Detection Unlimited Page 9

  ‘What about the Will?’ objected Harbottle.

  ‘That was in Warrenby’s safe at his office. This London lawyer is one of the executors, according to what his clerk told the Colonel, and Miss Warrenby’s the other. Which made it all plain sailing. It was opened in her presence, and I can go through any papers there may be, in her presence, too. And when we get through at Fox House, we’ll call on Mr Drybeck. We don’t want to start a scandal in his office, by going to interview him there tomorrow.’

  This programme was carried out. At the appointed hour Sergeant Carsethorn arrived with a police-car, and twenty minutes later the Chief Inspector was enjoying his first view of the village of Thornden. A game of cricket was being played on the common, where a level piece of the ground beside the Trindale road had been turned into a playing-field; but the village itself was wrapped in a Sunday stillness. The Sergeant drove up to the cross-road, to enable Hemingway to see where Wood Lane turned out of the High Street, and then turned, and drove back to Fox Lane.

  Before entering the garden of Fox House, the three men, leaving the car, climbed the rising ground of the common to where the flaming gorse bushes stood. From this point of vantage quite an extensive view could be obtained over the common, which stretched away eastward in the general direction of Bellingham. It was dotted over with similar clumps of gorse, and a great many blackberry bushes, with here and there one or two trees, mostly silver birches. Away to the north, close to the Hawkshead road, some fencing railed off a gravel-pit which, the Sergeant told Hemingway, had recently been opened up by the Squire. He explained that the common was not Crown land, but manorial waste. ‘All the land here used to belong to the Ainstables, except what the Plenmellers had, west of the village, but you know how things have been for people like them, ever since the First War. They say young Plenmeller doesn’t care, and from what I’ve seen of him I shouldn’t think he cares about anything much; but the Squire’s a very different sort of man. Quite one of the old school, as you may say. He’ll carry on while he lives, but it’s likely to be a bad look-out when he dies, because it’s not to be expected that the next man will work like he does to keep things going. Lost his son in the last war, you know. I’m told the place’ll go to a nephew or a cousin, or something, who never comes near it. Well, he couldn’t, really: he lives in Johannesburg. Not at all the sort of Squire Thornden’s accustomed to. I reckon you’ve got to hand it to Mr Ainstable. It fairly knocked him out, the young chap’s being killed, but he’s carried on, stiff-backed as you please, doing everything he can, like starting up that gravel-pit, to keep up the estate. Over there’s his new plantations: he’s had to sell a lot of timber.’

  Hemingway nodded. ‘Not many left now like him,’ he remarked, turning to survey the garden of Fox House. ‘Well, it would have been an easy shot,’ he said, his eyes on the seat under the tree. They travelled on, up the lane, to the stile at the top of it.

  ‘You see, if you was to crouch down you couldn’t be seen from the stile,’ the Sergeant pointed out.

  ‘No. Seems to be woodland beyond it.’

  ‘That’s right: Mr Haswell’s spinney. The footpath skirts it. It used to be all woodland from the common up to the Vicarage meadow – you can’t see that from here, but it’s behind the grounds of Fox House. Of course, that’s a long time ago now, but they say those fine old trees you can see were once part of it. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  The Chief Inspector was certainly thinking, but if the subject of his thought was an ancient forest he did not say so. After looking about him in silence for a few moments, he said briskly: ‘Well, let’s get on!’ and led the way down into the lane again. The arched and massively built front-door of Fox House stood open, in the country-way, allowing a view of the hall, and of the carved staircase at the end of it. The floor was of black oak, and had two Persian rugs thrown down on it. An old chest stood under the window opposite the front-door; there was a warped gateleg-table in the centre, and several highbacked Jacobean chairs were ranged against the walls. One or two sporting prints completed an interior that seemed in some indefinable way to represent a period piece rather than the owner’s individuality.

  ‘Mr Warrenby furnished the place regardless, when he bought it,’ confided the Sergeant. ‘He had a man down from London to advise him, even.’

  There was an iron bell hanging beside the front-door, and this the Sergeant tugged. The effect was instant and unexpected. Furious yapping arose, and through the half-open doorway on the left of the hall skidded two tawny and determined defenders. One of these made threatening darts at the intruders; the other, a more elderly gentleman, contented himself with standing squarely before them, and uttering slightly wheezy barks.

  ‘Now, now, Peekaboos!’ called a fondly chiding voice. ‘Naughty! Come back to Mother at once!’

  ‘Mrs Midgeholme!’ whispered the Sergeant.

  The look he cast at Hemingway was pregnant with meaning, but he had no time to explain the reason for his patent horror: Mrs Midgeholme, overpowering in lilac foulard, came out of the drawing-room, and explained: ‘Oh! It’s the police! Well, really! On a Sunday!’

  ‘Good afternoon, madam. This is Chief Inspector Hemingway, from Scotland Yard. And Inspector Harbottle. They wish to see Miss Warrenby, if convenient, please.’

  ‘Scotland Yard!’ ejaculated Mrs Midgeholme, apparently regarding this institution in the light of a Gestapo headquarters. ‘That poor child!’

  ‘That’s all right, madam,’ said Hemingway soothingly. ‘Properly speaking, I only want to have a look through her uncle’s papers. There are one or two questions I’d like to ask her, but don’t you worry! I shan’t go upsetting her.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Midgeholme, with an air of noble resolution, ‘if you must see her, I shall insist on being present! She is alone in the world, and she has had a terrible shock. I refuse to abandon her!’

  ‘And I’m sure it does you credit,’ said Hemingway affably. ‘I’ve got no objection.’ He bent to stroke the elderly Peke, who was sniffing his shoe. ‘Well, you’re a very handsome fellow, aren’t you?’

  The Peke, his eyes starting angrily, growled at him. However, Hemingway was scratching the exact spot on his back which afforded him the most gratification, so he stopped growling, and faintly waved his plumed tail. This circumstance struck Mrs Midgeholme forcibly. She exclaimed: ‘He’s taken a fancy to you! Ulysses! He hardly ever allows strangers to touch him! Do you like that kind of policeman, then, my precious? Oh, Untidy! You mustn’t let her bother you!’

  By this time, the younger Peke, encouraged by the example set her by her grandfather, was effusively making the Chief Inspector welcome. Sergeant Carsethorn heaved an exasperated sigh, but no one could have supposed from Hemingway’s demeanour that he had come to Thornden with any other purpose in mind than to admire Mrs Midgeholme’s Pekes. Within a few minutes he and Mrs Midgeholme were fast friends; and he could have answered an examination-paper on Ulysses’ superlatively good points, the number of prizes he had won, and the number of prize-winners he had sired. It was on a wave of good-will that he was finally ushered into the drawing-room. Here, seated in a wing-chair, with her hands folded in her lap, was Mavis Warrenby. Not being one of those who considered no wardrobe complete that did not contain at least one Good Black Frock, she had been unable to array herself in mourning, but had compromised by putting on a very unbecoming dress of slate grey. She got up, as the party entered, and said, casting a somewhat spaniel-like glance at Mrs Midgeholme: ‘Oh, what – ?’

  ‘Now, there’s nothing to be nervous about, my dear!’ said that lady bracingly. ‘These are two detectives from Scotland Yard, but you’ve no need to be alarmed! They’re very nice, and I shall remain with you all the time!’

  ‘Oh, thank you! I’m sorry to be so silly,’ Mavis said, with a fleeting look at Hemingway. ‘I think it must all have been a little too much for me. Of course, I know I must be prepared to answer questions, and I shall do my best to help you in
any way I can. I know it’s my duty to, however painful it may be.’

  She then proceeded, with very little encouragement, to relate the whole story of her activities on the previous afternoon, not omitting a description of her qualms at leaving the late Mr Warrenby alone in the house, and what she had said to Mrs Haswell on perceiving how late it was. Not unnaturally, since she had by now told her story a good many times, it had grown a little in its details, and she had talked herself into almost believing that she had had a premonition of evil when she had left the house. But in two essentials the tale was identical with the version Sergeant Carsethorn had already heard: she knew of no one who could have had any reason to kill her uncle; and she had seen no one at the time when she had been startled by the shot.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said simply, ‘I can’t help feeling glad I didn’t see anyone? It would be such a terrible thing to know! I mean, it can’t bring Uncle back, and I’d much, much rather not know!’

  ‘We know just how you feel, dear,’ Mrs Midgeholme assured her. ‘But you wouldn’t want your uncle’s murderer to go unpunished! Besides, we can’t have a killer allowed to wander about our dear little village. We should none of us be able to sleep in our beds. I don’t believe in trying to conceal things. I was just talking it over with Miss Warrenby when you arrived, Inspector, trying to think who might have done it.’

  ‘I don’t think one ought to,’ said Mavis, in a troubled tone.

  ‘Well, if you’ll pardon me,’ said Hemingway, ‘that’s where you’re wrong! If you do know of anyone who might have done it, it’s your plain duty to talk about it to me!’

  ‘Oh, but I don’t! I can’t imagine!’

  ‘Really, Mavis, that’s going too far!’ protested Mrs Midgeholme. ‘It’s all very well to be loyal to your uncle’s memory – not that you’ve any reason to be! – but when you tell the Inspector that your uncle had no enemies – well, it just isn’t true, dear, because you know very well that he had! I don’t say it was his fault – though of course it was – but facts are facts! Heaven knows I’m not one to gossip about my neighbours, but I should very much like to know what Kenelm Lindale was doing after he left that party. I’ve always said there was something fishy about the Lindales. The way they live, never going anywhere, or taking a real part in Thornden society. It’s all very well for Mrs Lindale to say she can’t leave the baby, but I think she’s just stand-offish. Why, when they first came to Rushyford Farm I went to call immediately, and did my best to be a friend to her, but she was quite unresponsive: in fact, she made it very clear that she’d rather I didn’t drop in at the Farm without being invited.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s always been very nice to me,’ said Mavis repressively.

  ‘Oh, I’m not saying she isn’t perfectly polite, but do you get anywhere with her?’ demanded Mrs Midgeholme. ‘When I asked her about her people, and where she came from, and how long she’d been married, she was evasive. There’s no other word for it: evasive! I wondered at the time if she had anything to hide. Well, it isn’t natural for a girl – for that’s what she is to me! – not to talk about her people! And I’ll tell you another thing,’ she added, rounding on Hemingway, ‘they never have anybody to stay! You’d think her mother and father would visit her, or his mother and father, or a sister, or something, wouldn’t you? Well, they don’t! Not once!’

  ‘Perhaps they’re dead,’ suggested Hemingway.

  ‘They couldn’t all be dead!’ said Mrs Midgeholme. ‘Everybody has some relations!’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Midgeholme, please don’t talk like that!’ begged Mavis. ‘Now poor Uncle has passed over I haven’t any relations either. Not ones I know!’

  ‘But you’re not married, dear,’ said Mrs Midgeholme, somewhat obscurely, but with an air of one who had clinched the matter.

  At this point, the Chief Inspector intervened. He said that he would like to go through the late Mr Warrenby’s papers, and in Miss Warrenby’s presence.

  ‘Must I?’ Mavis asked, shrinking from the prospect. ‘I’m sure Uncle wouldn’t have liked me to pry into his desk!’

  ‘Well, it’s not to be supposed he’d have liked any of us to do so,’ said Hemingway practically. ‘However, that can’t be helped, and as I understand you’re an executor to his Will, I think you’d better come and keep an eye on me.’

  A biddable girl, she rose to her feet, saying as she did so:

  ‘I couldn’t believe it, when Colonel Scales told me that! I never had the least idea Uncle meant to appoint me. I’m afraid I don’t know what executors do, but I’m so touched it makes me want to cry!’

  She then led the way across the hall to the large, sunny room on the other side of it, which Mr Warrenby had appropriated as his study. She paused on the threshold, and smiled wanly upon Hemingway. ‘I expect you’ll think me very foolish, but I hate going into this room! Of course, I know he wasn’t – I know it didn’t happen there, but still – I can’t help looking for him when I go in. And I want to get rid of that seat in the garden at once. That is, if the police don’t mind? I know nothing must be touched until you say so.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind: very natural you should want to get rid of it,’ said Hemingway, stepping into the study, and looking round.

  ‘Every time I see it it reminds me!’ said Mavis, shuddering. ‘My uncle very rarely sat out of doors. It was really my favourite seat, which seems to make it worse somehow. Doesn’t it seem dreadful to think that if it hadn’t been so terribly hot I don’t suppose he ever would have taken his work out into the garden, and then none of this would have happened?’

  The Chief Inspector, who was growing tired of these gentle inanities, agreed to this, and nodded to the constable who had been sitting in the room, reading a newspaper.

  ‘I thought it best to leave a man on duty till you came, sir,’ explained Sergeant Carsethorn. ‘We couldn’t very well seal the room, on account of the telephone. It’s the only one in the house.’

  A slight twinkle was in the Chief Inspector’s eye as his gaze alighted on the instrument, which stood on Sampson Warrenby’s desk. It appeared to him that Miss Warrenby must have been obliged to enter the study a good many times since the murder of her uncle. As though she read his thought, Mavis said: ‘I’ve come to dread the sound of the telephone-bell.’

  The room, which had obviously been swept and dusted, was very neat, the papers on the top of the desk, on which Sampson Warrenby had been working, having been collected into one pile, and tied up with red tape, and all the drawers in the desk sealed. The Sergeant explained that the papers had been scattered over the top of the desk, the fountain-pen, now lying tidily amongst several pencils in a little lacquer tray, uncovered beside them.

  Hemingway nodded, and sat down in the chair behind the desk, an action from which Mavis averted her eyes. ‘Well, now, Miss Warrenby, I take it I have your permission to see if there’s anything here that might have a bearing on the case?’ he said, cutting the tape round the papers.

  ‘Oh, yes! Though I’m sure there can’t be anything. I should so like to feel that the whole thing was an accident, and the more I think about it the more I believe it was. People are always shooting rabbits here – in fact, I know my uncle several times complained to Mr Ainstable about it, and said he oughtn’t to allow it on the common. Poachers, too. Don’t you think it might have been an accident?’

  Hemingway, disinclined to enter into argument, said that it was too early for him to give an opinion. He ran quickly through the sheaf of documents, which concerned the efforts of a landlord to dislodge a tenant, and stretched over several months. Hemingway recalled that the letters which had been found, clipped together, at Sampson Warrenby’s feet, had been written by this tenant, presumably before Sampson Warrenby had been called into the dispute, since the papers attached to them were copies of the landlord’s own, acidly worded replies. It was the old story of a tenant protected by the Rent Restriction Acts, and the correspondence was increasingly acrimonious. But since
Sampson Warrenby had merely acted in it in the rôle of legal representative to the landlord it was difficult to perceive what bearing it could have upon his murder. Hemingway laid the papers aside, and began to go through the contents of the drawers in the desk. One of these contained only such oddments as paper-clips, sealing-wax, spare nibs, and pencils, two others held virgin stationery; and another a collection of different sized envelopes. Two other drawers were devoted to bills and receipts; below these, a third held nothing but account-books and used cheques; and the fourth, on that side, contained bank-sheets. Such private correspondence as Sampson Warrenby had preserved was found thrust into the long central drawer at the top of the desk. Unlike the other drawers, it was in considerable disorder. Before touching its contents Hemingway considered it with a look of bird-like interest. ‘Would you say your uncle was a tidy man, Miss Warrenby?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Uncle hated things to be left about.’

  ‘Is this how you’d expect to find a drawer in his desk?’

  She blinked at it. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I never went to his desk. I shouldn’t have dreamed of opening any of his drawers.’

  ‘I see. Well, if you’ve no objection, I’ll pack this lot up, and go through it at my leisure. Then you won’t have to have the house cluttered up with policemen any longer. Everything will be returned to you in due course.’ He got up. ‘See to it, will you, Harbottle? Now, Miss Warrenby, are there any other papers? No safe in the house?’

  ‘Oh, no! Uncle kept all his important papers at the office, I think.’

  ‘Then I won’t be taking up any more of your time,’ he said. She escorted him into the hall, where they were immediately joined by Mrs Midgeholme and the Ultimas. Delicacy had prevented Mrs Midgeholme from accompanying them to the study, but she was plainly agog with curiosity, and would have done her best to ferret out of the Chief Inspector the discovery of a possible clue had not Miss Patterdale at that moment walked in at the open front-door. As she was accompanied by her lumbering canine friend, a scene of great confusion followed her entrance, Mrs Midgeholme uttering dismayed cries, and both the Ultimas bouncing at the labrador, Ulysses in a very disagreeable way, and Untidy in a spirit of shameless coquetry. Rex, though goodnatured, took very little interest in the Ultimas, but Mrs Midgeholme was obsessed by the fear that he would one day lose patience with their importunities and maul them hideously. By the time she had succeeded in catching her pets, and scooping them up into her arms, assuring them, quite unnecessarily, that there was nothing for them to be afraid of, Mavis had explained to Miss Patterdale that the stranger was a detective from Scotland Yard; and Miss Patterdale, screwing her glass still more firmly into her eye, had looked him over and said that she was sorry to hear it.