Why Shoot a Butler (26 page)

"Not unless I choose," replied Amberley. "To make it clear to you I should have to divulge certain illegal proceedings which might conceivably induce the sergeant to make two more arrests."

The sergeant smiled. "You will have your joke, sir. I don't know what you done, though I always did say and always will, that you'd make a holy terror of a criminal."

"H'm!" said Mr. Amberley.

The sergeant, who by this time would have compounded a felony sooner than be left in the dark, reminded him that he was off duty. "Anything you say to me now won't go no farther, sir," he assured him.

"Very well," said Amberley. He puffed for a moment at his pipe. "To go back to the start." He drew the crumpled will from his pocket and read the date - "which was on llth January, two and a half years ago, when Jasper Fountain made a new will. This is it. It was drawn up by himself on a sheet of foolscap and witnessed by his butler, Dawson, and his valet, Collins, in favour of his grandson Mark, or failing him, of his granddaughter Shirley. From which I infer that he had only just learned of their existence. Or he may have had a change of heart. It's quite immaterial , he left the bulk of his property to Mark Fountain and the sum of ten thousand pounds to his nephew Basil, who, under the previous will, inherited the entire estate. I find that he died five days later, which would account for the fact that no lawyer drew up this document. Jasper Fountain obviously feared he was very near death. What was done with the will I don't know, but that the two witnesses obtained possession of it at Fountain's demise is positive. Whether they tore it in half then or later, again I don't know. At some time or other this was done, the valet keeping one half and the butler having the other. Basil Fountain inherited the estate under the terms of the old will, and these two blackguards instituted a form of blackmail, holding the later will over his head." He paused and again looked down at Shirley. "You shall tell us why Dawson approached you," he said.

"I think he was afraid of Collins," she replied. "Collins wanted to get back his half. Dawson struck me as a timid sort of creature, not really cut out to be a blackmailer. I don't know how he discovered us." She flushed. "You see my father was - not a particularly estimable person. When he died my mother moved from Johannesburg and called herself Brown. Mark and I kept that name after her death, and when we returned to England. I wasn't proud of our own name. Mark didn't care much either way. However, Dawson found us and wrote to Mark. It was a most mysterious letter, hinting at the existence of a will in his favour and warning him of all sorts of danger. It's at my bank now. I thought I'd better keep it. Mark thought it was a hoax. I didn't. I came down to Upper Nettlefold to inquire for rooms.Ivy Cottage was to let, and I took that. It suited me better really, because of-because of Mark's - habits. 1 made Mark write to Dawson, telling him he'd meet him. That frightened Dawson; he didn't want us here, it was too dangerous. He came once to the cottage, but he was terrified of being seen there, and he wouldn't come again. He told us very much what you've heard from Frank. He wanted to get out - I don't think he was afraid of the police so much as of Collins. He offered to sell us his half." She broke off and looked towards the sergeant. "Of course I knew I was going against the law ill negotiating with him, but I couldn't put the matter into the hands of the police, because not only was the will torn in half, but if Collins got wind of the fact that the police were on to him he'd immediately destroy his half."

"Very awkward, miss," agreed the sergeant, who had been listening spellbound.

"The trouble was," Shirley continued, "he wanted a ridiculous sum for it, and naturally we couldn't possibly raise anything like the money until we came into possession of my grandfather's estate. It was rather a deadlock, but in the end we reached a compromise, and Dawson —principally, I think, because he was afraid if he held out we should make trouble with the police - agreed to trust us. He was to meet Mark on the Pittingly Road on his evening out and hand over his half of the will which seemed to me better than nothing. In return Mark was to give him a plain IOU for five thousand pounds."

"Hold on a moment, miss! Was your brother present when he was done in?" demanded the sergeant.

"You're off duty, Sergeant," Mr. Amberley reminded him. "We now come to my own nefarious conduct. You remember that I told you I wasn't sure that I was on your side?"

" I do sir," said the sergeant, regarding him round eyed.

"I informed you," proceeded Amberley, "that I had discovered the body of a murdered man in an Austin Seven saloon on the Pittingly Road. What I did not tell you was that standing in the road beside that car I found Miss Shirley Fountain."

The sergeant's jaw dropped. "Suppressing valuable evidence, Mr. Amberley, sir!"

"Exactly. But Fraser would probably have got her hanged for the murder if I'd spoken. Now you begin to understand why this very dull crime interested me so much. Dawson was alive when you found him, wasn't he, Shirley?"

Just alive. He knew me. He hadn't brought his half of the will. I don't know why not. Probably because he wanted to squeeze us for more money. Anyway he managed to tell me where it was. Then you came."

"You mean to tell me, sir," said the sergeant, "that you knew about this will, and all the rest, right from the start and never let on to us?"

"Not at all. I knew nothing. But I was interested. The only thing I knew was that the murder had been committed for the purpose of robbery. When I learned Dawson's identity I assumed that as it could hardly be money that he had, and as nothing of value was missing from the manor, it was in all probability a document. I made the acquaintance of Basil Fountain. It was on the occasion of my first visit to the manor that my suspicions were roused against Collins. He was rather to anxious to overhear what I had to say. What the conection between him and Fountain was I had no idea, but that there was one I was fairly certain. Fountain knew he was listening at the door, and he didn't want us to guess that. It seemed to me a point worth remembering, too, that Collins' alibi rested on Fountain's word alone. I was sufficiently interested to make a few casual inquiries about Fountain. Before I connected him with the crime at all, you, Aunt Marion, had divulged that you did not like him. I have a great respect for your instinct. You, Felicity, said that he was always grumbling about money. He kicked up a fuss about the cost of Joan's fancy dress. When I made his acquaintance that didn't fit in with his obviously generous, rather extravagant nature. He was the type of man who likes spending money. On the face of it, it looked as though he were hard up. Why? His fortune was considerable, and you, Anthony, informed me that he didn't go in for excesses. You described him quite accurately as a bonhomous sportsman. You also informed me that although he and Joan had never hit it off life had gone more or less smoothly until he came into possession of his uncle's estate."

"I seem to have told you the hell of a lot," remarked Anthony.

"You did. It was to you that I owed my knowledge of his fondness for the sea. You described his bungalow at Littlehaven to me and the super motorboat he had, which was capable of crossing the Channel. At the time that conveyed nothing particular to me. It came in useful later. You also told me that he had asked you to remain on at the manor, actuated, you thought, by funk. He did not want to be left alone there. That might have arisen from his undoubtedy gregarious nature. On the other hand it looked very much as though the presence of guests in the house was a protection. So it was. While you and Joan were there Collins had to walk warily. Fountain was beginning to be afraid of him. He knew that Collins had murdered Dawson, but he dared not give him away for fear Collins should counter with the real will - which Fountain undoubtedly thought he possessed in its entirety. That he didn't eliminate Collins then was due, I feel sure, to his perfectly sincere horror of death. If you remember, Anthony, Miss Fountain mentioned that on the occasion of my first meeting with her. He could not bear the thought of a dead body - even a puppy's."

"After the inquest you, Sergeant, told me of Dawson's money. It puzzled you. You could find no explanation for it. It was then that the thought that he might have been blackmailing Fountain crossed my mind. But what you, Shirley, had to do with any of this I had no idea until the night of the fancy-dress ball at the manor. You attended that ball, quite uninvited, in the costume of an Italian peasant-girl."

"Good Lord, was it you?" cried Felicity. "Joan and I wondered who on earth it could be, because you weren't there at the unmasking. I say, how perfectly thrilling of you!"

"Restrain your ardours, my love," requested Mr. Amberley. "When I discovered the contadina's identity I thought it worth while to keep an eye on her. It did not seem to me probable that she had gate-crashed the ball from a mere desire to be at an amusing party. Putting two and two together I inferred that she had seized the opportunity to get into the manor for some very definate purpose. Then I saw the Reynolds on the passage."

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"A portrait., Sergeant. The portrait of a lady of the late eighteenth century. The resemblance is most striking, Shirley. Fountain came upon me while I was studying this portrait, and from what he said I knew that he was unaware of your presence in the district. He was not much interested in the picture but remarked, with perfect truth, that the lady had the family beetle brows. He thought she was probably a great-grandmother but recommended me to ask the housekeeper."

"The main facts in my possession then were, briefly, these: that Fountain's butler had been shot with robbery as the motive; that a mysterious lady bearing a startling resemblance to the family had been present on that occasion and was now masquerading in the house in disguise; and that Jasper Fountain had had a son, then deceased, whom he had disinherited on account of his predilection for drink - and other things. It proved nothing, but was an interesting coincidence that Mark Brown also drank." He paused and pressed the tobacco down in the bowl of his pipe with his thumb. "We now come to the extremely reprehensible proceedings of Miss Shirley Fountain. Dawson having informed her that his half of the will was hidden in a certain tallboy, she went to find it. She was interrupted by the appearance of Collins, who was watching her with great interest. Both he and she left the tallboy, which was in the passage leading to the picture gallery, and went downstairs. A bad moment, wasn't it, Shirley?"

"Thanks to you!" she retorted.

He laughed "All your own fault, my dear. Well, when the two of them had gone I had a look in the tallboy myself and found the torn half of a will. Part of Jasper Fountain signature was on it, and most of the signatures of the two main witnesses. The names of the legatees were upon the other half, but the thing seemed fairly obvious in spite of that."

"In due course Shirley came back to the tallboy. Finding the will gone she leaped to the conclusion that Collins had been before her. Right?"

"Of course," she said. "What else could I think?"

"I'll tell you later," he said. "Collins, who came a few minutes later to secure the missing half, naturally ;assumed that Shirley had outwitted him. An engaging st;ite of mind on both sides."

Shirley interrupted. "Yes, I've no doubt, but why couldn't you have told me you had it?"

"My good child, once I had that torn paper in my possession there was very little you could tell me that I didn't already know. It was, in fact, infinitely better that neither you nor Collins should know who really had the will. Your combined antics were far more helpful to me than your confidence would have been. There was another reason too, which concerns you and me alone. To continue: On the following day I sustained a visit from Colonel Watson and agreed to take on the case. I now held most of the strings of it. I knew that there was a later will in existence which at least two people were painfully anxious to get hold of. Your anxiety, Shirley, led me to suppose that it was in your favour; Collins' anxiety confirmed my previous suspicion that he was blackmailing Fountain with it. It seemed probable that he held the missing half. The first thing to be proved was your identity, and the main problem was how to get hold of the rest of the will, which obviously existed. It was no case for the police, who wouldn't have acted on an entirely valueless half. I went up to London. I instructed my man Peterson to apply for the vacant post of butler at the manor and provided him with a faked reference, which reminds me that you gave him a bad moment over that, Sergeant."

"Ah!" said thec sergeant deeply.

"Quite. I thought it possible that he might manage to get hold of a clue to the will's hiding-place, but my chief object in putting him at the manor was to have someone watching Fountain's movements. It seemed to me that it could only be a matter of time before Fountain discovered who was living at Ivy Cottage, and when he knew that, anything might happen. On this same visit to town I visited the Times office to look through the back numbers for a notice of your father's death, Shirley. That represents the only occasion in my memory when you've let me down, Aunt Marion. Your recollection of dates is lamentable. He died five years ago, not three."

"Tiresome for you, dear boy," agreed Lady Matthews.

"It was. However, I found the notice at last and took down the address in Johannesburg. Then I sent a cable to a firm of inquiry agents there to ascertain whether he left any issue, and if so what became of the issue. To speed things up a little I also employed a private detective agency in London to trace the records of Mark and Shirley Brown."

"When I got back to Greythorne I found you there, Anthony. You gave me, though reluctantly, a valuable piece of information. You divulged that Fountain had received a letter from a firm of private detectives and that it had very much upset him. That could only mean one thing he was trying to discover what offspring his cousin had left and where they were. The fact that he was upset seemed to point to him knowing that both Mark and Shirley Fountain were actually at his gates. You told me next day that he had had a row with Collins. I imagine he had jumped to the conclusion that Collins was double-crossing him. Things were beginning to move rather quickly, and the devil was in it that while Collins still held that vital portion of the will it was extraordinarily hard to take any sort of action."