night: ‘Mr. George Coppett? The Ferns speaking. It’s all out’ and I
rang off. I thought George would quit. George will be worrying quite
a lot. So that’s that.”
“Yes, you have your uses, Fortune,” said Lomas. “I’ve noticed it
before.”
Reggie Fortune fumbled in his pocket and drew out the magic stone.
“Tetherdown said he would like me to have it. Cut him to the heart to
give it up, poor old boy. Told me it saved his life.” He smiled. “I
don’t care for its methods, myself. Better put it back in a glass
case, Lomas.”
“What did Melitta give you?”
“Melitta is rather a dear,” said Mr. Fortune.
CASE V
THE SNOWBALL BURGLARY
A TELEGRAM was brought to Mr. Fortune. It announced that the woman
whom his ingenuity convicted of the Winstanton murder had confessed
it in prison just after the Home Secretary decided not to hang her.
Mr. Fortune sighed satisfaction and took his hostess in to dinner.
He was staying in a Devonshire country house for mental repairs. This
is not much like him, for save on visits of duty country houses
seldom receive him. The conversation of the county, he complains, is
too great a strain upon his intellect. Also, he has no interest in
killing creatures, except professionally. But the output of crime had
been large that winter and the task of keeping Scotland Yard
straight, laborious; and he sought relief with Colonel Beach at
Cranston Regis. For Tom Beach, once in the first flight of hunting
men, having married a young wife, put central heat and electric light
into a remote Tudor manor house, and retired there to grow iris and
poultry. Neither poultry nor young wives allured Reggie Fortune, but
gardens he loves, and his own iris were not satisfying him.
So he sat by Alice Beach at her table, and while her talk flowed on
like the brook in the poem, while he wondered why men marry, since
their bachelor dinners are better eating, surveyed with mild eyes her
and her guests. Tom Beach had probably been unable to help marrying
her, she was so pink and white and round, her eyes so shy and
innocent. She was one of those women who make it instantly clear to
men that they exist to be married, and Tom Beach has always done his
duty. “But she’s not such a fool as she looks,” Reggie had pronounced.
With pity if not sympathy he glanced down the table at Tom Beach,
that large, red, honest man who sat doing his best between dignity
and impudence, dignity in the awful person of Mrs. Faulks and the
mighty pretty impudence of his wife’s sister, Sally Winslow. Mrs.
Faulks has been described as one who could never be caught bending,
or a model of the art of the corset. She is spare, she is straight;
and few have seen her exhibit interest in anything but other people’s
incomes, which she always distrusts. A correct woman, but for a habit
of wearing too many jewels.
What she was doing in Tom Beach’s genial house was plain enough. Her
son had brought her to inspect Sally Winslow, as a man brings a vet
to the horse he fancies. But it was not plain why Alexander Faulks
fancied Sally Winslow. Imagine a bulldog after a butterfly. But
bulldogs have a sense of humour. Sally Winslow is a wisp of a
creature who has no respect for anyone, even herself. Under her
bright bobbed hair, indeed, is the daintiest colour; but when some
fellow said she had the face of a fairy, a woman suggested the face
of a fairy’s maid. She listened to Alexander’s heavy talk and watched
him in a fearful fascination, but sometimes she shot a glance across
the table where a little man with a curly head and a roguish eye was
eating his dinner demurely. His worst enemies never said that Captain
Bunny Cosdon’s manners were bad.
Now you know them all. When they made up a four for bridge, upon
which Mrs. Faulks always insists, it was inevitable that Reggie
Fortune should stand out, for his simple mind declines to grasp the
principles of cards. Alexander Faulks in his masterful way directed
Sally to the table; and scared, but submissive, she sat down and
giggled nervously. Reggie found himself left to his hostess and
Captain Cosdon. They seemed determined to entertain him and he sighed
and listened.
So he says. He is emphatic that he did not go to sleep. But the study
of the events of that evening which afterwards became necessary,
makes it clear that a long time passed before Alice Beach was saying
the first thing that he remembers. “Did you ever know a perfect
crime, Mr. Fortune?”
Mr. Fortune then sat up, as he records, and took notice.
Captain Cosdon burst out laughing, and departed, humming a stave of
“Meet me to-night in Dreamland.”
Mr. Fortune gazed at his hostess. He had not supposed that she could
say anything so sensible. “Most crimes are perfect,” he said.
“But how horrible! I should hate to be murdered and know there wasn’t
a clue who did it.”
“Oh, there’ll be a clue all right,” Reggie assured her.
“Are you sure? And will you promise to catch my murderer, Mr.
Fortune?”
“Well, you know,” he considered her round amiable face, “if you were
murdered it would be a case of art for art’s sake. That’s very rare.
I was speakin’ scientifically. A perfect crime is a complete series
of cause and effect. Where you have that, there’s always a clue,
there is always evidence, and when you get to work on it the unknown
quantities come out. Yes. Most crimes are perfect. But you must allow
for chance. Sometimes the criminal is an idiot. That’s a nuisance.
Sometimes he has a streak of luck and the crime is damaged before we
find it, something has been washed out, a bit of it has been lost.
It’s the imperfect crimes that give trouble.”
“But how fascinating!”
“Oh, Lord, no,” said Mr. Fortune.
The bridge-players were getting up. Sally Winslow was announcing that
she had lost all but honour. Mrs. Faulks wore a ruthless smile. Sally
went off to bed.
“Oh, Mrs. Faulks,” her sister cried, “do come! Mr. Fortune is
lecturing on crime.”
“Really. How very interesting,” said Mrs. Faulks, and transfixed
Reggie with an icy stare.
“The perfect criminal in one lesson,” Alice Beach laughed. “I feel a
frightful character already. All you want is luck, you know. Or else
Mr. Fortune catches you every time.”
“I say, you know, Alice,” her husband protested.
A scream rang out. Alice stopped laughing. The little company looked
at each other. “Where was that?” Tom Beach muttered.
“Not in the house, Colonel,” Faulks said. “Certainly not in the
house.”
Tom Beach was making for the window when all the lights went out.
Alice gave a cry. The shrill voice of Mrs. Faulks arose to say,
“Really!” Colonel Beach could be heard swearing. “Don’t let us get
excited,” said Faulks. Reggie Fortune struck a match.
“Excited be damned,” said Tom Beach, and rang the bell.
Reggie Fortune, holding his match aloft, made for the door and opened
it. The hall was dark, too.
“Oh, Lord, it’s the main fuse blown out!” Tom Beach groaned.
“Or something has happened in your little power station,” said Reggie
Fortune cheerfully, and his host snorted. For the electricity at
Cranston Regis comes from turbines on the stream which used to fill
the Tudor fish-ponds, and Colonel Beach loves his machinery like a
mother.
He shouted to the butler to bring candles, and out of the dark the
voice of the butler was heard apologizing. He roared to the
chauffeur, who was his engineer, to put in a new fuse. “It’s not the
fuse, Colonel,” came a startled voice, “there’s no juice.”
Colonel Beach swore the more. “Run down to the powerhouse, confound
you. Where the devil are those candles?”
The butler was very sorry, sir, the butler was coming, sir.
“Really!” said Mrs. Faulks in the dark, for Reggie had grown tired of
striking matches. “Most inconvenient.” So in the dark they waited. . .
And again they heard a scream. It was certainly in the house this
time, it came from upstairs, it was in the voice of Sally Winslow.
Reggie Fortune felt some one bump against him, and knew by the weight
it was Faulks. Reggie struck another match, and saw him vanish into
the darkness above as he called, “Miss Winslow, Miss Winslow!”
There was the sound of a scuffle and a thud. Colonel Beach stormed
upstairs. A placid voice spoke out of the dark at Reggie’s ear, “I
say, what’s up with the jolly old house?” The butler arrived
quivering with a candle in each hand and a bodyguard of
candle-bearing satellites, and showed him the smiling face of Captain
Cosdon.
From above Colonel Beach roared for lights. “The C.O. sounds peeved,”
said Captain Cosdon. “Someone’s for it, what?”
They took the butler’s candles and ran up, discovering with the light
Mr. Faulks holding his face together. “Hallo, hallo! Dirty work at
the crossroads, what? Why---- Sally! Good God!”
On the floor of the passage Sally Winslow lay like a child asleep,
one frail bare arm flung up above her head.
“Look at that. Fortune,” Tom Beach cried. “Damned scoundrels!”
“Hold the candle,” said Reggie Fortune; but as he knelt beside her
the electric light came on again.
“Great Jimmy!” Captain Cosdon exclaimed. “Who did that?”
“Don’t play the fool, Bunny,” Tom Beach growled. “What have they done
to her, Fortune?”
Reggie’s plump, capable hands were moving upon the girl delicately.
“Knocked her out,” he said, and stared down at her, and rubbed his
chin.
“Who? What? How?” Cosdon cried. “Hallo, Faulks, what’s your trouble?
Who hit you?”
“How on earth should I know,” Faulks mumbled, still feeling his face
as he peered at the girl. “When Miss Winslow screamed, I ran up. It
was dark, of course. Some men caught hold of me. I struck out and
they set on me. I was knocked down. I wish you would look at my eye,
Fortune.”
Reggie was looking at Sally, whose face had begun to twitch.
“Your eye will be a merry colour to-morrow,” Cosdon assured him. “But
who hit Sally?”
“It was the fellows who set upon me, I suppose, of course; they were
attacking her when I rescued her.”
“Stout fellow,” said Cosdon. “How many were there?”
“Quite a number. Quite. How can I possibly tell? It was dark. Quite a
number.”
Sally tried to sneeze and failed, opened her eyes and murmured, “The
light, the light.” She saw the men about her and began to laugh
hysterically.
“Good God, the scoundrels may be in the house still,” cried Tom
Beach. “Come on, Cosdon.”
“I should say so,” said Captain Cosdon, but he lingered over Sally.
“All right now?” he asked anxiously.
“Oh, Bunny,” she choked in her laughter. “Yes, yes, I’m all right.
Oh, Mr. Fortune, what is it? Oh, poor Mr. Faulks, what has happened?”
“Just so,” said Reggie. He picked her up and walked off with her to
her bedroom.
“Oh, you are strong,” she said, not coquetting, but in honest
surprise, like a child.
Reggie laughed. “There’s nothing of you,” and he laid her down on her
bed. “Well, what about it?”
“I feel all muzzy.”
“That’ll pass off,” said Reggie cheerfully. “Do you know what hit
you?”
“No. Isn’t it horrid? It was all dark, you know. There’s no end of a
bruise,” she felt behind her ear and made a face.
“I know, I know,” Reggie murmured sympathetically. “And how did it
all begin?”
“Why, I came up to bed, Mr. Fortune--heavens, there may be a man in
here now!” she raised herself.
“Yes, we’d better clear that up,” said Reggie, and looked under the
bed and opened the wardrobe and thrust into her dresses and turned
back to her. “No luck, Miss Winslow.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” she sank down again. “You see, I came up and
put the light on, of course, and there was a man at the window there.
Then I screamed.”
“The first scream,” Reggie murmured.
“And then the lights went out. I ran away and tumbled over that chair
and then out into the passage. I kept bumping into things and it was
horrid. And then--oh, somebody caught hold of me and I screamed----”
“The second scream,” Reggie murmured.
“I was sort of flung about. There were men there fighting in the
dark. Horrid. Hitting all round me, you know. And then--oh, well, I
suppose I stopped one, didn’t I?”
There was a tap at the door. “May I come in, doctor?” said Alice
Beach.
“Oh, Alice, have they caught anyone?”
“Not a creature. Isn’t it awful? Oh, Sally, you poor darling,” her
sister embraced her. “What a shame! Is it bad?”
“I’m all muddled. And jolly sore.”
“My dear! It is too bad it should be you. Oh, Mr. Fortune, what did
happen?”
“Some fellow knocked her out. She’ll be all right in the morning. But
keep her quiet and get her off to sleep.” He went to the window. It
was open and the curtains blowing in the wind. He looked out. A
ladder stood against the wall. “And that’s that. Yes. Put her to bed,
Mrs. Beach.”
Outside in the passage he found Captain Cosdon waiting. “I say,
Fortune, is she much hurt?”
“She’s taken a good hard knock. She’s not made for it. But she’ll be
all right.”
“Sally! Oh damn,” said Cosdon.
“Did you catch anybody?”
“Napoo. All clear. The Colonel’s going round to see if they got away
with anything. And Faulks wants you to look at his poor eye.”
“Nothing of yours gone?”
Cosdon laughed. “No. But I’m not exactly the burglar’s friend, don’t
you know? My family jewels wouldn’t please the haughty crook. I say,
it’s a queer stunt. Ever been in one like it?”
“I don’t think it went according to plan,” said Reggie Fortune.
He came down and found Faulks with an eye dwindling behind a bruise
of many colours, arguing with an agitated butler that the house must
contain arnica. Before he could give the attention which Mr. Faulks
imperiously demanded, the parade voice of the Colonel rang through
the house. “Fortune, come up here!”
Tom Beach stood in the study where he writes the biographies of his
poultry and his iris. There also are kept the cups, medals and other
silver with which shows reward their beauty. “Look at that!” he
cried, with a tragic gesture. The black pedestals of the cups, the
velvet cases of the medals stood empty.
“Great Jimmy!” said Captain Cosdon in awe.
“Well, that’s very thorough,” said Reggie. “And the next thing,
please.”
Colonel Beach said it was a damned outrage. He also supposed that the
fellows had stripped the whole place. And he bounced out.
Reggie went to his own room. He had nothing which could be stolen but
his brushes, and they were not gone. He looked out of the window. In
the cold March moonlight he saw two men moving hither and thither,
and recognized one for his chauffeur and factotum Sam, and shouted.
“Nothing doing, sir,” Sam called back. “Clean getaway.”
Reggie went downstairs to the smoking-room. He was stretched in a
chair consuming soda-water and a large cigar when there broke upon
him in a wave of chattering Tom Beach and Alice and Captain Cosdon.
“Oh, Mr. Fortune, is this a perfect crime?” Alice laughed.
Reggie shook his head. “I’m afraid it had an accident in its youth.
The crime that took the wrong turning.”
“How do you mean, Fortune?” Tom Beach frowned. “It’s deuced awkward.”
“Awkward is the word,” Reggie agreed. “What’s gone, Colonel?”
“Well, there’s my pots, you know. And Alice has lost a set of cameos
she had in her dressing-room.”
“Pigs!” said Alice with conviction.
“And Mrs. Faulks says they’ve taken that big ruby brooch she was
wearing before dinner. You know it.”
“It’s one of the things I could bear not to know,” Reggie murmured.
“Nothing else?”
“She says she doesn’t know, she’s too upset to be sure. I say,
Fortune, this is a jolly business for me.”
“My dear chap!”
“She’s gone to bed fuming. Faulks is in a sweet state too.”
“What’s he lost?”
“Only his eye,” Cosdon chuckled.
“That’s the lot, then? Nice little bag, but rather on the small side.
Yes, it didn’t go according to plan.”
“Oh, Mr. Fortune, what are you going to do?”
“Do?” said Reggie reproachfully. “I? Where’s the nearest policeman?”
“Why, here,” Alice pointed at him.
“Cranston Abbas,” said Tom Beach, “and he’s only a yokel. Village
constable, don’t you know.”
“Yes, you are rather remote, Colonel. What is there about you that
brings the wily cracksman down here?”
“Mrs. Faulks!” Alice cried. “That woman must travel with a jeweller’s
shop. There’s a chance for you, Mr. Fortune. Get her rubies back and
you’ll win her heart.”
“Jewelled in fifteen holes. I’d be afraid of burglars. Mrs. Beach,
you’re frivolous, and the Colonel’s going to burst into tears. Will
anyone tell me what did happen? We were all in the drawing-room--no.
Where were you, Cosdon?”
“Writing letters here, old thing.”
“Quite so. And the servants?”
“All in the servants’ hall at supper!” Colonel Beach said. “They are
all right.”
“Quite. Miss Winslow went upstairs and saw a man at her window.
There’s a ladder at it. She screamed and the lights went out. Why?”
“The rascals got at the powerhouse. Baker found the main switch off.”
“Then they knew their way about here. Have you sacked any servant
lately? Had any strange workman in the place? No? Yet the
intelligence work was very sound. Well, in the darkness Miss Winslow
tumbled out into the passage and was grabbed and screamed, and the
brave Faulks ran upstairs and took a black eye, and Miss Winslow took
the count, and when we arrived there wasn’t a burglar in sight. Yes,
there was some luck about.”
“Not for Sally,” said her sister.
“No,” said Reggie thoughtfully. “No, but there was a lot of luck
going.” He surveyed them through his cigar smoke with a bland smile.
“What do you think I ought to do, Fortune?” said Tom Beach.
“Go to bed,” said Reggie. “What’s the time? Time runs on, doesn’t it?
Yes, go to bed.”
“Oh, but, Mr. Fortune, you are disappointing,” Alice Beach cried.
“I am. I notice it every day. It’s my only vice.”
“I do think you might be interested!”
“A poor crime, but her own,” Captain Cosdon chuckled. “It’s no good,
Mrs. Beach. It don’t appeal to the master mind.”
“You know, Fortune, it’s devilish awkward,” the Colonel protested.
“I’m sorry. But what can we do? You might call up your village
policeman. He’s four miles off, and I dare say he needs exercise. You
might telephone to Thorton and say you have been burgled, and will
they please watch some road or other for some one or other with a bag
of silver and a set of cameos and a ruby brooch. It doesn’t sound
helpful, does it?”
“It sounds damned silly.”
“But I thought you’d find clues, Mr. Fortune,” Alice Beach cried,
“all sorts of clues, finger-prints and foot-prints and----”
“And tell us the crime was done by a retired sergeant-cook with pink
hair and a cast in the eye,” Cosdon grinned.
“You see, I’ve no imagination,” said Reggie, sadly.
“Confound you, Cosdon, it isn’t a joke,” Colonel Beach cried.
“No, I don’t think it’s a joke,” Reggie agreed.
“One of your perfect crimes, Mr. Fortune?”
“Well, I was sayin’--you have to allow for chance. There was a lot of
luck about.”
“What are you thinking of?”
“The time, Mrs. Beach. Yes, the flight of time. We’d better go to
bed.”
But he did not go to bed. He stirred the fire in his bedroom and
composed himself by it. The affair annoyed him. He did not want to be
bothered by work and his mind insisted on working. Something like
this. “Philosophically time is an illusion. ‘Time travels in divers
paces with divers persons.’ Highly divers, yes. Time is the trouble,
Colonel. Why was there such a long time between the first scream and
the second scream? Sally tumbled down. Sally was fumbling in the
dark: but it don’t take many minutes to get from her room to the
stairs. She took as long as it took the chauffeur to run to the
powerhouse. He started some while after the first scream, he had
found what was wrong and put the light on again within a minute of
the second. Too much time for Sally--and too little. How did Sally’s
burglars get off so quick? Faulks ran up at the second scream. The
rest of us were there next minute. They were there to hit Faulks.
When we came, we saw no one, heard no one and found no one.” He shook
his head at the firelight. “And yet Sally’s rather a dear. I wonder.
No, it didn’t go according to plan. But I don’t like it, my child. It
don’t look pretty.”
He sat up. Somebody was moving in the corridor. He went to his table
for an electric torch, slid silently across the room, flung open the
door and flashed on the light. He caught a glimpse of legs vanishing
round a corner, legs which were crawling, a man’s legs. A door was
closed stealthily.
Reggie swept the light along the floor. It fell at last on some spots
of candle grease dropped where the fallen Sally was examined.
Thereabouts the legs had been. He moved the light to and fro. Close
by stood an old oak settle. He swept the light about it, saw
something beneath it flash and picked up Mrs. Faulks’s big ruby
brooch.
The early morning, which he does not love, found him in the garden.
There under Sally’s window the ladder still stood. “That came from
the potting sheds, sir,” his factotum Sam told him. “Matter of a
hundred yards.” Together they went over the path and away to the
little powerhouse by the stream. The ground was still hard from the
night frost.
“Not a trace,” Reggie murmured. “Well, well. Seen anybody about this
morning, Sam?”
“This morning, sir?” Sam stared. “Not a soul.”
“Have a look,” said Reggie and went in shivering.
He was met by the butler who said nervously that Colonel Beach had
been asking for him and would like to see him in the study. There he
found not only Colonel Beach but Mrs. Beach and Sally and Captain
Cosdon, a distressful company. It was plain that Mrs. Beach had been
crying. Sally was on the brink. Cosdon looked like a naughty boy
uncertain of his doom. But the Colonel was tragic, the Colonel was
taking things very hard.
Reggie Fortune beamed upon them. “Morning, morning. Up already, Miss
Winslow? How’s the head?”
Sally tried to say something and gulped. Tom Beach broke out: “Sorry
to trouble you, Fortune. It’s an infernal shame dragging you into
this business.” He glared at his wife, and she wilted.
“My dear Colonel, it’s my job,” Reggie protested cheerfully, and
edged towards the fire which the Colonel screened.
“I’m awfully sorry, Colonel. I’m the one to blame,” Cosdon said.
“It’s all my fault, don’t you know.”
“I don’t know whose fault it isn’t. I know it’s a most ghastly mess.”
“It’s just like a snowball,” Alice laughed hysterically. “Our
snowball burglary.”
“Snowball?” the Colonel roared at her.
“Oh, Tom, you know. When you want subscriptions and have a snowball
where every one has to get some one else to subscribe. I thought of
it and I brought in Sally and Sally brought in Bunny and then Mr.
Faulks came in--poor Mr. Faulks--and then Mrs. Faulks got into it and
her rubies.”
“And now we’re all in it, up to the neck.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s very lucid,” said Reggie. “But a little confusing
to an outsider. My brain’s rather torpid, you know. I only want to
get on the fire.” He obtained the central position and sighed
happily. “Well now, the workin’ hypothesis is that there were no
burglars. Somebody thought it would be interesting to put up a
perfect crime. For the benefit of the guileless expert.”
They were stricken by a new spasm of dismay. They stared at him.
“Yes, you always knew it was a fake,” Cosdon cried. “I guessed that
last night when you kept talking about the time.”
“Well, I thought a little anxiety would be good for you. Even the
expert has his feelings.”
“It was horrid of us, Mr. Fortune,” Sally cried. “But it wasn’t only
meant for you.”
“Oh, don’t discourage me.”
“It was all my fault, Mr. Fortune.” Alice put in her claim and looked
at him ruefully and then began to laugh. “But you did seem so
bored----”
“Oh, no, no, no. Only my placid nature. Well now, to begin at the
beginning. Somebody thought it would be a merry jest to have me on.
That was you, Mrs. Beach. For your kindly interest, I thank you.”
Mrs. Beach again showed signs of weeping.
“Please don’t be horrid, Mr. Fortune,” said Sally, fervently.
“I’m trying to be fascinating. But you see I’m so respectable. You
unnerve me.”
“I thought of a burglary,” said Mrs. Beach, choking sobs. “And I
asked Sally to do it.”
“And she did--all for my sake. Well, one never knows,” Reggie sighed,
and looked sentimental.
“It wasn’t you,” said Sally. “I wanted to shock Mr. Faulks.”
“Dear, dear. I shouldn’t wonder if you have.”
“Oh!” Sally shuddered. “That man is on my nerves. He simply follows
me about. He scares me. When I found he’d got Tom to ask him here
I----”
“Yes, of course, it’s my fault,” Tom Beach cried. “I knew it would
come round to that.”