The Layton Court Mystery Read online

  ‘For the simple reason that the excellent Jefferson would certainly not give anything away, my dear Alec; whereas there’s always the chance that a woman will. But enough! We’ll confine ourselves to sticks and stones, and leave the human element out of account; or the feminine part of it, at any rate. But for all that,’ Roger added wistfully, ‘I would like to know what’s going on amongst that trio!’

  ‘Humph!’ Alec grunted disapprovingly.

  They paced for a time in silence up and down the edge of the lawn, which ran parallel with the back of the house.

  Roger’s thoughts were racing. The disappearance of the footprints had caused him drastically to rearrange his ideas. He had now no doubt at all that Jefferson not only knew all about the crime itself, but that he was in all probability an actual participator in it. Whether his part had been an active one and he had been present in the library at the time, was impossible to say; probably not, Roger inclined to think. But that he had helped to plan it and was now actively concerned in endeavouring to destroy all traces of it was surely beyond all disbelief. That meant one accomplice, at least, within the house.

  But what was really worrying Roger far more than the question of Jefferson’s share in the affair was the possible inclusion of the two women who seemed somehow to be mixed up with it. On the face of things no doubt it was, as Alec so strongly held, almost incredible that either Mrs Plant or Lady Stanworth could be a party to a murder. Yet it was impossible to dispute the facts. That there was a distinct understanding between Jefferson and Lady Stanworth seemed as certain to Roger as that there had been a murder in the house instead of a suicide. And a similar understanding between Mrs Plant and Jefferson appeared to be even more strongly established. Added to which there was her suspicious behaviour in the library that morning; for in spite of the fact that her jewels had been in the safe, after all, Roger was still no less firmly convinced that this excuse for her presence in the library was a lie. Furthermore, Mrs Plant certainly knew very much more about Stanworth and his relations with his secretary and sister-in-law than she was willing to admit; it was a pity that she had checked herself just in time after tea, when she appeared to have been on the point of allowing something of real importance to slip past her guard.

  Yes; though he was no more willing to believe it than was Alec himself, Roger could see no loophole through which to escape from the assumption that both Mrs Plant and Lady Stanworth were as deeply implicated as Jefferson himself. It was most unfortunate that Alec should have chosen to adopt such a highly prejudiced view of the matter; this was just the sort of thing for which nothing was required so much as impartial discussion. Roger covertly eyed the face of his taciturn companion and sighed softly.

  The back of the house did not run in a single straight line. Between the library and the dining room, where was the small room which was used for storing trunks and lumber, the wall was set back a few feet and formed a shallow recess; and this space was occupied by a little shrubbery of laurels. As the two passed this shrubbery, a small blue object, lying on the ground at the outer edge, caught the sun’s rays and the gleam of it attracted Roger’s attention. Carelessly and half unconsciously, he strolled towards it.

  Then something in its particular shade of blue struck a sudden note in his memory, and he stared at it curiously.

  ‘What’s that little blue thing by the roots of those laurels, Alec?’ he asked, frowning at it. ‘It seems vaguely familiar somehow.’

  He stepped across the path and picked it up. It was a piece of blue china.

  ‘Hullo!’ he said eagerly, holding it up so that Alec could see it. ‘Do you realise what this is?’

  Alec joined him on the path and looked at the piece of china without very much interest.

  ‘Yes, it’s a bit of broken plate or something.’

  ‘Oh, no, it isn’t! Don’t you recognise the colour? It’s a bit of the missing vase, my boy. I wonder – By Jove, I wonder if the rest is in here.’

  He dropped on his hands and knees and peered among the laurels. ‘Yes, I believe I can see some other bits farther in. I’ll investigate, if you’ll keep an eye open to see that nobody is coming.’ And he crawled laboriously into the little shrubbery.

  A few moments later he returned by the same route. In his hands were several more pieces of the vase.

  ‘It’s all in there,’ he announced triumphantly. ‘Right back by the wall. You see what must have happened?’

  ‘The fellow threw it in there,’ said Alec wisely.

  ‘Exactly. I expect he put the pieces in his pocket when he collected them, in order to chuck them away somewhere as soon as he got clear. Methodical sort of bird, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alec agreed, looking at Roger with some surprise. ‘You seem quite excited about it.’

  ‘I am!’ Roger said emphatically.

  ‘Why? It’s what we expected, isn’t it? More or less. I mean, if the vase was broken and the pieces disappeared, it’s a pretty reasonable assumption that he threw them away somewhere, isn’t it?’

  Roger’s eyes sparkled. ‘Oh, perfectly. But the point is where he threw them. Doesn’t it occur to you, Alec, that this place is not on the route between the lattice window and the quickest way out of the grounds? In other words, the drive. Also, doesn’t it occur to you that if he wanted to throw them where nobody would be likely to find them, the best place to do it would be that thick undergrowth on either side of the drive – especially as he would be passing along it on his way out? Don’t those points seem rather significant to you?’

  ‘Well, perhaps it is a little curious, now you come to mention it.’

  ‘A little curious!’ Roger repeated disgustedly. ‘My dear chap, it’s one of the most significant things we’ve struck yet. What’s the inference? I don’t say it’s correct, by the way. But what is the inference?’

  Alec pondered.

  ‘That he was in a deuce of a hurry?’

  ‘That he was in a deuce of a fiddlestick! He’d have gone on straight down the drive if that is all. No! The inference to my way of thinking is that he never was going down the drive at all.’

  ‘Oh? Where was he going, then?’

  ‘Back into the house again! Alec, it’s beginning to look as if that Mysterious Stranger of ours may be going the same way as Mr John Prince.’

  chapter eighteen

  What the Settee had to Tell

  Alec stared incredulously. ‘Back into the house? But – but what on earth would he want to be going back into the house for?’

  ‘Ah, now you’re asking me something. I haven’t the least idea. I don’t even know that he was going back into the house. All I say is that that is the only inference I can draw from the fact of these pieces of vase being where they are. It’s possibly quite wrong.’

  ‘But look here, if he wanted to go into the house again, why on earth should he have taken the trouble to climb out of the window like that? Why didn’t he just go out of the library door?’

  ‘Obviously because he wanted to leave all ways into or out of the library fastened on the inside, in order to further the idea of suicide.’

  ‘But why should he have gone back into the house at all? That’s what I can’t understand.’

  ‘Well,’ Roger remarked very casually, ‘supposing he lived there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, supposing he lived there. He’d want to go up to bed, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Good Lord, you’re surely not suggesting that somebody in the house murdered old Stanworth, are you?’ Alec asked in horrified tones.

  Roger relit his pipe with some care.

  ‘Not necessarily, but you keep asking me why he should want to get back into the house, and I give you the most obvious explanation. As a matter of fact, I should say that he probably wanted to communicate with somebody inside before making his escape.’

  ‘Then you don’t think it was somebody from inside the house who killed Stanworth?’ Alec asked with some relief. />
  ‘Heaven only knows,’ Roger replied laconically. ‘No, perhaps on second thoughts I don’t. We mustn’t forget that Jefferson couldn’t find those keys this morning. Unless that was a blind, by Jove! I never thought of that. Or he might have forgotten something important and wanted to get at the safe again, not realising that he’d put the keys back in the wrong pocket.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Alec said slowly, ‘that Jefferson is the only person inside the house that you would suspect of having done it?’

  ‘No, I’m hanged if he is,’ Roger retorted with energy.

  ‘Oh! Who else then?’

  ‘I’m suspecting everybody at present; put it like that. Everybody and everything within these four walls.’

  ‘Well, look here, don’t forget your promise, mind. No decisive steps to be taken without me, eh?’

  ‘Yes, but look here, Alec,’ Roger said seriously, ‘you really mustn’t stand out unnecessarily if I might want to take steps that don’t altogether meet with your approval. We’re playing a very grave game, you know, and we can’t treat it as a joy-trip and only do the bits we like and leave out all the nasty part.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alec said, a little reluctantly. ‘I see that. I won’t make a fuss about anything unnecessarily. But we must go on working together.’

  ‘Right!’ Roger answered promptly. ‘That’s a bargain, then. Well, look here, there’s one thing we ought to have done earlier, but it quite slipped my memory. We must have a look for that possible second cartridge case. Personally I don’t believe there is one; I think there was one shot fired from each revolver. But it’s a possibility, and we ought not to overlook it.’

  ‘Rather a tall order, isn’t it? It might be anywhere in the whole grounds.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s only one place that it’s any use to search – the library. If we can’t find it there, we’ll give it up.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Oh, Alexander,’ Roger observed unhappily, as they strolled back to the library. ‘Alexander, we’re very terribly handicapped in this little problem, as Holmes would call it.’

  ‘In what way particularly?’

  ‘Not knowing the motive for the murder. If we could only get at that, it would simplify matters tremendously. Why, I dare say we could put our hands on the criminal at once. That’s the way all these murder cases are solved, both in real life and in fiction. Establish your motive, and work back from that. We’re groping utterly in the dark, you see, till we’ve found that.’

  ‘And you haven’t any idea of it at all? Not even a guess?’

  ‘Not a one. Or, rather, too many. It’s impossible to say with a man like Stanworth. After all, what do we know about him, beyond that he was a cheery old gentleman and kept an excellent cellar? Nothing! He might have been a lady-killer, and it may be a case of the jealous husband, with Lady Stanworth and Jefferson in the know after it had happened, and hushing it up for the sake of the name.’

  ‘I say, that’s a good idea! Do you really think it was that? I shouldn’t be a bit surprised.’

  ‘It’s possible, but I shouldn’t say it was likely. He was rather too old to be acting as Lothario, wasn’t he? Or again it might have been somebody whom he ruined in business (I shouldn’t say his methods were any too scrupulous) and a somewhat drastic revenge, with the other two also knowing what had happened and keeping quiet about it for reasons that we don’t know anything about. But what’s the use? There are a hundred theories, all equally possible and plausible, to fit the very meagre array of facts that we’ve got in our possession.’

  ‘We are in a bit of a fog, yes,’ Alec agreed as they entered the library.

  ‘But there’s rather more light I think, already, than an hour or two ago,’ Roger replied cheerfully. ‘No, when all’s said and done, we haven’t done so badly as yet, what with luck and certain other things which modesty forbids me to mention. And now for this cartridge case, and let’s pray that we shan’t be interrupted.’

  For some minutes they searched diligently in silence. Then Alec scrambled up from his knees beside the little typist’s table and inspected his hands ruefully.

  ‘No sign of it,’ he said, ‘and I’m in a filthy mess. I don’t think it can be in here, do you?’

  Roger was investigating the cushions of the big settee.

  ‘Afraid not,’ he replied. ‘I hardly expected it, but – Hullo, what’s this?’

  He drew out a small piece of white material from between two of the loose cushions and inspected it with interest.

  Alec strolled across the room and joined him. ‘It looks like a woman’s handkerchief,’ he said carefully.

  ‘More than that, Alexander; it is a woman’s handkerchief. Now what on earth is a woman’s handkerchief doing in Stanworth’s library?’

  ‘I expect she left it here,’ Alec remarked wisely.

  ‘Alec, this is positive genius! I see it all now. She must have left it here. And there was I thinking that she’d sent it by post, with special instructions for it to be placed between those cushions in case she ever wanted to find it there!’

  ‘You are funny, aren’t you?’ Alec growled wearily.

  ‘Occasionally,’ Roger admitted modestly, ‘quite. But reverting to the handkerchief, I wonder whether this is going to prove rather important. What do you think?’

  ‘How could it?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure yet, but I have a sort of feeling. It all depends on several things. Whose handkerchief it is, for instance, and when this settee was tidied up last, and when the owner of the handkerchief admits she was in here last, and – Oh, quite a large number of things.’ He sniffed at the handkerchief delicately. ‘H’m! I seem to know that scent, at all events.’

  ‘You do?’ Alec asked eagerly. ‘Who uses it?’

  ‘That unfortunately I don’t appear to remember for the moment,’ Roger confessed reluctantly. ‘Still, we ought to be able to find that out with a few discreet inquiries.’

  He put the handkerchief carefully in his breast pocket, crumpling it into a small ball so as to retain as much of the scent as possible.

  ‘But I think the first thing to do,’ he continued, when it was safely bestowed, ‘is to examine this settee rather more minutely. You never know what you’re going to find, apparently.’

  Without disturbing the cushions further, he began a careful scrutiny of the back and arms. It was not long before he found himself rewarded.

  ‘Look!’ he exclaimed suddenly, pointing at a place on the left arm. ‘Powder! See? Face powder, for a sovereign. Now I wonder what on earth that’s got to tell us, if we only know how to read it.’

  Alec bent and examined the place. A very faint smudge of white powder stood out upon the black surface of the cloth.

  ‘You’re sure that’s face powder?’ he asked, a little incredulously. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Roger admitted cheerfully. ‘It might be French chalk. But I’m sure it is face powder. Let me see, face powder just on the inner curve of the arm; what does that mean? Or talking about arms, perhaps it’s arm powder. They do powder their arms, don’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably.’

  ‘Well, you ought to,’ Roger said severely. ‘You’re engaged, aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ Alec replied mournfully. After all, Roger would have to know some time that the engagement had been broken off.

  Roger stared at him in amazement. ‘No? But you got engaged to Barbara yesterday, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alec, still more mournfully. ‘But we broke it off today. Or postponed it, rather, It may be on again in a month or so, I hope.’

  ‘But why, in the name of goodness?’

  ‘Oh, for – for certain reasons,’ Alec said lamely. ‘We decided it was the best thing to do. Er – private reasons, you know.’

  ‘Good Lord, I’m awfully sorry to hear it, old man,’ said Roger genuinely. ‘I hope things will come all right for you in the end; and if there’s anything in the
world that I can do, you know you’ve only got to say the word. There isn’t a couple anywhere that I’d sooner see fixed up than you and Barbara. You’re quite the nicest two people I know.’ Roger was in the habit of disregarding the convention that a man should never under any circumstances display emotion in the presence of another man, just as heartily as he violated all other conventions.

  Alec flushed with pleasure. ‘Thanks awfully, old chap,’ he said gruffly. ‘I knew I could rely on you. But really, there isn’t anything you could possibly do. And things will come out all right, I feel sure.’

  ‘Well, I sincerely hope so, or I’ll wring young Barbara’s neck for her,’ said Roger; and both men knew that the topic was closed, until or unless Alec himself chose to reopen it.

  ‘And about this powder?’ Alec prompted.

  ‘Ah, yes. I hadn’t finished with the settee, had I? Well, let’s see if there’s anything more to be found first.’

  He bent over the couch again, only to look up the next instant.

  ‘See this?’ he said, indicating a long fair hair in the angle between the arm and the back. ‘There has been a woman sitting here recently. This confirms the face powder. What an extraordinarily lucky thing that we thought of searching the place for that cartridge case. It would never have done to have missed this. I have an idea that this woman is going to be more useful to us than fifty cartridge cases.’ And taking a letter out of his pocket he drew out the sheet of paper and carefully placed the hair in the envelope. ‘They always do this in books,’ he explained, observing Alec’s interested gaze, ‘so I suppose it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘And what are you going to do next?’ Alec asked, as the envelope followed the handkerchief into Roger’s breast pocket. ‘You’ve only got about half an hour before dinner time, you know.’