The Spirit Murder Mystery (21 page)

“Well, Ricky, what do you make of the elfin music?” he asked.

“I don't know what to make of it, Algernon. I'm almost certain it has nothing to do with departed spirits.”

“Oh, this is surprising from you. I expected to find you entranced when I opened the study door. What's your objection to the theory that it's a linking up with something beyond the veil, or with some musician in Summerland, as they call it?”

“In the first place, there's no medium present, which is unusual to say the least of it. Again, neither you nor I are psychic. Somehow I feel certain there's a natural explanation of the business if we could only tree it.”

“The music seems rather familiar to me. Did you recognize it?”

“Yes, I did. The invisible organist was playing snatches from Haydn's ‘Four Seasons.' I twigged it when he tried over the bass song, ‘From out the Fold the Shepherd Drives.' My musical memory's none too bright, but I'd put my only dress shirt on that. He must be a Victorian spook.”

“Ah yes, now I recollect. This is excellent. Haydn, yes, Haydn, now I've got it!” said Vereker with a certain note of jubilation. “I think that's worth a good bottle of claret between us. Will you go down into the cellar and fetch one?” 

“Not to-night, Algernon, not to-night! I don't mind seeing wonders with solid human beings to right! and left of me, but I jib at saying, ‘How d'you do' to a grisly horror in the gloom of a wine cellar.”

“You're not scared, Ricky?” asked Vereker, glancing at him with some surprise.

“Scared be hanged!” exclaimed Ricardo, jumping to his feet with a laugh. “I was just seeing if you'd volunteer. You looked rather green about the gills when you returned to the room. Name your tipple and I'll go and fetch it. I'd wrest a bottle of the worst Lisbon wine from the hands of a matricide's ghost!”

“You won't need to. I've brought a delightful claret back from the cellar with me. Go and get a couple of glasses.”

Flinging aside his book, Ricardo disappeared. A few minutes later he returned with the glasses and a corkscrew and laid them on the study table.

“Now let's enjoy ourselves quietly, Algernon,” he said. “The subject of spectres is taboo from now onwards. It's very nearly bedtime. I'm not easily scared, but I simply can't sleep with my head under the bedclothes!”

Next morning, after breakfast, Ricardo brought out his car from the garage, fixed his suit-case firmly in the dicky and stepped into his seat at the wheel.

“Now remember, Ricky, strictly business is the order of the day. When you've got the information I want, and any other knowledge you can pick up, return as quickly as possible. Speed is paramount,” said Vereker.

“I get you, Algernon. Built-up areas and mandatory regulations cease to be. I refuse to apply my brakes till I hear the windscreen splinter. Au revoir,” replied Ricardo, and with a sustained blast from his horn, disappeared down the drive.

An hour later, Vereker entered the village and crossing the green, called at the Yarham cobbler's tiny shop. The cobbler, sitting at his last, was driving nails with monotonous rhythm into the sole of a shoe, using a heavy file as a hammer. On Vereker's entry he looked up, extracted half a dozen nails from his mouth, and rose from his seat.

“Yes, sir,” he said inquiringly.

“I wonder if you can give me some information, Clarke,” said Vereker. “Among your customers, is there a lady who wears size three in shoes?”

Simeon Clarke scratched his head vigorously, as if to rouse a sluggish memory, and replied: “I can only remember one at the moment and that's Miss Garford, sir. She has a wonderful small foot for a lady of her build.”

“No one else?” asked Vereker.

“Not as I can recollect at the moment, but my memory is getting shocking bad.” Turning round to his assistant, he asked: “D'you know any of our lady customers as wears size three in shoes, Jasper?”

Jasper, in turn, tried to recollect with an air of complete vacancy. “No,” he replied, “can't just think of no one. There's Crazy Ann takes fours. You don't mean she by any chance?”

Jasper was told rather brusquely that the question didn't refer to size fours and therefore not to Crazy Ann.

“Who's Crazy Ann?” asked Vereker, amused.

“She be one of the maids at the rectory,” explained the cobbler, and there the matter ended.

With a puzzled air, Vereker left the cobbler's shop and called on the church organist. The latter denied having practised on the church organ the previous night and didn't know of anyone who had. Satisfied with this information, Vereker returned to Old Hall Farm, He spent the greater part of the day photographing, developing, and enlarging finger prints, and at the conclusion of his task, began a careful comparison of the prints. It was not long before a satisfied smile crossed his features, and he exclaimed with some excitement:

“The poltergeist was certainly not Miss Thurlow or any of the servants in the house. That's something definite at last!”

He had barely made this startling discovery, when a maid announced that Inspector Heather had called and would like to see him.

“Well, Heather, how's the hunt proceeding?” asked Vereker on entering the drawing-room.

“Damned slowly, Mr. Vereker. Very little headway since I saw you last, and I don't want any more verdicts about some person or persons unknown. Have you had any luck rummaging among Mr. Thurlow's papers?”

“Came across something that'll interest you. It concerns your friend Ephraim Noy. Here I have a peculiar letter from Noy to Thurlow. Read it and tell me what you think of it.”

Vereker passed the letter to the inspector and watched his face while he read it. But Heather was not a man to disclose his feelings readily, and when he had finished his perusal, he handed the letter back to Vereker.

“Looks as if Noy was trying to twist the old boy's tail. I wonder if the dodge proved successful.”

“I can't say definitely, but it looks like it, Heather. A week after the date of that letter, Thurlow drew a cheque for five hundred in favour of Ephraim Noy.”

“That's interesting, Mr. Vereker. It looks suspicious, but you never know. Thurlow was a generous man and might simply have been helping an old business pal over a big stile. You see, it was years ago since they had any business connections with one another, and Thurlow probably knew nothing of Noy's racketeering exploits in America. We've got further information from the American police, and find that Noy participated in bumping off several members of a rival gang in the booze racket. He managed to keep out of the clutches of the law on that count, but it shows he's a man who doesn't stop at murder. I've been trying to tighten the net round him, but so far without success. What have you been doing yourself?”

“I've been mighty busy on a ghost hunt, Heather. The night before Miss Thurlow left for London, a woman got access to this house after everyone had gone to bed. She moved all the ornaments and a lot of the furniture into other positions in Thurlow's study, and got away again without being seen.”

“How did she get in?”

“I don't know yet. Miss Thurlow, thinking she heard noises during the night, came down to investigate. She tried all the doors and windows herself and found every window closed and all the doors locked. She put the rearrangement of the study furniture down to a poltergeist!”

“Bless my soul, and what's that!”

“A mischievous spirit, Heather,” replied Vereker with a laugh.

“In this year of grace, too! Do you believe that rot, Mr. Vereker?” asked Heather impatiently.

“No, I don't. This ghostly visitor, I must tell you, left the print of a woman's shoe in chalk on the study carpet. Also I've got her finger prints on some of the ornaments. She was a bit too material for a poltergeist.”

“Was it one of the servants or Miss Thurlow herself?” asked the inspector.

“No; that's the mysterious part about it. The finger prints are not those of anyone in the house. The size of the shoe is a three, and that doesn't correspond with the shoe of any of the ladies here.”

“Then there must be some method of getting in and out of this house other than by doors or windows,” declared Heather emphatically.

“I agree, Inspector, but I haven't discovered the method yet. I must admit that I haven't made a thorough search for that secret trap-door. I've been so busy in other directions that I haven't had time. Another remarkable thing happened last night which comforted me considerably.”

“I wish something would comfort me. What was it?”

“Ricardo and I heard the mysterious music which Miss Thurlow spoke about. We couldn't find out how the magic was worked. I questioned the church organist this morning and found that he wasn't playing the church organ last night.”

“But this has nothing to do with our case; it's all so irrelevant, I simply don't know what you're driving at, Mr. Vereker.”

“I feel certain it's going to have something to do with our case. Otherwise, I wouldn't trouble myself any more about it. What pleased me about hearing the music was that it proves that such a phenomenon did occur on the night of Thurlow's disappearance. I was half afraid that Miss Thurlow's story was pure moonshine, a figment of her lively imagination. To return to the poltergeist business in the study, I'm convinced that a human being played that trick. But what was her motive? I don't think for a moment that it was merely a practical joke.”

“The ghost business has often been played to scare a person out of a house,” remarked the inspector casually.

“So I believe,” said Vereker, and at that moment the muscles of his cheek hardened, because Heather had shrewdly hit on one of his own secret convictions.

“Anybody want to buy the property?” asked Heather, lighting his pipe.

“Yes, Orton of Church Farm wants to buy. He frankly told me so himself, but he's not a woman with a size three foot.”

“Why don't you pump the village cobbler? It's an unusual size, and he might be able to tell you right away.”

“I did, Heather. The only woman that he could name was Miss Dawn Garford, or rather Mrs. Button, and she wasn't in Yarham that night as far as I could ascertain.”

“There have been faked footprints, I believe, in criminal history,” continued Heather, “but I've never come across an actual case and don't know anyone who has. They really belong to the world of the detective story writer. I know this Miss Dawn Garford benefits under Thurlow's will, but I can't connect her up with his murder in any way.”

“Heather, that's just where my methods score. From my observations in this Yarham case, I've slowly pieced together a very amazing story. There are some nasty gaps still waiting to be filled in, but they won't wait long. Mere facts lead to the ordinary process of deduction, but unless you can make a big intuitional jump, those deductions frequently get you nowhere. You've made fun of my barleycorn, you've pooh-poohed the spirit music, the poltergeist and so forth, but I've fitted them into a complicated scheme of things. You may as well own up that I've got you whacked to the wide, and hand me over my packet of ‘Players.'” 

“Not if I know it,” replied Heather with well- assumed truculence. “We're just beginning and I'm going to put up a stiff fight. I've got my eye fixed on a barrel of beer and that adds weight to my punch.”

“Have you cut Runnacles completely out of your list, Heather?” asked Vereker after a pause.

“No, he's still running, but he has fallen behind. I tackled him about being on the road near Cobbler's Corner on that Tuesday night, and he gave me a fairly reasonable explanation.”

“Why did he lie about it and say he was at home all evening? Even his wife backed him up in the yarn,” asked Vereker.

“He's a bit of a simpleton in some ways. Having come up against the law and served a sentence before, he thought he'd be connected up with this case by a vindictive police force. He knew he was on the road either before or after those bodies were planted, and got the wind up. When I cornered him with Deeks's statement, he owned up and told me why he had lied. He then promptly split on Deeks and his poaching. Deeks, however, is a much shrewder man. He at once owned up to poaching, knowing it would serve to clear him from any connection with the major crime.”

“Did either of these men pass or see the car which Ephraim Noy has spoken about?” asked Vereker.

“Deeks says no. Runnacles says a motor lorry passed him. He was a bit blinded by its headlights, but thought it was one of Orton's lorries from Church Farm.”

“Was it?” asked Vereker.

“I questioned Joe Battrum and he didn't think it could be. If it was, he wasn't the driver, for he was in bed at that hour on Tuesday night.”

That was somewhere about eleven o'clock?” asked Vereker quickly.

“Yes.”

“And you have asked Orton if one of his lorries was on the road at that hour?”

“I did. He said that Runnacles must be mistaken, because both lorries were in the yard long before dusk on the Tuesday evening.”

“What do you make of it, Heather?”

“Can't make head or tail of it. There's a liar among them, I should say. I promptly pumped Joe Battrum's missus before he could get back and coach her. She said that her husband didn't get home till midnight on that Tuesday. On being pressed, however, she began to wobble and said it might be Wednesday. She couldn't be sure. Sandy Gow, another of Orton's men who drives a lorry, said he thought Joe had one of the lorries out late on Tuesday. Again, he wouldn't be dead certain.”

“It's all so damned inconclusive, Heather,” agreed Vereker, and asked: “When did you see Orton?”

“This afternoon. I ran up to Church Farm after lunch.”