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Chapter 9

The Sunningdale Mystery

‘The Sunningdale Mystery’ was first published as ‘The Sunninghall Mystery’ in The Sketch, 19 October 1924. The Old Man in the Corner was created by Baroness Orczy (1865–1947).

‘Do you know where we are going to lunch today, Tuppence?’

Mrs Beresford considered the question.

‘The Ritz?’ she suggested hopefully.

‘Think again.’

‘That nice little place in Soho?’

‘No.’ Tommy’s tone was full of importance. ‘An ABC shop. This one, in fact.’

He drew her deftly inside an establishment of the kind indicated, and steered her to a corner marble-topped table.

‘Excellent,’ said Tommy with satisfaction, as he seated himself. ‘Couldn’t be better.’

‘Why has this craze for the simple life come upon you?’ demanded Tuppence.

‘You see, Watson, but you do not observe. I wonder now whether one of these haughty damsels would condescend to notice us? Splendid, she drifts this way. It is true that she appears to be thinking of something else, but doubtless her sub-conscious mind is functioning busily with such matters as ham and eggs and pots of tea. Chop and fried potatoes, please, miss, and a large coffee, a roll and butter, and a plate of tongue for the lady.’

The waitress repeated the order in a scornful tone, but Tuppence leant forward suddenly and interrupted her.

‘No, not a chop and fried potatoes. This gentleman will have a cheese-cake and a glass of milk.’

‘A cheesecake and a milk,’ said the waitress with even deeper scorn, if that were possible. Still thinking of something else, she drifted away again.

‘That was uncalled for,’ said Tommy coldly.

‘But I’m right, aren’t I? You are the Old Man in the Corner? Where’s your piece of string?’

Tommy drew a long twisted mesh of string from his pocket and proceeded to tie a couple of knots in it.

‘Complete to the smallest detail,’ he murmured.

‘You made a small mistake in ordering your meal, though.’

‘Women are so literal-minded,’ said Tommy. ‘If there’s one thing I hate it’s milk to drink, and cheese-cakes are always so yellow and bilious-looking.’

‘Be an artist,’ said Tuppence. ‘Watch me attack my cold tongue. Jolly good stuff, cold tongue. Now then, I’m all ready to be Miss Polly Burton. Tie a large knot and begin.’

‘First of all,’ said Tommy, ‘speaking in a strictly unofficial capacity, let me point out this. Business is not too brisk lately. If business does not come to us, we must go to business. Apply our minds to one of the great public mysteries of the moment. Which brings me to the point – the Sunningdale Mystery.’

‘Ah!’ said Tuppence, with deep interest. ‘The Sunningdale Mystery!’

Tommy drew a crumpled piece of newspaper from his pocket and laid it on the table.

‘That is the latest portrait of Captain Sessle as it appeared in the Daily Leader.’

‘Just so,’ said Tuppence. ‘I wonder someone doesn’t sue these newspapers sometimes. You can see it’s a man and that’s all.’

‘When I said the Sunningdale Mystery, I should have said the so-called Sunningdale Mystery,’ went on Tommy rapidly.

‘A mystery to the police perhaps, but not to an intelligent mind.’

‘Tie another knot,’ said Tuppence.

‘I don’t know how much of the case you remember,’ continued Tommy quietly.

‘All of it,’ said Tuppence, ‘but don’t let me cramp your style.’

‘It was just over three weeks ago,’ said Tommy, ‘that the gruesome discovery was made on the famous golf links. Two members of the club, who were enjoying an early round, were horrified to find the body of a man lying face downwards on the seventh tee. Even before they turned him over they had guessed him to be Captain Sessle, a well-known figure on the links, and who always wore a golf coat of a peculiarly bright blue colour.

‘Captain Sessle was often seen out on the links early in the morning, practising, and it was thought at first that he had been suddenly overcome by some form of heart disease. But examination by a doctor revealed the sinister fact that he had been murdered, stabbed to the heart with a significant object, a woman’s hatpin. He was also found to have been dead at least twelve hours.

‘That put an entirely different complexion on the matter, and very soon some interesting facts came to light. Practically the last person to see Captain Sessle alive was his friend and partner, Mr Hollaby of the Porcupine Assurance Co, and he told his story as follows:

‘Sessle and he had played a round earlier in the day. After tea the other suggested that they should play a few more holes before it got too dark to see. Hollaby assented. Sessle seemed in good spirits, and was in excellent form. There is a public footpath that crosses the links, and just as they were playing up to the sixth green, Hollaby noticed a woman coming along it. She was very tall, and dressed in brown, but he did not observe her particularly, and Sessle, he thought, did not notice her at all.

‘The footpath in question crossed in front of the seventh tee,’ continued Tommy. ‘The woman had passed along this and was standing at the farther side, as though waiting. Captain Sessle was the first to reach the tee, as Mr Hollaby was replacing the pin in the hole. As the latter came towards the tee, he was astonished to see Sessle and the woman talking together. As he came nearer, they both turned abruptly, Sessle calling over his shoulder: “Shan’t be a minute.”

‘The two of them walked off side by side, still deep in earnest conversation. The footpath there leaves the course, and, passing between the two narrow hedges of neighbouring gardens, comes out on the road to Windlesham.

‘Captain Sessle was as good as his word. He reappeared within a minute or two, much to Hollaby’s satisfaction, as two other players were coming up behind them, and the light was failing rapidly. They drove off, and at once Hollaby noticed that something had occurred to upset his companion. Not only did he foozle his drive badly, but his face was worried and his forehead creased in a big frown. He hardly answered his companion’s remarks, and his golf was atrocious. Evidently something had occurred to put him completely off his game.

‘They played that hole and the eighth, and then Captain Sessle declared abruptly that the light was too bad and that he was off home. Just at that point there is another of those narrow “slips” leading to the Windlesham road, and Captain Sessle departed that way, which was a short cut to his home, a small bungalow on the road in question. The other two players came up, a Major Barnard and Mr Lecky, and to them Hollaby mentioned Captain Sessle’s sudden change of manner. They also had seen him speaking to the woman in brown, but had not been near enough to see her face. All three men wondered what she could have said to upset their friend to that extent.

‘They returned to the clubhouse together, and as far as was known at the time, were the last people to see Captain Sessle alive. The day was a Wednesday, and on Wednesday cheap tickets to London are issued. The man and wife who ran Captain Sessle‘s small bungalow were up in town, according to custom, and did not return until the late train. They entered the bungalow as usual, and supposed their master to be in his room asleep. Mrs Sessle, his wife, was away on a visit.

‘The murder of the Captain was a nine days’ wonder. Nobody could suggest a motive for it. The identity of the tall woman in brown was eagerly discussed, but without result. The police were, as usual, blamed for their supineness – most unjustly, as time was to show. For a week later, a girl called Doris Evans was arrested and charged with the murder of Captain Anthony Sessle.

‘The police had had little to work upon. A strand of fair hair caught in the dead man’s fingers and a few threads of flame-coloured wool caught on one of the buttons of his blue coat. Diligent inquiries at the railway station and elsewhere had elicited the following facts.

‘A young girl dressed in a flame-coloured coat and skirt had arrived by train that evening about seven o’clock and had asked the way to Captain Sessle’s house. The same girl had reappeared again at the station, two hours later. Her hat was awry and her hair tousled, and she seemed in a state of great agitation. She inquired about the trains back to town, and was continually looking over her shoulder as though afraid of something.

‘Our police force is in many ways very wonderful. With this slender evidence to go upon, they managed to track down the girl and identify her as one Doris Evans. She was charged with murder and cautioned that anything she might say would be used against her, but she nevertheless persisted in making a statement, and this statement she repeated again in detail, without any subsequent variation, at the subsequent proceedings.

‘Her story was this. She was a typist by profession, and had made friends one evening, in a cinema, with a well-dressed man, who declared he had taken a fancy to her. His name, he told her, was Anthony, and he suggested that she should come down to his bungalow at Sunningdale. She had no idea then, or at any other time, that he had a wife. It was arranged between them that she should come down on the following Wednesday – the day, you will remember, when the servants would be absent and his wife away from home. In the end he told her his full name was Anthony Sessle, and gave her the name of his house.

‘She duly arrived at the bungalow on the evening in question, and was greeted by Sessle, who had just come in from the links. Though he professed himself delighted to see her, the girl declared that from the first his manner was strange and different. A half-acknowledged fear sprang up in her, and she wished fervently that she had not come.

‘After a simple meal, which was all ready and prepared, Sessle suggested going out for a stroll. The girl consenting, he took her out of the house, down the road, and along the “slip” on to the golf course. And then suddenly, just as they were crossing the seventh tee, he seemed to go completely mad. Drawing a revolver from his pocket, he brandished it in the air, declaring that he had come to the end of his tether.

‘“Everything must go! I’m ruined – done for. And you shall go with me. I shall shoot you first – then myself. They will find our bodies here in the morning side by side – together in death.”

‘And so on – a lot more. He had hold of Doris Evans by the arm, and she, realising she had to do with a madman, made frantic efforts to free herself, or failing that to get the revolver away from him. They struggled together, and in that struggle he must have torn out a piece of her hair and got the wool of her coat entangled on a button.

‘Finally, with a desperate effort, she freed herself, and ran for her life across the golf links, expecting every minute to be shot down with a revolver bullet. She fell twice, tripping over the heather, but eventually regained the road to the station and realised that she was not being pursued.

‘That is the story that Doris Evans tells – and from which she has never varied. She strenuously denies that she ever struck at him with a hatpin in self-defence – a natural enough thing to do under the circumstances, though – and one which may well be the truth. In support of her story, a revolver has been found in the furze bushes near where the body was lying. It had not been fired.

‘Doris Evans has been sent for trial, but the mystery still remains a mystery. If her story is to be believed, who was it who stabbed Captain Sessle? The other woman, the tall woman in brown, whose appearance so upset him? So far no one has explained her connection with the case. She appears out of space suddenly on the footpath across the links, she disappears along the slip, and no one ever hears of her again. Who was she? A local resident? A visitor from London? If so, did she come by car or by train? There is nothing remarkable about her except her height; no one seems to be able to describe her appearance. She could not have been Doris Evans, for Doris Evans is small and fair, and moreover was only just then arriving at the station.’

‘The wife?’ suggested Tuppence. ‘What about the wife?’

‘A very natural suggestion. But Mrs Sessle is also a small woman, and besides, Mr Hollaby knows her well by sight, and there seems no doubt that she was really away from home. One further development has come to light. The Porcupine Assurance Co is in liquidation. The accounts reveal the most daring misappropriation of funds. The reasons for Captain Sessle’s wild words to Doris Evans are now quite apparent. For some years past he must have been systematically embezzling money. Neither Mr Hollaby nor his son had any idea of what was going on. They are practically ruined.

‘The case stands like this. Captain Sessle was on the verge of discovery and ruin. Suicide would be a natural solution, but the nature of the wound rules that theory out. Who killed him? Was it Doris Evans? Was it the mysterious woman in brown?’

Tommy paused, took a sip of milk, made a wry face, and bit cautiously at the cheesecake.

‘Of course,’ murmured Tommy, ‘I saw at once where the hitch in this particular case lay, and just where the police were going astray.’

‘Yes?’ said Tuppence eagerly.

Tommy shook his head sadly.

‘I wish I did. Tuppence, it’s dead easy being the Old Man in the Corner up to a certain point. But the solution beats me. Who did murder the beggar? I don’t know.’

He took some more newspaper cuttings out of his pocket.

‘Further exhibits – Mr Hollaby, his son, Mrs Sessle, Doris Evans.’

Tuppence pounced on the last and looked at it for some time.

‘She didn’t murder him anyway,’ she remarked at last. ‘Not with a hatpin.’

‘Why this certainty?’

‘A lady Molly touch. She’s got bobbed hair. Only one woman in twenty uses hatpins nowadays, anyway – long hair or short. Hats fit tight and pull on – there’s no need for such a thing.’

‘Still, she might have had one by her.’

‘My dear boy, we don’t keep them as heirlooms! What on earth should she have brought a hatpin down to Sunningdale for?’

‘Then it must have been the other woman, the woman in brown.’

‘I wish she hadn’t been tall. Then she could have been the wife. I always suspect wives who are away at the time and so couldn’t have had anything to do with it. If she found her husband carrying on with that girl, it would be quite natural for her to go for him with a hatpin.’

‘I shall have to be careful, I see,’ remarked Tommy.

But Tuppence was deep in thought and refused to be drawn.

‘What were the Sessles like?’ she asked suddenly. ‘What sort of things did people say about them?’

‘As far as I can make out, they were very popular. He and his wife were supposed to be devoted to one another. That’s what makes the business of the girl so odd. It’s the last thing you’d have expected of a man like Sessle. He was an ex-soldier, you know. Came into a good bit of money, retired, and went into this Insurance business. The last man in the world, apparently, whom you would have suspected of being a crook.’

‘It is absolutely certain that he was the crook? Couldn’t it have been the other two who took the money?’

‘The Hollabys? They say they’re ruined.’

‘Oh, they say! Perhaps they’ve got it all in a bank under another name. I put it foolishly, I dare say, but you know what I mean. Suppose they’d been speculating with the money for some time, unbeknownst to Sessle, and lost it all. It might be jolly convenient for them that Sessle died just when he did.’

Tommy tapped the photograph of Mr Hollaby senior with his fingernail.

‘So you’re accusing this respectable gentleman of murdering his friend and partner? You forget that he parted from Sessle on the links in full view of Barnard and Lecky, and spent the evening in the Dormy House. Besides, there’s the hatpin.’

‘Bother the hatpin,’ said Tuppence impatiently. ‘That hatpin, you think, points to the crime having been committed by a woman?’

‘Naturally. Don’t you agree?’

‘No. Men are notoriously old-fashioned. It takes them ages to rid themselves of preconceived ideas. They associate hatpins and hairpins with the female sex, and call them “women’s weapons.” They may have been in the past, but they’re both rather out of date now. Why, I haven’t had a hatpin or a hairpin for the last four years.’

‘Then you think –?’

‘That it was a man killed Sessle. The hatpin was used to make it seem a woman’s crime.’

‘There’s something in what you say, Tuppence,’ said Tommy slowly. ‘It’s extraordinary how things seem to straighten themselves out when you talk a thing over.’

Tuppence nodded.

‘Everything must be logical – if you look at it the right way. And remember what Marriot once said about the amateur point of view – that it had the intimacy. We know something about people like Captain Sessle and his wife. We know what they’re likely to do – and what they’re not likely to do. And we’ve each got our special knowledge.’

Tommy smiled.

‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that you are an authority on what people with bobbed and shingled heads are likely to have in their possession, and that you have an intimate acquaintance with what wives are likely to feel and do?’

‘Something of the sort.’

‘And what about me? What is my special knowledge? Do husbands pick up girls, etc?’

‘No,’ said Tuppence gravely. ‘You know the course – you’ve been on it – not as a detective searching for clues, but as a golfer. You know about golf, and what’s likely to put a man off his game.’

‘It must have been something pretty serious to put Sessle off his game. His handicap’s two, and from the seventh tee on he played like a child, so they say.’

‘Who say?’

‘Barnard and Lecky. They were playing just behind him, you remember.’

‘That was after he met the woman – the tall woman in brown. They saw him speaking to her, didn’t they?’

‘Yes – at least –’

Tommy broke off. Tuppence looked up at him and was puzzled. He was staring at the piece of string in his fingers, but staring with the eyes of one who sees something very different.

‘Tommy – what is it?’

‘Be quiet, Tuppence. I’m playing the sixth hole at Sunningdale. Sessle and old Hollaby are holing out on the sixth green ahead of me. It’s getting dusk, but I can see that bright blue coat of Sessle’s clearly enough. And on the footpath to the left of me there’s a woman coming along. She hasn’t crossed from the ladies’ course – that’s on the right – I should have seen her if she had done so. And it’s odd I didn’t see her on the footpath before – from the fifth tee, for instance.‘

He paused.

‘You said just now I knew the course, Tuppence. Just behind the sixth tee there’s a little hut or shelter made of turf. Any one could wait in there until – the right moment came. They could change their appearance there. I mean – tell me, Tuppence, this is where your special knowledge comes in again – would it be very difficult for a man to look like a woman, and then change back to being a man again? Could he wear a skirt over plus-fours, for instance?’

‘Certainly he could. The woman would look a bit bulky, that would be all. A longish brown skirt, say a brown sweater of the kind both men and women wear, and a woman’s felt hat with a bunch of side curls attached each side. That would be all that was needed – I’m speaking, of course, of what would pass at a distance, which I take to be what you are driving at. Switch off the skirt, take off the hat and curls, and put on a man’s cap which you can carry rolled up in your hand, and there you’d be – back as a man again.’

‘And the time required for the transformation?’

‘From woman to man, a minute and a half at the outside, probably a good deal less. The other way about would take longer, you’d have to arrange the hat and curls a bit, and the skirt would stick getting it on over the plus fours.’

‘That doesn’t worry me. It’s the time for the first that matters. As I tell you, I’m playing the sixth hole. The woman in brown has reached the seventh tee now. She crosses it and waits. Sessle in his blue coat goes towards her. They stand together a minute, and then they follow the path round the trees out of sight. Hollaby is on the tee alone. Two or three minutes pass. I’m on the green now. The man in the blue coat comes back and drives off, foozling badly. The light’s getting worse. I and my partner go on. Ahead of us are those two, Sessle slicing and topping and doing everything he shouldn’t do. At the eighth green, I see him stride off and vanish down the slip. What happened to him to make him play like a different man?’

‘The woman in brown – or the man, if you think it was a man.’

‘Exactly, and where they were standing – out of sight, remember, of those coming after them – there’s a deep tangle of furze bushes. You could thrust a body in there, and it would be pretty certain to lie hidden until the morning.’

‘Tommy! You think it was then. – But someone would have heard –’

‘Heard what? The doctors agreed death must have been instantaneous. I’ve seen men killed instantaneously in the war. They don’t cry out as a rule – just a gurgle, or a moan – perhaps just a sigh, or a funny little cough. Sessle comes towards the seventh tee, and the woman comes forward and speaks to him. He recognises her, perhaps, as a man he knows masquerading. Curious to learn the why and wherefore, he allows himself to be drawn along the footpath out of sight. One stab with the deadly hatpin as they walk along. Sessle falls – dead. The other man drags his body into the furze bushes, strips off the blue coat, then sheds his own skirt and the hat and curls. He puts on Sessle’s well-known blue coat and cap and strides back to the tee. Three minutes would do it. The others behind can’t see his face, only the peculiar blue coat they know so well. They never doubt that it’s Sessle – but he doesn’t play Sessle’s brand of golf. They all say he played like a different man. Of course he did. He was a different man.’

‘But –’

‘Point No. 2. His action in bringing the girl down there was the action of a different man. It wasn’t Sessle who met Doris Evans at a cinema and induced her to come down to Sunningdale. It was a man calling himself Sessle. Remember, Doris Evans wasn’t arrested until a fortnight after the time. She never saw the body. If she had, she might have bewildered everyone by declaring that that wasn’t the man who took her out on the golf links that night and spoke so wildly of suicide. It was a carefully laid plot. The girl invited down for Wednesday when Sessle’s house would be empty, then the hatpin which pointed to its being a woman’s doing. The murderer meets the girl, takes her into the bungalow and gives her supper, then takes her out on the links, and when he gets to the scene of the crime, brandishes his revolver and scares the life out of her. Once she has taken to her heels, all he has to do is to pull out the body and leave it lying on the tee. The revolver he chucks into the bushes. Then he makes a neat parcel of the skirt and – now I admit I’m guessing – in all probability walks to Woking, which is only about six or seven miles away, and goes back to town from there.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Tuppence. ‘There’s one thing you haven’t explained. What about Hollaby?’

‘Hollaby?’

‘Yes. I admit that the people behind couldn’t have seen whether it was really Sessle or not. But you can’t tell me that the man who was playing with him was so hypnotised by the blue coat that he never looked at his face.’

‘My dear old thing,’ said Tommy. ‘That’s just the point. Hollaby knew all right. You see, I’m adopting your theory – that Hollaby and his son were the real embezzlers. The murderer’s got to be a man who knew Sessle pretty well – knew, for instance, about the servants being always out on a Wednesday, and that his wife was away. And also someone who was able to get an impression of Sessle’s latch key. I think Hollaby junior would fulfil all these requirements. He’s about the same age and height as Sessle, and they were both clean-shaven men. Doris Evans probably saw several photographs of the murdered man reproduced in the papers, but as you yourself observed – one can just see that it’s a man and that’s about all.’

‘Didn’t she ever see Hollaby in Court?’

‘The son never appeared in the case at all. Why should he? He had no evidence to give. It was old Hollaby, with his irreproachable alibi, who stood in the limelight throughout. Nobody has ever bothered to inquire what his son was doing that particular evening.’

‘It all fits in,’ admitted Tuppence. She paused a minute and then asked: ‘Are you going to tell all this to the police?’

‘I don’t know if they’d listen.’

‘They’d listen all right,’ said an unexpected voice behind him.

Tommy swung round to confront Inspector Marriot. The Inspector was sitting at the next table. In front of him was a poached egg.

‘Often drop in here to lunch,’ said Inspector Marriot. ‘As I was saying, we’ll listen all right – in fact I’ve been listening. I don’t mind telling you that we’ve not been quite satisfied all along over those Porcupine figures. You see, we’ve had our suspicions of those Hollabys, but nothing to go upon. Too sharp for us. Then this murder came, and that seemed to upset all our ideas. But thanks to you and the lady, sir, we’ll confront young Hollaby with Doris Evans and see if she recognises him. I rather fancy she will. That’s a very ingenious idea of yours about the blue coat. I’ll see that Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives get the credit for it.’

‘You are a nice man, Inspector Marriot,’ said Tuppence gratefully.

‘We think a lot of you two at the Yard,’ replied that stolid gentleman. ‘You’d be surprised. If I may ask you, sir, what’s the meaning of that piece of string?’

‘Nothing,’ said Tommy, stuffing it into his pocket. ‘A bad habit of mine. As to the cheesecake and the milk – I’m on a diet. Nervous dyspepsia. Busy men are always martyrs to it.’

‘Ah!’ said the detective. ‘I thought perhaps you’d been reading – well, it’s of no consequence.’

But the Inspector’s eyes twinkled.