THE CRYSTAL BEADS MURDER (Murder Mystery for Inspector Stoddart). Annie Haynes
meeting?"
They were crossing the Dutch garden now. Harbord looked all round before he answered.
"Through that gate at the side I suppose our way lies, sir. With regard to your first question, I think it is pretty obvious the person Saunderson came to meet must be some one in the Hall, either a resident or a visitor. And he came, I should imagine, with some very definite object. If it should be a love-affair it must have been an illicit one. Therefore I should make a few careful inquiries about any married women who may be in the house. As far as I have ascertained they have a pretty good houseful now, as large, if not larger, than the one they had for the St. Leger. If there should be anyone here at the present time who was included in the Doncaster party, I should look up that person's antecedents."
"Well reasoned, Alfred. But"--the inspector looked at him with a wry smile--"we have no proof that the murderer was a woman. As a matter of fact I should say it is quite as likely, if not more likely, to have been a man. Money or love, and in love I include jealousy. As far as my experience goes nine-tenths of the murders committed are committed for one or other of these motives. In this case I think financial difficulties are just as likely to have led to the death as an illicit love-affair."
"I wonder if they searched the place thoroughly?"
Stoddart shrugged his shoulders.
"You don't need me to tell you that when a place is used for tea fairly often anything may be found there. Might be a dozen clues that mean nothing. This is our way, I presume."
He unlatched the gate at the right-hand side of the Dutch garden. They heard voices as they went along the path to the summer-house.
The inspector frowned as he saw the downtrodden grass.
"Done their best to destroy any clue there might have been, of course."
The summer-house stood on a little knoll in the midst of the clearing; all around it the rhododendrons that formed the sides of the Dutch garden had spread and were pressing closely.
Superintendent Mayer and another man, apparently occupied in staring at the summerhouse, turned as the detectives approached.
"I am pleased to see you, Inspector Stoddart," the superintendent began. "This is a terrible job. We can't make anything of it ourselves. 'Tain't believable that anybody hereabouts would have done a thing like this."
"It is pretty obvious that somebody did, superintendent," the inspector said dryly. "Still it is more than likely it was not a native of Holford. This is where the body was found, I suppose. Can you show me just how it lay?"
"Yes, I can." The superintendent stepped into the summer-house. "He lay right on his back, did the corpse. His head was over here," indicating a spot by the nearest leg of the rustic table. "His feet, they were right there in the doorway. Seemed as if he had been standing there, or maybe on the step. And I should say them as he was expecting came right on him, maybe by a way he wasn't looking for them."
The inspector surveyed the place where the dead man had lain in silence for a minute. Then, standing on the step, he looked round.
"It wouldn't have been very difficult for anyone to take him unawares. The rhododendrons come right up on all sides except the front, it seems to me. But it rained last night in town. I expect it was the same here. How did your unexpected assailant see to aim at his victim?"
The superintendent stared at him.
"I don't know. But there was a moon, though it was showery most of the time. The--the murderer must ha' waited till it shone a bit, like, and then the gentleman's shirt front would make a decent target."
The inspector nodded.
"Quite. Down here you say he was lying. Were his feet projecting beyond the doorway?"
The superintendent scratched his head. "Sticking out, like, you mean? No, they didn't. But I think as the murderer had searched through his pockets and maybe been disturbed. The body had got on a light overcoat and one of the pockets looked as if it had been pulled out and pushed in again carelessly. I mean as it wasn't right in like, a bit of it was left pulled out and just here by the side of the pocket there was a notebook lying on the ground and a paper or two, as if them that took them out had been in too much of a hurry to put them back."
The inspector pricked up his ears.
"Where are they?"
The superintendent tramped across the summer-house and, stooping down, drew a small leather attache-case from beneath the seat.
"I put 'em in this and locked 'em up." He felt in his pockets and produced the key. "I thought you'd be wanting to see them or I'd have taken them down to the police station," he said as he unlocked the case and handed a pocket-book and a couple of letters not enclosed in envelopes to Stoddart. "There's a lot of notes in the pocket-book, so it don't look as if robbery had much to do with it."
The inspector glanced at the letters first. One was merely a business communication from a wholesale leather firm saying that Mr. Saunderson's esteemed order should have their earliest attention. The other was a very different affair. The detective's eyes brightened as he looked at it. Written on good paper, it was neither stamped nor dated, but across it was scrawled in large, badly printed letters: "I accede because I have no choice."
That was all. There was no signature. Stoddart turned it over, looked at it from every angle, and even actually smelt it before he handed it back to the superintendent. Then he made no comment, but he turned to his case-book and jotted down an unusually lengthy entry. He opened the dead man's pocket-book and after a rapid glance through it laid it on the table.
"Put this back in your case, superintendent. We will take it back to the police station and go into it all carefully. Now, before we go across to the mortuary, do you know how the deceased got here? As he was not staying at the Hall, and presumably not in the immediate neighbourhood, I mean? Did he come to Holford by train?"
The superintendent shook his head.
"Not to Holford, he didn't. I have asked at the station and nobody answering to his description was seen there last night, and he must have been noticed if he had come, for there's precious few passengers at Holford except the folks from the Hall. There's other stations he might ha' come to, of course, but not hardly within walking distance--seven or eight miles maybe, and cross-country at that. His shoes don't look as if he had come far, either. And yet, if he was in a car, where is the car?"
"H'm--well!" The inspector looked thoughtful. "We will go down to the mortuary at once," he decided.
Chapter IV
As the Chief Constable had said, the temporary mortuary at Holford was just an ordinary barn. Some rough trestles had been set up in the middle under the direction of Superintendent Mayer, and Robert Saunderson lay on them. Some one had thrown a white sheet over the body. Superintendent Mayer tramped across and laid it back.
"Looks as if he'd been surprised somehow," he commented, gazing down on the face that, sensual and coarse-looking in life, had gained a certain dignity in death. "Stiff and cold he'd been for hours before we found him," the superintendent went on.
Standing beside him, Inspector Stoddart looked down at the dead man. He glanced quickly over the face and form, then passed to the light overcoat that hung over the bottom of the trestles.
"You have gone through the pockets, you said, superintendent?"
"I have--and there's nothing in 'em to help us," that worthy announced in a tone of assurance that made Stoddart raise his eyebrows. "There's a letter or two, none from anywhere about here, and the money that I showed you before. His wrist-watch too, I left that on."
One of the dead man's arms was lying by his side. Stoddart lifted it up; the watch had stopped at 9.30.
"We get the time of death approximately from that. Probably when