The Santa Klaus Murder (14 page)

Rousdon stumped in, glared at Kit and suggested to him:

“Now, you be a good boy and tell me where you found those things!”

The child's face crumpled; he stammered, “I w-w-won't! I w-w-w-won't!” and began to yell.

Miss Portisham took him on her lap and tried to soothe him. He kicked at her viciously and yelled louder. I advised her to take him back to the nursery and see if the nurse could get anything out of him.

“And you might detach those things from his face and bring them back to us,” Rousdon commanded. They departed.

“That's the first vestige of the second Santa Klaus costume,” I told Rousdon. “I want two men to search the house thoroughly for the rest of it. If a child can find it, a policeman should be able to.”

“They'll find it all right, if it's here,” Rousdon snorted.

I thought that it must be here and probably downstairs. The outfit would be too bulky to be carried about unnoticed, the front staircases could hardly have been reached unobserved by anyone on the evening of the crime and access to the back staircase, which began near the door of the servants' hall, would be almost as difficult. Rousdon went off to give instructions for the search.

Miss Portisham returned with the eye-brows. “Kit had got hold of some gum they had been using to stick pictures in a scrap-book and stuck them on with that,” she explained. “They weren't very tight. But really, Kit is a very difficult child. I'm sure I tried my best to get it out of him, but he won't say a word. You see, I was going upstairs after breakfast and there he was at the back of the hall, prancing about as pleased as Punch. I can't
think
where he found them. Really, I did what I thought was best but there's a terrible commotion upstairs with Kit howling himself into hysterics.”

The library door swung open and in swept Patricia, now Lady Melbury.

“Really, Colonel Halstock, really, when the
children
are to be put through the fourth dimension or whatever you call it, and terrified, poor little things, out of their lives, really, it is
too
much! And, Miss Portisham, I think you are taking
too
much responsibility upon yourself! If you had brought the child to me I could have used my judgment as to how he should be treated. But really, without a word to his mother, to bring the child before strangers who have not the least idea how children should be dealt with, and to give him a shock from which his nervous system may
never
recover—!”

Poor Miss Portisham shrank; her lips trembled; she looked appealingly at me.

I did my best to mediate, trying to make Patricia see that Kit's eye-brows might be a very important clue, which it was essential to tell us about at once. I couldn't explain to her, of course, that once she had got hold of the boy and the eye-brows we could never have been sure whether he had really found them or when or where he had done so. In fact, she might easily have detached them and flung them into the nearest fire and we should have had only Miss Portisham's word for their existence. I did, however, impress upon Patricia that we must somehow find out where the child discovered those clues. I disguised my opinion that he was a spoilt little brat, howling out of sheer naughtiness, and expressed tender concern for the state of his nerves. Miss Portisham managed to melt away during this difficult conversation.

Before I had got rid of Patricia, Gordon Stickland sailed in, his smooth, pinkish face looking, as usual, as if it had been well polished. He was smiling and pleased with himself.

“Understand, Colonel, that you want to know where Kit unearthed those eye-brushes, as he calls 'em? He found 'em in the cupboard under the stairs, the little beggar! No business to be there, of course, routin' about in the dust, so he was scared to tell; but I got it out of him.”

“Oh, Gordon!” Patricia reproached him. “Kit has been so dreadfully frightened already; I
do
hope you haven't upset him again. He's so highly strung, you know and I always say that
nothing
can be so important as the necessity to protect a child's nervous system; nothing in the world!”

“Now, Patricia, don't get all het up about him; he's right as rain; come and see for yourself. I just showed him a new game of hiding and finding and in the middle of it he told me all about the eye-brushes without any trouble. Come along now! That all right, Colonel?”

I thanked him for what he had done and—silently—for removing Lady Melbury. When they had gone off to the nursery, I went in search of Rousdon and together we inspected the cupboard under the stairs. It was a large, dark place, running in under the main flight of stairs and opening into the passage behind the hall. All sorts of oddments were stored there, old motor rugs, golf clubs, baskets, brown paper, hockey sticks, a croquet set. Rousdon called up one of his men who searched the place systematically with an electric torch—the cupboard had no light—but we found no trace of the rest of a Santa Klaus costume. Kit had a little torch of his own, we found, and probably he had selected the big cupboard as a suitable place in which to use it.

Rousdon dismissed the constable to continue the search of the rest of the house and we returned to the library to discuss the problem. The cupboard was obviously an ideal place for anyone to use as a dressing-room if he had to get into a Santa Klaus costume and out of it again without being seen and as near to the hall as possible. The gun room was conveniently close at hand, too. I cursed myself for not having searched the cupboard at the beginning but we had not guessed that there was anything to search for.

“He's got the stuff away out of the house, that's certain,” Rousdon grumbled. “That's to say, if there really was a second outfit. We'd better make quite sure that those eye-brows weren't in the house beforehand, part of some acting properties.”

We questioned Jennifer and Miss Portisham, and even George, with the idea that he might know of a theatrical property box which had been in the house before he married. They were all sure there had been nothing of the sort, and certainly we found nothing else in the cupboard or elsewhere to justify this idea. George declared bluffly that that sort of thing wasn't in his line. Jennifer said they had never done much acting except some impromptu charades organized by Philip Cheriton—who was rather a good actor—during the previous Christmas visit of the family. They had no special properties. Miss Portisham confirmed this. She remembered the theatricals last year and was quite sure that no one bought any properties beforehand. “It was because I was quite convinced that those eyebrows did not belong to the house that I brought them to you immediately, Colonel Halstock,” she assured me, rather reproachfully.

“Now how did he get the stuff away?” Rousdon considered. The house had been thoroughly searched by now, without result. “My men have been here all the time and they've watched everyone who went in or out. By Jove! That open window! I always thought it was a bit pointless to open that heavy, noisy window just to throw away a key which need not have been thrown away at all. But supposing he wanted to hand the costume out to an accomplice who was waiting there—Sir David, in fact—who would get rid of it? Where would he get rid of it?”

“And what about the eyebrows? How did they get back to the cupboard—where presumably he originally dressed up?”

“Maybe he hadn't time to put on the eyebrows, or had forgotten the gum. Or else—yes! Snatching off the things in a hurry he might forget the eyebrows till Sir David was well away. Then he tears them off and skips round to that cupboard and chucks 'em in before he goes back to the hall. Pity he didn't forget 'em altogether! Now, let's consider Sir David; he hadn't much time; he was back in the drawing-room, or at any rate in the house, before the alarm was given.”

“The pool!” I cried. I suppose it was in my mind because of my dream. “It would be a matter of a few minutes to run down the lawn, tie the things up in a bundle and sink them. Or would they float? A stone—there's the rock garden at the end of the pool—done up in the bundle, would do the trick. That bundle must be near the edge; we can find it.”

For once Rousdon liked my idea. We were neither of us very satisfied with the casting of Sir David for the part of assistant, but it would be odd if there had been someone else hanging about near the study windows, whom Sir David had not seen.

“Seems to me that only another lunatic would take him in as accomplice!” Rousdon commented as he went to give orders for rakes and hoes to be collected from the gardener's shed, for poles to be bound to their handles to lengthen them, and for his men to start dragging all round the edges of the pool.

Chapter Fifteen

Dittie Explains

by Col. Halstock

The inquest held that Friday morning was a short formal affair at which George gave evidence of identity. The other members of the family, having been assured that no further details would be inquired into, were not present. The proceedings were adjourned to the following week, and Rousdon was able to return to see how his dragging operations were getting on.

I sent a message to Lady Evershot, asking her to come and speak to me in the library. I had not seen her since I had shared that uneasy lunch with the family the day before, and then she had sat at the other end of the table, between her husband and Kenneth Stour, very quiet and preoccupied but still a bit jumpy, I thought.

When she joined me in the library I remembered my wife's remarks yesterday. Dittie, I thought to myself, cannot be more than thirty-two, but one might have taken her for forty and not a very well preserved forty at that. She had never been so lovely as Eleanor, who had perfect features and the knack of always posing in a becoming attitude. But before the girls were married I had always considered Dittie the more attractive, because she was more lively and intelligent. Now, as my wife said, she had a hard look. There was something impersonal in her expression, and a tightness of the lips, a recklessness of make-up resulting in crudity, which would have justified a description of her as middle-aged and embittered.

I asked her to tell me again, very carefully, exactly what she had done on the afternoon of Christmas Day when she heard the news of the murder. To make it easy for her I said I realized that everyone was very upset when I questioned them that evening and might now be able to give clearer accounts of the events.

She sat in the chair opposite to me, her face in the full light of the window. Her hands were clasped in her lap and before she began to speak she clenched them more tightly and drew a deep breath, as if bracing herself for an effort. She looked past me, out of the window.

“I was sitting in the drawing-room with several of the others. I was on the
qui vive
, I suppose, because we were expecting a summons to the hall for the final scene of the Santa Klaus masquerade, as my father had planned it. Oliver Witcombe came in, in the Santa Klaus dress, looked round and went straight to George, who was twiddling the wireless knobs. I could see there was something wrong—no; don't ask me how I could see; it wasn't
seeing
, really of course; it was one of those occasions when one feels something tingling in the atmosphere. Oliver spoke to George in a low voice and I got up and joined them. I was sitting fairly near them. The others didn't seem to have noticed anything unusual. I suppose that, living with David, I've become specially sensitive to people's feelings. You know, I expect, that David is—well, unbalanced; badly shell-shocked. One must always be ready for an upset.”

She had been talking almost as if I wasn't there; as if she were recalling the scene for purposes of her own. Now she paused and turned to me.

“I'm telling you as a friend, Colonel Halstock. I expect that's irregular. I know you're questioning me as Chief Constable. But I can explain things more easily like this, if you don't mind. I was stupid before, because I was—well—frightened, and so I was on my guard. I don't think I told you anything untrue but I didn't explain as much as I might have done. I'll try to make up for that. After the finger-print business yesterday, I realized that I should have to explain and I meant to, even if you hadn't asked me.”

“Go on, Dittie. Tell me in your own way,” I urged her. “Probably you all think me a tactless brute, but I'm doing my best to help you all and I'm most profoundly sorry for you all.”

“Yes,” Dittie agreed dreamily. “It's horrible.” Then, suddenly, she asked: “You haven't got a policeman concealed anywhere, taking shorthand notes?”

I assured her that this was a private conversation, though if she told me anything that was of importance to the case, I might have to ask her to make a statement afterwards. She nodded and looked out of the window again and went on.

“I got to the point where I went up to George and Oliver in the drawing-room, to find out what was wrong. I'm trying to explain to you how it was that I reached the study before anyone else, as you probably know. I quickly gathered that something was seriously the matter, in the study. I didn't wait to hear details. George was beginning to fuss about what was to be done. I slipped away from the drawing-room and through the hall and into the library.”

“You didn't go to the door that leads from the hall straight into the study?” I asked her.

Dittie turned to me with a look of faint surprise.

“No; I didn't. I don't quite know why, except that we often used that way through the library into the study. I found the study door locked, but the key was in it, so I opened it and went in. I saw my father—you know how he looked. I went up to his table to see just what had happened. There was a pistol lying on the table and just behind him was an open window. Of course, I thought—someone—had come in through the window and shot him. I couldn't think what to do; I felt I must do something, but my mind wouldn't work. I could only think of the window and I pulled at it, but it was stiff and I thought I had only a few minutes, so I closed and latched the shutters and as I turned round again the door opened and Hilda came in, and some others. Of course I see now that it was hopelessly silly; that if things had been as I thought, I had done nothing to help; nothing. But I couldn't think clearly.”

She paused, but I judged that it was only to find words for the rest of her explanation. Soon she began to speak again, in a faint, strained voice.

“Colonel Halstock, I suppose you know what I thought and why I was so desperate. I had seen Kenneth on Monday at the Tollards. He didn't tell you because he guessed I hadn't mentioned it and he didn't want to make you think I was being secretive. No one else here knows that I was there, except David. We said we were going to lunch with the FitzPaines at Manton and David went there, but he dropped me at the Tollards. I simply had to see Kenneth. He had been in the States for a year and is only just back. I didn't want to tell the family and have a lot of gossip and all of them telling me what they think my duty is. I'd rather they didn't have to know.”

I couldn't see that her visit to the Tollards affected the case, but I reminded her that any fact which was relevant couldn't be concealed.

“Yes, I know,” Dittie said listlessly. “I've made up my mind to all that and I'll go through with it. You're wondering why David collaborated in this. It isn't easy to explain because David's character is so contradictory, but he is fond of me and he wants to keep me and yet he realizes that he's a pretty tough sort of husband. Yet we get on together on the whole and understand each other pretty well. He knows I'm fond of Kenneth and should manage to see Kenneth in any case, so he has the sense not to make a fuss about it. I can't bear hiding things and pretending and I'm always at my worst if I have to do it.

“Well, I talked to Kenneth on Monday and he asked me, not for the first time, to go away with him and leave David. I said I couldn't—not for any virtuous reason but because I am a coward. I am so desperately afraid of being poor—what I should call being poor, which is not being able to have every sort of convenience and to pay people to see to everything that's troublesome and to travel and run away from oneself. I know it's despicable, but those are the things that make life bearable. I suppose you can't believe that I'm really fond of Kenneth. He's rich now, I know, but the stage is so uncertain and actors, even successful ones, so often end in miserable poverty.

“It seemed to me that there were two possibilities. Either we stayed in London and I should be continually meeting David's friends, and Eleanor and her friends, and they would all think me a cad, and although I despise their opinions, I can't stand up against them. Or else we should go abroad—which Kenneth suggested—and then his career might go to bits and we should be poor. And, you see, I should be cut out of Father's will if I went off with Kenneth. That was certain, and I couldn't face losing what I felt I really had a right to and that meant so much to me. Comfort and security—they mean a terrible lot. I can't take risks. When I told Kenneth that, he said rather bitterly that after Father's death, when we might both be too old to care, he supposed I would go to him.

“When I saw the open window, I thought of that. Of course now I see that the idea was absurd, but I couldn't think. I was sure that Kenneth had shot my father; that made me his murderer, too, because I had given Kenneth the idea that it was the only way of getting me. I closed the shutters—when I couldn't shut the window—so that you wouldn't know anyone had come in from outside. When I saw Kenneth the next day, I thought he had rushed over to see if I had changed my mind about him. And I hadn't; that seemed, in a way, the most awful part of all. I had been awake all the night, thinking over the situation. Father was dead; I should probably be pretty well off. It would be
safe
to go away with Kenneth. Yes, I'm a coward; I wouldn't risk anything; I had to be safe. And yet I knew I still wouldn't go. It wasn't just people's opinions; it's horrible to feel that everyone is despising you, but I could get away from them. It's—it's just David.” Her voice broke. Her eyes were shining and a tear trickled down one cheek. “He's so dependent on me. If he was more of a brute I could leave him. The story of inherited lunacy, by the way, is all bunk. He's just neurotic, through shell-shock. But it's not his fault. It would be so horribly mean to leave him, when I'm the one person who can be of help to him. Oh, do you understand?”

She dropped her head, propping her forehead in one hand, to hide her face, while she dabbed at her tears.

I thought I did understand. While she had been rather morbidly proclaiming her cowardice and worldliness as the reason for her refusal to run away with Stour, it was really a very honourable determination to stand by her husband and give him what help she could.

I tried to comfort her and told her that she had explained a good deal, but I wanted to ask her a few questions. To begin with, what had convinced her that Kenneth was not the murderer? Had she lighted upon some clue?

“No,” she told me. “We're all utterly in the dark. I wish you could get to the bottom of it—well; I suppose I do; but of course we're all frightened of what the solution may be. Not that we have any definite suspicion, but just that it's all such a wretched mess. Kenneth explained that he couldn't have done it; I could see he was speaking the truth and there must be a dozen people who can witness that he was at the Tollards' party all that afternoon. You must know that, of course.”

I asked her if she had never suspected Sir David. She turned to me in amazement.

“David! But why should he? Surely
you
don't think David did it? He couldn't have any motive at all! Besides, if he did anything so frightful, he couldn't keep it to himself. I should know something was wrong.”

I asked her what she could remember about her husband's movements that afternoon.

“David was certainly in the library at first and he went out and came back after about ten minutes. He told me afterwards that he went out of the front door to get some air. I've known him do that before, and he probably wanted to get away from the noise of the crackers; he can't stand bangs. I had asked Father not to have crackers, because of that, and he had promised that there shouldn't be any, so I was surprised when I heard them. But I thought he had just decided, as usual, that my fussiness ought not to be taken into account.”

“Do you remember just who was in the library when Witcombe came in?” I asked.

“Oh yes, because I looked round before I left. I think I was trying to guess how they would all behave and what sort of a fuss there would be. I think I told you on Christmas Day that I couldn't remember. It was true—then; I couldn't bring my mind to bear on anything except what I thought Kenneth had done and how I could protect him. But I'm sure, now, that Gordon was there, with Shakespeare and the
Times
crossword.”

“Shakespeare?” I inquired, taking him for a hitherto unmentioned guest.

“Yes, Shakespeare's works,” Dittie explained, with a hint of a smile. “There was a special crossword, with all the clues taken from the plays. George was there, as you know. David was there, too; he had come back. And when he came back he was quite calm and undisturbed. That would show that he couldn't have done anything frightful when he went out, or even have known about it. I don't think there was anyone else. Patricia and Eleanor had gone into the hall when the crackers began and Aunt Mildred had gone to fetch her knitting.”

“Miss Melbury hadn't come back?” I asked.

“No, I'm sure she didn't come back.”

“And Philip Cheriton?” I asked.

“No, he wasn't there at all, nor Jennifer.”

I asked if she could remember who was in the hall, but she shook her head. “I went straight through; there were the children and several others, but I didn't really notice. I don't think I can tell you anything else.”

I asked her one more question. Had there been any talk about a new will which Sir Osmond may have made or may have intended to make? Did she think her father had confided in anyone his intended method of dividing his property?

“I'm sure he hadn't told any of us. We all had suspicions that Miss Portisham knew all about it, but of course we could hardly ask her. There was a great deal of talk; the others were always worrying about what Father would leave them. Oh, yes! I was too; I was just as bad as the others; worse, perhaps. But we none of us knew a thing, and we don't know yet.”