CHAPTER XIII
THE VICAR’S STORY
IT was by means of the Vicar that the story was carried a stage further. I had made the old man’s acquaintance soon after I first came to Cartordale and had conceived a great liking for the gentle, kindly old parson and his bustling, energetic, rather autocratic wife.
The Rev. Herbert Wickstead was an elderly man, with a thin, colourless face, short-sighted eyes and a scholarly stoop. As a preacher, he was not very much, for, though he did some hard thinking and was now and again original, he possessed very little gift for literary expression and none at all for oratory. Nor was he very much more successful in parochial work, though that did not greatly matter since his wife—Mrs. Vicar, as she was generally labelled—possessor of the quickest of tongues and the kindest of hearts, took the heaviest part of that burden upon her own shoulders.
I met him by the vicarage on the afternoon of the day following our visit to Thoyne’s house and when he asked me to go in and have some tea I accepted chiefly because I thought he, or at any rate Mrs. Vicar, might be able to tell me some of the things I wanted to know. You see, I was still very much of a stranger in Cartordale with only a vague and shadowy knowledge of its people. In some ways that may have been a gain though, generally speaking, it was a handicap. He began on one of the subjects uppermost in my mind almost as soon as we were seated at the table.
“I was very sorry to learn to-day that we are losing Mr. Thoyne,” the Vicar said, in his halting drawl.
He took off his spectacles and polished them with the corner of his handkerchief, peering mildly at the rest of us the while, though his remark had evidently been addressed to his wife.
“He very seldom came to church,” Mrs. Vicar snapped.
“No, not frequently,” the Vicar admitted, “not so frequently as I could have wished. But he was very generous—very. Any story of distress or need was very sure of a sympathetic hearing. I have dipped rather deeply into his purse more than once.”
“Who told you he was leaving?” his wife asked.
The Vicar selected a slice of bread-and-butter with great deliberation from the plate before him.
“I was sorry I had no opportunity of bidding him good-bye,” he went on, apparently ignoring his wife’s question though most likely he had not heard it. “True I saw him yesterday but I had no chance then. I was returning from a visit to Sarah Blooms—poor woman—”
“She died this morning,” his wife chimed in, a little snappily I thought, though that may have been because I was not quite used to her conversational style.
“Ah, yes—dear me! dear me!”
The Vicar relapsed into silence.
“You were telling us, sir—?” I ventured, after a pause.
“Yes, yes, of course, I was returning from my visit to Sarah Blooms and was passing the end of Pallitt’s Lane when Mr. Thoyne passed me in his motor-car. There was a lady with him, Miss Clevedon, I think, though I could not be very sure of that.”
“Were they alone in the car?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, as far as I could see, quite alone.”
“With Mr. Thoyne driving, perhaps?”
“Oh, no, they were in the body of the car. There was the chauffeur and another man on the front, a servant, I think.”
“You did not recognise the second man?”
“Well, no, to tell you the truth I did not take particular notice of him.”
It was at least level betting that the second man was Tulmin. But what interested me most was the fact of Kitty Clevedon’s presence in the car. It seemed to suggest that whatever was going on, she had a hand in it.
“I have heard their names coupled more than once—Mr. Thoyne and Miss Clevedon,” Mrs. Vicar declared.
“Is that so?” the Vicar queried. “I had not heard it. But it would be a very suitable match too. He has money and physical strength and she has youth and beauty. That should make an ideal combination. They seemed very happy and comfortable—I noticed that. As they passed me he was talking to her, but they both saw me. Thoyne nodded to me as they went past.”
“And how do you know he’s gone for good?” Mrs. Vicar demanded.
“Oh, yes, it was Miss Kitty who told me that. I met her again an hour or two later and I asked her if she thought Mr. Thoyne would take the chair next Wednesday. She said he couldn’t because he had left Cartordale and had given up his house. She said, I think, that he was going abroad—”
“On his yacht, I expect,” Mrs. Vicar chimed in.
“Lucky man!” I interjected. “So he possesses a yacht, does he?”
“A lovely vessel,” Mrs. Vicar replied, with enthusiasm. “I haven’t seen it, but he gave us a lecture with limelight views, ‘Round the World by Steam’ he called it, and he showed us a lot of pictures of his yacht. The Sunrise its name is, and he says he gave it that name because he uses it to go where the sun is—one of the privileges of wealth, Mr. Holt,” she added, with a sigh.
“Had Mr. Thoyne been long in Cartordale?” I asked.
“Oh, well, it would be about two years, or, let me see, perhaps a little longer,” Mrs. Vicar replied. “He fought in the war, you know, and was wounded. He stayed as a lodger for some months at Lepley’s Farm and then took Lennsdale which belongs to Mr. Bannister of Peakborough, an auctioner and agent and all sorts of things generally, who lets it furnished—”
“Lepley,” I murmured, “that name seems familiar—”
“Yes,” Mrs. Vicar went on, right in her element now, “you will be thinking of the girl who gave evidence at the inquest, Nora Lepley, tall, good-looking, with dark eyes. She lives at the farm though she sometimes stays at White Towers with her aunt, the housekeeper there. I remember there was some talk about Ronald Thoyne and Nora Lepley, but there was nothing in it, or, anyway nothing came of it. Talk’s easy in a place like this, you know—there is nothing else to do. And there’s always been plenty of talk round Nora Lepley—”
“A good girl, my dear, a good girl,” the Vicar mildly interposed.
“Oh, yes, quite,” Mrs. Vicar admitted.
“Exceptionally well able to take care of herself I should imagine,” was my own comment, whereat Mrs. Vicar nodded emphatically.
It was two days after that conversation that I met Detective Pepster in the village.
“Ah, Mr. Holt,” he said, “I was coming to see you. I have found out where Mr. Thoyne is.”
“Why,” I returned, “there was no particular mystery about that, was there? He’d made none so far as I know. What is the point?”
“Well—he disappeared.”
“Disappeared? Do you call it that? He left the furnished house he’d been occupying and went off to his yacht, the Sunrise, but that isn’t disappearing.”
“No—well, perhaps in a way it isn’t. But I’m going to interview Mr. Ronald Thoyne for all that and with a warrant in my pocket—”
“It hardly seems likely that Thoyne—”
“I don’t put my money on what is likely,” Pepster interrupted. “I’ve been had that way. I once had a case of the theft of a diamond ring. There were only three men possible—a bookmaker who’d once been in prison for horse-doping, a defaulting bankrupt and a clergyman. I arrested the horse-doper and kept an eye on the bankrupt, but it was the parson who had the ring.”
“You ought to write your reminiscences,” I remarked dryly.
“I am looking forward to doing so when my pension falls due,” Pepster returned, entirely unabashed. “But, now, let’s talk business. The warrant isn’t for Thoyne himself, but for Tulmin. Thoyne will come into it later—accessory after or before the fact, you know. Tulmin will do to be going on with.”
“You think Thoyne has taken Tulmin on board the yacht with him?”
“I don’t know—perhaps—perhaps not. But Thoyne has spirited Tulmin away somehow, somewhere. Isn’t that clear? And why has he done it?”
“Yes, I know, you explained before that Thoyne had paid Tulmin to murder Sir Philip—”
“No, Mr. Holt, that was your theory,” Pepster explained patiently. “And you said you didn’t believe it. No, Thoyne may have done the murder himself, or he may not, and Tulmin may have spotted him at it. But, to tell the truth, I’m not worrying about that just now. It is Tulmin I want. There’s enough against him to be going on with, anyway, and I mean to get him and to learn why Thoyne carried him off. Will you come down to Ilbay with me?”
“Ilbay?”
“Yes, the yacht’s there.”
“When do you go?”
“To-morrow.”
“No,” I said slowly, “I can’t go to-morrow. I could go the next day, but not to-morrow.”
“Well, that’ll do,” he replied. “There’s a breakdown in the machinery and he can’t shift for at least four days. I’ve got that much anyhow. The day after to-morrow, then. I’ll send you a list of the trains.”
An hour or so later I called at Hapforth House and was shown into the presence of Lady Clevedon and Miss Kitty.
“Well,” said the old lady, a little tartly, “have you made any discoveries?”
“Yes,” I returned equably, “several. But I have run up against a brick wall and I’ve come to you to pull it down for me. I can’t get over it or under it or round it.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about!” the old lady cried irascibly. “The question is—do you know who killed Philip Clevedon?”
“Well,” I said, “it depends. Perhaps I do, and possibly I am wrong.”
I glanced casually at Miss Kitty Clevedon, over whose pretty face some inward emotion had drawn a greyish pallor that extended even to her lips. It was quite certain that the last thing she wanted to hear was the name of the person who had killed Sir Philip Clevedon. But she was seated a little behind the old lady who noticed nothing.