White Priory Murders shm-2 Read online

  "Possibly. I wasn't feeling like returning. Do you realize," Bohun demanded, "what I'd just heard from Canifest? Ruin of all our plans. I was drinking, if you want to know the truth. And driving the streets, wondering what in God's name I should say when I got home." He beat his hands together. "Well? What happened then?"

  "I should have thought," Willard remarked musingly, "her attitude was. never mind. At midnight she insisted on going to bed; a little early for Marcia. I didn't want her to go there — Maurice offered to let one of the housemaids sleep there and act as maid — but she wouldn't. We went out there with her. The night had gone clouded; that was when it started to snow, and there was a sharp wind. When we came back to the house after we had," he snapped the word out, "installed her, Maurice dragged Rainger off to the library to discuss motion pictures. Maurice had completely forgotten about, the play. Rainger gave me a very strange, almost leering good-night when I said I was going to my room." He blew a film of ash off the bowl of his pipe. "As a matter of fact, I walked back to the pavilion."

  "Oh."

  "I was there," Willard answered, very quietly, "exactly ten minutes. That was as long as she allowed me to stay. She seemed surprised when I knocked at the door, surprised and annoyed, as though she had been expecting somebody else. Twice while we were talking — it was in the bedroom she went out and looked through the front windows of the drawing-room. And she seemed to be growing more nervous and upset. We drank a glass of port and smoked a cigarette. But the more I pointed out that there was somebody in very cool earnest, who had made two attempts to kill her, the more amused she grew. She said, `You don't understand the chocolates; and, as for the other, I'm certainly not afraid of..’

  "Who?"

  "I don't know. She only stretched her arms up above her head (you know that gesture of hers?) As though she were breathing-life, and breathing it in a kind of glutted satisfaction. She was not acting then. In ten minutes she walked to the outer door with me. She was still wearing the silver gown, and the snow was growing thicker outside. That was the last I saw of her."

  The snow. Bennett leaned across in the firelight. His muddled brain still kept returning to that question of the snow.

  "Do you remember," he said, "exactly what time the snow began, Mr. Willard?"

  "Why yes.. Yes, if it matters. It was when we took Marcia out to the pavilion, about ten minutes past twelve." `But I don't suppose you'd know what time it stopped?"

  The actor wheeled round. He seemed about to answer irritably, when he saw Bennett's expression, and then looked with a quick speculative glance at Bohun.

  "As it happens, I do. For reasons I'll explain, I spent a very wakeful night. First there was the dog barking. I was up and at the window any number of times, although — although my room isn't at the rear of the house and I couldn't see towards the pavilion. But I noticed how very heavy a fall of snow it was to last for so brief a time. It lasted just about two hours, roughly from a little past twelve to a little past two. The number of times I looked at my watch last night" He hesitated. "Why?"

  A knocking at the door echoed hollowly across the room. Wind was rising across the Downs and rumbling in the chimney. Out of the corner of his eye Bennett saw Thompson come in.

  "Excuse me, sir," said Thompson's voice. "Dr. Wynne has just arrived, and the inspector of police you sent for. There's, a definite ah of doubtful description, "there's someone else with them…"

  So Marcia Tait must have been killed before two o'clock, probably some time before two o'clock, for all footprints of the murderer to have been effaced. Why, Bennett wondered, should it bother him? He almost started when he heard Thompson go on:

  "The other ma — the other gentleman asked for his card to be given to Mr. Bennett. You are Mr. Bennett, sir? Thank you "

  Bennett took the slip of pasteboard, on which was scribbled, "Friend of Sir Henry Merrivale. Should like to see you privately." The neat engraving read:

  HUMPHREY MASTERS

  CHIEF INSPECTOR

  CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPT.

  NEW SCOTLAND YARD, S. W.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Shadows in the Gallery

  "Tell Dr. Wynne and the inspector," said Bohun, becoming brisk and alert once more, "that I'll take them down to the pavilion at once. Like to come along, Willard?" He looked at Bennett, who was still staring at the card in his hand. "You're a very popular young man, Jimmy my lad," he added in a curious voice. "You arrive here at break of day. At (what time is it?) at a quarter past eight people have already begun calling on you. - May I ask who it is?"

  Bennett decided to be frank, though he was a little uneasy at the wheels he seemed to have set in motion. He put the card into Bohun's hand.

  "I don't know the man," he replied, "or how he happens to be here at eight o'clock in the morning. My uncle is"

  "I know who he is," said Bohun. His voice was quiet, but a nerve twitched beside his eyelid.

  "I'm sorry. I admit it was sheer impertinence, but I mentioned the poisoned chocolates to him: in confidence. And, considering what's happened now, don't you think that maybe it was the best thing…?"

  "Good Lord, of course it was," snapped Bohun, rather too quickly. "We shall get things done, now. He's a jolly quick worker, I should say, to be here now. Er — privately,' he says. Yes, of course. Thompson, show Chief Inspector Masters in here. Mr. Willard and I will go down to the pavilion with Dr. Wynne. No, we won't meet the chief inspector yet. Let him have his privacy."

  It was a good deal of a relief, Bennett felt, to have Bohun and Willard out of the room. The thickness of the emotional atmosphere, through which you could hardly see a man for his nerves; all the antagonisms and hates which were Marcia Tait's only legacy; seemed to clear from the library when they left it. And he was still more heartened at the homely, genial appearance of Chief Inspector Masters.

  A portly man, Masters, with his bland and shrewd face, his sedate dark overcoat, his bowler hat held against his breast as though he were watching a flag procession go by. He had the eyes of a young man, a heavy jaw, and grizzled hair carefully brushed to hide the bald spot. He came into the library with just the proper air of being impressed by it.

  "Ah, sirl" said Masters, by way of greeting. He. took the extended hand, and returned Bennett's grin. His deep voice fell soothingly on rattled nerves. "You must excuse such an early morning call. I promised your uncle I'd keep an eye on you."

  "On me?"

  "Well, well," said Masters, waving a deprecating hand. "Manner of speaking, dye see. Manner of speaking, that's all. Point of fact, he phoned me last night, but I'm not (exactly) on duty. No. The wife of the local inspector of police is a cousin of mine, it happens. I'd been visiting. Just between ourselves,' — he lowered his voice and peered round,"I'd arranged to officiate as Santa Claus at the Christmas festival of the Methodist Junior Children's League. Eh? When Mr. Bohun's message came through this morning, I took the liberty of coming along with Inspector Potter. And I wanted a word with you."

  Bennett was rather surprised to find that Thompson had wheeled in a tea-table set with a fragrant steaming coffee-urn, hot milk, and cups. He became conscious of a gnawing in his stomach.

  "Sit down," he invited, "by all means. Coffee?"

  "Ah!" said Masters appreciatively.

  `Er — cigar?"

  "Ah!" said Masters voluptuously. The chief inspector lowered himself with careful motions to the edge of the sofa, and accepted a cup. Bennett felt a blast of pleasant sanity coming through the miasma. "Now, here's how it is," Masters went on in a confidential tone. "I won't detain you long, because I must go down to that pavilion. But first I wanted to establish relations. In a manner of speaking. Eh? Exactly. Now I won't conceal from you," he proceeded, again as though he were imparting a confidence, "that this case is going to create a stir. It's likely the Yard will be asked to take it up. And I want to establish relations with somebody Sir Henry said I could trust. Very useful. I'm a very suspicious man, Mr. Bennett." De
spite his beaming shake of the head, the other felt that the shrewd eyes were ticketing his appearance and missing no detail.

  "You've worked with Sir Henry before, haven't you?"

  "A lot" the chief inspector murmured, and stared at his cup. "Why, as to that, yes. I should be inclined to say that I did the working and he did the thinking." There was the suggestion of a wink about one eye. "You mustn't mind Sir Henry, Mr. Bennett. He grouses and grouses, until he forgets his firm belief that he's got to grouse; then he goes to work on the thing like a kid building a card-house. And before you know it his case is complete and he's grousing again. Eh? I owe him quite a lot, and that's a fact. But the messes he becomes involved with are a bit too strenuous for me. I don't like these things that couldn't have happened yet did happen. Like Darworth's murder in the stone house..:'*

  It was impossible for the man to know what he was thinking about, but, as he met the small bright eye that was shifted round on him, Bennett felt his old doubts.

  He said: "I only hope you haven't got another such case. Damn it, you can't have! It depends on the time a woman died."

  Masters bent forward.

  "Just so. Now, there was certain information given to Inspector Potter over the phone. It was to the effect that you had just driven down from London," he darted a glance at Bennett's crumpled collar and tie, "and you and Mr. John Bohun discovered the body. Eh?"

  "Yes, that's right. -Well, more or less. He got there two or three minutes before I did."

  "'More or less.' Now, suppose you tell me what happened. Tell me in your own words," suggested Masters, rather superfluouly, "what happened. With details." He lit his cigar carefully, and listened with a wooden face while Bennett spoke. Only towards the end did he seem to grow disturbed. "Now, now!" he urged, sharply. "Now, come! Let's be certain. Only one set of tracks going in (Mr. John Bohun's), and none coming out?"

  "Yes."

  "Were they fresh tracks?"

  "Yes, I'll swear they were. I noticed by the feathery condition of the snow. They'd been made very shortly before mine."

  Masters studied him. "Fresh tracks, and you say the body was already cold then. Hurrum. So that the tracks couldn't have been made hours before you saw… Tut, young man Tut tut tut! I'm suspecting nobody, ha ha ha. Not Mr. Bohun, of course." His smile looked almost genuine. "But did anybody actually see him go in when he said he did? Eh? Eh?"

  "Yes. As a matter of fact, a groom or somebody. I've forgotten his name."

  * See The Plague Court Murders.

  "Oh, ah," said Masters, nodding. He sat down his cup and got up urbanely. "Now, I shall want to know a great deal about the people in this house. Everything that happened; eh? Death of Marcia Tait!" said Masters. "Lummy, what a plum! First thing under my nose since-well, since. Excuse me if I'm interested. Mrs. M. and I go often to the pictures, Mr. Bennett." He seemed frankly surprised at his good or bad fortune in being so near Marcia Tait. "And why I came to you, Sir Henry tells me you know all this group? You've travelled with 'em, know what they're like… What? No?'

  'I've travelled with them. I'm not at all sure I know what they're like."

  Masters said that was better yet; he shook hands cordially, and said he must go to see how Inspector Potter was handling matters. When he had gone, Bennett considered Masters' suggestion about John Bohun, and knew that it was absurd. But it worried and depressed him. Finding a bell-cord beside the fireplace, he summoned a flurried Thompson and suggested that he would like to find his room.

  After more crooked passages and one magnificent low staircase, he found himself sitting on the bed of a very large and very cold room opening off a broad gallery on the second floor of the house. The whole place had the usual disconsolate early-morning look. What was worse, as they passed along the dusky gallery he could have sworn he heard somebody sobbing in one of the rooms. Thompson had obviously noticed it, though he pretended otherwise. He said that there would be breakfast in half an hour. The man's swollen jaw (hadn't Bohun said something about a toothache?) was paining him, and the news of the murder must clearly have torn the last rags of his self-possession. When he heard that faint sobbing, he began speaking loudly as though to drown it out; stabbing his finger towards a door at the end of the gallery, and repeating, "King Charles's room, sir. King Charles's room. Now occupied by Mr. John!" in the fashion of a hysterical guide. The gallery ran the width of the house, and King Charles's room was just opposite the one to which Bennett had been shown.

  Sitting now on a bed with a shaky-looking tester bulking overhead, Bennett scowled at a pitcher of hot water in a washbowl nearby. Damn their water in pitchers and their asthmatic fires and their open windows. Sybaritic American, eh? Well, why not? At least his bags had been deftly unpacked. He found his shaving-tackle, and over the wash-stand discovered a small mirror hung at a neck-breaking angle, out of which a hideous Coney-Island reflection leered at him from the wavy glass. This was worse than waking up with a hangover. Where was the old sense of humor? Hunger, loss of sleep, horrors: and across the hallway was a room where somebody had tried to throw Marcia Tait down a flight of stone stairs

  Then he heard it. He heard the sound, the cry, whatever it was, that trembled somewhere along the gallery outside. The razor slipped out of his fingers. For a moment he felt sheer unreasoning terror.

  A scuffling noise, and then silence.

  He had to do something as an outlet for anger, or fear, or both. Groping after a dressing-gown, he twisted himself into it. The thing would squeeze up like a rolled umbrella when you tried to jam your hands through the armholes; you stepped on the trailing end of the waist-cord and pulled the whole thing out. He got it over his shoulders somehow, and opened the door to peer into the gallery.

  Nothing at least, nothing of visual fear or danger. He was at the end of the gallery, where there was a big latticed window looking down on the roof of the porte-cochere. Smoky light showed him the faded red runner of carpet stretching away fifty feet to the head of the stairs, the line of doors in low oaken walls, the gilt frames and claw-footed chairs. He looked across at the door directly opposite. There was no reason to suppose the noise had come from King Charles's room, except that he associated it with all the stealth moving in this house. It was Bohun's room; but Bohun could not be there. He moved across and knocked. Then the big door creaked under his hand.

  In a twilight of curtains that were nearly drawn across deep embrasures, he saw its vastness. He saw a glimmer of silver vases, a tall hearse of a bed-canopy, and the reflection of his own face in a mirror. The bed was made, but Bohun's clothes were flung about on chairs and bureau-drawers hung drunkenly open. Instinctively he was peering round for that hidden door to the staircase.. This room occupied the angles of the house that looked down on the drive and the lawns towards the rear. The staircase, then, would be in the wall at his left hand; probably, between those two windows. That was where —.

  He heard the noise again. It was behind him; it was in the gallery somewhere; behind one of those doors that locked up the White Priory's secrets. He moved a little way up the gallery, and a door opened almost in his face. It opened as quietly as the girl who came out, although she was breathing hard and her hands fumbled at her throat.

  She did not see him. From the room behind her he heard a curious mutter and stir, as of a sick person, before she closed the door. She bent her head forward, slid against the wall, and then straightened up.

  As she took her hands away, just before they looked at each other in the gloom, he saw the bruises on her throat. And he saw Marcia Tait's face.

  CHAPTER SIX

  "Who Walked, but Left no Footprint"

  He stood a little to one side, loosing down at her, so that the gray light should fall on her face. Curiously enough, in the first utter blankness of the shock, he did not think of ghosts or even of a hallucination whereby he saw Marcia's face everywhere. He only thought, with a dazed feeling of relief, that the whole farce of a murder was a monstrous joke after all, a
hoodwinking and a premeditated nightmare; and he wanted to laugh.

  Then he saw that it was not Marcia, which was even a worse shock. In the next moment he wondered that he had seen any resemblance at all in these white features crossed by the shadow of the lattice. This girl was smaller and slighter; her dark hair was caught back carelessly behind her ears; and she wore a careless gray jumper and black skirt. Yet for one instant an outline of her cheek, a trick of gesture, a heavy liddedness of the dark eyes — it had been there.

  But he forgot that in the knowledge that she was hurt. He heard her voice, which was not Marcia Tait's.

  "Jo-" she said, and swallowed hard. She was looking up eagerly. "John? You haven't been to see- No what am I saying? About Louise. It's all right; really it is. It was the shock. I've quieted her. She didn't know me. She was hysterical, after last night. She tried to. " Speaking hurt her. The hands went to her throat again; she fought down nausea, and tried to smile. "But I wish you'd get Dr. Wynne to come up and-"

  A pause.

  "You're not my uncle! Who are you?"

  "Steady," Bennett urged, and felt somehow guilty. "It's all right. Word of honor, it's all right! I'm a friend of your uncle. My name's Bennett. Look here, you're hurt. Let me..’

  "No. I'm all right. It's Louise. Oh! Bennett! Yes, I know who you are. Louise spoke about you. You're the man who took her father round New York. What are you doing?" She moved swiftly in front of the door. "I say, you mustn't go in there! Really you mustn't. She's got her nightgown on."

  "Well, what of it?" said Bennett, so startled that he pulled short. "Anybody who goes berserk and tries to strangle.. that's what she did, wasn't it?"

  Impossible to imagine this. He remembered that freckled, rather dowdy, mechanically-smiling girl who was always the background for Lord Canifest; who was quietly efficient, who expertly managed his correspondence and was not permitted a second cocktail.