The Night of the Storm

Chapter I.—The Crime-3

He paused a long moment to marshal his facts in their proper order, and then resumed his tale. “Some things, at any rate, seemed perfectly obvious to us. A murder had been committed with a .22 bullet and a rifle of that calibre had been taken from the hall of the Priory not long before the murder had been done. Presumably, therefore, the murder had been carried out with that rifle. Then the murderer had been seen running in the direction of the Priory, and not two minutes later someone had been heard to enter there. Therefore, again, we can presume it was the murderer who had gone in, and if the rifle had not been returned to its place, then undoubtedly it had been thrown away so as not to impede the murderer's flight.” He smiled. “All justified deductions, were they not?”

The Inspectors nodded and he continued. “So we started to search for that rifle, and we found it in less than a couple of minutes”—his voice hardened grimly—“at the very spot where the murderer had been passing when the old gardener, seeing the running figure, had shouted to him or her to stop, and as I have already told you among a clump of rhododendrons.”

“And after the rain, no fingermarks of course, on it?” asked Carter.

“Not a sign of one, for it was muddied all over,” replied the Superintendent. He lent forward over his desk. “Now comes an interesting point, for the rifle, being a light one, to a running man it would have been of small impediment, but”—he spoke very slowly—“to a woman, and especially to one of slight physique, such as all these three girls, carrying it in flight would certainly have been a handicap.”

“And you thought at once of these sisters!” suggested Stone.

“Of course I did,” replied the Superintendent instantly, “and I went straight up to the house to have a talk with them. The butler opened the door, and his jaw dropped and he looked darned scared the moment he set eyes upon me. ‘Found that rifle?’ I asked with no preliminaries. ‘No-o,’ he stammered, ‘and no one knows any thing about it.’ ‘Good,’ I said, ‘and now don't you forget about those noises you heard in this hall after the clicking of this door.’ ‘No, no,’ he exclaimed at once, some firmness coming into his voice. ‘I made a mistake last night, and it has come back to me now that the sounds I heard were footsteps upon the gravel outside, and they were not in here at all.’”

He paused and made a gesture of contempt. “But I took no notice of his denial and, asking where the young ladies were, was informed that they were just finishing breakfast in the morning room. So I ordered him to announce me, and, intending to give him no opportunity to warn them, followed straight upon his heels. Detective Jennings came with me.”

“But didn't the butler want to go and ask the girls, first, if it were convenient to them to see you?” asked Inspector Carter.

“Of course he did,” replied the Superintendent. “He didn't want me to follow him. But I waved him on angrily and he shuffled before me with the gait of a very frightened man. Well the three girls were standing talking by the window when he opened the door”—he frowned here and shook his head—“and the instant I set eyes upon them, I confess quite frankly that I didn't feel quite so sure one of them had shot the man. They looked so dainty and such perfect ladies and there was an air of refinement about them that I couldn't well associate with crime. They are women——”

“Yes, of course they are women,” Interrupted Stone testily, “and being women, at your time of life you ought to know you can never judge by appearance what they will or will not do. A woman in a fury or a passion is much nearer to the savage than we men are and I've seen——”

“Never mind what you've seen, Charlie,” broke in Inspector Carter rudely, “everyone knows you've seen a lot that you ought not to have seen but you needn't tell us about it now, for it's not to the point.” He waved to the Superintendent. “Go on Bill. Take no notice of him.”

The eyes of the burly Stone twinkled good-humoredly, but he subsided into silence and the Superintendent went on.

“Well, I can tell you I didn't beat about the bush, and after I'd told them who I was, I went straight to the point. ‘One of you young ladies,’ I said sharply, ‘came into the hall just after half-past ten last night,’ I eyed them very sternly. ‘Now which one of you was it?’ They all went white as chalk, and for a few seconds looked at one another bewilderedly. Then the eldest, Miss Beatrice, said very quietly, but with a choke in her voice. ‘None of us. We were all in bed by half-past nine!’ ‘That not true,’ I said. ‘The gardener saw one of you running by the rhododendrons, and your butler heard whoever it was, not two minutes after, creep into the hall here.’ Then I raised my hand accusingly and went on: ‘One of you killed your agent; you shot him with that rifle you took from the hall. You——’”

“One moment,” said Stone. “Did they go white before you said a word to them—before you had spoken at all?”

“No but they all looked very agitated, as if the way I had come into the room was upsetting to them.”

“But did they know then what the gardener had seen?” went on the stout Inspector.

The Superintendent frowned. “Yes, unfortunately, for as I have said, the butler had been over to the gardener, very early, to tell him all that had happened during the night, and then, in turn the gardener had told his story, and back had come Chime to the house and informed the young ladies.”

“But when they had first learnt that the man had been murdered?” asked Stone.

“The eldest one had learnt it a few minutes after we had gone the previous night, because Dr. Athol, taking the housekeeper home with him—he had decided he dare not leave her in the bungalow with the body there—had called at the Priory in passing and made the butler go and fetch Miss Beatrice. Then he had broken the news to her and the first thing in the morning, so she says, she told her sisters.”

“Then if one of these girls was the killer,” remarked Carter, “she was prepared to meet you with an expression of innocence, when you appeared!”

“Yes, unhappily she not taken by surprise as far as the knowledge of the agent's death and the gardener's story were concerned”—the Superintendent nodded grimly—“but she was undoubtedly deuced surprised to be confronted with an accusation of murder so speedily, for when I entered the room no one in the Priory was aware that the old General's rifle had been picked up among the rhododendrons.”

“Well, go on,” said Stone. “How did they take it when you accused them point blank?” asked Carter.

“They gasped and went more ghastly than ever. Lady Mentone gave a little cry and dropped into an armchair as if she were going to faint, and Beatrice rushed and put her arms round her. Then the third one, Eva, from pallor turned to a flaming red and stamping her feet, but without raising her voice, turned on me like a tigress and exclaimed furiously. ‘You fool! You senseless fool!’”

“It looked the real thing, as if they were very surprised?” queried Stone.

“Very much like it,” frowned the Superintendent, “and then in a few moments they had all, so to speak, recovered themselves and were lashing in to me as if I were trying to blackmail them. Oh, yes, the breeding came out right enough then, for they had got their tempers well under control. They became now sarcastic and icily cold. ‘Where's your proof that it was one of us?’ they kept asking. ‘What motive could we have had?’ ‘Why should we have wanted to harm him?’ and adding that Toller was a valuable employee of theirs.” He looked scornful. “Employee! mind you, to rub it in that he was only a servant. They all denied, too, that they had touched the rifle. Then I asked them if any one of them could bear witness as to where any other of them was after ten, and they reiterated they had said good-night to one another and were in their separate rooms by half-past nine.”

The Superintendent mopped his forehead with his pocket handkerchief, as if he were still thinking of the gruelling nature of the interview, and then went on. “I could get nothing out of them. As I say, I was up against a blank wall, and so with the intimation that they must practically consider themselves as prisoners, and and extracting from each a solemn promise she would not go beyond the Priory grounds, I left them and went to have another talk with the butler. In the hall, however, I met this Dr. Athol who had just arrived to see Lady Mentone, as a patient. As I have told you, she had overtired herself at the ball and he was apprehensive about her.”

“But did he tell you that straightaway?” asked Stone.

“No, but when I told him how the girls had come to be under the gravest suspicion”—the Superintendent nodded viciously—“I tell you I made no secret of it, he looked very disturbed and said any bad shock might have very serious consequences for Lady Mentone. Then when, in reply to his questioning, I informed him how the girls had taken the accusation, he said that as a medical man, whose special study up to his coming to Stratford St. Mary less than a year previously, had been nervous diseases, in his opinion it was quite impossible for anyone of their temperaments to have committed any such crime and not be hysterical and absolutely prostrated after it. He was convinced that if any one of them were really a murderess, then her mental state would be so noticeable that it would be patent to anyone.”

“And without having seen any of these girls I don't agree with him,” growled Carter. “Why, I knew a woman once, a fragile little flower of a thing, whom it turned out later had been the party to kill her husband with an axe, and who, when we called in not a couple of hours after she had committed the crime, choked back her sobs to make us a cup of tea. I have also known——”

“Never mind what you have also known, Elias,” interrupted Stone with a grin, and evidently remembering the snub he had received a few minutes previously. “You've known a great deal too much in your time for the peace of mind of your missus if anyone only told her.” He turned to the Superintendent. “Go on, Bill!”

“Then I returned to that precious butler again,” went on the Superintendent disgustedly, “and at once was of opinion that he'd been listening at the keyhole when I was questioning those girls, and was heartened at the way they had denied everything, for he now swore most confidently to his tale about the footsteps on the gravelled drive. I was pretty sharp with him, but I couldn't shake him, and he began to get impudent and finally stated he wasn't going to suppress facts to please anyone. I gave him up at last and went back to the bungalow. We——”

“One moment, please,” interrupted Stone. “Had the body been taken away by then?”

“Yes, we had brought an ambulance along with us that morning, as well as our own surgeon and our photographer; the latter is also a fingerprint expert.”