And Death Came Too Read online

  “And with or without saying goodnight to or waiting for the police to go? Just as you please.” Lansley finished his champagne and lit a cigarette from the box on the table. “But you know,” he added, “we have not been together all the evening. I mean not well enough to give each other an alibi. In fact, we were saying so only a little while before we came, and I don’t think that it would do to say that we were. We should all have to admit that we danced with other people for instance, and then we should look foolish.”

  Martin got up abruptly.

  “We were foolish to come—”

  “That’s right. Say ‘I told you so.’”

  “Sorry, Patricia, but it’s true. And now we’re solemnly talking about alibis and heaven alone knows why. Everything seems odd here, I know, but that’s only because we’re tired. What we want is a good night’s rest and then we shan’t go talking about alibis and tripping over corpses and nonsense like that. But I must say that I think that it’s infernally rude of Yeldham not to come. I cannot imagine what is keeping him. However, it will save trouble for the future. We needn’t worry to come round again. Oh! I wish you wouldn’t keep on startling me by creeping in and out of the door like that.”

  The last remark was addressed to the police constable who, once more, had quietly made his way back into the dining-room.

  “Sorry, sir. But I must do my duty.”

  “What, another glass of champagne?”

  “Steady, Martin.” Lansley’s voice sounded quite surprised. “That’s a bit hard on the constable. What are you getting all het up about?”

  “Yes, indeed, sir. What?”

  Martin Hands ran his hand across his forehead.

  “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m sorry I was rude, but the fact is I don’t understand what you—or, for that matter, anybody—is up to, and you did ask me some very odd questions without telling me why.”

  “We’re taught in the force, in certain circumstances, to ask questions, not to answer them.”

  “But what circumstances?” The tension in Barbara’s voice sounded almost unbearable.

  “You’ll know soon, miss. That is, if none of you know already.” Suddenly he stopped short and gave an exclamation. “Where’s that other woman?” he asked, in a completely different tone of voice.

  “She went out into the kitchen, I think,” Lansley drawled, pointing to the screen behind which the fair woman had departed. He seemed to be amused to see that the tables were turned and that it was the constable now who was agitated.

  With considerable agility the policeman jumped to the door. In a few seconds he could be heard throwing open the doors of the ground-floor rooms, and turning on the lights.

  “What’s above here?” he called back to them.

  “The maids’ bedrooms,” Barbara answered.

  “All full?” came back the question.

  “How should I know? But very probably. There isn’t much accommodation there.”

  Slightly farther off the constable could be heard trying the back door.

  “Not locked,” he said as he reappeared. “If you ask my opinion, she went that way. I only hope it doesn’t matter. I suppose we can find her when we want her. Who was she, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Lansley answered, as if humouring a child, “and, for that matter, Mr Salter said he didn’t know either. No doubt Mr Yeldham will be able to tell you.”

  “That he won’t.” The reply was very definite. Then, unexpectedly, he went on: “Coo! I shan’t half catch it for this.”

  “Who from?”

  “From the station sergeant first, miss, and the Lord knows from whom afterwards. And I did think I was being so clever. Why did you let her go?” He turned away from Patricia after answering her last question, so that now he was facing Hands and Lansley. In the last few minutes all the impudence and bounce had been knocked out of him, and he looked what he was—little more than a boy, and an inexperienced one at that.

  “Perhaps,” Lansley suggested, “if you had answered any of Mr Hands’ questions and told us what it was about—”

  “Don’t rub it in, sir. I never saw that other door, and that’s a fact, and I thought you were all one party or that the lady was with the tall gentleman. I thought there might perhaps be some promotion coming to me over this, but now—”

  “Yes, but what is ‘this’?” Patricia almost screamed.

  “This, miss? Oh, I forgot. You still don’t know. Just about the time that you ladies and gentlemen must have been arriving, I found Mr Yeldham’s body in his study.”

  “Do you mean he’s dead?” Barbara asked in a dull, senseless way.

  “Yes, miss. Of course, the regulations are to send for the doctor at once in case anything can be done but he couldn’t be alive after losing all that blood.”

  “An accident then?” Lansley asked.

  “A very funny sort of one, sir, although there isn’t any sort of weapon left behind. And now, apparently, I’ve let the woman who did it walk away clean from under my nose.”

  “Why do you think it was her?” Martin glanced at the other three before he spoke.

  “Only because she’s walked off. And by all the powers, for all I know that tall bloke may be walking off, too.”

  “No, I’m here.” Salter, looking as, but no more, uncouth as before, came in through the door from the hall. “I’m sorry about that good lady,” he went on, “but it never occurred to me to stop her. You see then, I wasn’t in your confidence, and I had no idea of what it was all about. I rather thought that she was going to depart, because, you see, she arrived that way.”

  “She did what?” The constable led the chorus of surprised ejaculations.

  “She came in through the back door. She said that she had lost her way and found it open. She, too, was expecting to find Yeldham but, unlike Miss Hands, she knew that I was not him.”

  “I see. I think, sir, that perhaps we had better not say anything more until the station sergeant arrives. He ought to be here any minute now, and I think I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

  Lansley nodded.

  “I don’t know if it’s against the interests of justice,” he said pleasantly, “but I rather suggest that we might suppress one incident.” By way of indicating his meaning he glanced smilingly first at the constable and then at the glass which had been emptied by him.

  “All right,” Patricia agreed for them all, “but look here, constable—?”

  “Reeves, miss.”

  “Constable Reeves, oughtn’t we to start searching at once for this woman?”

  “I think I must leave everything now until Sergeant Evans comes.”

  “But she’s going farther away every minute!”

  “Very possibly, miss, but we shan’t catch her by running. Besides, which way do we go? There won’t be footsteps to follow in August or at any time on this road. Anyhow, I’m not taking any more responsibility. In a few minutes the station sergeant comes and I’m bound to say I wish him joy of it.”

  Indeed, when Sergeant Evans did arrive he seemed in need of the wish but unlikely to see its immediate fulfilment. Two facts stood out in his mind. One was that PC Reeves had made an infernal muddle of everything by not ringing him up earlier and by allowing a great deal too much conversation to have taken place at the wrong time. That was a fact to be emphasised and reported. The second was that the affair was not one for him to deal with. It was a matter for the chief constable who, presumably, would want some help. On the telephone he suggested Dr Vesey, whom his standing orders instructed him to call in when medical assistance was required. Besides that, would Major Flaxman want Sergeant Scoresby brought round?

  Without quite thinking how he was wording his acceptance the chief constable agreed at once that Scoresby was exactly the person who was wanted. Directly afterwards, he remembered that he should have done so with more pretence of deference to Evans, for Scoresby was an innovation of Flaxman’s own making. Previously Treve had got along withou
t a detective sergeant, and Evans was still sore that, if there had to be such a person, he himself had not been appointed. And as if that had not been enough, two of his more intelligent constables had been taken away and given some training in photography and fingerprints. Would the chief constable want those two, too? He would? Very well, he would send Reeves round with orders to bring them. Meanwhile, he would detain everybody else who was at Y Bryn—everybody, that is, who was left. The chief constable put down the receiver and dressed hurriedly. Without knowing quite what Evans meant by “left”—for the telephone conversation had naturally left many gaps to be filled up later—he had an impression that there had been a minor massacre at Y Bryn. He was almost relieved when he reached there to find that he had only to deal with one corpse.

  There seemed, however, to be quite a number of live people in the house. In fact, the hall and the dining-room were almost crowded since Reeves in his anxiety to try to do something right had almost run for the two men for whom he had been sent. Detective Sergeant Scoresby, though only one man, had the additional disadvantage of taking up the room of two, with bushy, beetling black eyebrows that were almost enough for three.

  All these, including even the doctor who had only just got there, were in the hall, and all were firmly refused by Evans the right to do anything or go anywhere else.

  “No, sir,” he was saying firmly, as Flaxman reached the outer front door. “I presume that I am in charge until Major Flaxman comes. When he does, that’s different. But until he does I propose to hand over everything as I found it. Then he can put whom he likes in charge.” It was clear that love was not lost between him and Scoresby.

  “But supposing that something can be done for Mr Yeldham?” Vesey suggested.

  “I understand that that is quite impossible. Ah! Here is the major.” Evans, with the air of a man who has done his duty fully, gladly handed over the situation. “I have here, sir, everybody whom you said you wanted. Five of the six people who were in the house at the time, I have locked up in the dining-room, with Constable Reeves, who is responsible for the escape of the sixth, I regret to say, on duty outside the window. None of them will get away. The maids have been woken up and put in the larder. It may be that it is rather cold there but it’s the only one of those rooms with a key—here it is, sir—and without a window. So far as I know that accounts for everybody, except the one woman who has escaped, and I can be sure, sir, that nothing has been disturbed since I arrived.”

  “I see. You seem to have made everybody thoroughly comfortable, especially the maids. Perhaps you had better tell them to go back to their rooms and wait until they are wanted. We don’t want any deaths from pneumonia. How many are there?”

  “Three. Cook, house-parlourmaid, and a girl—with hysterics.”

  “I’m not surprised. Now then, Scoresby,” Flaxman went on as Evans unlocked the dining-room door to go to the rescue of the party in the larder, “I suppose you want to see the body first?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, but I think just a comforting word to these people in here. Who are they, by the way? Good gracious! Patricia and Martin and you, Barbara, and Gerald Lansley, too! Well, there isn’t much difficulty about knowing who four of the five of you are. But—?” He looked inquiringly at Salter.

  “Salter is my name. I was staying with Yeldham. At your service at any time.”

  “Good. We shall want your help, but I hope not to keep any of you up too long. Stay here for a while though, please. Now then, Scoresby, and you, too, please, doctor. In his own study, I understand. You’ve had this door-handle tested for fingerprints? Good! Oh, Constable Reeves, you think? Not so good! However—” The three of them passed across the hall and opened the door of the study. As they did so a great breath of hot air greeted them.

  “Now why on earth,” Flaxman exclaimed, “turn on an electric fire on a night like this? Even though it is half on. Can’t we turn it off?”

  4

  Report

  Scoresby gladly accepted the chief constable’s invitation to sit down, smoke and report progress to date. From a leather portfolio he produced a number of typewritten sheets of paper.

  “To tell you the truth, sir,” he said wearily, “there’s a mass of detail here, most of which I have hardly digested as yet, and if some of what I tell you is a little muddled, I hope you won’t blame me.”

  “I absolutely understand. You must be very tired, too. When did you get to bed last night?”

  “I didn’t. It was nearly four in the morning before we finished with everybody at Y Bryn. Then I went back and got everything down on paper and by that time it wasn’t worthwhile. So I just went straight on. However, I hope by tonight to have got things to a temporary stopping point and I can pick up sleep quite easily then. Now, sir, where shall we start?”

  “It is quite certain that it is murder, isn’t it?”

  “No doubt whatever. Dr Vesey says that death was due to a sharp instrument being run into Yeldham’s heart and withdrawn almost instantly in all probability. Hence the great quantity of blood. Now a man could, I suppose, conceivably run such an instrument accidentally into himself or could commit suicide that way. I don’t suppose that if he did, he would get the knife, or whatever it was, out, but he certainly could not dispose of it. He would be dead long before, and, as you saw, no weapon was left behind nor did we find one anywhere in the room or anywhere at all for that matter.”

  “Was it a long weapon?” Flaxman asked.

  “Not very. Just long enough to go through his soft white shirt and penetrate his heart. It didn’t go in very far but far enough.”

  “I see. It’s a small point but I wondered at the time why he was wearing a soft shirt. I mean, it was a formal occasion.”

  “The parlourmaid says that he didn’t like stiff ones, and never wore one if he could possibly help it. Apparently he had talked about it, more aloud to himself than anything else, but in her presence, and had finally decided that a soft one was good enough. She seemed to think, though, that he had considerable misgivings about the propriety of it. It’s rather tragic now, because if he had been wearing a stiff one, it might just have made the difference. A very little protection might have been enough.”

  “Did Vesey say if much force was used?”

  “He says that not a great deal would have been necessary, though, of course, a certain amount was used, but he is quite definite that there is no need to exclude anyone—a woman, for instance—on account of lack of pure physical strength.”

  “I see. Direction of blow? Does the height of the person come in?”

  “Almost exactly horizontal. Yeldham was five feet ten. Any ordinary person would be tall enough to give such a blow, while, if you try to eliminate the other way, a tall man could give a short-arm jab, so to speak. So that doesn’t get us much further.”

  “Wait a minute, though. Yeldham was on the floor when we came in.”

  “Yes, sir, but there is no sign of his having been knocked down and then stabbed. Of course, he might have tripped, but people more often trip forwards than backwards. It’s only a guess, but the most likely thing is that he was stabbed when standing upright and that he fell backwards. Dr Vesey says that there is a small bruise on the back of his head which he thinks is due to his banging it against the switch of the electric fire as he fell.”

  “So that accounts for the fire being on!”

  “It would account, sir, but it is only a guess, and although it is very likely, I suppose that we mustn’t take it absolutely for granted.”

  Flaxman nodded his head once or twice as if thinking the point over.

  “Almost certain, I should think. Still, no doubt you’re right to keep a slightly open mind, but I must admit that it spoils what I thought was a promising feature, the clue of the turned-on fire.”

  “It’s more of a nuisance even than that,” Scoresby answered glumly. “It absolutely prevents us from knowing at what time he was killed—that is, from
the medical point of view. You see,” he explained. “Dr Vesey says that any information as to that can only be derived from how far rigor mortis has set in, and that apparently varies from person to person, and hour to hour, on a number of things. The state of health of the man, how well-nourished he was, and, above all, on the temperature in which the body remained. Last night was a reasonably warm night. In that room the accidental—or intentional—turning on of half the electric fire meant, as you know, that it was very hot, and consequently rigor hardly set in at all. Yeldham was alive at eleven o’clock—or just before—according to Salter. The four young people arrived at the house a few minutes before twelve—that is quite certain, and it is also quite certain that he was dead then, but whether he was killed directly he left the room at eleven or whether it was just before Constable Reeves found him, at eleven fifty-three, the doctor says he can’t tell us.”

  “In fact, generally speaking—no doubt through no fault of his own—Dr Vesey’s evidence hasn’t got us much further? Can he do one thing, though? Can he substantiate Salter’s statement that Yeldham was alive at approximately eleven? I’m assuming, for a moment, that there is a possibility of Salter either lying or being genuinely mistaken.”