The Layton Court Mystery Read online

  ‘I haven’t the least idea,’ said Jefferson quietly. ‘It is the last thing in the world I should have expected from Mr Stanworth.’

  The inspector turned to Roger. ‘Now, sir, you were in the garden with him last evening at ten. What happened after that?’

  ‘Oh, we didn’t stay out very long after that. Not more than twenty minutes, I should say. I had some work to do, and we went in together.’

  ‘What were you talking about in the garden?’

  ‘Roses chiefly. He was very keen on roses and took a lot of interest in the rose garden here.’

  ‘Did he seem cheerful?’

  ‘Very. He always struck me as an exceptionally cheerful person. Genial, in fact.’

  ‘Did anything he said lead you to think that he might be contemplating taking his life? Not at the time, of course; but looking back on it. No casual remark, or anything like that?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! On the contrary, he talked quite a lot about the future. What part of the country he was going to stay in next year, and that sort of thing.’

  ‘I see. Well, what happened when you went in?’

  ‘We met Mrs Plant in the hall, and he stopped to speak to her. I went on to the drawing room to get a book I’d left there. When I came back they were still in the hall talking. I said good night to both of them and went on up to my room. That was the last I saw of him.’

  ‘Thank you. Then you can’t help, either?’

  ‘Not in the least, I’m afraid. The whole thing beats me completely.’

  The inspector looked at Alec. ‘And you, sir? When did you see him last?’

  Alec considered. ‘I hardly saw him after dinner at all, Inspector. That is, I didn’t speak to him; but I caught a glimpse of him once or twice in the garden with Mr Sheringham.’

  ‘You were in the garden, too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  Alec blushed. ‘Well, I was – That is – ’

  Roger came to his rescue. ‘Mr Grierson and Miss Shannon, whom you have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, became engaged yesterday, Inspector,’ he said gravely, but with a side-long wink.

  The inspector smiled genially. ‘Then I don’t think we need enquire what Mr Grierson was doing in the garden last night,’ he remarked jovially. ‘Or Miss Shannon, for that matter, when I come to question her later. And you can’t help us either in any other direction?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Inspector. I really knew very little of Mr Stanworth in any case. I only met him for the first time when I arrived here three days ago.’

  Inspector Mansfield rose to his feet. ‘Well, I think that is all I have to ask you, gentlemen. After all, even if we can’t find out what his reasons were, the case is clear enough. The door and all the windows locked on the inside; the revolver in his hand, which the doctor says must have been there during life; to say nothing of his own statement. I don’t think the coroner will take very long to arrive at his verdict.’

  ‘What about the inquest?’ Roger asked. ‘Shall we be wanted?’

  ‘You and Mr Grierson will be, and the other person who was present when the door was broken in – the butler, wasn’t it? And of course yourself, Major, and Lady Stanworth; and the last person to see him alive. Who else is there in the party? Mrs and Miss Shannon and Mrs Plant? Well, I don’t think they will be required, unless they have any further information of importance. Still, the coroner will notify whom he wants to attend.’

  ‘And the inquest will be tomorrow?’ Major Jefferson asked.

  ‘Probably. In a case as simple as this there is no point in delay. And now, Major, I wonder if I might have a word with Lady Stanworth down here. And I wish you’d look round and see if you can hit on the code for that safe. I could get it from the makers, of course, if necessary; but I don’t want to have to do that unless I must.’

  Major Jefferson nodded. ‘I’ll try,’ he said briefly. ‘And I’ll send one of the maids to tell Lady Stanworth. She’s in her room.’

  He rang the bell, and Roger and Alec strolled over to the door.

  ‘And you might warn the others in the household not to leave the premises till I have seen them,’ they heard the inspector say as they passed through it. ‘I shall have to interrogate everyone, of course.’

  Roger drew Alec into the dining room and thence out into the garden. They reached the middle of the lawn before he spoke.

  ‘Alec,’ he said seriously, ‘what do you make of it all?’

  ‘Make of what?’ asked Alec.

  ‘Make of what?’ Roger repeated scornfully. ‘Why, the whole blessed business, of course. Alec, you’re uncommonly slow in the uptake. Can’t you see that Jefferson is hiding something for all he’s worth?’

  ‘He did seem a bit reticent, certainly,’ Alec agreed cautiously.

  ‘Reticent? Why, if that fellow’s telling one tenth of what he knows I should be surprised. And what about Mrs Plant? And why doesn’t anybody know the combination of that safe? I tell you, there are wheels within wheels going on here.’

  Alec threw caution to the winds. ‘It is curious,’ he admitted recklessly.

  Roger was intent on his own thoughts. ‘And why was Jefferson searching Mr Stanworth’s pockets?’ he demanded suddenly. ‘Oh, but of course, that’s obvious enough.’

  ‘I’m dashed if it is. Why was he?’

  ‘To find the keys of the safe, I suppose. What else could it be? For some reason or other Jefferson is all against having that safe opened. By the police, at any rate. And so is Mrs Plant. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Alec helplessly.

  ‘Nor do I! That’s just the annoying part. I hate things I don’t understand. Always have done. It’s a sort of challenge to get to the bottom of them.’

  ‘Are you going to get to the bottom of this?’ Alec smiled.

  ‘If there’s a bottom to get to,’ said Roger defiantly. ‘So don’t grin in that infernally sarcastic way. Dash it all, aren’t you curious?’

  Alec hesitated. ‘Yes, I am in a way. But after all, it doesn’t seem to be our business, does it?’

  ‘That remains to be seen. What I want to find out is – whose business is it? At present it seems to be everybody’s.’

  ‘And are you going to tell the police anything?’

  ‘No; I’m hanged if I am,’ said Roger with conviction. ‘I don’t mind whose business it is; but it isn’t theirs. Not yet, anyway,’ he added with a touch of grimness.

  Alec was plainly startled. ‘Good Lord! You don’t think it might be eventually, do you?’

  ‘I’m blessed if I know what to think! By the way, reverting to Jefferson, you remember when I found those ashes in the hearth and suggested that they might be the remains of those mysterious private documents Jefferson had been hinting about? Well, did it appear to you that he looked uncommonly relieved for the moment?’

  Alec reflected. ‘I don’t think I was looking at him just then.’

  ‘Well, I was. And I made the suggestion on purpose, to see how he’d take it. I’d take my oath that the idea appealed to him immensely. Now why? And what’s he got to do with Mr Stanworth’s private papers?’

  ‘But look here, you know,’ said Alec slowly, ‘if he really was hiding something, as you seem to think, surely he wouldn’t go and give the whole show away by telling us straight out like that what sort of thing it is that he’s hiding? I mean, if he really is hiding something he’d mention papers to put us off the scent, wouldn’t he? Really, I mean, it would be something quite different. What I mean is – ’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m beginning to get an idea of what you mean,’ said Roger kindly. ‘But seriously, Alec, that’s rather an idea of yours. After all, Jefferson isn’t the man to give himself away, is he?’

  ‘No,’ said Alec earnestly. ‘You see, what I mean is – ’

  ‘Hullo!’ Roger interrupted rudely. ‘There’s the inspector going down the drive. And without Jefferson, by all that’s lucky! Let�
�s cut after him and ask him if he’s brought anything else to the surface.’ And without waiting for a reply he set off at a run in the wake of the retreating inspector.

  The latter, hearing their footsteps on the gravel, turned round to wait for them.

  ‘Well, sir?’ he said with a smile. ‘Remembered something else to tell me?’

  Roger dropped into a walk. ‘No; but I was wondering whether you had anything to tell me. Found anything more out?’

  ‘You’re not connected with the press by any chance, Mr Sheringham, are you?’ the inspector asked suspiciously.

  ‘Oh, no; it’s just natural curiosity,’ Roger laughed. ‘Not for publication, and all that.’

  ‘I was thinking you might get me into trouble if it came out that I’d been talking more than I ought to, sir. But I haven’t found anything more out in any case.’

  ‘Lady Stanworth wasn’t any help?’

  ‘Not a bit, sir. She couldn’t throw any light on it at all. I didn’t keep her long. Or any of the others, either, for that matter. There was nothing more to be got out of them, and I’ve got to get back and make out my report.’

  ‘Not even found the safe’s combination?’

  ‘No,’ returned the inspector disappointedly. ‘I shall have to ring up the makers and get that. I’ve taken a note of the number.’

  ‘And who saw him last?’

  ‘Mrs Plant. He stopped her in the hall to ask her if she liked some roses he’d had specially sent up to her room for her, and left her to go into the library. Nobody saw him after that.’

  ‘And is the body still in there?’

  ‘No, sir. We shan’t want that any more. The constable I brought with me, Rudgeman, is helping them take it upstairs now.’

  The lodge gates appeared in sight, and Roger halted.

  ‘Well, goodbye, Inspector. Shall we see you over here again?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I shall have to come over about that safe. I don’t suppose we’ll find anything in it, and it’s a ten-mile bicycle ride for me in this heat; but there you are!’ He laughed ruefully and went on his way.

  Roger and Alec turned and began to pace slowly back to the house.

  ‘So Mrs Plant was the last to see him alive, was she?’ observed the former thoughtfully. ‘That means she’ll be staying over for the inquest. The others will be going this afternoon, I suppose. What’s the time?’

  Alec glanced at the watch on his wrist. ‘Just past eleven.’

  ‘And all that’s happened in two hours! My hat! Well, come along with me. If the body’s been removed, we may find the coast clear with any luck.’

  ‘What are you proposing to do now?’ Alec asked with interest.

  ‘Look around that library.’

  ‘Oh? What’s the idea?’

  For once in his life a curious reluctance seemed to have settled upon Roger. Almost nervously he cleared his throat, and when at last he did speak his voice was unwontedly grave.

  ‘Well,’ he said slowly, picking his words with care; ‘there’s a thing that nobody else seems to have noticed, but it’s been striking me more and more forcibly every minute. I tell you candidly it’s something rather horrible – a question that I’m honestly rather frightened of finding the answer to.’

  ‘What are you driving at?’ asked Alec in perplexity. Roger hesitated again.

  ‘Look here,’ he said suddenly, ‘if you were going to shoot yourself, how would you go about it? Wouldn’t you do it like this?’

  He raised his hand and pointed an imaginary revolver at a spot just above the right-hand end of his right eyebrow.

  Alec copied his action. ‘Well, yes, I might. It seems the natural way to do it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Roger slowly. ‘Then why the devil is that wound in the centre of Stanworth’s forehead?’

  chapter six

  Four People Behave Remarkably

  Alec started, and his broad, good-humoured face paled a little.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he ejaculated in startled tones. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Simply what I say,’ returned Roger. ‘Why did Stanworth go out of his way to shoot himself in such a remarkably difficult manner? Don’t you see what I mean? It isn’t natural.’

  Alec was staring up the drive. ‘Isn’t it? But he did it all right, didn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, of course he did it,’ said Roger in a voice that was curiously lacking in conviction. ‘But what I can’t understand is this. Why, when he could have done it so easily, did he go about it in such a roundabout way? I mean, a revolver isn’t such an easy thing to manipulate unhandily; and the attitude he used must have twisted his wrist most uncomfortably. Just try pointing your forefinger in a straight line at the middle of your forehead, and you’ll see what I mean.’

  He suited his action to his words, and there was no doubt about the constraint of his attitude. Alec looked at him attentively.

  ‘Yes, it does look awkward,’ he commented.

  ‘It is. Infernally awkward. And you saw where the doctor took the bullet from. Almost at the very back. That means the revolver must have been nearly in a dead straight line. You try and see how difficult it is. It almost dislocates your elbow.’

  Alec copied the action. ‘You’re quite right,’ he said with interest. ‘It is uncomfortable.’

  ‘I should call it more than that. It’s so unnatural as to be highly improbable. Yet there’s the fact.’

  ‘Can’t get away from facts, you know,’ observed Alec sagely.

  ‘No, but you can explain them. And I’m dashed if I can see the explanation for this one.’

  ‘Well, what’s the idea?’ Alec asked curiously. ‘You’re being infernally mysterious.’

  ‘Me? I like that. It isn’t I who am being mysterious. It’s everything else. Facts and people and everything. Look here, we won’t go in for a moment. Let’s find a seat somewhere and try and get a grip on things. I’m getting out of my depth, and I don’t like it.’

  He led the way to where a few garden chairs were scattered beneath a big cedar at one of the corners of the lawn, and threw himself into one of them. Alec followed suit, somewhat more cautiously. Alec was a big person, and he had met garden chairs before.

  ‘Proceed,’ he said, fishing for his pipe. ‘You interest me strangely.’

  Nothing loth, Roger took up his tale.

  ‘Well, then, in the first place let’s consider the human side of things. Hasn’t it struck you that there are four separate and distinct people here whose conduct during the last few hours has been, to say the least of it, remarkable?’

  ‘No,’ said Alec candidly, ‘it hasn’t. Two have, I know. Who are the other two?’

  ‘Well, the butler is one. He didn’t seem particularly cut up over Stanworth’s death, did he? Not that you look for a tremendous display of emotion from a great hulking brute like that, true. But you do look for some.’

  ‘He wasn’t vastly upset,’ Alec admitted.

  ‘And then there is his position in the household. Why should an ex-prize-fighter turn butler? The two professions don’t seem to harmonise somehow. And why should Stanworth want to employ an ex-prize-fighting butler for that matter? It’s not what you’d expect from him. He always seemed to me particularly meticulous over points of etiquette. I wouldn’t have called him a snob exactly; he was too nice and jolly for that. But he did like to be taken for a gentleman. And gentlemen don’t employ prize-fighting butlers, do they?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it being done before,’ Alec conceded cautiously.

  ‘Precisely. My point exactly. Alec, you’re positively sparkling this morning.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Alec growled, lighting his pipe. ‘But apparently not enough so to make out who the fourth of your suspicious people is. Get on with it.’

  ‘After you with that match. Why, didn’t it strike you that somebody else took the news of Stanworth’s death with remarkable fortitude? And that after it had been broken to her with a bluntness that verged on bruta
lity.’

  Alec paused in the act of applying a second match to his refractory pipe. ‘By Jove! You mean Lady Stanworth?’

  ‘I do,’ said Roger complacently.

  ‘Yes, I did notice that,’ Alec remarked, staring over his pipe at his companion. ‘But I don’t think there was much love lost between those two, was there?’

  ‘You’re right. There wasn’t. I shouldn’t mind going farther than that and saying that she absolutely hated old Stanworth. I noticed it lots of times these last three days, and it puzzled me even then. Now – ’ He paused and sucked at his pipe once or twice. ‘Now it puzzles me a good deal more,’ he concluded softly, almost as if speaking to himself.

  ‘Go on,’ Alec prompted interestedly.

  ‘Well, that’s four people; two whose behaviour has not been quite what you’d expect under the circumstances, and two who are downright suspicious. Anyhow, you can say four curious people.’

  Alec nodded in silence. He was thinking of a fifth person whose conduct early that morning had been something more than curious. With an effort he thrust the thought from him abruptly. At any rate, Roger was going to know nothing about that.

  ‘And now we come to facts, and the Lord knows these are curious enough, too. First of all, we’ve got the place of the wound and the extreme unlikelihood (as one would have said if one hadn’t actually seen it) of anyone committing suicide by shooting himself in that particular way. About that I’m not going to say any more for the moment. But there are plenty of things to talk about without that.’

  ‘There would be, with you anywhere about,’ Alec murmured irreverently.

  ‘You wait. This is serious. Now according to what they say, people went to bed in pretty decent time, last night, didn’t they? Mrs Plant after meeting Stanworth in the hall; Barbara and her mother soon after you came in from the garden; and Jefferson and you after you’d finished playing billiards?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Alec nodded. ‘Eleven thirtyish.’

  ‘Well,’ said Roger triumphantly. ‘Somebody’s lying! I was working in my room till past one, and I heard footsteps in the corridor not once but two or three times between midnight and then – the last time just as I was knocking off! Of course I didn’t pay any particular attention to them at the time; but I know I’m not mistaken. So if everyone says that they were in their rooms by eleven-thirty (except Stanworth, who was presumably locked in the library), then I repeat – somebody’s lying! Now what do you make of that?’