Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (13 page)

“Did I or did I not give you my solemn word, Inspector?” queried Roger in hurt tones. “Besides, I would have you know that my nickname at school was ‘Oyster’. ‘Oyster Sheringham’, I was invariably called.”

“There’s often an untrue word spoken in jest,” murmured the inspector with a face of preternatural innocence.

Before Roger could reply suitably the door was opened by a large and fishlike butler.

There are few men in this country who can remain their normal selves in face of a truly fishlike specimen of the English butler. Roger’s admiration of his companion increased almost visibly as he watched him confront this monumental dolphin (that was the word which rose unbidden into Roger’s mind the moment the door opened) without so much as a blench.

“I want to see Mr Colin Woodthorpe,” said the inspector heartily, in a voice free from the slightest tremor. “Is he at home?”

“I will enquire, sir,” returned the dolphin coldly, eyeing their dusty appearance with obvious pain, and made as if to close the door. “Would you care to leave your name?”

The inspector placed a large foot in the aperture. “You needn’t put on any of those frills with me,” he said with the utmost cheerfulness. “You know whether the gentleman I want to see is at home or not.” He paused and looked the other in the eye. “I
s
he
?” he shot out with startling abruptness.

Roger watched the dolphin’s reaction to this mode of attack with some interest. His gills opened and closed rapidly, and a look of distinct alarm appeared in his pale sandy eyes. Roger had never seen an alarmed butler before, and he certainly never expected to see one again.

“He – he was in to dinner, sir,” gasped the dolphin, almost before he knew what he was doing.

“Ha!” observed the inspector, evidently satisfied. “Then you cut along, my man, and tell him that Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard would like a word or two with him. And you needn’t shout it out for all the rest of the world to hear, understand?” It appeared that the dolphin understood. “Very well. Now show us somewhere where we can wait.”

The chastened dolphin led them into a small room on the left of the big hall, the gunroom. As the door closed behind him, Roger seized the inspector’s hand and wrung it reverently. “Now I can see how you can arrest seventeen armed criminals in the most dangerous dive in Limehouse with nothing but a walking stick and a safety pin,” he said in awestruck tones. ‘ “My man!’ And yet the heavens remain intact!”

“I never stand nonsense from butlers,” remarked the inspector modestly.

Roger shielded his eyes and groaned.

Colin Woodthorpe, who made his appearance a couple of minutes later, proved to be a pleasant-looking young man of some five- or six-and-twenty, with fair hair and a sanguine complexion, big and sturdy; he was wearing a dinner jacket, but Roger instinctively saw him in gaiters and riding breeches. He was perfectly self-possessed.

“Inspector Moresby?” he asked with a little smile, picking out Roger’s companion without hesitation.

“That’s me, sir,” assented the inspector in his usual genial tones. “Sorry to bother you, but duty’s duty, as you know. I hope that butler of yours didn’t make too much bother. I told him not to. Scotland Yard has a nasty sound in the ears of the old people, I know.”

“Oh, no,” laughed the young man. “As a matter of fact I was alone, though it was very kind of you to think of warning him. Well, what’s it all about, Inspector? Sit down, won’t you? Cigarette?”

“Well, thank you, sir,” The inspector helped himself to a cigarette from the other’s case and disposed his bulk in a comfortable leather-covered armchair. Roger followed suit.

As the young man sat down, the inspector edged his chair round so as to be able to look him directly in the face. “As I said, sir, I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s this matter of Mrs Vane’s death I’m looking into.” He paused significantly.

Roger could have sworn that a look of apprehension flitted for an instant across the young man’s face, but his voice when he spoke after only a second’s hesitation was perfectly under control.

“Oh, yes?” he said easily (almost
too
easily, Roger felt). “And why have you come to me?”

The inspector’s hand shot out towards him, holding the piece of paper he had already drawn from his pocket. “To ask you to explain this, sir, if you please,” he said very much more brusquely.

Colin Woodthorpe looked at the paper curiously; then, as his brain took in the significance of the words written upon it he flushed deeply. “Where – how did you get hold of this?” he asked in a voice that was none too steady.

The inspector explained briefly that the original had been found among the rocks close to where the body was lying. “I want you to explain it, if you please, sir,” he concluded. “I need not point out to you its importance as far as we are concerned. You ask the lady to meet you, and on the very day you arrange she meets her death. If you kept the appointment, it seems to us that you should be able to shed some light on that death. I need hardly ask you whether you did keep it?”

The young man had recovered himself to some extent. He frowned and crossed his legs. “Look here, I don’t understand this. I thought Mrs Vane’s death was an accident. They’ve had the inquest, and that was the verdict. Why are you ‘looking into it’, as you say?”

“Well, sir,” the inspector returned in his usual cheerful tones, “I came here to ask questions, not to answer them. Still, I don’t mind answering that one. The fact of the matter is that we’re not at all sure that Mrs Vane’s death
was
an accident.”

There was no doubt that the young man was genuinely startled. “Good Heavens!” he cried. “What on earth do you mean? What else could it be?”

The inspector looked at him quizzically. “Well – it might have been suicide, mightn’t it?” he said slowly.

“Suicide!” Woodthorpe sat up with a jerk and his rosy face paled. “You don’t – you don’t really mean to say you think it might have been, Inspector?”

“Have
you
any particular reason for thinking it might have been, sir?” the inspector shot out.

The young man sat back in his chair again, moistening his lips with a quick movement of his tongue. “No, of course not,” he muttered. “I don’t understand.”

“Oh, yes, you do, sir,” retorted the inspector grimly. “Now look here, Mr Woodthorpe,” he went on in a more kindly voice. “I want you to put down your cards on the table and tell me the whole story. Believe me, it’s far and away the best thing to do, from your point of view as well as ours. It’s bound to come out in the end you know. And –”

Woodthorpe had risen to his feet. “Excuse me, Inspector,” he interrupted stiffly, “I must repeat that I don’t understand you. I have nothing to tell you. Is that all you wished to see me about?”

He walked towards the door as if inviting the other to rise and take his departure, but the inspector blatantly ignored the hint.

“Of course I know what you’re feeling, sir,” he remarked. “You’re trying to shield the lady’s reputation, I know that. Well, the best way you can do so is to answer my questions. I’ve got to get my information, and if I get it from you we may be able to keep it between ourselves; if you force me to try other sources, I’m afraid there’s no hope of keeping it dark. At present (if you haven’t given yourselves away elsewhere) there’s nobody but you and us who knows that you were Mrs Vane’s lover.”

Woodthorpe looked at him steadily. “Inspector,” he said slowly, “may I say that you are being offensive?”

“Can’t help that, sir, I’m afraid,” replied the inspector cheerily. “And if you’re not going to be open with me, I dare say you’ll find me more offensive still. And you can’t bluff me, sir, you know. Not that I blame you for trying; I’d do the same myself for a lady I’d got into a mess with.” The inspector’s choice of words may not have been fortunate, but his sentiment was admirable. “Still, you’ve given yourself away too much in this note, you know, sir – besides what I’ve been able to find out elsewhere. For instance, I know that Mrs Vane had been your mistress for some little time, that you’d got tired of her and were trying to break with her, and that she was threatening you if you did. I know all the essentials, you see. It’s only a few details I want you to tell me, and I’d much rather have them from you than from anybody else.”

The young man had put up a good fight, but it was plain to Roger that he now accepted defeat. Indeed, it was difficult to see what else he could do. Dropping back into his chair, he acknowledged the truth of the inspector’s words by a tacit hiatus. “If I answer your questions,” he said curtly, “will you treat what I tell you as private and confidential?”

“As far as I possibly can, sir,” the inspector promised. “It’s no wish of mine to drag out unnecessary scandals, or make things awkward which might have been better left undisturbed.”

“I can’t see what you’re driving at, in any case,” Woodthorpe said wearily, lighting another cigarette. “Mrs Vane is dead, isn’t she? What does it matter whether her death was accident or suicide? It can’t help
her
to have these things raked over.”

“It’s my duty to look into it, sir,” replied the inspector primly. “Now, when I mentioned the word ‘suicide’ just now you were startled, weren’t you? Did it cross your mind that she might have killed herself because you insisted on breaking with her, and she didn’t want to let you go?”

Woodthorpe flushed. “Yes,” he admitted reluctantly. “It did.”

“Ah!” Having succeeded in impressing the young man with his own mental acuteness, the inspector proceeded to the questions of real importance. “Did you keep that appointment, sir?”

“No.” Reconciled as he now was to the necessity of being frank, Woodthorpe spoke with no hesitation or sullenness. “You were wrong about that note of mine. It’s nearly three weeks old. That appointment was for a fortnight ago last Tuesday, and I did keep it then.”

“I see.” The inspector’s voice did not show the slightest surprise at this unexpected piece of news; Roger’s face, on the contrary, betrayed the liveliest astonishment. “And where was the meeting held, sir? What, in fact is ‘the usual place’?”

“A little cave we knew of on that ledge, quite near the place she was killed. I discovered it about a year ago; and was struck with its privacy. Anyone who didn’t know of it would never find it. The mouth is at an angle in the rock, and there’s a big boulder masking it. We’ve been in there heaps of times when people have passed by outside without spotting us.”

“How many times have you met Mrs Vane since then?”

“Not at all. I broke with her at that meeting.” He shifted a little uneasily in his chair, and Roger guessed that the process of breaking had not been a simple one. “I’d like to add, by the way,” he went on a little stiffly, “that the fault for the whole thing was mine. Mrs Vane was in no way to blame. I –”

“We’ll leave that for a moment, sir, if you don’t mind,” the inspector interrupted. “It’s facts I’m after, not faults. Why did you decide to break with Mrs Vane?”

“For private reasons,” Woodthorpe replied shortly, setting his jaw and looking very obstinate indeed.

The inspector abandoned that point. “What was Mrs Vane threatening to do if you broke with her?” he asked bluntly.

“Tell her husband,” replied the other, no less bluntly.

The inspector whistled. “Whew! The whole story?”

“The whole story.”

“But that would have meant divorce!”

“She said she didn’t mind about that.”

“Humph!” The inspector turned this surprising information over in his mind. “How long had you been – well, friendly with her?” he continued, somewhat inadequately, after a short pause.

“For about a year,” replied Woodthorpe, who evidently understood what the inspector’s delicacy was intended to convey.

“Did you have many quarrels during that time?”

“About as many as other people do, I suppose.”

“Not more than you might expect to have with any other woman?”

“Well – perhaps a few more,” Woodthorpe admitted awkwardly.

Frantic signs from Roger conveyed the information to the inspector that his companion was anxious to put a question of his own. As the conversation had taken a psychological turn, the inspector saw no harm in graciously according permission.

“Did you find that you had cause as time went on very considerably to modify your original estimate of the lady’s character?” Roger asked, choosing his words with some care.

Woodthorpe shot him a grateful look. “Yes,” he said instantly. “I did.”

Roger held him with a thoughtful eye. “Would you call her,” he said slowly, “an i
mprudent
woman?”

Woodthorpe hestitated. “I don’t know. In some things, damnably! In others, very much the reverse.”

Roger nodded as if satisfied. “Yes, that’s just what I imagined. All right, carry on, Inspector. Sorry to have interrupted you.”

“Well?” Roger asked, as the two of them walked down the drive again half an hour or so later. “Well, what did you make of that young man, Inspector?”

“A very nice young gentleman, I thought,” returned the inspector guardedly. “What did you, Mr Sheringham, sir?”

“I thought the same as you,” Roger replied innocently.

“Um!” observed the inspector.

There was a little silence.

“You brought out your deductions from the wording of that note very pat and cleverly,” Roger remarked.

“Ah!” said the inspector.

There was another little silence.

“Well, I’m quite sure he knows nothing about it,” Roger burst out.

The inspector bestowed a surreptitious grin on a small rambling rose. “Are you, sir?” he said. Mr Roger Sheringham was perhaps not the only psychologist walking down the drive of Clouston Hall at that moment.

“Aren’t you, Inspector?” Roger demanded point-blank.

“Um!” replied the inspector carefully.

“If he does, he’s a better actor than ever I’ve met before,” said Roger.

“I was watching him closely, and I’m convinced his surprise was genuine,” said Roger.

“He certainly believed her death had been accidental,” said Roger.