THE CRYSTAL BEADS MURDER (Murder Mystery for Inspector Stoddart). Annie Haynes
but that the dead man was no other than Robert Saunderson, who had so recently been his guest. Of course they got the doctor there as soon as possible. He said the man had been dead for hours, had probably died the night before the discovery."
"Presumably I should not be here if the case was one of suicide?"
"Out of the question," Major Logston said decidedly. "I can't give you the technical details, but the fellow had been shot through the heart. Death must have been instantaneous. And the revolver cannot be found."
"H'm!" The inspector drew in his lips. "Pretty conclusive, that. Any clue to the murderer?"
The Chief shook his head.
"Not so far. The summer-house is a favourite place for tea with Lady Medchester, so there'll be a maze of finger-prints and what not. Oh, it won't be an easy matter to find out who fired the fatal shot, as things look at present. I don't know whether Dr. Middleton will be any help to you, but he is up at the Hall now. He is attending General Courtenay, an uncle of Lord Medchester's, who had a stroke last night, so you will be able to hear what he has to say at once. Lord Medchester wants to see you too."
"I shall be glad to see him," Stoddart said politely. "But first about the body--I presume you have had it moved?"
"Yes. As soon as the doctor had seen it we had it taken to an outhouse near the churchyard, which has to serve as a temporary mortuary."
"Well, naturally you could do nothing else," the inspector said, staring up at the windows of Holford Hall. "This Saunderson, now, what was he like to look at?"
"Alive, do you mean?" the Chief Constable questioned. "I saw him at Doncaster. Didn't care much for the look of him myself. Big haw-haw sort of brute, don't you know. Pretty bad lot from all accounts--always after the skirts. Well, here we are!"
Stepping inside the big portico that was over the front entrance to the Hall, his ring was answered instantly. The two-seater stood before the door. A young footman flung the door open and announced that his lordship was expecting them. Stoddart joined Harbord and the two went in together.
Lord Medchester received them in his study. The walls were lined with books, but a little inspection showed that the two shelves which had the appearance of being the most used were devoted to racing literature. Lord Medchester was a tall, thin man in the early forties; perfectly bald in front and on the crown, the ridge of hair at the back was unusually thick and had the appearance of having slipped down from the top. He glanced sharply at Stoddart as the detectives entered, and came forward to meet them.
"I am delighted to see you, inspector. This--this is an appalling thing to happen in one's grounds. And our local police don't seem able to grapple with it at all--we look to you to find out who killed the poor beggar."
"I will do my best, Lord Medchester. Will you tell me what you know of Mr. Saunderson?"
"That will be precious little," said his lordship, subsiding into a chair near the fireplace and motioning to Stoddart and Harbord to take chairs close at hand. "I have met him out and about for years. He was staying at Merton Towers for the Derby, and when we were talking about putting a bit on Harkaway he gave me a tip for Battledore for the Cup. The colt ran away with it, you know, and I made a tidy pocketful over him. So, times being what they are, and these damned Socialists not content with screwing every penny they can out of you when you are alive, but dragging your very grave from you when you are dead, I was deuced bucked with my luck and on the spur of the moment I asked Saunderson here for the St. Leger. He rather jumped at it, I thought, and turned up all right. Of course we all put our shirts on Battledore and he let us all down and ran nowhere. So I lost most of what I won at Goodwood. I was a bit rattled, I can tell you. Not that it was Saunderson's fault."
"Did he lose?" Stoddart asked quickly.
"Well, he went down on Battledore of course," his lordship answered, "but he'd hedged on Goldfoot, lucky beggar! At least, I thought he was lucky until this happened."
"He left Holford the day after the races, I understand?" Stoddart pursued.
Lord Medchester nodded. "Yes, he went up to town with Colonel Wynter, another of the men who were staying here."
"And you had no reason to expect him at Holford again?"
"Good Lord, no!" his lordship said impatiently. "You might have knocked me down with a feather when I heard he had been shot in the summer-house; matter of fact, he had no encouragement from me to come again. On further acquaintance I didn't exactly take a fancy to Saunderson. Thought he was a bit of a bounder. Still, I don't want to talk about that now the poor chap's been done in. But you are asking."
"Precisely." The detective glanced at his notes and made a hieroglyphic entry. "Now, I want to know whether he had any sort of a quarrel with any of your other visitors--any woman got a down on him?"
Glancing at him as he answered, Harbord caught a curious, momentary gleam in Lord Medchester's eyes.
"He wasn't exactly a favourite, but they all seemed friendly enough together," he replied, ignoring the latter half of the question. "Besides, most of 'em had gone away. If they had wanted to murder one another, they could have done it in town; no need to come down here."
"Any possible love-affair with anyone at Holford?"
"Oh, Lord, I should think not!" he said with a laugh that sounded a bit forced in Stoddart's ears. "I shouldn't think Saunderson was that sort, getting a bit long in the tooth. Besides, there was nobody here he could have got soppy about. All of 'em married and not the kind that are looking about to get rid of their husbands."
"Nobody unmarried?" the inspector queried. "Not that that matters. The married ones are generally the worst."
"Yes, there I am with you. They are if they take that way. But you are talking about the unmarried ones. The only one in the lot was my cousin, Miss Courtenay, and she is engaged to my trainer, Michael Burford--no eyes for anyone else; damned nuisance sometimes, don't you know! Be a bit more interesting in a year or two. I made the remark to Saunderson, I remember."
"What did he say?"
"Oh, nothing much. Merely laughed. There wasn't much he could say. Anybody could see it."
Stoddart got up. "Well, marriage doesn't make much difference to some of them. I think the best thing I can do is just to have a look round at the summer-house and then at the body. Perhaps you would let me have a list of the house-party later on?"
"I'll have one made," Lord Medchester promised, getting up and taking a position before the fireplace. "And if there's anything else we can do you've only to let us know. It's no joke having a man murdered at the back of your own garden."
That seemed to be all there was to be got out of Lord Medchester and, as Stoddart observed to Harbord, it was not very illuminating.
The doctor could only tell them two things--first, that death had probably occurred some nine or ten hours before the body was discovered, which would place the time round about ten o'clock the preceding evening; and that, secondly, the automatic had not been fired close at hand. The murderer, according to Dr. Middleton, had probably stood outside the summer-house and fired through the open doorway.
Stoddart drew his brows together as he and Harbord walked across the lawn to the Dutch garden.
"Queer case!" the younger man ventured.
The inspector nodded.
"We'll just have a look at the summer-house before it gets too dark, and interview the local superintendent. And then it strikes me we may as well toddle back to town in the morning and investigate Saunderson's doings. I fancy we are more likely to hit on the clue there than here."
"I don't know," Harbord said slowly. "Of course he came here to meet some one."
"Naturally!" the inspector assented. "One hardly imagines that he travelled down for the sole purpose of being murdered. But the two questions that present themselves, and which I fancy we shall have some difficulty in answering are these: who did Saunderson come to meet, and why did he come to Holford for