Crime at Tattenham Corner (5 page)

The pallid face before him went suddenly scarlet, then rapidly white again.

“Oh, I knew that. Sir John told me there had been some sort of dispute. It was about their horses. I thought nothing of it.”

“Naturally you would not,” the inspector said in the characterless voice of his which Harbord knew meant that he was getting dangerous.

“But did Sir John tell you that the quarrel was about the racehorses?”

“Yes, yes; he said it was about their horses. Sir Charles owned Perlyon, you know, and he said he would beat Peep o' Day, and Sir John knew – knew he could not.”

“And that was all?”

Again there was one of those very long pauses.

“Had Sir John and Sir Charles met since, Lady Burslem?”

“I don't know,” Lady Burslem said listlessly. “I don't suppose I should have heard if they had.”

“And yet Sir Charles was an old friend of yours – a neighbour of yours in the country,” Stoddart suggested.

Again there was that momentary flood of crimson.

“I had not seen Sir Charles Stanyard for ages – until a few weeks ago, when we met accidentally at a dance. I danced with him then. I have not spoken to him since.”

“Sir John made no objection to your dancing with him?”

“Certainly not!” There was a touch of hauteur now in the chilly tone. “I am perfectly ready to answer any questions that may help you to find out the cause of Sir John's death, inspector, but really I fail to see –”

“Be assured that I shall ask you no questions that are without some bearing on that subject, Lady Burslem.”

The inspector's voice had a new note of sternness in it now.

“Then I am to understand that the last you saw of Sir John was when he left you ostensibly to take the car to the garage?”

“Absolutely the last!” Sophie Burslem assented, her fingers plucking restlessly at the handkerchief she still held, her brown eyes not looking up now, but mechanically following out the pattern of the carpet.

“And he said nothing to you of any intention to return to Oxley or any visit to Hughlin's Wood?”

“On the contrary, he said he should be only a few minutes away; the garage was only down the mews at the back of the house.”

The inspector nodded. “And you, what did you do?”

“I went straight to bed.” Lady Burslem looked straight at him now. “I was very tired and I wanted to be fresh for the races the next day. I went to sleep at once, and did not wake until my maid brought my tea.”

“Quite natural,” the inspector said. “Just one more point, and then I will not trouble you any more today. Sir John's relatives – I believe he had a brother and a daughter?”

“Both,” Lady Burslem agreed. “The daughter – his, not mine – is abroad travelling in Italy with friends. The brother – you must have heard of him, the explorer – he is hunting about for buried cities or something in Tibet just now. We have cabled to his last known address and wired to Miss Burslem. She is on her way home.”

“And the brother?”

“I am sure he will come when he gets the message,” Lady Burslem said at once. “He is very charming, I know, though really I have seen very little of him. He was at my wedding. That is the only time I have seen him. The relations were rather strained between the two brothers: James married a variety actress, and although he did not get on very well with her himself he never forgave my husband for objecting to the marriage. So that was why we did not see so much of him as we otherwise should.”

“Thank you, Lady Burslem.” The inspector took his elbow off the mantelpiece and straightened himself. “Just one thing more – could you give me the name of Sir John's dentist?”

Sophie bit her lip. “No, really I couldn't. I have never had anything to do with dentists, but Ellerby would know.” She rang the bell as she spoke and ordered the valet to come to them.

He did not keep them waiting.

“Ellerby –” she began at once.

The inspector stopped her.

“If you please, Lady Burslem.”

He put the question to Ellerby.

Ellerby frowned. “I am sure I couldn't; Sir John never went to one here that I heard of. He went to one when he was over in the States, but I don't know where. He told me American dentists could knock spots off the English ones. It is all I know, inspector.”

“Thank you. Then that is all this morning and I hope I may not need to trouble you again,” turning back to Lady Burslem.

“Thank you, inspector!” Lady Burslem did not raise her eyes. Was it possible that he had not seen the terror in them? she asked herself.

Harbord followed his superior out of the house. Outside the crowd had increased. It needed all the efforts of the police to keep it moving. Stoddart gave a few sharp orders to a man in plain clothes; then he and Harbord got into the run-about in silence. When they were clear of the traffic and had got into a quiet street, Stoddart glanced at Harbord.

“What do you think of her ladyship?”

Harbord fenced. “What do you?”

The inspector did not look at him. “A pretty woman, a very pretty woman. For the rest, I shall be able to tell you more about her when I have seen the paper that Sir John signed that last night, and that Mr. Weldon holds.”

“I rang Sir Charles Stanyard up an hour ago, but he is not in town.”

Inspector Stoddart was the speaker. He had been out for some time and had just returned. He was sitting before his desk in his room at Scotland Yard, and as he looked up at Harbord his expression was worried, troubled.

Harbord had also been out since early morning, pursuing a different line of investigation. He carried a small brown parcel, which he laid upon the inspector's desk. Stoddart did not take it up. Instead he sat back in his chair and drummed absently on the open flap of his desk as he looked up at Harbord.

“This case does not get any easier, Alfred.”

“It does not, sir,” his subordinate agreed with emphasis.

“I have just come from the lawyers, Weldon & Furnival of Spencer's Inn,” Stoddart went on almost as if he were talking to himself, his eyes not looking at Harbord now, but staring straight in front of him at a map of Old London pasted on the wall opposite.

Harbord waited.

“Weldon & Furnival were Sir John's lawyers,” Stoddart continued. “Weldon transacted most of the business. I went to get the paper Lady Burslem said Sir John signed when they came home, which he told her to take care of and which she had given to Mr. Weldon. Well, I had some trouble in persuading Mr. Weldon even to let me see it. He utterly declined to let me bring it away.”

“But could he refuse?” Harbord questioned doubtfully.

“Not ultimately, of course. Still, he can put a good many difficulties in our way, as he did. But the point of the whole matter is this” – the inspector paused a moment, and then went on impressively – “that paper was a short will, drawn up apparently in Sir John's own handwriting, leaving everything of which he died possessed to his wife, appointing her sole executor and residuary legatee. His daughter – his only child – is not even mentioned.”

“What an extraordinary thing!” Harbord exclaimed. “Why on earth should he make a new will at that time of night? Did he know he was in some danger?”

Stoddart nodded. “Exactly the questions I have been putting to myself, but I can find no answer to them. More especially as he had already made one will since his marriage with Miss Carlford. This former one was drawn up by Mr. Weldon. It left Lady Burslem and his daughter well provided for, but the bulk of his fortune was to be held in trust for any son that might be born to him. Only in the case of his second marriage, like his first, failing to provide him with an heir, was his property to be divided equally between Lady Burslem and his daughter Pamela and any other daughters he might have. It appears to be, on the face of it, a far more satisfactory arrangement, and the questions one cannot help asking oneself are: “Why did he want to make a hurried fresh will in that last moment? And had he any reason to suppose that it was his last moment?”

“Could it have been a duel?” Harbord said in a puzzled tone.

“Hardly!” The inspector laughed satirically. “The duellist does not throw his dead opponent in a ditch and go off with his car. Besides, who would fight a duel in these days?

“I don't know,” Harbord said in a befogged tone. Then, brightening up, “I beg your pardon, sir. Of course it was an idiotic suggestion. But this case so bristles with impossibilities that goodness knows what we shall come to before we have finished with it.”

“I hope at any rate we shall keep our heads,” the inspector said dryly. “This last will is witnessed by James, the second footman, and Ellerby, Sir John's man.”

“It is a queer affair altogether,” Harbord concluded, “and I'm afraid a little discovery I made down at Hughlin's Wood this morning will not throw any additional light on the matter.”

The inspector pricked up his ears. “Discovery! What was it?”

“Well, I proceeded on the lines you suggested,” Harbord went on, “and I have found a man who saw two cars, both two-seaters, coming from Oxley at a great pace towards Hughlin's Wood. Each of them had two occupants, a man and a woman. But he did not notice numbers or anything else that would help us to identify either of them. At last I began to think he had taken something that had made him see double. Finding I could make nothing more of him, I thought I would take another look at the ditch and its surroundings. On the other side of the ditch from the road, behind one of those old trees, I found this.”

He took up the parcel he had brought in and carefully unwrapping it held up the contents.

The inspector stared. “What's that?”

“One of those wretched little handbags that women carry about and are always leaving behind them,” Harbord explained. “And it has just got the usual rubbish they put in them, lip-stick, powder-puff, and what-not. But one thing that most of them haven't got is this.” He held out a betting slip – on it was scrawled in pencil, “Put me a fiver on Peep o' Day, fiver each way on Perlyon.” “She wouldn't want to make bets after the race was run, would she? Particularly as Peep o' Day was scratched.”

The inspector did not look impressed. “No, but that might have been written out beforehand and forgotten.”

“Of course it might,” Harbord agreed with a crest-fallen air. “But nobody has had the chance to lay the bag where it was found since the murder. And the boys from the Beacon School had been playing rounders among the trees on that very afternoon of June 2nd. A couple of masters were with them, and both masters and boys agreed there was no bag there then. They say they could not have helped seeing it if there had been, as that particular tree was one of their goals.”

The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Umph! Pretty strong evidence that some woman was there on the evening or night of June 2nd. But it does not take us any further.”

“No, perhaps not. But what do you make of this?”

Harbord dived into the bag again and brought out another bit of paper.

On it was scrawled in what looked like the same writing as that on the other: “Will probably leave Oxley a little after twelve. Should reach the Wood in ten minutes.”

Stoddart knit his brows. “As I said before, it seems strong evidence that some person was lurking there on the night of the tragedy. But I suppose you don't suggest that the owner of this thing” – giving the bag a contemptuous flick – “waited there under the trees and took a pot-shot at Sir John Burslem as he passed in his car, then pulled him out and flung him into a ditch. Besides, you are forgetting when Sir John left Oxley soon after twelve he had his wife with him. He drove her home, drew up and signed his will after that. It was not until he went out again for some inexplicable reason and drove to Hughlin's Wood a second time that he met his death. But the owner of this bag must be traced. It is quite possible that she witnessed the murder, or at any rate knows something of the events that led up to it. The question is, How is this woman to be found? She must have heard of Sir John Burslem's death – the papers are full of nothing else – and she hasn't come forward. The inference is that she has some reason for her silence, and one can scarcely conceive that it is an innocent one.”

“Hardly,” Harbord assented. He waited silently while Stoddart stood up, took a pipe from the mantelpiece, filled it deliberately and then sat down while he lighted a match.

“There's no doubt a pipe does clear one's brain in a way that this rubbish you younger ones smoke doesn't touch,” he said, throwing a cigarette-case over to Harbord. “Help yourself. They are Imperial Regent, quite a new brand, and not bad. So far as I can see, a journey to Oxley is the first thing indicated and a few inquiries as to any strangers who were seen in the neighbourhood that day, or who had made inquiries about Sir John Burslem or his projected visit. Somebody must have given the information away.”

“Precisely. But –”

A tap at the door interrupted Harbord before he could finish his sentence. A man in undress uniform opened the door. “A young lady is asking to see the officials in charge of the Burslem case, sir.”

“A young lady?” the inspector demanded sharply. “What young lady? What name did she give?”

“I asked her, sir. But she said you did not know her.”

“Ask her again.”

The man saluted and departed. Stoddart looked across at Harbord.

“Is this your mysterious lady of the Wood and the handbag?”

As he spoke the door opened. “Miss Burslem, sir – Miss Pamela Burslem.”

“Sir John's daughter! Show her in at once,” the inspector ordered. He drew in his lips as he looked across at Harbord.

Miss Burslem was ushered in in a moment – a tall, slim girl, in a short skirt and with the shingled hair of the period. She looked essentially modern. She glanced at Stoddart, who had risen and put his pipe down, and from him to Harbord.