The Santa Klaus Murder (8 page)

I pointed out that no one delivers bread on Bank Holiday and no one walks out before ten o'clock in the morning, but I know how news does seep out and float abroad, apparently on the air. Another point struck me. “So you know Dittie is here?” I asked him.

“Bound to be; whole family always comes for Christmas. But why this cross-examination?”

I don't know why I should have felt so suspicious of him, but it struck me as odd, his driving up at that moment. I took him inside the front door and advised him to ring the bell and ask Parkins if Dittie would see him. I hadn't seen any of the family that morning.

“I don't think I'll ring the bell just yet,” he announced coolly. “That is, if you can spare me a moment, Colonel.”

I didn't feel inclined for a friendly chat with anyone. I'd just been making mental notes of half a dozen points I wanted to inquire into. I suppose I growled at him. I told him I was up to my eyes in a difficult business.

“I rather thought it might be difficult,” he remarked. “Look here, sir; I really want to speak to you. I think I might possibly be able to help.”

I told him that if he had anything relevant to tell me, he'd better tell it quickly; the hall was empty; I went over to the fireplace and stood before the blazing logs. I was leaving the drawing-room free for the use of the family and I didn't want him to entrench himself in the library.

“I'm a student of human nature, Colonel Halstock, and a bit of a criminologist,” he began grandly. “Oh yes, you think that all rot, but at least you know that I've got brains and if I give you my word that I won't do any fool detective work on my own and that I'll obey orders, will you let me help you in any way I can?”

I asked him how he knew that I wanted help.

“Oh, I know you've got your trained men and finger-print experts and all that. But sometimes a private individual can pick up information. I worked with you once before, you remember, and you were good enough to say—”

“You were younger then, and less cocksure,” I told him, and asked what he was after, anyway. Did he
know
anything? If so, he'd better tell me and have done with it.

“I don't know anything in the police sense. You'd be the last man to encourage anyone to communicate unfounded suspicions,” he had the cheek to say. “But I know the family— some of them—pretty well.”

I told him that so did I, and that was my trouble. I didn't admit, however, that I'd been half inclined to call in Scotland Yard straight away last night. I did say that I hoped we might have the whole case straightened out in half an hour.

“And if you haven't,” he said, not in the least discouraged, “you'll tell me how things stand and give me a chance. Colonel Halstock, you know how I felt about Dittie, ten years ago. My feelings haven't changed. This is a rotten thing for them all and in some ways it's worst of all for her, because she has no one who can really help her. David—well, you know David! I don't want publicity. I merely want to be of use. That's hard for you to believe, of an actor. But perhaps you can believe it of Kenneth Stour whom you've known for thirty-five years.”

It's impossible to describe Kenneth Stour's charm; that sounds an effeminate word, but there's nothing of the sissy-boy about him. Opposition simply doesn't affect him; he behaves as if he couldn't see or feel it. By persisting in the assumption that you're agreeing with everything he suggests, he hypnotises you into doing so. That's the only way I can explain why I trusted him as I did in this case, although I met him with a feeling of suspicion which I didn't shake off for a long time.

I made no promise to him at the moment, but told him to go and see Dittie, if she were willing, and warned him that I would not be responsible for giving him the run of the place. I wasn't sure how pleased the family would be to see him at Flaxmere at this time.

He smiled at me as if I were an approving first-night audience, and then a slight noise drew our attention towards the wide staircase at the far end of the hall and, glancing round, I saw Dittie stepping down deliberately from stair to stair. She was looking down at her feet all the time, and biting her under-lip, as if she were negotiating some unfamiliar or difficult descent. She was concentrated on what she was doing—or perhaps on her thoughts—and quite unaware of us until Kenneth strode out towards the foot of the staircase.

Hearing his steps, she raised her eyes and saw us. She stopped, with a half-uttered, half-choked cry of his name and swayed backwards. Her right hand, already on the rail, gripped it and steadied her. Her left hand groped wildly for the other rail and found it. I could see the fingers, whitened by her grip, moving uneasily.

We all stood there a moment without speaking; Dittie's eyes wavered from Kenneth to me; I saw terror in them; they turned back to Kenneth. Then he ran up the stairs and put his hand on her arm.

I heard him saying, “Dittie—my dear—,” with such tenderness in his voice that I had an uneasy feeling of eavesdropping and slunk into the library. But of course, the man is an actor.

Chapter Eight

Who Left Flaxmere?

by Col. Halstock

Constable Stapley came panting after me into the library, with mud sticking to his boots, holding out a large white handkerchief carefully folded over something in his palm.

“Key, sir!” he announced.

He had found it in the flower-bed, where I told him to look, about five yards from the house, directly in front of the open study window. It fitted the lock of the study door into the hall.

“He just opened the window to throw out the key,” Rousdon asserted. “All that shutter business is just a blind!”

Constable Stapley, who was a smart young man and knew how to appreciate the jokes of his superiors, uttered a loud guffaw. Rousdon, who hadn't intended the pun, glared at him and he retired abashed.

Rousdon picked up the red Santa Klaus costume, trimmed with white rabbit fur, from a chair.

“He threw the things off in the drawing-room last night; Mr. Melbury—Sir George, I suppose we must call him now—said, you remember, that Witcombe went in there to tell them Sir Osmond was shot and didn't seem to realize he was still dressed up. It's the same fur, right enough, that is sticking to Sir Osmond's coat!”

I examined the fur. “Regular moulting, it is,” said Rousdon scornfully. “Comes off on everything you touch, and that's lucky for us! Shall we have him in?”

But I hoped to clear up a few points before we roused a sensation in the household, so I told Rousdon that his victim would keep.

“He'll keep all right. Cool as you like! Ate a hearty breakfast in the dining-room this morning. Rest had theirs in bed.”

He had got a pretty detailed account from Miss Portisham of what money Sir Osmond had. In the note-case found on the body there was a five pound note and three pounds more in notes and some silver. She had cashed a cheque for him on Monday afternoon and knew pretty well what he had spent; it all agreed with the amount found on him and some more notes in a locked drawer in the study which she pointed out. Any possibility of robbery as a motive seemed definitely ruled out.

Further examination of Sir David Evershot was the next item on my agenda and, being sent for, he strode jerkily into the library and sank into a deep arm-chair. He gave me the impression of being ill at ease and making an effort to conceal it. I knew he was touchy and difficult and I didn't want to get him worked up. Everyone had been on edge last night and I hoped he might be more amenable this morning. I told him we had now found out a bit more and thought he might be able to confirm some of our facts.

“Most unlikely!” he snarled. “I had no idea Sir Osmond was about to be murdered, so I didn't take particular note of what was going on.”

“I think you said that you went out of the front door while the crackers were being pulled in the hall?”

“That's so. Beastly stench they made!”

“Do you remember whether you shut the lobby door behind you?”

“I haven't the least idea, and I don't suppose it will help you if I invent an answer.”

I continued my questions just as if he was behaving with ordinary politeness.

“And the front door?”

“Probably. But, mind you, I'm not going to swear any oath on that!”

“You walked up and down on the gravel drive in front of the house for about five minutes?”

“If you say so, you're probably right. I'm not going to contradict the Chief Constable.”

“Did you see anyone about?”

“Didn't look. D'you think I was spying on Santa Klaus and his damfool reindeer?”

“Do you happen to remember whether you heard any particular sounds from the house?”

“What sort of sounds?” Sir David seemed suddenly suspicious.

“We hardly know what sort of sounds you
may
have heard. Possibly voices raised in anger; possibly a shot?”

“Shot! Nobody would hear a shot with those damned crackers banging right and left.”

“But you couldn't hear crackers from the drive?”

“You think I'm lying! I tell you I heard one.”

“Just one?” Rousdon pressed him.

“Confound your questions! I wasn't in a mood to count the crackers, I tell you.”

“Anything else? Any other sound to suggest what the people in the house were doing?”

“I didn't care what the people in the house were doing. And I'll tell you this. If someone chose to shoot Sir Osmond last night, it's not my affair. It's just my blasted luck to be in the house at the time, but I don't mean to be mixed up in the business any more than I can help! I believe someone shut a window while I was outside, if that's any damn use to you! A maid upstairs, probably, going the round of the bedrooms. And that's all I can tell you.”

“You
heard
a window being shut—or perhaps being opened?” I pressed him. “Are you sure it was upstairs?”

“Call it opened if you like; if you think anyone in this house would ever open a window when it was getting dark. Sir Osmond had a Victorian fear of the night air. I don't know what window it was; I didn't care and didn't look to see. I won't answer any more fool questions! What's the good of badgering me when I tell you I know nothing? It's the wrong method, I tell you, trying to get information where it doesn't exist. Why you fix on me, and question me and question me again, hounding me till I don't even know what I did do or hear—”

He was working himself into a fury. He heaved his lean body out of the chair and strode up and down the room heavily, running his fingers through his thin pale hair. I fell into step beside him and talked quietly to him.

“I know we're being troublesome, but we have to pick up every scrap of information we can,” I said, and so forth. Thanked him for answering our questions and then ventured to ask whether he heard the window opened—or shut—before he heard the cracker. He had been calming down but that roused him again.

“Those hellish crackers were going off in my head, I tell you!” he shouted. “They were going off all the time! I want to forget them!”

I gave it up and let him go.

“The man's not normal!” Rousdon commented superfluously. “Now, if it looked like a crime committed in a sudden fury, I'd plump for him. But it doesn't. He heard the shot all right. He couldn't hear a cracker out there, and he knows it. And he heard the window opened. I'll make sure about the maids, but it's almost certain they weren't shutting windows then because they were all gathered in the servants' hall.”

No one, so far as we had discovered, had noticed Sir David going out or coming in again. I began trying to reconstruct his movements on the drive. Assuming that he heard the shot fired in the study and recognized it for something more than a cracker, he would stand still, wait. Then he heard the window opened for the murderer to throw out the key, and he crept round the corner of the house. The murderer hadn't switched off the light and Sir David saw Sir Osmond slumped in his chair with a hole in his head. He climbed in through the window. Then—? Did he find some evidence which he destroyed in order to shield the murderer? Or did he merely realize that his own position there might be difficult to explain? In either case, he slunk out through the library and dining-room and so back into the hall, first closing and hooking the shutters—why? Just an instinctive action, perhaps.

This might explain Sir David's state of mind, which struck me as more agitated than I should have expected even in the irritable man I knew him to be, but it wasn't very helpful. Except that it pointed to some murderer whom Sir David would be anxious to shield—and that was surely not Witcombe.

I had one more job to do before I let Rousdon loose on that gentleman. I sent for Sir George and while waiting for him asked Rousdon if he had collected all the details of the Santa Klaus outfit. He had the fur-trimmed robe with its hood, the beard on wires and a pair of eyebrows which had to be attached with gum; there was also an empty sack, which had held the presents.

“Probably used that to carry the pistol in,” Rousdon surmised. “No pockets in this garment. But the sleeves are wide; you might just hold the pistol ready in your hand and draw it back under the sleeve and no one'd notice. We've found no gloves, though he's pretty sure to have worn them, since he left the pistol lying on the table and he seems to be a careful chap. That pistol's covered with finger-prints, almost as if someone had handled it on purpose to wipe out anything that might have been there before, but I don't suppose that the prints of the hand that pulled the trigger were ever there at all. It would be easy enough to drop those gloves into the fire in the hail. We've sifted the ashes this morning, and there's nothing to show, but that's only what I'd expect.”

George Melbury opened the door and looked at me inquiringly. “Mornin', Colonel! You wanted me? Anything discovered?”

“Nothing definite,” I told him, watching him pretty closely. He looked distinctly disappointed, and I don't think he's capable of simulating it.

First I asked him if he knew what kept Sir Osmond in his study after the Christmas present distribution yesterday afternoon.

“He was waitin' for a telephone call,” George declared. “Some private business. The old man didn't confide in anyone much about his private affairs, not even me. I think he'd made an arrangement with some friend, maybe a business acquaintance, to ring him up at that time. None of us thought much about him shutting himself up alone like that. He'd get sudden fits of being tired, y'know, and go off into his study at any time.”

“Did that telephone call for which he was waiting ever come through?” I asked.

George looked puzzled. “That's rum! Never thought about it before, but now I do come to think of it, I don't know of any call coming through.”

“Could it have come before your father was shot? Would anyone have heard it then?” I knew that all calls to Flaxmere must go direct to the study, because Sir Osmond had refused to have a telephone extension to any other part of the house.

“Depends on how the bell was fixed,” George told me. “Y'see, it rings out in the hall or in the study, accordin' to how it's switched. The old man had that fixed because people used to ring up and get no answer if the study was empty and no one happened to be about within hearing. Miss Portisham would probably know all about it; she had to arrange for it to be switched the right way.”

That seemed to be all the light he could throw on Sir Osmond's appointment. He had some inquiries of his own to make. Could he go ahead with arrangements for the funeral and had we yet got into touch with Crewkerne, Sir Osmond's solicitor? George knew we were trying to get hold of him. We agreed that he should arrange for the funeral to be held on Saturday.

“Don't want to make a big parade, under the circs.,” he mumbled. “Must have a notice in the
Times
but I thought of putting
funeral very quiet
, or something of that sort. Don't want the countryside flockin' and askin' awkward questions. My aunt would like to put,
struck down by the hand of a foul assassin
, in the
Times
notice, but we can't have that sort of thing, of course. Now, there's another thing, Colonel; sorry to bother you and all that, but the ladies are all gettin' in a state about their mournin'; must have it for the funeral, y'know. Of course nothing can be done to-day, but they want to make a shoppin' expedition into Bristol to-morrow.”

I saw Rousdon cock his head at that and scowl. He wasn't so dead sure of Witcombe that he was ready to give anyone else the chance of making an easy escape, or else he felt sure that Witcombe had accomplices and he did not want to let them out of his sight. Personally I felt that we had a great deal yet to discover and that everyone was safer under observation. So I had to tell George that the shopping expedition was banned. Surely they could get their blacks without going to Bristol themselves? They had permission to telephone to the shops and get things sent up.

“Of course,” George pointed out gloomily, “that takes all the kick out of shopping! As a married man yourself you'll understand that. But I've no doubt they can get their things all right that way.”

He seemed very downcast, doubtless at the prospect of having to break this news to his wife and sisters, and inclined to discuss his troubles, but I was impatient to get on to the main business for which I had summoned him.

I explained to him that there were numerous finger-prints in the study, which were probably left by various people in the house when about their lawful occupations. I wanted him to help me persuade everyone to have their finger-prints taken, so that we could identify and eliminate those which had nothing to do with the murder—those of Miss Portisham, who would naturally handle many things in the study, of the maid who closed the shutters, and so forth.

George looked thoughtful. “You're welcome to mine, of course. I'll do my best to get the others to follow suit, but—er—well, some of 'em may object. I mean they might think it a bit odd without really having any reason to be afraid of giving them; I mean to say, I hope you don't mean to put 'em under arrest and all that, on the spot, if they refuse?”

I pointed out that anyone had a right to refuse and I couldn't enforce the ordeal unless I brought a definite accusation against the recalcitrant. I have often found that the best way to persuade anyone to do something they suspect is to explain that they really need not do it.

I arranged that George should first assemble all the house party in the hall, and that we would take the domestic staff afterwards.

“It's those who're likely to kick up a fuss, I'm afraid, but perhaps our example—moral effect, y'know—”

He went off and before long Parkins came to report that all the family and guests were in the hall. I went out and took up a station on the stairs. They were standing in separate little groups, which told me a good deal. Kenneth Stour with Dittie near the back; there was anxiety still in Dittie's eyes. Not far from them Sir David stood alone, staring into the fire, taking no notice of anyone. Miss Portisham was also alone, on the opposite side of the hall, looking about her anxiously. Carol Wynford and Philip Cheriton were talking together near the foot of the stairs. I looked for Jennifer. At this moment, when everyone was a little apprehensive of what was before them, I had expected that she would be with Philip. But she stood at some distance from him, looking a bit forlorn, I thought, until Hilda Wynford joined her. Witcombe was moving here and there, with the air of a man who will not recognize that he is being ignored. Eleanor and her aunt and George's wife were a little gossiping group. Gordon Stickland and George were at the back of the hall, keeping a watchful eye on the rest.