The Layton Court Mystery
by Anthony Berkeley
Contents
I. Eight o’Clock in the Morning
II. An Interrupted Breakfast
III. Mr. Sheringham is Puzzled
IV. Major Jefferson is Reluctant
V. Mr. Sheringham Asks a Question
VI. Four People Behave Remarkably
VII. The Vase That Wasn’t
VIII. Mr. Sheringham Becomes Startling
IX. Mr. Sheringham Sees Visions
X. Mrs. Plant is Apprehensive
XI. Lady Stanworth Exchanges Glances
XII. Hidden Chambers And What-Nots
XIII. Mr. Sheringham Investigates a Footprint
XIV. Dirty Work at the Ash Pit
XV. Mr. Sheringham Amuses an Ancient Rustic
XVI. Mr. Sheringham Lectures on Neo-Platonism
XVII. Mr. Grierson Becomes Heated
XVIII. What the Settee Had to Tell
XIX. Mr. Sheringham Loses and Wins the Same Bet
XX. Mrs. Plant Proves Disappointing
XXI. Mr. Sheringham is Dramatic
XXII. Mr. Sheringham Solves the Mystery
XXIII. Mrs. Plant Talks
XXIV. Mr. Sheringham is Disconcerted
XXV. The Mystery Finally Refuses to Accept Mr. Sheringham’s
Solution
XXVI. Mr. Grierson Tries His Hand
XXVII. Mr. Sheringham Hits the Mark
XXVIII. What Really Did Happen
To my Father
My dear Father,
I know of nobody who likes a detective story more than you do, with
the possible exception of myself. So if I write one and you read it,
we ought to be able to amuse ourselves at any rate.
I hope you will notice that I have tried to make the gentleman who
eventually solves the mystery behave as nearly as possible as he might
be expected to do in real life. That is to say, he is very far removed
from a sphinx and he does make a mistake or two occasionally. I have
never believed very much in those hawk-eyed, tight-lipped gentry, who
pursue their silent and inexorable way straight to the heart of things
without ever once overbalancing or turning aside after false goals;
and I cannot see why even a detective story should not aim at the
creation of a natural atmosphere, just as much as any other work of
the lighter fiction.
In the same way I should like you to observe that I have set down
quite plainly every scrap of evidence just as it is discovered, so
that the reader has precisely the same data at his disposal as has the
detective. This seems to me the only fair way of doing things. To hold
up till the last chapter some vital piece of evidence (which, by the
way, usually renders the solution of the puzzle perfectly simple), and
to achieve your surprise by allowing the detective to arrest his man
before the evidence on which he is doing so is ever so much as hinted
to the reader at all, is, to my mind, most decidedly not playing the
game.
With which short homily, I hand the book over to you by way of some
very slight return for all that you have done for me.
Chapter I
Eight o’Clock in the Morning
William, the gardener at Layton Court, was a man of melancholy
deliberation.
It did not pay, William held, to rush things; especially the important
things of life, such as the removal of greenfly from roses. Before
action was taken, the matter should be studied, carefully and
unhappily, from every possible point of view, particularly the worst.
On this summer’s morning William had been gazing despondently at the
roses for just over three quarters of an hour. Pretty soon now he
would feel himself sufficiently fortified to begin operations on them.
“Do you always count the greenfly before you slaughter them, friend
William?” asked a sudden voice behind him.
William, who had been bending forward to peer gloomily into the
greenfly-blown intricacies of a _Caroline Testout_, slewed hastily
about. He hated being accosted at the best of times, but there was a
spontaneous heartiness about this voice which grated intolerably on
all his finer feelings. The added fact that the act of slewing hastily
about had brought a portion of his person into sharp and painful
contact with another rose bush did not tend to make life any more
cheerful for William at that moment.
“Weren’t a-countin’ em,” he observed curtly; and added naughtily under
his breath, “Drat that there Mr. Sheringham!”
“Oh! I thought you must be totting up the bag in advance,” remarked
the newcomer gravely from behind an enormous pipe. “What’s your record
bag of greenfly, William? Runs into thousands of brace, I suppose.
Well, no doubt it’s an interesting enough sport for people of quiet
tastes. Like stamp-collecting. You ever collect stamps, William?”
“Noa,” said William, gazing sombrely at a worm. William was not one of
your chatty conversationalists.
“Really?” replied his interlocutor with interest. “Mad on it myself
once. As a boy, of course. Silly game though, really, I agree with
you.” He followed the direction of William’s eyes. “Ah, the early
morning worm!” he continued brightly. “And defying all the rules of
its calling by refusing to act as provender for the early bird. Highly
unprofessional conduct! There’s a lesson for all of us in that worm,
William, if I could only think what it is. I’ll come back and tell you
when I’ve had time to go into the matter properly.”
William grunted moodily. There were many things in this world of which
William disapproved; but Mr. Roger Sheringham had a class all to
himself. The gospel of laughter held no attractions for that stern
materialist and executioner of greenfly.
Roger Sheringham remained singularly unperturbed by the sublime
heights of William’s disapproval. With hands thrust deep into the
pockets of a perfectly incredible pair of gray flannel trousers he
sauntered off among the rose beds, cheerfully poisoning the fragrant
atmosphere with clouds of evil smoke from the peculiarly unsavoury
pipe which he wore in the corner of his rather wide mouth. William’s
eloquent snorts followed him unheeded; Roger had already forgotten
William’s existence.
There are many who hold that eight o’clock in the morning is the most
perfect time of a summer’s day. The air, they advance, is by that time
only pleasantly warmed through, without being burned to a cinder as it
is an hour or two later. And there is still quite enough dew sparkling
upon leaf and flower to give the poets plenty to talk about without
forcing them to rise at six o’clock for their inspiration. The theory
is certainly one well worth examination.
At the moment when this story opens Mr. Roger Sheringham was engaged
in examining it.
Not that Roger Sheringham was a poet. By no means. But he was the next
worst thing to it—an author. And it is part of an author’s
stock-in-trade to know exactly what a rose garden looks like at eight
o’clock on a summer morning—that and everything else in the world
besides. Roger Sheringham was refreshing his mental notes on the
subject.
While he is doing so let us turn the tables by examining him. We are
going to see quite a lot of him in the near future, and first
impressions are always important.
Perhaps the first thing we notice about him, even before we have had
time to take in his physical characteristics, is an atmosphere of
unbounded, exuberant energy; Roger Sheringham is evidently one of
those dynamic persons who seem somehow to live two minutes to
everybody else’s one. Whatever he happens to be doing, he does it as
if it were the only thing that he had ever really intended to do in
life at all. To see him now, looking over this rose garden, you would
think that he is actually learning it by heart, so absorbedly is he
gazing at it. At least you would be ready to bet that he could tell
you afterwards just how many plants there are in each bed, how many
roses on each plant, and how many greenfly on each rose. Whether this
habit of observation is natural, or whether it is part of the training
of his craft, there can be no doubt that Roger possesses it in a very
high degree.
In appearance he is somewhat below the average height, and stockily
built; with a round rather than a long face, and two shrewd, twinkling
gray eyes. The shapeless trousers and the disreputable old Norfolk
jacket he is wearing argue a certain eccentricity and contempt for
convention that is just a little too self-conscious to be quite
natural without going so far as to degenerate into a pose. The
short-stemmed, big-bowled pipe in the corner of his mouth seems a very
part of the man himself. Add that his age is over thirty and under
forty; that his school had been Winchester and his university Oxford;
and that he had (or at any rate professed) the profoundest contempt
for his reading public, which was estimated by his publishers at a
surprisingly large figure—and you have Roger Sheringham, Esq., at your
service.
The sound of footsteps approaching along the broad gravel path, which
separated the rose garden from the lawn at the back of the house,
roused him from his studious contemplation of early morning phenomena.
The next moment a large, broad-shouldered young man, with a pleasing
and cheerful face, came into sight round the bend.
“Good heavens!” Roger exclaimed, in tones of the liveliest
consternation. “Alec! And an hour and a half before it need be! What’s
wrong with you this morning, Alec?”
“I might ask the same of you,” grinned the young man. “It’s the first
time I’ve seen you down before ten o’clock since we came here.”
“That only gives us three mornings. Still, a palpable point. By the
way, where’s our worthy host? I thought it was a distressing habit of
his to spend an hour in the garden every morning before breakfast; at
least, so he was telling me at great length yesterday afternoon.”
“I don’t know,” said Alec indifferently. “But what brings you here
anyway, Roger?”
“Me? Oh, I’ve been working. Studying the local flora and fauna, the
latter ably represented by William. You know, you ought to cultivate
William, Alec. You’d have a lot in common, I feel sure.”
They fell into step and strolled among the scattered beds.
“You working at this hour?” Alec remarked. “I thought you wrote all
your tripe between midnight and dawn.”
“You’re a young man of singular literary acuteness,” sighed Roger.
“Hardly anybody would dare to call my work tripe. Yet you and I know
that it is, don’t we? But for goodness’ sake don’t tell anyone else
your opinion. My income depends on my circulation, you know; and if it
once got noised about that Alexander Grierson considered——”
Alec landed a punch on the literary thorax. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,
shut up!” he grunted. “Don’t you ever stop talking, Roger?”
“Yes,” Roger admitted regretfully. “When I’m asleep. It’s a great
trial to me. That’s why I so much hate going to bed. But you haven’t
told me why you’re up and about so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” responded Alec, a trifle sheepishly.
“Ah!” Roger stopped and scrutinised his companion’s face closely. “I
shall have to study you, Alec, you know. Awfully sorry if it’s going
to inconvenience you; but there’s my duty to the great British public,
and that’s plain enough, my interesting young lover. So now perhaps
you’ll tell me the real reason why you’re polluting this excellent
garden with your unseemly presence at this unnecessary hour?”
“Oh, stow it, you blighter!” growled the interesting young lover,
blushing hotly.
Roger regarded him with close attention.
“Notes on the habits of the newly engaged animal, male genus,” he
murmured softly. “One—reverses all its habits and instincts by getting
up and seeking fresh air when it might still be frowsting in bed.
Two—assaults its closest friends without the least provocation.
Three—turns a bright brick-red when asked the simplest question.
Four——”
“Will you shut up, or have I got to throw you into a rose bed?”
shouted the harassed Alec.
“I’ll shut up,” said Roger promptly. “But only on William’s account;
please understand that. I feel that William would simply hate to see
me land on one of his cherished rose bushes. It would depress him more
than ever, and I shrink from contemplating what that might mean. In
passing, how is it that you were coming from the direction of the
lodge just now and not from the house?”
“You’re infernally curious this morning,” Alec smiled. “If you want to
know, I’ve been down to the village.”
“So early? Alec, there must be something wrong with you, after all.
And why on earth have you been down to the village?”
“To—well, if you must have it, to post a letter,” said Alec
reluctantly.
“Ah! A letter so important, so remarkably urgent that it couldn’t wait
for the ordinary collection from the house?” Roger mused with
interest. “Now I wonder if that letter could have been addressed, let
us say, to _The Times_? ‘Marvellous, Holmes! How could you have
surmised that?’ ‘You know my methods, Watson. It is only necessary to
apply them.’ Well, Alexander Watson, am I right?”
“You’re not,” said Alec shortly. “It was to my bookmaker.”
“Well, all I can say is that it ought to have been to _The Times_,”
retorted Roger indignantly. “In fact, I don’t mind going so far as to
add that it’s hardly playing the game on your part that it shouldn’t
have been to _The Times_. Here you go laying a careful train of facts
all pointing to the conclusion that this miserable letter of yours was
to _The Times_, and then you turn round and announce calmly that it
was to your bookmaker. If it comes to that, why write to your
bookmaker at all? A telegram is the correct medium for conducting a
correspondence with one’s bookmaker. Surely you know that?”
“Doesn’t it ever hurt you?” Alec sighed wearily. “Don’t you ever put
your larynx out of joint or something? I should have thought that——”
“Yes, I should have liked to hear your little medical lecture so
much,” Roger interrupted rapidly, with a perfectly grave face.
“Unfortunately a previous engagement of the most pressing urgency robs
me of the pleasure. I’ve just remembered that I’ve got to go and see a
man about—— Now what was it about? Oh, yes! I remember. A goat! Well,
good-bye, Alec. See you at breakfast, I hope.”
He seized his astonished companion’s hand, shook it affectionately,
and walked quickly away in the direction of the village. Alec gazed
after him with open mouth. In spite of the length of their
acquaintance, he had never got quite used to Roger.
A light tread on the grass behind him caused him to turn round, and
what he saw supplied the reason for Roger’s hurried departure. A quick
smile of appreciation flitted across his face. Then he hurried eagerly
forward, and all thought of Roger was wiped from his mind. So soon are
we forgotten when somebody more important comes along.
The girl who was advancing across the grass was small and slight, with
large gray eyes set wide apart, and a mass of fair hair which the
slanting rays of the sun behind her turned into a bright golden mist
about her head. She was something more than pretty; for mere
prettiness always implies a certain insipidity, and there was
certainly no trace of that in Barbara Shannon’s face. On the contrary,
the firm lines of her chin alone, to take only one of her small
features, showed a strength of character unusual in a girl of her age;
one hardly looks for that sort of thing at feminine nineteen or
thereabouts.
Alec caught his breath as he hurried towards her. It was only
yesterday that she had promised to marry him, and he had not quite got
accustomed to it yet.
“Dearest!” he exclaimed, making as if to take her in his arms (William
had long since disappeared in search of weapons with which to rout the
greenfly). “Dearest, how topping of you to guess I should be waiting
for you out here!”
Barbara put out a small hand to detain him. Her face was very grave
and there were traces of tears about her eyes.
“Alec,” she said in a low voice, “I’ve got rather bad news for you.
Something very dreadful has happened—something that I can’t possibly
tell you about, so please don’t ask me, dear; it would only make me
more unhappy still. But I can’t be engaged to you any longer. You must
just forget that yesterday ever happened at all. It’s out of the
question now. Alec I—I can’t marry you.”