Mr. Grierson Becomes Heated
But however much Jefferson might guess of their activities, certainly
nothing was visible in his manner as Roger and Alec entered the
drawing room, twenty minutes late for tea. He greeted them in his
usual curt, rather brusque way, and asked casually how they had
managed to amuse themselves. Lady Stanworth was not present, and Mrs.
Plant was seated behind the tea tray.
“Oh, we went for a stroll through the village; but it was too hot to
be pleasant. Thanks, Mrs. Plant. Yes, milk and sugar, please. Two
lumps. You got through your business in Elchester all right? I saw you
starting.”
“Yes. Got off infernally late. Had to rush things. However, I managed
to get everything done all right.”
“Have they arranged about the inquest yet, by the way?” Alec asked
suddenly.
“Yes. To-morrow morning at eleven, here.”
“Oh, they’re going to hold it here, are they?” said Roger. “Which room
will you put them in? The library?”
“No. I think the morning room’s better.”
“Yes, I think it is.”
“Oh, I do wish it were over!” Mrs. Plant remarked with an involuntary
sigh.
“You don’t seem to be looking forward to the ordeal,” Roger said
quickly, with a slight smile.
“I hate the idea of giving evidence,” Mrs. Plant replied, almost
passionately. “It’s horrible!”
“Oh, come. It isn’t as bad as all that. It’s not like a law case, you
know. There’ll be no cross-examination, or anything like that. The
proceedings will be purely formal, I take it, eh, Jefferson?”
“Purely,” Jefferson said, lighting a cigarette with deliberation.
“Don’t suppose the whole thing will last more than twenty minutes.”
“So you see there won’t be anything very dreadful in it, Mrs. Plant.
May I have another cup of tea, please?”
“Well, I wish it were over; that’s all,” Mrs. Plant said with a
nervous little laugh, and Roger noticed that the hand which held his
cup shook slightly.
Jefferson rose to his feet.
“Afraid I shall have to leave you chaps to your own resources again,”
he remarked abruptly. “Lady Stanworth hopes you’ll do whatever you
like. Sorry to appear so inhospitable, but you know what things are
like at this sort of time.”
He walked out of the room.
Roger decided to put out a small feeler.
“Jefferson doesn’t seem extraordinarily upset really, does he?” he
said to Mrs. Plant. “Yet it must be rather a shock to lose an
employer, with whom one’s been so many years, in this tragic way.”
Mrs. Plant glanced at him, as if rather questioning the good taste of
this remark. “I don’t think Major Jefferson is the sort of man to show
his real feelings before comparative strangers, do you, Mr.
Sheringham?” she replied a little stiffly.
“Probably not,” Roger replied easily. “But he seems singularly
unperturbed about it all.”
“He is a very imperturbable sort of person, I imagine.”
Roger tried another tack. “Had you known Mr. Stanworth long, Mrs.
Plant?” he asked conversationally, leaning back in his chair and
pulling his pipe out of his pocket. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do
you?”
“Please do. Oh, no; not very long. My—my husband knew him, you know.”
“I see. A curious habit that of his, asking comparative, or, in my
case at any rate, complete strangers down to these little gatherings,
wasn’t it?”
“I think Mr. Stanworth was a very hospitable man,” Mrs. Plant replied
tonelessly.
“Very! A most excellent fellow in every way, didn’t you think?” Roger
asked with enthusiasm.
“Oh, most,” said Mrs. Plant in a curiously flat voice.
Roger glanced at her shrewdly. “You don’t agree with me, Mrs. Plant?”
he said suddenly.
Mrs. Plant started.
“I?” she said hurriedly. “Why, of course I do. I thought Mr. Stanworth
a—a very nice man indeed. Charming! Of course I agree with you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought for the moment that you didn’t seem very
enthusiastic about him. No earthly reason why you should be, of
course. Everybody has their likes and dislikes, don’t they?”
Mrs. Plant glanced quickly at Roger, and then looked out of the
window. “I was simply thinking how—how tragic the whole thing is,” she
said in a low voice.
There was a short silence.
“Lady Stanworth didn’t seem to be on very good terms with him, though,
did she?” Roger remarked carelessly, prodding at the tobacco in his
pipe with a match-stalk.
“Do you think so?” Mrs. Plant returned guardedly.
“She certainly gave me that impression. In fact, I should have gone
farther. I should have said that she positively disliked him.”
Mrs. Plant looked at the speaker with distaste. “There are secrets in
every household, I suppose,” she said shortly. “Don’t you think that
it is a little impertinent for outsiders to probe into them?
Especially under circumstances like these.”
“That’s one for me,” Roger smiled, quite unabashed. “Yes, I suppose it
is, Mrs. Plant. The trouble is, you see, that I simply can’t help it.
I’m the most curious person alive. Everything interests me, especially
every human thing, and I’ve just got to get to the bottom of it. And
you must admit that the relations between Lady Stanworth, of all
people, and the—shall we say?—somewhat plebeian Mr. Stanworth, are
uncommonly interesting to a novelist.”
“Everything is ‘copy’ to you, you mean?” Mrs. Plant retorted, though
less uncompromisingly. “Well, if you put it like that I suppose you
may have a certain amount of reason; though I don’t admit the
justification for all that. Yes, I believe Lady Stanworth did not get
on very well with her brother-in-law. After all, it’s only to be
expected, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” asked Roger quickly. “Why?”
“Well, because of the circumstances of——” Mrs. Plant broke off
abruptly and bit her lip. “Because of the blood and water idea, I
suppose. They were utterly unlike each other in every way.”
“That isn’t what you were going to say. What had you got in mind when
you corrected yourself?”
Mrs. Plant flushed slightly.
“Really, Mr. Sheringham, I——”
Alec rose suddenly from his chair. “I say, it’s awfully hot in this
room,” he remarked abruptly. “Come into the garden and get some air,
Roger, I’m sure Mrs. Plant will excuse us.”
Mrs. Plant flashed a grateful look at him.
“Certainly,” she said, in somewhat agitated tones. “I—I think I shall
go upstairs and lie down for a little myself. I have rather a
headache.”
The two men watched her go out of the room in silence. Then Alec
turned to Roger.
“Look here,” he said heatedly, “I’m not going to let you bully that
poor little woman like this. It’s a bit too thick. You get a lot of
damned silly notions into your head about her, and then you try to
bully her into confirming them. I’m not going to stand for it.”
Roger shook his head in mock despair.
“Really, Alexander,” he said tragically, “you are a difficult person,
you know. Extraordinarily difficult.”
“Well, it’s getting past a joke,” Alec retorted a little more calmly,
though his face was still flushed with anger. “We can do what we want
without bullying women.”
“And just when I was getting along so nicely!” Roger mourned. “You
make a rotten Watson, Alec. I can’t think why I ever took you on in
the part.”
“A jolly good thing for you that you did,” Alec said grimly. “I can
see fair play, at any rate. And trying to trick a woman who’s got
nothing to do with the thing at all into a lot of silly admissions is
_not_ playing the game.”
Roger took the other’s arm and led him gently into the garden.
“All right, all right,” he said in the tones of one soothing a
fractious child. “We’ll try other tactics, if you’re so set on it. In
any case, there’s no need to get excited. The trouble is that you’ve
mistaken your century, Alec. You ought to have lived four or five
hundred years ago. As a heavy-weight succourer of ladies in distress
you could have challenged all comers with one lance tied behind your
back. There, there!”
“Oh, it’s all very well for you to laugh,” returned the slightly
mollified Alec, “but I’m perfectly right, and you know it. If we’re
going on with this thing, we’re not going to make use of any dashed
underhand sneaky little detective tricks. If it comes to that, why
don’t you tackle Jefferson, if you’re so jolly keen on tackling
someone?”
“For the simple reason that the excellent Jefferson would certainly
not give anything away, my dear Alec; whereas there’s always the
chance that a woman will. But enough! We’ll confine ourselves to
sticks and stones, and leave the human element out of account; or the
feminine part of it, at any rate. But for all that,” Roger added
wistfully, “I _would_ like to know what’s going on amongst that trio!”
“Humph!” Alec grunted disapprovingly.
They paced for a time in silence up and down the edge of the lawn,
which ran parallel with the back of the house.
Roger’s thoughts were racing. The disappearance of the footprints had
caused him drastically to rearrange his ideas. He had now no doubt at
all that Jefferson not only knew all about the crime itself, but that
he was in all probability an actual participator in it. Whether his
part had been an active one and he had been present in the library at
the time, was impossible to say; probably not, Roger inclined to
think. But that he had helped to plan it and was now actively
concerned in endeavouring to destroy all traces of it was surely
beyond all disbelief. That meant one accomplice, at least, within the
house.
But what was really worrying Roger far more than the question of
Jefferson’s share in the affair was the possible inclusion of the two
women who seemed somehow to be mixed up with it. On the face of things
no doubt it was, as Alec so strongly held, almost incredible that
either Mrs. Plant or Lady Stanworth could be a party to a murder. Yet
it was impossible to dispute the facts. That there was a distinct
understanding between Jefferson and Lady Stanworth seemed as certain
to Roger as that there had been a murder in the house instead of a
suicide. And a similar understanding between Mrs. Plant and Jefferson
appeared to be even more strongly established. Added to which there
was her suspicious behaviour in the library that morning; for in spite
of the fact that her jewels had been in the safe, after all, Roger was
still no less firmly convinced that this excuse for her presence in
the library was a lie. Furthermore, Mrs. Plant certainly knew very
much more about Stanworth and his relations with his secretary and
sister-in-law than she was willing to admit; it was a pity that she
had checked herself just in time after tea, when she appeared to have
been on the point of allowing something of real importance to slip
past her guard.
Yes; though he was no more willing to believe it than was Alec
himself, Roger could see no loophole through which to escape from the
assumption that both Mrs. Plant and Lady Stanworth were as deeply
implicated as Jefferson himself. It was most unfortunate that Alec
should have chosen to adopt such a highly prejudiced view of the
matter; this was just the sort of thing for which nothing was required
so much as impartial discussion. Roger covertly eyed the face of his
taciturn companion and sighed softly.
The back of the house did not run in a single straight line. Between
the library and the dining room, where was the small room which was
used for storing trunks and lumber, the wall was set back a few feet
and formed a shallow recess; and this space was occupied by a little
shrubbery of laurels. As the two passed this shrubbery, a small blue
object, lying on the ground at the outer edge, caught the sun’s rays
and the gleam of it attracted Roger’s attention. Carelessly and half
unconsciously, he strolled towards it.
Then something in its particular shade of blue struck a sudden note in
his memory, and he stared at it curiously.
“What’s that little blue thing by the roots of those laurels, Alec?”
he asked, frowning at it. “It seems vaguely familiar somehow.”
He stepped across the path and picked it up. It was a piece of blue
china.
“Hullo!” he said eagerly, holding it up so that Alec could see it. “Do
you realise what this is?”
Alec joined him on the path and looked at the piece of china without
very much interest.
“Yes, it’s a bit of broken plate or something.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t! Don’t you recognise the colour? It’s a bit of the
missing vase, my boy. I wonder—— By Jove, I wonder if the rest is in
here.”
He dropped on his hands and knees and peered among the laurels. “Yes,
I believe I can see some other bits farther in. I’ll investigate, if
you’ll keep an eye open to see that nobody is coming.” And he crawled
laboriously into the little shrubbery.
A few moments later he returned by the same route. In his hands were
several more pieces of the vase.
“It’s all in there,” he announced triumphantly. “Right back by the
wall. You see what must have happened?”
“The fellow threw it in there,” said Alec wisely.
“Exactly. I expect he put the pieces in his pocket when he collected
them, in order to chuck them away somewhere as soon as he got clear.
Methodical sort of bird, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Alec agreed, looking at Roger with some surprise. “You seem
quite excited about it.”
“I am!” Roger said emphatically.
“Why? It’s what we expected, isn’t it? More or less. I mean, if the
vase was broken and the pieces disappeared, it’s a pretty reasonable
assumption that he threw them away somewhere, isn’t it?”
Roger’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, perfectly. But the point is _where_ he
threw them. Doesn’t it occur to you, Alec, that this place is not on
the route between the lattice window and the quickest way out of the
grounds? In other words, the drive. Also, doesn’t it occur to you that
if he wanted to throw them where nobody would be likely to find them,
the best place to do it would be that thick undergrowth on either side
of the drive—especially as he would be passing along it on his way
out? Don’t those points seem rather significant to you?”
“Well, perhaps it is a little curious, now you come to mention it.”
“A little curious!” Roger repeated disgustedly. “My dear chap, it’s
one of the most significant things we’ve struck yet. What’s the
inference? I don’t say it’s correct, by the way. But what _is_ the
inference?”
Alec pondered.
“That he was in a deuce of a hurry?”
“That he was in a deuce of a fiddlestick! He’d have gone on straight
down the drive if that is all. No! The inference to my way of thinking
is that he never was going down the drive at all.”
“Oh? Where was he going, then?”
“Back into the house again! Alec, it’s beginning to look as if that
Mysterious Stranger of ours may be going the same way as Mr. John
Prince.”