The Polo Ground Mystery (16 page)

“It's certainly metrical, and I've read it before. Where, I don't know. It won't be very difficult to place, but I doubt whether it has anything to do with our business. Here, however, is something which may be relevant. On the middle of the pad is the impression in reverse of an address. It's in Armadale's writing, and is obviously the result of blotting an envelope on the pad. It runs, ‘Mr. J. Portwine, Learoyd St., W. Hartlepool.'”

“Good business, good business, Mr. Vereker. We want that address. Dunkerley, the butler, told me that a seafaring gent called Portwine turned up at the manor about a month ago to see Mr. Armadale. He put up at this inn for a few days, and was drunk most of the time, according to Mrs. Heaver, the landlady. He was a pretty rough handful, and Dunkerley says he could curse in every known language, including Chaldean. He drank port, too, and it's nasty stuff to get tight on.”

“Literally drinking himself to death,” commented Vereker quietly.

“I might have said that myself later on in the evening,” laughed the inspector. “About this seafaring gent, who's probably only Lisbon wine after all, I've found out something that's important. He hitched up with Trixie's mother a year after Trixie's birth. Now, it's rather unlikely that before her marriage his wife owned up to an illegitimate child. Yet on the other hand she may. He might be one of those sailors who don't care. But suppose she didn't and he found it out afterwards. Put a bloodthirsty bos'n in such a position. He'd start sharpening his cutlass on the doorstep right away.”

“That's certainly a promising line, Heather. What are you going to do about it?”

“We're on his tracks already, and when we lay hands on Mr. Portwine we'll decant him.”

“Do you connect him in any way with the burglary?”

“Naturally. He probably got the geography of Vesey Manor from his wife, who knows every inch of it. As the first Mrs. Armadale's maid you can bet your shirt-studs she knew all about the safe in the library. From all accounts, the late Mrs. Armadale was an easygoing sort who trusted her servants implicitly, and it's more than likely that her maid frequently locked up her jewels for her at night.”

“Rather risky, I should say, but the carelessness of women with their valuables is notorious. Every week you hear of one leaving a king's ransom in a taxi-cab.”

“There's one little item still that I can't make head or tail of,” remarked the inspector after a pause. “It's the suit of clothes Burton, the gardener, discovered in the laurels near the bathing pavilion. It may have no connection with our case, and yet something tells me it's part and parcel of it—no pun intended.”

“Have you found out the tailor who made or sold it?” asked Vereker.

“Not yet. That's going to be difficult. It's a ready-made suit of a shoddy that's turned out by the mills at Batley in Yorkshire by the mile. By a process of trial and error we may find out the tailor in London who sold it. Then that tailor won't know the name of the customer who bought it unless it was sent on to his address.”

“It was cleaned lately, but I believe that Sergeant Goss said there were no cleaners' marks.”

“Not a trace. It seems a rather hopeless line at present, but I can't neglect it.”

“You've interviewed all the servants in the manor, I suppose?” asked Vereker.

“Yes, but the servants' quarters are practically in a separate wing of the house. None of them heard or saw anything unusual on the night of the burglary. Dunkerley, the butler, told me all about Portwine, and Frederick, who unbolted all the doors on Thursday morning, found that a bolt of the side door near the gun-room had been pulled back. As this bolt fits very badly into its socket, there's a knack in pushing it home. He is absolutely certain that he shot that bolt home when he locked up on Wednesday night.”

“Of course he may have been mistaken,” said Vereker, “but it's an important item. When the guests left the house on Thursday morning for the scene of the tragedy, out of which door did they go?”

“The door leading out of the dining-room on to the back veranda.”

“But the door near the gun-room leads out of the western end of the house and is certainly nearest the polo ground.”

“That's true, but it's a door that was very seldom used except by Mr. Armadale himself. It has a specially constructed lock, very much resembling a Yale, but there's no handle on the inside, and it has to be opened by a key from both sides. Dunkerley has one key, and the other Mr. Armadale always carried on his own bunch.”

“That explains it fairly satisfactorily,” replied Vereker. “Did you interview the maid who was told to look after Miss Cazas? She didn't bring her own maid.”

“Yes,” replied the inspector, “but she's not a very intelligent girl and chatters like a magpie. She seemed very concerned that Miss Cazas had grazed both her knees in the swimming-pool the evening before, and told me at length what trouble she had in matching a button which the young lady had lost off one of her walking shoes. She wound up by saying that Miss Cazas wasn't the goods because she only tipped her half a crown on leaving.”

“And what about Mrs. Armadale's maid?”

“She's too clever by half and as tight as an oyster. But, by gum, she's pretty—she'd make a robber's go- bang. She has gone with her mistress to Sutton Pragnell for a couple of days. I'll give her another twisting when she comes back. I'm rather fond of baiting a cheeky girl if she's really pretty. It's like trying to hit a butterfly with a baton. But did you see any of Wednesday's guests up at the manor to-day, Mr. Vereker?”

“Two. Captain Fanshaugh and Mr. Ralph Degerdon. Fanshaugh's a retired cavalryman. He knows a good deal about fire-arms and surprised me with his knowledge about the marks an extractor and a firing-pin leave on the brass shell of a cartridge. This may mean nothing, because the matter had been brought to his notice by a shooting affair in India. He's a downy bird with all his wits about him and of a very resolute temper, I should say. Still, I like him immensely. Degerdon is rather hard to place. He's younger and shows few marked characteristics. Oppressively good-looking and would make a first-rate lover in a musical show if he had a third-rate voice. He's cast in a softer mould and has a tendency towards being a ‘good-timer'; but, as a horsy man would say, he has a generous eye. I'm going to interview him alone; he may yield something important. I shall also try to get in touch with the other two male guests of Wednesday; Houseley, who left early, and Mrs. Armadale's cousin, Aubrey Winter. I particularly want to meet Houseley.”

“Still sticking to your old line, I see,” remarked Heather. “Because Mr. Houseley's yum-yum with Mrs. Armadale. You may be right, but at a first glance none of the gentlemen you've mentioned seem to me in the list of possibles. They're not the kind to engineer a burglary and then pump lead into their friend and host. What we've got to do is find that damned automatic pistol!”

Inspector Heather glanced hurriedly at his watch and rose.

“My men will have stopped work by now,” he remarked. “And, if any of them have found that pistol on the estate, you'll have to stand him a bottle of fizz and I'll present him with a packet of Player's. I'll go and see if I can find them. After that I must run down to the police station at Nuthill. I'll be back in time to have a night-cap with you unless something very important has turned up.”

On Inspector Heather's departure, Vereker settled himself in the only easy-chair in the coffee-room, and lighting his pipe gave himself up to idle dreaming about the Armadale case. In this mood, which on subsequent analysis always appeared to him to resemble very closely the preliminary mood from which sprang his creative impulses in painting, his mind flitted inconsequently from one point to another. It was a pleasant, fluid sort of cerebration without any of the exhausting demands of purposive concentration, and yet from its idle ferment ideas suggesting a line of action frequently grew. He fell to thinking of the divergent courses taken by himself and Inspector Heather in their pursuit of a solution to the riddle of Sutton Armadale's violent death. Heather had proceeded from the discovery of trouble between the financier and his underkeeper, Peach, to inquire into the latter's history and movements. In this he was working on the very tangible basis of a threat to kill. The officer had also been considerably impressed by the intrusion of Jonathan Portwine into the fabric of the case. Here, again, were factors which might be sufficiently strong to drive a violent man to murder. He himself had from the very first been attracted by the marital differences between Sutton Armadale and Angela as the source from which the trouble had risen. What might have proved an eminently happy marriage had resolved itself into a complete severance except in outward appearance. And what bitter ferocity on both sides might underlie icy politeness and simulated endearments! He could imagine the deadening pain which Angela must have suffered on her discovery of Sutton's deception of her and in her swift disillusionment in him. Her aristocratic egotism must have received a disrupting shock on finding that love, which she had idealized and qualified with a nice discrimination, could be so capricious and catholic in taste as to lead her to the same couch as a lady's-maid! And in her revulsion she had flown back into the arms of her former lover, Houseley, whose passion apparently approximated her ideal of steadfastness and cultured appreciation.

Stanley Houseley! For a moment, in Vereker's mind, he was dramatically transfigured, and with swift transition slipped ludicrously into the sporting anticlimax of “Hell-for-leather.” Thence arose the memory of Heather's remark about a Rover Meteor car, and at once Vereker jumped from his chair. He would go and interview Mrs. Burton, the gardener's wife, at the lodge at the manor gates. At the entrance to the inn he encountered a telegraph boy who had just propped his bicycle against the post from which hung the sign of the “Silver Pear Tree.” The wire in the boy's hand was addressed to him. Vereker took it and tore it open. It ran:

Procuring a telegram form from the messenger, Vereker scribbled the reply:

Handing it to the boy for transmission, he set out at a brisk pace towards the gates of Vesey Manor.

Mrs. Burton, the gardener's wife, was one of those comfortable women who take existence with a sane and versatile enjoyment. No note in its pleasant roundel was unduly stressed; there was a quiet, happy interest in birth, in love, in marriage, and even a funeral, though a gloomy emotional necessity, could yield its quota of sweet tears. Funerals had to stand the test of criticism from the point of view of successful functions. “Uncle Jim's funeral was pretty good, but I've seen better in our family,” were her words on a recent occasion, and they are instructive. She and her husband had finished tea when Vereker arrived. Victor Burton, her husband, was a thin, weather-beaten-looking man of very few words. His vital juices seemed to have been sapped as a tribute to his wife's bland exuberance, but he had an air of complacency which suggested that the process had not been altogether unpleasant. When Vereker explained that he was a friend of Mr. Ralli and would like to ask a few questions about the car she had heard start up and pass the lodge on Thursday morning, Mrs. Burton shed any pretence at reserve and became affable, if not voluble. She was unable, however, to add much to what Vereker had already learned from Inspector Heather. In the midst of the conversation her son, Reginald Burton, entered, and hearing a discussion about a motor-car at once became alert. He was a fresh-looking youth of about sixteen, who had just got employment in a garage and petrol station at Nuthill. At this phase of his existence the world seemed to him to have been created as a fitting
mise en scène
for the internal combustion engine. With the superciliousness of youth and its pride in knowledge, he brushed his mother aside and took the matter into his own hands.

“I heard both cars, sir,” he said, addressing Vereker.

“Then there were two cars?” asked Vereker, with surprise.

“Oh, yes. I'm nearly certain the first was a Rover Meteor and I know the second was a Trojan. Nobody could mistake a Trojan engine.”

“At what time did you hear the first car?”

“I couldn't say exactly, but it must have been between two and half-past two. I was lying awake with toothache. When I heard the first car, I sat up and looked out of the window. You can see right down the Nuthill road from my window. The driver was larking about with his headlights, putting them on and then dimming them. Having a game with them, I suppose. It wasn't a pitch-dark night, and I could see fairly well across the meadow next to the road. A woman was in the meadow about twenty yards from the hedge when I looked out. She went through the gate and seemed to join the car on the road. I could see her quite clear in the light of the lamps.”

“Was she tall or short?”

“Tall and wore a brown fur coat but no hat. To me it seemed the double of Mrs. Armadale, but of course it couldn't have been Madam. Then I heard the car start up, and it accelerated and went past here at about forty miles an hour.”

“Did the lady enter the car?”

“I couldn't say, sir.”

“You didn't by any chance see her in the meadow after the car had passed here?”

“I didn't look. I was too much interested in the car itself—which I was pretty certain was a Rover Meteor—to bother about the lady. My mate, George Barter, who had been over at Godstone and was getting back to Nuthill about that time, told me next day that a Rover Meteor had passed him on the road.”