The Chief Constable
As Stenness picked his way through the convolutions of the Maze, his
face showed that his mind was at work on some puzzling problem.
“Things haven’t worked out quite according to plan,” he commented to
himself as he walked along. “I’ve missed that train, now; and I may as
well see the business through on the spot. If only I’d aimed for the
earlier train, I might have pulled it off.”
His frown of annoyance faded out suddenly, as a new idea crossed his
mind.
“Perhaps it’s all for the best after all. I never thought of that
point. Nobody can swear to it: and it leaves me absolutely on
velvet—safer than ever.”
His face cleared completely as he considered the fresh situation which
had presented itself.
“This is worth a dozen of the other notion. All I have to do now is to
sit tight and keep a straight face.”
The secretary soon reached the outskirts of the Maze. Then, taking up
a position which commanded the road to the East Gate, he sat down on
the grass and waited the arrival of the police.
Before long, a motor-horn sounded, and he rose to his feet as a big
car came tearing up the narrow private road. In the front seats were
two civilians, whilst the back held three uniformed policemen. Long
before the motor reached him, Stenness had recognised the man at the
wheel as the owner of a neighbouring estate.
“That’s Wendover of Talgarth Grange. I wonder what he’s doing here.”
Going out into the roadway, the secretary signalled them to stop and
the long car drew up as it came level with him. Wendover jumped down
from the driving seat and came forward while the others were getting
out of the motor.
“Sad business, this, Stenness! Terrible affair! Is poor Shandon really
dead? Why, I saw him yesterday, poor chap.”
Stenness was watching the remainder of the party, and he noticed that
there had been a dog in the car. It was now fawning on the second
civilian, evidently delighted to get out of its cramped quarters in
the motor. Stenness turned back to his interlocutor.
“It’s worse than we supposed when I telephoned. Two of the Shandons
have been murdered in the Maze, here.”
He nodded in the direction of the high green hedges.
Wendover was completely taken aback.
“Two of them! My godfathers! Here, Clinton!” he called to the second
civilian. “Terrible business, this. There’s been a second murder.”
Then, as the man with the dog came up to them, Wendover turned back to
the secretary.
“This is the Chief Constable, Sir Clinton Driffield. Clinton, this is
Mr. Stenness; secretary to Roger Shandon.”
Stenness examined the Chief Constable with what seemed more than
common interest. Sir Clinton was a slight man who looked about
thirty-five. His sun-tanned face, the firm mouth under the
close-clipped moustache, the beautifully-kept teeth and hands, might
have attracted a second glance in a crowd; but to counter this there
was deliberate ordinariness about his appearance. Had a stranger,
meeting him casually, been asked later on to describe him, it would
have been difficult; for Sir Clinton designedly refrained from
anything characteristic in his dress. Only his eyes failed to fit in
with the rest of his conventional appearance; and even them he had
disciplined as far as possible. Normally, they had a bored expression;
but at times the mask slipped aside and betrayed the activity of the
brain behind them. When fixed on a man they gave a curious impression
as though they saw, not the physical exterior of the subject, but
instead the real personality concealed below the facial lineaments.
“A second case? H’m! You seem to be starting a wholesale trade at
Whistlefield, Mr. Stenness.”
Stenness was not impressed by the cheerfulness of the tone. He had
felt those keen eyes sweep over him; and though it had been anything
but a stare, he had the sensation of being appraised and catalogued
for future reference. He disliked the turn of the Chief Constable’s
phrase, too. Whether intentionally or not, it seemed to verge on the
macabre.
“What about starting, eh?” Wendover demanded. “Get on the track while
the scent’s hot, Clinton? Every minute may count, you know.”
Sir Clinton assented with a nod and snapped his fingers to call his
dog to heel.
“Suppose you show us the bodies, Mr. Stenness.”
Without replying, Stenness led the way into the Maze, followed closely
by the whole party. The Chief Constable scanned the corridors as he
passed along, but made no comment. Wendover evidently felt that some
explanation of his presence was due, for as they traversed the alleys
he overtook the secretary.
“Curious coincidence, this, Stenness. Sir Clinton’s a friend of mine,
and he happened to be staying with me just now for a few days. Most
fortunate affair! When you ’phoned down to the police station, they
rang him up at once at the Grange. I got out the car, of course; and
we picked up the constables at the station as we passed. Couldn’t have
been better planned, could it?”
Then, passing to a new line of thought, he added:
“Terrible affair for the family! Dreadful business! It’ll be a
frightful shock for Miss Hawkhurst, won’t it?”
Before Stenness could reply, they came to the entrance of one of the
centres of the Maze. The secretary turned to the Chief Constable.
“This is what they call the Pool of Narcissus, Sir Clinton. We found
Neville Shandon’s body here. Roger Shandon’s body is lying in the
other centre of the Maze.”
Sir Clinton nodded without replying, took off his hat, and entered the
enclosure. The body lay just as Stenness had seen it last; and the
Chief Constable made no attempt to touch it, though he subjected it to
a most minute inspection.
“I forgot to tell you,” whispered Wendover. “We ’phoned for a doctor
to come and examine the body. He’ll be here very soon.”
The Chief Constable rose lightly to his feet.
“Two or three small wounds, apparently; but not much bleeding. Once
the doctor’s overhauled him, we can make a fuller examination. In the
meantime things had better be left as they are. Will you take us to
the other body now, Mr. Stenness?”
Leaving one of the constables on guard over the corpse, the party made
its way, under Stenness’s guidance, to the second centre of the Maze.
On the road, Wendover gave Stenness some further information.
“Most fortunate that Driffield was on the spot, wasn’t it? He’ll get
to the bottom of things quick enough; trust him for that. He used to
be out in South Africa; a big post in the police there. Then he came
home for family reasons and dropped into the Chief Constableship here.
Much too good a man for the place, you know; but it gives him enough
to keep him busy. By the way, he knew something about Roger Shandon
out at the Cape.”
“I believe Shandon made part of his money there,” Stenness volunteered
in confirmation.
As they entered Helen’s Bower, Stenness saw a momentary upward twitch
of Sir Clinton’s eyebrows as his glance lighted on the stranger whom
they had encountered in the Maze.
“Ah! Mr. Timothy Costock?”
The captive showed much more surprise.
“Why, it’s Driffield, so it is! Well, if that isn’t the damnedest
luck. There’s no keepin’ out o’ the way o’ you busies, it seems. But
you’re on the wrong track this shot. I never laid a finger on this
fellow.”
He indicated Roger Shandon’s body as he spoke.
“Nobody’s accused you of laying a finger on him. Or of anything
else—yet,” said Sir Clinton, curtly. “I’ll listen to your story later
on. Don’t waste time elaborating it. You’ll find the plain truth’s
best. This is more serious than illicit diamond buying.”
He paused for an instant, then continued:
“Now I think of it, you were Shandon’s cat’s paw that time I got my
hands on you at Kimberley.”
Then, as Costock opened his mouth in protest, Sir Clinton cut him
short abruptly:
“I’d keep my mouth shut, if I were you. Nobody’s asking you to
incriminate yourself.”
The hint was sufficient for the ex-I.D.B. expert. His protest died on
his lips. Sir Clinton paid no further attention to him, but set about
a careful examination of the body of Roger Shandon. As he rose to his
feet again, Stenness came forward.
“This is Mr. Howard Torrance, Sir Clinton, a guest at the house. He
was in the Maze at the moment when the murder was done. Torrance, this
is the Chief Constable.”
He turned to the gardener.
“This is Skene, Sir Clinton, one of the gardeners on the estate. He
came with me here as soon as we learned what had happened.”
Sir Clinton nodded a brief appreciation of Stenness’s explanations.
The secretary had wasted no words over the business, and yet had given
all the information necessary at the moment.
Howard Torrance, thus brought to the front, seized the opportunity
offered to him.
“Some darts here. Skene found them at the foot of the hedge. Lid of a
tin box was lying beside them as well.”
Sir Clinton picked up the lid and inspected the tiny missiles which
had been collected.
“Air-gun darts, evidently,” he commented.
Characteristically enough, he did not call attention to the equally
obvious fact that they were not ordinary air-gun darts. The woollen
feathering, instead of showing the usual gaudy colours, was stained
brown; and a rusty powder seemed to cling to the fibre. A tiny patch
of the same pigment showed on the metal jackets of the darts, near the
points. Sir Clinton put the collection down again carefully.
“Now, Skene,” he said, turning to the gardener, “that was a good piece
of work of yours. Can you show me exactly where you found these
things?”
Obviously delighted with the Chief Constable’s compliment, Skene was
only too ready to indicate the precise position where he had picked up
the darts and the box-lid.
“You got the lot, I suppose? At least all you could see from here?”
Howard Torrance, watching the Chief Constable, was surprised to see
that his eyes, instead of searching the ground, seemed to be ranging
over the surface of the hedge; and when Skene answered the question,
Sir Clinton’s thoughts appeared to be elsewhere. He turned to
Stenness.
“Can you take us to the other side of this hedge at that point?”
Stenness led the way once more into the Maze; and Sir Clinton found
that quite a considerable distance had to be traversed before they
reached the required position.
“This is the place?” he inquired, as Stenness came to a halt. “That’s
clear enough,” he added, as he stooped to pick something from the side
of the path. When he held it out, they recognised it as the bottom of
the tin box of which the lid had already been found. Sir Clinton
turned to the constables.
“Hunt about and see if you can find any more of these darts. You
mustn’t miss a single one, remember. And handle them carefully.
They’re deadly things, evidently.”
Then, as Stenness and Howard Torrance showed signs of joining in the
search, the Chief Constable stopped them with a gesture.
“I think we’ll leave the officials to do the work,” he said with a
certain finality in his tone.
Again he appeared to be more interested in the hedge itself than in
the roots where more darts might be hidden; and after a moment or two
he went forward and seemed to peer closely into the greenery at one
particular point. When he stepped back again, Howard moved forward in
curiosity; and Sir Clinton made way for him. As he brought his eye to
the position in which he had seen the Chief Constable’s, he looked
into a concealed loop-hole. The twigs had been trimmed away to form a
tunnel, the ends of which had been left covered with a thin screen of
leafage; and a glance through the aperture showed that it bore
directly on the chair in which Roger Shandon had been killed.
But already Sir Clinton seemed to have lost interest in the matter. He
whistled; and the dog which had been left behind in Helen’s Bower came
running to him.
“Have a sniff,” he invited the animal, holding out to it the part of
the tin box which he still held in his hand. “Now see what you can
make of it.”
He turned to his companions.
“It’s a poor chance. Don’t blame the animal if it fails.”
Part of Sir Clinton’s character was revealed in the whimsical apology.
He was always noted for his loyalty to his subordinates and his
readiness to recognise the impossibility of some tasks. It was the
complement to his sternness when he had to deal with inefficiency.
“That’s right! Good dog! He’s on to something!” Wendover announced
unnecessarily.
The beast had apparently picked up some scent or other, for it hurried
off along the alleys, followed by Sir Clinton and the other three men.
The constables were left to their search among the hedge roots.
It was anything but a simple route along which the dog led them; for
it seemed to wind backwards and forwards almost at haphazard.
“Nobody who knew the Maze would have tried to get out this way,”
Stenness commented at last.
His remark was hardly needed; for already the dog had more than once
halted in the middle of an open alley and then retraced its course for
no obvious reason. It was Howard Torrance who saw the meaning of these
intricate tracings before the remainder of the party.
“Of course!” he explained. “The murderer didn’t go straight out of the
Maze immediately. Probably he found Miss Forrest and myself blocking
the road again and again as we wandered about. And he’d got to avoid
being seen by us. That’s why he had to turn and wind about like this.”
At last the dog led them to the edge of the Maze, passed out through
the iron gate, and went on eagerly across the grass. The track had
brought them to the river side of the labyrinth, where a tiny clump of
trees had been planted; and into this the dog plunged. A few paces
further on it halted for a moment at the foot of a tree.
“Perhaps he climbed that,” Wendover suggested, going up and examining
the trunk. “Look! There’s a faint mark here on the trunk, just about
the height that a man could reach with his foot.”
Sir Clinton examined the mark, which was very slight indeed. Then he
looked at the dog, which had set off in a fresh direction.
“I suppose he must have got tired of the view and come down again, in
that case. One usually does come down. One rarely climbs higher than
the top.”
He set off after the dog, which was now making for the road running
past the Maze. But here it seemed to go astray. It snuffed about with
the utmost eagerness, casting wider and wider in its attempt to
recapture the scent; but soon it was clear that it had lost the track.
Sir Clinton took it back to the tree once more and allowed it to start
afresh. This time he followed closely on its track; and his companions
noticed that he had pulled some paper from his pocket and was
scattering tiny fragments on the grass to mark the animal’s route. But
this attempt also ended in failure. Beyond the road, the trail seemed
to be lost.
“We may as well give it up,” Sir Clinton admitted. “One can’t expect
infallibility from a dumb animal.”
As he called the beast off, a motor-horn sounded, and they saw a car
coming from the direction of the house.
“That’s our doctor, I expect,” Sir Clinton surmised; and Stenness
confirmed the guess.
In a few minutes they had all made their way to Helen’s Bower, under
Stenness’s guidance. Once there, the doctor proposed to begin his
examination of the bodies; but the Chief Constable intervened.
“Just a moment, doctor. Before you shift anything, I want to take one
or two photographs. Nothing like a permanent record for future
reference.”
He took a case which one of the constables had carried and produced
from it one of the largest-sized Kodaks. Then, by the marks of the
feet in the grass, he replaced the overturned chair in its proper
position; and finally he marked the position of the loophole in the
hedge by means of a scrap of paper.
“I want something to give the scale,” he explained, at the last
moment. “Would you mind sitting in the chair, Mr. Stenness? And
perhaps you’d stand by the loophole, Mr. Torrance?”
He looked round the enclosure for an instant.
“And here, Costock, you get over into that corner. It’ll give some
notion of the distance.”
When they had placed themselves, he took several photographs from
various positions.
“Now, doctor, you can get to work if you like.”
The doctor made only a cursory examination.
“I think it would be best to shift the body up to the house. The
light’s not very good here, now the sun’s going down. Besides, I’ll
need to do more than I can do in this place.”
“There’s a second body waiting for you,” Sir Clinton explained. “We’ve
the whole thing to do over again.”
The doctor, a taciturn man, shrugged his shoulders without making any
audible comment and they made their way, guided by Stenness, to the
Pool of Narcissus. Sir Clinton gave some directions to his constables
and despatched the gardener to the house to bring down something on
which the bodies could be carried. Then the photographic procedure was
repeated; and the doctor made his examination of Neville Shandon’s
corpse.
“There must be a loophole in this hedge as well,” the Chief Constable
mused aloud, “but it’s not worth while hunting for it at present. It
won’t run away.”
The constables reported the discovery of several fresh darts which had
fallen either into the hedge itself or among the roots on the outer
side. Skene, it appeared, had secured all those on the inner border.
Sir Clinton counted the tiny projectiles carefully, dropped them into
the tin box, and put the box in his pocket.
“That’s eleven altogether. Go back and hunt for anything more. I must
have every one of these darts if you have to finish the search by
lamplight. Make absolutely certain that you miss nothing.”
Skene arrived shortly afterwards with two other gardeners carrying
hurdles; and the two bodies were transported to the cars and so
conveyed to the house. Two more constables had arrived, and these were
put under the guidance of Skene and given instructions to search the
whole of the Maze for anything suspicious.
When the bodies had been taken up to a bedroom, Sir Clinton and the
doctor carried out a minute examination. Each victim had been struck
by three darts. In the case of Neville Shandon, the wounds suggested
that the shots had been fired from the front and rather to one side.
Roger’s body, on the other hand, contained one dart imbedded in the
back of the neck, and two in the upper part of the rear surface
between the spine and the shoulder on the left side. Beyond the
punctures made by the darts, neither victim showed a trace of either
wound or struggle.
“Poison, obviously,” Sir Clinton concluded.
The doctor agreed, adding in confirmation:
“None of these darts came near a vital spot. Alone, they’d never have
killed a man.”
“Can you guess what poison was used?”
The doctor shook his head.
“Not my line. Some of these Indian arrow-poisons, perhaps. Ardsley
could tell you something about them, most likely.”
“Who’s Ardsley? Could one get hold of him quickly?”
“He lives less than a mile from here. He’s a medical; but he doesn’t
practise. Curiously enough, toxicology is his line, more or less. He’s
a bit of a physiologist, too. I know he has a vivisection licence. You
might do worse than look him up. He might be able to give you a hint.”
Sir Clinton looked thoughtful for a moment.
“What worries me is that a man can’t be in two places at once. I’m
going to take over this case myself, and there’s enough work on hand
in the next hour to keep two men busy. It’s time I’m up against at
present.”
The doctor, reflecting on the conflicting calls of a country Practice,
was inclined to think that Sir Clinton seemed to make a fuss about
very little.