The Ginger Cat Mystery (8 page)

During Crawley's reminiscence Vereker's restless eyes had been busy. A chintz-covered settee in a bay window overlooking the garden had particularly attracted him and, bending over it, he had looked at it with the most minute attention. Finally he picked from the chintz cover with a small pair of steel forceps some almost invisible object and carefully put it away in his note-case between a folded sheet of paper beside the one he had discovered on Frank Cornell's lounge suit. Then on hands and knees he examined the carpet close to the settee with his magnifying glass. Satisfied with the scrutiny, he rose once more to his feet.

“When was this room last cleaned out, Crawley?” he asked.

“The morning of the very day Mr. Frank was killed, sir. It was done properly, too. All the chair covers taken off and replaced with new ones, carpet vacuum cleaned, paint all washed and the chimney swept. It was all finished by lunch time.”

“It hasn't been used at all since?” asked Vereker with surprise.

“No, sir, I don't think a soul has been in the room except Doctor Redgrave who looked in the other night to see if he could see the ghost. If you ask me, sir, he simply wanted to have a quiet chat with madam and wasn't bothering about no ghost.”

“Thanks, Crawley. Don't let me keep you off your work if you're busy,” suggested Vereker, who noticed that the butler had just glanced at his watch.

“I was going to suggest, sir, that if you didn't want me, I had a particular job I'd like to get on with. Mr. Carstairs is going to be in for lunch at one o'clock. If there's anything you'd wish will you please ring.”

“I thought everyone had gone over to Doctor Redgrave's for lunch,” remarked Vereker.

“Only the ladies, sir. Mr. Carstairs said he'd be here all afternoon in case there was any urgent inquiries by the police and Mrs. Cornell was glad there was someone to take charge in her absence.”

With these words Crawley departed and Vereker began a very systematic and thorough search of the room. He lifted up the top of the grand piano, thrust his hands into the interstices of chairs and settee, peered behind pictures, and even probed up the chimney. He then unlocked the door leading down to the garden by the stone steps and immediately a look of surprise came over his face. Something important had caught his highly alert and observant senses. As he stood ready to step out he again turned the key forwards and backwards. This moved the bolt of the lock with such unexpected ease and silence that he promptly looked closely at the bolt and found that it had been recently oiled. Quickly bending down, he smelled the bolt and then brought his hand down with an ecstatic slap on his knee.

“By Jove, this is excellent,” he exclaimed. “There's simply no mistaking the pleasant, sweetish odour of ‘Three in One' oil.”

Descending the flight of stone steps, he wandered round a portion of the garden and carefully examined the gravel path that ran contiguous with the walls of the house. Finding nothing to arrest his attention, he returned, re-entered the music room, and locked the door once more. He had just satisfied himself that for the time being there was nothing else to be learned in this quarter of the house and was about to explore the rooms leading off the first-floor corridor, when he heard footsteps ascending the stairs and a few seconds afterwards a tall young man entered the room. He had an earnest, shrewd face with a firm mouth and chin and walked with that gait which unmistakably discloses a full measure of self-confidence.

“You are Mr. Vereker?” he asked bluntly.

“I am,” replied Vereker as briefly.

“My name's Carstairs,” he continued with an added inflection of amiability as if he felt his address had been too curt and wished to apologize for it. “Mrs. Cornell has asked me to take charge here for her while police investigations are being carried out. If there's anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

“Thanks, I'm very much obliged. Can you tell me if there's a cat in the house?” asked Vereker.

For a moment an unpleasant look of aggression lit Mr. Carstairs' eye. He thought that the visitor was being impertinently facetious. Seeing that Vereker was in earnest he replied, “As far as I know, only one black cat which is an excellent mouser. Mrs. Cornell adores him.”

Silence ensued and was at length broken by Carstairs.

“What are you doing about lunch to-day?” It's nearly one o'clock,” he said glancing at his watch.

“I shall see what ‘The Dog and Partridge' can do about it in half an hour's time. These country inns often surprise one quite pleasantly in the matter of a good meal.”

“If you'd care to lunch with me, I'd be quite glad,” continued Carstairs. “It's dull eating by one's self and I might be helpful to you with regard to your work in this dreadful business.”

“If it would be no trouble,” replied Vereker, feeling that he certainly would like to hear Mr. Carstairs' views on the murder of Frank Cornell. Frank Cornell and he had been friends since they were at school together and he probably knew the dead man more intimately even than his own family.

“No trouble at all. I'll just see Crawley at once,” he said and disappeared down the stairs.

In spite of a certain aggressive confidence in himself and a peculiar habit of assuming an impressive air when about to speak, Mr. Roland Carstairs made on the whole a favourable impression on Vereker. He was very direct and if opinionated certainly wasted no time in irrelevant subtleties or beating about the bush. Moreover, he showed himself intensely interested in the technicalities of detection and evinced a wholehearted eagerness to get at the truth about the mysterious murder of his friend, Frank Cornell. He was anxious to discuss every point of the case with utmost freedom and give Vereker any information he could. Having measured up his man with swift insight, Vereker lost no time in taking advantage or the occasion to add to his knowledge of the whole strange affair.

“You were a great friend of Mr. Frank Cornell?” he asked after the first stiffness of conversation had thawed into geniality.

“We were at school together, went up to Oxford together and had more or less kept in touch ever since, Mr. Vereker. In a friendship between two men you will generally find that one of the two is the dominant character. He doesn't consciously assume this superiority, he doesn't intrude it unpleasantly on the other; it's the consequence of the rather obscure thing we call personality. Now in our friendship I was the dominant partner. I was a couple of years older, but I don't think age had anything to do with it. His was the more brilliant and supple mind and in spite of a certain boyishness of behaviour, Frank was undeniably clever. My outlook, however, had a quality which his lacked and the only word I can find to express it is, rigidity. It's not an intellectual asset, it's a thing of temperament. I acted as a moral brake on his rather amoral recklessness. Often our differences came to the point of my giving him a jolly stern lecture on his general conduct. Now, he had the astuteness and courage to see and admit that I was right and even when I'd lost my wool and said bitter and brutal things to him, he'd wind up by being repentant in his jocular way. He often used to heal a tiff with, ‘Never mind, Roly, I'll take your advice and try and act on it in future. You see you were born with just those qualities that make you a splendid unit of a shining social herd. I've got to break myself in and form those qualities. It's a hell of a hard job, my boy. A feckless Frank can't be hammered into a righteous Roly in the twinkling of an eye.'”

“You did your best to keep him straight,” suggested Vereker, secretly amused at the hint of priggishness that peeped out of Carstairs' conversation.

“Yes, I did my very best because I was genuinely fond of him. I knew he thought I was a self-righteous old stick and used to laugh at me, but I never allow myself to be intimidated by ridicule in doing what I think's my duty.”

“That requires a good deal of moral courage,” said Vereker and noted that his companion was secretly gratified by the compliment. It at once removed his initial attitude of reserve and he became more informative than ever.

“I look at life in this way,” he continued as he sipped his wine with delicate precision. “Human beings are diverse and it's no use saying a man's worthless if his character differs from your own. But we've got to jog along together happily and everyone must conform to a certain social code. If your propensities bump against that fairly elastic code, you've simply got to clip the wings of your propensities. If you seek complete personal liberty you're asking for humming birds. It can't be done, Mr. Vereker.”

“But suppose the social code isn't based on biological necessities,” said Vereker, faintly roused to an argumentative mood.

“Biological necessities be damned,” returned Carstairs firmly. “It's the modern scientific way of saying we must follow Nature's laws. Subversive rubbish! Nature is haphazard and pure opportunism. Lust, cruelty, greed, rape, theft, war are all natural. No, no, it won't do. Now Frank and I were absolutely dissimilar. He was too fond of drink, of gambling, of philandering. He always had his snout turned towards the path that leads to social disaster. I didn't think he was depraved on that account. I simply thought he was a fool and tried to show him that he was.”

“He was badly in debt, I believe,” remarked Vereker.

“He was always getting badly into debt. His father rescued him on several occasions. I've helped him, too, according to my means. But his father took him the wrong way. He stormed and raved at the poor fellow instead of trying to reason with him. That only put Frank's back up and he could be as obstinate as a pig. Old Cornell had threatened to cut him off with a shilling so frequently that Frank used to say the bobs were mounting up to quite a respectable legacy.”

“Did his father give him an adequate allowance?” asked Vereker.

“Five hundred a year but what's the use of five hundred a year to a man who thinks in champagne, horses and costly presents for pretty young women. It's an ample allowance for any sensible fellow, I admit, and he ought to have lived down to it while he was studying for his profession.”

“He was intended for the bar,” suggested Vereker.

“Yes, but reading for the bar was merely a camouflage with Frank for living in chambers and having a floodlight time of it.”

“He'd have settled down all right after marriage, perhaps.”

“Perhaps!” repeated Carstairs ironically. “If he'd married the right sort of woman. Once upon a time he was really in love with his cousin Stella and she with him. It would have made an admirable marriage—unless you think biologically. Stella's one of the best women that ever breathed: that is, of course, in my opinion. But old Cornell was dead against it and so was Stella's father. They both forbade their children to enter into such a union. Old Cornell wanted Frank to make a better match, connect up with a good county family. David Cornell thought his daughter too good for what he called ‘that drunken little profligate.' In the end the lovers cooled off.”

“What about Miss Valerie Mayo?” asked Vereker.

“Yes, John Cornell thought his son might do worse. She comes of good family and is fairly wealthy as wealth goes nowadays, but I can't stand the woman myself. It was none of my business but strictly between ourselves I think she was the last person Frank ought to have married, had he lived. Over-sexed, cocktail-sipping blonde with an hysterical desire for limelight! Her very phrase, ‘I'm just crazy about Frank,' was enough for me. In my opinion she's simply just crazy and nothing else. No genuine feelings, just a sticky mess of screen heroics, inordinate vanity and gingered sexual appetite. She'd have suited Frank till he tired of her physically and then there would have been the inevitable divorce. And she'd have thought such a deplorable climax fashionably smart if it attracted sufficient publicity!”

“A very modern young lady,” commented Vereker.

“I don't agree with you,” contradicted Carstairs emphatically. “Modernity has nothing to do with it. The type has always existed. At certain periods of human history she lived her real life secretly and conformed to public opinion openly. Human nature doesn't alter but its mental plumage is pagan or puritan according to what is called the swing of the pendulum. We're rather pagan at the moment.”

“You think Miss Mayo was genuinely in love with Frank Cornell?” asked Vereker.

“Oh, yes, in her own way. She does nothing by halves. Everything is ‘most frightfully' or ‘just too perfectly.' You know the kind of ecstatic being. Her love for Frank would be a ‘body and soul' business or nothing.”

“Was he tiring of this intense young lady?” asked Vereker.

“I don't think so. The type appealed to him strongly. Her hyperbole awoke something sympathetic in his own genuine recklessness.”

“You were in the house on the fatal evening?” asked Vereker.

“Oh, yes. At dinner there were Mrs. Cornell, Doctor Redgrave, Mrs. and Miss Mayo, Frank Cornell and myself. After dinner we went to the drawing-room where Miss Mayo played and sang and, to give her her due, she can be most entertaining. She is anxious for a stage career and certainly has ability. Then someone suggested bridge, but it never materialized and finally Dr. Redgrave was persuaded by Mrs. Cornell to do some of his conjuring tricks for our amusement. At that sort of thing he's amazingly clever, quite up to professional standard, I should say. Personality here again counts almost as much as conjuring skill.”

“And then?” asked Vereker trying to shepherd his informer away from any irrelevancy.

“We just talked. When it was dark, the conversation turned on the Manor ghost and Miss Mayo, probably picturing herself as the future mistress of the Manor, said it was frightfully thrilling to have a house with an authentic ghost. Redgrave listened attentively to Mrs. Cornell's story of the lady at the piano in her wedding dress, his disbelief in the apparition well hidden by his admiration for the narrator.”