The Polo Ground Mystery (4 page)

“There's not much in that, Ricky; the woman usually makes up for it in intelligence. Intelligence is to experience what art is to craftsmanship.”

“But Angela, like many aristocrats, isn't intelligent. With her the delightful capriciousness, the eagerness and glow of vulgar life have hardened into the glitter of good taste and perfect manners. She's a human crystal. She was brought up in the later feudal tradition of romantic love. In your own language, Vereker, she has been painted in the neo-classic style. At forty-eight, Sutton had outgrown his illusions, but he was stupid enough to give them lip service and always enacted a preposterous make-believe. His was one of those rather undeveloped minds that always think they ought to illuminate their sexual emotions with strings of fairy lamps. However, when the newly married couple discovered that they didn't live in the same street they were both very amiable about it. Sutton was too indifferent and Angela too polished to quarrel. Figuratively, Sutton sought the Garden of Eden, and Angela was all the time yearning for Paradise. Now, Edmée has always roamed the Garden of Eden. It's her natural habitat.”

“A very modern Eve, I suppose.”

“No, I wouldn't call Edmée modern. Ordinary women, like hymns, are either ancient or modern, but Eve is of all time. She's Isis, Aphrodite, Venus in a hundred guises and various coloured skins. Edmée is ninety per cent Eve and Sutton had achieved through experience seventy-five per cent Adam. They were bound to fuse. It didn't take Edmée a week to see that Sutton and Angela were a discrepancy, and that Sutton, to use her own phrase, was ‘tout cousu d'or.' How distinctly I can visualize her mouth as she said ‘tout cousu d'or' and the calculating gleam in her Belgian eyes! She translated for my benefit in Americanese—‘he's lousy with money, Ricky.' Like all Eves, Edmée is passionately fond of money; not for its own sake, but as something to be quickly exchanged for the fruits of the earth. She came upon Sutton just as I might stumble on a fiver when I was hard up.”

“Just as you might come on me for a tenner would be more accurate,” interrupted Vereker, with malicious glee.

“You deserve the point, Algernon; I had dropped my guard. To continue the story, there followed the Sutton Stakes.”

“What on earth was that?”

“Haven't you heard the yarn? Bless my soul, I thought it was in a cheap edition by now. I have much pleasure in telling you the scandalous story. It happened about a fortnight after Edmée had arrived in Nice. She had come to Nice because Aubrey Winter was there. As I have said, Aubrey was in love with her, he may be so now for all I know, but her affection for Aubrey was the affection she might have for a comfortable pair of house slippers. Aubrey's a delightful fool and, though Edmée hurts all her lovers indiscriminately, they are somehow never disillusioned. There's something of the snake and the bird in her relations with men. Well, to brighten things up the Armadales gave a little dinner and dance at their Villa, Les Aigles d'Or. What part Aubrey had in suggesting that dinner and dance, or whether Sutton was inspired to its realization by Edmée, it would be hard to say. Most likely Aubrey, because if a man's stupid Fate seems to take a grim delight in making him encompass his own ruin. In any case, the dinner was given, and when Sutton gives a dinner it is a dinner. The cost doesn't interfere with the dream, and Angela saw to it that the dream was delightful. Angela is all for English dinners, and one of the items on the menu was cygnets. I like that touch of cygnets; it's pure Angela. But the wines that flowed appealed to my imagination. They proved the
deus ex machina
in what followed. There were old golden sherry, Château Montbrun, Grand Musigny 1911, Clicquot 1919, Cockburn port 1904, and '70 brandy. Could anything be more reasonable? This selection of sound liquor produced a Bacchanalian atmosphere among the happy guests. Edmée, flushed with the fire of the grape, became Phryne incarnate; Aubrey's Boeotian wit began to caper whimsically, and even Sutton's merry mercantile eye took on a satyr's gleam. It was this vinous urge which promoted the Sutton Stakes. No one is certain to this day who suggested the rag, but it has generally been attributed to ‘Fruity' Fanshaugh. He has never denied it. ‘Fruity' is a cross between Kipling's Anglo-Indian and a Yogi. As a young officer in India he swallowed a lot of Yoga and got it inextricably mixed up with polo and pig-sticking. He's credited with the possession of a Bombay head.”

“What's that? I don't understand,” asked Vereker, with solemn interest.

“I'm not quite clear myself, but I believe it means that the owner has suffered at one time or another from a touch of the Indian sun—a bit ‘gaga,' to put it vulgarly. In any case, towards the end of the dance ‘Fruity' seemed to take charge of the company of guests, and there was a hurried consultation with much laughter among the males. In a few minutes it was seen that something unusual was afoot, and it was suddenly announced before the final dance that the Sutton Stakes was to be run. The gees were to be seven male members of the company who had pooled substantial stakes, and the riders were to be seven of the ladies present. The horses were to run on all-fours with their jockeys astride their backs, and the course was once round the ballroom. It was an astounding proposition, but, as I've said, a Dionysian spirit was abroad and the Greeks had a very natural taste in amusements. I can never remember just who the horses were, but I know there was an eminent K.C., a brigadier, a very famous playwright, an M.P.—I won't mention his name—and an R.A. among the field. Not a selling-plater ran. ‘Fruity' Fanshaugh was weigher-in, starter, judge, winning-post, tote, Stewards of the Jockey Club, all rolled into one. It was a weight for youth handicap, and to Sutton, being the oldest horse, was allotted Edmée as his rider. She's a sylph, I may explain, a wisp of provocative feminine gossamer. One of the rules insisted that no rider should touch the ground with her feet. Infringement of this rule instantly disqualified. Edmée, trained for the ballet, found this acrobatic feat to her taste and had, moreover, the courage of her anatomy not to mention underwear. In any case, she rode a daring and graceful race. Sutton went well up to bridle and won, and from that moment lost his heart to his pretty jockey. Edmée at once took the reins and began to ride him for all he was worth in the everyday race of having a good time.”

“And have you heard what Angela thought of this performance?” asked Vereker, with grave interest.

“Have I not? You could have iced the bubbly yards away from her. After the riders had mounted and Edmée had adjusted her rope of pearls—Ciro, of course—on Sutton as a bridle, Angela walked out of the room like a plate-glass Bellona. For a few seconds the air was susurrous, and then ‘Fruity' shouted the word ‘Go.' Angela went and sat out on the balcony in frozen meditation, gazing at the sweet moonlit shimmer of the Mediterranean while the race was in progress. Her old friend, Houseley—‘Hell-for-leather' Houseley—accompanied her and gallantly held her hand in the courtliest manner. ‘Masochistic vulgarity' was what Angela thought of the race, and remarked to Edmée afterwards that she was certain that ‘Nebuchadnezzar at his worst could never have looked such a damned fool as Sutton did on all-fours.'”

“I've a soft spot for Angela already,” remarked Vereker when Ricardo had finished his story. “Among the goddesses there's something devilishly attractive about Diana.”

“I think I'll call you Endymion instead of Algernon in future,” said Ricardo, with a loud laugh.

For some moments Vereker sat in thought, and then rose abruptly to his feet.

“Do you know, Ricky, when I hear of rags like the Sutton Stakes I long for an evening in company with Van Ostade's Dutch boors. I want to sit in an old picture and laugh over my mug of ale.”

“Posing again, Algernon, in spite of yourself, and pure cussedness at that! Besides, it's completely out of fashion to hiccup the antithesis of beer and erudition or beer and art at the British public—except at the Universities. Even the Sussex literary school is as dead as Van Ostade. The idea that poverty implies robust virtue won't wash in these democratic days. Give me the vivid amusements of the unorthodox rich. Money doesn't smell, but those that lack it frequently do!”

“Quite in your best vein, Ricky, but now for that lunch. My bag is packed and I start for Nuthill immediately after we've eaten. While I'm down there I want you to get in touch with Edmée Cazas.”

“She's an expensive contagion,” interrupted Ricardo gloomily.

“Never mind, I'll stand the racket. Connect up. Keep in touch with her and get from her her version of this shooting of Sutton Armadale. I'll bet she knows more than may ever be made public. With her hysterical desire to be interesting, you ought to have no difficulty in pumping her to a vacuum. I will run up and see you in a day or so, and I hope you'll have something important to communicate. And now for grub!”

Half-way between Vesey Manor and the little, old-fashioned market town of Nuthill there stands a country inn called the “Silver Pear Tree.” Somewhere in one of those interesting volumes published by the Surrey Archaeological Society on the history of that charming county there is a pleasing story about how this country inn acquired its fantastic name, but Vereker was too delighted with the name to trouble about its history. History, even when it falls back on legend for lack of fact, is inclined to be prosaic, and somehow Vereker was in a mood to accept the “Silver Pear Tree” as too good for investigation. He had been shown his room and ordered tea, which was to be served in what was called “Ye Olde Coffye Roome.” He was obliged to smile on seeing this title freshly painted on the glass panel of the door of that apartment. For a few moments he was lost in amused reverie, and then quietly opened the door and entered. To his surprise, he found “ye coffye roome” occupied. In the most comfortable chair, by an open window, through which drifted the warm, flower-scented air of the August afternoon, lounged a bulky figure. On his entry, the figure moved, two powerful arms shot out and were stretched in lazy ecstasy; a pair of large grey eyes under heavy, bushy eyebrows slowly opened and were questioningly turned on him. With an agility amazing in so cumbrous a bulk, the figure sprang instantly to its feet.

“God bless my soul, Mr. Vereker!” came the exclamation.

“And my soul, too, Inspector Heather!” returned Vereker, with genuine pleasure.

“No need to ask you what brings you down here,” remarked the inspector.

“Beauty, inspector, beauty! I sometimes come down into the country in search of it. Doesn't my old friend, Ralph—I mean Emerson, of course—say ‘we ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its ends; which stands related to all things; which is—'”

“Good beer,” interrupted the inspector hastily.

“Agreed. To quit fooling, I'm down here on this Armadale affair.”

“Not a job for amateurs, Mr. Vereker.”

“Why call in the Yard, then? I have here in my pocket-book a cutting from the
Daily Express
. It is wholesomely informative. Let me read it to you. ‘Six murders have been committed during the first nine months of this year and the six murderers are still at large. Scotland Yard detectives were concerned in four of these cases.'”

“Sounds as if we committed them,” interrupted the inspector testily.

“‘Nine murders took place last year and are marked in the police records as “undiscovered,”'” continued Vereker relentlessly. “‘Scotland Yard inquired into seven of those crimes. A plain fact must be stated—Scotland Yard, the most highly organized police department in the world, has lost the habit of catching murderers.'”

“Catching murderers is an art, not a habit, Mr. Vereker, with all due respect to the
Daily Express
correspondent.”

“Perhaps you're right, inspector. But what are you going to do about it?”

“Catch 'em in future if we can. In the art of criminal investigation, just as in your job—if you can call it a job—of painting, there's a power of luck. Only you can burn your duds while ours are put on record for critical Press correspondents to chuckle over,” replied the inspector, with a show of warmth.

“Neatly expressed, inspector, but only partially true. The critical Press correspondents generally manage to chuckle even over our successes. We have that disadvantage. But let's get to the Armadale case. You've been over the ground and got the general hang of things. I know only what I've gathered from the news—fragmentary, uncertain, inconclusive stuff—poor foundations to build on. Of course it was a murder and not suicide.”

“Oh!” said the inspector, looking up with his slow, inquisitive glance. “How did you tumble to that?” 

“Just a guess,” replied Vereker lazily, “an idle guess. I don't think a man would commit suicide by shooting himself in the stomach. There were two bullet wounds: one in the head and one in the abdomen, I believe?”

“That's true, and the guess is quite a good one, but only a guess. If a man's determined to do himself in there's no saying how he'll do it if his mind is sufficiently worked up. A man has committed suicide by beating his head almost to a pulp with a hammer; another by driving a chisel several times into his skull. At first glance these actual cases looked like particularly brutal murders, and yet they were proved without any doubt to have been suicides.”

“Amazing! What do you think about it yourself, Heather?”

“Like you, I've guessed it's murder. But it's too early in the day to say much more. For instance, suppose Mr. Armadale wished it to be thought that he had been murdered. There have been hidden reasons for such a trick on several previous occasions. It might be done to avoid trouble over insurance money; to incriminate some innocent person in a mad spirit of revenge.”