The Bungalow Mystery (11 page)

After a couple of days spent in restless self-questioning, of nights in which he lay tossing from side, in which pictures of the girl who had acted at Freshfield in the prisoner's dock had alternated in his mind with visions of Elizabeth Luxmore's great brown eyes filled with tears, of the sweet arched lips quivering, he had resolved to come over to Sutton Boldon himself, and ascertain, if possible, how the matter stood, and from what quarter danger was to be apprehended. So he turned into the inn. The landlord came forward to greet him, his rubicund face beaming with smiles.

“Why, Dr. Lavington, sir, this is a treat. We were talking of you the other day, me and Sam Doulton, and Sam Doulton he said he wished you was back. ‘Nobody never did my rheumatics the good that Dr. Lavington did,' he said.”

Roger shook his hand heartily.

“It is pleasant to have a welcome to the old place, Mr. Rose. And now, can you give me a glass of ale and a slice of bread and cheese or some cold meat?”

The landlord rubbed his hands.

“Eh doctor, I think we can do better for you than that. The missus has got a fine sirloin; we don't hold with cold meat on Mondays, we don't.”

“I'm in luck's way then,” Roger said genially, as he followed to the little bar-parlour.

While the table was being laid, the landlord stood with his back to the empty fire-place, glad to have a chat with a new-comer.

“You are staying with Sir James Courtenay, aren't you, sir?” he inquired conversationally. “Him as had both his legs took off in that accident at Northchester? I remember hearing about it at the time, and you saying he was a friend of yours. Terrible thing it was too! Ah, that was a time; if you remember, it was just after the murder at the Bungalow! You will have heard, maybe, that they are opening that up again?”

Roger poured out a glass of ale, and motioned the landlord to help himself.

“I think I did see something about it in the paper, but it is rather late to do much now, I should think. What have they found? Do you know?”

“Thank you, sir; your health, sir!” Mr. Rose ducked his head towards Roger as he lifted the glass to his lips. “As to what they have found,” he went on as he set it down, “it goes more to show they were wrong in the past than it puts them on the right track now, I'm thinking. You remember it was supposed as the girl that did it was killed at Northchester in that very accident we were speaking of just now?”

“Well?” Roger took out his cigar-case. “Help yourself, Mr. Rose. Yes, I remember. Poor thing, she was a terrible sight!”

“Was she really, sir?” striking a match. “Well, as I was saying, while she was supposed to be killed there, it pretty well put an end to the case. But it turns out now that she had nothing to do having with it.”

“Nothing to do with it, you say? How have they made that out?”

“Well, it seems that this girl was some connection of Mr. von Rheinhart's, and that accounts for her having found his card in her pocket, which the police thought so much of at the time. They began to make inquiries, and they have identified the clothes and everything this poor thing was wearing.”

“But how do they know that this girl was not Rheinhart's visitor? If she were related to him—”

The landlord scratched his head.

“I can't answer for the rights of it, doctor, but I hear that she was at a farewell party somewhere that night, and that there were lots of folks as could swear she was there all the evening, and naturally couldn't ha' been at The Bungalow shooting Mr. von Rheinhart.”

“Naturally she couldn't, if that were so,” Roger assented. “But I thought that Heron identified her dress?”

“I understand he said it looked the same. But there—what does Heron know about dress?” the landlord said with a jolly laugh. “He said her hair was the same colour too; but there—there are plenty of yellow-haired lassies about. I have always said, if she made straight off to the woods she would ha' been there before the police began to search. I'm real glad the poor thing got off. From what I can make out, Mr. von Rheinhart was a brute. I'm not one as cares to see a woman hung.”

A momentary vision rose before Roger's eyes—a mass of golden hair, the brown eyes, so like Elizabeth Luxmore's.

His stiff lips moved.

“No; I don't believe in it either.”

Roger took his place at the table; but though the meal was all that had been promised, he could hardly bring himself to eat.

The police-station at Sutton Boldon was a long, low building; the end nearest the station was set apart for the incarceration of prisoners, and was easily distinguishable by its heavy, iron-studded doors; the other side, that towards the village, was the residence of the inspector. A gay little garden sloped down to the high road; offenders against the law at Sutton Boldon were brought to the place of detention up a pathway bordered by hollyhocks and carnations.

Chief-Inspector Spencer took great pride in his flowers: but to-day, though he was strolling up and down the little grass plot, called by courtesy the lawn, he was not thinking of his beloved blossoms: even his pipe had been suffered to go out as he listened attentively and nodded assent every now and then to the little man who walked by his side, talking and gesticulating vigorously.

“Yes, it has been a case that has puzzled good deal first and last,” he said slowly. “And I don't say that we see our way through it yet,” blinking his eyes and looking round him thoughtfully.

The other glanced at him.

“You agree with me in the main though, I see.”

“I am not altogether sure that I do. Still there would be no harm in looking him up. Why, I declare—Who is that?”

“Hallo, who is this?” repeated Inspector Spencer to Detective Collins, as the doctor's tall figure approached them.

Roger Lavington was swinging down the cobbled walk on the other side of the palings. As the inspector spoke he halted beside the wooden gate.

“Good-morning, inspector. How is the world using you?”

The inspector hurried down the gravel path.

“Pretty middling, thank you, Doctor. I'm glad to see you in Sutton Boldon again, sir!”

Roger struck with his cane at a tall, upstanding dandelion.

“I have just come over for the day to see Dr. Marpont; there are a few things to be settled between us yet. How is Mrs. Spencer?”

“Nicely, sir, thank you. She always says she owes her life to you for pulling her through that pneumonia two years ago. Will you step in and take a glass of her home-brewed, doctor?”

Roger pushed his hat back from his forehead; the invitation might give him the very opportunity he had been hoping for. He had at least an hour at his disposal before Dr. Marpont would be at liberty.

“Thank you very much, inspector. I don't mind if I do. I haven't tasted anything like Mrs. Spencer's home-brewed since I left Sutton Boldon.”

The inspector held the gate open. His companion came towards them, touching his hat.

“Good morning, doctor!”

Lavington looked at him in surprise, then a gleam of unwelcome surprise flashed in his eyes.

“Why, surely, it is Detective-Inspector Collins?”

The little man's rosy, good-humoured face lighted up with a smile.

“Detective-Inspector no longer. I have retired from the force.”

Roger was conscious of a throb of relief.

“Retired, have you? Surely, you are young to give up work?”

Collins caressed his round, clean-shaven chin.

“Maybe I am older than you think, doctor. My looks have always favoured me. I haven't given up work altogether either. I do a little on my own now. It pays me better too. You may have heard of Collins and Mason's Private Detective Agency perhaps? I am the original founder.”

“Oh, I see!”

Roger looked at the carnations tied carefully to their stakes; he was not to have it all his own way, then. Collins would have his own axe to grind; the chat over the inspector's home-brewed would resolve itself more or less into a duel.

The inspector was still holding the gate open hospitably.

“The missus will never forgive me if I let you go without speaking to her, doctor.”

Telling himself that it could make no possible difference, and that in the remote case of there being danger it would be better that he should know it, Lavington turned in.”

“You know your way here, doctor,” the inspector cried genially, as he held the door open. “Molly”—as a child in a white pinafore appeared at the end of the passage-“go and tell your mother that Dr. Lavington has come to pay us a visit. Say she is to bring jug of home-brewed for him to taste. Step in, doctor.”

The inspector drew forward one of the shiny horse-hair covered chairs.

“Sit down, doctor. The missus will be here directly. Where's your mother, child?” as the little maiden returned stumbling under the burden of the great jug she carried.

“Mother has gone over to Hemington this morning,” she announced importantly as she set her tray on the red tablecloth, “and I am keeping house. Did you forget, dad?”

For one brief second the inspector looked rather foolish. He gave an embarrassed laugh.

“It had slipped my memory, Molly. That is a fact. She will be disappointed when she hears she has missed you, doctor.”

“I am very sorry too,” said Roger politely.

The inspector poured out the ale, frothing up the glass carefully.

Detective Collins seated himself gingerly on the extreme edge of one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs; as he glanced about the room in apparent admiration, one hand planted firmly on each knee, he might have been taken for a prosperous farmer, a well-to-do mechanic—anything rather than a well-known detective.

“Ay, doctor,” he said, as Roger took a draught from his foaming glass, “the last time we met was at Northchester. You had been to see the poor thing who was supposed to have shot Rheinhart. You'll have heard perhaps that was all a mistake?”

“Mr. Rose at the Crown was talking about it just now. But one hears so many tales. You don't mean that—”

“She had nothing to do with the affair,” the detective said, jerking his head in the direction of The Bungalow. “That is clear enough. She was at a party in Cirencester on April 14th, the night Rheinhart was murdered. At least ten independent witnesses are ready to swear that. So it settles the matter as far as she is concerned, and we shall have to look elsewhere for the lady who dropped her glove.”

A cold shiver ran down Roger's spine as he tried to think.

“I have always heard that an alibi is the most unsatisfactory and delusive of defences,” he said at last, hating himself the while for the slur he was casting on the dead girl's memory. Where had he heard that the vilest slander of all was to defame the helpless dead?

“I don't say but what I am inclined to agree with it in nine cases out of ten, but this affair of the Bungalow is the tenth. I have sifted it through and through, and nothing is absolutely clearer than that the woman who died at Northchester had no hand in Rheinhart's death. You said at the inquest that he had been dead from a quarter of an hour to twenty minutes when you first saw him.”

“About that, I should say,” Roger assented. “Certainly not more than half an hour.”

Collins took a long draught of beer and wiped his lips meditatively.

“It's a queer thing how she got so completely away. You saw nothing of her as you went into the house, doctor?”

Not a muscle of Lavington's face altered.

“Absolutely nothing. There was no one so far as I could see in the neighbourhood.”

“And in the house, in the room itself?” The question had all the sharpness of a sword thrust. Collins was not admiring the colour of the ale now; his eyes were fixed gimlet-wise on the other's face.

Despite his self-control, Lavington's eyelids flickered.

“I did not search when I entered,” he said, speaking as naturally as he could. “But I saw nothing to lead me to suppose that the assassin was concealed in the house.”

Detective Collins nodded his head as if satisfied.

“Just so! just so! That is what I understood at the time. You may have heard that Rheinhart was shot with his own pistol?”

“No. I had not,” Roger said, in genuine surprise. “Have you found it?”

“No. That is what we should particularly like to do,” the detective remarked grimly. “Apparently the murderer carried that little piece of evidence away.”

Roger finished his beer at a draught.

Altogether it seems as if you were in the right way to discover the criminal at last, inspector.”

“Oh, I could not say that, doctor! The time that has elapsed is all against us. Still, it does not do to give up hope.”

“Decidedly not!” Roger stood up. “Well, I expect Dr. Marpont will be ready for me now. Thanks for your hospitality, inspector. I am sorry not to have seen Mrs. Spencer. I dare say I shall be over this way again before long.”

“I hope so, I am sure, sir.” Despite Roger's remonstrances both men insisted on accompanying him to the garden gate, pointing out various choice blossoms on the way, and finally taking leave of him effusively.

“What do you make of him?”

Collins pursed up his lips.

“Pretty much what I made of him at the time,” he said enigmatically.

The inspector made no rejoinder until they had turned into his room at the official end of the station, then he nodded his head at the bureau which stood in a recess near the door.

“You did not tell him of that?”

Collins looked at him.

“What do you take me for, Joe Spencer—a green-horn? Let alone that, at present, there is not much to tell anyone.”

“Well, I don't know.” The inspector unlocked the drawer and took out a wooden box.

Collins opened the lid and lifted some oblong, gleaming object tentatively in his fingers.