The Santa Klaus Murder (19 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Carol and Oliver

by Col. Halstock

While Jennifer was driving to Bristol I talked to Philip Cheriton. He is a shortish, rather stocky young fellow, generally a bit untidy in his dress, although he had shown enough respect to the mourning atmosphere of the house to appear in a grey suit in place of his usual sloppy flannel trousers and sports coats. He wears his hair too long and has an irritating habit of twirling a lock between his fingers and then leaving it on end.

He blurted out as soon as he came into the room, without waiting for me to say anything, “I know I'm in a deuced awkward position, Colonel! What I mean to say is, it's quite obvious to anyone that this clears the ground a lot for Jenny and me. I'm sorry I didn't spill the whole story to you right away on Wednesday evening, but as I wasn't in the business at all I thought it didn't matter a row of beans to anyone just where I was that afternoon. I thought you'd have the fellow by the heels in no time.”

I told him, pretty severely, that we had small chance of clearing up the affair until people in the house told us the truth.

“Oh, of course; I see that now. I'm ready to come clean. I was sitting in Jenny's room, talking to Carol, trying to persuade her to be an accomplice—in our plans for eloping, you know!”

I questioned him, but his story was simple. He left the library with the others and gave Clare, George's youngest child, a pick-a-back round the hall. That led to some words with Patricia, who thought he was exciting the child too much, and he talked to her for a bit, or rather listened to her exposition of the right way to treat children, to put her in a good humour again. He saw Santa Klaus go out of the door at the back and he saw Carol run after him and then Santa Klaus returned with crackers and he pulled some of these with the children. When all the cracker-pulling was over and he had helped Kit to get his train running, he looked round for Carol, thinking this might be the opportunity to have a quiet word with her. He didn't see her and it occurred to him that she hadn't come back to the hall, so he went off to see what she was up to. The natural place to look was in Jenny's room, since the door was so near the door of the hall through which he had seen her go.

There she was, looking a bit flustered, he thought.

At that point he pulled himself up. “Good Lord! What have I said? I don't know what made me say that! Carol was all right and she sat down quite calmly and listened to my plans and we discussed how she could help, by getting her mother installed here, and there we were when Parkins came in, very solemn, with the message from Ashmore and some rather confused remark about an accident in the study, which sent us both off to see what had happened.”

“And when you found out what had happened you realized that the need for an elopement, with its probably unpleasant financial consequences, was gone?” I suggested.

“Naturally it occurred to me before long that Jenny and I were now on velvet, but a lot of other things occurred to me first. Really frightful for the family, it would be. Something so sordid about murder! It's one of the things that you think can never happen in your own family. Nasty shock for Jenny, too. I noticed the minute I got in to the library that she looked pretty well knocked out.”

I told him I didn't think he had really explained why he did not tell me the truth about his whereabouts during the afternoon, when I had particularly asked each one of them to describe their movements accurately.

“To tell the truth, by the time you began asking your questions I had begun to wonder—I suppose all of us had—just how the affair had happened and who had done it. I'd been rather out of it, away there in Jenny's room and there was only Carol to say that I had really been there. You were obviously suspecting all of us and I thought you might well suspect me if I admitted I hadn't been with the rest of the party, but with the kids racing about in the hall and crackers popping and people going to and fro between hall and drawing-room, I thought no one would notice I hadn't been there. It does sound a bit thin, I know,” he finished apologetically. “But there is it.”

“The thinnest part,” I pointed out, “is that Miss Wynford might have given you away, unintentionally. How could you be sure that she wouldn't tell the truth?”

“You do put your finger on the spot, every time,” Cheriton remarked, in a sort of mocking complaint. “I have to admit, I suppose, that I passed the word to Carol not to say we left the hall and she seemed to think that was all right. Poor girl, she couldn't do much but agree, for she hadn't any opportunity to argue and she was smart enough to see that at all costs our stories must tally.”

He didn't seem to realize that they had been perjuring themselves and obstructing the police and all—according to his story—because they thought it might sound better to say they were in the hall rather than in Jenny's room. It wasn't a good story and yet there was nothing tangible against the man except this untruthfulness.

***

Meanwhile Rousdon had pursued his search into the walled kitchen garden, which adjoined the servants' quarters of the house and came close up to the windows in the side of Jenny's room. It was entered by a gate in its wall on that side and also by a door from the house near the kitchen. There was a potting-shed and other outbuildings in this garden but, being used by the gardeners, they were unlikely hiding places and they had yielded nothing.

He had explored all the gardens round the house and found that from Jennifer's windows there was no direct way to the garage yard; you had to go round the front of the house and along the path on the other side, unless you went through the kitchen garden and the back part of the house. So if the Santa Klaus costume had to be conveyed to Ashmore's car in the garage yard, the study window was a more practical outlet than the windows of Jennifer's room.

Rousdon was confident that his men had thoroughly examined all possible hiding places in the grounds which were within easy reach of the house and he was coming round again to the idea that Ashmore had taken the Santa Klaus outfit away in his car. That seemed to implicate Jennifer or Carol, for we could not discover that anyone else, excepting the domestic staff, knew of Ashmore's presence. Philip Cheriton, I thought, might have heard of it from Jennifer, but it was unlikely that she would tell anyone else.

Rousdon had also made sure that there was no typewriter about the place except Miss Portisham's and that had, as we feared, yielded no clue to the person who may have used it on Tuesday afternoon, or perhaps even earlier.

He had also, at my suggestion, set inquiries on foot about the delivery of parcels at Flaxmere before Christmas. They came in the mail van and the back drive was used because that happened to be the more convenient route. The post office people would make inquiries but they did not hold out much hope of being able to tell us whether a box from Dawson's, containing the Santa Klaus outfit first ordered, had really been delivered at Flaxmere, and if so on which day, and who had taken it from the postman. So many parcels had been sent up and there were so many temporary postmen, who did not know the houses nor the residents, that it was unlikely they could give us any definite facts, unless something unusual had happened to that parcel before it left their hands.

Jennifer returned from Bristol while we were reviewing the situation and I sent for Carol to hear what she had to tell us.

She reported that Mrs. Ashmore was confused in her statements but had made it pretty clear that Ashmore went off early this morning, long before the first plain clothes man called. She maintained that Mrs. Ashmore was very worried and, although the woman apparently knew of no reason why Ashmore should want to disappear, yet obviously thought that he had gone for good.

As soon as Jennifer finished her story, Carol burst out furiously: “You must find him! It's horrible! We're all responsible! He must be found, I say!”

Whilst Jennifer gave her account of the interview, I had watched Carol closely. She sat listening eagerly, her eyes fixed on Jennifer's face, biting her lip.

“I agree that we must find him,” I told her seriously. “We must know the reason why he has run away.”

“The only reason,” Carol cried emphatically, “is that he doesn't know what he's doing. Mother and I saw that he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown when he drove us on Saturday. And then on Christmas Day Jenny knows what he was like.”

We all looked at Jenny. “Yes,” she said; “it's difficult to explain but he was so frightfully grateful just for an ordinary Christmas hamper. It was—well, rather ghastly— that anyone could be so—so abjectly grateful for that and for being asked to stay and have tea. It made me feel ashamed. He—he was almost in tears. I told Carol afterwards.”

“Look here!” Carol announced. “I'll tell you everything, the whole beastly story, if only you'll let us look for Ashmore. I think he means to do away with himself and if we follow him at once we may be in time to save him.”

“Can you tell us where to follow him to?” I asked.

“I can!” Jennifer volunteered, and told us rather a fantastic story of Mrs. Ashmore's belief that the man had gone to Tintern. It sounded very unlikely.

“There! That shows you he's half crazy!” Carol declared. “And if you put your police on his tracks, plain clothes or not, that'll be the last straw. Now listen; I'll tell you every blessed thing I know and perhaps then you'll believe me!”

We settled down to hear this extraordinary confession. Jennifer looked uneasy and I caught a questioning look from her, but signed to her to stay.

“To begin with,” said Carol; “I never went to Jenny's room to fetch my handbag. I followed Oliver Witcombe when he left the hall because it occurred to me that he would see Ashmore in the servants' hall and might ask who he was when he found there was no present for him, and would then tell grandfather. He's rather officious, you know, and it would be just like him to go butting in. So I ran out after him and found him in the passage admiring himself in the mirror, though there wasn't much light. I told him about Ashmore and how grandfather mightn't like the man being here, when he hadn't invited him, and asked Oliver to keep quiet about him. Oliver looked very prim and made some idiotic remark about it being unwise to run counter to grandfather's wishes. I was fed-up and told him that if he wasn't a cad he just wouldn't see Ashmore in the servants' hall. Oliver very solemnly took me by the arm and led me into Jenny's room. Then he unhooked his beard and threw off his red hood, but evidently forgot all about his rouged cheeks and the white eyebrows, which made him look a perfect ass. He gave me a solemn lecture about the importance of keeping in with grandfather. Said that grandfather thought a lot of me, and hinted that I should probably come in for a lot of money under his will if only I behaved like a good girl. I told him I thought it was immoral to play for anyone's money after their death by being nice to them in their lifetime. Then he came over all sentimental and said he was very fond of me himself and he couldn't bear to see me throwing away my chances. He said: if I was honest with myself I'd admit that it would mean a lot to me to have enough money to follow my career; made out that I was being proud about it because I didn't believe him. He said he knew what he was talking about, though he hadn't breathed a word of it to anyone else and only told me because he was fond of me. It was nauseating!

“There was a good deal more of it and I only got rid of him by laughing at him. Of course I don't know if he really knew anything. If he did, if what he said is true, I'm sure he was just making up to me because of the money.

“When later on I heard of grandfather's death, it was horrible, after what had happened. But it didn't strike me that Oliver could have had anything to do with it, because I had seen him go to the servants' hall. Of course, Oliver might have shot grandfather in the study immediately after the Christmas-tree, but everyone seemed to think it had been done later—because of that cracker business.

“When you began making inquiries, Oliver got hold of me and pointed out that he would be in an awkward position if I told you about our conversation. It would lead to all sorts of nasty questions, he said, and it was just bad luck that he happened to say all that to me just at such a time. Jenny and I didn't want Ashmore brought into it, so I asked Oliver to say nothing about him and promised that if he kept quiet about that I would keep quiet about his remarks to me. Naturally I didn't want to be cross-questioned about them and I didn't think the incident could matter to you in the least.

“That's all, I think, except that just after Oliver had gone off to the servants' hall, Philip came in. I saw Oliver go through the door at the back of the passage, but then I went back to Jenny's room because I was all het up and wanted to cool down. Philip came to look for me there and he wanted to talk to me alone so he took the opportunity to tell me about his and Jenny's plans and how I might help them. I expect you know all that?

“There's one other thing. I did tell you a lie when I said I knew Oliver was talking to me when the crackers went off, because I heard them. You see, I do know that he had come straight out from the study because I had watched him from the hall and followed him, but we didn't hear the crackers at all in Jenny's room. I was in a bit of a hole because I didn't want to confess that we were in that room; it would look so much like a private conversation. So I had to invent hearing a cracker. I'm sorry. But now I really have told you the whole truth and I suppose Oliver will have to endorse it. If it gets him into a mess, I can't help it. I did what I could for him; a lot more than he deserves. It's much more important now to do something for poor old Ashmore and I'm furious to think that it was partly to save Oliver's beastly feelings that I began telling you lies and made you think there was something fishy about Ashmore.”