Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (3 page)

“I never thought of that,” Anthony confessed, his frown disappearing.

“Nor did I, till this minute,” Roger said candidly. “Still, it’s true enough. And there’s a little job for you, Anthony. I shan’t want you with me while I’m talking to Moresby; it’s going to be difficult enough to get anything out of him in any case, but your presence would probably dry him up altogether. So you might stroll along the cliffs, locate the Vane’s house, and see if you can discover unobtrusively any information as to the girl’s movements or where I might be likely to catch her – outside the house, of course, if possible. What about that?”

“Yes, I could do that for you. And meet you later on?”

“Yes, just stroll back along the top of the cliffs again and I shall be sure to run into you. Well, there’s the sea not three hundred yards ahead, and nothing but nice, open downs along the top of the cliffs up there. We turn off to the right, I suppose, and you go straight along while I make for the edge just over there. I expect I shall be through in something under an hour. So long!”

As Anthony made his way leisurely over the springy turf in the direction in which he judged his objective to lie, he pondered with no little interest over the object of their journey down to this charming part of the world and its possible outcome. There was in his make-up none of that eager curiosity regarding his fellow-creatures, their minds and the passions which sway them that had led Roger, after the way had once been opened to him, to explore the vast field of criminology with all its intense and absorbing interest for the student of the human animal. Indeed the notion of nosing out hidden facts and secret horrors (“like a bally policeman”, as he had contemptuously phrased it to Roger over their lunch on the train) had at first actually repelled him; it was not until Roger had been at considerable pains to point out the moral duty which every living person owes to the dead that his eyes were opened to any wider conception of the idea. And even then, though admitting that there must be detectives just as much as there must be hangmen, he was quite firm in his gratitude to Providence that he at any rate was not one of them; nor could Roger, expatiating on the glories of a clever piece of deductive reasoning, the exquisite satisfaction of logical proof, the ardour of the chase with a human quarry (but none the less a quarry that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred deserved not a jot of mercy) at the end of it, move him an inch from this position.

It was this state of mind which had caused him to receive with ominous disapproval Roger’s pointed information about the girl cousin and her ten thousand pounds. A girl, to Anthony’s mind, should not be mentioned in the same breath as the word murder. Girls were things apart. Murder concerned men; not girls. Girls might be and very often were murdered, but not by other girls. If it were distasteful to hunt down a man suspected of murder, how impossible would it not be to harry a wretched girl in the same circumstances?

As his thoughts progressed with his steps, an idea began to form in Anthony’s mind. He would not only seek out the whereabouts of Miss Cross, as Roger had asked him; he would contrive to speak to her for a minute or two and, if possible, drop a veiled warning as to the things that might be expected to happen – that were, in fact, even now happening – together with an equally veiled hint that at any rate he, Anthony Walton, was prepared to extend to her any help within his power, should she wish to accept it. After all, that was the least a chap could do. It was the only decent thing. Ten to one she wouldn’t need anything of the sort, but the offer – yes, of course it was the only decent thing to do. Girls were weak, helpless things. Let them know they’ve got a man behind them (even a perfect stranger if the case is serious enough to warrant it) and it makes all the difference in the world to ‘em. Naturally!

In the glow of this resolution Anthony had unconsciously directed his steps toward the sea, so that he was now striding along the very edge of the cliffs. Coming to his senses with a jerk, he pulled up short and looked inland. Not five hundred yards to his right there stood, in a large fenced area which evidently stretched to the road half a mile away, a big red house. As the landlord of the inn had said, there was no mistaking it. Anthony gazed at it for a few moments without moving; now that he was face to face with it, the task of penetrating its purlieus and demanding speech with an unknown lady in order to warn her against dangers which quite probably did not exist at all, suddenly took on a somewhat formidable aspect.

His eyes left its red roof and began, probably with an instinctive idea of looking for help, to sweep the remainder of the view, arriving in due course at the edge of the cliff just in front of him. At this point Anthony started violently, for seated on a small grassy ledge not a dozen feet below the clifftop, which was crumbled away at the point to form a steep but not impossible slope down, was a girl who was occupied in gazing as hard at Anthony as he had been gazing at the house. As his glance at last fell upon her she also started, coloured faintly, and hurriedly transferred her eyes to the horizon in front of her.

On an impulse Anthony stepped forward and raised his hat.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I am looking for Dr Vane’s house. Could you tell me if that is it?”

The girl twisted half round to face him. She wore no hat, and the sun glinted on her dark hair, unshingled and twisted in two coils on either side of her head; the eyes with which she looked at Anthony were large and brown, and the simple little black frock she was wearing suited her lithe, graceful body so well that one would have said she should never wear anything else.

“I thought you must be,” she said calmly. “Yes, it is. Did you want to see anyone in particular?”

“Well, yes; I – that is, I rather wanted to see Miss Cross.”

The girl suddenly stiffened. “I am Miss Cross,” she said coldly.

The village of Ludmouth lies about half a mile back from the sea. At the nearest point to the village, where Roger and Anthony had left the road to strike across open country, the water had broken in upon the stern lines of the high cliffs which form the coastline for several miles in either direction. The result is a tiny little inlet, almost completely circular in shape, which has been dignified by the name of Ludmouth Bay.

At either horn of this minute bay, which could hardly have been more than a couple of hundred yards wide, the cliffs rise almost sheer to a height of at least a hundred feet, to sink gradually down as they follow the bay’s curve into a strip of sandy beach at the innermost edge, whence a steep track leads up to the village on the high ground behind. It is a charmingly picturesque spot and, lying as it does a little way off the beaten track, has not yet been spoiled (except for occasional excursion parties on bicycles from the neighbouring town of Sandsea, half a dozen miles away to the West) by the ubiquitous tripper; for the roads on all sides are too steep and too dangerous for charabancs – a matter of much comfort to those of the inhabitants who keep neither public houses nor banana shops.

The cliffs which stretch towards Sandsea face the open sea with considerably less frowning austerity than those to the East; they slope slightly backward instead of dropping sheer, and are so irregular and split up into huge boulders, clefts and rocky knobs, as to be by no means impossible for a determined man to climb. About a third of the way down their face they bear a narrow ledge, which proceeds more or less level for a considerable distance and has been turned, by means of a flight of steps cut in the rock at either end, into a pathway. At one time this pathway had been in some favour among the lads of the village as a place from which to fish when the tide was high; but customs change even in Ludmouth, and nowadays anyone in search of solitude could usually be sure of finding it here. To add to its advantages in this respect, a bulge in the rock just above served to hide it completely for nearly its whole length from the eyes of anybody standing on the top of the cliff overhead. Inspector Moresby, sitting on a low boulder at a spot where the ledge widened out to a depth of nearly a dozen feet, could be observed from nowhere except the open sea.

Inspector Moresby was as unlike the popular idea of a great detective as can well be imagined. His face resembled anything but a razor, or even a hatchet (if it must be compared with something in that line, it was far more like a butter knife); his eyes had never been known to snap since infancy; and he simply never rapped out remarks – he just spoke them. Let us not shirk the fact: a more ordinary-looking and ordinarily behaved man never existed.

To proceed to details, the inspector was heavily built, with a grizzled walrus moustache and stumpy, insensitive fingers; his face habitually wore an expression of bland innocence; he was frequently known to be jovial, and he bore not the least malice toward any of his victims.

At the moment of our introduction to him he was gazing with an appearance of extreme geniality, his chin on his knuckles and one elbow perched on either knee, at a small rowing boat half a mile out at sea; but his expression was not inspired by any feeling of affectionate regard for the boat’s horny-handed occupant. He was, indeed, quite unaware of the boat’s existence. He was engaged in wondering very intensely how a lady could have managed to fall accidentally off this ledge at the particularly broad part where he was now sitting; and why, if the lady had not fallen off accidentally but had been committing suicide, she should have done so with a large button from somebody else’s coat tightly clenched in her right hand.

Quite an interesting problem, Inspector Moresby had decided; interesting enough, at any rate, to call him over semi-officially that morning from Sandsea, where he had been in the middle of his annual holiday with his wife and two children, to look into the matter a little further pending instructions from Scotland Yard and the county police authorities.

The sound of footsteps advancing along the path from the East caused him to glance up sharply, his face just a shade less genial than usual. The next moment a stockily built man, hatless and wearing a pair of perfectly shapeless grey flannel trousers and a disreputable old sports coat, and smoking a short-stemmed pipe with an enormous bowl, came into sight round a bend in the path, walking rapidly.

The newcomer slowed up at sight of the inspector and glanced at him with an air of elaborate carelessness. A look of equally elaborate incredulity appeared on his face, then he smiled widely and hurried forward with outstretched hand.

“Great Scott, Inspector Moresby! Well, fancy seeing you here, Inspector! You remember me, don’t you? My name’s–”

“Mr Sheringham! Of course I remember you, sir,” returned the inspector warmly, shaking the other’s hand with great heartiness. “Shouldn’t be likely to forget you after enjoying your books so much, you know, let alone the way you astonished us all at the Yard over that business at Wychford. Let’s see now, it was with Mr Turner of the
Courier
, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. The ‘Hatton Garden jewel case’, as the papers called it. Well, Inspector, and what are you doing in this peaceful part of the world?”

“I’m on my holiday,” replied the inspector with perfect truth. “Staying over at Sandsea with the wife and children.”

“Oh, yes,” said Roger innocently.

“And how do you come here, sir? Holidaying too?”

Roger winked broadly. “Me? Oh, no. I’m down here in pursuit of a new profession that’s just been thrust upon me.”

“Indeed, sir? What’s that?”

“Well, to put it quite bluntly, I’m down here to ask Inspector Moresby on behalf of the
Courier
what he’s got to tell me about a lady who fell off the cliff somewhere about here a day or two ago, and why such an important person as he should be so interested in an ordinary accident.”

The inspector rubbed his chin with a rueful grin. “And I’d just strolled over here from Sandsea to get away from the crowds for a bit!” he deplored innocently. “I’ve only got to yawn at the wrong time, and there’s half a dozen gentlemen of your profession round the next minute asking what the significance is.”

“Going to have a nice nap before you go back to Sandsea?” Roger asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“A nap?”

“Yes; at least, I don’t suppose you booked that room at the Crown just to brush your hair in, did you?”

The inspector chuckled appreciatively. “Got me there, sir! Well, I may be staying over here for a day or two, yes. Even accidents can have their interesting side, you know, after all.”

“Especially an accident that isn’t an accident, eh? Come on, Inspector; you can’t put me off like that, you know. I’m developing a nose like a bloodhound’s for this sort of thing, and it’s busy telling me very hard that you’ve got something up your sleeve. What’s the idea? Can’t you give me a pointer or two?”

“Well, I don’t know that perhaps I mightn’t. I’ll think it over.”

“Can’t you do it now? Just a few words to send the
Courier
before the other johnnies turn up. I’ll get ’em to splash your name all over it, if that’s any good to you. Come now!”

The inspector considered. He was never averse to having his name splashed about in an important paper like the
Courier
if the circumstances warranted it. As long as the bounds of discretion were not overstepped a little publicity never did a police officer any harm, and it has frequently done him a great deal of good.

“Well, without saying too much, I don’t mind telling you that there
are
one or two suspicious circumstances, Mr Sheringham,” he admitted at length. “You see, the lady was supposed to have been alone at the time when she fell over here.”

“At this very spot, I take it?” Roger put in.

“At this very spot. But I’m not at all sure – not at
all
sure! – that she was alone. And that’s really all I can say at present.”

“Why do you think she wasn’t?”

“Ah!” The inspector looked exceedingly mysterious. “I can’t go so far as to tell you that, but I think you can let your readers know that I’m not speaking altogether at random.”