The Polo Ground Mystery (6 page)

For some moments the inspector was silent over the mastication of a generous mouthful of home-made cake.

“You have an idea that some one may have shot him with his own pistol and then thrust it in his hand?” he asked at length.

“It seems a likely supposition; it would account for only two reports. When a man commits suicide with a revolver or pistol he usually relaxes his grasp of the weapon, and it is nearly always found at some little distance from the body.”

“There is that alternative, and yet a missing cartridge case to explain away. But, Lord bless us, Mr. Vereker, we could go building variations on the theme till doomsday. In the meantime—”

“We'll go up and have a look at that polo ground,” interrupted Vereker, rising. “There's one point that I had nearly forgotten. What's this yarn about Mr. Armadale as he was dying murmuring the word ‘Murder' to Collyer? What do you make of it?”

“We've only got Collyer's word for it. It's so easy to be wrong on such a point,” replied the inspector gravely.

“Only too easy, inspector. It may have been the word ‘Mother.' It's a strange thing that proud, self-reliant man in the last great crisis of death will sometimes unconsciously call for help to her who gave him birth and who was his comfort through so great a part of his growing years. In the mystery of existence, womanhood seems to be imbued with terrible significance!”

“It's nearly opening time,” interrupted the inspector, noisily clearing his throat. “I think we'd better be going.”

“Knowing ourselves very thoroughly, inspector, I quite agree. I see you're as sentimental as ever!”

On leaving the “Silver Pear Tree” the inspector turned eastward along the road which runs between Nuthill and Burstow and thence onwards to the north-east right away to Canterbury. To the north of this highway swell the rolling masses of the Surrey Hills, and roughly parallel with it wandered the old Pilgrim's Way. Those comfortable hills were now bathed in the hot August sunshine, and the atmosphere about them trembled mistily—a golden transfiguration. The two men had barely walked a hundred yards along this thoroughfare, both lost in their own thoughts, when the inspector halted at a gate leading into a field on their left.

“We'll take a short-cut across the fields from here, Mr. Vereker,” he said. “It chops off a big bend in the road, and Armadale's polo ground lies on this side of the manor.”

“How far from the house does the polo ground lie?” asked Vereker suddenly.

“About two hundred yards. The gardens and lawns surrounding the manor are enclosed by a ten-foot wall except on a short frontage near the main gates, where there are posts and chains and a low quickset hedge, over which a beautiful view of the front drive and its flanking lawns and borders can be seen. These grounds are roughly rectangular. The western wall, that is the wall nearest us at the moment, is pierced by a folding iron gateway into a courtyard. This courtyard contains the stables for the polo ponies and hunters, and also a garage for Mr. and Mrs. Armadale's cars. From this courtyard wide wooden gates again open out on the field which Mr. Armadale has had converted into a first-class private polo ground.”

“An inspiring picture, Heather. It fires my imagination and is an arraignment of the disgusting crime of poverty,” interrupted Vereker.

“Armadale was immensely wealthy,” commented the inspector simply.

“And immensely intellectual, if we are to believe my friend Emerson. ‘Property is an intellectual production,' he says. ‘The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Man was born to be rich.' Sutton must have been a plucky and tenacious man as well.”

“I'm glad to hear that man was born to be rich,” sighed the inspector, and added, “I don't know so much about that gentleman's pluck.”

“You must admit it. He gets up before five o'clock in the morning to surprise a burglar who wished to acquire some intellectual production quickly by a bold display of coolness and promptness. Without troubling to ring for assistance or rouse the house, he chases him out of the building, follows him through the stable-yard into the polo ground, some two hundred yards of dogged pursuit, and tackles him single-handed with an automatic pistol and a monocle. Then that limitation we call Fate intervened. In a grossly immoral mood Fate sided with the burglar, and twenty-five years of financial acquisition was shot like a rabbit in a ride. On second thoughts, perhaps, Fate has a stern criterion in moral values. God knows!”

Inspector Heather's face broke into a smile.

“To put it in a few words, that burglar business has got you guessing, Mr. Vereker.”

“Mightily, inspector. I don't feel quite happy about that burglar, and the more I think on the subject the more mysterious does his mask seem. Can you tell me why burglars wear masks?”

“To avoid identification should we subsequently clap our hands on a suspect.”

“To avoid identification? Ah, there's the rub! And yet at the very moment when his mask ought to have been fulfilling its purpose, he recklessly flings it off. Can you explain that action?”

“I've thought about it a good deal. It may have been a bit of a hindrance when he was cracking the safe; or, when he was disturbed and found that it might be necessary to use his gun, he reckoned he'd be able to shoot better without it.”

“You've taken good care so far to hide from me all particulars about the cracking of the safe, inspector. Did the burglar use the latest gadgets to do the job—the oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, for instance?”

“That's just what he didn't do. The safe had simply been unlocked with a key.”

“The mystery deepens. I suppose it was a modern safe?”

“Yes, but not a very massive affair. A similar safe can be found in any club or hotel in England.”

“Where was the key kept, and who had charge of it?”

“There were two keys. Mr. Armadale always carried one on his key chain. He was wearing the chain when he was shot. The other, Mrs. Armadale always kept in a jewel-case in her bedroom. When it was discovered that the safe had been rifled and her £20,000 pearl necklace stolen, she rushed into her room to see if the key was in its usual place. To her surprise, it was there.”

“Amazing! Now how did the burglar manage to get a duplicate of one of those keys? It seems to have been a carefully planned affair by a skilled man who took his time, did things with aforethought, and of course left no finger-prints.”

“There were no finger-prints on the bolt handle of the safe. The few prints we discovered on the inside walls of the double doors will doubtless prove to be those of the master and mistress of the house. We can't hope for much from finger-prints, and there were no footprints. The man knew his job.”

“Was there no electrical burglar alarm on the door of the safe?”

“Yes, but it was out of order.”

“You should have said it ‘wasn't functioning,' inspector. Is the safe a concealed structure?”

“A bookcase which opens and swings out like a door on hinges hides it very neatly, but as I've said, the man knew his job. He had probably been at work for months finding out all about this safe and its contents. Even if he had spent a year on preliminary scouting the result was worth while. Burglary is highly paid work if you know how to get rid of the swag.”

“Your skilled burglar rarely carries fire-arms; you must admit that much, Heather.”

“The old hands seldom did, Mr. Vereker, but what with the example of the American crook and the suggestive education of Yankee films, our chaps are taking to the dirty habit more and more. For all we know, an American crook has followed that necklace across the Atlantic; it was bought at Tiffany's in New York.”

For some moments Vereker was silent as they crossed a meadow crimsoned with sorrel and powdered with the warm gold of buttercups over which the air hovered in quivering heat. He was walking with head bent in thought. Every now and then he would look up, and his searching eye would drink in the still beauty of the landscape with its drowsy elms drooping in bluish-grey festoons. Above their soft masses shone the distant hills crowned away to the east by a water-tower, now looking in the transforming glow bold, feudal, chivalric.

“How did this burglar enter the house, Heather?” he asked suddenly, as if his thoughts had been utterly detached from his roaming and appreciative vision.

“A folding glass door, or French window, if you like, of the library opens on to a long balcony supported by stone pillars. The library is on the first floor, some twenty feet from the ground and quite an easy climb for an active man. Underneath this balcony is a veranda, which looks out on to a magnificent rock garden. The French window was found ajar when the burglary was discovered, and certain scratches on the stone balustrade of the balcony and down one of the supporting pillars showed that the thief had escaped that way. If this window had accidentally been left open, he may have got in that way by shinning up a pillar and climbing over the balustrade. All the doors and windows on the ground floor were found firmly fastened and hadn't been tampered with.”

“You're talking poppycock, Heather. You don't mean to tell me that Armadale clambered over the balustrade and slithered down a pillar after his man?”

“It looks mighty like it, anyhow,” replied the inspector. “How is the French window of the library fastened?”

“With an ordinary handle catch and a lock and key. One-half of the window is made fast, of course, with a bolt into the transom and a bolt into the floor. This half was closed and bolted; the other half was ajar.”

“The thing's as simple as pie, Heather. One of the servants was in collusion with the burglar and kindly left the window open for him. This servant coached the crook as to the concealed safe, got an impression of the safe key for him, and disconnected the burglar alarm on the safe door, so that you've just got to choose him out of the staff and clap the bracelets on him as an accessory. Arrest the trusted butler for choice!”

“I've got my eyes on the staff, Mr. Vereker. There's a lot in your suggestion,” said the inspector gravely.

“I'm going to concentrate on the guests, Heather. There's a Raffles among 'em. Life's daily creeping up to fiction, or vice versa. Bothered if I know. The tragedy of this problem is that nobody will ever know exactly what wakened Armadale in the early hours to go down to the library.”

“His bedroom is right above the library,” interrupted the inspector. “The noise below probably woke him up.”

“Then that's the first logical thing I've heard about this astounding affair, Heather.”

“The second is that we've arrived at the polo ground,” added the inspector.

At these words, Vereker's lackadaisical manner was at once sloughed, and for some moments he stood silent, his eye taking in every detail of the scene. From the polo ground with its boarded edging it crossed to the gates opening from the stable-yard, thence to the upper windows of Vesey Manor, peering over the enclosing walls of the grounds and kitchen garden and now aflame with the westering sun. He noted that a good view of the polo ground could be obtained from the upper windows of the second and third stories. Thence his glance swept northward to where Hanging Covert frowned over the valley. It was an ideal covert, he could see, for driven pheasants. With their homing habits they would make for Wild Duck Wood to the south-east, flying across the narrow intervening valley, and supply the rocketers beloved of every good shot. Due east of Hanging Covert his eye picked up a puff of bluish smoke issuing from a red chimney-pot burning like a tiny flame against the dark green of the surrounding foliage.

“That's Collyer's cottage nestling on the slope of the hill, I suppose, Heather?”

“That's it, Mr. Vereker. Collyer was making for, and had nearly reached the fringe of, Hanging Covert when he spotted Armadale's body lying near the goal flags at the end of the ground.”

“It would take him a good twenty-five minutes to reach the covert after leaving his cottage even at a steady jog-trot. He probably walked, and that would give the murderer half an hour to make himself scarce before Collyer came into a position from which he could view the polo ground. He could have been spotted from the manor windows, but evidently no one was roused or took the trouble to look out. It would probably be more than an hour before Captain Fanshaugh suggested combing the surrounding grounds and woods, so that the man had plenty of time to clear without being seen. In any case, he was careful enough, it seems, to pick up his ejected cartridge cases—a nice point, Heather, don't you think? I should say a man who had committed a murder would be desperately eager to quit the scene of the crime without stopping to hunt for cartridge cases.”

“It suggests he was a crook who knew the danger of leaving any clue behind. If we could get hold of one of his empty shells we might be able to trace the weapon, and if we traced the weapon we should probably be able to lay hands on our man.”

“You're deadly efficient fellows, Heather,” commented Vereker, and hastened his pace towards the northern goal flags of the polo ground. Some twenty paces from those goal flags he noticed a cross marked in whitewash on the close-shorn turf. “Is this the spot where Collyer found the body?”

“Yes. Mr. Armadale was lying on his back with his feet towards the house and his head towards the west.”

“With his feet towards the house,” repeated Vereker slowly, and was lost in a brown study. After a few moments he added, “That looks as if he had fallen forwards after being shot, and subsequently turned on his back.”

“How do you make that out, Mr. Vereker?” asked the inspector quickly.

“If he had fallen backwards, the man who shot him must have been between him and the house. As we are presuming he was chasing the burglar from the house, that would be ridiculous.”