Who Killed Charmian Karslake? Read online

  “Snakes! That’s another thing.” The millionaire watched his daughter carefully. “How did you get hold of that sapphire ball, Sadie? You found it by the pool, you said? What were you doing with it in the shrubbery anyhow?”

  “Yes, I found it by the pool,” Sadie said feebly. “Don’t you see that was why I went back to the Monks’ Pool? We were all hanging over, the Fergusons and I, trying to see the old carp, and the water was very low down because of the dry weather. We didn’t see any fish; I expect they are all dead long ago. But I caught sight of something red wedged in among the rocks at the side. I guess you know, dad, the monks were real cunning when they made that pool, they put rocks all round slantwise, kind of sticking out. I was wondering to myself what that red thing was, and when the Fergusons’ car had started I thought I would go back to the old pool and see if I could make out what the red thing was. It wasn’t a fish, but it might have been some treasure that those old monks had left. So I went back. I could see the thing stuck there right enough, and I made up my mind to get down to it. You know I was always champion gymnast when I was at school, dad.”

  “I remember right well,” Mr. Juggs said heavily. “I wish you hadn’t been now, Sadie. If it took you down that pool, that is to say.”

  “That is just what it did do,” Sadie said, raising herself on her arm, her voice growing stronger in her excitement. “I climbed down – I guess these short frocks make it safer. And when I got down to arm’s length of the thing I was disappointed, for it was just an old tin box, with a bright paper cover. I was in two minds to go back and leave it there. But I didn’t. You know I was always psychic and I suppose I was guided, for I –”

  “Then I wish to hell you hadn’t been,” Dicky ejaculated, his face flushed with emotion. “Why, you might have fallen right into that pool. And when we were boys we were always told it was bottomless. You might easily have fallen right in.”

  “But I didn’t,” Sadie said, raising her big eyes to her husband’s. “I was taken care of – I was quite safe.”

  “Neither the care nor the guidance seem to have lasted very long,” Dicky said irreverently. “But all this talking is getting too much for you, Sadie. You ought to shut your eyes and go to sleep. Dad and I will watch over you.”

  “Ay, I guess we will that,” Mr. Juggs said emphatically. “There will be no guiding or any foolery of that kind when we are about, Sadie.”

  “It – it isn’t right to make fun of it,” Sadie whispered, her eyes glancing round in terrified fashion. “Something worse may happen if you do.”

  “There couldn’t be anything much worse, seems to me,” the millionaire said slowly. “You were pretty well done for altogether, you know. And now it seems to me the best thing you can do is to get the lot of it off your chest.”

  “I brought it back with me,” Sadie said in a very low tone, her eyes wandering to every corner of the room in turn. “Then it was rather hard to open – swollen, maybe, with the water or something. I took the nearest path back to the Abbey and managed to get the box open, and then – then I thought I must be potty and all the place seemed swimming round, for what did I see there in front of me but Charmian Karslake’s sapphire ball. It was lying on a bit of cotton-wool, and the platinum chain was all curled round it. I was just staring at it, and thinking that the murderer must have put it down there maybe when the water was higher, to make it safe when the sleuths were searching all the rooms, and suddenly I heard a sort of a sound behind me.”

  “What sort of a sound, dear thing?” Dicky interrupted.

  “It – well, I don’t know quite what it was,” Sadie confessed. “It was a sort of howl and then there was a crashing in the bushes and something – somebody sprang out in the path behind me. I took to my heels, for I just felt as if there was something wicked about.”

  “You weren’t far wrong there, either,” Mr. Juggs interposed. “But get on with your recital. You didn’t think to turn your head, just to see –”

  “Didn’t dare,” Sadie confessed with a shamefaced glance. “I was scared right out of my wits. I seemed just to get a moment’s vision of something big and black, and then I had a knock on the back of my head and everything was dark, and I did not know any more until one day I awoke and found myself here lying on the bed and the sapphire ball was gone clean away.”

  “It’s a queer story,” Mr. Juggs commented, pulling his long chin. “A mighty queer story. If I read it in a book I bet I shouldn’t put much credence in it. What do you say, Dicky?”

  “I don’t know. Queer things do happen,” Dicky answered wisely. “But the question that I keep putting to myself is, where is that blessed sapphire ball?”

  “Maybe at the bottom of the Monks’ Pool,” Mr. Juggs responded. “Anyway, wherever the darned thing is, you may guess it will be taken care of this time. It won’t be found in any tin box now. I am beginning to realize now how things were. That murdering guy reckoned that if that sapphire ball was found on him it would about do for him, and he’d be entering eternity at the end of a rope and a bit sooner than he had any notion for, so he put it down there, meaning to fetch it; but when all the hullabaloo was over. Then I guess he kept guard over the pool, and maybe Sadie was never nearer heaven than when she clambered down among those rocks. It’s a wonder to me he didn’t jump out and knock her clean down into the Monks’ Pool.”

  Sadie shivered. “Ugh! And I might have been lying down there among those old carp and nobody might ever have found me.”

  “Well, you would not have been much good when you were found if you had been down there a day or two, that’s a fact,” commented her father dryly. “But it seems to me that it is a sure thing this murdering brute was in the Abbey all the time, or he would have got away with the thing.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Dicky dissented. “Stoddart told Arthur that he made sure that nobody took away what he was searching for – the three things, he said – the sapphire ball, the revolver, and the key of the door.”

  “But he told me himself that Charmian Karslake was shot with her own revolver,” said Mr. Juggs, staring at him.

  Dicky nodded.

  “So she was, as the evidence at the inquest showed. But the revolver was not found in her room; presumably it was carried away by the murderer with the sapphire ball.”

  “And the door key, didn’t you say?” questioned Mr. Juggs.

  “Oh that!” said Dicky, shrugging his shoulders. “I expect that was knocked out of the way when the door was broken open. We were too agitated to take any notice of a key. It might have been kicked aside.”

  “The door was locked, of course, though, or you would not have had to force it open.”

  “Oh, of course it was,” Dicky agreed. “I expect that Charmian locked it herself, though. Lots of people do when they are in a strange house. Some of ‘em barricade their doors too – pull the drawers in front of them, you know. ’Pon my word, I am not sure that I shall not do it myself in the future. One never knows who the blighters will be getting at next.”

  Mr. Juggs smiled. “I guess you will be safe enough. But now, Sadie, you’ll fall in with my scheme? You will come with us to Bermuda, the Isles of the Blest, as they stick on their letters. Nothing like self-praise, you know. You will be as safe as houses, I promise you. We will have the sleuths and we will have the nurses and the best wireless we can get on board and a radio operator that’s good enough for Buckingham Palace. And you will always have me or Dicky with you, mostly both of us. What do you say?”

  “You are very good,” said Sadie, her long, slender fingers plucking restlessly at the thin, silken coverlet that lay over her, while her great haunted eyes searched the room on every side. “But I don’t know. Seems to me I’d get better quicker if I just stayed on quietly here.”

  “Well, I am darned well sure you wouldn’t,” Mr. Juggs burst out emphatically. “This place fair gives me the hump. And I’ll get you out of it the very first minute I can.”

  CHAPTER
18

  “Now’s our time!” said Inspector Stoddart. “We will get to work at once, and you may bet your bottom dollar, as our friend Mr. Juggs would say, that we get things moving and very soon be at the bottom of the Charmian Karslake mystery.”

  Harbord raised his eyebrows. “As how?”

  “Sir Arthur and Lady Moreton are going up to town for a change. Her ladyship wants to see her dentist and buy a few new frocks. Sir Arthur says he wants to shake the cobwebs off, have a game of polo and a look in at his club. Mr. and Mrs. Richard and Mr. Juggs are well on the way to Bermuda. And I have got a free hand to do what I like in the Abbey while they are away.”

  “And what are you going to do?” inquired Harbord. “It seems to me that everything that can be done in the Abbey has been done.”

  The inspector looked at him.

  “Do you really think so? I tell you that we might pull the Abbey down stone by stone without finding the clue I want. And yet it might be there under our noses all the time.”

  The two men were in the inspector’s private room at the “Raven.” Stoddart occupied an arm-chair, near the window, drawn a little to one side in the shadow of the curtain. From it he obtained an excellent view of the Bull Ring, and the entrance gates of the Abbey. He took out his cigarette-case as he spoke and handed it to Harbord.

  “Just one while we talk things over before we start. If it was a man who was guilty of the double tragedy – of which I have little doubt – we now have an opportunity of going through the rooms of the three men who were in the Abbey upon whom general suspicion has focused itself. Sir Arthur Penn-Moreton, his brother and Mr. John Larpent.”

  “General suspicion usually focuses itself on the wrong people,” Harbord remarked. “I have heard you say so heaps of times, sir.”

  Stoddart lighted his cigarette.

  “Quite. But the extraordinary thing about this case is that not one of these men has a satisfactory alibi with regard to the attack on Mrs. Richard. No alibi at all would, perhaps, be more correct. Sir Arthur was in the billiard-room and says he came on from the stables and stopped there knocking balls about until the Fergusons had gone, as he did not like them and did not want to see them. Dicky was in the Home Woods, talking to one of the gamekeepers about the state of the coverts.”

  “Well, that is an alibi of sorts. What of Larpent?”

  “Anyhow the bottom drops out of Dicky’s when neither he nor the gamekeeper can be certain about the time – not to half an hour. The keeper never gave it a thought and Dicky went on to the old quarry to see after the pheasants’ nests and doesn’t know how long he spent pottering round there. He says he looked for his wife when he came in and couldn’t find her, but he did not think much of that until it got near dinner time. As for Larpent himself, he had been up town on business and came back by the 4.15 and walked up to the Abbey. He didn’t hurry himself, and goodness knows what happened on the way up.”

  “It seems to me that lack of motive is the weak point with regard to any of the three,” Harbord said reflectively, letting his cigarette go out while he pondered over the point.

  The inspector nodded. “Ah, we haven’t come across that yet. My idea is that one of these three had been up to larks with young Sylvia Gossett, who probably like her mamma was no better than she should be. How far matters may have gone we don’t know, but far enough apparently to make it a matter of grave importance and the need for silence imperative. Charmian Karslake, I take it, was shot by accident or, at the most, with her own revolver in a fit of passion. The attack on Mrs. Richard is a different thing altogether. Her possession of the sapphire ball evidently meant danger to someone; for all we know, there may have been something else in the box that would have given the show hopelessly away. There is no doubt somebody was watching when Mrs. Richard managed to get the box, and went on watching while she opened it and discovered the sapphire ball. Then the need for action became imperative. He sprang out from the bushes and knocking Mrs. Richard down possessed himself of the sapphire ball, may have tried to ram it in the handbag, then he appears to have made off in the direction of the Abbey. The spot where the lid of the box and the handbag and the cotton-wool were found was just beyond the place where the shrubbery path divides into two, one going round to the stables, the other back to the Abbey. These things were by the side of the walk leading to the Abbey. I should imagine that the murderer was disturbed here and flung the handbag away, realizing that should it be traced to his possession it would inevitably damn him. He probably dropped the lid of the box and the wool by accident.”

  “Sounds as if the fellow must have been a bit of a maniac,” Harbord commented. “Why on earth did he take the sapphire ball, anyway? It only added enormously to the risk of discovery, and he would never have been able to dispose of it.”

  “Probably he didn’t realize this at the time. As for being a maniac, I incline to the opinion that there must be a bit of a kink somewhere in every murderer, or they would never put their necks in danger for the sort of motives that most of them have. I have heard of a man who committed a particularly revolting murder for the sake of a couple of pounds. However, in this case robbery was not the motive, I feel sure.”

  “The handbag was found by the side of the path leading to the Abbey,” Harbord said thoughtfully. “That seems to prove that the murderer must have been someone inside the Abbey. I have thought sometimes, particularly since the attack on Mrs. Richard, that Charmian Karslake might have been murdered by somebody connected with the stables or employed about the garage or the gardens.”

  “Oh, well,” Stoddart observed, throwing his cigarette end into the fire-place, “this theory of mine does not entirely do away with that possibility. The man might have gone only a few steps towards the Abbey and then turned back or cut through the bushes towards the stable-yard. You come out of the shrubbery on to the broad walk that runs all round the Abbey and from there could get almost anywhere. There are several entrances to the Abbey. Those downy old monks seem to have known the value of a side door. But, when you speak of the possibility of Miss Karslake’s murderer being somebody employed outside the house, you forget the man in evening dress whom the French maid saw coming down the corridor the night of the murder.”

  “No, I haven’t!” Harbord contradicted. “But I never placed much reliance on that story. The man might have been anybody, and the French girl didn’t really know that he went to Miss Karslake’s room. She was not a very satisfactory witness.”

  “She was not,” the inspector agreed. “Sometimes I think I will have another talk with her. She is in North Wales now with a friend of Lady Penn-Moreton’s who wanted a temporary maid. Well, Alfred, I am afraid sitting here talking will not get us much forrarder. We will go across to the Abbey. First, though, I must show you this.” He unlocked his desk and brought out a paper.

  Harbord gazed at it in a puzzled fashion.

  “Looks like gibberish to me. What does it mean?”

  The inspector took it from him.

  “It is a message in cipher from the wireless operator on board the ‘White-Wings,’ Mr. Juggs’s yacht now on the high seas. Translated into English as she is spoke it reads: ‘Evening shoes size eight carefully cleaned but still bearing traces of blood found in Bird’s cabin.’ Bird, of course, is the pseudonym for Richard Penn-Moreton.”

  Harbord drew a deep breath.

  “Is the wireless operator to be trusted?”

  “Our own staff,” the inspector answered briefly. “Venables.”

  “The inference being that he has found the shoes worn by Miss Karslake’s murderer,” Harbord said slowly.

  “Ay, the inference,” the inspector agreed. “But inferences are mostly wrong. And I am glad you say worn by Miss Karslake’s murderer, Alfred. That is just as far as it takes us.”

  “Who found the shoes?” Harbord pursued. “Not Venables, I presume?”

  “No. Spender is on board as steward and Manders as Silas Juggs’s own man. Valet, if you can
imagine Mr. Juggs with such an appendage.”

  Harbord laughed.

  “I can’t. Imagination fails me.”

  “H’m! Manders will find that part of his work easy enough,” the inspector commented. “He is really there – both of them are – at Mr. Juggs’s own request to make Mrs. Richard feel quite safe. It seems that she lives in constant fear that she may be attacked again.”

  “I am sure I don’t wonder, poor soul,” Harbord said compassionately. “Her assailant may be nearer than she imagines. I wonder if she suspects –”

  “If she does she wisely keeps her suspicions to herself,” the inspector said meaningly. “Now for the Abbey.”

  Down in the Bull Ring the tiny ferns were poking their little heads from between the stones of the old wall. When they had passed the Abbey gates and were walking up to the house, on one side they had the shrubbery that surrounded the Monks’ Pool. Here the rhododendrons were blooming bravely, on the other the wide stretch of greensward that spread right up to the wall of the old church was dotted with azaleas nodding their bell-shaped heads in the sunshine.

  Their ring at the front door was answered by a footman, with Brook hovering behind. The inspector stepped inside.

  “I think you are expecting us, Mr. Brook?”

  “Oh, yes, Inspector Stoddart.” The butler was looking rather worried. “My orders from Sir Arthur are to get you anything you may require. You have the key that has been made for poor Miss Karslake’s room, I think?”

  “I have. But I don’t know that I shall want it today,” the inspector said, moving towards the stairs. “It is the first-floor rooms I am going through today, particularly Mrs. Richard’s.”

  “Certainly, inspector. I will come up with you and open them up.” The butler followed him. “Sir Arthur gave me all the keys but that new one of Miss Karslake’s before he went away. This is Mrs. Richard’s, the first on the right. I hope you may find something there which will help you to discover who the brute was that attacked the poor young lady.”