Читать книгу The Corpse in the Crimson Slippers - R. A. J. Walling - Страница 4

Table of Contents

1

Two cigars had been smoked in the shade of a tall elm in the garden, and the chauffeur waited a long hour before Felderman had finished his story and answered Tolefree's questions.

"I'll tell you first what happened last night," said he. "You know about Grymer?"

Tolefree had never met Sir Thomas Grymer, but, like everyone else, knew of him as the chairman of Applewhites.

"Well, that's it. Peter Lewisson, who's lying dead at Old Hallerdon, was one of Grymer's men at Manchester, an engineering research chemist. Last night about a quarter to twelve, we found him shot dead, with a revolver in his hand, lying on the floor of his bedroom. He was an obvious suicide, Tolefree—far too obvious. I'm not so sure. It worries me. But I daren't say a word to a soul at Old Hallerdon. You're the man."

Tolefree shook his head.

"Decidedly not, Felderman! The police are the men."

"Well, you'll see. They aren't. They're quite certain he killed himself."

"If they are—?"

"You mean, why trouble with it? But I can't help it, Tolefree. I'm puzzled to death about lots of things at Old Hallerdon. By the way," he added, giving Tolefree a sidelong glance, "what's puzzling you in connection with Old Hallerdon?"

"Nothing more than a coincidence. Who found Lewisson dead?"

"The tame antiquarian—fellow called Borthwick, a few seconds before I reached the room myself. But you'll never get the hang of it unless I tell you what went before."

"I'd like to know first how and why all those people got to Old Hallerdon, and what they were doing there—including yourself."

"Yes. Well, it was this way—"

Sir Thomas Grymer, said Felderman, besides being an eminent engineer, was a man of some note on the fringes of finance and society. He had great wealth. But he also had quality. "He's a personality, Tolefree. He has presence. You get him?"

Tolefree nodded.

Well, Old Hallerdon, Tolefree must understand, was one of Grymer's highbrow fancies. It cost him a little fortune to make the place what it was, for the house, on two sides of what had been a quadrangle, was a farmhouse for more than a hundred years, and the quadrangle a farmyard, and the chapel a barn. He'd put architects and archaeologists on to the job of restoring it to something like the state it had in the sixteenth century when the Duke to whom Henry the Eighth sold a neighboring Priory used the Priory as a stone quarry and built himself a Tudor mansion. Grymer was as proud of this performance as of Applewhites latest aeroplane engine. He could hold forth on it for hours. Nothing delighted him so much as to entertain antiquarians who would listen to him.

"And that's where you come in, Tolefree. You're going to be Grymer's tame antiquarian. You talk about coincidence!—it's a happy coincidence that Borthwick left this morning. You'll be able to talk oriels, mullions, gables and chimney stacks while you weigh things up. Multa viros nescire decit, you know—"

Tolefree smiled. "And Sir Thomas is one of 'em?"

"Er? No—I didn't mean that. Everyone's one of 'em."

"Well, never mind. I have a good picture of Sir Thomas. But about his chemist?"

"It's the reason why his chemist was there that bothers me. Grymer was coming down to spend a week at Old Hallerdon, and he invited Lyneham—well, I needn't tell you anything about Lyneham?"

"No—his other name's Midas, isn't it?"

"Rolling," said Felderman. "He asked me to join. Then this fellow, Borthwick, whom he'd met at his club. And, the day before we were coming down, a Frenchman called Thibaud burst in on him with a letter of introduction and a brand new invention for him to consider. He invited him, too, and wired to Manchester for Lewisson to come along, with the idea that they could discuss Thibaud's proposals at odd times."

Tolefree took a sheet of foolscap from his pocket and unfolded it.

"Yes," said he. "And then there was Canon—"

"Why—you've got a list! Tolefree, you're hiding up something."

"Nothing whatever, Felderman. My list has nothing to do with your story. I can't tell you how I got it, but I did. Who is Canon?"

"The Canon, you mean. He's Canon Merafield, the vicar of Hallerdon, one of three local people. There's his niece, Miss Merafield, and there's the Honorable Robert Bigbury—nice youth. You'll meet 'em all. But they just don't count. Keep your mind on the visitors from town. Now, I'm not going to suggest anything to you about any of 'em—want you to see for yourself—hear the evidence at the inquest tomorrow and tell me afterwards whether you're satisfied with it. But here's the bare bones of fact. Lewisson seemed under the weather yesterday, spent a lot of the day in his room and didn't come down to dinner last night. But later on he turned up in the smoke-room and said he was better. He and Grymer were the last up. All the party had retired when a shot in Lewisson's room roused everyone. Borthwick and Thibaud and I were nearest. Borthwick got there first, then I, and then Thibaud. Lewisson was dead on the carpet, with an automatic clutched in his hand. Within a minute or two everybody was there. Next—doctors, police—it all went off according to Cocker, Tolefree. They examined the body carefully, and when they moved it, they found the discharged shell from the automatic underneath. Pretty well squashed by the fall, it was. And this is curious, Tolefree—I happened to be looking at Thibaud when that shell was uncovered, and I could swear that something had given him a nasty shock. He had looked perfectly normal a moment before; now he was pale, and his cheek was twitching. I don't know what you'll make of that. Well, I'm not satisfied. But if you get the atmosphere, hear all the evidence, and then you're satisfied, I give in."

"You don't say why you're not satisfied," Tolefree remarked.

"No. I hoped you wouldn't ask that. I don't want to prejudice you. I'll say this—that I see no reason why Lewisson should have shot himself. Nor does Lyneham. But you come and see things on the spot and form your own conclusions. Whatever you're after—" Felderman paused.

"I can't tell you what I'm after, Felderman—anyhow till I get my bearings."

"Well, I know what you ought to be after, and that's the truth of this poor devil's fate. What's more, I bet you will be after it before another twenty-four hours."

"You seem to feel strongly, Felderman—"

"All right—I do. Lewisson seemed to me a good chap. I hate the idea that he may have been put out for some hellish reason—say, because his knowledge stood in somebody's way. And I can't bring myself to believe that he committed suicide because he had a headache. It doesn't make sense. However, drop it now. You're going to drive through some fine country and see a place that ought to impassion an archaeologist like you."

Felderman's gravity fell from him. He seemed to have discharged his mind of a load.

The drive, ten miles to the north, towards the dark serrated line of high country on the horizon was all that he had promised. The car made light of the hills on this spur of Dartmoor. In half an hour, at a crest, Felderman pointed into the next valley.

"Old Hallerdon," he said.

An ancient house, tucked cosily among the trees, it made a fine picture from the hillside where the road curled down towards it—a gray house of two wings in the shape of an L, with the interior angle facing southeast. It had three stories in one wing and two in the other, but the steep-pitched roofs were all at the same level for this reason—that in the eastward facing wing the height of two stories was occupied by what had evidently been a chapel, its windows arched and pointed instead of mullioned. From the hill the house appeared almost complete in plan, except, as Felderman remarked, for the domestic quarters which Grymer had built on at the back on the outside angle.

From the foot of the hill, after the car had passed a hump-backed bridge over the stream rattling down from the moor, a drive turned through lodge gates into the woods, and ended at a sweep round the lawn in the quadrangle.

In the lobby at the junction of the two wings, a tall gray-haired man waved away the servant who stood to receive them and advanced with hand outstretched. Felderman introduced Tolefree to Sir Thomas Grymer, and passed on.

"Hope you're had a good journey. Not too hot?" said the big man pleasantly.

Tolefree assured him that the journey had been a complete success and the clou of it at Old Hallerdon entrancing.

"Take Mr. Tolefree's bag up," said Grymer to the man, and to Tolefree, "Come in and have a drink."

He turned into a small room, part lounge and part office, and shut the door. He invited Tolefree to take a pew. He opened a cupboard full of bottles, and busied himself with a cocktail shaker and glasses. A big man of fine appearance, Sir Thomas Grymer twelve-and-a-half stone of weight distributed over a body six feet high, a thatch of graying hair, a pair of keen gray eyes, a clean-run face, humorous creases in it but steel behind.

"So you find Old Hallerdon entrancing?" said he, presenting Tolefree with golden fluid in a glass. "I'm mighty glad to have you here, Tolefree. I understand from Felderman that you're a great expert on the domestic architecture of the Tudor Renaissance."

Tolefree saw the gray eyes twinkling over the glass. He muttered some words of self-deprecation: Felderman had greatly exaggerated his knowledge of architecture. The twinkle broke into a laugh as Grymer said:

"You bet your life he did!"

"I will," said Tolefree, laughing too.

"Felderman's a wonderful chap and as fine a sport as they make 'em," said Grymer. "But he's got the legal hush-hush complex. He thinks engineers are born blind and business men can never see anything but their bankbooks."

"He gave me a very different impression of his thoughts about you," said Tolefree.

"Yes, I daresay. But still the feeling's there. When he suggested that he'd got on the telephone a real dyed-in-the-wool archaeologist to admire Old Hallerdon, I said, `Get him here.' Then I asked him who was this bird, and he told me he was called Philip Tolefree. Had I ever heard of him?"

"Well, had you?" Tolefree had trouble in finding his feet.

"Well—what do you think!" Grymer's eyes twinkled fast. "I said it must be the chap who'd written six volumes on the domestic architecture of the Tudor Renaissance under a nom de plume, and he said that was probably so, but he didn't know for certain. So I told him to fetch you along and here you are."

"Under false pretenses so far as the six volumes are concerned," said Tolefree.

"Yes—and so far as everything else is concerned," Grymer chuckled. "Have one more? Well, I Willa slow one." He took a chair opposite Tolefree. "False pretenses. That's way I asked you in hereto put you wise. But you see what I mean about Felderman's complex? He really imagined that I might be ignorant of your identity—and he was being a regular sly dog. But in fact, as I said, I'm very glad to have you. Now, Tolefree, what's the game?"

Tolefree shook his head.

"I know no more than you do, Sir Thomas—probably not so much. I received an invitation from you through Mr. Felderman to pay you a visit at Old Hallerdon, and here, as you said, I am."

"Well, I'm not a Marine, so you needn't try that on! I don't want to pry. But there's only one thing I can think of. We've got a French chap here that I can't make out, nor Felderman either...Is that it? I suppose it's true that you rang up Felderman, eh? He didn't ring you up?"

"It's certainly true. I wanted a talk with Mr. Felderman about something which is a thousand miles from Old Hallerdon, and he had this idea of a visit to help me out."

"So that's how I get a distinguished archaeologist—"

"A tame antiquarian was Mr. Felderman's denomination," said Tolefree demurely.

Grymer broke into a loud guffaw.

"Well, keep it up, Tolefree. I don't know much about archaeology, and Felderman knows less. Whatever you're after, God speed you. But—"

Grymer grew suddenly grave. Tolefree waited.

"But I ought to tell you this—that while Felderman's playing about with his mysterious Frenchman we've had a real tragedy at Old Hallerdon, and I'm afraid we shan't be very gay for the next two days."

"Oh?" said Tolefree.

"Yes. Last night, a young fellow staying here—the head of our chemistry research department at Manchester, fellow called Lewisson—he committed suicide. Shot himself in his room. He'd been bad all day, driven mad with a nervous headache. But nobody thought of it as desperate, and last night he seemed to be recovering. Then, just as we'd all gone to bed, he killed himself. They're holding the inquest here tomorrow, and then we'll have to get the poor fellow off to Cheshire, where his parents live. So don't be surprised if we're all preoccupied and mouldy, will you?"

Tolefree found some words. Grymer finished his glass.

"Now," said he, "you'll like to get upstairs. Dinner's at half past eight. I'll take you up. We foregather on the lawn these evenings. There's always a patch of sunshine about that time on the southeast corner, and it's not too hot in these hills. Come along."

Tolefree followed him up two turns of a broad staircase to a corridor on the first floor.

"Bathrooms straight ahead," said Grymer, pointing to a passage facing the stairs. "The Elizabethans did without 'em, so I had to build 'em on. We go this way." He turned along the corridor to the right, with bedroom doors on each side. Grymer stopped an instant at the first door on the right, and said in a whisper, "Poor Lewisson—he's in there." He threw open the second door on the left. "This is yours. We'll have to call it the Tame Antiquarians' Den. Borthwick, who was here over the week-end, had this room. There's your bag. Ring for anything you need. See you on the lawn."

Tolefree walked to the window. His room was at the back of the house, and it looked out over a walled kitchen garden and a wooded slope beyond, with a purple sweep of moorland above and behind it. His watch showed him a quarter to eight. There was no time to sit at that open window and try to make sense of his position in Grymer's party. He found his clothes laid out. He undressed, slipped into a light dressing-gown, and made for the bathrooms. There were sounds of occupation in the first two. The door of the third was ajar. He was soon submerged in the softest water that ever laved his skin. In the first moments of his enjoyment, a voice was raised in song in one of the other rooms—a more vigorous than tuneful baritone proclaiming the virtues of a Life on the Ocean Wave and a Home in the Rolling Deep, accompanied by loud splashing. Upon which cacophony broke the sound of banging on the wall and a soprano voice crying, "Bobby! Bobby!"

"Hello, Florence!" said the baritone. "You drowning? Half a tick and I'll be there."

"Shut up, you ass!" said the soprano. "You'll scandalize everybody. Poor Mr. Lewisson—"

"Well, I shan't scandalize him. He can't hear—"

By this time, Tolefree thought it well to draw attention to himself by loud splashing, and the colloquy came to a sudden end.

In the patch of sunshine on the lawn, Tolefree recognized with amusement the owner of the baritone—a very fair youth with a snub nose and very blue eyes and a pair of notably long legs, introduced to him as the Honorable Robert Bigbury—and the owner of the soprano, a neat dark girl with brown hair and sparkling brown eyes and a blue frock trailing about her feet—Miss Merafield. There was a kind of hush on the assembly. Glances went up to the window on the first floor where the blind was drawn. People spoke in low tones. He heard "Poor Mr. Lewisson!" more than once.

Grymer, having taken him round, sat him down by Lady Grymer. She was fifty, slim, competent, unaffected.

"Tom's told you about poor Mr. Lewisson?" she said in a half whisper. "It's very sad, but we thought we couldn't do him any good by breaking up the party."

"Why, of course," said Tolefree.

"But we're going to be very quiet. Tom will enjoy a chat with you about his hobby. You must see what he's doing in the old chapel. It'll be lovely. And tomorrow—I expect they'll be busy tomorrow—the inquest, you know—and perhaps Bobby Bigbury—do you play golf, Mr. Tolefree?—but of course. Come here, Bobby. Will you take Mr. Tolefree to play golf tomorrow?"

Mr. Bigbury rose and advanced.

"What's that, Janet? Golf? Not on your life—unless he'll play a threesome!"

"Is there any sea nearby?" said Tolefree.

"Not for miles and miles," replied Mr. Bigbury. "Why?"

"Oh, I just thought I'd like to sample the life on the ocean wave," Tolefree grinned. "I'm sorry, Lady Grymer, my golf is all divots; but don't worry about me. I'll be quite happy at Old Hallerdon."

"I know!" said she in the tone of a discoverer; "get Canon Merafield to show you his church: you'll make him your friend for life."

Fortunately for Tolefree the dinner gong put an end to the rival clamor of golf and ecclesiastical architecture, and at dinner, placed at the big round table between Grymer and Felderman, he was safe from both. He answered a word here and there, but initiated nothing. There was plenty of time to watch the faces of the company.

Including Grymer and his wife there were nine at table. They seemed to divide themselves into two groups—four people to whom Grymer wanted to be pleasant (that was if he might put himself in that category) and three who might represent business. Canon Merafield was a middle-aged cleric with a dry sense of humor; but evidently he was there not so much for his own beautiful eyes as for those of his niece, Florence Merafield, which were much more beautiful; and, if Tolefree was not mistaken, she had been invited because the Honorable Robert Bigbury rejoiced in her society and Lady Grymer was inclined to be a matchmaker.

The second group was a very different affair. It began with Mr. George Lyneham, the City man down to the ground, business friend of Grymer. Lyneham's money might well be in the background of whatever business they had in hand. He knew two principal types of City men who handled lots of money—the robustious type whose very waistcoats seemed to exude wealth, and the retiring and silent type who looked as if they might possibly be earning five pounds a week. Lyneham was of these latter—a rather tall, spare, unobtrusive man, who spoke little and apparently had no personality till you got him by the gray eyes. Hard to tell his age: perhaps he was fifty—younger than Grymer anyway.

But the most interesting figure at the table was Monsieur Hippolyte Thibaud—by far the most interesting to Tolefree for more than one reason. First, his attention had been startlingly called to Mr. Thibaud by both Felderman and Grymer. And now his attention was riveted upon Mr. Thibaud by the comedy in which he played the leading part. He sat exactly opposite, with Miss Merafield between him and Mr. Bigbury. Mr. Thibaud was as dark as Mr. Bigbury was fair, as sleek as he was rough, as polished as he was crude, and as light-handed as he was clumsy.

With truly Gallic verve he maintained a violent flirtation with Miss Merafield, plying her with compliments and witticisms endlessly, while Mr. Bigbury gave a first-class representation of a thunderstorm. It was impossible to hear what Mr. Thibaud, in his excellent but Parisian English, said to throw the Canon into ecstasies of laughter and cause Miss Merafield's soprano to ripple so merrily. Watching him twirl his black mustache while preparing some new sally, Tolefree observed that for the third or fourth time Mr. Thibaud's bold black eyes were fixed upon him. He turned away and said to Felderman:

"Our French friend seems in good form tonight."

"The fellow's an artist," said Felderman; "inexhaustible."

"Yes—right out of the Porte St. Martin," Tolefree grinned.

Felderman grinned too. "He's been making young Bigbury's life all Dead Sea apples. How propinquity with the ravishing Miss Merafield brings out the Gallic strain! You ought to have been here yesterday! If Bigbury had committed suicide instead of poor Lewisson nobody'd have been surprised."

"Can't quite make out what he's doing in this galley," said Tolefree.

Felderman gave him a speculative look and glanced past him to Grymer, who was talking hard to Lyneham on his left.

"Your intense absorption in architecture has left you no time for engineering—"

"None whatever," said Tolefree, with a flicker of the eyelid.

"Well, I thought I knew a bit, and so did Lewisson, but on my life I can't fathom Thibaud's ideas on the subject."

"Deep?" asked Tolefree.

"Bottomless," said Felderman.

Tolefree's look swept round the table. Thibaud's eyes were boldly fixed on him again.

"I'm inclined, to think," said Felderman, "that if the young gentleman knew as much about engineering as he does about his fellow men he'd be a world's wonder. I expect you've noticed that he's already exceedingly curious about you?"

"Really?"

"Yes—and perfectly conscious at this moment that we're talking about him. So get hold of Grymer for a bit, and I'll talk to his wife."

This conversation provided Tolefree with his cud to chew, and he chewed it while Grymer made him acquainted with Lyneham over the port, and went on chewing when Lady Grymer and Miss Merafield had left them and Mr. Bigbury and Mr. Thibaud had soon followed. And while Lyneham refused to satisfy Grymer's request that he should instruct Tolefree how to make a fortune in twenty-four hours, but talked about printing instead, lamenting the happy days when he had been a printer in a moderate way of business and had been foolish enough to leave that profession for the anxieties of a life in the City. And while Canon Merafield fished at him for archaeology and got no bites. Listening to the subdued buzz of talk in the drawing-room, sitting before the open window in his bedroom through which a faint tang of gorse and heather drifted with the starlight, all the time a little litany ran in Tolefree's head: "A French chap I can't make out, nor Felderman either...Exceedingly curious about you."

Tolefree knocked out his pipe and undressed leisurely, took a last sniff of the moorland smell at the window, got into bed and propped up Banister-Fletcher on his chest against his knees. He turned to page 551, "English Renaissance: the Elizabethan Style." But, try as he would, he could not read a sentence intelligibly. At every point he saw the words, "French chap...exceedingly curious..." He had turned two pages, and almost made up his mind to drop Banister-Fletcher on the floor, when he heard a tap on the door, which, by custom, he had locked.

Tolefree got out of bed, switched on the main light and opened. A gorgeous apparition in a brightly flowered dressing-gown stood in the doorway.

"Monsieur Thibaud?" exclaimed Tolefree.

"Good evening, Mr. Tolefree," said Mr. Thibaud; "you permit that I come in?"