Dead Man's Quarry (19 page)

“At the moment he is away. But if you care to call to-morrow morning ”

“Let me see your Mr. Eade.”

The young man assumed the slightly hurt and sorrowful expression suitable to the occasion.

“Our Mr. Eade, sir, is not an active partner. He is, in fact—ah! dead.”

“Then,” said John firmly, “I'm afraid you'll have to take the responsibility of giving me that address. I must have it. Come now, do I look perfectly respectable or do I not? I'll stand with my face to the light, so that you can have a good look at me.”

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes!” murmured the clerk in an agony of deprecation. “It isn't that at all, sir. But ”

“But a rule is a rule, eh? I know. I make it a rule always to have my own way. Come on! It's somewhere in Kensington, isn't it?”

With a subdued sigh, the young man turned over the leaves of a large book.

“8a Featherstone Terrace, W.8,” he uttered hopelessly, as one whose soul is lost. “Mrs. Margaret Field, 8a Featherstone Terrace, W.8.” He gently closed the tome and looked sadly at his persecutor. “Shall I write it down?” he asked, completing his damnation.

“Please. Thank you. Well, good afternoon! When I want to buy an estate in Herefordshire I'll certainly come to you.”

The young man smoothed his shining locks, smiled a pensive, sceptical smile and opened the door.

“Ornamental creature, wasn't he?” said John, as he and Nora turned down the narrow pavement. “But too docile to rise high in his profession. He'll never be the Emperor of Estate-Agents. Hullo! What is it, Miss Browning? Aren't you glad we've got one step nearer to the elusive Mrs. Field?”

“I don't know,” said Nora in a subdued manner. She had gone rather pale, and as they approached a crossing was about to step in front of a large motor-lorry when John grabbed her by the arm. Her eyes had a vague, stern look.

“I'm sorry,” she murmured. “I didn't notice it.”

They crossed, arm in arm.

“I say!” murmured John, stopping a little way up the quiet side-street to look at her pale face. “Is it the heat?”

He had a sister who was, to put it euphemistically, not a good traveller, and he recognized that pensive, remote and other-worldly look as a familiar presage of disaster.

“No,” said Nora with a pale smile. “It's all right. I'm not going to be sick. I'm just—rather surprised.”

“Whatever at?”

Nora looked up at him solemnly.

“That address.”

“Mrs. Field's?”

“Isabel's. I don't think I like being a detective.”

“I suppose,” said John, making a neat parcel of three banana-skins and several paper bags and handing it to Nora to put in the basket, “that Mrs. Margaret Field, Clytie Meadows and Isabel's aunt are one and the same person. Let's see where it leads us.”

It was the morning of the day following the visit to Hereford, and John, feeling a need to discuss his discoveries with Rampson far from the dangers of doors, walls and windows, had suggested a trip to Radnor Forest. True to her compact, Blodwen did not offer to come; but she would have come, John knew, had he asked her. He did not do so. He felt a strong desire to get away from the Prices and the Price point of view for a time. Their close connection with the murder introduced an emotional note that was fatal to impartial discussion. Besides, to the impersonal investigator that a detective should study to be, Blodwen herself was a possible suspect. She had been out in her car on the afternoon of the murder; and there was no witness to confirm her statement that she had celebrated her return to her native land by joyously touring the roads from one beloved landmark to another. Yes, on the whole it was better not to admit the Prices to these conclaves. Blodwen was a possible suspect, and Felix, though he had stiffened to a more cheerful frame of mind since his interview with the bank manager, was a youth of that uncertain and impulsive temperament that can never quite be trusted to be discreet.

They had made their expedition to the Forest in John's two-seater, calling for Nora on the way. And now, having eaten the bananas and buns they had bought for lunch at a village shop, they were sitting among the bracken on a high slope within sound of Water-Break-Its-Neck, in profound peace and loneliness, surrounded by great trees where pigeons cooed and ghostly owls slept on the branches.

“I had a letter from Isabel to-day,” murmured Nora pensively. “Just a duty letter, you know, written as soon as she got home. She says her aunt isn't seriously ill, after all. She writes from the same address. Mr. Christmas—” She hesitated, puckering her fair brows.

“Isn't it possible that they both have flats in the same house? Isabel and her aunt live in a flat, I know. I can't believe—”

“What?” asked John gently. “That Isabel is Mrs. Field's niece?”

“That Isabel could be so—so secretive. And yet, oh dear! I
can
believe it! I suppose it's just because I can believe it so easily that I feel ashamed to!” She half smiled, half sighed. “Isabel was always a little strange. She told one nothing, though she talked so much. She knows everything about me. But now I come to think of it, what do I know about her? Nothing!”

“How long have you known Isabel?” asked John musingly.

“Since the middle of June. She came to the art-school then.”

“What art-school do you go to?”

“The South Kensington. She came in the middle of the term. She'd just come to England with her aunt, she said. She'd been living for two years in—” Nora caught her breath, suddenly realizing as she spoke that there might be great significance in what she said. “Canada,” she finished in a low voice.

“Ah!” said John. “She'd been living for two years in Canada. Canada is a large place, of course. Did she say where in Canada?”

“No. She'd been living there with her aunt, and they had both come over to England to live. She said she had no father or mother.”

Nora paused, frowning and pulling a bracken frond to pieces.

“Really, that's all I know. She was very popular at school, because she's so amusing, and we made friends. But she never talked much about herself.”

“She made friends with you, and she made friends with Felix. Was she more friendly with you two than with any of the others?”

“Yes. With me, at first. And then, of course, as I know Felix awfully well, she was friends with Felix too. We used to go about together a lot. Museums and theatres and things. I live with my sister in Kensington during term-time. And Isabel used to come and see me a lot. So did Felix.”

“Did she ever ask you to visit her and her aunt?”

“No. I never saw her aunt, nor heard her name. I took it for granted her aunt's name was Donne.”

“Now, Nora, what made you ask Isabel to come and stay with you?”

Nora looked a little surprised.

“Well, we thought it would be fun. What generally makes one invite people to stay with one?”

“She didn't—invite herself?”

“No. At least—”

“Ah!”

“No, but she
didn't
invite herself, John! Only, one evening when Felix and I first got the idea of bicycling home with Lion, and were talking it over, she said that she loved cycling. And soon afterwards it came out that she had no plans for the holidays. So of course I said: ‘Come with us.'”

“And she said?”

“She didn't know whether her aunt could spare her at first. But next time I saw her she said she would love to come for ten days. But there's nothing in that! I mean, you can't call that inviting herself!”

“No, perhaps not. Let's call it gentle encouragement of a potential hostess.”

John rolled over and lay chin on hands looking across the deep, narrow gorge of Water-Break-Its-Neck to the great mossy boulders and forests of tall bracken on the other side.

“Now, what do we know about Mrs. Field? One: she lives at the same address in London as Isabel Donne. Two: she was anxious to rent a cottage near Penlow during the time that Isabel was staying with the Brownings. Three: she left in a hurry on the day of the inquest, alleging that her niece was ill in London. Four: she paid her rent with a five-pound note which had been in Charles's possession four days earlier. Yes, Nora, Felix got the numbers from the bank manager in Penlow. And the number on our note is one of them.”

“But good heavens, nobody but a half-wit would abstract five-pound notes from the pockets of a person they'd just murdered!”

“Softly, my dear Miss Watson! We're not accusing anybody of the murder yet. We're just reciting the facts. Now for Clytie Meadows. Blodwen was quite successful in pumping old Penrose about her. One: she was the daughter of a successful hotel-keeper in Bristol. Two: she married Morris Price in 1905, and lived with him in Bristol. Three: she left Morris Price in 1908. There was no divorce. Mr. Penrose did his best at the time to persuade Morris to apply for a divorce, but he refused, on the grounds that he did not believe in divorce and would never think of marrying again. Four: her description, allowing for the passage of twenty years, would be a good description of Mrs. Field. And now we come to a third person, the mysterious lady who called at Rhyllan Hall on August twenty-fifth, two days before the murder, and left a note for Morris Price. We have only a slight and vague description of her, but such as it is, it would do both for Mrs. Field and for Clytie Meadows, or Clytie Price, as her name must be. And the fact that she came to Rhyllan Hall on a bicycle suggests that she did not come from far. From Sheepshanks Cottage to Rhyllan Hall is about twelve miles, quite a nice cycling expedition. Altogether, I am inclined to think that Clytie Meadows, Mrs. Field, Isabel's aunt and the mysterious visitor are one and the same lady. Can either of you think of a sound objection to this theory?”

Nora nibbled thoughtfully at a grass stalk, and Rampson lit his pipe.

“I can't,” he replied. “All I can say is, that the lady who gave us lemonade didn't look to me at all like a person out of a crook play.”

“What did she look like?” asked Nora thoughtfully.

Rampson took several puffs at his pipe and considered the question carefully.

“A bazaar-opener,” he answered finally, with quiet conviction.

“Perhaps she's that too,” said John cheerfully. “Bazaar-opening isn't a full-time career.”

“My dear John, people with four aliases don't open bazaars.”

“Nobody suggests that she's got four aliases. She's Clytie Meadows, Mrs. Field, Isabel's aunt and a visitor to Rhyllan. Surely one can be an aunt and a visitor without leading a double life. By the way, Nora, didn't Isabel ever mention her aunt's Christian name?”

“Puffy.”

“Eh?”

“Isabel always spoke of her as Puffy.”

“Giving people nicknames,” remarked John sadly, “is a detestable practice which ought, in the interests of the detective profession, to be abolished by law. We'll ask Mr. Penrose if he used to call Clytie Meadows Puffy.”

“He didn't,” said Nora with conviction. “He called her my dear young lady, like he does me and Blodwen.” She added:“But I think you're probably right. And I can see that if you are right the whole thing hangs together, and there's a motive for the murder. It's the details that seem so crude and unlikely. If Clytie Meadows wanted to murder Charles, have a reconciliation with Morris and come and live at Rhyllan Hall, would she have done the murder quite so near home? Would she have taken a cottage next door to the murder, so to speak? And that five-pound note! I can't get over that!”

“Again, Miss Watson, you go too fast. Whether she did the murder or not will appear later, we hope. Meanwhile the facts are that a lady who may or may not be Clytie Meadows
did
rent Sheepshanks Cottage, and that one of Charles's notes
was
in her possession after the murder. Our business is to follow up those two facts. They may lead us to the murderer, or they may lead us up against a blank wall. It's wasting time to try to guess which. I think we may take it as certain that the lady who rented Sheepshanks Cottage is Isabel's aunt, and we ought to be able to get at her through Isabel and find out if she is also Clytie Meadows.”

“I don't quite see how,” said Nora pensively. “Of course I could write and ask Isabel. But she wouldn't answer.”

“No, no. We'll have to be more subtle than that. But let's leave Mrs. Clytie alone now, and turn our attention to the other possible murderers.”

“Are there any?” asked Rampson with an appearance of surprise.

“Great Scot, yes! Now what are the two essential qualifications of the murderer, whoever he may have been?”

“One,” said Nora, “is that he hasn't got an alibi for round about seven o'clock on August the twenty-seventh.”

“Yes. That's the most important point, of course. And the second? That he must have had access to Morris's revolver between August the eleventh, when Mrs. Maur saw it in the drawer in the library, and August the twenty-seventh, when the murder was committed.”

“He must have had a motive, too,” observed Nora, “unless he was a lunatic. And as he took the trouble to use another man's revolver, I suppose we can leave stray lunatics out of it.”

“We'll certainly leave them out,” said John decidedly. “Murders by wandering homicidal maniacs are rare enough to be ignored. As for the question of motive, I think we'll leave it out too, until we've got our list of people who fulfil the other requirements. Motives are sometimes obvious and sometimes not, and we don't know enough about Charles to be able to guess at the motive of his murderer. After all, until a few weeks ago he was living in Canada. We don't know what enemies he may have made there. Well. Let's try and clarify our ideas. Possible Murderers.”