The Return Of Bulldog Drummond (11 page)

“He certainly seemed to attach a great deal of importance to it himself,” answered Drummond. “And then, before we realised what he intended to do, he bolted. I knew it would be useless to pursue him in the fog, and that sooner or later he would certainly be caught. And we were just going to ring up the police when we met Mr Hardcastle and Mr Slingsby here in the hall.”

“Now, Captain Drummond, I am going to put a leading question to you. You and your friends are the only people who actually saw and spoke to Morris. I dismiss the brief glimpse that Mr Hardcastle got of him as he dashed through the hall. Have you any doubts in your mind that Morris was the murderer of Robert Marton?”

“The evidence on the point appears conclusive, Mr Coroner,” said Drummond, and the jury nodded their heads in agreement. They were getting bored: the case was such an obvious one. But the Coroner – a man of stern determination – was not to be baulked. First Darrell, then Jerningham, was called to substantiate Drummond’s story. Then Penton deposed to what he had seen when working on the car in the garage. And finally the Inspector put forward his reconstruction of the crime.

“The only thing wanting, sir, for absolute proof,” he concluded, “is the discovery of the weapon with which the murder was committed. The doctor has told us that the crime took place round about nine o’clock; he also says that in his opinion the weapon used was something in the nature of a meat-chopper. On the handle of that weapon, if we find it, will be the fingerprints – the fingerprints of the murderer: the fingerprints of Morris. But so far the most exhaustive search has failed to bring it to light.”

“Is it possible that he had it with him the whole time?” suggested the Coroner, glancing at Drummond.

“An axe is a difficult thing to conceal about one’s person,” remarked the latter mildly. “In fact, I feel almost sure we should have noticed it.”

“You have searched the grounds?” continued the Coroner to the witness.

“Yes, sir. But they are, of course, extensive, and we have not given up hope of discovering it. As Captain Drummond says, it is almost impossible that he should have had it on him, and in all probability, therefore, it is either hidden in the house, or he threw it from the window of the room in which he killed Marton.”

Finally the sergeant was called, who gave evidence of his call at Merridale Hall, and the presence there of Comtessa Bartelozzi, whom the Coroner decided it was not necessary to trouble. And so the inquest ended with the verdict that had been obvious from the commencement: “Wilful murder by John Morris, subsequently believed drowned in Grimstone Mire.” They further added a rider to the effect that no pains should be spared to discover the weapon with which the crime was committed.

“I think we may congratulate ourselves on the way that went off,” said Hardcastle to Drummond, as the jury began to disperse. “It was most masterly the way you avoided any direct reference to the ghost, and I’m very much obliged to you.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Drummond affably. “It is a pleasure to assist you in any way. But you’ll still have to watch it. We may have finished with the inquest, but we’ve not got rid of the reporters yet. Here’s one of the blighters bearing down on us now.”

But it was not at the newspaper man that Hardcastle was looking, and following the direction of his glance, Drummond saw Jerningham, at the other side of the hall, chatting to Mr Peters.

“May I trouble you for a few moments, gentlemen?” The reporter, notebook in hand, paused hopefully.

“You may not,” laughed Drummond. “Nothing on this earth is going to keep me one minute longer from the consumption of ale. My throat is like a lime-kiln. So long, Mr Hardcastle: doubtless we shall meet again in less stirring times. Are you coming, Ted? Peter is in the bus already.”

“A stroke of luck, Hugh,” said Jerningham as they left. “You remember my telling you about Dick Newall, whom I’ve often played golf with. Well, he is in the firm. He’s the sort of opposite number to young Marton. There’s an old Newall, and Dick is his nephew.”

“What sort of a bloke is he, Ted?”

“Quite a cheery lad, and plays no bad game.”

“Good! But we’ll have to get hold of him on the quiet. Hardcastle had an eye like a gimlet on you when you were talking to Peters.”

“And he had an eye like a gimlet on you when you were giving evidence, old son,” said Darrell.

“I know he had, Peter. He’s not very good at disguising his expression. I thought I was pretty hot stuff over the Puck-like elfin streak, didn’t you?”

“I damned near gave it away by laughing,” said Jerningham. “And as for your thirteenth child of a thirteenth child, it’s seventh, you ass.”

“To the great artist what is a trifle of that sort?” remarked Drummond. “It is the general atmosphere that counts. And incidentally,” he continued more seriously, “there’s nothing much wrong with the general atmosphere the other side have managed to produce, as far as they’re concerned. What a stroke of luck for them that Morris hadn’t got to be reckoned with! But, for all that, the more you look into it, the more masterly do you find the way they’ve extricated themselves from a very nasty position.”

“What’s going to happen if they do find the chopper?” said Darrell.

“Find your grandmother, Peter! Morris was not the only thing that went into Grimstone Mire that night. They aren’t the type of bunch who would keep a weapon covered with fingerprints that are
not
Morris’. No: I should say that delightful creature Penton bunged the chopper into the bog immediately the thing was done, and I’m wondering how it’s going to strike the Inspector when he fails to find it.”

“Bring the cocktails, Jennings,” shouted Jerningham, as they got out of the car.

“Because, if he only realises it, it knocks the whole verdict endways. If the original scheme had gone through, and Morris had been caught later, the point didn’t arise: naturally he would have thrown it away where it could never be found. And little Willie isn’t going to find it.”

“It would take more than a trifle of that sort to worry him,” said Darrell. “But the point now is, what’s the next move?”

“The trail here is dead for the moment,” remarked Drummond, lighting a cigarette. “I think we’d better try this pal of yours, Ted – young Newall.”

“Right you are, old lad: there’s nothing to stop us. We can easily beetle up to Town by the three o’clock train from Plymouth. But I can’t promise that we’ll get anything out of him. I mean, even if by chance he knows something, he may flatly refuse to pass it on.”

“We can but have a dart at it,” answered Drummond. “Because it’s perfectly obvious that the matter can’t stop where it is. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for a long while.”

“It was rather interesting to hear that friend Hardcastle has a yacht,” said Darrell, as Jennings announced lunch.

“The whole thing is deuced interesting,” cried Drummond cheerfully. “Let’s get to the stewed hash, Ted, and tell him to throw a few toothbrushes into a bag. And you never can tell: I shouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t find ourselves travelling up with little Pansy-face.”

He paused, struck with a sudden idea.

“I say, chaps – what’s Algy Longworth doing these days?”

They both stared at him.

“Algy!” said Jerningham. “The last time I saw him he was pretending to do a job of work in his uncle’s office. What’s the idea?”

“Algy and Pansy-face: our Comtessa. Might be rather useful if they met one another. Algy wouldn’t know us: we wouldn’t know Algy. Perhaps we’d get on to something that way.”

“How are we going to get them to meet?”

“I haven’t an earthly at the moment,” admitted Drummond. “But it’s a possibility that’s worth bearing in mind. If we do travel up with Pansy-face – and she said she was going this afternoon – we’ll try and find out her haunts in Town.”

And, as it turned out, the first person they saw on the platform at Plymouth was the Comtessa. Hardcastle was with her, and she gave them a charming smile.

“Are you all going up to London as well, Captain Drummond?” she asked.

“That’s the idea, Comtessa. The country is really getting so deuced exciting these days, that one has to calm one’s nerves in the old Metropolis. Got rid of the reporters yet, Mr Hardcastle?”

“No, confound it!” cried the other. “That constable or the sergeant has been talking, and they’ve got on to a rumour about the ghost.”

“Barricade the front door and bark at them,” advised Drummond, as the train began to move out of the station. “So long, Mr Hardcastle: my love to your boy friends.”

“How thankful I am to get away from that dreadful place!” said the Comtessa, as he sat down opposite her. “These last two or three days have seemed like an awful nightmare.”

“They have certainly been full of incident,” agreed Drummond. “Ted is quite jealous that it didn’t happen at Merridale Hall.”

“I thought it was charming of you to give your evidence about the poor boy in the way you did,” she said, leaning towards him and lowering her voice.

He looked a little puzzled.

“I hope I’m not being dense, Comtessa, but I don’t quite follow you. In what other way could I have given it?”

“My dear man, you’re not going to tell me that you really thought the cause of his nerves was due to the fact that two warders suddenly loomed out of the fog?”

She smiled and lit a cigarette.

“No, Captain Drummond – that did well enough for the inquest, and it is much better that his poor mother should think so – but as a man of the world you cannot really believe it yourself.”

“My dear Comtessa,” he remarked, “you are, in our English phraseology, barking up the wrong tree. The youngster struck me as being very unfit: I should say he had been drinking too much and hitting it up generally. But more than that I frankly know nothing about.”

“Do you mean to say that he didn’t tell you he was in very serious trouble?”

Drummond nodded.

“My dear lady, he was a complete stranger to me. I was with him for ten minutes at the most. Would he be likely to spring an intimate confession on me in such a very short time? Now that you mention it, his condition, if what you say is true, is far more comprehensible. But it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

She looked at him keenly, but Hugh Drummond was not accounted one of the best poker-players in London for nothing.

“I’ll tell you why I thought you must know more than you said,” she continued after a moment. “To be perfectly candid, Captain Drummond, I did not believe that you went to Glensham House in search of ghosts.”

“It did sound a bit thin, I admit,” he laughed. “And yet there was the ghost that you and I both saw. However, if it wasn’t the ghost that took us there, what did you think it was?”

“I thought you were worried over Bob Marton, and that, knowing he was going to Glensham House, you came along to see if he was all right.”

“At ten o’clock at night! Really, Comtessa, it seems an odd hour to pay a call. And you are ignoring the somewhat important fact that he never even mentioned Glensham House to me.”

“It was such an extraordinary coincidence, wasn’t it, you selecting that particular night?”

“Foggy, you see. It is then that the ghost walks. Though the story current in these parts is of a very different type of manifestation from the one we saw.”

“Really! What is that?”

“Honestly I would sooner not tell you, Comtessa.”

He shook his head gravely and stared out of the window.

“But I would like to know,” she insisted.

“Comtessa,” he said after a while, “you wouldn’t think, would you, to look at me that I am at all a nervous individual? And I must say for myself that it has to be something pretty large in the human line for me to get the wind up. But when it comes to the thing that is reputed to haunt Glensham House, it’s a different matter. Ted knows more about it than I do, he’ll tell you.”

“What’s that, old lad?” said Jerningham, apparently waking up suddenly.

“I was telling the Comtessa about the horror of Glensham House,” explained Drummond. “It’s a thing, Comtessa – a monstrous misshapen thing.”

“That’s right,” said Jerningham. “No one knows what it is for certain, because everyone who has seen it either goes mad or dies. Some people say it is an elemental, of incredible strength and ferocity; others say that it is some dark secret of the Glenshams. And one of the few facts that seems to be known about it is that its appearance is always preceded by a horrible vault-like smell. Whether, of course, there is any truth in it at all, I don’t know. West Country people are notoriously superstitious. And it may be that occasionally on foggy nights Grimstone Mire produces this strange fetid odour, which by some means or other reaches the house.”

“And that is what you came to see,” she exclaimed a little breathlessly.

“That was our idea,” answered Drummond. “Though probably the whole thing is a fable.”

“That is what I say when sitting in a comfortable carriage on the way to London,” said Jerningham. “But what was it that sent young Roger Glensham mad in the course of a single night? Was it an accident that caused his great-uncle to fall from his bedroom window and break his neck, or was that look of terror in his staring eyes due to something else? I always think that it is one thing to talk about these matters in the broad light of day, and quite another when one is in an old house at night.”

“But has no one ever heard of the ghost that we saw?” asked the Comtessa.

“The Glenshams are notoriously uncommunicative about the whole thing,” said Jerningham. “I personally had never heard of a woman haunting the house, but since we all saw her, the matter is proved. And for my part, at any rate, I’m glad it was that one we saw, and not the other.”

The train was slowing down for Exeter, and he rose.

“What about a spot of tea?” he remarked.

“I’m with you, Ted,” said Darrell, but Drummond shook his head.

“I’ll come along a bit later, old boy,” he said. “Now, Comtessa,” he continued, as the other two left the compartment, “to revert once more to the question of young Marton. Don’t say anything if you would prefer not to: naturally I don’t want to pry into any secrets. But since you mentioned the matter in the first instance yourself, what was this trouble he was in?”