Dead Man’s Quarry: A Golden Age Mystery

by Ianthe Jerrold

  “Apparently!” echoed Rampson, shaking his head. “My dear John, never forget that apparently disconnected facts are often actually disconnected. Far, far more often than Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Mr. John Christmas seem to imagine.”

  “Now, Sydenham,” said John firmly, “don’t start trying to depress me again. I need all my strength to think out a plan of campaign for to-morrow.”

  “To-morrow?”

  “I’m going to London to-morrow to look for Clytie Meadows. I shall probably take Felix with me, and Nora’s coming to fetch some canvases from her sister’s. You’re going to stay behind and keep an eye on things at Rhyllan.”

  “Things? What things?”

  “Oh, things,” answered John vaguely. “Nothing in particular, but I shall feel happier if I know you’re there.”

  “But,” protested Rampson as they flew along the road towards Hereford, “I’ve already told you that I don’t feel I can stay at Rhyllan and eat the bread of Price any longer.”

  “You must just stun your tender conscience as best you can, Sydenham,” said John firmly, “for staying you are. After all, you’re doing the Prices a good turn by staying, whatever your private views may be. Anyhow, I’m not going to have my plans spoilt by any nonsensical squeamishness about eating bread, so if you can’t stay with a clear conscience, you must just stay and suffer pangs.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk about bread and pangs, John,” said Rampson plaintively. “You’ve made me realize it’s past dinner-time and I’m ghastly hungry. Oh, confound these geese! There ought to be a law against letting animals loose on the highways.”

  “There is a law against letting motorists loose on the highways,” replied John gloomily. “Do moderate your hunger, Sydenham. I really can’t afford a broken neck just now.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE INNOCENT LADY

  “Good-bye,” said Blodwen. “When will you be back?”

  She spoke mechanically, as if she did not care when they came back, nor whether they came back at all.

  “Late to-night, if we’re lucky,” replied John, opening the door of the car for Nora and her rugs. “But don’t worry if we’re not back till to-morrow. I’ll take care of Felix.”

  “What about you, Nora?”

  “Oh, Tm not part of the flying squad. John’s just giving me a lift to my sister’s. I’ve got to fetch some canvases I left behind,” explained Nora, tucking the rug carefully around her ankles.

  John, who had a shrewd suspicion that Nora’s wish to go to London was not prompted solely by a desire for canvas, smiled and said:

  “I promised your father I’d leave you at your sister’s, Nora, and leave you out of our search for Mrs. Field. And I’m afraid I’m a man of my word.”

  “All right,” said Nora innocently. “Of course. I know.”

  “Well,” said Blodwen, “I wish you success.”

  She spoke absently and did not smile, and then, as though suddenly herself aware of the omission, gave a hard artificial smile and waved her hand.

  “Good-bye! Good-bye!”

  John hesitated, his hand on the clutch.

  “We’re leaving you Rampson to look after you.”

  A queer dark look came into Blodwen’s fine bright eyes.

  “Thank you.”

  Still John hesitated. He glanced up at the curtained windows of the room where Rampson was still sleeping. He glanced again at Blodwen Price. The clear morning light did not suit her. She looked old and tired standing there on the steps with the early sun on her. One of her red setters sidled up and rubbed his silky head against her knee, but she seemed oblivious of it. Oh, well! Rampson could be trusted to look after himself!

  “Good-bye! Good-bye!”

  The car slid down the drive and into the dewy freshness of the September morning.

  “What’s the matter with Blodwen?” asked Nora in mild surprise, looking back towards the terrace where Miss Price was still standing, quiet as a waxwork, looking over the lawns.

  John shook his head, but Felix, sitting in the dicky, replied in a low voice:

  “The matter? What’s the matter with all of us? What should be the matter in these delightful circumstances?”

  “I’m sorry, Felix. Felix, don’t! What’s the use? But Blodwen does seem to have something extra the matter with her this morning. She was quite herself last night.”

  “Probably,” said Felix coldly, “she hasn’t slept much.” He hesitated, and took the hand Nora held out to him across the back of the seat. “I’m sorry, Nora,” he said in a low voice. “But it’s all very well for you people to say what’s the matter? and what’s the use? For you, it’s just—fun, all this. Isn’t it?”

  There was a pause.

  “Partly,” replied the truthful Nora at length. She seemed about to say more, but altered her mind, withdrew her hand and turned thoughtfully away.

  It was nearly two o’clock when they entered the Brompton Road. John turned to Nora.

  “You turn down opposite the Brompton Oratory,” said Nora placidly. “Will you stay to lunch at Eveline’s? Or can’t you spare the time?”

  Feeling a trifle baffled, John turned down as directed. Was it possible that Miss Watson had no ulterior motive in coming with them to London? She had not, apparently, any desire to accompany Mr. Holmes on his adventures. John was exceedingly relieved, for he had anticipated some difficulty in carrying out his promise to Dr. Browning. Ridiculously enough, he was a little disappointed, too.

  They left Nora at her sister’s pleasant little house in a quiet Kensington street, promising to call there when their mission was completed, and refusing an invitation to stay to lunch.

  “I wonder,” murmured John to himself, as they drove off.

  “What?”

  “Whether Nora’s got anything up her sleeve. She didn’t mention anything to you, I suppose?”

  Felix looked surprised.

  “No. What sort of thing? What do you mean?”

  “I thought at first that fetching canvases was just an excuse to join in the hunt for Clytie Meadows. But I suppose I was wrong.”

  “You promised her father you wouldn’t take her, didn’t you?”

  “I know,” said John pensively. “That’s what makes me wonder, as I said before, whether she has anything up her sleeve. I didn’t hear her make any rash promises to her anxious parent. I’ve kept my promise, but I feel a bit responsible for her. And she’s rather a lively person to be responsible for.”

  “Is she?” murmured Felix absently.

  John was moved to reply:

  “Well, isn’t she? You ought to know. You’ve known her for years, and I’ve only known her a week.” A certain sharpness in his voice caused Felix to turn and look at him in surprise. There was a pause.

  “Yes,” said Felix at length in a subdued voice. “I know she is. I don’t know why I said is she? in that loutish way.” He hesitated. “To tell you the truth, John, since this dreadful thing happened, everybody and everything has become strange and a little out of focus to me. I’ve kind of lost my hold on reality for the time being.”

  “It’s a pity,” said John, turning into the Kensington Road, “to lose your hold on your friends. You’ll want them again some day.”

  “Nora?” said Felix vaguely. “Oh, but Nora and I are great friends, we always have been. Do you mean that Nora’s getting fed up with me?”

  John, noting half with approval, half with a queer disappointment, the genuine note of anxiety in the boy’s voice, judged that he had said enough.

  “I don’t mean anything,” he responded lightly, “except just what I said.”

  They passed the Albert Memorial. The trees in the park were changing colour, and the grass was thick with the brownish early-dropping London leaves. Felix, having recovered from his first surprise, spoke gloomily:“I’m sorry if I’ve been behaving badly to my friends. But in the circumstances, isn’t it a good deal to ask of a man to expect him to think of such th
ings?”

  “Why not ask a good deal of a man?” replied John gently, and there was silence until the shops of narrow crowded Kensington High Street came in view. Then, with a rather chastened air, Felix asked:

  “John, what are we going to do, exactly?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re going to No. 8 Featherstone Terrace. And we’re going to ask if Mrs.—now, that is a bit of a problem!”

  “What is?”

  “I don’t know what her name is when she’s at Featherstone Terrace. She was Miss Meadows before she married, and Mrs. Field at Sheepshanks Cottage, and I suppose she’s really Lady Price. But heaven knows what she is when she’s at home! Never mind. I shall ask for Miss Isabel Donne.”

  There was silence. Glancing round out of the corner of his eye, John saw Felix’s profile pale and thoughtful.

  “I think you’d better come with me, Felix,” he said gently enough. “You know Miss Donne better than I do. Perhaps she’ll tell you more than she will me.” There was another silence. At last Felix said tonelessly:

  “Isabel doesn’t tell anybody much.”

  “So Nora said.”

  “One tells her everything, but she tells one nothing.”

  “Yes. So Nora said.”

  A pause.

  “Last Monday,” said Felix, suddenly and impulsively, “seems a hundred years ago. If you had asked me then to question Isabel as if she were a criminal, I’d have wrung your neck. But now—does it matter? Will anything ever matter again? I’ll go anywhere with you. I’ll do anything you say. Because all the time there’s only one horrible thing in my mind that crowds out everything else. And you seem to be the only person in the world who really believes that it’ll pass. Isabel!” He spoke the name softly and lingeringly, as if trying to wring the utmost music from it. “Isabel! It’s become just a word in my thoughts, a word that ought to mean something, and does not.” He broke off abruptly as if half regretting having said so much, and after a while went on: “What will you do then? Suppose they won’t see you?”

  John laughed.

  “I don’t suppose they will. In fact, I don’t suppose we shall find them there. I expect we shall spend the entire day in trying to discover their whereabouts.”

  “Are you assuming, then, that Mrs. Field had a hand in the murder?”

  “I am assuming what is obvious, that she wished to avoid her identity becoming known.”

  “Are you sure of her identity?”

  “It’s not proved. But personally I am quite sure. But whether my theory as to her being Lady Price is correct or not, we must find out how she got hold of that five-pound note. We have something definite to go on there. And this, I think, is Featherstone Terrace. And there is No. 8.”

  They drew up in front of a terrace of stucco houses that fronted on to a peaceful residential street. It was a pleasant enough looking row of houses, adorned with iron balconies, window-boxes and a variety of classic orders, painted in all shades from pristine white to a dark and peeling grey, with front doors that ranged in colour from the sombre green of the old regime to a lively scarlet.

  Felix looked a trifle surprised as John drew boldly up at No. 8.

  “Isn’t it a pity to give them time to see you coming?” he asked hesitatingly. “They’ll say they’re not at home.”

  John laughed.

  “I’ve left my false beard and blue spectacles behind,” he said cheerfully. “So I’m afraid there’s no disguising either of us. Pull up your coat collar and jam down your hat and walk with a stealthy, cat-like tread up the front door steps, and you’ll attract no attention at all.”

  Felix looked for a moment a trifle hurt, and then decided to smile.

  “What are we going to say, exactly?” he asked rather nervously as they got out of the car.

  “If we see Mrs. Field we’ll ask her straight out where she got that five-pound note. If we see Isabel we’ll ask her to lead us to Mrs. Field. But probably we shan’t see either of them. My only hope is that they haven’t left the country.”

  “Left the country!” echoed Felix distastefully. “Why should they have done? There’s nothing against them except that five-pound note, which may have quite an innocent explanation.”

  “It may,” said John grimly. “And the fact that Isabel told none of you her aunt was staying near Penlow may have an innocent explanation too. So may the fact that they both left for London a day or two after the murder. I should like to hear all these innocent explanations. 8a is the address. That’ll be the upper maisonette, I suppose.”

  They passed into the little lobby and John rang the bell of one of the twin front doors. There was a silence, while they both listened for footsteps on the stairs inside. Suddenly Felix turned restlessly towards John and asked:

  “John, why did you bring me here?”

  “To protect me, of course,” replied John with a faint smile. “It’s better to hunt in couples. There’s always a slight element of risk in this business, you know. Do you mind?”

  “Risk?” repeated Felix, shrugging his shoulders. “Lord, no, I don’t mind that. But—I have wondered—why me, rather than Rampson, this time?”

  “Thought I should like a change of Watson,” said John lightly, and as the boy’s face remained moody and thoughtful, added:“Rampson didn’t want to come, and I thought you’d like to have something to do.” He did not add that he had not cared to leave Rhyllan Hall for a whole day unwatched.

  A very young, very neat servant-maid opened the door with an interrogatory smile.

  “Is Miss Donne at home?” asked John, expecting the girl to disclaim all knowledge of such a person. But to his surprise she replied equably:

  “She’s out, sir. But Mrs. Field is in. Will you come in?”

  They followed her up the narrow stairs on to a light and pretty landing hung with Japanese colour-prints. John, who had fully expected to find that his quarry had run to a new earth, had to make a quick readjustment of his ideas. Was it possible that, after all, Mrs. Field was a perfectly innocent lady? Was it possible that she had no connection at all with Morris Price and Rhyllan Hall, and that he must look elsewhere for the mysterious Clytie Meadows? He had time to murmur into Felix’s ear, “Keep your eyes open, and keep your head whatever happens,” before they were ushered into a small, pleasant drawing-room with long windows giving on to the balcony.

  A lady rose from a pretty chintz-covered chair near the window, and exclaimed in accents of surprise and pleasure:

  “Why, it’s the young man who wanted ginger-beer!”

  John saw the smiling, clever face of the late lessee of Sheepshanks Cottage. So far, so good.

  “My name’s Christmas,” said John, taking the muscular hand she held out to him. “This is my friend, Felix Price.”

  The grey eyes made a quick survey of Felix’s sombre young face.

  “I’ve heard of you from my niece Isabel,” said Mrs. Field amiably. “I’m pleased to meet you. Poor Isabel, it was a shame she had to cut her holiday short! All for nothing, too, because my illness turned out to be just an ordinary tiresome cold! As a matter of fact—do sit down! That’s a comfy chair—I had a dreadfully sore throat the day you called at the cottage, and by the evening I was feeling so bad I quite thought I was in for something serious, and my one idea was to get back to my comfortable home and have Isabel to nurse me. She’s quite a good nurse, Mr. Price, though you mightn’t think it from her heartless way of talking. So I flew home and went to bed and sent for Isabel. But by the time she arrived I was perfectly well. Isabel was very cross with me, and it really was a shame to interrupt her holiday. Though the dreadful death of that poor boy had rather cast a cloud over things, of course.”

  Her rich voice softened and dropped. She leant sympathetically towards Felix.

  “He was a relation of yours, wasn’t he, Mr. Price?”

  “My cousin.”

  “Ah, I’m sorry! Poor boy! You’re going through a dreadful t
ime. We’ve seen reports in the papers. But it’ll come right in the end. Don’t lose heart.”

  Her kindly, maternal voice, her gentle phrases that yet had a certain conventional stamp as though she spoke of a matter that did not closely concern her, might almost have convinced John that he was stirring a mare’s nest. Yet this same agreeable lady who now spoke so naturally of her niece Isabel had confronted that niece without a sign of recognition at Sheepshanks Cottage, less than a week ago. As if she had read his thoughts, Mrs. Field turned to him and said:

  “It was funny that it happened to be my cottage that you came to for ginger-beer. And you must be thinking it very funny that Isabel and I didn’t seem to know one another. The fact is—it sounds rather silly, I know—but I’m not very strong. I suffer from occasional mild but very tiresome heart attacks, and I’m such an idiot that I hate Isabel going far away from me. She’s the only person I’ve got in the world, you see, and—well, it sounds morbid, I know!”—she laughed in an embarrassed way— “but I hate the idea of being taken ill, and perhaps dying, with Isabel hundreds of miles away. Oh, I’ll probably last for years! We chronic invalids always do, you know. But there it is! I’ve got an invalid’s obsession. And I haven’t been very well this summer, the attacks have been getting more frequent, and when Isabel was asked to go and stay with the Brownings, I almost implored her not to go! But it seemed selfish, so I compromised and took a cottage as near as I could get to where Isabel was staying, so that I could feel that she wasn’t out of reach. And we decided not to let the Brownings know, because it would have seemed rather an imposition on them. I mean, they might have felt they had to offer me hospitality. It would have been rather awkward. You had the young Browning boy with you when you came for ginger-beer, and for all I knew you might have been one of the Brownings yourself. That was why Isabel and I met as strangers, as they say in the melodramas.” She laughed pleasantly. “We both felt awful idiots.”

  John expressed polite interest and amusement, and condoled with his hostess on her ill-health. She did not look like a lady subject to heart-attacks, sore throats and obsessions. Her eyes were bright, her smooth, powdered face firm and clear-skinned, and there was a suggestion of strength and vitality in her figure that a younger woman might well have envied.