Death Comes to Cambers (2 page)

‘Her bed's not been slept in; her room's empty,' Amy repeated.

Farman considered this. His was not a very quick mind; its tendency was always to reject the unfamiliar, the unexpected. He said at last: ‘Don't talk silly. She's not been sitting up all night, has she?'

‘I don't know,' answered Amy helplessly.

‘Well, she must be somewhere,' declared Farman. ‘You had better find her,' he added. ‘Her tea'll be cold.'

‘It's cold already,' said Amy.

Farman sniffed, as if to indicate that from Amy he had expected nothing better, and then, what she had told him beginning to sink into his mind, he so far departed from his usual routine of next unlocking and unbolting the front door, as to proceed instead to the small morning-room that was Lady Cambers's favourite sitting-room – her ‘den' she had been used to call it sometimes, in opposition to the library Sir Albert had appropriated to himself and his special pursuits and interests wherein books and reading had no place whatever. That, of course, had been before the final breach, but Lady Cambers had continued her habit of using this small room as her own special domain – it was snug and quiet, she said, and she liked it, and gradually a convention had been established that when she was sitting there she was not to be disturbed except for urgent cause. Farman, opening the door, had a vague expectation of finding her there now. He supposed she might have got up early for some reason and come downstairs to sit here. But the room was unoccupied. The morning light, struggling through the still shuttered and curtained windows, showed that, and showed, also, on the table a tray with an empty tumbler on it, and a plate on which were still some crumbs. Glancing over his shoulder, to remark to Amy that anyhow her ladyship wasn't there, Farman noticed with uninterested surprise that the girl's former expression of bewilderment had given way to one that seemed to show uneasiness and alarm – even terror. Though what there could be to alarm her or anyone else in this unoccupied room, Farman had no idea. He left the problem unconsidered, and said: ‘Well, she isn't here.'

‘I'll clear those things away,' Amy said, advancing into the room, putting down the breakfast-tray she was still carrying, and making to pick up the one on the table before them.

Again Farman was vaguely puzzled by a certain haste and uneasiness her hurried nervous action seemed to show. But it was plainly her duty, since she was responsible for the room, to clear away this tray that had apparently been left from the night before.

‘Ought to have been done before,' he said severely, and then sniffed at the glass from which a faint odour had reached his expert and practised nostrils. ‘Brandy,' he exclaimed. ‘Well, now, and I thought she never touched it. That young Eddy Dene was here last night, wasn't he? Been standing him a drink, I suppose.'

Amy did not reply. She picked up the tray and began to hurry away. But Farman stopped her. He was beginning to feel really puzzled and uneasy now.

‘I'll attend to that,' he said. ‘You go and see if she's in Lady Hirlpool's room. Very likely she's there all the time.'

‘I'll take this into the kitchen first,' Amy said, still holding on to the tray.

‘You do what you're told, my girl; and look slippy, too,' Farman ordered, taking it from her. ‘It's a bit rummy, where she is.' When Amy still hesitated, he added sharply: ‘Now then, what are you waiting for?'

She obeyed then, though still as if reluctant to leave the tray with him. When she had gone, Farman smelt the glass again.

‘Stiff,' he commented to himself. ‘There's been no drowning that little lot. Is the old girl taking to drink on the sly?' He shook his head gravely, pleased at the idea – which, however, he did not believe for a moment. ‘Or is it Miss Amy Emmers having a go on the q.t., and is that why she didn't seem to like me seeing it?' Again he shook his head gravely, again pleased at this idea and thinking it more probable. ‘Or has one or other of 'em been standing Mr. Eddy drinks?'

But against this last supposition was the fact that he himself had let Eddy Dene out the night before, and certainly, so far as he knew at least, no brandy – or, indeed, any other refreshment – had been served during his visit, prolonged as that had been.

In the hall he gave the tray to one of the maids – for now the usual round of domestic work was beginning – told her to take it into the kitchen, and then went on upstairs. He paused on the landing outside Lady Hirlpool's room. There was a murmur of voices within, and almost at once Amy came out.

‘She's not there,' she said. ‘Lady Hirlpool's not seen her.'

They looked at each other helplessly, and there emerged from the room Amy had just left a little old sharp-featured lady, wearing her dressing-gown over her pyjamas, for, if she was over sixty and a grandmother of grown-up grandchildren, none the less she was as up-to-date as the most up-to-date young miss who ever let to-morrow toil after her in vain.

‘What's all this fuss about?' she demanded. ‘Lady Cambers has most likely just gone out for a stroll before breakfast – it's a lovely morning after the rain.'

‘Yes, m'lady,' agreed Farman, ‘but she never does, m'lady; and then all the doors were locked.'

‘Her bed's not been slept in,' Amy said.

Lady Hirlpool looked as if she didn't believe it.

‘But that's...' she began, and then, without specifying what it was, she marched across the landing and along the passage to Lady Cambers's room. She went in, and came out again almost at once.

‘No, it hasn't been,' she confirmed, and stood still in the doorway, looking at them and apparently expecting them to say something.

By this time a certain uneasiness, a vague alarm, had begun to spread itself through the house. The maid who had taken the tray into the kitchen had reported that ‘Mr. Farman looked that upset'; the chauffeur, coming into the kitchen for his early-morning cup of tea, had smelt at the glass on the tray on the kitchen table, and inquired, with jocular envy, who had been swigging brandy already; the parlourmaid had reported that Amy had left Lady Cambers's early-morning tray in the morning-room for her tea to grow cold. All the domestic staff – parlourmaid, housemaids, senior and junior, the tweeny, cook, kitchen-maid, chauffeur – were now hovering doubtfully on the frontier-line that cut off the family rooms from the staff apartments, and then cook, strong in the knowledge of a dignity that enabled her to hold her own even with Mr. Farman himself, came resolutely through the hall and up the stairs.

‘Is it burglars?' she demanded, voicing her perennial fear. ‘And me thinking we were safe for once, with a young police gentleman in the house.'

Lady Hirlpool had vanished into Lady Cambers's room again, but now once more emerged. She somehow gave an impression of having just made a swift and careful search in every corner, in every drawer, behind every chair or curtain. She said: ‘It's most extraordinary. She must be somewhere.' She paused to see if anyone contradicted this. No one did, and finding it was a proposition generally accepted, but not carrying the matter much further, she asked: ‘Have you told Mr. Owen? If you haven't, you had better.'

The Mr. Owen she referred to was the young policeman on whose mere presence in the house the cook had so greatly relied. A grandson of Lady Hirlpool's, he had chosen the police for a career, and by good luck and a certain stolid persistence of endeavour that never let him abandon any clue, however slight, had attained some success and promotion to the rank of sergeant in the C.I.D. It was through his grandmother, Lady Hirlpool, an old friend of Lady Cambers, that he had come to spend the week-end here, partly because his grandmother wanted to show him off to her friend, but ostensibly to advise Lady Cambers on precautions to be taken against the burglary whereof she shared her cook's perennial dread that certain recent occurrences had much increased. His room was on the same floor, not far away, and when Farman entered he found the young man standing at the window, already fully dressed. He glanced round as the butler came in, and said to him: ‘Isn't that field over there the one where Eddy Dene is doing his digging? Seems to be something up; there's a bit of a crowd and people running about. Looks as if they had found the Missing Link all right.'

But this jesting allusion to the archaeological investigations that were being carried on brought no response from Farman. He came to the window, too, and looked out. He said abruptly: ‘We can't find Lady Cambers. She's not in the house. Her bed's not been slept in.'

For a moment or two they remained standing in silence, the young detective and the butler, staring from the window at the little group assembled there in the sunshine in the distant field. Then Bobby said: ‘I think we had better see what's up.' He added: ‘Are you sure Lady Cambers isn't in the house?'

‘We've looked everywhere,' Farman answered. ‘Her maid says her bed hasn't been slept in.'

It was a piece of information that made Bobby look graver even than before.

‘Any doors or windows open this morning?' he asked.

‘No; they were all locked and bolted same as usual,' Farman answered.

‘Well, then, how did she get out?' Bobby asked, and, when Farman only shook his head and looked bewildered, he went on: ‘Are you sure she was in the house when you locked up? I suppose you see to that?'

‘Last thing,' Farman answered. ‘About eleven it was; and her ladyship wouldn't be out at that time of night, would she?'

They left the room together, and, on the landing outside, Bobby said to Lady Hirlpool, who was still standing there with Amy: ‘We're going to have a look round outside. I expect she's just gone out for a stroll before breakfast.'

‘No, you don't; and don't tell lies to your grandmother,' retorted Lady Hirlpool. ‘Lotty never went for a walk before breakfast in her life. There's something wrong, and you know it.'

‘We won't be longer than we can help,' Bobby answered. ‘Anyhow, there's no sense in jumping to conclusions.'

Followed by Farman he went into the hall, where the indoor servants had now gathered in a whispering, excited group.

‘May as well get on with the work,' Bobby said to them. ‘If Lady Cambers has gone out for some reason, she'll want breakfast when she gets back. Miller,' he added, to the chauffeur, ‘better see that the car's ready. It may be wanted.'

‘Her bed hasn't been slept in,' called out the parlourmaid. ‘I've looked myself and so it hasn't.'

‘See that nothing in the room is touched till we know what has happened,' Bobby directed. ‘Don't touch or disturb anything in the house if you can possibly avoid it. Understand?'

They said they did, and were plainly sufficiently frightened and impressed to make it likely they would try to obey, though sad experience had long ago convinced Bobby that always the important pieces of evidence get thrown away, because at first it seems so inconceivable they can be of any value, while irrelevant trifles are religiously preserved. Lady Hirlpool had come down the stairs now, and she and the maid, Amy, joined the little group of women-servants, while Miller retired to get the car ready in case of need, and Bobby, followed by Farman, went out by the front-door and round the side of the house, towards where, north of the building, was gathered the distant group they had observed from the window of Bobby's room.

Hurrying past the rose-garden and through the shrubbery above the tennis-lawns, they came soon to the boundary-fence of the grounds, where a small gate opened on a footpath leading to the village. On the other side of this path were fields sloping to the bed of a tiny stream, and then, sloping upwards again to a smooth rounded crest of grassy land known locally as The Mounts, the farm of which it formed part, going by the name of Mounts Farm. To the casual glance all this district might have seemed somewhat flat, dull, and uninspiring, but the trained geologist would have found it full of interest, such plain evidence did it show of slow rise and slower subsidence, of a time when The Mounts had been, in fact, a considerable range of hills, almost deserving the name of mountains, and when, in the place of the tiny streamlet of to-day, a great river had covered most of the valley, presently to flow into the Thames on its way to join the Rhine at some spot where now the North Sea ebbs and flows.

Leaving the footpath that ran in an easterly direction towards the village, Bobby and his companion hurried across the fields, and saw running quickly towards them a figure that had detached itself from the group on the other side of the stream.

‘It's Ray Hardy – Mr. Hardy's son,' Farman said uneasily. ‘He's in a hurry about something.'

Instinctively they paused. It was as though a sense of coming tragedy impinged upon their consciousness and held them still.

‘Who is Mr. Hardy?' Bobby asked, his eyes fixed upon that coming, running figure.

‘Mr. Hardy's the farmer here,' Farman answered. ‘That's his son, Ralph. Ray, they call him. What's he running that way for? Some of the land's Mr. Hardy's own, but most he rents from her ladyship.'

Ray Hardy was quite close now. Though the long damp grass that still held much of the previous night's soaking rain hampered his progress, he came at speed. He called out pantingly: ‘It's Lady Cambers. She's dead. In Frost Field. Mr. Bowman saw her. He told us.'

It seemed to both Bobby and to Farman that they had already known this.

‘Well, now then, now then, now then,' Farman muttered, and he would have gone on muttering those two words over and over again to himself if Bobby had not stopped him with a gesture for silence.

Yet Bobby himself was almost as much affected by the bewildering suddenness with which this horror had leaped upon them. For a moment he had a brief vision of Lady Cambers as he had known her – brisk, energetic, authoritative – directing everybody and everything the way they should go, arranging all things to her taste, full of confidence in herself and in life. And now it seemed there had fallen upon her, without warning, a strange and dreadful doom. Recovering himself with an effort, reminding himself there was much that must need doing, he said: ‘How... I mean... what's happened... is there anything to show...?'