The Polo Ground Mystery Page 7
“I’ve already told him,” said Trixie quietly.
“Then he’s asking for a boiling of trouble. If you will go home now and get the supper ready, I’ll be back in an hour’s time. Mr. Ralli was looking for you; did you see him?”
“Yes, I’ve just left him. It’s a quarter to seven now. I’ll expect you back about eight,” replied the girl, glancing at her wrist-watch, and without further words turned on her heel and hurried away.
“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” asked the keeper, turning to Vereker. “Anything you want to know particular mebbe I can tell you.”
“Thanks, Collyer. As I’m working on this shooting mystery you may be helpful,” replied Vereker, as he glanced furtively at the keeper’s face. It was a hard, weather-beaten face, with a thick, grizzled beard which completely hid the mould of his chin and jaw. The barely visible lips seemed thin and firm. Underneath the capacious peak of his old tweed cap bushy eyebrows shaded a pair of dark, shrewd eyes. There was a distrustful glint in those eyes which declared that Stephen Collyer would be hard to deceive and slow to accept human nature as wholly good.
“Inspector Heather seems to think there were more than two shots fired, Collyer. What’s your private opinion?” asked Vereker.
“I told him, sir, I was pretty sure there weren’t no more, but of course I might be wrong. There’s no saying for certain in these things. These tecs always know better, far as I can see, and them newspapers talk a lot of nonsense. Daily Report said I thought poachers had sprung alarm guns. I know the sound of alarm guns better nor that, and I can generally tell the report of a poacher’s gun when the barrels have been sawed off short. I had a suspicion it were neither. There was a something about those two shots as was different from a shot-gun. That’s what made me take particular notice, so up I gets to see what was the matter.”
“You made your way to Hanging Covert, I believe?”
“Yes, because you can get a good view from there of a tidy bit of the estate. I weren’t bothering about poachers at all.”
“How long did you take to get there?”
“It would be a good half-hour after I heard the shots. I went at a smartish pace.”
“After you spotted the body lying on the polo ground you went straight there?”
“Not exactly. I went across to Wild Duck Wood and then along by the north wall of the manor gardens. You see, sir, I wanted to come on the polo ground sudden-like.”
“I see, a sort of flanking approach to surprise the intruder.”
“I suppose that was it. More of a habit nor anything else.”
“You saw no one else about at that hour?”
“Nobody as could be connected with the murder.”
“Then you saw some one you knew?”
“Oh, yes. I come across young Frank Peach, who was startin’ early for Nuthill. He was going down into Sussex to see about a job on Sir Conway Rigden’s estate.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“I passed the time o’ morning with him, and we chatted a little while quite pleasant. You see, sir, Peach used to be underkeeper to me, but him and Mr. Armadale couldn’t get on with one another, and so the guv’nor sacked him about a week or so ago.”
“What was the trouble? I believe Mr. Armadale was an easy man to get on with,” asked Vereker in as casual a tone as he could assume.
For some moments, Collyer was silent as if weighing his words.
“I couldn’t say for certain, sir,” he replied at length. “Mr. Armadale were easy enough to get on with if you humoured him, but you never knew when you had him and when you hadn’t. He was very touchy about some things. Take his shootin’, for example. He couldn’t shoot for nuts, sir, and nothing worried him more. He wanted to be a good gun, and he tried mortal hard. But men is like dogs, there’s some as you can never break in to the gun. He hadn’t the hands nor the temper’ment. Far too excited he got, and he always handled a gun as if it were an umbrella as didn’t belong to him. Him and young Frank had words when we were driving pheasants last year. Frank was loading for Mr. Armadale, and the guv’nor was missing most of his birds as usual. Suddenly he turns round and says to Frank, ‘In the name of God, what’s wrong with my shooting, Peach?’ Instead of smoothing him down or holding his own tongue as he oughter done, young Frank tells him blunt, ‘Your footwork’s uncommon bad this morning, sir.’ ‘Footwork be damned,’ says Mr. Armadale. ‘I’m shootin’ at pheasants, not kicking goals with ’em.’ ‘You couldn’t be worse at that, sir,’ says Frank, and there weren’t no excuse for him being impertinent like that. Young Peach is mortal touchy, and he took it to heart. He was dyin’ to see the guv’nor killing his birds proper, and honestly it was gallin’ to see the mess he was making of it. Even those he hit weren’t no use to anybody but a plumber afterwards. A little later Frank was talking to one of the beaters, and he says, ‘It’s Zeppelins tied to a mast the boss oughter try his hand at and not tall birds coming fast downwind.’ Mr. Armadale overheard the words, and that, I think, was the beginning of the trouble. You see, sir, Mr. Armadale was not what we call a real sportsman. Terribly touchy about his shootin’, he was. You had to handle him gentle as an egg.”
Amused as Vereker was by this narration, he was secretly convinced that it was an evasion. Something more than this, he felt sure, had led to Peach’s dismissal.
“Can you take me to the spot near Hanging Covert from which you first saw Mr. Armadale’s body, Collyer?” asked Vereker, to change the subject.
“Certainly, sir,” replied the keeper, glancing shrewdly at his questioner as he led the way across the meadows, followed close at heel by the cocker bitch.
As they were about to climb a portion of post and rail fencing, along which ran strands of barbed wire, the keeper suddenly stopped to observe a footprint in the soft earth of the ditch.
“Not there yesterday morning,” he muttered aloud.
“More trespassers?” asked Vereker, interested in the keeper’s observation. Here, he thought, was one of Nature’s detectives at work.
“Only a courtin’ couple,” replied Collyer, with a smile. “There’s the mark of a lady’s heel as well. Courtin’ couples ain’t exactly troublesome, but some will bring a dog with them. You see that dog’s hair stickin’ to the barbed wire? Sheep-dog type, from the look of it, and I’d like to bet it’s young Norman Sparrow’s mongrel. I’ll have to tell him if he wants to kiss and spoon in these meadows he’ll have to do it without the help of his cur.”
Having crossed the fence into the next meadow, the two men walked along without further conversation until Vereker asked suddenly:
“Is Frank Peach courting your daughter, Collyer?”
The blunt question took the stolid keeper by surprise but with unexpected rapidity he covered it and smiled slowly.
“You be smartish good at guessin’, sir,” he replied. “Young Frank has been dead sweet on Trixie for some time, but she don’t know her mind about him. She says she likes him but don’t love him serious. He’s a moody lad and sulks very bad. Trixie can’t stand no sulkin’, and about a month ago she told him straight she didn’t care that way for him. The young fellow won’t take it she means what she says. He’s obstinate as a donkey.”
“She’s pretty enough to warrant a little obstinacy, if I may say so,” said Vereker tactfully.
“She’s comely,” continued the keeper casually. “You see, sir, she’s had a decent schoolin’. Mr. Armadale saw to that and sent her to a finishing school at Eastbourne, so as she could have a better chance nor I could possibly give her. He took a great interest in Trixie, having no children of his own. That schoolin’ was the trouble, and has put big notions in her head. She wants to be like the gentry. If you ask me, she thinks young Peach ain’t quite up to her standard of varnish, and perhaps he ain’t when you come to think of it.”
“I see,” said Vereker quietly, and was lost in his own thoughts.
As they climbed the slope to Hanging Covert, the k
eeper’s eye was again arrested by some impression on the chalky ascent.
“See them claw marks, sir?” he asked.
“Now you’ve pointed them out, Collyer, I do. They look like a dog’s.”
“Much too long for a dog’s, sir. Those are a badger’s claws. I’ve got a trap set for him, but he’s a cunnin’ old devil. I’ll have him yet or my name’s not Steve Collyer!”
A few minutes later they reached the fringe of Hanging Covert, where Collyer halted.
“Here’s where I stood when I first saw Mr. Armadale’s body on the polo ground,” he remarked, and produced a pair of field-glasses from his pocket. “If you’ll look through them, sir,” he added, “you’ll get a good view.
Vereker took the binoculars and, adjusting them to his vision, scanned the shorn turf of the polo ground until he distinguished the white cross which marked the spot where Sutton Armadale’s body had been found. Handing the glasses back to Collyer, he asked:
“Do you think it was murder, Collyer?”
“Certain, sir! Murder was the only word Mr. Armadale could say when I got to his side before he died, and he said it quite distinct. The inspector tried to mix me up about that word, but I could give my oath on it. What’s more, I’m sure Mr. Armadale was expecting something of the sort. He has been acting very queer lately.”
“What makes you think that?” asked Vereker, with suppressed eagerness.
“One thing in particular, sir, but it don’t do for me to talk. What I say might be brought up in evidence in court, and I don’t fancy bein’ bullied by coppers and lawyers till I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels. Mum’s the word with Steve Collyer.”
“I’ve nothing to do with the police, Collyer. I’m only making a private investigation for Mr. Ralli, to safeguard his interests in this business,” said Vereker, feeling that the moment warranted a certain elaboration of the truth.
“In the first place, sir, Mr. Armadale was always practising with a Colt pistol. He became a first-class shot with one too. Strange, because he could never handle a shot-gun. I’ve been out with him many times, and at twenty paces he could smash a small tea saucer nearly every time. I often thought he was expecting to use his Colt in real earnest some day. That was the notion he gave me, though of course I may be mistaken. He didn’t do it for sport, because—well, pistol shootin’ ain’t a sport; it’s only a silly kind of game unless you mean business. Puzzles me how he missed his man when the time came. Lost his head, I suppose, like he always did with birds. You’d only to see him flurried when a woodcock had been flushed to understand. He was a dangerous gun then.”
“Did anyone on the estate bear him a grudge?” asked Vereker.
“No, sir, not a soul. On the whole, he was very well liked. He was a generous man. Chucked his money about a bit too flash for a real gentleman. Still, there ain’t too many generous men in these parts nowadays. Frank Peach didn’t exactly love him after he got the sack, but, bless my soul, Peach wouldn’t commit murder for that. I’ve my suspicions Mr. Armadale had bigger enemies among his own class.”
“I dare say. Where there’s a dog-fight for money there’s always some kind of trouble,” commented Vereker lazily.
“It’s not always money that causes the mischief, sir; it’s just as often a bit of skirt,” hinted the keeper.
“I hear that Mr. Armadale and his wife didn’t quite hit it off together,” commented Vereker in the hope of eliciting extraneous information.
“It would be hard to say, Mr. Vereker. If you’re to believe the servants in the manor they was always mighty polite to one another—a bit too polite for man and wife. I never had much to do with the good lady myself, but from what I gather she was very fond of Mr. Armadale for about six months after their weddin’, and then she took a sudden turn against him and froze up. Lately she got a bit reckless.”
“She began to quarrel with him?” asked Vereker.
“Oh, no, sir; they never quarrelled in front of their servants. But Madam was always hanging about with a Mr. Stanley Houseley and didn’t seem to care whether Mr. Armadale saw her or not.”
“Did her husband seem to mind?” asked Vereker.
“He didn’t show it. On the other hand, you could never say what was at the back of his mind. He was a deep ’un was Mr. Armadale. Only last Wednesday, after Mrs. Armadale had given out the prizes for the flower show, the guests came back to the manor and were having a dip in the swimming-pool. The guv’nor didn’t care for swimming parties, so he walked up to my cottage, and we took a stroll round the shoot. He was asking what the prospects was for partridges. I told him they was none so rosy because the weather was perishing bad just after the young birds was hatched. He was only pretending to be listening, and I could see there was something on his mind. As luck would have it, we went towards the manor through Wild Duck Wood, and Mr. Armadale had just stepped out of the wood when he suddenly turned and rushed back again. I thought perhaps he’d forgotten to give me some order, and I was hurrying towards him when he waved me back with his hand and said, ‘It’s all right, Collyer, I don’t want you.’ Of course I wondered what had made him dodge back into the wood and, being nosy, I skirmished round a bit. Then I saw the cause of it. Strolling along the edge of the covert, thinking they was out of sight of every one, came Mrs. Armadale and Mr. Houseley with their arms round one another for all the world like an innocent courtin’ couple. Thinks I, that’s put the cheese in the trap, and as I was looking at them they came to a standstill, and the young gent starts kissing Madam as if she were under the mistletoe. Just then the guv’nor stepped out of the wood looking all puffed up and went straight towards them. I thought there was going to be blows, but I was mistaken. After a bit of a jawbation they all walked back to the house together as if nothing had happened. Still, Mr. Houseley left for Nuthill Station shortly afterwards in Mrs. Armadale’s car. He didn’t stop for dinner as was expected, so I heard from the butler. Of course, sir, it’s none of my business, and perhaps I oughtn’t to have mentioned it. I don’t say it has anything to do with Mr. Armadale bein’ shot by a burglar, but it looks mighty bad, in my opinion. There’s more than we see on top of the water in this business, sir.”
Vereker made no comment on the information he had received, but he was not slow to appreciate its possible importance. Caution, however, was one of the predominant characteristics of his mental make-up. Factors, he argued, which might point to subsequent proceedings in the Divorce Court might not, among civilized beings with a none too romantic outlook, be strong enough emotionally to lead to murder. Collyer’s story had, however, awakened his interest in Mr. Stanley Houseley, whom he now remembered Ricardo had called “Hell-for- leather” Houseley; but his interest was tinged with a recollection of society drama as presented by modern playwrights balancing delicately values somehow relieved of their basic sordidness by an intensity of stress on a peculiarly English culture. Things somehow didn’t happen quite in that way; on its emotional side life was cruder and more brutally natural. For the moment, Vereker’s mind was preoccupied with an altogether different line of speculation. He took leave of Collyer, and made his way in a ruminant mood across the meadows until he reached the main road running between Burstow and Nuthill. It was growing dusk when he reached the “Silver Pear Tree” and wandered into the tap-room. Here a few of the neighbouring rustics were smoking placidly over their pints of ale, and among them loomed the bulk of Detective-Inspector Heather, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their companionship.
“I thought as much, Heather,” said Vereker, with a well-feigned air of deprecation.
The inspector chuckled comfortably. “This is about the nicest time of the day in the country, Mr. Vereker. Peace perfect peace, and pint after pint. I once read a poem that ran:
‘I cannot eat but little meat,
My stomach is not good,’
and it wound up:
‘Back and side go bare, go bare,
Both foot and hand go cold,
Whether it be new or old.’”
“Marvellous, Heather! It was written by a Bishop of Bath and Wells. In fact, it’s about the best thing a bishop ever wrote. He must have been spiritually sound. Oddly enough, his name was Still!”
“Just the man for a Liquor Commission,” agreed the inspector, and asked, “Make any discoveries after I left you, Mr. Vereker?”
Vereker, taking a seat beside the officer, carefully related what he had learned from the gamekeeper, Collyer. The inspector listened intently to the story, and on its conclusion made his usual non-committal remark.
“Altogether a rum business, a rum business!”
“I knew from the first that the burglary was a fake,” said Vereker solemnly. “It’s a crime of passion, Heather.”
“What makes you think the burglary was a fake?” asked the inspector quickly.
“It’s clear on the face of it. If Armadale had been awakened by the sound of unusual movements in the library beneath his bedroom he’d have pulled on his dressing-gown, shoved his feet into slippers, and gone down to investigate. Now, instead of behaving like an ordinary man, he took the trouble to dress, except for collar and tie. He even went the length of pulling on socks, shoes, and a monocle before leaving his room. Ask yourself, Would any reasonable man behave like that in similar circumstances?”
“You can’t chase a man in slippers, Mr. Vereker,” suggested the inspector, “and I’ve never heard that a dressing-gown was the thing to sprint in.”
“Your arguments are sound enough in their way, Heather, but a man getting up at night to investigate doesn’t count on chasing a problematic burglar across country. It seems to me that Armadale knew that he would be obliged to leave the house and prepared for the contingency. Again, why didn’t Armadale rouse the servants or some of the males among his guests to help him hunt the robber. By pushing a bell at his side he could have summoned his personal man-servant at once to his room.”