Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (4 page)

‘ “Inspector Moresby, who has the matter in hand, intimated that he has discovered an important clue. While not at liberty to disclose the precise nature of this, he assured me that important developments may be expected shortly,’” Roger intoned solemnly.

“Something like that,” the inspector laughed. “And of course I needn’t point out to a gentleman like you how improbable it would be for anyone to fall over accidentally just here where this ledge is so deep.”

Roger nodded. “Suicide, by any chance?”

“May have been,” agreed the inspector in a perfectly expressionless voice.

“But you’re quite sure it wasn’t!” Roger smiled. “Eh?”

The inspector laughed again. “I’ll be able to let you know a bit more later on, no doubt, sir. In the meantime –” He paused significantly.

“In the meantime you’d be very much obliged if I’d stop these awkward questions and leave you in peace again? I get you, Inspector. Very well. But you don’t mind if I just have a look round here before I go, do you?”

“Of course not, Mr Sheringham,” said the inspector heartily. “By all means.”

It was with a mild feeling of resentment, however, in spite of the inspector’s friendly reception of him, that Roger embarked upon a cursory examination of the ledge on which they were standing. It was more in the nature of a demonstration than anything else, for he knew perfectly well that there would be nothing for him to find; Inspector Moresby would have seen to that. No doubt it was perfectly right and proper to withhold from him the clues which he had most certainly discovered – no doubt at all. But Roger did think the man might have treated him somewhat differently from an ordinary reporter, especially after his reference to Wychford. It was annoying in a way; decidedly annoying. And still more annoying was the fact that he had nothing whatever to be annoyed about. In the inspector’s eyes he was a reporter, and that was all there was to it; he had come down here as a reporter, he was acting as a reporter, he
was
a reporter. Hell!

As he had expected, the ledge yielded nothing at all.

“Humph!” he observed, straightening up from a boulder behind which he had been peering. “Nothing much here. And no signs of a struggle either.”

“There wouldn’t be, on this rocky surface,” the inspector pointed out kindly. “Too hard to take impressions, you see.”

“Yes, that idea occurred to me,” Roger remarked a trifle coldly. He walked over to the western end of the ledge, where it narrowed down rapidly into a pathway not more than four or five feet wide, and began to stroll along it.

He had scarcely covered half a dozen paces before the inspector’s voice pulled him up with a jerk. “Not that way, if you want to get back, sir. I shouldn’t go that way if I were you; it’s very much longer. You’ll find the way you came a good deal shorter.”

Roger started slightly. “Oho, old warhorse!” he murmured to himself. “So the ears are pricking, are they?” He turned about and scrutinised the inspector with interest. “Now I wonder just exactly why you don’t want me to go this way, Inspector?”

“It’s no matter to me, sir,” returned the inspector very innocently. “I was just trying to save you a bit of a walk round, that’s all.”

“I see. But do you know, I think I should like a bit of a walk round,” Roger remarked with some care. “I feel it would do me good. Clear my brain, and all that. Goodbye, Inspector; see you later, no doubt.” And he set off again, though more slowly this time, in the confident expectation of being called back once more.

He was not disappointed.

“I see I shall have to tell you,” said the inspector’s resigned voice behind him. “But you understand, I don’t want this mentioned yet awhile, sir. I’m not scaring my bird just at present if I can help it – always provided there is one, of course. Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

He led the way a few yards farther along the path and paused in front of a wide patch of dry mud. Plainly marked in the mud were the imprints of two pairs of feet, both women’s, one pair decidedly larger than the other; the deep impressions of the high heels were clean and distinct.

“Oho!” said Roger softly, staring hard.

“Yes, that’s why I said the lady wasn’t alone,” the inspector pointed out. “I’ve ascertained pretty certainly that she came along from this end, you see, and these marks were made yesterday morning or thereabouts. It’s a bit of luck that they haven’t been obliterated since, but everyone else seems to have come and gone from the other end as it’s so near the steps. I’ve tried the shoes she was wearing, by the way, and they fit exactly in the smaller impressions. That’s nothing like so important as the story books make out, of course (I dare say there are at least twenty pairs of shoes even in this small place which would fit one or other of those prints); but it’s a point worth mentioning for all that.”

Roger turned eagerly from his contemplation of the mud. “This is jolly significant, Inspector; anyone can see that. But it doesn’t absolutely destroy the accident theory, does it? Not alone. No, I’m ready to bet you’ve got something else up your sleeve as well.”

“Well, perhaps I have, sir,” twinkled the inspector, who was not feeling inclined to talk about coat-buttons just at the moment. “Perhaps I have. But you must take it from me that this is all I can tell you for the moment, and that last bit isn’t for publication yet awhile either, you won’t forget.”

They turned and walked back to the ledge again.

“Where was the body found?” Roger asked. “In the water?”

“No, a couple of feet above high-water mark. You see that big rock down there – the one with the seaweed halfway over the top and a bunch of yellow limpets on this side? Well, wedged between that and the smaller one this side of it.”

“I see,” said Roger thoughtfully, gauging the distance from the edge of the ledge. A person tumbling straight over the edge would miss it by feet; quite a respectable little jump would be needed to reach it. A jump, or – a push! Furthermore, there was, straight down below the ledge, a deep pool among the rocks into which anybody just tumbling over must inevitably have fallen. Mrs Vane’s body had cleared the pool and landed on the boulders beyond it. The inference was obvious; any question of an accident was now almost definitely ruled out. It was a matter of suicide or murder.

Roger turned to the inspector. “There’s been a post mortem, I suppose?”

“Yes. This morning.”

“Were any bones broken?”

The inspector smiled. “Oh, yes; plenty. She hadn’t been murdered anywhere else and put there, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“It did cross my mind,” Roger smiled back. “I needn’t ask whether anyone saw anything from the sea?”

“No, I was making enquiries on those lines this morning, myself. Unfortunately there don’t seem to have been any boats out here at all just then. But the old fisherman who subsequently discovered the body seems to think he heard a scream coming from this direction about an hour beforehand; in fact, he says that’s probably what made him look over here as he was rowing past. But he didn’t pay any attention to it at the time, thinking it was some dratted girl being tickled – his own words, by the way.”

“That’s interesting,” observed Roger, the light in his eye belying his laconic words. “By the way, I suppose you’ve been down to those rocks?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t,” said the inspector a little guiltily. “I should have done, I know, but I’m not built for climbing down from here, and I don’t seem to have had time to get round there in a boat. In any case, I’m pretty sure there’d be nothing to find. The constable who recovered the body brought her handbag and her parasol, and he said he’d had a good look round. Strictly between ourselves, Mr Sheringham, I was going to assume that his eyes are as good as mine; but don’t put anything about that in the
Courier
.”

“I’ll have to think that over,” Roger laughed. “Anyhow, I’m a man of stern duty: I’m going to see if I can scramble down and poke round. I know there won’t be anything to find, but it’s the sort of thing that gives one a lot of satisfaction afterward to have done.”

“Well, don’t you stumble and pitch on the rocks too,” said the inspector humourously. “Somebody might come along and accuse me of things.”

The way down was not nearly so difficult as it looked from above. Everywhere the face of the cliff was so seamed and fissured that foothold was easy, while halfway down a great piled-up pyramid of boulders provided a kind of giant’s staircase tolerably simple to negotiate. Within five minutes of leaving the inspector, Roger was standing on the big rock beside which Mrs Vane’s body had been found.

For some minutes he poked about, peering into pools and religiously exploring the recesses of every cranny, while the inspector kept up a running commentary upon the habits of crabs, lobsters and other seagoing creatures which lurk in dark holes awaiting an opportunity to deal drastically with exploratory hands; then he stood up and swept a brief glance round before beginning the climb back.

“No,” he called up to the inspector, who had just finished recounting an anecdote about the grandfather of a friend of his who had been stung to death by a jellyfish while paddling among the rocks off Sandsea. “Nothing here! Now tell me a story about the great-aunt of another friend of yours who fell down a hundred feet when rock-climbing in Cumberland. I shall be ripe for something like that in about five minutes, when I’m clinging on to that last bit of cliff up there with my teeth and eyebrows.”

The obliging inspector instantly embarked on the anecdote required, and at the same moment Roger, in mid-stride between two boulders, noticed something white glistening below him. Action was almost instinctive.

“Hullo!” exclaimed the inspector in concern, breaking off his narrative abruptly. “Hurt yourself?”

Roger picked himself up slowly and brushed a little green slime off his trousers with his hands. “No, thanks,” he called back cheerfully. “Not a bit!” And he went on brushing himself with his hands.

He couldn’t use his handkerchief, because that was lying in his breast pocket, wrapped about a piece of paper on top of which he had skilfully stage-managed his fall.

Anthony had not had very much experience with women. In the brief instant after the girl had spoken it occurred to him with some force that his ideas on the subject might require drastic revision. Women were not necessarily weak, helpless creatures. Names such as Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Queen Elizabeth, occurred to him with startling rapidity. Were they weak, helpless creatures? They were not. Nor was the girl who was standing in front of him and regarding him now with cold, haughty eyes. Anybody less weak and helpless, anybody more obviously capable of looking after herself could hardly have existed.

“I am Miss Cross,” she repeated in frigid tones. “What do you want?”

Anthony’s tongue seemed to have become jammed. His mission, which had seemed a moment before so altogether right and proper, suddenly took on the aspect of the most fatuous thing ever conceived by misguided human mind. Even to connect this beautiful, proud creature with the mere idea of bare self-interest appeared a kind of blasphemy.

“Oh, I – I wanted to speak to you for a minute,” he managed to stammer. “But it doesn’t matter.” At this point Anthony ought to have turned about and run off at top speed with his tail between his legs, making a noise like a flat pancake. But he couldn’t. By some curious action of nature his feet seemed to have taken root in the ground.

“Are you connected with the police?” the girl asked with incredible scorn.

“Great Heavens, no!” cried Anthony, genuinely shocked. “I should think not! Great Scott, no! Good Lord, no!”

The girl’s uncompromising attitude relaxed slightly. “Then why did you want to see me?” she asked, as if very few people except the police ever wanted to see
her
.

“Well, it was just about something I thought I ought to tell you,” Anthony mumbled. “But it doesn’t matter. I see that now. It doesn’t matter a bit.”

Curiosity could be seen struggling with resentment in the girl’s face. Strangely enough, curiosity won.

“You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve come all this way out to speak to me, and now you’ve got here you’ve decided that it doesn’t matter?” she said, and actually a faint hint of the merest shadow of a suspicion of a smile flitted for a quarter of a second into and out of her eyes.

“Now I’ve seen you, I’m quite sure it doesn’t matter, Miss Cross,” Anthony said simply.

“Well, thank Heaven my appearance seems to impress somebody favourably,” murmured the girl wearily, more to herself than the other, and for an instant the mantle of pride she had been wearing seemed to drop from her and she looked utterly forlorn and miserable.

Anthony was emboldened into a sudden decision. “I’ll tell you why I came, Miss Cross, after all. I just came to say that if you wanted any help in the present circumstances, I should be very proud to – that is to say, I should like you to know that – I mean –” He ceased floundering, for the girl’s eyes were regarding him steadily with an expression in their depths which he was finding peculiarly disconcerting.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” she said haughtily. “I was not aware that I needed any ‘help’.”

“No, of course not,” Anthony stammered. “Naturally not! I was only thinking that –”

“And I must decline to discuss my private affairs with a stranger! So if there is nothing else –” She paused, obviously waiting for him to go.

Anthony felt himself becoming annoyed. He knew that his recent embarrassment had made him look a fool and he resented the fact; he knew that his motive in seeking speech with this girl had been a completely altruistic one and here she was treating it as a piece of unwarrantable impertinence, and he resented that still more.

“In that case,” he said stiffly, “there is nothing more to be said, and I must apologise for bothering you. Though I think you should understand,” he added on the impulse of the instant by way of a parting shot as his temper momentarily got the better of his manners, “I think you should understand that possibly your private affairs will soon be becoming of some interest to the public at large, Miss Cross.”