The Polo Ground Mystery (12 page)

Ralli paused to allow the significance of this
denouement
to sink in.

“What became of her mother?” asked Vereker quietly.

“She subsequently married a seaman and now lives, I believe, in West Hartlepool.”

“Of course your Aunt Angela knew of this before her marriage to your uncle?” asked Vereker.

“No, she didn't. She found it all out about six months after her marriage. I don't think she had ever really loved Sutton. He had appealed rather to her imagination than to her heart. His wealth dazzled her, and he always had a tremendously forceful way with women. The discovery simply destroyed any affection she had for him, and she never really lived with him as a wife again. This, in fine, was the Armadale skeleton, and rather a difficult one to box in a cupboard. It got a strangle-hold on my first aunt and worried her into her grave. She lived the last years of her life in perpetual fear that it would thrust a conspicuous finger through the keyhole. She developed diabetes, and after some years of ill-health died.”

“Can you tell me if Trixie's mother told her sailor husband of her pre-marital trouble?” asked Vereker.

“No, she didn't. This I only found out quite recently. After the birth of her child, Sutton allowed her an income which was paid quarterly through her solicitors. Whether she told the sailor before her marriage of this quarterly payment, I can't say. But it's strange that only a month ago he turned up at the solicitors' office, and in a circuitous way wanted to know all about the blinking history of his wife's income. They fobbed him off with some yarn that it was by instruction of my late Aunt Sarah's executors that she was paid this money for her faithful services to my aunt during her stay with her. He was apparently not quite satisfied with this explanation and came down and put up at the ‘Silver Pear Tree' for some days. During that time he sought and obtained an interview with my uncle. Needless to say, he learned nothing from him, but while he was here Sutton went about with some of the hesitancy of a man carrying an infernal machine in his pocket. Then Sinbad vanished, and we haven't seen or heard of him since.”

“Do you know his address?” asked Vereker.

“No, but I can get it from my solicitors whenever you want it. His name is unforgettable to me because of its singularity—Jonathan Portwine.”

“Do you know the nature of his interview with your uncle? Do you think he was trying to blackmail him?”

“I couldn't say. The possibility occurred to me, but until my uncle's death I never gave it further thought. Now it seems likelier than it did then.”

Vereker glanced up quickly at Ralli's face. Through his own mind had suddenly flashed the idea that his interlocutor might be tactfully leading him on to a false trail. But from Ralli's face he could learn nothing; his gaze was wandering idly over the sunlit grounds in front of the house, and he was puffing at his pipe with quiet enjoyment. For a few minutes the conversation languished, and then Vereker broke the silence with the question:

“Can you tell me the names of the guests who passed Wednesday night in the house?”

“Let me see now. There was Ralph Degerdon, son of Harold Degerdon, the stockbroker; he has suffered very badly through the Braby financial crash. There was Captain ‘Fruity' Fanshaugh, who lives on the outskirts of Nuthill. He was a very intimate friend of my uncle, who followed his advice on everything to do with his polo ponies, his hunters, and his shooting. Fanshaugh is none too well off and probably got something for his services to my uncle, but on this point I wouldn't be positive. There was Miss Edmée Cazas. You've possibly heard of her. An entertaining young lady of questionable antecedents, if I'm not mistaken. I've never liked her myself, but my uncle seemed to be hypnotized by her rather sinister beauty and scandalous wit. I may be biased, but I've always felt that she worships at the shrine of Venus Apostrophia. There was Aubrey Winter, ostensibly very much in love with Edmée, whom she enjoyed torturing in a spirit of pure sadism. Aubrey is rather a nice, simple fellow who, if he wasn't fairly rich, might shine as a sports master at a second-rate school for the sons of English gentlemen. He's a cousin of Angela's. To these add my uncle, my aunt, and myself, and you have every one except servants who stayed at Vesey Manor on Wednesday night.”

“Wasn't Mr. Stanley Houseley one of the guests? I think the
Evening Bulletin
mentioned him in its list.”

“You're referring to ‘Hell-for-leather,'” exclaimed Ralli, with a laugh. “No, he didn't stay the night. He had to get back to town early and didn't even wait for dinner. I don't remember what excuse he put up, but Stanley's excuses are always as patent as his shoes.
Laudator temporis acti
, especially of Victorian and Edwardian times, he's an exact replica of his father. Beachcomber's Mr. Thake is perhaps rather a wild caricature of him, but there's a distinct likeness. He has been Angela's faithful cavalier for years. His favourite author is Whyte-Melville, and his favourite show a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. You observe the paternal echo. Though he's an ardent motorist, one of his pet pastimes is to inveigh against the use of a motor-car as a covert hack. He hitched on to this topic at tea on Wednesday, and Miss Cazas remarked that she objected to a Baby Austin being used as a
cabinet particulier
. It interfered so with the legitimate traffic.”

“Have you seen or heard from him since?” asked Vereker.

“No, but he writes to Angela once a week. Houseley would make love with a calendar in his hand.”

“About those shots you heard, Ralli? Are you certain there were only two?”

“I'm damned if I am. I was wide awake, and I think I heard only two.”

“What time was it?”

“It must have been about an hour before sunrise; the dawn had just broken. There's a curious point about those shots which I've remembered since. I didn't recall it when being questioned by the inspector. There was a comparatively long lapse of time between the two reports.”

“That's very strange,” commented Vereker, deep in thought. “How long was the interval between them?”

“Five or six minutes, I should say.”

On hearing this, Vereker rose from his chair and paced nervously up and down the solarium. Ralli's recently imparted information had set fire to an exciting train of thought.

“That's damned intriguing!” he exclaimed at length. “May I have a look at the library and the bedrooms?”

“Come along,” replied Ralli, with sympathetic enthusiasm. “I'll show you round the whole place.”

After examining the dining, drawing, and other rooms on the ground floor, they entered a small room which Sutton Armadale had always called the gun-room. Here in a case against the wall were several shot-guns of twelve, sixteen, and twenty bores; polo sticks stood in odd corners or hung in a rack; a bookcase with none but books on sport lined one of the sides of the room, and near the window was a desk of very beautiful wood, its top thrown open and the desk littered with papers and copies of the
Field
,
Sketch
, and
Punch
. In an angle formed by this piece of furniture stood two shooting-sticks, and on a small table close by was a tray with a decanter of whisky, soda, glasses, a box of cigars, and two silver boxes of cigarettes. It was a thoroughly comfortable, untidy, man's room. Crossing to the small table, Vereker opened the silver cigarette boxes. One contained Virginian and the other Bogdanov's Russian cigarettes.

“Your uncle was fond of Russian cigarettes,” he remarked to Ralli, who was watching his movements with concentrated interest.

“Well, I can't say he was. He rarely smoked, and then only a cigar, usually after a meal. He always kept a stock of these Russian cigarettes, chiefly, I think, because they're expensive and uncommon. He felt that they lent him a sort of individuality. It was a curious little weakness which in the matter of cigarettes he borrowed from ‘Hell-for-leather' Houseley. He was always stealing other people's idiosyncrasies and caricaturing them to fit his own flamboyant personality.”

“I know the type,” smiled Vereker. “There are people who are unconsciously individual and those who are consciously so. Your uncle was doubtless one of the latter, but was either too lazy or too afraid to choose his own pigments.”

With these words he crossed over to the roll-top desk, picked up one of the shooting-sticks, and examined its steel extremity.

“That was another fad of my uncle's,” remarked Ralli. “He carried a shooting-stick on every possible occasion, and once absent-mindedly took one to morning service at the village church. To him shooting-sticks stood as the insignia of the Order of Antiquated English Gentlemen!”

“I've often thought of trying one as a sketching- stool,” remarked Vereker casually.

“Then take one by all means and see how it works,” replied Ralli.

Vereker tucked the stick under his arm, and from the gun-room Ralli led the way up to the second floor. Here were the billiard-room, music-room, library, Angela Armadale's suite of rooms, and guest-rooms. From the billiard-room a door led on to the solarium or sun terrace running the whole width of the southern face of the house; through the library another door opened on to a balcony on the northern face. This balcony overlooked the extensive and beautifully-laid-out rock garden with its swimming-pool and pavilion, and from it an extensive view of the Surrey Hills could be obtained.

On entering the library, Vereker at once cast a searching glance round the shelves and asked:

“Where's the safe, Ralli?”

Crossing over to a bookcase by the fireplace, Ralli pressed a hidden button and a section of the bookcase swung slowly out on hinges, revealing a safe with double doors let into the masonry of the wall.

“Shall I open it, Vereker?” he asked. “I've my uncle's bunch of keys in my pocket.”

“No, thanks, not at present,” replied Vereker. “I don't think it would tell me anything new,” and stepping over to the door opening on to the balcony he carefully examined its lock, bolts, and catch.

“Who sees to the locking of the doors and fastening of windows at night?” he asked.

“Old Dunkerley usually. Dunkerley's what a medical man loves to call ‘podagrous.' His affliction is due to his trustworthiness and an intimate knowledge of the best port. When he is particularly podagrous, he deputes Frederick, the first footman, or even George, the second, to see to the locking up. On the night of my uncle's murder this door was found open. Frederick says he locked and bolted it before going to bed.”

After a brief survey of the balcony outside with its stone balustrade and a glance at the supporting pillars springing from the veranda below, Vereker asked to be shown the bedrooms. A few yards down the corridor from the library, Ralli flung open a door leading into Mrs. Armadale's suite. Vereker entered with a strange sense of suppressed excitement, which he would have found difficult to explain. In spite of his general practicality a thread of philosophical mysticism ran through the texture of his mind. He could never dismiss from any general speculation the profound riddle of human personality. Here was ostensibly an expression of Angela Armadale's predilections, an unwitting revelation of the myriad diverse desires, convictions, caprices, which formulated her taste, liberated by the magic touch of great wealth. The scheme of decoration was in coral and green, and through an open door he caught a glimpse of a coral and green bathroom. There was something cold and virginal in the atmosphere, a suggestion of an intellectual rather than a physical pleasure in existence. He glanced at the bed with its exquisite spread of Chinese embroidery, and thought that even its voluptuous comfort must have been disturbed of late by the fretful tossing of an uneasy human spirit. And that uneasiness must have been due to her unhappy marital relations with Sutton Armadale, to an error in her vital adjustment with the profound emotion of love. As Vereker stood lost in reverie, a smile crossed his face, for he had suddenly remembered some words of Bertrand Russell's which ran, “Speaking broadly, the actions of all living things are such as tend to biological survival,” and he muttered to himself, “beds and biological survival.”

“You're admiring my aunt's wonderful taste?” suddenly asked Ralli.

“I'm very much impressed by it,” replied Vereker thoughtfully.

“Then I'm sorry to disillusion you,” continued Ralli, with a note of mischievous satisfaction; “it's entirely the work of Sam Ramsbottom, the architect, and his assistants.”

The remark brought Vereker to earth, and his attention was at once arrested by the folding glass doors opening on to the balcony. They were almost exactly similar to those of the library farther eastward along the corridor. Noticing another door in the bedroom, he asked:

“I suppose that leads into your uncle's room?”

“He hadn't slept in that room for the last eighteen months. I needn't explain why. He had moved into a room exactly above the library and on the next floor, but ‘not a step nearer heaven,' as Angela spitefully remarked.”

“And Miss Cazas, where did she sleep?” asked Vereker.

“In the next suite on this corridor. It was practically always reserved for her, and you can understand the influence she exercised over my uncle when I tell you that it was furnished and decorated throughout according to her specific instructions,” replied Ralli, as he led Vereker to the rooms in question.

The colour scheme chosen by Miss Cazas was pale bluish-grey and silver, and every touch in the room revealed a nervous sensitiveness to beauty of line. Here and there an ardent spot or splash of flame in cushion or coverlet suggested the coquettish disclosure of a passion curbed by the delicacy of a refined taste. Vereker was surprised. He had looked for some evidence of natural vulgarity, of a riotous and clamorous personality. No trace of such met his appraising eye. But as he stood surveying the room he was struck by the prevalence of a delightful but very insistent perfume. He knew that scent, warm, languorous, and insinuating. It was not now generally used, but its name for the moment escaped him. He was racking his memory in an effort to recall it when he noticed a book lying on a small table by the high Italian bed. He picked it up and glanced at its title. It was Sherard Vines's
Movements in Modern English Poetry and Prose
.