CHAPTER XV
ON RONALD THOYNE’S YACHT
ILBAY we discovered to be a very tiny village, hardly more than a cluster of cottages, a small inn and a church.
There was a jetty, built of stone in a rough-and-tumble fashion that clearly betokened amateur workmanship, and flanked on either side by a semi-circular sweep of sandy beach that ended in a jumble of rocks lying at the bases of tall cliffs. The road came over the hills after threading its way through vast moorlands and dipped steeply down to the village and the sea.
“The yacht is still here,” Pepster announced, on his return from what he described as “an early morning prowl round.”
“Can we get a boat?” I asked.
“I have already annexed one,” Pepster replied. “We mustn’t waste time in this case. The yacht may up-anchor and steam off at any minute. The boat is ready and the men are waiting.”
“The sooner the better,” I agreed. “It is understood that you do all the talking?”
“It shouldn’t need much talking, but anyway I’ll start it.”
“Then the sooner the better,” I repeated.
“Let us be off.”
Ronald Thoyne met us on the deck of the yacht and stood with his hands clasped loosely behind him, surveying us with a queer, twisted smile on his face. He waited for us to speak and evidently had no intention of helping us out. If he wondered how we had caught his trail he said nothing.
“We have come,” Pepster began, “for a word or two with Tulmin.”
“Tulmin!” Thoyne exclaimed. “What a disappointment when I thought it was a friendly call on myself. Though I can’t say you look very friendly or I might invite you to stay to lunch. I have quite a good cook, a negro, certainly, but in his way a genius. Now if—”
“I suppose,” Pepster said with a smile, “you are talking to gain time.”
“No, not at all,” Thoyne replied calmly. “Why should I? Let us come down to bedrock facts. Tulmin isn’t here.”
“We traced him here,” Pepster interposed in his small, squeaky voice. “He was here, you know.”
“You see,” Pepster went on, “I have a warrant for his arrest, and if you continue to conceal him you are interfering with the law, always a rather dangerous proceeding.”
“Your little lecture is interesting,” Thoyne replied carelessly, “but doesn’t apply. You see, I am an American citizen and your law doesn’t interest me. This ship sails under the Stars and Stripes, you know, and you daren’t forcibly seize anyone from under that flag. No, don’t get angry—it won’t pay you. I have a dozen men on board who will obey my lifted finger. If I told them to pitch you into the water, into the water you would go.”
He turned his back on us and leaning his elbows on the brightly polished rail, gazed down into the cool, green depths of the water that was lap-lapping idly against the sides of the vessel.
“But I am not angry,” Pepster explained, “only interested. Is that your case—that Tulmin is aboard the vessel, but that I dare not take him off an American ship? If that is so—”
“Don’t be a damned fool!” Thoyne retorted roughly, facing us again.
“I won’t—more than I can help,” Pepster responded mildly.
“Well, anyway, you can search the yacht,” Thoyne went on. “Tulmin isn’t here—I know nothing of him.”
He took a whistle from his pocket and blew a shrill note which was answered almost simultaneously by a sprightly youth, who must have been waiting near at hand, so rapid was his appearance.
“Bender, take this gentleman over the yacht and show him everything—everything, damn you!”
“Yes, sir.”
Pepster glanced at me but I shook my head. I intended to have a few words with Thoyne on my own account.
“I’m no good at a search,” I said. “That is police work. I’ll leave it to you.”
It was the first time I had spoken since we had boarded the yacht.
“And now,” Thoyne said, facing me with glaring eyes, “perhaps you’ll tell me what the hell sort of game you think you are playing.”
I regarded him smilingly for a moment or two.
“Did you get Miss Clevedon’s telegram?” I asked.
“Why,” he said quickly, “did she tell—oh, I don’t know what you are talking about. And I don’t understand why you want to butt in on this. What business of yours is it, anyway?”
“Well, I thought perhaps it was the telegram that caused you to send Tulmin away so hurriedly yesterday,” I remarked.
He stood glaring at me for a moment or two, then turned away with a quick laugh.
“Why should I let you go now you are here?” he said. “Tell me that. You are in my power and I could carry you and that fat fool who came with you to the ends of the earth. What could you say?”
“I am sure it would be an enjoyable trip,” I replied.
“Oh, it would be all right. I would see to that. I shouldn’t ill-use you—only keep you locked up until we were well away.”
“Yes,” I remarked, “it sounds all right. But in the first place, you can’t move until your missing machinery comes to hand and—”
“What the devil do you know about my missing machinery?” he roared. “But, of course, I was only talking off the top,” he went on. “I am doing nothing desperate. But, now, man to man, what is the game? Put your cards on the table, face up.”
“I’ll see.”
“You mean you’re not playing your own hand. Well, it’s a one-sided bargain, but I’m willing. Listen carefully and then do just as you like, with this certainty in your mind that what you try to hide I shall nevertheless discover. I need only remind you of what I have already told you—Miss Clevedon’s wire and Tulmin’s hurried departure, not to mention the missing machinery. You may deny as much as you like but you know full well it is all true. Now, then, for the story. Pepster wants Tulmin in order that he may arrest him for the murder of Sir Philip Clevedon. Not that he believes Tulmin to be the principal or is quite sure that he actually did the killing. But—why are you keeping Tulmin out of the way?”
“Perhaps I was the—”
“Perhaps you were,” I agreed equably.
Thoyne glared at me speechlessly for a moment or two, then threw back his head with a great, bellowing roar of laughter.
“And is that your theory?” he demanded, when he had regained breath.
“No,” I replied, still speaking with careful deliberation. “I am not very keenly interested in Tulmin nor in yourself, except just in passing. It is someone—quite—different. Who stands to gain most from Sir Philip Clevedon’s death? Tell me that.”
His face went as white as Kitty Clevedon’s had done when I made a similar suggestion in her presence at Hapforth House.
“But I am not clear on details,” I went on, “and what I want to know—the real reason, indeed, for my being here—is why Miss Kitty Clevedon promised to marry Sir Philip, though it is quite obvious that her affections are—otherwise bestowed. Now let us take the course of events. You quarrelled with Sir Philip Clevedon over a woman—and that woman was Miss Kitty Clevedon.”
“It is a lie—a damned lie!” he said thickly, clenching his great fists.
“It was stated by Mrs. Halfleet at the inquest—”
“Kitty’s name—Miss Clevedon’s name was never—Mrs. Halfleet mentioned no name.”
“Miss Clevedon promised to marry Sir Philip and you quarrelled with him in consequence. Why did she promise?”
“It’s a lie—she never did.”
“Then perhaps you will tell me the name of the woman over whom you quarrelled.”
“It was nobody you know.”
“I have been told—it was suggested—that it was Nora Lepley.”
“Nora Lepley! What the devil has she to do with it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It is not my suggestion because, you see, I know who the lady was. The one missing link in my chain of evidence is not the lady’s identity but her reason for throwing you over and saying ‘Yes’ to Sir Philip.”
“Why do you want to know? What has it to do with the—the murder?”
“I cannot tell you until I have all the facts.”
“You will not get the lady’s name out of me.”
“But I don’t want her name,” I retorted tranquilly, “I know that already.”
“It was not Miss Clevedon.”
“No?”
“Nor Nora Lepley.”
“No, I am sure of that. But the name doesn’t matter. Will you tell me why Miss Clevedon agreed to marry Sir Philip?”
“I will tell you nothing—nothing at all. You are a damned Paul Pry. What business is it of yours?”
“Very well, then I—but here comes Mr. Pepster, unsuccessful as I see and as I knew he would be. I will not worry you any more just now, Mr. Thoyne, but I will let you know how I go on.”
I nodded cheerfully and made my way to the side where our boat was moored, and, indeed, I think that if I had not moved out of his way just then he would have hit me.
In tackling a case of this sort, any case, indeed, I like to build up as I go along and leave no blank spaces. Very often I have spent much time over some detail that had eluded me, and occasionally I have found that time wasted. But far more frequently it has happened that the fitting in of one missing piece has straightened out much that followed. And I like to observe my chronology.
This question of Kitty Clevedon and her engagement to the baronet may seem trifling and I had no certainty myself of its relative importance, but I was quite assured in my own mind that I could make very little of what followed until I had straightened that. There was no reasonable doubt that Kitty Clevedon was the mysterious lady of the quarrel—she fitted so completely into the picture. That both these men wanted her was common gossip in the Dale and it seemed equally evident that her preference was for Ronald Thoyne. Yet, apparently, she had promised herself to the baronet. Why? And why should Thoyne quarrel with him over it? It was her right to choose. The only possible explanation was that the promise had been extracted from her by some means that had not left her a free agent. And there was my missing piece. Why had Kitty Clevedon promised to marry Sir Philip?
I received my first glimmer of light from Pepster, though it was quite unconscious on his part.
The inn at Ilbay was a delightful old place, full of odd, mysterious corners, quaint unexpected doorways and queerly shaped rooms that were always a step or two below or a step or two above the passage that led to them and thus constituted traps for the unwary visitor. Pepster and I had a small parlour to ourselves, a queer room with five walls and a couple of huge beams crossed on the ceiling. It had a wide, open fire-place but no grate, the pile of blazing logs resting on the hearth, while the flames roared and spluttered into the darkness of a capacious chimney. The room had only one small window that looked out over the jetty and the bay, and was shrouded at night by warm crimson curtains; and one had to climb three steps in order to reach the door which opened into the bar.
Chief among the furniture was a black oak dresser with an inscription on the panel, reading, “John and Annie Tumm, 1671,” but all the rest was new and neither good nor artistic. The “pictures” consisted of the faded photographs of a past generation, framed funeral cards and a Sunday School certificate awarded to Elizabeth Tumm, 1874. The black oak dresser and that document bridged 200 years of Tumms.
“Comfortable quarters,” Mr. Pepster remarked, as he sat in a big wicker chair toasting his toes at the fire and sipping at a glass of hot whisky.
“Very,” I agreed, being similarly situated and occupied at the other side of the hearthrug. There was another long silence between us, which again Pepster broke.
“Do you know,” he said, “I am a little worried—no, that is hardly the word—a little interested in Sir William Clevedon.”
“Yes?”
I did not add that Sir William Clevedon was just then the centre of all my own inquiries, but I was curious to hear what he had to say about it.
“You see,” Pepster went on, “he has never been to take up his title or the money. The title I could understand. There are too many of them about in these days to make any of them really worth while. But he stands in also for the cash—there was no will and Billy Clevedon takes the lot. Where is he?”
“Do you mean that he has disappeared?”
“Well, that’s rather a long word. But nobody seems to know where he is.”
“You have made inquiries?”
“Oh, yes. He started a long leave on February 20th—his battalion is in Ireland, you know—and is straightway lost. But as to where he is—”
“His sister will know.”
“She says she doesn’t.”
“Did Miss Clevedon tell you that herself?”
“Well, no, not directly. It was old Parfitter, the family lawyer, who dropped a hint, so to speak. ‘Sir William Clevedon ought to be home looking after this business and helping to clear up the mess,’ I said to him. The old chap wagged his head mysteriously. ‘Aye,’ he replied, ‘he’ll be Sir William now, of course—yes.’ I hazarded the opinion that his long-delayed appearance was breeding rumours. ‘For his own sake he should come,’ I said. The old fossil took the alarm at once. ‘Rumours? he asked sharply. What rumours?’ He glared at me as if I were in some way responsible. ‘Oh, nothing definite,’ I said, ‘just rumours, mere talk.’ And then he opened out and let go, said he would like to ask my advice and so on. In short, they didn’t know where Billy Clevedon was, none of them knew, not even his sister. And there it is. He will turn up in good time—if he hasn’t some reason for stopping away. The question is, has he?”
“Has he what?” I demanded.
“A good reason for stopping away.”
That was precisely the point at which I had arrived myself.