Death Comes to Cambers (21 page)

‘He might have known that and not wished to admit it, without being actually guilty,' Bobby pointed out. ‘He may have realized it would look bad, and have hoped he hadn't been noticed and needn't say anything. I suppose he might think it wouldn't do a young business any good to have its owner suspected of murder.'

‘Then it looks as if he were afraid Lady Cambers meant to claim back the money she had advanced him,' Colonel Lawson continued, ‘though that hardly seems a motive for murder. There's the stolen jewellery, of course. We have to remember that. And he was on the spot and denied it; and then there's this business of the cigarettes.'

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Bobby, ‘only what was the idea of this hiding in the rhododendrons? Apparently that happened after the murder.'

‘But not after the burglary, perhaps,' Lawson remarked. He went on: ‘I think we must make a few inquiries about the rabbit-trap business. Not that I think there's likely to be much in it. Still, if this Ray Hardy used threats we had better see him.'

‘Shall I send for him, sir?' Moulland asked.

‘I think we'll take a stroll that far,' Lawson said. ‘It might be as well to have a look at the place and the people – and I'm tired sitting so long.'

‘There's Eddy Dene,' Bobby ventured to remind them. ‘I expect he is waiting.'

‘Yes, yes,' agreed Lawson, vexed at having forgotten Dene for the moment and looking sternly and rebukingly at all in the room. ‘Certainly. We must hear what he has to say. Tell them to send him in.'

There came, as the chief constable was speaking, a knock at the door, and one of the maids appeared. Would the gentlemen like tea? she asked. The gentlemen accepted the suggestion with alacrity, and the girl at once brought in a tray with the tea, cakes, scones and so on she had in readiness.

A smart, good-looking girl, Bobby thought, as he watched her with the concentrated interest he felt should be directed upon all the inmates of this house till the mystery was solved. A little better-looking she might have been, though, had her nose been a trifle less long, her chin a trifle less pointed. Her eyes, a light grey, were small, alert, and bright, and on her side she was evidently very much interested in them all, and greatly impressed. It was, Bobby supposed, the first time she had ever seen real live detectives actually at work, and he reflected that the dull slow stolid routine he knew so well had somehow got invested in the popular mind with an extraordinary halo of romance.

He smiled ruefully as he turned from his tea to his shorthand notes. Not much romance in writing those cabalistic signs, fit product in their lines and angles of a utilitarian age, and he remembered that this girl was the Miss Robins described by Farman as such an expert in the psychology of love. It might, he told himself, be worth while to try to find an opportunity for a chat with her. She might have something interesting to say on the characters and the motives of the people engaged in this complicated and confused drama.

Again the door opened, and Eddy Dene came in. On the threshold he paused and stood looking at them. They were all relaxing over their tea. Moulland was thoughtfully chewing scone as though beyond chewing scone he hadn't a thought in the world. Colonel Lawson was lying back in his chair, lazily making smoke-rings from the cigarette he had just lighted. It was a pastime in which he had much skill. Behind, his two or three expert assistants had their heads together, chuckling over a faintly improper story one of them had just related. It was a peaceful, friendly scene that merited in no way the extraordinary – indeed, magnificent – disdain wherewith Dene regarded it. To Bobby there came a ridiculous memory of his school-days, when his housemaster had intruded upon a surreptitious dormitory supper.

Colonel Lawson straightened himself, letting his last and most successful smoke-ring float unheeded ceilingward. Moulland put down the piece of scone he was conveying to his mouth, and looked as if he and scone were strangers for evermore. The experts in the background hurriedly resumed their usual air of grave authority, and the little chubby-faced youngster in the doorway, with that odd air of arrogant authority with which he seemed to be able to clothe at will his at first sight unimpressive physique, Bobby almost expected to hear him ordering them all to bring him five hundred lines by next Wednesday evening. Instead he said: ‘Oh, sorry. If I had known you were so busy I wouldn't have interrupted.'

‘Mr. Dene, I believe,' said Colonel Lawson, visibly deciding to ignore this as a piece of impudence beneath notice.

‘There's one thing I want to ask you,' Dene went on, ignoring this in his turn. ‘I thought it might be as well to have a look round Lady Cambers's room – the one she used to call her den, so she could feel she had one, too. Some fathead in uniform out there told me no one was allowed in.'

‘The room was locked by my orders,' said Colonel Lawson, in his most severe voice – a voice calculated, indeed, to make most tremble in their shoes, so instinct was it with ‘shot at dawn' and ‘confined to barracks' and ‘pay docked' and other similar dooms. He went on: ‘When you refer to members of the force I have the honour to command, I will ask you to choose your words more carefully.' 

‘I do – jolly carefully,' retorted Eddy, quite unabashed. ‘I won't ask you what authority you have to lock doors in other people's houses. But it meant I had to get in by the window.'

‘You – you – what?' gasped Lawson, his gasp echoed all round the room, except by Bobby, who was so startled he knocked his note-book over and had to stoop to pick it up, thus being able to indulge in a quick little smile all to himself.

‘Get in by the window,' repeated Eddy, with a touch of impatience in his voice, and apparently quite unaware of the sensation he had caused. ‘Luckily it was open. Easy enough to hop in.'

‘Against my strict orders,' interposed Lawson, heavy menace in every inflexion of his voice.

‘My dear sir,' retorted Eddy. ‘Your orders don't affect me. I'm not one of your policemen. I take orders from no one.' And lounging there in the doorway, from which he had not yet moved, his whole body seemed again instinct with that strange, deep, almost involuntary arrogance of his. ‘Have you people any idea what Lady Cambers's jewellery was worth?'

‘Sir Albert is getting us the inventory,' Lawson replied, almost meekly.

‘Thirty thousand,' Dene said. ‘That counts. She showed it me once or twice. She liked to play with it. And when I say thirty thousand, I mean selling price. What you could pick up for it anywhere, any day.'

Colonel Lawson had recovered himself slightly by now.

‘We are fully aware of the value of the missing jewellery...' he began, and once more Eddy interrupted him.

‘Stolen jewellery,' he corrected sharply. ‘Are you fully aware, too, that if the stuff's gone, then it was the murderer took it, and, once you've found it, then you can bet your last copper the murderer won't be far off.'

‘Mr. Dene,' Colonel Lawson tried again, but still Eddy was not listening.

‘What's more,' he said, ‘it's a darn sight more important. Death's death, and nothing to be done about it. Common enough, too.' He pointed from the window towards Frost Field. ‘I can show you there the bones of men and women who died half a million years ago. I dare say it seemed important at the time. Personal prejudice. But thirty thousand pounds – that means life; that means power. And life and power they count – not death.'

He seemed to dismiss death with a shrug of the shoulders – an incident in the cosmic process, no more. The others watched him in silence, puzzled and impressed, too, by a kind of force that seemed to emanate from him. With his round chubby face, his slight stooping figure, his staring eyes, he looked insignificant enough, and yet there was this power about him, too. The first to break the brief silence, he said: ‘That's what you want to concentrate on – finding the jewellery. And when you've found that, you'll have found the murderer, too.'

‘Mr. Dene,' said the chief constable, rallying somewhat, ‘when I want your advice, I'll ask for it...' and once more Dene interrupted.

‘Yes, I know. When it's too late,' he said. ‘That's why I wanted to have a look round that room you've locked before everything was messed up. Of course, I knew you people had had a look round, but I expect you thought of nothing but finger-prints and clues of that sort. As if to-day every two-year-old starting out to raid the jam-cupboard doesn't put on gloves first.'

There was enough truth in this remark about the fingerprints to make Colonel Lawson angrier still.

‘Mr. Dene,' he thundered, so loud and so fast that this time you could no more have interrupted him than you could have an express train, ‘your attitude is most improper, and is making a most unfavourable impression on me.'

‘My good sir,' retorted Dene, ‘I always make an unfavourable impression – one can't help it except when one is talking to one's intellectual equals.'

‘I don't want,' pursued Lawson, ‘to be forced to take extreme steps...'

‘Extreme steps sometimes mean actions for damages,' retorted Eddy; and the poor Colonel winced, for that shot went home, since one was at the moment pending against him. ‘By the way, what's this about that pen of mine?'

‘Your – pen?' repeated Lawson, rather helplessly, so much again was he taken aback.

‘Well, I've lost mine, and I heard you've found it,' answered Eddy. ‘Isn't that right?'

‘How did you know we had found it?' interrupted Moulland this time, so anxious to make what he thought a good point he forgot to wait for his superior officer to ask the question.

Eddy surveyed him with an almost infinite pity. He gave the impression of bending gently, quietly, a little sadly, over the cradle of a new-born babe, regretting all it had yet to learn.

‘There isn't a thing,' Eddy explained very gently, ‘you people have done or said, or thought even, that isn't known and gossiped about all through the village. Everyone knows about that pen. Some people seem to think I choked the poor old girl with it. What about it? Can I have it back? It happens to be my property, you know.'

‘It has been sent to Scotland Yard for examination,' said Lawson briefly.

‘To find finger-prints?' asked Eddy, looking very amused. ‘I don't believe there's a thing in all the world but finger-prints that you people can think of. Well, I suppose that's your idea of your job, and anyhow I don't want to row with you. Why should I? I want to help. I'm as anxious as you are to get to the bottom of all this. I don't know if it's occurred to you that my apple-cart is pretty thoroughly upset. And what I say is – that when you've got the stolen jewellery, you'll have got the murderer, too. That's why I wanted to look round in there. Sorry if it's upset you – my going in, I mean. I don't see why. After all, if you wanted to keep people out, you should have shut the window.'

This was a statement so incontrovertible that no one had anything to say. Colonel Lawson realized that to pursue the subject would mean having that point raised quite frequently. He contented himself, therefore, with turning in his chair and fixing on Superintendent Moulland a baleful glare, full of the promise of things to come. Moulland looked pitifully at his superior officer and very fiercely at the door. Plainly someone out there was in for a hot time. Dene said: ‘Well, go ahead. Anything I can tell... I'll make it as plain and simple as I can. Not so easy to tell a plain simple story, either. But you can trust me. I'll help you along.'

‘Very good of you, I'm sure,' said Lawson, with a sarcasm Eddy showed no sign of noticing.

He repeated the story he had already told Bobby. Evidently his memory was good, for he often used almost the same words. The only difference was that several times he referred to the stolen jewellery, and repeated again that the important thing was to recover it at the earliest moment.

‘Thirty thousand pounds,' he insisted. ‘That's life, that's power that counts. The other's only death, and death's – well, dead, isn't it?'

He told again how he had spent the night, shuffling up and down his room, since his aching tooth had not allowed him to sleep and movement had seemed to alleviate the pain; and Bobby, remembering those old carpet-slippers he had seen, wondered if even they were capable of transforming Dene's quick, decided tread into a shuffle. But then, if someone else had taken his place, who could that have been?

When the chief constable went on to question him about rabbit-traps, Dene, when he understood the reference, was a trifle scornful. It was a silly business all round, he thought. Rabbits had got to be kept down, and what was the sense of making a fuss about the means used.

‘Like mice,' he said, ‘you've got to use traps, and what's the good of getting sentimental because they squeal when they're caught? I know Ray Hardy was wild about Lady Cambers interfering. He told me so. He thought her a confounded old nuisance. And I shouldn't wonder if she didn't have a prowl round at nights, just to see who was using what traps; and I dare say Ray Hardy would have liked to wring her old neck for her if he caught her doing it. But liking's not doing. If we all did what we liked...' He paused and smiled, the phrase and the idea evidently pleasing him. ‘Ray wouldn't,' he repeated, ‘and, if he had, he would never even have thought of the jewellery. If he had done a thing like that, he would just have panicked, not gone on to burglary. Stick to looking for the jewellery, that's my advice.' The colonel consulted his notes, whispered to Moulland, asked a question or two of Bobby, and then turned back to Eddy.

‘I think that's all we require to ask you for the present, Mr. Dene,' he said. ‘But I must warn you we shall perhaps wish to question you again.'