Читать книгу The Caravan Crime - Fergus Hume - Страница 6

Table of Contents

FORTUNATELY the imperfect moon light prevented Selwin from noticing the startled look of his companion which might have suggested leading questions. The mention of the dead woman’s name, so intimately connected with what he carried in his pocket, shook Dick considerably. With cautious cunning he feigned complete ignorance. “And who is Lady Hamber?”

“Widow of Sir John Hamber,” answered the policeman, glibly. “Sarley Court.”

“Sarley Court!” echoed Lawson, wondering if the unknown girl had come from that house; wondering also if she had anything to do with this mysterious death. “Lady Hamber of Sarley Court,” repeated Selwin, more to himself than to his companion. “What was she doing in this blinking wood so late.”

“If we could learn that we might find out who murdered her,” said Dick drily.

Selwin nodded. “Did you see her in the glade by any chance, sir?”

“No! So far as I know she never entered the glade. Do you think she was coming to the glade when she was shot down?”

The policeman criticised the attitude of the body and was perplexed by the disposition of the same. “Lying sideways, face up’ard,” he said, shaking his head with official gravity. “Seems to me as one can’t say nohow if she was coming or going.”

“Certainly not going,” remarked Dick, positively; “had she passed through the glade I should have seen her.”

“But you was sleeping in the caravan, sir,” objected the constable.

“Yes; but later on, in the open, by the fire, as you see. Besides, as I told you, I was hunting for my horse when Lady Hamber was shot down. At a quarter to eleven I heard the crack of a revolver when I was groping my way through trees and underwood over yonder. It is just as well to be precise, Selwin, or people will think that I have something to do with the matter.”

The policeman threw back his head and laughed scornfully. “No one ‘ud be such a fool as to think that, sir. Any tramps about the glade tonight, sir?”

“I didn’t see any. I saw no man of any kind.”

“And no woman, since you never set eyes on Lady Hamber,” chuckled Selwin.

Dick did not contradict him, since truth-telling was risky. “Lady Hamber,” he mused, looking down on the still, white, handsome face. “Had she enemies?”

“Well, she wasn’t what you’d call popular, sir. Haughty and stuck-up and thinking a power of herself. But murder—” Selwin shook his head again. “I don’t know as anyone would have gone so far as murder. Evening dress with jewels, I see; not a robbery, I take it, unless the cove as did it had no time to lift the swag.”

“He had ample time. I heard the shot at a quarter to eleven, and when I met you on the road it was after half-past eleven. I was insensible meanwhile from the knock on the head. But as you say, Selwin, evening dress, alone in a wild wood at so late an hour. What does it mean?”

“Them at Sarley Court may be able to tell us,” suggested the policeman, “Help me to carry the body, sir.”

Lawson obeyed, lifting the head while Selwin swung up the feet. “Where is the place—Sarley Court, I mean?”

“Something like a stone’s throw away, sir.”

“Up this path?” Dick remembered how the girl had come down this byway.

“Yes, sir. This here wood joins on to the park, and there’s a fence between with a gate of sorts. Lady Hamber must have come this way to get into the wood, though goodness knows why she was messing about here after dark.” And the perplexed officer shook his head with the air of a beaten man.

The two carried the dead woman slowly along the path, stopping every now and then. The way was so narrow, so twisted, so tangled with briar and brushwood, that it was some considerable time before they reached the gate. A bright half-moon revealed the fence, which turned out to be a low brick wall into which were mortised stout posts, supporting wire-netting.

Passing through a gate at the park boundary they struggled along a little used path, as crooked and tangled as that in the wood, and suddenly emerged into a vast space of smooth, green lawns, girdled by ancient oaks and elms, beech, birch, and chestnut trees. On a slight rising, approached by three terraces, rose the big house of mingled flint and stone and brick, with steeply sloping roofs and many windows glittering coldly in the moonlight.

The mansion fronting them was as dark as the wood, and as silent; no lights, no sound, no indication of life anywhere. “Gone to bed.” commented Selwin, ponderously. “Why wasn’t she there, too, and what was she doin’ in Sarley Wood?”

Dick naturally could not reply to these questions, and said nothing, but he uttered an exclamation of relief when they turned the corner of the house after climbing the three flights of terrace steps. Here four French windows were ablaze with vivid light, and one of them stood wide open, as though an inmate of the mansion had stepped out for a mouthful of fresh air. Undoubtedly, if circumstantial evidence went for anything, Lady Hamber had made use of this exit, but—”Why did she walk as far as that bloomin’ wood?” queried the constable, voicing Dick’s mental question. “Queer go, ain’t it, sir? We’d best carry her in and call up the servants.”

On a convenient couch of rose-colored brocade they laid down their uncomfortable burden, and Selwin went to shout for assistance while Lawson kept watch. When alone he glanced curiously round the room, a luxurious apartment with a richly painted ceiling. In his half-undressed state—without gaiters and coat, clothed mainly in pyjamas, with the addition of breeches and stout boots—Dick felt very much out of the picture. But the servants, who now began to push into the room, were not much better as regards clothing, being all more or less untidy and in hastily assumed costumes. Selwin drew them into line, quite in a military way, and began to question a very dignified butler, who remained dignified throughout in spite of his dishabille and natural alarm.

“Lady Hamber,” said the constable, pointing to the body on the couch, “dead—found in the wood by this gentleman and myself, shot through the heart. What do you know about it? Be careful, for anything you say will be used in evidence against you.”

“I—I don’t know—anything,” quavered the butler, while a wail of alarm rose from the female servants, horror-struck in the presence of death. “We all went to bed at 10, leaving her ladyship here with Mr. Randolph.”

“Who is Mr. Randolph?” Selwin made a note of the name.

“A friend of her ladyship’s, who came over here this evening from Mr. Pollard’s place to stay for a few days.”

“Where is he?”

“In bed, I suppose,” said the bewildered man, staring at the body of his late mistress as if the eyes would start out of his head.

“And Sir Gerald?”

“He’s in bed, too; went there at 9 o’clock. You know, Mr. Selwin, as he had an accident with his motor car and has been ill for a long time.”

“I know.” The policeman glanced round at the frightened faces. “Well, and have any of you anything to say?”

“No!” came in a chorus, and one after another endorsed the butler’s statement that they had all retired to bed at 10 o’clock, leaving her ladyship and Mr. Randolph in the drawing room. “But Miss Audrey is sitting with her brother,” volunteered the housekeeper, a stout old dame, wearing a nightcap and a bed robe of flaming red.

“I must see her; see everyone,” said Selwin, positively. “Now, Mr. Randolph—”

“My name!” A tall young man with a toothbrush moustache as black as his closely-trimmed hair lounged into the room. He was clothed from head to foot in a sage-green silk dressing gown, and smoked a cigarette. “Heard a row,” he explained in a drawling way. “Thought this might be useful; burglars. What?”

The officer took the revolver, which Randolph held and examined the chambers carefully. “Hasn’t been fired,” he muttered, laying it on the table.

“Why should it have been fired?” asked the young man, greatly amazed, and shot an enquiring glance at Lawson, whom he recognised as one of his own class, notwithstanding the shabby undress.

“Lady Hamber has been shot in the wood, sir,” stammered the butler, and moved aside to reveal the body on the couch.

“Good Lord!” Randolph dropped his easy tone, also his cigarette, and stepped forward swiftly, with a look of horrified amazement. “Who shot her?”

“That is what I am trying to find out, sir,” said Selwin, significantly. “Mrs Trotte”—he turned to the stout housekeeper—”go up and ask Sir Gerald and his sister to come down at once.”

“But I say, you know,” cried Randolph, as the woman left the room, “I was with Lady Hamber here up to 9 o’clock.”

“Ten, according to the servants,” interposed Dick, sharply.

“I went to bed at nine,” insisted Randolph, wheeling to face the speaker; “but I did come down just before ten to get a book I had left here. The butler was in the room when I came down.”

“You were, sir,” struck in the butler, “and I left you here with her ladyship.”

“Quite so; but I went upstairs again a minute or so after ten.”

“And Lady Hamber?” asked Selwin, pointedly.

“She said that she was going to the library to write some business letters; but I left her in this room.”

“Was that window open?”

“Yes; but she said nothing about going out,” said the young man, perplexed. “And after reading my book for a time I went to bed, and was awakened by the infernal row you have all been making.”

The man spoke convincingly, and Dick believed that he was truly explaining the events of the evening. Selwin nodded once more, and was about to ask another question, when Mrs. Trotte rolled into the room, much flustered.

“Miss Audrey begs that you will excuse her, Mr. Selwin, as she is sitting up with Sir Gerald, and don’t want him waked out of a lovely sleep, she holding his hand to keep them eyes of his shut.”

Lawson objected to the policeman accepting this excuse as he seemed inclined to do, being more than anxious to satisfy himself on a certain and very important point. His whispered suggestion altered the man’s mind.

“Take me to Sir Gerald’s room,” commanded Selwin, sharply. “Mr. Lawson, come with me.”

Mrs. Trotte objected vehemently, but was nevertheless compelled to become an unwilling guide. Leaving the excited, hysterical servants at one end of the room and Randolph staring at the dead body of his unfortunate hostess at the other, the two men followed the stout housekeeper. Protesting loudly all the way that they would rob Sir Gerald of a much-needed sleep, she panted up the wide staircase, along the spacious corridor, and knocked gently at a door near the far end. In answer to a soft invitation, Selwin, with the other man at his heels, stepped promptly into the room. They found themselves in the rosy twilight of shaded electric bulbs to behold a handsome lad sleeping on the bed close to an open window. Beside him, holding his hand, sat an agitated young lady, swathed in a crane-embroidered kimono of white silk. Lawson stared with all his eyes. Yet he was by no means surprised. She—as he expected—was the very girl who had appeared and disappeared so mysteriously in the wood of adventure.