The Layton Court Mystery Page 7

  He paused and looked at Alec inquiringly.

  ‘Well?’ said that worthy.

  ‘Well, don’t you see the difficulty? Vases don’t suddenly break where they stand. They fall and smash on the ground or something like that. This one calmly fell to pieces in its place, as far as I can see. Dash it all, it isn’t natural! – And that’s about the third unnatural thing we’ve had already,’ he added in tones of mingled triumph and resentment.

  Alec pressed the tobacco carefully down in his pipe and struck a match. ‘Aren’t you going the long way round again?’ he asked slowly. ‘Surely there’s an obvious explanation. Someone knocked the vase over on its side and it broke on the shelf. I can’t see anything wrong with that.’

  ‘I can,’ said Roger quickly. ‘Two things. In the first place, those vases were far too thick to break like that simply through being knocked over on a wooden surface. In the second, even if it had been, you’d get a smooth, elliptical mark in the dust where it fell; and there isn’t one. No, there’s only one possible reason for it to break as it did, as far as I can make out.’

  ‘And what’s that, Sherlock?’

  ‘That it had been struck by something – and struck so hard and cleanly that it simply smashed where it stood and was not knocked into the hearth. What do you think of that?’

  ‘It seems reasonable enough,’ Alec conceded after consideration.

  ‘You’re not very enthusiastic, are you? It’s so jolly eminently reasonable that it must be right. Now, then, the next question is – who or what hit it like that?’

  ‘I say, do you think this is going to lead anywhere?’ Alec asked suddenly. ‘Aren’t we wasting time over this rotten vase? I don’t see what it can have to do with what we’re looking for. Not that I have the least idea what that is, in any case,’ he added candidly.

  ‘You don’t seem to have taken to my vase, Alec. It’s a pity, because I’m getting more and more fond of it every minute. Anyhow, I’m going to put in one or two minutes’ really hard thinking about it; so if you’d like to wander out into the garden and have a chat with William, don’t let me keep you.’

  Alec had strolled over to the windows again. For some reason he seemed somewhat anxious to keep the garden under observation as far as possible.

  ‘Oh, I won’t interrupt you,’ he was beginning carelessly, when at the same moment the reason appeared in sight, walking slowly on to the lawn from the direction of the rose garden. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, perhaps I will wander out for a bit,’ he emended hurriedly. ‘Won’t stay away long, in case anything else crops up.’ And he made a hasty exit.

  Roger, following with his eyes the beeline his newly appointed assistant was taking, smiled slightly and resumed his labours.

  Alec did not waste time. There was a question which had been worrying him horribly during the last couple of hours, and he wanted an answer to it, and wanted it quickly.

  ‘Barbara,’ he said abruptly, as soon as he came abreast of her, ‘you know what you told me this morning. Before breakfast. It hadn’t anything to do with what’s happened here, had it?’

  Barbara blushed painfully. Then as suddenly she paled.

  ‘You mean – about Mr Stanworth’s death?’ she asked steadily, looking him full in the eyes.

  Alec nodded.

  ‘No, it hadn’t. That was only a – a horrible coincidence.’ She paused. ‘Why?’ she asked suddenly.

  Alec looked supremely uncomfortable. ‘Oh, I don’t know. You see, you said something about – well, about a horrible thing that had happened. And then half an hour later, when we knew that – I mean, I couldn’t help wondering just for the moment whether – ’ He floundered into silence.

  ‘It’s all right, Alec,’ said Barbara gently. ‘It was a perfectly reasonable mistake to make. As I said, that was only a dreadful coincidence.’

  ‘And aren’t you going to change your mind about what you said this morning?’ asked Alec humbly.

  Barbara looked at him quickly. ‘Why should I?’ she returned swiftly. ‘I mean – ’ She hesitated and corrected herself. ‘Why should you think I might?’

  ‘I don’t know. You were very upset this morning, and it occurred to me that you might have had bad news and were acting on the spur of the moment; and perhaps when you had thought it over, you might – ’ He broke off meaningly.

  Barbara seemed strangely ill at ease. She did not reply at once to Alec’s unspoken question, but twisted her wisp of a handkerchief between her fingers with nervous gestures that were curiously out of place in this usually uncommonly self-possessed young person.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know what to say,’ she replied at last, in low, hurried tones. ‘I can’t tell you anything at present, Alec. I may have acted too much on the spur of the moment. I don’t know. Come and see me when we get back from the Mertons’ next month. I shall have to think things over.’

  ‘And you won’t tell me what the trouble was, dear?’

  ‘No, I can’t. Please don’t ask me that, Alec. You see, that isn’t really my secret. No, I can’t possibly tell you!’

  ‘All right. But – but you do love me, don’t you?’

  Barbara laid her hand on his arm with a swift, caressing movement. ‘It wasn’t anything to do with that, old boy,’ she said softly. ‘Come and see me next month. I think – I think I might have changed my mind again by then. No, Alec! You mustn’t! Anyhow, not here of all places. Perhaps I’ll let you once – just a tiny one! – before we go; but not unless you’re good. Besides, I’ve got to run in and pack now. We’re catching the two forty-one, and Mother will be waiting for me.’

  She gave his hand a sudden squeeze and turned towards the house.

  ‘That was a bit of luck, meeting her out here!’ murmured Alec raptly to himself as he watched her go. Wherein he was not altogether correct in his statement of fact; for as the lady had come into the garden for that express purpose, the subsequent meeting might be said to be due rather to good generalship than good luck.

  It was therefore a remarkably jubilant Watson who returned blithely to the library to find his Sherlock sitting solemnly in the chair before the big writing table and staring hard at the chimney-piece.

  In spite of himself he shivered slightly. ‘Ugh, you ghoulish brute!’ he exclaimed.

  Roger looked at him abstractedly. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Well, I can’t say that I should like to sit in that particular chair just yet awhile.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come back,’ Roger said, rising slowly to his feet. ‘I’ve just had a pretty curious idea, and I’m going to test it. The chances are several million to one against it coming off, but if it does – ! Well, I don’t know what the devil we’re going to do!’

  He had spoken so seriously that Alec gaped at him in surprise. ‘Good Lord, what’s up now?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, I won’t say in so many words,’ Roger replied slowly, ‘because it’s really too fantastic. But it’s to do with the breaking of that second vase. You remember I said that in order for it to have smashed like that it must have been struck extraordinarily hard by some mysterious object. It’s just occurred to me what that object might possibly have been.’

  He walked across to where the chair was still standing in front of the fireplace and stepped up on to it. Then, with a glance towards the chair he had just left, he began to examine the woodwork at the back of the chimney-piece. Alec watched him in silence. Suddenly he bent forward with close attention and prodded a finger at the panel; and Alec noticed that his face had gone very pale.

  He turned and descended, a little unsteadily, from the chair. ‘My hat, but I was right!’ he exclaimed softly, staring at Alec with raised eyebrows. ‘That second vase was smashed by a bullet! You’ll find its mark just behind that little pillar on the left there.’

  chapter eight

  Mr Sheringham Becomes Startling

  For a moment there was silence between the two. Then:

  ‘Great Scott!’ Alec remarke
d. ‘Absolutely certain?’

  ‘Absolutely. It’s a bullet mark all right. The bullet isn’t there, but it must have just embedded itself in the wood and been dug out with a penknife. You can see the marks of the blade round the hole. Get up and have a look.’

  Alec stepped on to the chair and felt the hole in the wood with a large forefinger. ‘Couldn’t be an old mark, could it?’ he asked, examining it curiously. ‘Some of this panelling’s been pretty well knocked about.’

  ‘No; I thought of that. An old hole would have the edges more or less smoothed down; those are quite jagged and splintery. And where the knife’s cut the wood away the surface is quite different to the rest. Not so dark. No; that mark’s a recent one, all right.’

  Alec got down from the chair. ‘What do you make of it?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Roger slowly. ‘It means rather a drastic rearrangement of our ideas, doesn’t it? But I’ll tell you one highly important fact, and that is that a line from this mark through the middle of the ring in the dust leads straight to the chair in front of the writing table. That seems to me jolly significant. I tell you what. Let’s go out on to the lawn and talk it over. We don’t want to stay in here too long in any case.’

  He carefully replaced the chair on the hearth-rug in its proper position and walked out into the garden. Alec dutifully followed, and they made for the cedar tree once more.

  ‘Go on,’ said the latter when they were seated. ‘This is going to be interesting.’

  Roger frowned abstractedly. He was enjoying himself hugely. With his capacity for throwing himself heart and soul into whatever he happened to be doing at the moment, he was already beginning to assume the profound airs of a great detective. The pose was a perfectly unconscious one; but none the less typical.

  ‘Well, taking as our starting point the fact that the bullet was fired from a line which includes the chair in which Mr Stanworth was sitting,’ he began learnedly, ‘and assuming, as I think we have every right to do, that it was fired between, let us say, the hours of midnight and two o’clock this morning, the first thing that strikes us is the fact that in all probability it must have been fired by Mr Stanworth himself.’

  ‘We then remember,’ said Alec gravely, ‘that the inspector particularly mentioned that only one shot had been fired from Mr Stanworth’s revolver, and realise at once what idiots we were to have been struck by anything of the kind. In other words, try again!’

  ‘Yes, that is rather a nuisance,’ said Roger thoughtfully. ‘I was forgetting that.’

  ‘I thought you were,’ remarked Alec unkindly.

  Roger pondered. ‘This is very dark and difficult,’ he said at length, dropping the pontifical manner he had assumed. ‘As far as I can see it’s the only reasonable theory that the second shot was fired by old Stanworth. The only other alternative is that it was fired by somebody else, who happened to be standing in a direct line with Stanworth and the vase and who was using a revolver of the same, or nearly the same, calibre as Stanworth’s. That doesn’t seem very likely on the face of it, does it?’

  ‘But more so than that it was a shot from Stanworth’s revolver which was never fired at all,’ Alec commented dryly.

  ‘Well, why did the inspector say that only one shot had been fired from that revolver?’ Roger asked. ‘Because there was only one empty shell. But mark this. He mentioned at the same time that the revolver wasn’t fully loaded. Now, wouldn’t it have been possible for Stanworth to have fired that shot and then for some reason or other (Heaven knows what!) to have extracted the shell?’

  ‘It would, I suppose; yes. But in that case wouldn’t you expect to find the shell somewhere in the room?’

  ‘Well, it may be there. We haven’t looked for it yet. Anyhow, we can’t get away from the fact that in all probability Stanworth did fire that other shot. Now why did he fire it?’

  ‘Search me!’ said Alec laconically.

  ‘I think we can rule out the idea that he was just taking a pot-shot at the vase out of sheer joie de vivre, or that he was trying to shoot himself and was such a bad shot that he hit something in the exact opposite direction.’

  ‘Yes, I think we might rule those out,’ said Alec cautiously.

  ‘Well, then, Stanworth was firing with an object. What at? Obviously some other person. So Stanworth was not alone in the library last night, after all! We’re getting on, aren’t we?’

  ‘A jolly sight too fast,’ Alec grumbled. ‘You don’t even know for anything like certain that the second shot was fired last night at all, and – ’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do, friend Alec. The vase was broken last night.’

  ‘Well, in any case, you don’t know that Stanworth fired it. And here you are already inventing somebody else for him to shoot at? It’s too rapid for me.’

  ‘Alec, you are Scotch, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I am. But what’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Oh, nothing; except that your bump of native caution seems to be remarkably well developed. Try and get over it. I’ll take the plunges; you follow. Where had we got to? Oh, yes; Stanworth was not alone in the library last night. Now, then, what does that give us?’

  ‘Heaven only knows what it won’t give you,’ murmured Alec despairingly.

  ‘I know what it’s going to give you,’ retorted Roger complacently, ‘and that’s a shock. It’s my firm impression that old Stanworth never committed suicide at all last night.’

  ‘What?’ Alec gasped. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘That he was murdered!’

  Alec lowered his pipe and stared with incredulous eyes at his companion.

  ‘My dear old chap,’ he said after a little pause, ‘have you gone suddenly quite daft?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ replied Roger calmly, ‘I was never so remarkably sane in my life.’

  ‘But – but how could he possibly have been murdered? The windows all fastened and the door locked on the inside, with the key in the lock as well! And, good Lord, his own statement sitting on the table in front of him! Roger, my dear old chap, you’re mad.’

  ‘To say nothing of the fact that his grip on the revolver was – what did the doctor call it? Oh, yes; properly adjusted, and must have been applied during life. Yes, there are certainly difficulties, Alec, I grant you.’

  Alec shrugged his shoulders eloquently. ‘This affair’s gone to your head,’ he said shortly. ‘Talk about making mountains out of molehills! Good Lord! You’re making a whole range of them out of a single worm-cast.’

  ‘Very prettily put, Alec,’ Roger commented approvingly. ‘Perhaps I am. But my impression is that old Stanworth was murdered. I might be wrong, of course,’ he added candidly. ‘But I very seldom am.’

  ‘But dash it all, the thing’s out of the question! You’re going the wrong way round once more. Even if there was a second man in the library last night – which I very much doubt! – you can’t get away from the fact that he must have gone before Stanworth locked himself in like that. That being the case, we get back to suicide again. You can’t have it both ways, you know. I’m not saying that this mythical person may not have put pressure of some sort on Stanworth (that is, if he ever existed at all) and forced him to commit suicide. But as for murder – ! Why, the idea’s too dashed silly for words!’ Alec was getting quite heated at this insult to his logic.

  Roger was unperturbed. ‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I had an idea it would be a bit of a shock to you. But to tell you the truth I was a bit suspicious about this suicide business almost from the very first. I couldn’t get over the place of the wound, you know. And then all the rest of it, windows and door and confession and what not – well, instead of reassuring me, they made me more suspicious still. I couldn’t help feeling more and more that it was a case of Qui s’excuse, s’accuse. Or to put it in another way, that the whole scene looked like a stage very carefully arranged for the second act after all the debris of the first act had been cleared
away. Foolish of me, no doubt, but that’s what I felt.’

  Alec snorted. ‘Foolish! That’s putting it mildly.’

  ‘Don’t be so harsh with me, Alec,’ Roger pleaded. ‘I think I’m being rather brilliant.’

  ‘You always were a chap to let things run away with you,’ Alec grunted. ‘Just because a couple of people act a little queerly and a couple more don’t look as mournful as you think they ought, you dash off and rake up a little murder all to yourself. Going to tell the inspector about this wonderful idea of yours?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Roger with decision. ‘This is my little murder, as you’re good enough to call it, and I’m not going to be done out of it. When I’ve got as far as I can, then I’ll think about telling the police or not.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness you’re not going to make a fool of yourself to that extent,’ said Alec with relief.

  ‘You wait, Alexander,’ Roger admonished. ‘You may make a mock of me now, if you like – ’

  ‘Thanks!’ Alec put in gratefully.

  ‘ – but if my luck holds, I’m going to make you sit up and take notice.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’ll begin by explaining how this excellent murderer of yours managed to get away from the room and leave everything locked on the inside behind him,’ said Alec sarcastically. ‘He didn’t happen to be a magician in a small way, did he? Then you could let him out through the key-hole, you know.’

  Roger shook his head sadly. ‘My dear but simple-minded Alexander, I can give you a perfectly reasonable explanation of how that murder might have been committed last night, and yet leave all these doors and windows of yours securely fastened on the inside this morning.’

  ‘Oh, you can, can you?’ said Alec derisively. ‘Well, let’s have it.’

  ‘Certainly. The murderer was still inside when we broke in, concealed somewhere where nobody thought of looking.’

  Alec started. ‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed. ‘Of course we never searched the place. So you think he was really there the whole time?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Roger smiled gently, ‘I know he wasn’t, for the simple reason that there was no place for him to hide in. But you asked for an explanation, and I gave you one.’