Grayne Hall was not in the residential area of St Margaret’s Bay. It stood aloof in a fold of the downs and within a very short distance of the cliff’s edge. A red brick building, with squat chimneys that were not at all in harmony with the Elizabethan architecture of the house.
“We used to have high twisted chimneys, but the wind blew them down. You’ve no idea what the wind is like here,” explained Dr Ingham before dinner.
The car passed through a pair of ornamental iron gates and up a broad drive to the portico before the door. The doctor was waiting and with him a tall slight woman, who looked very young until she was seen closer at hand. Even then she might deceive any but the most critical, for her brown hair had a glint of gold in it, and the beauty of her face had not entirely faded.
“Welcome!” Dr Ingham had a bandage over one eye and his injured nose was still covered with plaster. But he was in a pleasantly jovial mood. Perhaps he was relieved at the sight of his visitor, for he subsequently admitted that he had been expecting a wire from Mr Reeder, regretting his inability to put in an appearance.
“I want you to persuade Mrs Ingham that this is not the most forsaken spot on the face of the earth, my dear Reeder. And if you can allay her fears about a repetition of the attack upon me I shall be completely grateful.”
Mrs Ingham’s red lips curled in a smile. She was, Mr Reeder discovered, a well-read, knowledgeable woman. As she showed him round the lovely grounds (the spring flowers were a joy to the eye) she gave him every opportunity to study her. He himself said little – she gave him no chance, for she never stopped talking. Her voice was low but monotonous. She had definite views on almost every subject. She told him that she was a graduate of a famous New England university – she was obviously proud of this and repeated the information twice. She was pretty, probably nearer forty than thirty. She had deep dark brown eyes, the most delicate of features, and jet black eyebrows which contrasted attractively with the colour of her hair.
“…I remember the Pizarro case – I had just left college and naturally I was thrilled because he came from our home town. And, Mr Reeder, I’m sure that all these disappearances have something to do with the Pizarro outfit. I have been racking my brains all day trying to think how my husband has offended them. Maybe he preached against them. I’ve a kind of recollection that he had a threatening letter when we were in Boston soon after we married. Not that my husband would worry about threatening letters…”
There was much to see in the grounds: here and there a crumbling ruin of a wall to remind the observer of the dead glories of Grayne Castle. One interesting feature Mr Reeder discovered was a flight of steps leading down the face of the cliff. It was guarded by an iron hand rail and gave the occupants of Grayne Hall a private way to the beach.
“If anybody wants to bathe on pebbles,” said Mrs Ingham.
The room allotted to Mr Reeder’s use gave him a beautiful view of the sea and the flower garden before the house. It was furnished with rare taste – he saw in the decorations Mrs Ingham’s hand. A pleasant retreat, but in many, many ways a dangerous one. He went up to his room after tea and found his dress clothes laid out for him by his host’s valet. Later came the individual to assist Mr Reeder. A bathroom opened from the bedroom and Mr Reeder was under the shower when the valet knocked. He came out, to find the man folding the discarded day clothes and hanging them neatly in the wardrobe.
The contents of his pockets were placed neatly on the dressing table.
“Thank you,” murmured Mr Reeder. “I – um – shall not require you any more. I will ring if I do.”
He closed the door on the retiring valet, turned the key and began to dress at his leisure. Mr Reeder liked the routine of well run country houses and Grayne Hall was extraordinarily well run. He came down to find himself alone in the drawing-room. A fine aromatic cedar log burnt on the open grate, above which was a picture which might have been a Rembrandt.
The soft hangings of the room, the austere furnishings, the pastel coloured walls, were very soothing. Dr Ingham, wearing the evening dress of the laity, came in to rub his hands before the fire.
“I suppose Elsa gave you the full benefit of her theories? There may be something in them. I’ve been trying to think how I might have offended these birds. A sermon maybe. I used to be a powerful preacher – took current events as my text. Come into my study and have a drink. Elsa won’t be down for hours.”
He conducted Mr Reeder across the panelled hall, through a deeply recessed door into as comfortable a room as the heart of man could desire.
Deep armchairs, a low divan before the fire, walls covered with bookshelves, and a big empire desk were the main features of the room.
“Comfort, comfort, comfort!” said the cleric as he opened a walnut cabinet and took out a silver tray laden with glasses. To these he added a square decanter and a syphon.
“Say when.”
He splashed the soda into the brown whisky and Mr Reeder sipped daintily.
“Elsa wants me to keep firearms in the house. Now you, as a detective, I suppose would think nothing of that. To me it is an abhorrent practice. I may not be a great preacher, but I am, I hope, a good Christian, and the idea of taking life – ugh!”
Mr Reeder tried to raise a complimentary shudder, but failed.
For his part he believed in taking life. He was old-fashioned enough to regard the gallows as an instrument of the highest social value.
“I presume you carry a gun?”
Mr Reeder shook his head.
“On occasions that dreadful necessity has been forced upon me,” he said. “I dislike the practice. I have – er – two such weapons, but I have never had to use them. One is at my office and one at my private residence.”
The doctor made a little face.
“You disappoint me, Mr Reeder. I am not a nervous man, but in view of what happened the other night” – he touched his injured face–” I should have felt a little safer. Hello, sweetness.”
Sweetness wore a perfectly cut gown of deep crimson velvet. Mr Reeder thought that she looked twenty-four and not a day over, and had he the courage of a lady’s man – a quality he much envied – he would have said as much.
“What were you talking about?” she asked.
“We were talking of guns,” said Mr Reeder loudly, “um – revolvers.”
She smiled at this.
“And my husband was giving his well-known views of the sanctity of human life,” she said scornfully.
Mr Reeder smiled.
“Rather I was giving a bit of my mind, my dear madam,” he said.
“My dear,” broke in the host, “all this arose from a question I asked Mr Reeder: whether he carried weapons. He doesn’t.”
“I expect poor Thomas was terribly disappointed,” said Mrs Ingham. “When he unpacked your bag he had expected to find it full of pistols and handcuffs.”
She took them back to the drawing-room, but either she thought it was a painful subject, or she wanted to postpone the discussion till after dinner, for she made no reference to her husband’s experience.
It was Mr Reeder who brought up that matter. They were passing through the hall on their way to the dining-room – “Which axe was it you used?” he asked.
The panelled walls were entirely innocent of armour or battle-axes.
“We have had them moved,” said Mrs Ingham. “It occurred to me afterwards that these dreadful people might have used the battle-axe instead of my husband.”
They had passed the broad stairs on which the battle between Dr Ingham and his midnight intruders had been fought, and Mr Reeder tried to visualize the scene. But there were occasions when his imagination failed, and this was one.
The dining-room had been fashioned like an Elizabethan banqueting hall in miniature. There was a big Tudor fireplace, a minstrel gallery, and he noticed with surprise that the floor was of flagstones.
“That is the original floor of the old castle,” said Mrs Ingham proudly. “The builders unearthed it whilst they prepared the foundation, and my husband insisted that it should remain. Of course we had it levelled, and in some cases the flags had to be replaced. But it was in a marvellous state of preservation. It used to belong to the De Boisy family–”
Mr Reeder nodded.
“De Tonsin,” he said gently. “The De Boisys were related by marriage, and only one De Boisy occupied the castle in 1453.”
She was a little taken aback by his knowledge.
“Yes, I have made a study of this place,” Mr Reeder went on. “I am something of a student of archaeology.”
He beamed up and down the room approvingly.
“Dirty work.”
Mrs Ingham lifted her eyebrows.
“I don’t quite get you?”
“On this floor,” said Mr Reeder almost jovially, “wicked old barons were slicing off their enemies’ heads and were dropping them into the deepest dungeon beneath the – um.” No, he had never heard of a moat. It could not well be that, could it?
As the footman placed a cup of soup before him, and the tall butler poured him out a glass of wine, Mr Reeder looked at the glass, held it up to the light.
“That’s good stuff. I can quite imagine,” he said reminiscently, “that dramatic scene when Geoffrey De Boisy induced his old rival to come to dinner. How he must have smiled as his varlets ended – um – the unfortunate gentleman with wine from a poisoned flagon.”
He finished the scrutiny of the wine and put it down untasted.
Mrs Ingham was amused.
“You have a mediaeval mind, Mr Reeder.”
“A criminal mind,” said that gentleman.
He did not drink throughout the meal, and Dr Ingham remembered that he had merely sipped his whisky in the study.
“Yes, I am a teetotaller in a sense,” said Mr Reeder, “but I find life so completely exciting that I require no other stimulant.”
He had observed that the man who had valeted him was also the footman.
He waited till the two servants were at the other end of the room, and then: “Your man is looking rather ill. Has he also been injured in the fight?”
“Thomas? No, he did not appear on the scene until it was all over,” said Dr Ingham, in surprise. “Why?”
“I thought I saw a bandage round his throat.”
“I haven’t noticed it,” said the host.
The conversation flagged. The coffee was served on the table, and Mr Reeder helped himself liberally to sugar. He refused a cigar, and, apologizing for his bad manners, took one of his own cigarettes.
“Matches, Thomas,” said Dr Ingham, but before the footman could obey, Mr Reeder had taken a box from his pocket and struck a match.
It was no ordinary match: the light of it blazed blindingly white so that he had to screw up his eyes to avoid the glare. Only for a moment, then it died down, leaving the party blinking.
“What was that?” asked Ingham.
Mr Reeder stared hopelessly at the box.
“Somebody has been playing a joke on me,” he said. “I am terribly sorry.”
They were very ordinary looking matches. He passed the box across to his host, who struck one, but produced nothing more startling than a mild yellow flame.
“I have never seen anything so extraordinary,” said the beautiful lady who sat on his left. “It was almost like a magnesium flare. We see them sometimes when ships are in distress.”
The incident of the match passed. It was the doctor who led the conversation to the Pizarros and Mrs Ingham who elaborated her theory. J G Reeder sat listening, apparently absorbed.
“I don’t think he was a really bad man,” Mrs Ingham was saying when he interrupted.
“Pizarro was a blackguard,” said Mr Reeder. “But he had the kind of nature one would have expected in a half-bred Dago.” If he saw Mrs Ingham stiffen, he gave no sign.
“Kennedy, his confederate,” he went on, “was, as I said this afternoon, a man to be pitied. His mother was a moral leper, a woman of no worth, the merest chattel.”
Dr Ingham’s face had gone white and tense, his eyes glowed like red coals, but J G Reeder, sitting there with his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, his cigarette hanging limply from his lower lip, continued as though he had the fullest approval of the company.
“Kennedy was really the brain of the gang, if you can call it a brain, the confidence man with some sort of college education. He married Pizarro’s daughter, who was not a nice young lady. He was, I think, her fourth lover before he married her – if they were married at all…”
“Take that back, you damned liar!”
The woman was on her feet, glowering down at him, her shrill voice almost a scream.
“You liar, you beast!”
“Shut up!”
It was Dr Ingham’s voice – harsh, commanding. But the injunction came too late. One of Mr Reeder’s hands had come out from his pocket and it held an automatic of heavy calibre. He came to his feet so quickly that they were unprepared for the manoeuvre.
Mr Reeder pushed the chair behind, and leant back against the wall. Thomas, the footman, had come in running, but stopped now at the sight of the pistol. Mr Reeder addressed him: “I’m afraid I hurt you Thursday night,” he said, pleasantly. “A pellet from an air pistol can be very painful. I owe you an apology – I intended it to be for your friend.”
He nodded towards the butler.
“It was very stupid of you, Dr Ingham, to allow your two men to come to London, and it led to very unpleasant consequences. I saw the dead man today. Rather a powerful looking fellow named Gelpin. The knuckles of his hand were bruised. I presume that, in an unguarded moment you went too near to him without your body-guard.”
He reached one of the long windows, and with a quick movement of his hand he drew the curtain aside. The window was open. The military-looking man who had accompanied him from London climbed through. Then followed the three who had followed Mr Reeder to the house. Dr Ingham stood paralysed to inaction.
Suddenly he turned and darted towards the small door in a corner of the room. Mr Reeder’s pistol exploded and the panel of the door split noisily. Ingham stood stock still – a pitiable, panic-stricken thing, and he came staggering back.
“It wasn’t my idea, Reeder,” he said. “I will tell you everything. I can prove I had nothing to do with it. They are all safe, all of them.”