The Layton Court Mystery Read online

  Roger seated himself on the arm of a chair and swung his leg carelessly.

  ‘But you’ll be called in any case, so why not tell exactly what happened?’

  ‘Yes, but – but I didn’t know that then, you see; not when I made my statement. I didn’t think they’d call me at all then. Or I hoped they wouldn’t.’

  ‘I see. Still, I think it would be better not to conceal anything as things are, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I quite see that now. Quite. It’s very good of you to help me like this, Mr Sheringham. When – when did you find my handkerchief?’

  ‘Just before I went up to change for dinner. It was between two of those loose cushions on the couch.’

  ‘So you knew I must have been in the library? But how did you know what time I was there?’

  ‘I didn’t. In fact, I don’t know,’ Roger smiled. ‘All I know is that it must have been after dinner, because the maid always tidies the room at that time.’

  Mrs Plant nodded slowly. ‘I see. Yes, that was clever of you. I didn’t leave anything else there, did I?’ she added, again with that nervous little laugh.

  ‘No, nothing else,’ Roger replied smoothly. ‘Well, have you thought it over?’

  ‘Oh, of course I’ll tell you, Mr Sheringham. It’s really too ridiculous. You remember when you passed us in the hall? Well, Mr Stanworth was speaking to me about some roses he’d had sent up to my room. And then I asked him if he’d put my jewels in his safe for me, as I – ’

  ‘But I thought you said this morning that you asked him that the other day?’ Roger interrupted.

  Mrs Plant laughed lightly. She was quite herself again.

  ‘Yes, I did; and I told the inspector it was yesterday morning. Wasn’t it dreadful of me? That’s why I was so upset when you told me this afternoon that I should have to give evidence. I was so afraid they’d ask me a lot of questions and find out that I was in the library, after all, when I hadn’t said anything about it, and that I had told the inspector a lie about the jewels. In fact, you frightened me terribly, Mr Sheringham. I had dreadful visions of passing the rest of my days in prison for telling fibs to the police.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Roger smiled. ‘But I didn’t know, did I?’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. It was my own fault. Well, anyhow, Mr Stanworth very kindly said he’d be delighted to put them away safely for me, so I ran upstairs to get them and brought them down into the library. Then I sat on the couch and watched him put them in the safe. That’s all that happened really, and I quite see now how absurd it was of me to conceal it.’

  ‘H’m!’ said Roger thoughtfully. ‘Well, it certainly isn’t vastly important in any case, is it? And that’s all?’

  ‘Every bit!’ Mrs Plant replied firmly. ‘Now what do you advise me to do? Admit that I made a mistake when I was with the inspector and tell the truth? Or just say nothing about it? It may be very silly of me, but I really can’t see that it makes the least difference either way. The incident is of no importance at all.’

  ‘Still, it’s best to be on the safe side, I think. If I were you I should take the inspector aside before the proceedings open tomorrow and tell him frankly that you made a mistake, and that you took your jewels in to Mr Stanworth in the library last night before saying good night to him.’

  Mrs Plant made a wry face. ‘Very well,’ she said reluctantly, ‘I will. It’s horrid to have to admit that one was wrong; but you’re probably right. Anyhow, I’ll do that.’

  ‘I think you’re wise,’ Roger replied, getting to his feet again. ‘Well, Alec, what about that stroll of ours? I’m afraid it will have to be a moonlit one now.’ He paused in the doorway and turned back. ‘Good night, Mrs Plant, if I don’t see you again; I expect you will be turning in fairly early. Sleep well, and don’t let things worry you, whatever you do.’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ she smiled back. ‘Good night, Mr Sheringham, and thank you very much indeed.’ And she heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief as she watched his disappearing back.

  The two made their way out on to the lawn in silence.

  ‘Hullo,’ Roger remarked, as they reached the big cedar, ‘they’ve left the chairs out here. Let’s take advantage of them.’

  ‘Well?’ Alec demanded gruffly when they were seated, disapproval written large in every line of him. ‘Well? I hope you’re satisfied now.’

  Roger pulled his pipe out of his pocket and filled it methodically, gazing thoughtfully into the soft darkness as he did so.

  ‘Satisfied?’ he repeated at last. ‘Well, hardly. What do you think?’

  ‘I think you scared that wretched woman out of her wits for absolutely nothing at all. I told you ages ago you were making a mistake about her.’

  ‘You’re a very simple-minded young man I’m afraid, Alec,’ Roger said, quite regretfully.

  ‘Why, you surely don’t mean to say you disbelieve her?’ Alec asked in astonishment.

  ‘H’m! I wouldn’t necessarily say that. She may have been speaking the truth.’

  ‘That’s awfully good of you,’ Alec commented sarcastically.

  ‘But the trouble is that she certainly wasn’t speaking the whole of it. She’s got something up her sleeve, has that lady, whatever you choose to think, Alec. Didn’t you notice how she tried to pump me? How did I know what time she’d been in there? Had she left anything else there? When did I find the handkerchief? No, her explanation sounds perfectly reasonable, I admit, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go nearly far enough. It doesn’t explain the powder on the arm of the couch, for instance; and I noticed at dinner that she doesn’t powder her arms. But there’s one thing above all that it leaves entirely out of the reckoning.’

  ‘Oh?’ Alec asked ironically. ‘And what may that be?’

  ‘The fact that she was crying when she was in the library,’ Roger replied simply.

  ‘How on earth do you know that?’ said the dumbfounded Alec.

  ‘Because the handkerchief was just slightly damp when I found it. Also it was rolled up in a tight little ball, as women do when they cry.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Alec blankly.

  ‘So you see there is still a lot for which Mrs Plant did most certainly not account, isn’t there? As to what she did say, it may be true or it may be not. In gist I should say that it was. There’s only one thing that I’m really doubtful about, and that’s the time when she said she was in the library.’

  ‘What makes you doubt that?’

  ‘Well, in the first place I didn’t hear her come upstairs immediately to fetch her jewels, as I almost certainly should have done. And, secondly, didn’t you notice that she carefully asked me if I knew what time she was there, before she gave a time at all? In other words, after I had let out like an idiot that I didn’t know what time she was there, she realised that she could say what time she liked, and as long as it didn’t clash with any of the known facts (such as Stanworth being out in the garden with me) it would be all right.’

  ‘Splitting hairs?’ Alec murmured laconically.

  ‘Possibly; but nice, thick, easily splittable ones.’

  For a time they smoked in silence, each engaged with his own thoughts. Then:

  ‘Who would you say was the older, Alec,’ Roger asked suddenly, ‘Lady Stanworth or Mrs Shannon?’

  ‘Mrs Shannon,’ Alec replied without hesitation. ‘Why?’

  ‘I was just wondering. But Lady Stanworth looks older; her hair is getting quite grey. Mrs Shannon’s is still brown.’

  ‘Yes, I know Mrs Shannon looks the younger of the two; but I’m sure she’s not, for all that.’

  ‘Well, what age would you put Jefferson at?’

  ‘Lord, I don’t know. He might be any age. About the same as Lady Stanworth, I should imagine. What on earth are you asking all this for?’

  ‘Oh, just something that was passing through my mind. Nothing very important.’

  They relapsed into silence once more.

  Suddenly Roger s
lapped his knee. ‘By Jove!’ he ejaculated. ‘I wonder if we dare!’

  ‘What’s up now?’

  ‘I’ve just had a brain wave. Look here, Alexander Watson, it seems to me that we’ve been tackling this little affair from the wrong end.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Why, we’ve been concentrating all our energies on working backwards from suspicious circumstances and people. What we ought to have done is to start farther back and work forwards.’

  ‘Don’t quite get you.’

  ‘Well, put it another way. The big clue to any murder must after all be supplied by the victim himself. People don’t get murdered for nothing – except by a chance burglar, of course, or a homicidal maniac; and I think we can dismiss both of those possibilities here. What I mean is, find out all you can about the victim and the information ought to give you a lead towards his murderer. You see? We’ve been neglecting that side of it altogether. What we ought to have been doing is to collect every possible scrap of information we can about old Stanworth. Find out exactly what sort of a character he had and all his activities, and then work forwards from that. Get me?’

  ‘That seems reasonable enough,’ Alec said cautiously. ‘But how could we find out anything? It’s no good asking Jefferson or Lady Stanworth. We should never get any information out of them.’

  ‘No, but we’ve got the very chance lying close to our hand to find out pretty nearly as much as Jefferson knows,’ Roger said excitedly. ‘Didn’t he say that he was going through all Stanworth’s papers and accounts and things in the morning room? What’s to prevent us having a look at them, too?’

  ‘You mean, nip in when nobody’s about and go through them?’

  ‘Exactly. Are you game?’

  Alec was silent for a moment.

  ‘Hardly done, is it?’ he said at last. ‘Fellow’s private papers and all that, I mean, what?’

  ‘Alec, you sponge-headed parrot!’ Roger exclaimed, in tones of the liveliest exasperation. ‘Really, you are a most maddening person! Here’s a chap murdered under your very nose, and you’re prepared to let the murderer walk away scot-free because you think it isn’t ‘done’ to look through the wretched victim’s private papers. How remarkably pleased Stanworth would be to hear you, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Of course if you put it like that,’ Alec said doubtfully.

  ‘But I do put it like that, you goop! It’s the only way there is of putting it. Come, Alec, do try and be sensible for once in your life.’

  ‘All right then,’ Alec said, though not with any vast degree of enthusiasm. ‘I’m game.’

  ‘That’s more like it. Now look here, my bedroom window is in the front of the house and I can see the morning-room window from it. You go to bed in the ordinary way, and sleep, too, if you like (all the better, in case Jefferson should take it into his head to have a look in at you); and I’ll sit up and watch for the morning-room light to go out. I’m safe enough in any case, as I can always pretend to be working; I’ll put my things out, in fact. Then I’ll wait for an hour after it’s out, to give Jefferson plenty of time to get to sleep; and then I’ll come along and rouse you, and we’ll creep down at our leisure. How about that?’

  ‘Sounds all right,’ Alec admitted.

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ Roger said briskly. ‘Well, I think the best thing for you to do is to go to bed at once, yawning loudly and ostentatiously. It will show that you have gone, for one thing; and also it will show that we’re not powwowing together out here. We’ve got to remember that those three, in spite of their fair words and friendliness, are bound to be regarding us with the greatest suspicion. They don’t know how much we know, and of course they daren’t give themselves away by trying to find out. But you can be sure that Jefferson has warned the others about that footprint; and I expect that as soon as our backs were turned just now, Mrs Plant ran into the morning room and recounted our conversation to them. That’s why I pretended to be taken in by her explanation.’

  The bowl of Alec’s pipe glowed red in the darkness.

  ‘You’re still convinced, then, in spite of what she said, that those three are in league together?’ he asked after a moment’s pause.

  ‘Run along to bed, little Alexander,’ said Roger kindly, ‘and don’t be childish.’

  chapter twenty – one

  Mr Sheringham Is Dramatic

  Long after Alec’s not altogether willing departure, Roger sat smoking and thinking. On the whole, he was not sorry to be alone. Alec was proving a somewhat discouraging companion in this business. Evidently his heart was not in it; and for one so situated the ferreting out of facts and the general atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that is inevitably attendant on such a task, must be singularly distasteful. Roger could not blame Alec for his undisguised reluctance to see the thing through, but he also could not help thinking somewhat wistfully of the enthusiastic and worshipping prototypes whose mantle Alec was at first supposed to have inherited. Roger felt that he could have welcomed a little enthusiasm and worshipping at the end of this eventful and very strenuous day.

  He began to try to arrange methodically in his mind the data they had collected. First with regard to the murderer. He had made an effective escape from the house only, in all probability as it seemed, to enter it again by another way. Why? Either because he lived there, or because he wished to communicate with somebody who did. Which of these? Heaven only knew!

  He tried another line of attack. Which of the minor puzzles still remained unsolved? Chiefly, without doubt, the sudden change of attitude on the part of Mrs Plant and Jefferson before lunch. But why need they have been apprehensive at all, if the murderer had been able to communicate with them after the crime had been committed? Perhaps the interview had been a hurried one, and he had forgotten to reassure them on some particularly vital point. Yet he had been able to do so in the course of the next morning. This meant that, up till lunch time at any rate, he had still been in the neighbourhood. More than that, actually on the premises, as it seemed. Did this point more definitely to the probability of his being one of the household? It seemed feasible; but who? Jefferson? Possibly, though there were several difficult points to get over if this were the case. The women were obviously out of the question. The butler? Again possibly; but why on earth should the man want to murder his master?

  Yet the butler was a strange figure, there was no getting away from that. And as far as Roger could judge, there had been no love lost between him and Stanworth. Yes, there was undoubtedly a mystery of some kind connected with that butler. Jefferson’s explanation of why Mr Stanworth should have employed a prize-fighting butler did not strike one as quite satisfactory.

  Then why had Mrs Plant been crying in the library? Roger strove to remember some scenes in which she and Stanworth had been thrown into contact. How had they behaved towards each other? Had they seemed friendly, or the reverse? As far as he could recollect, Stanworth had treated her with the same casual good-fellowship which he showed to everybody; while she – Yes, now he came to think of it, she had never appeared to be on particularly good terms with him. She had been quiet and reserved when he was in the room. Not that she was really ever anything else but quiet and reserved under any circumstances; but yes, there had been a subtle change in her manner when he was about. Obviously she had disliked him.

  Clearly there was only one hope for finding the answer to these riddles, and that was to investigate Stanworth’s affairs. In all probability even that would prove futile; but as far as Roger could see there was no other way to try with even a moderate chance of success. And while he was racking his brains out here, Jefferson was sitting in the morning room surrounded by documents which Roger would give anything to see.

  A sudden idea occurred to him. Why not beard the lion in his den and offer to give Jefferson a hand with his task? In any case, that would form a direct challenge, the answer to which could not fail to be interesting.

  With Roger to think was, in nine cas
es out of ten, to leap into precipitate action. Almost before the thought had completed its passage through his mind, he was on his feet and striding eagerly towards the house.

  Without troubling to knock he burst open the door of the morning room and walked in. Jefferson was seated in front of the table in the centre of the room, surrounded, as Roger’s mind’s eye had seen him, with papers and documents. Lady Stanworth was not present.

  He glanced up as Roger entered.

  ‘Hullo, Sheringham,’ he said in some surprise. ‘Anything I can do for you?’

  ‘Well, I was smoking out there in the garden with nothing to do,’ Roger remarked with a friendly smile, ‘when it occurred to me that instead of wasting my time like that I might be giving you a hand here; you said you were up to the eves in it. Is there anything I can do to help?’

  ‘Damned good of you,’ Jefferson replied, a little awkwardly, ‘but I don’t really think there’s anything. I’m trying to tabulate a statement of his financial position. Something like that is sure to be wanted when the will’s proved, or whatever the rigmarole is.’

  ‘Well, surely there’s something I can do to help you out, isn’t there?’ Roger asked, sitting on a corner of the table. ‘Add up tremendous columns of figures, or something like that?’

  Jefferson hesitated and glanced round at the papers in front of him. ‘Well,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Of course if there’s anything particularly private in Stanworth’s affairs – !’ Roger remarked airily.

  Jefferson looked up quickly. ‘Private? There’s nothing particularly private about them. Why should there be?’

  ‘Then make use of me by all means, my dear chap. I’m at a loose end, and only too glad to give you a hand.’