The Polo Ground Mystery Read online

  “You hid the fact from your uncle, I suppose?” asked Vereker.

  “You bet. He found out somehow that I was in love with her and raised Cain. He wanted me to marry some one of good birth, whatever that may mean. The roturier always talks of good birth, and the skivvy’s child worships the baroness very much as people who chatter about good manners invariably lack them. Civilization teems with such paradoxes. Breeding’s all right, I dare say, with pigs and horses and dogs, but as a specimen of homo sapiens I’ve always wanted to follow my own inclinations—I won’t call it choice in these days of philosophical confusion. I’m a natural romantic in spite of our rational age. I argued with my Uncle Sutton, but he was a hopelessly confused thinker on everything except finance. In fact, I might say he could never rise above a syllogistic inference. It was useless. Prior to our discussion, I was to benefit comfortably under his will—the bulk of the estate was to go at that date to Angela. If I’d been rational I’d have comforted myself with the assurance that after all love is a purely temporary contraption on Nature’s part and that an assured income for life isn’t. Nature offered me Trixie, reason offered me an end to all money troubles. But Nature’s a hypnotist, and I’m under her spell. I wouldn’t promise to surrender Trixie, so my uncle cut me out of his will. Fantastically enough, I was delighted because we had both acted strictly according to a faded and fragrant romance. In this instance I agreed that vox populi was vox dei. It sounds reckless, but love is never sciurine; it simply won’t hoard up nuts for winter grub.”

  “Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur,” quoted Vereker, and asked, “Your uncle knew at last that you were engaged to Miss Collyer?”

  “No bally fear. After our little rumpus I refused to discuss the matter with him any further, and until recently I never came near Vesey Manor if I could help it. His attitude caused a temporary estrangement between Trixie and me. In a spirit of almost morbid self-sacrifice she refused to let me lose my inheritance on her account and tried hard to break away from me. Self-sacrifice is too often a wallowing in pain as a virtue. At length, with feminine practicality, she pointed out that we might ostensibly part until my uncle weakened. It was a saving gesture that re-established my confidence in her sanity. I didn’t like the idea, but love can transfigure even dishonesty. Neither did I like the delay. I forgive procrastination for being the thief of time, but to put love to a lingering death is an unpardonable crime. It’s more humane to kill it swiftly by marriage!”

  “What caused your uncle to relent?” interrupted Vereker pointedly.

  “He never relented on that score. He was utterly deceived. Finding out that Trixie and I never met, he thought I’d repented and sent for me just a month ago. He tried to bring up the subject again, but I was dead off and refused to discuss the matter. He had kept up a childishly simple system of espionage on us, and convinced that although beaten I was defiant, he said: ‘I see you’ve acquired common sense, Basil, but you’ve got the indomitable pride of the Armadales and won’t admit defeat. I admire you for it, my boy!’ The pride of the Armadales forsooth! You see, Vereker, the infantile sort of self-adulation and the truly pitiable homage of the pleb to lineage that his words implied. They almost conjured up to me our hatchments, a coat of arms, a column in Debrett, and I could hear myself murmuring piously, ‘Noblesse oblige, my dear uncle.’ Can you wonder at his objection to Trixie? He was an aristocrat, not by birth, but by auto-suggestion. It’s a widespread form of delusion.

  “Then, to my surprise, he told me he had left the whole of his fortune and this place to me. He couldn’t have surprised me more if he’d turned up at a hunt meet in November in a pullover and a ski-ing cap. I didn’t tell him at once that the relations between Trixie and me hadn’t changed. I was momentarily flabbergasted and felt that I’d just collared something like two millions of money by false pretences. All I could ask was, ‘What are you going to do about Angela? ’ ‘I’ve cut her off with an annuity of five hundred a year,’ was his reply. I protested, but he told me to mind my own business. There our interview ended. For a week I was terribly depressed. I was the battleground on which the romantic spirit put up a staggering fight against two millions sterling. Cupid fought Croesus over my body for possession of my soul! And then my uncle was murdered, and I discovered that silence for once had been golden!”

  Ralli concluded his narration with a sigh of intense relief. He seemed to have mentally reacted that bitter struggle of his spirit as he talked, and the following quiet suggested to Vereker the image of a canoe that has shot through the thundering welter of a barrier reef into a sunlit and glassy lagoon. Ralli resumed in a matter-of-fact tone:

  “The whole damned business looks too jolly opportune, Vereker. I almost feel guilty of my uncle’s murder. People professedly believe in chance or a deity, but they always bank on human intervention. I shall suffer agonies till this shocking affair is cleared up.”

  “I suppose your aunt feels hurt at being cut off with the time-honoured bob?” asked Vereker casually.

  “No. Angela’s made of a finer texture. She doesn’t care two hoots—I might say one hoot—about that side of this tragedy. I’m very fond of my aunt $ she also is a natural romantic. Besides, I’ve told her I shall go fifty-fifty with her over the income from the residue. She actually cried when I made this surrender, and Angela’s tears are jewels. They were neither tears of joy nor of grief, but of religious ecstasy. She was overwhelmed by the victory of our common belief in the romantic tradition. She’d been damnably afraid that I was going to apostatize at the last moment. Our slogan is, ‘Mammon for Monkeys!’”

  With these words the two men entered the magnificent hall of Vesey Manor.

  “And now for breakfast, Vereker. Let’s be monkeys shamelessly! A month ago it would have been boiled eggs, probably Polish, with toast and marmalade and a cup of tea. This morning I fancy a bunch of my own Muscat of Alexandria, a portion of cold grouse, and a glass of still Moselle. No man can grow a big heart on Polish eggs and tea. From the moment you discover the dependence of soul on stomach, you can progress spiritually with leaps and bounds!” said Ralli, with boyish jocularity.

  “I heartily agree,” laughed Vereker in reply; “it’s a basic part of my philosophy. Nobody can be a good Christian on crystallized ginger. Cheap claret will turn any man into a misogynist, and fish and eremitism are synonymous. Oysters—but perhaps I’d better not say anything about oysters.”

  “Frederick, when you’ve disposed of Mr. Vereker’s kit, kindly show him to his room—the one next to mine,” said Ralli to a footman, and turning to Vereker added, “While you’re in this neighbourhood, Vereker, that room will be reserved for you. Count it your headquarters. I’ll join you at breakfast in about ten minutes. There’s a lot more I’ve got to tell that maybe helpful, and we can start jaw-wagging after our grub.”

  Chapter Seven

  During breakfast both men were unusually silent. Ralli seemed intent on the enjoyment of his food. Vereker was deep in thought, weighing with critical appreciation the general tenor of the story Ralli had told him. On the face of it it seemed sincere and true, but the difficulty of detecting falsehood, he knew from experience, was far greater than is generally admitted. There are men who are bad liars for the simple reason that they are bad actors. They lie unconvincingly because they have no histrionic genius. Instead of living their parts they are merely dissimulating. Vereker would not have gone so far as to say that all fine actors could, if they chose, be accomplished liars. Here moral principles might be too strong to allow a full expression of their talent for playing a part. But a man without moral principle, gifted with histrionic genius, was a danger to society. Perhaps Ralli possessed this combination. He had a quick, supple mind, with a faculty for glib generalization, an easy and assured manner, and a supreme confidence in himself. His claim to be a natural romantic savoured of pose. At Oxford that sort of posture, assumed with all the gravity of youth, might be forgiven as a pardonably silly phase, but to carry it into
social life or the world of affairs was detestable. As Ricky had once vulgarly put it, “Any man who does so should have his nose rubbed in it.” On the other hand, Ralli might be perfectly sincere and flinging a challenge to what he considered the cynical nastiness of his contemporaries. It was impossible as yet to decide, and Vereker impressed upon himself that he must move cautiously.

  After breakfast Ralli suggested that they should sit out on the solarium and, having made themselves comfortable in wicker chairs and lit their pipes, he commenced to talk.

  “As people may suspect Angela of having something to do with her husband’s death—” he opened.

  “Why should they?” asked Vereker abruptly.

  For some moments Ralli seemed discomposed, but, recovering himself, resumed:

  “That’s just what I want to explain, Vereker. While the police are poking their snouts into this mystery, her relations with her husband are sure to be questioned. To all her friends and relatives they were pretty well known. I’m going to tell you something which is not generally known and which neither she nor I would like to be yapped abroad. I must leave it in your hands as to whether it will be necessary to make it public.”

  “I will be tact itself,” assured Vereker.

  “When Sutton married Angela two years ago his first wife, Sarah, had been dead about six months. It’s not necessary to go deeply into the history of my Aunt Sarah. She was a homely Yorkshire woman without any pretensions of her own. Sutton thrust those upon her as his fortune swelled and his own social pretensions grew. He was, as I’ve said, an aristocrat by auto-suggestion and, though he was fond enough of Sarah, he began to think she was not quite cast for the role of a society leader. It was an illuminating comment on his outlook when he suddenly ceased to call her Sarah and insisted on either Maureen or Renee. ‘Sarah’ smelled of the scullery. My aunt loathed Reeny, as she pronounced it, and fought a retreating battle over Maureen and all that Maureen implied. Finally she surrendered and tried to live up to it. It was a tragicomedy that used to make me laugh and weep alternately. She was dreadfully unhappy, but she did her best. She even tried to learn to ride, though she feared horses more than she dreaded cows. Bovine horns had always seemed to her less capricious than equine hoofs. But the advent of a butler was the climax of her troubles. Dunkerley always scared her stiff because he came to Vesey Manor from Lord Bravington’s. To her he was a terrible embodiment of the hierarchy of caste. I shall never forget when he told her, ‘You mustn’t put your whisky in a tantalus, madam; it’s only done among the poorer middle classes. The tantalus is now honly seen on suburban sideboards.’ At this time, too, my Aunt Sarah’s physical charms began to wane. She grew stout and, in spite of all sorts of mortification, persisted in growing stout. Sutton was mature enough to dislike the Rubenesque, and developed a secret promiscuity which ended in the seduction of his wife’s maid. She was a very beautiful and rather ingenuous young woman. It was a stunning blow to Sarah. Though infidelity was abhorrent to her, the prospect of a scandal was infinitely more so. Sutton allayed her fears on the latter score to such an extent that she almost forgave him his unfaithfulness to her. Mrs. Grundy was more exacting than Venus. She was genuinely sorry for her maid; it’s a commentary on her thundering good nature. The family went abroad for a year; the maid disappeared, and gave birth to a daughter, which was secretly farmed out, and after a wangle adopted by Collyer, the keeper’s wife. She was christened Beatrix, is now called Trixie, and is my fiancée.”

  Ralli paused to allow the significance of this denouement to sink in.

  “What became of her mother?” asked Vereker quietly.

  “She subsequently married a seaman and now lives, I believe, in West Hartlepool.”

  “Of course your Aunt Angela knew of this before her marriage to your uncle?” asked Vereker.

  “No, she didn’t. She found it all out about six months after her marriage. I don’t think she had ever really loved Sutton. He had appealed rather to her imagination than to her heart. His wealth dazzled her, and he always had a tremendously forceful way with women. The discovery simply destroyed any affection she had for him, and she never really lived with him as a wife again. This, in fine, was the Armadale skeleton, and rather a difficult one to box in a cupboard. It got a strangle-hold on my first aunt and worried her into her grave. She lived the last years of her life in perpetual fear that it would thrust a conspicuous finger through the keyhole. She developed diabetes, and after some years of ill-health died.”

  “Can you tell me if Trixie’s mother told her sailor husband of her pre-marital trouble?” asked Vereker.

  “No, she didn’t. This I only found out quite recently. After the birth of her child, Sutton allowed her an income which was paid quarterly through her solicitors. Whether she told the sailor before her marriage of this quarterly payment, I can’t say. But it’s strange that only a month ago he turned up at the solicitors’ office, and in a circuitous way wanted to know all about the blinking history of his wife’s income. They fobbed him off with some yarn that it was by instruction of my late Aunt Sarah’s executors that she was paid this money for her faithful services to my aunt during her stay with her. He was apparently not quite satisfied with this explanation and came down and put up at the ‘Silver Pear Tree’ for some days. During that time he sought and obtained an interview with my uncle. Needless to say, he learned nothing from him, but while he was here Sutton went about with some of the hesitancy of a man carrying an infernal machine in his pocket. Then Sinbad vanished, and we haven’t seen or heard of him since.”

  “Do you know his address?” asked Vereker.

  “No, but I can get it from my solicitors whenever you want it. His name is unforgettable to me because of its singularity—Jonathan Portwine.”

  “Do you know the nature of his interview with your uncle? Do you think he was trying to blackmail him?”

  “I couldn’t say. The possibility occurred to me, but until my uncle’s death I never gave it further thought. Now it seems likelier than it did then.”

  Vereker glanced up quickly at Ralli’s face. Through his own mind had suddenly flashed the idea that his interlocutor might be tactfully leading him on to a false trail. But from Ralli’s face he could learn nothing; his gaze was wandering idly over the sunlit grounds in front of the house, and he was puffing at his pipe with quiet enjoyment. For a few minutes the conversation languished, and then Vereker broke the silence with the question:

  “Can you tell me the names of the guests who passed Wednesday night in the house?”

  “Let me see now. There was Ralph Degerdon, son of Harold Degerdon, the stockbroker; he has suffered very badly through the Braby financial crash. There was Captain ‘Fruity’ Fanshaugh, who lives on the outskirts of Nuthill. He was a very intimate friend of my uncle, who followed his advice on everything to do with his polo ponies, his hunters, and his shooting. Fanshaugh is none too well off and probably got something for his services to my uncle, but on this point I wouldn’t be positive. There was Miss Edmée Cazas. You’ve possibly heard of her. An entertaining young lady of questionable antecedents, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve never liked her myself, but my uncle seemed to be hypnotized by her rather sinister beauty and scandalous wit. I may be biased, but I’ve always felt that she worships at the shrine of Venus Apostrophia. There was Aubrey Winter, ostensibly very much in love with Edmée, whom she enjoyed torturing in a spirit of pure sadism. Aubrey is rather a nice, simple fellow who, if he wasn’t fairly rich, might shine as a sports master at a second-rate school for the sons of English gentlemen. He’s a cousin of Angela’s. To these add my uncle, my aunt, and myself, and you have every one except servants who stayed at Vesey Manor on Wednesday night.”

  “Wasn’t Mr. Stanley Houseley one of the guests? I think the Evening Bulletin mentioned him in its list.”

  “You’re referring to ‘Hell-for-leather,’” exclaimed Ralli, with a laugh. “No, he didn’t stay the night. He had to get back to town early and didn�
��t even wait for dinner. I don’t remember what excuse he put up, but Stanley’s excuses are always as patent as his shoes. Laudator temporis acti, especially of Victorian and Edwardian times, he’s an exact replica of his father. Beachcomber’s Mr. Thake is perhaps rather a wild caricature of him, but there’s a distinct likeness. He has been Angela’s faithful cavalier for years. His favourite author is Whyte-Melville, and his favourite show a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. You observe the paternal echo. Though he’s an ardent motorist, one of his pet pastimes is to inveigh against the use of a motor-car as a covert hack. He hitched on to this topic at tea on Wednesday, and Miss Cazas remarked that she objected to a Baby Austin being used as a cabinet particulier. It interfered so with the legitimate traffic.”

  “Have you seen or heard from him since?” asked Vereker.

  “No, but he writes to Angela once a week. Houseley would make love with a calendar in his hand.”

  “About those shots you heard, Ralli? Are you certain there were only two?”

  “I’m damned if I am. I was wide awake, and I think I heard only two.”

  “What time was it?”

  “It must have been about an hour before sunrise; the dawn had just broken. There’s a curious point about those shots which I’ve remembered since. I didn’t recall it when being questioned by the inspector. There was a comparatively long lapse of time between the two reports.”

  “That’s very strange,” commented Vereker, deep in thought. “How long was the interval between them?”

  “Five or six minutes, I should say.”

  On hearing this, Vereker rose from his chair and paced nervously up and down the solarium. Ralli’s recently imparted information had set fire to an exciting train of thought.

  “That’s damned intriguing!” he exclaimed at length. “May I have a look at the library and the bedrooms?”