CHAPTER X
AN INVITATION FROM LADY CLEVEDON
“OH, Mr. Holt,” cried the young lady behind the counter of the little general shop that was also the village post office. “I have just taken a telegram for you. You can have it now if you like. It’s against the regulations, but that doesn’t matter.”
I took the yellow slip and perused the message which was from a publishing firm with whom I was negotiating, offering me a price for a manuscript I had submitted to them.
“It is a lot of money,” the girl said, with a touch of envy. “It would take me years and years to earn that at this job.”
“You’ll not be here years and years,” I replied smilingly. “Some lucky man will snap you up long before that.”
“Well, there’s no queue so far,” the girl returned dryly.
“Perhaps when Mr. Holt has quite finished, other customers may have a turn,” said a mocking voice at my elbow, and wheeling round with a quick movement that dislodged a pile of picture post cards and albums and brought them clattering to the floor, I saw Kitty Clevedon’s face flushed with pretty colour.
“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I was just reading a telegram.”
“I have been down to Stone Hollow,” Kitty Clevedon went on. “In fact, I have been looking for you. I have a message for you from Lady Clevedon. She would like you to come and see her.”
“Yes? When?”
“Well, could you come now? I have my car here.”
I nodded assent, and followed her out of the shop to the smart little two-seater, which she managed with a skill that betokened plentiful practice. As we drove off I saw Pepster walking slowly through the village.
“I don’t know that man,” Kitty said, as Pepster saluted, “but I have seen him about quite a lot lately. And he was at the—the inquest. I suppose he belongs to the police.”
“Yes, a detective. He is very interested in me.”
“I dare say you are a very interesting person,” Kitty rejoined equably.
“You see,” I went on, “I am under suspicion.”
She turned to have another look at Pepster, and the car swerved suddenly to the left.
“Steady on!” I cried. “You’ll have us into the wall.”
“But—I do not understand. Why should they—?”
“Oh, the story is very simple. The police knew I was out late on that particular night. Sergeant Gamley saw me. They questioned me, of course, and after all, it was a trifle—er—suspicious-looking, wasn’t it? Here was I, a new-comer and a stranger, wandering about the Dale at midnight—”
I paused and glanced at her to note the effect of my words; and was interested to see that she had grown perceptibly paler.
“But they—surely they didn’t suspect you?” she said, in tones that were very little above a whisper.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I returned cheerfully, “why shouldn’t they suspect me? They know nothing about me, and certainly nothing that would count particularly in my favour. At all events, they questioned me. Had I seen anyone that night? And I lied to them. I had seen nobody at all. There are occasions, you know, when mendacity may be condoned.”
Kitty gazed at me with wide-open eyes for fully a minute, then pulled herself together with an effort and laughed with a quite passable imitation of merriment.
“And had you seen anyone?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied, smiling into her face. “I had seen a very beautiful and clever woman and an extremely capable actress whose ideas regarding truth are apparently nearly as flexible as my own.”
She flushed a little, but remained apparently undisturbed by either the compliment or the sarcasm.
“And which had committed the crime?” she asked. “Was it the beautiful and clever woman—you said beautiful and clever, didn’t you?—or the capable actress? But still, I don’t understand. I thought you were a great detective—a sort of Sherlock Holmes in real life.”
I threw myself back on the cushioned seat with a quick laugh.
“Where did you get that fairy story from?” I demanded.
“But—it’s true, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said, “I am not a detective, certainly not. And I am not a great anything, unless it be a great liar. I have had a little practice at that just lately.”
“But that is why auntie has sent for you,” she added, with a puzzled frown.
“Because I am a great liar?” I asked.
“No,” she replied, quite seriously. “Because you—because she thinks that you—somebody told her you were a great detective.”
“Oh, yes, and why does she need the services of a—er—a detective?” I demanded.
“She wants you to find out who murdered Sir Philip Clevedon.”
“I see. And do you want me to discover that?”
“Of course, but I don’t think you can.”
“If you thought I could, you wouldn’t want me to try—is that it?”
“No—oh, I don’t know what you mean.”
She gave all her attention to the car after that, while I, having nothing particular to say, lapsed into silence.
We found Lady Clevedon seated in the small parlour, a square, cheerful room, furnished evidently for comfort with couches and big arm-chairs. The old lady bade me sit down and then plunged with characteristic abruptness into the subject of the interview.
“What is your fee?” she demanded.
“My fee?” I echoed. “But I have no fee. I am neither a doctor nor a solicitor.”
“Nor a parson—you may as well complete the usual trio,” the old lady said dryly. “But you are a policeman.”
The word was so unexpected that I could not forbear a soft laugh in which, after a momentary hesitation, Miss Kitty Clevedon joined me. I expected her to label me detective; that she should call me policeman had all the elements of novelty that go to make up unconscious humour.
“But policemen are not allowed to take fees,” I replied. “They have their salaries—or is it wages?”
“Do you get a salary?” Lady Clevedon demanded.
“No, but then you see I am not a policeman; I am merely a writer of books.”
“But the Chief Constable of Peakborough-he is a cousin of mine, distant, but still a cousin, and a fool at that, or he would have found out before this who killed Sir Philip—told me you were a celebrated detective and that if I could get your help—now, who did murder Sir Philip Clevedon?”
“Did you?” I asked, rudely enough I admit though the question was well in accord with her own conversational style. Nor did she take it amiss.
“I? No,” she said. “Why should I murder him?”
“Then if you are quite sure of that,” I returned, “you have all the world to go at. I may have done it, or Miss Clevedon may have done it, or Tulmin may—”
“May, may, may—you tire me to death with your may’s. I don’t want to know who may have done it, but who did. I suppose it is a case of the needle in the haystack.”
“Even the needle in the haystack could be found, given the necessary time and labour,” I observed.
“I wish you would talk sense,” the old lady rejoined tartly. “I have had that fat man Peppermint, Peppercorn—”
“Pepster,” I suggested.
“Yes—I have had him here and pumped him hard. But he knows nothing, merely talks in a squeaky voice and gets nowhere. Now, how would you start discovering who—?”
I found the old lady interesting and decided to humour her, not because I intended to be of any use to her, but because it was just possible she might be useful to me.
“Well,” I replied slowly, “there are several starting points. For example, who benefits most by his death?”
“Eh!”
I happened to glance just then at Miss Kitty Clevedon and noticed that her face had gone an almost chalky whiteness that extended even to her lips and that she was gripping the arm of her chair with a strong, nervous tension.
“For instance,” I went on slowly, keeping my voice low and tranquil as if it were really a matter of small importance, “who is Sir Philip’s heir?”
But I still kept my eyes on Kitty Clevedon and noted that her grip on the chair tightened.
“Well, he didn’t do it, anyway,” Lady Clevedon retorted.
“No, I don’t suppose he did,” I returned, carefully refraining from raising my voice. “I merely said that he would be my starting point. Then, doubtless, he would prove an alibi and I should eliminate him.”
“Billy might have hit him over the head with a stick,” Lady Clevedon went on, “but he wouldn’t poison a man nor would he dig a hatpin into him.”
“Oh, you never know,” I replied cheerfully. “Who is Billy?”
“Sir William Clevedon—the new baronet—Kitty’s brother,” the old lady explained. “But he never poisoned Philip. They weren’t friends, certainly, but then, Philip had no friends. And they had quarrelled; though for that matter Philip had quarrelled with Ronald Thoyne, as you heard at the inquest. Philip was that way. He quarrelled with most people. But Billy didn’t do it. He is with his regiment in Ireland, trying to keep the Sinn Feiners quiet.”
“Then there is his alibi which rules him out,” I said.
But I made up my mind to learn more regarding Billy Clevedon. His sister’s agitation had been too pronounced to be disregarded; and it was the more impressive in that I knew her for a very clever actress with a singular capacity for holding her own and keeping a straight face.
What was it, I wondered, that had so completely upset her and smashed down all her defences. It did not take me long to decide that. She had been told that I was “a great detective” who would infallibly discover the murderer and practically my first observation had been a direct hint that her brother might be the man. A suggestion so libellous should have caused her to flame out in resentment and denial instead of which she had had to exert all her strength and will-power to keep herself from fainting. There was more in all this than one could sum up in a moment or two and I made up my mind then and there that Billy would become an object of great interest to me.
It was not difficult to learn all I wanted. The fact that most people referred to him as Billy Clevedon and that no one called him Sir William may indicate something of his general personality, though that would be to do him some injustice since the diminutive was partly born of affection and was partly a survival from bygone years. There were those who declared that his sister had been mainly responsible for the reputation Billy had enjoyed for juvenile mischief. I could well believe that, knowing her in maturer years. She would lead him on and he, being a little gentleman, would bear the blame.
But that after all is only the female way. Man was intended by Nature to carry every burden save one and that the heaviest of the lot. From my housekeeper to whom I first applied I learnt little. She had heard stories but had never known Billy Clevedon personally. I applied to both Dr. Crawford and the Vicar, but with hardly more success. They, too, had the usual legends off by heart, but Billy had never been ill and had no reputation for piety and seemed to have kept out of the way of both doctor and parson. Tim Dallott could tell me a little more but it consisted chiefly of reminiscences of Sunday rat-hunts and fishing. Among them all, however, I built up a picture of a freckled, yellow-haired lad, full of high spirits and mischief, but honest and never afraid to face punishment for what he had done. And somewhere, not far away, hovered incessantly the figure of his sister, as irrepressible as himself but far more adroit.
But all that was years ago when they came as orphans to live at White Towers, when Lady Clevedon’s husband was alive and before the late Sir Philip had succeeded to the title. In due time they both went away to school and Cartordale knew them only in the holidays. They were but shadows of their former selves as far as their general activities went, or possibly were more careful and clever at evading the results.
Eventually Billy Clevedon went into the army, but as a career, not merely as a war measure, and won some distinctions in France. But he justified his old-time reputation in that he remained apparently a somewhat incalculable quantity always doing the unexpected. His sister, having finished her education with more or less credit, accompanied her aunt to Hapforth House and settled there, though during the war she engaged in various occupations and learnt to drive a motor, milk cows, and use a typewriter.