Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (2 page)

“Are we?” Anthony said equably. “I shall enjoy watching you on the trail, certainly. It must be a strange sight.”

“Yes, and now I come to think of it, you’re by way of being rather indispensable there yourself, aren’t you?”

“Me? Why?”

“As the idiot friend,” Roger returned happily. “Must have an idiot friend with me, you know. All the best sleuths do.”

Anthony grunted and began somewhat ostentatiously to turn the pages of
The Sportsman
with which he had prudently armed himself. Roger applied himself to his bundle of papers. For half an hour or more no word was spoken. Then Roger, throwing aside the last newspaper from his batch, broke the silence.

“I think I’d better give you the facts as far as I can make them out, Anthony; it’ll help to stick them in my own memory too.”

Anthony consulted his wristwatch. “Do you know you haven’t spoken for thirty-six minutes and twelve seconds, Roger?” he said in tones of the liveliest astonishment. “I should think that’s pretty nearly a record, isn’t it?”

“The name of the dead woman was Vane,” Roger continued imperturbably; “Mrs Vane. She appears to have gone out for a walk with a girl cousin who was staying with her, a Miss Cross. According to this girl’s story, Mrs Vane sent her back as they were approaching the village on their way home, saying that she wanted to call round and see a friend on some matter or other. She never got there. A couple of hours later a fisherman turned up at the police station and reported that he had seen something on the rocks at the foot of the cliffs as he was rowing out to some lobster pots half an hour earlier, though it had apparently not occurred to him to go and see what it was. A constable was sent off to investigate, and he and the fisherman climbed down the cliffs, which seem to be fairly well broken up at that point. At the bottom they found Mrs Vane’s body. And that was that.”

“I believe I did see something about it,” Anthony nodded. “Wasn’t it an accident?”

“Well, that’s what everbody thought, of course; and that was the verdict at the inquest yesterday, Accidental Death. But this is the important development. The
Courier’s
local correspondent caught a glimpse of Inspector Moresby, of all people, prowling about the place this morning! He telephoned through at once, and –”

“Inspector Moresby? Who’s he?”

“Oh, you must have heard of him. He’s one of the big noises at Scotland Yard. I suppose he’s been mixed up in nearly every big murder case for the last ten years. Anyhow, you see the idea. If Moresby’s on the job, that means that something rather important’s going to happen.”

“By Jove! You mean she was murdered?”

“I mean that Scotland Yard seems to think she was,” Roger agreed seriously.

Anthony whistled softly. “Any clues?”

“None that I know of, though of course they must be working on something. All the local man can tell us is that Mrs Vane was a charming woman, quite young (twenty-eight, I think Burgoyne said), pretty, attractive, and very popular in the neighbourhood. Her husband’s a wealthy man, a good deal older than herself and a scientist by hobby; in fact quite a fairly well-known experimentalist, I understand.”

“Sounds queer!” Anthony ruminated. “Who on earth would want to murder a woman like that? Did you gather whether any motive had come to light?”

Roger hesitated for a moment. “What I did gather is that the girl cousin benefits to the extent of over ten thousand pounds by Mrs Vane’s death,” he replied slowly.

“Oho! That sounds rather rotten, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Roger agreed gravely.

There was another little pause.

“And you’ve got to write about it for the
Courier
?” Anthony remarked almost carelessly.

“Yes; as far as we know we’re the first in the field. It’ll be a decent little scoop if we’re the only people to come out with the news about Moresby tomorrow morning. I shall have to fly off and have a chat with him the moment we arrive. Luckily I know him slightly already.”

“Take your seats for lunch, please,” observed a head popping suddenly into the carriage from the corridor. “Lunch is now being served, please.”

“I say, Roger,” Anthony remarked, as they rose obediently, “what put you onto this crime business? Before that Wychford affair, I mean. You never used to be keen on it. What made you take it up?”

“A certain knotty and highly difficult little problem which I had the felicity of solving about two years ago,” Roger replied modestly. “That made me realise my own powers, so to speak. But I can’t tell you names or anything like that, because it’s a most deadly secret. In fact, you’d better not ask me anything about it at all.”

“Right-ho, I won’t, if it’s a secret,” Anthony promised.

Roger looked slightly disappointed.

Ludmouth village is nearly a mile away from its station. On arriving at the latter Roger and Anthony put their traps in the combined ticket office, porter’s room, luggage depot and cloakroom, and proceeded to make enquiries regarding hotels.

‘“Otel?” repeated the combined porter, stationmaster and ticket inspector, scratching the top of his head with an air of profound cogitation. “Why, there ain’t no ‘otel’ ereabouts. Leastaways, not what you might call an ‘otel, there ain’t.”

“Well, a pub, then,” rejoined Roger a trifle irritably. The journey had been a long and tiresome one, and since changing at Bournemouth they had seemed to progress at the rate of ten miles an hour. For one who was as eager to get going as Roger had been all that day, few things could have been more maddening than the journey as habitually performed between Bournemouth and Ludmouth. It is not to say that the train does not go fast when it is going, but stations seem to demoralise it completely; it sits down and ruminates for a matter of twenty minutes in each one before it can bring itself to go on to the next. “What’s the name of the best pub in Ludmouth?”

The combination chuckled hoarsely. “The best pub?” he echoed with considerable amusement. “The
best
pub, hey? Oho! Hoo!”

“I’ve said something funny,” Roger pointed out to Anthony. “You see? The gentleman is amused. I asked the name of the best pub, so no wonder he’s convulsed with mirth.”

Anthony inspected the combination with some attention. “I don’t think he’s laughing at you at all. I think he’s just seen a joke that Gladstone made in 1884.”

“There ain’t nobbut one!” roared the combination. “So when you says the
best
pub I –”

“Where is the one pub in Ludmouth?” asked Roger patiently.

“Why, in the village, o’ course.”

“Where is the village of Ludmouth and its one pub?”

Roger pursued with almost superhuman self-restraint.

This time a more lucid reply was forthcoming, and the two strode out into the hot sunshine and down the country road in the direction indicated, leaving behind them a combination of porter, stationmaster and ticket inspector guffawing at irregular intervals as some fresh aspect of this cream of jests appeared to occur to him.

It was a warm walk into the village, and they were glad enough to plunge into the gloom of the little old-fashioned inn which stood in the middle of the small cluster of houses which constitutes the nucleus of the village. A smart rap or two on the counter brought the landlord, a large man of aspect not unlike a benevolent ox and perspiring almost audibly.

“Can’t serve you, gents, I’m afraid,” he rumbled cheerfully. “Leastaways lemonade you can have, or ginger beer, for the matter of that; but nothing else.”

“That so?” said Roger. “Then produce two large tankards of beer, the biggest tankards and the wettest beer you’ve got, for we came not as travellers but as residents.”

“You don’t mean you want to stay ‘ere as well? You want rooms?”

“Rooms we shall want, certainly; but what we want just at the moment is beer – and don’t forget what I told you about the size of those tankards.”

“Oh, well, that’s a different matter, that is,” agreed the landlord. “I can let you have a couple of quart tankards, if they’re any use to you.”

“Any
use?
You watch!”

With much wheezing and creaking the landlord filled the two huge tankards, and the two fell upon them gratefully. Then Roger replaced his on the counter and wiped his mouth.

“So this is the only inn hereabouts, is it?” he asked with a careless air.

“Yes, sir; it is that. Ludmouth’s a small village, you see, as far as the village goes.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, there’s far more big ‘ouses round and gentry and suchlike than there is of us villagers, and naturally they don’t want public ‘ouses.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, quite so. By the way, I believe there’s a friend of mine somewhere about here called Moresby. You seen or heard of him by any chance?”

“Mr Moresby?” beamed the landlord. “Why, he’s staying ‘ere, he is. Took ‘is room this very mornin’, he did. Well, fancy that!”

“Fancy it indeed! You hear that, Anthony? Dear old Moresby staying under the very same roof-tree! What do you think of that, eh?”

“Good enough,” Anthony agreed.

“I should say so.” He took another pull at his tankard. “Been having some excitement down here, landlord, haven’t you? Lady fell over a cliff, or something?”

“Mrs Vane, sir? Yes. Very sad business, very sad indeed. A wonderful nice lady she was too, they say, though I can’t say as how I knew ‘er meself. A bit of a stranger in these parts, she was, you see. ‘Adn’t been married to the doctor more nor five years.”

“The doctor? Her husband is a doctor, is he?”

“Well, in a manner o’ speaking he is. He’s always called Dr Vane, though he don’t do no doctoring. Plenty o’ money he’s got now and always ‘as’ ad since he settled ‘ere twenty or more years ago, but a doctor he was once, they do say, an’ Dr Vane he’s always called.”

“I see. And where does he live? Near here?”

“A matter of a mile or so out Sandsea way; big ‘ouse standin’ in its own grounds back from the cliffs. You couldn’t miss it. Very lonely, like. You might take a stroll out there and see it if you’ve got nothing to do.”

“By Jove, yes, we might, mightn’t we, Anthony?”

“I should think so,” said Anthony cautiously.

“But first of all about these rooms. How many have you got vacant, landlord?”

“Well, besides Mr Moresby’s, there’s four others altogether. If you’d like to step up in a minute or two and see ‘em, you could choose which ones you’d like.”

“We won’t bother. We’ll take them all.”

“What, all four of ‘em?”

“Yes; then we can have bedroom and a sitting-room apiece, you see.”

“But there’s a sitting-room downstairs I could let you‘ave. A proper sitting-room.”

“Is there? Good! Then we’ll take that too. I love proper sitting-rooms. That’ll be five rooms altogether, won’t it? I should think that ought to be enough for us. What would you say, Anthony?”

“I think that might be enough,” Anthony assented.

“You see, landlord? My friend agrees with me. Then that’s settled.”

“It’ll cost you more sir,” the landlord demurred in some bewilderment.

“Of course it will!” Roger agreed heartily. “Ever so much more. But that can’t be helped. My friend is a very faddy man – a very faddy man indeed; and if he thinks we ought to have five rooms, then five rooms we shall have to have. I’m very sorry, landlord, but you see how it is. And now I expect you’d like us to pay you a deposit, wouldn’t you? Of course. And after that, there are our bags and things to be got from the station, if you’ve got a spare man about the place; and you might tell him from me that if the red-faced man who hands them over begins to make curious noises all of a sudden, he needn’t take offence; it only means that he’s just seen a joke that someone told him the year Queen Victoria was born. Let’s see now; a deposit, you said, didn’t you? Here’s ten pounds. You might make me out a receipt for it, and be careful to mention all five rooms on the receipt or I shall be getting into trouble with my friend. Thanks very much.”

The landlord’s expression, which had been growing blanker and blanker as this harangue proceeded, brightened at the sight of the two five-pound notes which Roger laid on the counter; words may be words, but money is always money. He had not the faintest idea what it was all about and it was his private opinion that Roger was suffering from rather more than a touch of the sun, but he proceeded quite readily to make out the required receipt.

Roger tucked it away in his pocketbook and, professing a morbid interest in the late Mrs Vane, began to ask a number of questions regarding the exact spot where she had fallen over the cliff and how best to get there. This information having been obtained and the conveyance of the bags arranged for, he shook the puzzled landlord heartily by the hand and drew Anthony out into the road.

“Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing,” remarked that young man, as they set off briskly in accordance with the landlord’s instructions, “but I’m blessed if I do. Why on earth did you book four bedrooms?”

Roger smiled gently. “To prevent all the other little journalists from sharing our advantage in staying under the same roof as Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard, Cousin Anthony. A dirty trick, no doubt; but nevertheless a neat one.”

“Oh, I see. Very cunning. And where are we off to now? The cliffs?”

“Yes. You see, I want to get hold of Moresby as soon as I possibly can, and it seems to me that if he only arrived here this morning he’ll still be hanging round those cliffs; so the best thing I can do is to make for them too.”

“Seems a sound scheme. And after that?”

“Well, I ought to try to get an interview with one of the people at the house, I suppose, though I don’t much fancy the idea of tackling the doctor himself.”

“Dr Vane? No, dash it, you can hardly butt in on him.”

“That’s what I feel. He has a secretary, I believe, though I don’t know what her name is, and of course there’s the girl cousin, Miss Cross. She’s the person one ought to make for, I think.”

Anthony frowned. “Seems rather rotten to me.”

“To interview her? Not necessarily, at all. She might have something to say that she’d very much like published. She knows that the uncompromising fact about that ten thousand pounds is going to be talked about pretty hard if there’s any question of Mrs Vane’s death not being an accident; naturally she’d like an opportunity of putting an indirect answer of her own forward.”