Collected works of j s f.., p.807
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 807
CHAPTER XII. THE LEATHER UNDER-JACKET
FULL OF A laudable intention to enter on this new voyage of discovery, Charlesworth went away from Gilford’s office eager enough to carry it out. But he had not gone far before he realized that he was utterly puzzled. He was up against two questions which he couldn’t answer. The first was — what was in that letter which, according to Mappleson, Sir Charles Stanmore found on his desk when he and Mappleson entered the study and which, in Mappleson’s opinion, upset and agitated him considerably? And the second was — what had occurred within the few days immediately preceding his death which made him resolve on altering his will as regards his secretary and his nephew? A third question sprang out of these two. Were whatever was in the letter and the resolve to alter the will at all related?
After considering these problems over his mid-day dinner Charlesworth went off to Aldersyke and sought out Harding — to plump him with a straight question.
“Didn’t Bedford call you up on the ‘phone as soon as he found that his master was dead the other morning?” he asked.
“He did,” assented Harding, “and I went there at once.”
“Had anything been touched in Stanmore’s room?” inquired Charlesworth.
“I should say not,” replied Harding. “In fact, I’m sure. Bedford told me that as soon as the footman fetched him he immediately ‘phoned me (there’s a telephone in that room) and Dr. Holmes. We were both there, within ten minutes. And Bedford assured me that no one but the footman, Green, and himself had been in the room.”
“Not even Lady Stanmore?” suggested Charlesworth.
“Lady Stanmore didn’t know what had happened,” said Harding. “She didn’t know for some little time — a quarter of an hour, perhaps — after Holmes and I got there. Then Holmes went to break the news to her and to Mrs. John Stanmore.”
“Did Lady Stanmore come to the room then?”
“No, she didn’t! She never came near it. To the best of my belief,” said Harding, with a significant glance at his visitor, “and as far as I know, Lady Stanmore never saw her husband’s dead body! She’d every opportunity, of course, but I believe I should be quite right if I affirmed positively that she never did see it.”
“Well, look here,” said Charlesworth. “Was the room in order when you went into it?”
“Quite! I should say Sir Charles was one of those very orderly men — systematic. Everything was very tidy — things in their place, you know. There was a dressing-room opening out of one side of the bedroom, and a bathroom opening out of another; everything was in order in both.”
“You examined Sir Charles’ clothing — I mean what he’d taken off the night before — didn’t you? There and then, eh?”
“Well, it was certainly before I left his rooms. The suit he’d been wearing the night before was folded up on a stand in the dressing-room. I went through all the pockets, papers, everything, to see if I could get any clue. And as you know, Charlesworth, I didn’t.”
“Well — I’ll tell you what it is, Harding! We’ve had information — never mind from whom, just now — that when he returned home that night Sir Charles found a certain letter awaiting him which, when he’d read it, or glanced over it, appeared to annoy and upset him. He was seen — seen, mind you, by our informant — to thrust it into a pocket. You found no letter of that sort? No letter that seemed to contain purely private news or information?”
“No — nothing whatever of that sort. Besides,” said Harding, “you’ve already seen, yourself, everything that I found! I showed you the whole lot, soon after you got to the Manor that morning.”
“He must have destroyed it!” muttered Charlesworth. He reflected a moment or two. “Oh well,” he went on, presently. “I think I’d better tell you where I got the information I’ve just mentioned — it’ll have to be given in public before long.” He proceeded to repeat Mappleson’s story from the diamond merchant’s meeting with Sir Charles Stanmore at the club to his leaving Aldersyke Manor after midnight. “Now what do you think of that?” he asked in conclusion. “Who could the woman and the man be that Mappleson saw in the carriage drive?”
But Harding shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t think much about that,” he said. “I should say that Mappleson’s first impression was the correct one. A maid-servant meeting her sweetheart!”
“Is it likely — that time of night?”
“Why not? There are, or were, six or seven women-servants in that house. It was one of ’em. She could get out and in again, easy enough.”
“But the car that Mappleson saw in the road was, according to his description, a big, powerful one — he saw enough of it to see that. Would the owner of such a car be meeting a maid-servant?”
“Come, come!” retorted Harding, with a laugh. “Where’s your detective sense? It mightn’t be the owner — it might be, and probably was, a chauffeur who’d taken his master’s car out for a spree of his own! That’s constantly done. I don’t see anything in that part of Mappleson’s story. But I do in the letter part of it — but I tell you I never found any such letter. And I believe Mr. Gilford has gone through all the papers he could find — —”
“Oh, Gilford hasn’t found it,” said Charlesworth. “But I wish you had! It strikes me that there was something in that letter which might have given us a clue.”
“Well, I didn’t — and so there you are,” declared Harding. He looked inquiringly at Charlesworth. “Do you think you’re getting towards any solution?” he asked, half sceptically. Then, without waiting for an answer, he continued, shaking his head: “I don’t believe it’ll ever be found out! — I mean, I don’t think you’ll ever find out who poisoned Sir Charles — if anybody did!”
“What d’you mean? — if anybody did?” asked Charlesworth.
“Oh, I don’t know! They’re saying about here that he poisoned himself because he’d found out that his wife was carrying on with her cousin, Dr. Beck. Local talk!”
“Oh, that’s out, is it?” asked Charlesworth.
“What do you expect?” replied Harding. “When Lady Stanmore bundled the housekeeper and the parlour-maid — not to speak of the secretary — out of the house that morning, she sent out two enemies who immediately proceeded to talk their tongues off! Good Lord! — don’t you know anything about women?”
“Not much, thank goodness!” laughed Charlesworth. “Haven’t had time. Great gossippers, I understand?”
Harding gave his visitor a look that was half-incredulous, half-pitying, and picking up a pen, turned to a letter which he had laid aside, half-written, when Charlesworth entered.
“Go away!” he said, smiling. “Go and learn something!”
Charlesworth laughed, and went. But instead of returning to town, he walked on to the Manor and asked for Bedford. The butler had little to do in these days, and was obviously glad to see him. He pressed hospitality on his visitor, but Charlesworth went straight to his point.
“I want you to let your memory go back: — it’s not any great stretch! — to that morning of Sir Charles’ death, Bedford,” he said. “You telephoned for Mr. Harding and Dr. Holmes as soon as Green had made his discovery, didn’t you, and they came at once. Now, are you sure that nobody came into your master’s room from the time you entered it until those two came?”
“No one came in, sir,” declared Bedford. “No one at all! As a matter of fact, Mr. Charlesworth, nobody but Green and myself knew what had happened. I never left the room after entering it — there is a telephone there, you know. I remained in the room, and I kept Green outside the door. As soon as I saw Dr. Holmes and the police-superintendent coming up the drive I sent Green down to let them in and to bring them up. No — no one ever came into that room, sir — that’s certain.”
“Well, very soon after he and Dr. Holmes arrived, Harding examined your master’s clothing, didn’t he?” said Charlesworth. “I mean the suit he’d taken off the night before.”
“He did, sir. In Sir Charles’ dressing-room.”
“Where is that suit now, Bedford?”
“In the dressing-room, sir. Nothing has been touched. The room’s just as Sir Charles left it.”
“Take me up there,” said Charlesworth. “I want to have a look round.”
Bedford took him upstairs and through the dead man’s bedroom to the dressing-room. He pointed to a suit of dark grey tweed which lay, neatly folded, on a stand.
“That’s the suit Sir Charles was wearing when he came home that evening,” he said. “It is, of course, the suit in which he’d gone out the previous morning. I saw Mr. Harding go through all the pockets myself. The contents — papers, articles of value and so on — he took away: I think he sealed them up, downstairs.”
Charlesworth looked speculatively at the tweed suit.
“Wouldn’t Sir Charles be wearing an overcoat?”
“It was very seldom that Sir Charles ever did wear an overcoat, Mr. Charlesworth,” replied Bedford.
“But surely,” said Charlesworth, “motoring home at such a late hour . . .”
“What he did wear, supplementary like, when he was motoring, was this,” Bedford continued, opening the door of a press, and pointing to a sleeveless jacket of leather. “He used to put that on under his coat, sir; he’d take it off when he got to the garage in town where he was in the habit of leaving the car, and put it on again at night when he came home.”
“Would he have it on that night?” asked Charlesworth. “That particular night?”
“He had it on when he went off in the morning, Mr. Charlesworth,” said Bedford. “That I do know. You see, as a rule, he never kept that leather jacket up here — he used to keep it in a little room in the hall where his boots were kept, and things like that, and just before going out, he’d take off his ordinary jacket and slip this on, over his waistcoat. He used to take it off when he came in, and hang it up in that little room. But on that particular night,” continued Bedford, “he seems to have come up to his rooms in it. There it is, anyway.”
“Do you know if Harding examined it?” asked Charlesworth.
“I don’t remember seeing him do so,” replied the butler. “I saw him examine the pockets of that suit. That lay where it is now — Sir Charles was very particular about folding up his clothes. Evidently he’d hung up the leather jacket in this press.”
Charlesworth took down the leather jacket and ran his fingers over its surface. And instantly he recognized the feel of paper inside the left half of the front. Slipping his hand inside he found that there was a pocket there, and in the pocket a letter — he could feel the torn edges of the flap of the envelope. He glanced at his companion — Bedford’s orderly mind had perceived something amiss in the arrangement of the room and he had turned his back to the detective. And in a second the letter had been transferred from the leather jacket to Charlesworth’s pocket, and when Bedford turned again he was putting the jacket back in its place.
“Well,” he said, indifferently, “if, in looking round, you ever find anything that seems likely to help, Bedford, let me know. Every little helps! — as I’ve said before.”
“Rely on me, sir,” replied Bedford. “Getting on at all, Mr. Charlesworth?”
“Oh, I daresay we shall worry through!” answered Charlesworth. “Stiff work — so little to go on, you know.”
He left the Manor and walked down the village street till he came to the entrance to the churchyard. There was nobody about there, and he turned inside the old lych-gate and sitting on a bench in its shadow, took out his find and examined it. At the first sight of the envelope he let out a sharp exclamation — for the letter was addressed, not to Sir Charles but to Lady Stanmore.
On seeing this, Charlesworth immediately noted two or three things. First, the date, which was that of the day before Sir Charles’ death; second, the postmark, which was London, S.W.; third, that the address was typewritten. And, as he expected, the enclosure was typewritten, too. He glanced round, to make sure that there was no one near who could steal up and look over his shoulder, and read the thing through from beginning to end.
“Lady Stanmore, Madam,” it ran, “I think it my duty to inform you that for some time your husband Sir Charles Stanmore has been carrying on an intrigue with the young woman whom he passes off as his secretary, Miss Fawdale. I have made it my business to watch him and to follow his movements and I am in a position to report to you positively that whatever may happen when Miss F. is at Aldersyke Manor, what happens when she is in town is this. 1st, Sir Charles spends whole afternoons and evenings with her at her flat. 2nd, he constantly takes her for long motor rides in the country. 3rd, her establishment could not possibly be kept up on a private secretary’s salary. If you desire me to give you further proof of these statements and to engage my services in procuring still more evidence, please insert an advertisement in the Personal Column of The Times worded XCB347 Eromnats, and I will communicate with you again.”
Charlesworth folded up this precious epistle and put it carefully away in his pocket-book. In the course of his professional career he had seen letters of this sort before; he even had an idea that he knew the scoundrel who had written this in pursuance of a despicable calling. But he left that aside. What interested him was that he now felt certain that this letter had been placed on Sir Charles Stanmore’s desk by Lady Stanmore herself — for him to see as soon as he came in that night!
CHAPTER XIII. I PUT IT THERE!
AFTER REFLECTING ON the possibilities arising through his discovery of this anonymous letter, Charlesworth returned to town, and going straight to Dr. Beck’s house, asked boldly for Lady Stanmore. He was shown into a waiting-room, but when the door opened it was not Lady Stanmore who appeared but Dr. Beck. And Dr. Beck did not look over pleased or over friendly.
“May I ask your reason for wishing to see Lady Stanmore?” he inquired icily. “She is staying here with my sister and myself, to be sure, but she is not over well, and we wish to spare her — —”
“You may be quite sure I shouldn’t have called here to ask for Lady Stanmore if I hadn’t had good reason, Dr. Beck,” interrupted Charlesworth. “It is as much for Lady Stanmore’s sake as my own that I did call! I am entrusted with this case and I am doing my best to clear it up, and — —”
“There seem to be many matters in connection with it which need clearing up,” remarked Beck. “As you are here, I should like to speak of one in which I seem to be concerned. When you were here before, you told me of what those women, Mrs. Protheroe and Miss Fawdale, had said — had told you, I think — about Lady Stanmore and myself? You remember? — that they had seen us behaving as lovers?”
“Yes,” said Charlesworth. “Well?”
“Well, you know, that’s all false! So far from being Lady Stanmore’s lover, I am engaged to another lady, and am, as a matter of fact, to be married to her very shortly! So — there you are!”
“Then — those women were lying?” said Charlesworth.
“Call it what you please! All I say is that they were not stating the fact when they said that Lady Stanmore and I behaved as lovers. No doubt we exchanged a kiss on parting — Lady Stanmore and I are first cousins, and have always been on affectionate terms, for she never had any brother and looks on me as one, and in addition to that we were brought up together, as boy and girl. But those women had no ground whatever for their allegation.”
“Why — if I may ask — did you meet Lady Stanmore secretly?” asked Charlesworth.
“If you like to call it secret! I don’t know that it was meant to be secret. Sir Charles Stanmore was a man of such a violent nature — hasty, irascible, easily vexed and thrown into a passion — —”
“He was, eh?” interrupted Charlesworth. “Ah, perhaps that explains — I beg your pardon, doctor. You were saying — —”
“That his wife did not wish me to go to the house, especially as he and I had a hearty dislike for each other. My cousin wanted to see me about several things and — we met. That is all there is in that.”
“Couldn’t she have come here?” suggested Charlesworth.
“If you really want to know, Stanmore had forbidden her to come here. He had obsessions. One was that my sister and I prejudiced his wife against him. That wasn’t true.” Beck paused, looking Charlesworth carefully over. “I think I may speak freely and confidentially to you,” he said, after a pause. “I think you’re doing your best about this case, with nothing but a desire to get at the truth.”
“Thank you, doctor,” replied Charlesworth. “You’ve hit it!”
“Well, I’ll tell you my honest belief — as a medical man,” continued Beck. “And it is this — I believe, from all I have heard and have pieced together, that during the last two or three weeks of his life Stanmore was mentally deranged. If necessary I could give you proof of it — perhaps proof will have to be given. My cousin had a hell of a time with him — she puts it down to his bad temper, his irascibility, and so forth: I don’t. I think he was — as I say, mentally deranged, in some form or other. And my honest belief as regards his death, is that he committed suicide!”
“You really think that?” exclaimed Charlesworth.
“I do! I think that you will find I am right, too.”
“Well,” said Charlesworth, after a pause, “I certainly don’t seem to be finding out anything which lays the fault of murder at anybody’s door! This is a very queer case indeed, doctor — several people might have put poison in Stanmore’s whisky that night, but I can’t find out any particular reason why any one of them should! Of course, if Lady Stanmore — you don’t mind my speaking straight out? — if Lady Stanmore had been madly in love with you, and just as madly anxious to get rid of her husband, and as she knows all about the poisons in that cabinet which once belonged to her father — you follow me?”
