Dead Mans Quarry: A Golden Age Mystery Page 7
The silence which had fallen upon them with the coffee and cigarettes was broken by Miss Price. Watching a blue ring dissolve against the window, she asked in a meditative voice:
“Felix, what did you think of my brother?”
It was the first time Charles had been mentioned since they left the Tram Inn. Felix shot a quick glance at her, then frowned at his plate, carefully flicking against its edge a minute portion of ash from his cigarette. He replied:
“I don’t know, Blodwen. He wasn’t bad.”
She looked long and keenly at him.
“I see,” she said softly. “De mortuis and the conventions.”
Felix stirred restlessly in his chair.
“He couldn’t help it.”
“Oh, none of us can help being ourselves!” agreed Blodwen softly. “I know what he was like. You needn’t tell me, if it hurts you. I heard from Uncle Morris and Mr. Clino.”
“What did they tell you?” asked Felix.
“Very little. But quite enough.”
There was a pause.
“Where is old Clino?” asked Felix listlessly, looking vaguely about, as if he had just missed him.
“He wouldn’t come down to lunch. He’s taken this affair rather badly. I thought he was going to faint when the telephone call came this morning. You know what a nervous old creature he is.” She added with a cold meditativeness that John, not a squeamish person, found a little horrible: “He ought to be glad. Charles meant to turn him out.”
Once again Felix stirred restlessly, as if he found her plain speaking not to his taste, and glanced at John.
“Mr. Clino,” explained Blodwen to her visitors, “is a distant cousin of ours. He was my father’s secretary and librarian—more or less a sinecure, of course. And I know it was my father’s wish that he should be allowed to end his days at Rhyllan Hall. He’s sixty-seven, too old to start again, and practically destitute. Charles, however, did not intend to respect our father’s wish.”
Once again at the mention of her dead brother her voice became hard and cold. Once again John had a sensation of being chilled and repelled. No one admired more than he a clear and truthful mind. But he was sufficiently conventional to feel that this was not the time for an analysis of poor Charles’s faults. Silence fell once more. At last Felix jumped up, as if seeking in movement some relief from an inner tension.
“Care to have a look round the place?” he asked, and hardly waiting for John to express his pleasure, led the way out through the hall on to the flagged terrace with its border of late summer flowers. A lad who was trimming the low box-hedge round the Dutch garden looked up and touched his cap as they passed. Felix greeted him as an old friend.
“Hullo, David. Letbe anywhere about?”
The boy went red, hesitated, and answered sheepishly:“He’ve gone, master. He’ve bin gone a week.”
Felix bit his lip.
“Oh, yes,” John heard him mutter. “I remember.”
“Sacked,” said Blodwen briefly. She and Rampson had caught up with them and overheard this little conversation. “By the new master. After thirty years’ service. Reason not stated. So I understand.”
“There must have been a reason,” said Felix moodily, as if he felt it his duty to defend the dead man, and they passed on round the corner of the house. Here the terrace widened and a flight of steps led down from it to a wide green lawn, with a glowing herbaceous border at the end of it. There were long French windows here, opening on to the flags, and one of them stood wide to the westering sun.
“This is the library,” said Felix, with his hand on the open window, and suddenly paused, transfixed, looking in. The look of incredulity on his face faded into relief and pleasure. “Hullo, Dad! Nobody told us you were back!”
A very tall man in rough light tweeds rose from a great mahogany desk in the middle of the room and approached the window, blinking in a dazzled way at the bright sun and the four people on the terrace. John saw a man of about sixty, of magnificent height and physique, burly and upright, with a broad-jawed, aquiline face, iron-grey hair and a heavy grey moustache. By the side of his father the slim Felix became insignificant. Yet the resemblance between them was strong. They were of the same Gaelic type, high-coloured, dark-eyed, hook-nosed. Both, Christmas judged, impulsive, irritable and capable of behaving with the utmost unreason. The elder Price frowned as the sun struck him in the eyes, and looked an extremely formidable figure. He came out on to the terrace and responded to his son’s introductions with a pleasant but, John thought, rather forced smile.
“Thinks this isn’t exactly the day for a luncheon-party,” was John’s mental comment. “And no wonder. Well, now he’s relieved his son’s anxiety by reappearing, I suppose my moral support is no longer required.”
But, glancing at Felix, he was not so sure of this. Morris Price was greeting Rampson with a few temperately hospitable words, and Felix was watching him with a close and painful attention, as if disturbed or disappointed by something in his father’s appearance. Certainly the elder man did not look well. His sunburn and high reddish colour had a sickly look mottled over the yellowish skin, and the pouches beneath his dark, rather fierce-looking eyes told of sleeplessness or ill-health or both.
“Been back long, Dad?” asked Felix with a pretence at casualness.
“An hour or more,” replied his father. “I heard you were at lunch, and as I was badly in need of a bath and change I didn’t disturb you. I left the car down in the village—slight engine trouble—and walked up.”
“Well, Uncle Morris,” observed Blodwen, sitting down in one of the wicker chairs and selecting a cigarette from her case, “you’ve caused your devoted niece a sleepless night.”
“Why?” asked the big man brusquely, sitting down beside her and refusing the cigarette she offered him.
“Oh, mystery of missing uncle, and all that,” said Blodwen lightly. “I expected you back last night.”
“I did intend to come back when I’d finished my business in Hereford. But it was such a lovely night I thought I’d like to take a run on the Forest. I had one or two things to think about, and I thought the air up there might clear my brain. And—well, to tell the truth, I stayed there all night, thinking what asses we are to waste every beautiful night asleep. The moonlight was wonderful.”
He seemed aware that his proceedings had been rather unusual, for he spoke in a deprecating tone, and glanced at Felix as if expecting to be laughed at. But Felix did not laugh. There was a silence, while the five of them sat and looked across the smooth lawn and listened to the humming of bees among the flowers and the distant whir of a mowing-machine, all their minds, John thought, occupied with the same unspoken theme. At last Morris spoke it.
“I must borrow your car, Blodwen, and go down to the police station. I didn’t hear of—Charles’s death until about an hour ago, in the village.”
“Lovell said he was coming up here this afternoon,” said Blodwen, “so you needn’t go down. He may be here any minute.”
There was a pause.
“I saw him last night, you know,” said Morris, idly twisting a piece of bass in his large strong hands and frowning down on it. “Charles, I mean. Walked with him as far as the quarry.”
His dead nephew’s name seemed to be distasteful or embarrassing to him, for each time he spoke it with a slight pause and jerk, as if forcing his lips to utter it. Like his niece, he uttered no formal expressions of sorrow or surprise.
Poor Charles, thought John to himself, seems to have gone his way unwept, unhonoured and unsung, by his own family, anyhow. He looked at the three Prices, with their odd likeness to one another, their hard-cut aquiline faces, close-set lips and bright, fearless eyes, and felt suddenly sorry for the dead Charles. An intolerant lot, they looked, capable of making the life of an interloper anything but a happy one. And now not one of them would commit the ordinary decent folly of pretending to be sorry the interloper was dead. For Felix’s distress was occasion
ed by something other than sorrow, John was prepared to swear.
Mr. Price seemed to become suddenly aware of his duties as a host, and abandoned the subject of his nephew’s death as though it were of small importance.
“Are you staying in this neighbourhood?”
“At the Feathers in Penlow, at present. But not for long. We’re touring with a car and move on as the spirit moves us. We may go towards Radnor to-morrow.”
Felix looked quickly at John, and opened his lips as if to speak, but decided to say nothing.
“Or towards London,” murmured Rampson hopefully.
John laughed.
“My cousin is one of those unfortunate beings who are never really happy on holiday,” explained John. “He seems to regard time spent away from work as wasted. Very curious and very rare.”
Mr. Price smiled his agreeable, rather formal smile.
“There’s nothing like work,” he said, “to give one permanent satisfaction. It’s the only thing worth while. And life’s so short.”
His deepset eyes roved over the prospect in front of them, the lawn, the park, the great well-grown trees. And it was plain to see where his work lay, and that his heart lay with it. Evidently he shared Blodwen’s love and reverence for his family’s old home. And quite suddenly, as though something in the elderly man’s proprietary look had raised the question, John wondered who inherited Rhyllan Hall. The answer, with the question, seemed to lie in Morris’s fond, arrogant gaze: Morris, and after him Felix. The interloper had been providentially removed. A queer little shiver passed over John, in spite of the warmth of the August sun, and it was with a faint unreasonable foreboding that he heard heavy steps on the terrace round the corner of the house.
The sad-faced Superintendent Lovell appeared, followed by a younger man in plain clothes. He greeted Morris Price with quiet deference.
“I’m glad you’re back, sir. Could I have a few words with you about this terrible affair?”
“Certainly, Superintendent.”
The big man rose and without further words led the two police officers through the French windows into the library. Felix half rose, with an anxious look, as if to accompany them, but receiving no invitation to do so fell back into his chair. There was a silence. “Felix,” said Blodwen slowly at last, “did you recognize that green bicycle pump this morning at the Tram?”
“No.”
“I did.” She paused, looked at Christmas and Rampson as if wondering whether or not to take them into her confidence. Then, impulsively: “It was poor old Letbe’s.”
“Letbe!” Felix turned, startled, and stared at her. “No! Are you sure?”
“Quite. I wasn’t going to give him away to Lovell, but of course they’ll be on his track in no time, without my help. Lots of people must have noticed he carried a green pump on his bicycle.” Her fine grey eyes sought John’s. “Mr. Christmas, you told me that you were specially interested in these sort of cases, and so I’m taking you into my confidence. You don’t mind, do you?’ We’re so isolated here, we see so few people. It’ll be a help to be able to talk matters over with someone outside the family. For though”—her clear voice sank lower and slower—“though, as I suppose you’ve noticed, none of us is broken-hearted by my brother’s death, still it is a terrible thing to have happened. We shan’t be able to think of much else for a while, I’m afraid.”
Felix cut through John’s expressions of willingness to give every possible help.
“But, good lord! Does that mean that Letbe—”
“Sh!” said Blodwen, and then, with a wry smile: “Oh, dear! I’ve read detective novels and laughed at them. And now I feel as if there were an army of detectives lurking round the corner of the house!” Meeting John’s observant eyes, she said gravely, in a lower tone: “Do you think me heartless, Mr. Christmas? Remember that I haven’t seen my brother for fifteen years, and that he went to Canada because—well, frankly, because we couldn’t endure him at home.” She added still lower: “He shot my dog Pelleas while I was away. They told me he laughed when he came upon the poor thing wounded and dying.”
“Letbe!” repeated Felix again. “But, I say, Blodwen, how awful!”
John noted, however, that the young man looked more relieved than shocked.
“Letbe,” explained Blodwen, leaning across her cousin and talking to John, “is our old head gardener. He’d been here nearly thirty years, longer than we have. He was here in my great-uncle Almeric’s time. Well, my brother sent him away about a week ago.” A flush rose suddenly in her thin cheeks. “It was—a horrible thing to do! He was the best man we had! His heart was in the place!”
“What was the reason, I wonder?”
“Uncle Morris said he wouldn’t give a reason, beyond saying that the old man was too big for his boots, as he put it. But Mrs. Maur—that’s the housekeeper—tells me that—that the trouble had something to do with Letbe’s daughter, who was housemaid here. Oh, it’s horrible! Charles kissed her, or something, and Letbe made her give notice. I suppose,” she spoke through clenched teeth, “it’ll all come out at the inquest. Delightful it’ll be!”
“But do you mean to say,” Felix spoke in a hushed voice, “that they think Letbe did it?”
“My dear Felix, how can I possibly tell what they think? I only say, it was Lethe’s pump—”
She broke off as the voice of Morris Price, raised in loud, arrogant tones, became audible through the closed French windows.
“I see no reason why I should enter into details, Superintendent! It was on private business that I went into Hereford, and business that has absolutely no connection with your case!”
The murmur of Superintendent Lovell’s dry, melancholy voice followed.
Blodwen looked startled for a moment at her uncle’s loud, angry tone, then said with a half-smile:
“What a shocking witness Uncle Morris would make in a law case! I can just hear him saying to counsel, or even to the judge: ‘Sir, I decline to answer your impertinent questions!’”
Felix stirred and glanced uneasily at his cousin.
“He does hate being interfered with or questioned,” went on Blodwen with a sort of amused affection in her voice, “and never sees any reason why he should explain himself even to his family ”
She broke off as footsteps sounded once more on the terrace and the voice of Mr. Price could be heard saying stiffly:
“I wish you good afternoon!”
The next moment he came round the corner of the house, frowning.
“Confound these policemen!” he said, taking the chair next to John and offering him a cigarette. “They seem to think the fact that they’re investigating a case gives them the right to ask all sorts of questions that have no bearing on the matter at all!”
“Ah!” said Blodwen lightly. “In all the detective stories I’ve read it’s been the thing that has no bearing that turns out to be the important clue!”
“I suppose,” said Rampson in his deep, tranquil voice, “that until they know the answer to a question they don’t know whether it has a bearing or not.”
Mr. Price turned on him as if about to damn his impertinence, but recollecting himself, replied merely:
“Oh, possibly!” and went on: “It seems they found poor old Letbe’s bicycle smashed up in the quarry. And they found Charles’s bicycle at Letbe’s cottage.”
“I was afraid so,” said Blodwen gravely, and Felix asked impulsively:
“Then do they think?”
“Oh, Lord knows what they think!” exclaimed his father brusquely. “They’re ‘investigating the matter.’ Letbe’s story is that when he came out of the inn last night he found his bicycle gone, and as there was another bicycle standing about unclaimed he went home on that, thinking somebody had taken his by mistake. I expect the old idiot’s been threatening blue murder in all the pubs in the district ever since he was turned off. Unless he’s got proof of his story things will go badly with him, no doubt.”
“Are there any other clues?” asked John.
“Apparently not. Unless you call it a clue that a ring seems to be missing. A signet-ring with a bloodstone in it. The police seem to make a lot of that. Lovell wanted to know if there was any history attached to the ring, anything that might make it interesting apart from its intrinsic value, which evidently isn’t much. Charles always wore a bloodstone ring, that’s all I could tell him; he was wearing it when he first arrived. But I can’t imagine that anybody’d commit murder for the sake of a bloodstone ring. It’s probably lying among the grass and stuff in the quarry.”
“Possibly,” agreed John. “Although, of course, there’s always the possibility that the ring, valueless in itself, had some intrinsic value for the dead man and for another person. One’s heard of such cases. There’s always the possibility, also, that the ring, being loose, slipped off during a struggle into one of the murderer’s pockets. In either case I’m afraid it’s gone for good. The murderer would be very careful that it never came to light again. May I ask if the date is fixed for the inquest?”
. “The day after to-morrow at the Tram Inn, at ten o’clock. And a beastly business it’ll be,” said the elder man irritably. “I’m one of the principal witnesses, I understand. Apparently I was the last person—last person but one, that is—to see my nephew alive. What made all the rest of you go off like that and leave Charles behind, by the way?”