House in Charlton Crescent (22 page)

It was a long speech for the ex-butler, and at its conclusion he glanced obliquely at the detective.

Inspector Furnival did not appear to be looking at him, however. He was admiring the old-fashioned flowers in the herbaceous border under the window.

“Very sweet they are!” he said, sniffing. “None of your new-fangled begonias and things will ever come up to what we remember in the old garden at home, Mr. Soames. Green roses are the last thing they tell me, but give me an old-fashioned moss rose or a cabbage before all the green roses that ever were blown!”

“I agree with you, sir,” Soames said as he opened the door. “Old-fashioned flowers and old-fashioned ways are the best in my opinion.”

“There I am with you; and so was Lady Anne, wasn't she?” the inspector questioned, turning sharply.

Soames put his tray on a table near the door. “Yes. My lady always liked things best as they were in Queen Victoria's days. I must see after the cheese myself, sir. The Stilton I don't allow anyone else to touch.”

“No hurry!” said the inspector genially. “I want a bit of a chat with you first, Mr. Soames. It will give a fillip to my appetite.”

Though the words were spoken smoothly enough and though they were accompanied by a smile that showed the inspector's somewhat yellow teeth, there was an underlying note of authority.

Soames's ears were sharp enough to recognize it. He paused with his hand on the door-handle.

“Yes, sir. Of course I always enjoy a chat myself,” he said with an obvious difficulty in keeping his voice steady.

“I saw your friend, Miss Pirnie, the other day,” the inspector began.

The relief in Soames's expression was obvious.

“Did you, sir? I hope she was looking well? I have not heard of her for some little time. In fact I was thinking of running up to town as soon as I could spare a day, to see how things were going with her.”

“She is looking first-rate,” said the inspector. “I was talking to her about Lady Anne's pearls. I don't know whether you are aware that there is a rumour, growing stronger every day, that Lady Anne herself sold her pearls to Spagnum's? Miss Pirnie was very indignant about it.”

“And I don't wonder,” said Soames, his face turning red with anger. “My lady would never have done a thing of that kind. She was far too proud. If she had wanted to sell her pearls she would have done so. But she would never have pretended they had been stolen! If you had known her ladyship—”

“Mr. Soames,” said the detective sharply, “who did take the pearls?”

Soames met his eyes steadily enough. “I don't know, sir. I have never been able to guess. It has been the thing that has puzzled me the most of everything in the whole affair—who could have taken my lady's pearls.”

For a moment Inspector Furnival did not speak. His small grey eyes focused themselves on Soames, held the unfortunate ex-butler's gaze as a snake's does a bird's. At last he said very deliberately with a pause between each word:

“Does it puzzle you, for instance, more than this question: Who killed Lady Anne Daventry?”

The unhappy Soames lost his usually florid colouring as if by a stroke, his face turned a dull, ashy white; the cheeks a little while ago so plump and rosy looked now in the clear midday light pendulous and yellow.

“I—er—oh—sir—” he stammered thickly.

The inspector's eyes still kept their cruel watch, probing, searching as though they would wring the truth out of the soul of the unhappy man before him. No answer came to his question, only that gibbering, moaning, stammering. Then as suddenly as it had begun the inspector's scrutiny stopped. He looked away from the almost convulsed face of the man before him, and drank in a long draught of the pure air coming in from the outside.

Released, Soames dropped heavily into the nearest chair; after staring at the inspector for a moment, he began to breathe in hoarse, painful gasps, wiping the sweat from his brow as he did so.

“I—don't—know—what you mean,” he said at last, recovering himself somewhat.

The inspector looked back at him with a benevolent smile.

“Mean?” he echoed. “Mean, my dear Mr. Soames? I think it is I who should put that question to you. I mean just what I said. It did occur to me as curious that with all the mystery surrounding the death of Lady Anne Daventry you should say that the thing that puzzled you the most was the theft of Lady Anne's pearls! Now of the minor puzzles of the affair I find the disappearance of the pearls the least baffling.”

Soames was sitting now facing the inspector and still breathing grampus-fashion, one hand firmly planted on each knee. Very gradually the colour was coming back to his face; it was far from reaching its usual rubicund proportions, but the ghastly pallor that had been called up by the inspector's question had passed. He looked up now in obviously genuine surprise.

“Do you mean that you know who it was took them, sir?”

“Ah! That would be telling,” the inspector said with the same open smile. “You will soon know how, Mr. Soames. Things are moving rapidly to a climax, and all the world will be told the secret of the house in Charlton Crescent before long. But what I want to know now is—”

He paused dramatically.

The colour that was stealing back to Soames's face began to ebb slowly away again. He sat gazing at the inspector in an odd, frightened fashion.

“Yes, yes? What you want to know is-—?” he prompted.

The inspector took out a cigar case. “Smoking is not forbidden here? No? Then you will try one of these, Mr. Soames. They were given me by a grateful client. Very good they are. You won't? Oh, well perhaps, you are wise—before lunch. Yes. What I should like to know above all things at this present moment is, who made the footmarks on the border under the window? The window you found open, you will remember, Mr. Soames?”

There was no doubt that Soames did remember. This time his face did not turn white. He became instead a curious mottled purple.

“I suppose the murderer must have been concealed in the house and managed to get out that way. I have always thought—”

“Ah! I see you have decided that the murderer was not one of the five, as some people call them?” the inspector said in a chaffing tone that seemed to affect Soames more than his previous sternness.

The butler glared round wildly as if seeking some way of escape.

“It—it doesn't seem possible that it could be, sir.”

“It doesn't, does it?” the inspector went on chattily. “Yet the murderer must have been some one in the house—”

“Concealed in the house,” Soames muttered.

“I scarcely think so,” said the inspector, taking a seat on the table near the unhappy man. “At least if he made the footmarks in the border he must have been in the house afterwards, because—”

He made another of his telling pauses. Soames wriggled uneasily in a fashion irresistibly suggestive of the toad under the harrow.

“Because—or perhaps I had better say,” the inspector corrected, “that at any rate if he got out of the house himself he left his boots behind him. They have been found upstairs among some of the things left by Lady Anne's son Frank.”

Soames stared at him helplessly. Twice he opened his mouth as if to speak and closed it again fishwise. At last he said thickly:

“Well, Mr. Frank—he could not have worn the boots, and Mr. John and me—we couldn't have got them on to save our lives. I don't believe there was a man in the house that could.”

“I dare say not,” the inspector acquiesced blandly, his small ferret eyes fixed upon the ex-butler's twitching face. “But then you see, Mr. Soames, I do not imagine they were worn by a man. But I
do
think that the time has come for you to speak out and tell the truth.”

“Charlton Crescent Mystery! Astounding Story!”

Walking quickly down a side street near Charlton Crescent, Inspector Furnival was greeted by the foregoing placard.

“
Daily Mercury,
Midday Edition—that's the racing edition,” he said to himself. “Umph! They must think they have got hold of something good, if they find room for anything but lists of probable winners and wires from the course!”

He took a paper from the boy and unfolded it as he walked.

“Charlton Crescent Mystery—Astounding development!” figured largely on the front page.

“Now, what the deuce have they got hold of?” he said to himself as he turned to it. “Oh, by Jove!” His face clouded over as he read.

The inspector drew a long breath when he had finished.

“So that's that! The fat is in the fire with a vengeance! Well, it will quicken matters up a bit, that's one good job!”

He squared his shoulders as he walked along quickly. For once his usual immobile face showed signs of inward perturbation. He turned into the first post-office he came to and despatched several messages, then he went quickly on to the house in Charlton Crescent. As he went up the steps the rector of North Coton opened the door.

“You there, inspector! I was just looking for you. What does this mean?” He was holding a copy of the paper the inspector had been reading. As he spoke he tapped the offending paragraph. The inspector drew him back into the house.

“I suppose you had no idea of this, Mr. Fyvert?”

“Not the least. How could I have?” the reverend gentleman said testily. “Do you mean that you—?”

“I discovered it very early in the case,” the inspector assented, leading the way to the library. “Naturally inquired into the antecedents of every one in the room, and the fact that Mr. Bruce Cardyn was old Squire Daventry's grandson was not particularly difficult to find out.”

Mr. Fyvert laid his hat on the library table, and stood gazing at the inspector in consternation.

“But you do not see the difference this makes? Personally, I have hitherto regarded Bruce Cardyn as one who might really be put out of the question. Now—”

“Now?” the inspector prompted.

Mr. Fyvert spread out his hands.

“My dear sir, is it not obvious? Bruce Cardyn, inheriting as he does under the will of my brother-in-law, largely, at the death, had as strong, possibly a stronger motive for the—er—murder than any one else.”

“I see that, of course. It jumps to the eyes,” the inspector agreed quietly.

“Then, once you know that, his whole conduct seems suspicious,” the rector of North Coton went on hotly. “Why did he go to my sister as secretary-detective, or whatever it was, without telling her he was poor Daventry's grandson? A false name, too—it will take a lot of explaining as far as I am concerned, let me tell you.”

“Oh, well, the name was his own, as you see in the paper,” the inspector said quietly. “It was not Cardyn's fault that Lady Anne did not know of the change his father had made. Then, again, it was not his doing that Lady Anne applied to the firm of inquiry agents of which he was a member. That he attended her personally was, of course, his choice. He explained it to me by saying that when he saw Lady Anne had no idea of his identity he thought he would take the opportunity of seeing his mother's old home and possibly of making friends with the family. He knew with what distaste his father and mother's marriage had always been regarded by the Daventrys and he had no idea that he inherited anything under the Squire's will. Got the idea out of a story-book, I should think, I told him. But there you are!”

“There I am not!” said the rector emphatically. “I call it a foolish attempt to explain what is unexplainable. And why did he and his sister pretend not to recognize one another? There is something behind all this that you have not found out yet, inspector. It looks to me like a deep-laid plot between the two. Though I can't believe that Margaret—However, I am going straight back to the hotel to tax her with all this duplicity and to hear what she has to say.”

“I must ask you not to do that,” the inspector said, taking a few paces up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent, his brows drawn together. At last he came to a standstill before the rector again. “Give me twenty-four hours, sir, and I think I shall be able to explain all that now seems mysterious to you. Will you give me your word not to speak to Miss Balmaine on the subject until this time has expired?”

 “What is the good of it if I do?” the rector questioned impatiently. “Won't the girl see it stuck up on every poster, buy a paper and know that the game, whatever it is, is up?”

“It won't be stuck up on every poster. I have taken care of that,” the inspector returned placidly. “At present this story is a scoop of the
Daily Mercury
's, and will remain so until there is no more need for secrecy.”