The Polo Ground Mystery (10 page)

“Yes, Mr. Vereker, every good gamekeeper has woodcraft at his finger-ends, but I think I know my man. I'm not in love with your suggestion that Mr. Armadale was shot elsewhere and his body carried out to the polo ground. It's possible but not probable. Take simple explanations first, the complicated ones will come without being asked.”

“You throw cold water on all my glowing fancies, inspector. By the way, Mr. Ralli has asked me to put up at Vesey Manor while I'm on this business. I'm in doubt whether I should or not.”

“Don't. You'd be putting yourself under an obligation to Mr. Ralli. You may yet be the direct cause of his being hanged,” returned the inspector, “and it would be a shabby way of acknowledging his hospitality.” Vereker glanced quickly at the inspector to see if he were joking, but the officer's face was gravity incarnate.

“Perhaps you're right,” he remarked. “I hadn't pictured Mr. Ralli swinging for this job. Thanks for the tip.”

“It might be a trick to keep in touch with your investigations,” continued the inspector quietly, “and when the pursuit became too hot you might be the second victim of a—of a burglary!”

“Look here, Heather, it's not fair to put the wind up me like that. I'm too young to die. If I get thoroughly scared, I'll vamose and leave you to make a ghastly mess of the whole show. Take this final notice.” The inspector finished his beer and, knocking out his pipe against the leg of the table, rose smartly to his feet.

“I feel strong enough to walk into Nuthill now,” he said. After carefully quilling his moustache, he leant over to Vereker in a confidential manner. “I don't think it would be cricket if I hid certain information from you that may be vital to your side of this job, and yet I don't particularly want to send you down the wrong street.”

“Spit it out, Heather. I had a feeling in my bones that you were concealing something weighty.”

“You remember I mentioned that a motor-car was heard starting up on the main road by Mr. Ralli in the early hours of Thursday morning? It was also heard passing the lodge by Mrs. Burton, who says it was going at a great speed.”

“I remember, inspector, but I don't attach importance to everything you say,” replied Vereker.

“You will to this, I'll bet. That car, we're pretty certain, was a Rover Meteor, and we're also fairly sure that it belonged to Mr. Stanley Houseley.”

“Aha, Heather, I thought my imagination would run away with your common sense! Perhaps you'll pay more attention to young gentlemen who openly make love to their hostesses and have earned the dashing sobriquet of ‘Hell-for-leather.' There are always nasty possibilities to such a pastime. When I see you again I hope you'll be able to shed some light on that suit of clothes that Burton, the gardener, found near the bathing pavilion.”

“I'll play the game as fairly as I can,” replied the inspector, “and now I must go. I hope to see you again before you've completely solved this mystery. So-long.”

On Heather's departure Vereker dined and then retired to his room. Here he made himself comfortable in a capacious Minty chair, and lighting his pipe reviewed at leisure all the incidents of the tragedy at Vesey Manor that had so far come to his knowledge. Theorizing at this stage of his investigation was, he felt, somewhat futile; a further accretion of facts was necessary. But his mind began to play with the evidence in hand much as the solver of a jig-saw puzzle plays with the exasperatingly incongruous pieces with which he wishes to construct his picture. The mystery of the number of shots fired and the two bullet wounds in the dead financier's body particularly intrigued him, and he pondered on them far into the night. Before retiring he extracted a well-worn notebook from his pocket and jotted down in pencil the following notes:

“Two pistols, A and B. Two bullet wounds. One bullet extracted by Sir William Macpherson is said by him to have been fired by a pistol other than Armadale's, B. One cartridge shell found has definitely been proved to have been fired by Armadale's pistol, A. This would suggest that three shots were fired: two by the murderer and one by Armadale. A second shell found by me has still to be examined. If this cartridge was fired by pistol B, there is still one shell fired by B missing, unless Armadale was killed by one shot from B and a second from A. It the latter supposition is correct, all the shells are in hand, only two shots were fired, and one bullet is still missing. If, on the other hand, the shell found by me is proved to have been fired from A, and if Armadale received two bullet wounds from pistol B, four shots must have been fired altogether, and three bullets and two shells are still missing. Though this supposition is at variance with evidence of reports heard by Collyer and Ralli, it declares that the murderer picked up both his empty shells.”

At this juncture Vereker's pipe went out. He thrust his notebook into his pocket and, exclaiming, “Damned if it doesn't remind me of a problem in permutations and combinations,” began to undress.

“A landscape painter has a delightful day. He gets up at 3 a.m. before sunrise. He goes and sits down under a tree and waits and watches. At first there is little to be seen. Nature hides behind a white veil through which some vague masses are faintly visible. Everything is sweetly scented and trembles under the wakening breeze of dawn.”

These words of Corot's from a letter which is an incomparable idyll had impelled Anthony Vereker on innumerable occasions to rise before daybreak and wander abroad with easel and painting gear to capture even remotely some of the sharp, scintillant spirit of the morning and imprison it on canvas. Nowhere, he thought, was the crystalline sweetness of early light the blithe tremor of yawning animation, the pungent yellows and greens of clean, supple foliage, the luminous purplish gloom of shadows so entrancing as in the heart of a wood at sunrise.

After getting into bed on the previous night, he had lain awake for hours pondering on the intricacies of the Armadale case until he had fallen into an uneasy drowsiness in which his head seemed to throb to the rhythm of “One bullet, two wounds, two shots, two shells, and only one dead man.” Then sleep and a pleasant dream in which he was in New York on a holiday, visiting again the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he had, a year or so before, first seen a study of trees by Narcisse Diaz. The picture had made a very deep impression on him, and on waking it was the first thing he remembered. At once he was all aglow with enthusiasm, and though it was only five o'clock he rose. In another hour the sun would be up. It was only four o'clock by solar time. He must make some notes for a picture. On the fringe of Wild Duck Wood he had seen some magnificent oaks and beeches the evening before, and they had then suggested a composition, but the urge had been stifled by other and more insistent business. Now the desire had returned with renewed vigour and, as he hurriedly dressed, Vereker could already visualize those trees caught in the first rays of the morning sun. He could even see them through the eyes of Diaz. Picking up his easel and an old army pack which contained his painting gear, he went downstairs. Early as it was, the landlady of the “Silver Pear Tree” was up and bustling round. Would Mr. Vereker like a cup of tea? Yes, Mr. Vereker was very fond of an early cup of tea. Then he should certainly have one. He should also have a biscuit, because a biscuit kept an early cup of tea from “gnorin' the stummick.” Up to this moment Vereker had been ignorant of this vicious propensity of early cups of tea, but if they gnawed the stomach perhaps a biscuit was a sovereign antidote. He had faith in mother-wit. After tea and biscuit he set out, saying he would be back at eight o'clock for breakfast. He left with the assurance that a nice gammon rasher and a couple of duck eggs would await his return. On reaching Wild Duck Wood the light pearly mist which had swathed the landscape was already beginning to vanish under the dynamic warmth and light of the risen sun. Making his way into the centre of the wood he came to a space where the brushwood and undergrowth were thin and a grouping of oaks all splashed and blotched with cool sunlight offered an arresting subject. There he settled down to work, making rapid studies of the play of light through foliage and of boles latticed with the shadows of branches and leaves. He was absorbed in his work and heedless of the swift passage of time when the crackle of a twig snapping under human tread attracted his attention. It was possibly Collyer making his way through the covert. On the previous evening he had said something about having bushed the meadows against poachers after partridges with drag nets. Rising from his painting stool, he stretched himself. He was stiff, and his eyes were tired from close application. Lighting a cigarette, he left his easel and wandered idly in the direction from which the sound had come. All at once he heard the intermittent rustling of some one making his way rapidly through the wood, and glancing quickly round caught a glimpse of a brown Harris-tweed Norfolk jacket and cap through a gap in the scattered mountain-ash and guelder undergrowth. Next moment the wearer had vanished, but in that brief space the set of his head and shoulders had photographed itself on his retentive visual memory. The man was certainly not Collyer and could hardly be one of the woodmen on the estate. The cut of the jacket and cap bespoke some one with sartorial taste and the money to indulge it. Vereker was nothing if not highly inquisitive, and at once hurried to the spot where the man had been when he had caught sight of him. Here he found that the bracken had all been trampled underfoot as if the unknown had been wandering about in ever-widening circles. It was suggestive, and as he stood surveying the ground his eye was suddenly caught by a tiny puff of blue smoke rising from a patch of sunlit bracken. In a couple of strides he was on the spot and, bending down, picked up the still burning end of a cigarette. It was a Russian cigarette, one of Bogdanov's of Petrograd, his well-known Zephyr brand. The stranger had evidently a cultivated and expensive taste in tobacco.

“Might be priceless, simply priceless!” exclaimed Vereker, as he extinguished the butt and carefully placed it in his wallet. He knew the particular brand, and he knew the tobacconists in the city of London who imported them. This was at present an insignificant trifle, but how often had he discovered the overwhelming possibilities of such. After a further fruitless investigation he returned to his easel, and there, to his astonishment, stood a figure bending over and critically scrutinizing his work. It was Basil Ralli, and so absorbed was he that he was unaware of Vereker's approach until the latter was almost upon him. Then he turned with a start and an anxious glance, which almost at once changed to pleased recognition.

“Good morning, Vereker,” he exclaimed. “I hope you don't mind my having a squint at your work. I love preliminary sketches; they have a liveliness which you seldom find in the finished picture.”

With these words he stood back from the easel and surveyed the canvas appreciatively. He was hatless and clad in light flannels with a silk sports shirt open at the neck, and as he posed reflectively, his hands thrust in his pockets, his brow slightly furrowed, Vereker was obliged to admit to himself that he had seldom seen such a handsome specimen of fresh and vigorous youth. In reply to Ralli's greeting, Vereker mumbled something conventionally depreciatory, but without heeding him Ralli continued:

“I always think painting's such a jolly sort of religion, such an admirable blend of the intellectual and the sensual. Like all other religions it promises a perfection to which you never bally well attain, but with the majority of its adherents it has sunk to a superstition fostered by a tribe of fraudulent high priests.” The words were spoken almost in soliloquy, and then, turning to Vereker, he swiftly changed the subject by remarking, “I didn't expect to see you about so early. Do you always practise your rites at dawn?”

“No; a landscape painter may be summoned at any moment by some inner muezzin to prayer. I felt in the mood this morning when I woke. Now, I feel more like bacon and eggs.”

“A natural reaction, though I always prefer fish after a communion service. I don't know why. Come and breakfast with me up at the manor.”

“Sorry, but I ordered breakfast at the ‘Silver Pear Tree' at eight,” replied Vereker, hesitating.

“It's nearly nine now, so that settles it. You can't go back to stale bacon and eggs, and I've got a lot to talk about on the subject of my uncle's death. The assumption that he was murdered puts me in a bally awkward position, and I'm jolly glad you've arrived on the scene. I'm a friendless sort of oaf, and there are a lot of private family complications which I'd hate to be made public, as much for Angela's sake as my own. We don't want the Armadale skeletons yanked out of their cupboards to perform a dance of death for the British public. You inspire confidence, Vereker, and I'd like you to handle matters on my behalf. Can you do so without it mucking up your connection with that awful rag, the
Daily Report
? I mean, of course, on a business footing.”

“I won't accept the business footing,” replied Vereker. “Detective work's only a hobby with me. My connection with the
Daily Report
's merely a species of passport and means nothing.”

“Good! Then I can take it you'll accept the job?”

“On a mutual basis the offer is reasonable,” replied Vereker cautiously. “You tell me all you know and I'll help you all I can.”

“Right-o! You can have free access to the house; come and go when you like; the servants are at your beck and call, and you can ask me anything you wish. I won't accept your help for nothing, but I won't offend your sense of material independence. You must leave that to my tact—I've got lots of it.”

“It's not altogether a question of independence,” said Vereker thoughtfully. “After all, independence is generally a swagger assumed by people of small social intelligence. I want complete freedom of judgment.”