The Polo Ground Mystery (17 page)

“What about the second car you heard?”

“I heard it about half an hour afterwards. It stopped at almost the same spot as the Rover Meteor had done. This seemed rather rum to me, and I got up and looked out of the window to see what was going on. This time I saw a lad leave the gate and run as hard as he could across the fields towards the polo ground. Then the second car started up and passed here. I knew by its engine that it was a Trojan.”

“Thanks very much, Burton. I see you take a great interest in your job. Otherwise you wouldn't have been able to spot the makes of those cars.”

“You get to know them all after a bit, sir,” replied the youth, highly pleased with Vereker's compliment.

Vereker then drew Burton senior into conversation about the parcel of clothes which he had found under the rhododendrons near the bathing pavilion. Burton explained that he was hoeing and raking between the shrubs when he came upon the parcel.

“Could you say if it had been there any length of time, Burton?” asked Vereker.

“Mebbe a night, mebbe a week, mebbe longer, sir. We rakes and 'oes between them shrubs every Thursday. The weather has been bone dry all August, so that weeds haven't bothered us much. Next month's the month for weeds. Ted, my man, did the job last week, but, as he said, it didn't need anything more than a kiss and a promise, and he possibly missed the packet.”

“Were there any footprints on the loose earth?”

“No, sir, or if there was, I raked 'em out without noticing 'em. The inspector from the Yard had a good look round to see if he could find footprints, and he remarked as how rakes was a blinkin' noosance and ought to require permits like fire-arms.”

“I'd like to see the exact spot if you could spare the time just now, Burton,” remarked Vereker.

To this Burton was agreeable. Slipping on his coat and a straw hat reminiscent of a past and joyous decade, he accompanied Vereker from the lodge to the rock garden behind the manor. Here Vereker made a very careful search among the shrubs and rhododendrons bordering on the spot where Burton had picked up the parcel, but his quest brought nothing further to light. With an air of disappointment he stood mopping his brow when, looking in the direction of the bathing pavilion, he caught sight of a fragment of gauzy material held fast in the foliage of a daphne, a few yards away. Crossing to the evergreen, he plucked the material from its entanglement and found that it was a diminutive handkerchief of beautiful French lace. Instinctively he put it to his nose. It was still heavily scented in spite of its exposure, and there was no mistaking the perfume. “Stephanotis!” he exclaimed, and all at once his face lit up with a strange light. It had recalled a vivid memory, one of Vereker's very few romances, and it took him back to his work on the Bygrave case. Mrs. Cathcart had been passionately fond of the scent, and she—well, she and he had parted since then. For some moments Vereker stood in a mood of wistful reflection, and then with dramatic suddenness straightened himself. The air of romantic lover vanished in a flash, for he had recalled the scent that had almost overwhelmingly pervaded the room which Miss Edmée Cazas had recently occupied in Vesey Manor. Thrusting the handkerchief into his pocket, he crossed rapidly to the bathing pavilion, followed by Burton, who was apparently coming slowly to the conclusion that the young gentleman was a “bit batchy.” In the pavilion, after an intensive search, Vereker found nothing, but just as he was about to return with Burton to the lodge he picked up on the loose gravel path leading to the swimming-pool a button that had become detached from a lady's shoe. This he carefully inserted in his ticket pocket and, after a further general survey of the rock garden, signified to Burton that he would return to the “Silver Pear Tree.” As they walked slowly together down the drive to the gates, they were overtaken by Ralph Degerdon, who had just left the manor. He had stayed on after Captain Fanshaugh's departure to have a private talk with Ralli, and was now making his way to the Captain's bungalow for dinner. At the lodge they parted with Burton and, as they tramped westward, Vereker at once turned the conversation on the topic of the burglary at Vesey Manor.

“Did you hear any suspicious sounds during the early hours of Thursday morning, Degerdon?” he asked.

“Yes, I did,” replied Degerdon, without any hesitation. “I was awake at several intervals during the night. If you remember it was poisonously hot, and it must have been between two and three that the sound of a window being opened attracted my attention. At first I thought it must be some one, either Edmée or Angela, on the floor below, who had pushed open a casement for air. The idea at once occurred to me to follow suit, and I rose and did so. I was feeling very wakeful and, as it was a glorious night, I lit a cigarette and stood at the window smoking and cooling off in my pyjamas. I casually leaned out to see whose window had been opened on the floor below, and to my surprise found that all the windows on that floor were closed. I at once concluded that either Edmée or Angela had closed a casement instead of opening it, and thought no more about the matter for the moment. Since then, of course, it has occurred to me that I must have heard the burglar entering by the library door. I finished my cigarette, flung the butt on the stone balcony below, and was just about to get back to bed when I heard a footstep on the gravel in front of the veranda on the ground floor. I at once rushed to the window and looked out. Unfortunately the gravel close to the veranda was hidden from my view by the balcony, and a burglar to avoid being spotted from the upper windows would naturally keep well in to the house. I stood and listened for fully five minutes, but heard no further sound. Just as I had returned to bed I once more heard footsteps on the gravel and, jumping up, hurried to the window. There wasn't a soul close to the house clear of the balcony, but I thought I caught a glimpse of a man's figure vanishing round a bend in the path that leads through the laurels to the rock garden.

“Tall or short man?” asked Vereker.

“I couldn't distinguish in the half-light, but I should say a short man.”

“You didn't take any action in the matter?” asked Vereker.

“No. I thought it was damned funny,” continued Degerdon, with a curious uneasy hesitation, “and at the moment I wondered whether I should knock up Sutton. On further consideration I thought I'd better not. I suppose I'm rather sensitive to ridicule and—well, you know what a bally fool I'd have looked if I'd waked the whole house up on a dud burglar scare. They'd have ragged the life out of me for weeks. I turned in and, forgetting all about the business, fell asleep again.”

“You heard no further sounds in the house itself?”

“Oh, yes; I'm forgetting to tell you that before I actually fell asleep again I heard Sutton moving about in his room.”

“But Fanshaugh's and Winter's rooms separated your bedroom from Armadale's,” commented Vereker, looking disconcertingly into Degerdon's eyes. “You couldn't possibly know that it was Sutton who was moving about.”

“Yes, I know that,” replied Degerdon, smiling, “but I reached the conclusion that it was Sutton after I had learned what had happened next morning. At the moment, of course, I couldn't say who it was, though I was fairly certain that it wasn't ‘Fruity,' who was separated from me by only one wall.”

“I see,” said Vereker dubiously. “You were wakened by Ralli, I believe.”

“Yes. I thought for a moment I was at home and didn't jump to things very quickly. But when I heard my pyjama jacket tear, I thought it was time to sit up and ask questions.”

“You accompanied Mrs. Armadale to the polo ground?”

“Yes.”

“She was very upset, I suppose?”

“Less than I'd expected, but Angela's tempered steel. She wasn't in love with her husband, but she was horror-struck at his violent end.”

“I hear that she'd got rather too fond of Mr. Houseley of late,” suggested Vereker.

“Ah, well, perhaps it wasn't all her fault. I don't know much about their private affairs and don't like to talk about them. Sutton, I feel sure, wasn't quite playing the game. I like Angela, and I'm probably biased in her favour. If people marry they ought to try and do the right thing by one another. It may be difficult, but it's seldom impossible. I'm a bit dogmatic on the subject, but a man who mixes his drinks is generally a nasty kind of drunkard and people should cut him.”

“They say that Sutton Armadale was paying too much attention to Miss Cazas,” said Vereker blandly.

“I know all about that. I'm very much in love with Edmée, and the way he hung on to her skirts rather annoyed me. He did his best to dazzle her with his money, but Edmée told me she didn't care two straws for him. She was leading him on to give him a salutary lesson for Angela's sake.”

“She's a very charming woman, I'm told,” said Vereker sympathetically. “I hope your feelings are returned.”

The words produced the effect which Vereker had intended.

“You've not seen her?” asked Degerdon, with surprise.

“No. You must introduce me.”

“Certainly. I'm sure you'll like her. She's not like other women; there's something different about her,” said Degerdon, with growing enthusiasm. “At times she's so sophisticated and at others so charmingly childlike. And she's so deuced clever. She can dance and sing and play exquisitely. I haven't got her photograph on me or I'd let you see it. She's as beautiful as she's accomplished.”

“I hope your money troubles won't make any difference to your relations,” remarked Vereker pointedly.

“Good heavens, you don't think for a moment she's one of the mercenary sort, do you?” asked Degerdon.

“I wasn't suggesting that,” replied Vereker diplomatically, “but money makes the mare go, you know. Lack of it often means such a wearisome postponement. Love's generally impatient.”

“Oh, Edmée and I are not a bit impatient. She's worth waiting for. We're not engaged yet, but I'm certain my being broke won't affect us in the slightest.”

For some minutes the two men walked in silence. Vereker was lost in his own thoughts. His conversation with Degerdon had revealed to him an unsuspected ingenuousness in the man. He was doubtless very much in love with Edmée Cazas and had declared it with the courage and enthusiasm of youth. Vereker was all the more surprised because Degerdon's face did not altogether suggest such boyish candour. Lavater's conclusions on the science of physiognomy might not be infallible, but the face was unquestionably a basic index to character. With his habitual scepticism he decided not to accept Degerdon's simplicity as wholly sincere, and broke the silence with the remark:

“I've left my confounded cigarettes in my other pocket.”

“Have one of these,” immediately suggested Degerdon, producing a gold cigarette-case and pressing it open. “They're Bogdanov's Russians. ‘Hell-for-leather' was the first to introduce them to me. I like them so much that I always smoke them now.”

Vereker picked out a cigarette with almost exaggerated clumsiness, and during the process had sufficient time to read an inscription incised across the inner leaf of the case. —“To Ralph with love from Edmée.” To him that sentence was a profound revelation.

“You like a country life, I suppose?” he asked, as if to change the tenor of his own thoughts. 

“Not altogether. I'm too busy in town to be entirely a countryman. I try to make a judicious mixture of life.”

“Do you ride to hounds?”

“Rather. Under ‘Fruity's' guidance I've become awfully keen.”

“What staggers me,” said Vereker, “is the cheerfulness with which you all get up early in the country. As an experiment, I dragged myself out at sunrise this morning to paint in Wild Duck Wood. I thought I'd be absolutely alone, but I hadn't settled down to work ten minutes before I heard some one making his way through the covert.”

“Men on the estate are usually about at dawn,” said Degerdon casually.

“At first I thought it was Collyer,” continued Vereker, “or, as you've suggested, one of the workers on the estate, but he was a well-dressed young fellow about your own height and build. The set of head and shoulders very much resembled your own.”

“What was he wearing?” asked Degerdon. “Perhaps I can place him for you.”

For a second Vereker hesitated. In a flash he saw or thought he saw the purport of the question. At the back of his mind he had stored away an evidentiary note concerning a brown Norfolk jacket and cap for future reference. He did not wish that note's potential usefulness nullified through any tactical error on his part.

“A blue flannel blazer and grey flannel trousers,” he replied. 

“It might be anyone,” said Degerdon. “Ralli usually wears grey flannels for knocking about in, but I've never seen him sporting a blue blazer.”

“It wasn't Ralli,” remarked Vereker. “I met him in the wood a few minutes later. In any case, it doesn't matter.”

“Talking about early rising,” continued Degerdon easily, “cub-hunting commences next month, and that means showing a leg before the lark or, in any case, before I usually feel inclined to. This morning, I simply couldn't get up. ‘Fruity' stayed with us overnight, and we sat up chin-wagging till all hours. I was waked at eight, but it was ten before I fell out of bed.”

“Have you ever met this fellow, Raymond Braby?” asked Vereker, turning the conversation.

“Frequently. I never want to meet a more charming man.”

“The investors in his companies wouldn't hold that view,” remarked Vereker caustically.

“Doubtless, but in the struggle for money a man has a peculiar knack of shutting his eyes to the troubles of those outside his personal circle. He'll send a cheque to help sufferers from an earthquake in Italy or a famine in India, but if Cyrus T. Bodkin beggars thousands of his fellows in America over an oil swindle, I've never heard of anyone in this country crying his eyes out about it. In business the man who loses his cash gets about as much sympathy as a man who loses a bet. Braby'll be sorry for me because he knows me, but he won't shed tears over Mary Smith of Golders Green who is stranger to him and is wondering whether it's going to be the cemetery or the workhouse.”