The Santa Klaus Murder (13 page)

“I'm not sure of that,” said Kenneth. “I don't believe Witcombe comes into this at all. That's to say, sometimes I don't believe it. But when I ask myself one question, I feel he must be connected with the plot in some way. Why was he at Flaxmere at all?”

I understood that he was invited and hadn't thought any special explanation of his presence was called for.

“But none of them like him,” Kenneth insisted. “You don't normally accept an invitation to a house in which you're not generally welcome, unless you're desperately hard up for somewhere to go. Witcombe wasn't that; he's got a home and parents and plenty of friends. He can't have had a very pleasant time at Flaxmere, where they all tend to cold-shoulder him.”

I reminded Kenneth that Sir Osmond liked Witcombe and that he was supposed to be paying court to Jenny.

“That's all my eye. Jenny doesn't care two hoots for him; in fact, she rather dislikes him since her father tried to force him on her. There was never the faintest chance that Jenny would marry Oliver Witcombe and he knew it. He may be obtuse but he's not so obtuse as all that. No, he didn't come to Flaxmere to ask Jenny again. And do you really suppose that he came for the sake of the company of Sir Osmond, a man forty years his senior, just at the time when that man would be much engaged with all his family? The family, of course, would be even less cordial towards Witcombe than usual if they noticed that their father was confiding in him and making a pet of him.”

There might be something in this point of view, but I didn't really feel it had much value. I discussed the facts of the case with Kenneth for a bit because, even if his ideas are erratic, it's often helpful to get a perfectly fresh point of view. I hoped he might have been able to pick up some information about the telephone call which Sir Osmond had been expecting when he went to his study on Christmas afternoon. Since it had never been made, it was almost certainly the murderer's trick to ensure that Sir Osmond would be in his study alone at the appointed time. But on the question of how and when Sir Osmond had been told to expect the call I had so far drawn a blank. Kenneth could tell me nothing. He was not proving any more helpful than I had expected.

There were a number of other clues that I wanted to follow up and I told Kenneth that I should go over to Flaxmere in the morning to make inquiries. I asked him one more question; if he was sure of Witcombe's innocence, how did he explain the finding of one of his gloves in the library?

“That's not difficult; if the murderer had planned to implicate Witcombe he wouldn't find it difficult to nab a pair of his gloves beforehand. Much better, in any case, to use someone else's gloves in this sort of business. He deliberately dropped one and returned the other to its place. Witcombe may be obtuse, but he's not such a fool as to leave the glove lying there; if he could take one back to his room, he could take the other.”

“Bingham thought it was only by chance he found it among the paper.”

“Shows the ingenuity of the hider. He arranged it so that anyone picking up the paper would be bound to see it and would yet think that it had really been hidden.”

It strengthens one's own ideas to have them confirmed by conclusions reached independently by someone else, and for that reason, if for no other, I was glad to have Kenneth's co-operation. If he spent another day with the Flaxmere family, as I gathered he intended to do, he might be able to throw some light on their private alarms, suspicions and motives. I thought I knew them pretty well but some of them were behaving unaccountably. I was reluctant to ask Kenneth if he could explain Dittie's state of nervous terror, but I hoped he might of his own accord throw some light on it before long.

Chapter Thirteen

Bad Dreams

by Col. Halstock

I had another talk over the telephone with Rousdon that evening. It occurred to me that newspapers would be published the next day and he would already be besieged by pressmen. I didn't want them to get the idea that Witcombe was under arrest, for the more I thought about it, the surer I felt that his guilt wouldn't explain half the problems of the case and would raise several new ones.

I told Rousdon about Sir Osmond's notes for his revised will and that the last name was not Witcombe's. As for the glove clue, if Rousdon accepted that at its face value, he must thereby admit that the police who had thoroughly searched for the gloves, particularly in the rooms near the library, had done their job very badly. Wasn't it far more likely that the thing had been planted later? The third point I urged was that facts suggested, on the whole, that the murder had been carefully planned beforehand. If Witcombe had thus planned it, was it credible that he would have arranged to draw so much attention to himself on the way to commit the crime as he had done by his second entry into the hall with crackers? He could easily have distributed these (if they were needed to drown the shot) before he went out and then have returned unseen to the study through the dining-room and library. His actual movements, assuming that all these were Witcombe's movements, of which I was doubtful, pointed rather to the idea that he had been made a dupe by someone else.

Rousdon apparently heard all this, but the telephone was still bewitched and I could hardly make out what he said about the finger-prints, which had now been sorted out. I asked him to meet me at Flaxmere the next morning with a couple of men who could be relied upon to carry out a thorough search of the house. Moreover, I didn't think that the residents ought to be left to their own devices as yet and two resourceful officers should be posted there for the night.

That evening I shuffled the pieces of the puzzle to and fro and tried to make a pattern of them. I believed that Sir David Evershot ought to be fitted in somewhere and was not satisfied with the idea that he came in as an accidental accessory who found the body by chance and didn't like to mention the matter. There ought by rights to be a more definite connection between the open window and the man who had gone outside for a breath of air at the time when the murder was committed. Dittie's state of alarm, too, would be natural if she had found something in the study which showed that her husband had been there.

I considered the concealed door between the dining-room and library, which was usually locked but had been open on Christmas Day so that the servants might go that way into the library to see the Christmas-tree. Only someone familiar beforehand with the Christmas plans could know that the door would be ready for their use. If it had not been known that this door would be available, then the study window would seem to provide the only chance of entering or leaving the library unseen from the hall. But we had already dismissed the possibility of anyone getting in at the window without Sir Osmond's knowledge or connivance, and from whatever angle I considered the picture I couldn't see Sir Osmond calmly inviting Sir David to come in out of the wet through his study window.

I threw aside that very awkwardly shaped piece of the puzzle represented by Sir David, and began to consider the piece called Carol. The fact that neither she nor Witcombe had mentioned their meeting in the passage until he was pressed to prove an alibi, and that she hesitated to admit it even then, until he pointed out to her that his situation was serious, looked queer. I couldn't help thinking that she had waited in the passage, near the gun room too—nasty thought!—intentionally to meet him. She would have benefited substantially under the proposed new will and that money would mean more to her than to any of Sir Osmond's own sons or daughters. It would mean an open way to the career she had set her heart on and the certainty of being able to build up her position in that career with the support of an independent income. I thought that money itself didn't mean much to Carol, but what money could buy for her at this moment meant a great deal.

The conclusion to which all this led revolted me, who had known Carol since her childhood. Witcombe may have had the notes of the will alterations from Sir Osmond and have jumped to the conclusion that they had been properly carried out; he may have confided in Carol; she met him by appointment as he left the hall and then, while he returned with crackers and created a diversion, she crept through the dining-room and library to the study and fired the shot. But how explain the gloves? Considering Carol critically and unsentimentally, I could see a streak of hardness in her, a determination to get her own way which might be relentless. She might be capable of the shooting, but could she be capable of a plan which, as she would be quick-witted enough to see, was bound to direct suspicion towards Witcombe, and could she be base enough to strengthen that suspicion by deliberately dropping one of his gloves in the track of the murderer?

There was a possible, though not very plausible, explanation of why Witcombe had denied any connection with the crackers, after entering the hall and distributing them so obviously. Was it conceivable that he didn't realize, when the plan was worked out, how guilty he would seem to be? Perhaps his exit from the hall, after the cracker-pulling, was planned to be through the door at the back; he may have gone into the library on a sudden impulse, to make sure whether Carol had carried out her role satisfactorily. I recalled that curious phrase of his, “having made sure that Sir Osmond was dead.” He might well have been doubtful whether Carol really had the nerve and brutality to fire a shot straight into her grandfather's head. Supposing all this, he might suddenly have realized, when he was being questioned, that his second visit to the hall with the crackers and especially his mistaken exit by way of the library, made things look very black against him, and have decided to disclaim that second visit. How he expected to be believed I could hardly imagine. But, yes,— I could. He had talked it over with Carol before his interview with Rousdon this morning and had persuaded her to agree that, if necessary, she would admit meeting him in the passage and would declare that he couldn't have been dealing out crackers in the hall because she heard them going off while she talked with him.

I went over this theory again and again. No one had given evidence of seeing Carol in the hall during the important time. In fact, she had been unsatisfactorily vague about her movements during the afternoon. Witcombe's stupidity in going from the hall into the library was on a par with his stupidity in making such a pother about destroying Sir Osmond's note when he suddenly realized that he still had it and that it would be a nasty bit of evidence if he were arrested—of which, as he began to see, there was some danger.

I reluctantly admitted to myself that there was yet another point against Carol. Kenneth hadn't liked my question as to why he didn't include Carol in the writers of “homework.” If he, mixing with the family as I couldn't do, had detected in her the signs of an uneasy conscience or had even picked up some scrap of evidence against her, he would think it useless to ask her to write an account, or he might shrink from trying to trip her up by such a method. If he had nothing definite against her, he would not say anything to me as yet, hoping probably that further evidence would point in a different direction.

The whole thing seemed horribly clear. An ingeniously contrived plan with just those patches of stupidity in the execution of it which generally occur to give the policeman his chance.

I spent a wretched night, dreaming of Carol; Carol with a smoking pistol in her hand, firing it again at me and then turning, running across the hall of Flaxmere, out of the front door, down the emerald slope of the lawn, standing for a moment poised at the end of the diving board which overhung the pool—she was now in a bright blue bathing dress, as I had seen her last summer—and plunging in with a frightful shriek, breaking up the smooth pewter surface with ripples which spread and spread, lapped over the edge of the pool, crept up the slope of the lawn, flowed strongly round my feet where I stood on the gravel drive.

Sir Osmond climbed out of his study window and came up to me, with a hole in his head, holding out a cracker.

“Pull this! Pull this!” he shouted like a maniac. “It will drown the shot! Drown the shot! Drown!”

Then again Carol appeared, walking in my own garden at Twaybrooks, wearing a pair of masculine hogskin gloves, and pointed to an immense edifice sprouting from my own tennis courts, rather like the tower of Bristol University but of bright pink brick.

“I designed that!” she announced proudly. Looking at her face I saw that it had become horrible; it was Carol's face and yet it was cruel, greedy, monstrous.

Chapter Fourteen

A Pair of Eyebrows

by Col. Halstock

I reached Flaxmere early on the morning of Friday after Christmas, feeling old, empty and harassed.

Parkins opened the door and he, too, looked older and seemed worried.

“If you'll excuse me, sir, there's something I'd like to say to you in private, that I should perhaps have said to you sooner, sir, but not thinking it was of any consequence and not wishing to give offence in any quarter, and of course a promise is a promise although in a case of this sort it's hard to know where duty lies.”

It struck me that there was something pathetic about Parkins, evidently trying to be loyal to the family and yet, for some reason, coming to the conclusion that another duty superseded that loyalty. On re-reading last night my notes made on the evening of the crime, I had found that there was a question I must put to Parkins. I now thought he was about to volunteer the answer.

He followed me into the library and there began further explanations.

“Inspector Rousdon asked me about this yesterday, sir, and somehow I couldn't bring myself to tell him, but it came over me that I ought to tell you, sir, you being a friend of the family and so understanding, perhaps, though it doesn't seem of any consequence, except that any comings and goings on such a night, maybe, ought to be notified to the proper quarters.”

“Well, what is it, Parkins?” I asked impatiently, feeling sorry for the old man, but unable to bear his meanderings any longer. “Are you going to tell me how you came to give a message to Miss Wynford on the evening of Christmas Day?”

Parkins looked astonished; his mouth fell slightly open, giving him a ludicrously frog-like appearance.

“Message, sir?—Why, yes, sir; that's correct; I had forgotten the message, though of course it comes back to me now, because the message was, in a manner of speaking, about the car. It was Ashmore's car, sir. You'll remember John Ashmore who drove the old Daimler for Sir Osmond? Well, sir, it was Ashmore who was here on Christmas Day, in that same car which he drives for hire in Bristol. He came up after lunch, sir, with a message for Miss Jennifer and Miss Carol, to thank them for some Christmas hamper they'd sent him, which was doubtless most welcome, him not being in too comfortable circumstances nowadays, and he thought it right to express his gratitude immediately, but they considered it best, sir, not to mention to Sir Osmond that he was here, and I acted accordingly, not wishing to make any trouble and Sir Osmond being, as you well know, sir, if you'll pardon the liberty, a gentleman who didn't like to be crossed.”

So that was the car which Caundle had met at the gates as he drove up to Flaxmere. I could understand how, if Jennifer and Carol had extracted a promise of secrecy from Parkins, he would hesitate to say anything about Ashmore's visit. I asked him when Ashmore had arrived.

“Soon after lunch, sir; and I informed Miss Jennifer during the Christmas-tree ceremony, sir, and she ran out immediately afterwards to speak to Ashmore and asked him to stay and have tea. But later on, sir, when it got through to the servants' hall that something had happened, though us not knowing then that it was a fatal act, but only understanding that it was some accident, then Ashmore said he'd better be leaving and asked me most particular to give a message to Miss Jennifer and Miss Carol, that he thanked them for their kindness. So I went to deliver the message and not finding Miss Jennifer I looked in her own room—you'll know it, perhaps, sir; the one at the end of the passage, and there was Miss Carol, so I delivered the message and she seeming in ignorance that there was anything wrong I told her there had been an accident in the study.”

I asked if he knew at what time he had found Carol.

“I couldn't say, sir, but there was no one about in the hall, sir; they had all gone into the study, I believe.”

Carol, therefore, hadn't returned to the hall. She couldn't face the others and she skulked in Jennifer's room, waiting for the alarm to be given when she might join the party unnoticed in the general confusion, and any distress she showed might be considered natural.

I dismissed Parkins and sat down to consider the plan of action. Apart from my personal feelings, the case was difficult. There was little direct evidence against Carol, and it wasn't easy to see where we were likely to discover more.

Presently Rousdon arrived and I eagerly demanded his account of what he had done with Witcombe and what he had got out of the man.

Rousdon was dissatisfied and grumpy. He had found, before leaving Flaxmere on Thursday evening, that Mrs. Wynford and Miss Portisham and others who had seen Santa Klaus enter the hall with crackers, could not swear that this was Mr. Witcombe; they were only sure that it was someone in an identical costume, with the hood pulled rather low over the eyes. They hadn't looked at him particularly, of course, assuming at the time that it must be Witcombe, but evidently some of them had realized since that it might have been someone else, and they had been very guarded in what they said to Rousdon.

At the police station Witcombe had asked for time to think things over and at first had said he would like to see a solicitor. This was not easy to manage on Bank Holiday evening, and before Rousdon had got hold of one Witcombe had said that “if they were not accusing him of anything, but merely asking him for information,” he didn't want legal advice. He was completely innocent, he maintained, and quite ready to tell anything he knew, but he must have time to think things out and remember the details.

First of all he said that the piece of paper bearing Sir Osmond's notes had fallen out of the
Tatler
as he was reading it and, thinking it was rubbish, he chucked it into the fire. Later he said he'd like to withdraw that and tell the truth. He gradually made a long statement. Sir Osmond, he said, had talked to him on Tuesday evening and told him he was going to make a new will, in which he intended to leave Jennifer a large sum provided she was still unmarried at the time of his death. The old man said that he did this because he had plainly told Jennifer that he wanted her to remain at home and he meant to make it worth her while if she chose to obey his wishes. He also—he hinted—was hoping that Jennifer's future husband would realize that it was worth his while to wait for her. Sir Osmond suspected, however, that Jenny intended to throw herself into the arms of young Cheriton, and if she did so they would both see, when he was dead, what fools they had been. He was telling Witcombe all this so that Witcombe might drop a few hints to Jenny and also, perhaps, to Cheriton. There was some idea, too, in Sir Osmond's mind, Witcombe thought, that he might thus be enlisted as Sir Osmond's ally in looking out for and frustrating any plan for elopement which Jenny and Cheriton might make.

Witcombe declared that he hadn't said a word about all this to any member of the family. He didn't think he could influence Jennifer and in any case he had had no opportunity as yet to discuss the matter with her. But at the end of his conversation with Sir Osmond, which took place in the study, the old man left the room first. Witcombe, politely standing aside, looked round at the table where they had been sitting and saw that the sheet of paper with names and figures on it had been left lying there. Under the impulse of curiosity Witcombe pocketed it. Sir Osmond had said nothing about his other legacies and Witcombe couldn't help wondering how they were planned. He confessed to Rousdon that it was “not quite above-board” to pick up the paper but seemed to think that his declared intention to return it to the study later purged his behaviour of real dishonesty.

He had studied the paper in his own room and had evidently gloated over his possession of information which members of the family had fished for in vain. He had put it away in his pocket book so that he could be ready to take any chance of slipping into the empty study and putting the paper in Sir Osmond's blotting pad. After the Christmas Day happenings he had forgotten it until he was harassed by Rousdon's questions. Then, he said, he asked himself what they had against him, and he remembered Sir Osmond's notes and felt uneasy about them because he had no business to be in possession of them, so decided to destroy them.

“I see now,” he said to Rousdon, “I was very unwise not to hand the paper to you, in case you might know it was missing and be looking for it. But, of course, it's of no real importance now, because Sir Osmond hadn't made this will.”

Witcombe's story was just credible, Rousdon thought. In any case, it didn't seem likely that he had stolen those notes from the dead man's pocket. As for the gloves, Rousdon agreed that they were not a very good piece of evidence. Witcombe said he had worn them to church on Christmas Day and had put them away in a drawer in his room; in the front of the drawer, he thought. Anyone could easily take them from there. Witcombe had apologized for the attack on Constable Mere, excusing it by saying he had been thoroughly startled when the man rushed at him, and didn't see that he was a policeman.

By the time all this had been thrashed out and Witcombe had divulged all that he admitted he knew, it was after midnight. Rousdon offered to send him back to Flaxmere but he was not at all keen to return and so had remained at the police station as a voluntary guest. He was sleeping what Rousdon regarded with some doubt as the sleep of the just when Rousdon looked in this morning, but would be sent back later in a police car.

The most important point in all this was Witcombe's statement that Sir Osmond had not executed the new will. Giving Rousdon the facts about the will, I pointed out that since Witcombe knew the state of affairs he could have no motive, either alone or in collaboration with Carol or even Jennifer, for murdering Sir Osmond. In fact, if he hoped to share either Jennifer's inheritance or Carol's he had every motive for keeping the old man alive.

Rousdon studied my notes of the provisions of the will and the proposed revision.

“Strikes me that Lady Evershot would be the person most likely to want to prevent that new will being made,” he suggested. “Any possibility that Witcombe told her what her father meant to do?”

I thought it most improbable, though I still wasn't satisfied that Dittie had neither knowledge nor suspicion about the identity of the murderer.

Rousdon now told me the report of the finger-print expert. Jennifer's finger-prints were on the pistol, all over it, on the muzzle as well as the butt, but not on the trigger. There were no other prints on it at all. That was what I expected, remembering George's remarks which I heard through the telephone and her own admission that she had touched it.

“But why did she want to smear it all over like that?” Rousdon persisted. “Who did she think she was protecting? Strikes me we ought to look into Mr. Cheriton's movements more carefully.”

The shutters showed the prints of the maid, Betty Willett, and Dittie had left her mark there too.

“Lady Evershot closed those shutters, I've no doubt,” Rousdon said. “What's more, she either opened the window or tried to shut it. She's had her fingers on the bottom of the sash, as if she'd tried to pull it down. There were no marks on the upper part, where you'd naturally put your hands in pushing it open, so I should say it was opened by the murderer with those gloves on.”

I asked if there were any sign of Sir David.

“Not a trace. Got a good record from his hair brush, but we can't match it anywhere.”

So my idea that Sir David had climbed in by the study window out of curiosity was washed out. He would hardly have put on his gloves when he went out casually to cool his head on the drive, and bare-handed he could not have climbed in over the window-sill without leaving some mark.

But Dittie had been trying to protect someone; someone who, she thought, had used that window.

As Rousdon and I sat staring at each other glumly over these problems, there was a tap at the door and in walked Miss Portisham and George's son, Kit. The child strutted in, very pleased with himself, and yet a little nervous. I couldn't think for a moment what made him look so absurd. Of course, it was the eyebrows! He had tufts of bushy white hair stuck on to his brows, rather crookedly, one of them taking a satirical list towards his temple.

“I thought it only right,” began Miss Portisham timidly, “to show you this—”

“What the—we're attending to serious business!” snorted Rousdon, furious at being interrupted by what he took to be a childish game.

“I've got Santa Klaus' eye-brushes!” piped Kit.

“He won't say where he found them,” Miss Portisham continued plaintively; “but they weren't in the nursery and he's been routing about the house. I hope I did right to show you?”

“Where's the rest of the outfit?” I asked Rousdon. “You must have dropped these when you carried it away.”

Rousdon got very red and looked as if he might burst. He shot out of his chair and charged into the study, where he dialled a telephone call to the police station and I heard him demanding that the blank blank idiot who had carried the Santa Klaus outfit from Flaxmere, to be preserved as “exhibit A,” should come to the 'phone. Then he growled out a series of infuriated questions.

“You've got them there? Go and fetch them and bring them here—no! not
here
; to the 'phone; and let the Super tell me if you've really got 'em. You know the difference between eye-brows and a beard? Describe them! Now read me the list of the items of the costume originally collected from the drawing-room at Flaxmere. Did you ever see any other eye-brows? No, not growing on anyone's face, you blankety blank; any others like those you've got there, loose ones, lying about here at Flaxmere. You're dead sure? Hm!” He slammed the ear-piece on to its hook and returned to the library.

Whilst listening to this half of the lively dialogue in the next room, I was questioning Kit about where he had found the eye-brows, but I could get nothing out of the child. He, too, was interested in the telephone conversation and instead of answering me he cocked his head and jigged about from one foot to the other, exclaiming, “D'you hear him? Who's that man talking to? OO! I wish I could hear the other man!”