, I recollect pushing Soames, the butler, back. But I do not remember where Mr. Daventry was then.”

  “John Daventry—um!” mused the inspector. “The heir, the most obvious trail, but is it the right one?”

  “I don’t know,” Bruce Cardyn confessed. “He doesn’t look like a murderer, but—”

  “No one ever does look like a murderer until he is found out,” the inspector said sententiously. “My experience is that people who look like murderers may be great philanthropists or prominent politicians, but they never commit murders. Well, doctor”—as Cardyn opened the door and Dr. Spencer came into the room—”what have you to say to us?”

  The doctor was a capable-looking man of middle age, with a pleasant professional manner. Just now his face was white and disturbed.

  “Us!” he repeated, raising his eyebrows as he glanced at Cardyn.

  “Ah, yes! I had forgotten. Now this must be strictly in confidence, doctor. Mr. Bruce Cardyn, a member of one of the best-known firms of private detectives, is here at Lady Anne’s own request, acting as her secretary, in order to discover, if possible, her secret enemy in the house.”

  The doctor stared at him.

  “But what—I don’t understand—Do you mean that Lady Anne—?”

  “Feared that what happened this afternoon might happen?” the inspector finished. “Exactly! But you must understand that this must go no further, doctor. Mr. Cardyn must remain the secretary to the rest of the world. Now, what have you to tell us?”

  “Nothing you do not know already,” the doctor said slowly. “Leaving technicalities to the inquest, Lady Anne died of the wound caused by the dagger which was still in it when I came. It penetrated to the heart and death must have taken place within a few minutes. The blow must have been one of great force and should say struck by a person who knew just where to strike. That is all can tell you, inspector, and it will not help you much, fear.”

  “One never knows,” the inspector said enigmatically. “One question, Dr. Spencer—you say ‘a powerful blow.’ Could it have been struck by a woman?”

  “It depends upon the woman,” the doctor said after a pause. “But, yes—I should say that in these days of athletic women most of them are as capable of striking hard as a man. But you surely do not think that—that a woman—”

  “I am not thinking anything at present,” Inspector Furnival interrupted. “I am trying to find out the truth, doctor.”

  “Quite so, I understand that. But there is one thing that has struck me might be a means of ascertaining the truth.” The doctor laid his hat and stick on the table. “I am a bit of a criminologist myself, and in reading both real and imaginary accounts of crime it has struck me how very often finger-prints have been the means of tracking down the criminal. Now in this case, surely the dagger—the handle I mean, must bear the marks of—”

  Something like a faint smile flitted momentarily over the inspector’s face.

  “I have not neglected what certainly does look like an obvious clue, doctor. But unfortunately so many people have handled the dagger, incidentally, Lady Anne herself, that I am afraid that it will not carry us much further.”

  “Ah, well! It is your job not mine.” The doctor took up his hat. “I am more grieved than I can say that such a thing should have occurred. Lady Anne was one of my oldest patients and I shall miss her more than I can realize at present. And I trust that so cruel a crime will not long go unavenged. Well, if there is nothing more that I can tell you, inspector—we shall meet at the inquest to-morrow.”

  When the door had closed behind him the inspector made a rapid note in his book.

  “Not very enlightening, that gentleman, now for Mr. John Daventry!”

  John Daventry kept them waiting for some little time. The inspector occupied himself in studying his notes and adding a few words, his face gloomy and abstracted. Bruce Cardyn did not move. He was going over and over again the tragedy of this afternoon. Who could be guilty? Was it one of the four people in the room with him, or could it possibly have been, as the inspector suggested, some outsider? The face at the window too! Rack his brains as he would he could think of no explanation of this, to him the most inexplicable feature of the whole affair. With all the precautions he had taken it would have seemed an actual impossibility that anyone should have got up to the window of Lady Anne’s room without being discovered at once. Yet the thing had happened.

  John Daventry’s face still bore evident marks of disturbance when at last he appeared.

  “You asked for me, inspector?”

  The inspector pointed to a chair next to Bruce Cardyn.

  “Do you mind sitting there, Mr. Daventry?”

  “Oh, I can’t sit down, thanks.”

  Yet under the inspector’s compelling eye, John Daventry walked over and laid his hand on the chair indicat
ed.

  “As a matter of fact you were lucky to catch me at all. The car will be round in a minute to take me to Daventry Keep. I want to break the news to my mother myself.”

  The inspector’s hand still pointed to the chair.

  “I think not, Mr. Daventry. You must let some one else break the news to them at the Keep. Don’t you understand that no one—no one may leave this house without my permission?”

  John Daventry stared at him.

  “No one may leave this house without your permission!” he repeated contemptuously. “My good man, are you going out of your mind? I know that you police have a very exalted idea of your own powers. But really—”

  The inspector pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “You do not seem to comprehend at all the gravity of the situation, Mr. Daventry. A foul and terrible murder has been committed in this house this afternoon, and up till now we have entirely failed to trace the guilty one. In these circumstances every one of the five in the room must be suspect. All of them are under observation and should any one of them attempt to leave the house without my permission, he—or she—will at once be placed under arrest.”

  “I can’t believe it!” That curious sickly pallor was stealing over John Daventry’s face again. “You can’t seriously think that one of us stabbed Aunt Anne? The very idea would be ludicrous if it were not so tragic.”

  “What do you think yourself, Mr. Daventry?” The Ferret’s eyes had never been more gimletlike.

  “I can’t think.” John Daventry ran his hands through his short hair. “But the idea that it was any one of us is inconceivable. The two girls must be out of the question, and I would trust Soames with my life any day. It must have been that blighter at the window, I said so at once.”

  The inspector’s eyes did not relax their watchful gaze for a moment.

  “You are talking of an impossibility, Mr. Daventry. The man could not have got through the window while you were all looking out.”

  Daventry stirred impatiently.

  “Not at that window, of course he couldn’t. But the other one—nearest to Aunt Anne—was open at the top. Soames says she would always have it so. The fellow must have managed it somehow through that. Oh, I don’t pretend to say exactly how. But there is this chap, the Cat Burglar the papers have been full of lately, and how he has got up the most impossible looking walls. They say he has clamps on his feet, don’t you know, or something of that kind—makes him stick to a flat surface like a fly. And those little beggars can walk upside-down on the ceiling.”

  The inspector did not appear to be particularly impressed by this fact in natural history.

  “He would have needed clamps on his hands too, I fancy, to get through that window, stab Lady Anne and get back without any of you seeing him. No, Mr. Daventry, we shall have to think of some more likely story than that.”

  “Look here!” John Daventry started up. “Mr. Inspector Furnival, or whatever you call yourself, it strikes me that you are trying to be offensive. The police are always making mistakes, and you will find you have made a pretty big one if you don’t take care. An Englishman’s house is his castle, you know. And it would not take much to make me put you out of this neck and crop, detective inspector or not.”

  The inspector did not move; his little eyes still maintained their careful watch on the young man’s face.

  “Only you see, you do not happen to be master of this house at present, Mr. Daventry.”

  “What do you mean? I stand in my aunt’s place,” John Daventry blustered. “What do you mean, sir?”

  “I mean that until Lady Anne’s lease of this house expires or is disposed of, her legal heir and representative is her executor and brother, the Rev. and Hon. Augustus Fyvert, rector of North Coton, to whom I have wired, and who will be here by the next train,” the inspector said coldly.

  CHAPTER VII

  “And now,” observed the inspector. “I think we will have another look at the sitting-room. There are certain papers that must be gone through.”

  It was the day after Lady Anne Daventry’s death. The inquest had been opened in the morning, but only formal evidence had been taken and, after hearing Dr. Spencer, the coroner had adjourned for a week to give the police time for their inquiries.

  Both the inspector and Cardyn had been up most of the night, though so far their efforts had produced no result. The rector of North Coton and his wife had arrived the night before and had been too much overcome by the shock and the horror of Lady Anne’s death to be of any assistance. Mr. Fyvert had, however, commissioned Cardyn to stay in the house to investigate the circumstances of Lady Anne’s death, in conjunction with the police. John Daventry still remained fuming at his enforced detention, but neither he nor the two girls had attended the inquest.

  Bruce Cardyn and the inspector walked back to the house together from the little hall in the side street where the inquest had been held.

  Soames himself opened the door for them. His mistress’s death was making an old man of him. His usually bland, benevolent-looking face was puckered and miserable; evidently he had been crying; his eyes were red-rimmed and his mouth was twitching.

  “Oh, couldn’t you have stopped it, Mr. Furnival? All those common men tramping up the stairs and right into my lady’s room! To say nothing of seeing my poor lady herself. It is what her ladyship would have hated above everything.”

  “Her ladyship would have wished her murderer found, Mr. Soames,” the inspector said, laying his hand on the man’s bowed shoulder. “We have good reason to know that.”

  “Have you?” Soames gulped down a lump in his throat. “There’s one thing I wondered whether I ought to mention to you. It is only a trifle, but—”

  “Nothing is a trifle in a case of this kind,” the inspector said gravely. “A straw shows which way the wind blows.”

  “Just so. That is what thought. Otherwise I shouldn’t have troubled you—but if you will come this way—”

  He went to a small window at the end of the hall, looking into the garden.

  “That window is always kept locked, by her ladyship’s orders, she being nervous of tramps and so many of them about nowadays. Well, when I went round, as my custom is, to see to the fastenings of the windows and doors, that window was open, at least I should say not fastened, and not quite shut at the top, as if some one had got out hurriedly and not been able to push it up from the outside. I—I’m ashamed to say that I did not regard it of any importance last night—I—we were all so upset about my lady. But, when I heard Mr. Fyvert say this morning that her ladyship must have been stabbed by one of the people in the room, it did strike me that the—the murderer might have been in hiding in the house and rushed in and—and accomplished his purpose while we were all engaged with the man at the window, and then made his escape.”

  The inspector was looking at the window.

  “Very well thought out,” he said approvingly. “You would make a first-rate detective. But, if the window were pushed up from the outside as you suggest, there ought to be very distinct footmarks in the flower border below.”

  “Yes, I suppose there ought,” Soames said uncertainly. “But it didn’t strike me to look, me being fresh to this kind of thing, as you may say,” his voice dying away apologetically.

  The inspector threw up the sash, noticing how stiffly it moved as he did so. He leaned out and looked down.

  “I believe there are some marks,” he said as he withdrew his head. “Mr. Cardyn, suppose we take a look at them from the outside.”

  He drew the window down again and turned off to the door at the end of the hall, which Soames opened for him. He did not go any farther with the detectives but stood watching them with interest.

  The inspector took out a measuring tape and a magnifying-glass. Then he carefully picked out a couple of large flat stones from the rockery and put them on the border so that he could cross it without putting his feet on the mould.

  “Four very dis
tinct footmarks,” he called out to Cardyn. “Two with their toes turned to the house, as if the man had just let himself down from the window—rather deep, too, as if he had shut it as he stood—and two with their toes turned to the garden as if he had gone off that way. Well, so far so good. We must have impressions made of those footmarks, Mr. Cardyn.”

  Cardyn did not speak for a moment; his grey eyes were thoughtful as he scrutinized the flower border.

  “I see the marks by the window plainly enough. But did the beggar get away? He couldn’t have taken a flying leap from where he stood to the gravel path, and yet there are no more footmarks on the flower border.”

  The inspector smiled grimly.

  “Another problem for you, Mr. Cardyn. But what I am wondering is, who made those footmarks?”

  Bruce looked surprised.

  “Well, of course—” he said.

  The inspector went on without noticing any interruption.

  “Because I examined all the doors and windows last night an hour before Soames did, and—the window was closed and locked then.”

  “But what can that mean?” Bruce said slowly.

  “Some one has a motive for trying to make us think the murderer was an outsider, and that he escaped that way,” the inspector said dryly. “But it is possible to be a little too clever, you know, Mr. Cardyn. Now, think we will station a man over there—by the cedar. He can keep an eye on the footmarks without being seen in return.”

  They went back to the same door. Soames was hovering about in the hall. He looked at them inquiringly.

  “As good impressions as we could hope to get,” the inspector said patronizingly. “We shall lay the fellow by the heels very soon now.”

  “I am glad to hear that—for her poor ladyship’s sake.” The man blew his nose noisily and turned away. “You see it is very upsetting, to them that knew my lady well. And me having been in the family, boy and man, between thirty and forty years.”

  “Ay! It will come hard on you old ones— like losing one of your own,” the inspector said sympathetically. “Between thirty and forty years, you say?”