Inspector Chippenfield, who had come into prominence in the newspapers as
the man who had caught the gang who had stolen Lady Gladville's
jewels--which included the most costly pearl necklace in the world--was
placed in charge of the case. It was to his success in this famous case
that he owed his promotion to Inspector. He had the assistance of his
subordinate, Detective Rolfe. So generous were the newspaper references
to the acumen of these two terrors of the criminal classes that it was to
be assumed that anything which inadvertently escaped one of them would be
pounced upon by the other.
On the morning after the discovery of the murdered man's body, the two
officers made their way to Tanton Gardens from the Hampstead tube
station. Inspector Chippenfield was a stout man of middle age, with a red
face the colour of which seemed to be accentuated by the daily operation
of removing every vestige of hair from it. He had prominent grey eyes
with which he was accustomed to stare fiercely when he desired to impress
a suspected person with what some of the newspapers had referred to as
"his penetrating glance." His companion, Rolfe, was a tall well-built man
in the early thirties. Like most men in a subordinate position, Rolfe had
not a high opinion of the abilities of his immediate superiors. He was
sure that he could fill the place of any one of them better than it was
filled by its occupant. He believed that it was the policy of superiors
to keep junior men back, to stand in their light, and to take all the
credit for their work. He was confident that he was destined to make a
name for himself in the detective world if only he were given the chance.
When Inspector Chippenfield had visited Riversbrook the previous
afternoon, Rolfe had not been selected as his assistant. A careful
inspection of the house and especially of the room in which the tragedy
had been committed had been made by the inspector. He had then turned his
attention to the garden and the grounds surrounding the house.
Whatever he had discovered and what theories he had formed were not
disclosed to anyone, not even his assistant. He believed that the proper
way to train a subordinate was to let him collect his own information and
then test it for him. This method enabled him to profit by his
subordinate's efforts and to display a superior knowledge when the other
propounded a theory by which Inspector Chippenfield had also been misled.
When they arrived at the house in which the crime had been committed,
they found a small crowd of people ranging from feeble old women to
babies in arms, and including a large proportion of boys and girls of
school age, collected outside the gates, staring intently through the
bars towards the house, which was almost hidden by trees. The morbid
crowd made way for the two officers and speculated on their mission. The
general impression was that they were the representatives of a
fashionable firm of undertakers and had come to measure the victim for
his coffin. Inside the grounds the Scotland Yard officers encountered a
police-constable who was on guard for the purpose of preventing
inquisitive strangers penetrating to the house.
"Well, Flack," said Inspector Chippenfield in a tone in which geniality
was slightly blended with official superiority. "How are you to-day?"
"I'm very well indeed, sir," replied the police-constable. He knew
that the state of his health was not a matter of deep concern to the
inspector, but such is the vanity of human nature that he was
pleased at the inquiry. The fact that there was a murdered man in
the house gave mournful emphasis to the transience of human life,
and made Police-Constable Flack feel a glow of satisfaction in being
very well indeed.
Inspector Chippenfield hesitated a moment as if in deep thought. The
object of his hesitation was to give Flack an opportunity of imparting
any information that had come to him while on guard. The inspector
believed in encouraging people to impart information but regarded it as
subversive of the respect due to him to appear to be in need of any. As
Flack made no attempt to carry the conversation beyond the state of his
health, Inspector Chippenfield came to the conclusion that he was an
extremely dull policeman. He introduced Flack to Detective Rolfe and
explained to the latter:
"Flack was on duty on the night of the murder but heard no shots.
Probably he was a mile or so away. But in a way he discovered the
crime. Didn't you, Flack? When we rang up Seldon he came up here and
brought Flack with him. He'll be only too glad to tell you anything you
want to know."
Rolfe took an official notebook from a breast pocket and proceeded to
question the police-constable. The inspector made his way upstairs to the
room in which the crime had been committed, for it was his system to seek
inspiration in the scene of a crime.
Tanton Gardens, a short private street terminating in a cul-de-sac, was
in a remote part of Hampstead. The daylight appearance of the street
betokened wealth and exclusiveness. The roadway which ran between its
broad white-gravelled footwalks was smoothly asphalted for motor tyres;
the avenues of great chestnut trees which flanked the footpaths served
the dual purpose of affording shade in summer and screening the houses
of Tanton Gardens from view. But after nightfall Tanton Gardens was a
lonely and gloomy place, lighted only by one lamp, which stood in the
high road more to mark the entrance to the street than as a guide to
traffic along it, for its rays barely penetrated beyond the first pair
of chestnut trees.
The houses in Tanton Gardens were in keeping with the street: they
indicated wealth and comfort. They were of solid exterior, of a size that
suggested a fine roominess, and each house stood in its own grounds.
Riversbrook was the last house at the blind end of the street, and its
east windows looked out on a wood which sloped down to a valley, the
street having originally been an incursion into a large private estate,
of which the wood alone remained. On the other side a tangled nutwood
coppice separated the judge's residence from its nearest neighbours, so
the house was completely isolated. It stood well back in about four acres
of ground, and only a glimpse of it could be seen from the street front
because of a small plantation of ornamental trees, which grew in front of
the house and hid it almost completely from view. When the carriage drive
which wound through the plantation had been passed the house burst
abruptly into view--a big, rambling building of uncompromising ugliness.
Its architecture was remarkable. The impression which it conveyed was
that the original builder had been prevented by lack of money from
carrying out his original intention of erecting a fine symmetrical house.
The first story was well enough--an imposing, massive, colonnaded front
in the Greek style, with marble pillars supporting the entrance. But the
two stories surmounting this failed lamentably to carry on the
pretentious design. Viewed from the front, they looked as though the
builder, after erecting the first story, had found himself in pecuniary
straits, but, determined to finish his house somehow, had built two
smaller stories on the solid edifice of the first. For the two second
stories were not flush with the front of the house, but reared themselves
from several feet behind, so that the occupants of the bedrooms on the
first story could have used the intervening space as a balcony. Viewed
from the rear, the architectural imperfections of the upper part of the
house were in even stronger contrast with the ornamental first story.
Apparently the impecunious builder, by the time he had reached the rear,
had completely run out of funds, for on the third floor he had failed
altogether to build in one small room, and had left the unfinished
brickwork unplastered.
The large open space between the house and the fir plantation had once
been laid out as an Italian garden at the cost of much time and money,
but Sir Horace Fewbanks had lacked the taste or money to keep it up, and
had allowed it to become a luxuriant wilderness, though the sloping
parterres and the centre flowerbeds still retained traces of their former
beauty. The small lake in the centre, spanned by a rustic hand-bridge,
was still inhabited by a few specimens of the carp family--sole survivors
of the numerous gold-fish with which the original designer of the garden
had stocked the lake.
Sir Horace Fewbanks had rented Riversbrook as a town house for some years
before his death, having acquired the lease cheaply from the previous
possessor, a retired Indian civil servant, who had taken a dislike to the
place because his wife had gone insane within its walls. Sir Horace had
lived much in the house alone, though each London season his daughter
spent a few weeks with him in order to preside over the few Society
functions that her father felt it due to his position to give, and which
generally took the form of solemn dinners to which he invited some of his
brother judges, a few eminent barristers, a few political friends, and
their wives. But rumour had whispered that the judge and his daughter had
not got on too well together--that Miss Fewbanks was a strange girl who
did not care for Society or the Society functions which most girls of her
age would have delighted in, but preferred to spend her time on her
father's country estate, taking an interest in the villagers or walking
the country-side with half a dozen dogs at her heels.
Rumour had not spared the dead judge's name. It was said of him that he
was fond of ladies' society, and especially of ladies belonging to a type
which he could not ask his daughter to meet; that he used to go out
motoring, driving himself, after other people were in bed; and that
strange scenes had taken place at Riversbrook. Flack had told his wife on
several occasions that he had heard sounds of wild laughter and rowdy
singing coming from Riversbrook as he passed along the street on his beat
in the small hours of the morning. Several times in the early dawn Flack
had seen two or three ladies in evening dress come down the carriage
drive and enter a taxi-cab which had been summoned by telephone.