The Incredible Crime Read online

  Taking the right-hand fork, after passing through the little town, Prudence drove very slowly. Away to the left on the heath were strings of thoroughbreds, some being walked, some cantered. Already the academic feeling of the University was beginning to fade, and the feeling of the country-side, of long furrows made by the plough, of chickens scratching in a stubble field, of tired cart-horses going home o’ nights, was beginning to supersede it—the beech woods were all turned to a russet brown, mingling with the soft tints of the ploughed fields and the hedgerows.

  She ran into Bury St. Edmunds. But from here on her pace was slower. From straight roads and open country she came to curling lanes and the well-timbered country of mid-Suffolk. In comfortable time for lunch, Prudence was threading her way through the narrow streets of Ipswich to that excellent hostelry known as the “Great White Horse.” It is a fact that Charles Dickens visited this inn, and a pleasant fiction that Mr. Pickwick did so. Anyhow, in the jumble of rooms and passages upstairs, and the stone-paved courtyard (now covered in and used as a lounge) downstairs, it requires no great effort of imagination to see gentlemen of a former century moving about. The bar itself must be identical with the one at which Mr. Dickens took his ale after getting off the London coach. And “mottle complexioned, double-chinned, portly men” are still to be seen in plenty. Indeed, there is always a busy and varied company in this old inn.

  Miss Pinsent, well accustomed to the ways of the place, drove into the garage at the back, and finding her way into the hotel she proceeded to the grill-room. Here was a white-capped cook, standing in front of his grill, awaiting orders. Prudence chose a careful meal, and then while it was grilling, went upstairs to get a wash. Coming down again ten minutes later, she settled herself down comfortably at a table and looked slowly round the grill-room.

  How delightful the prospect of everything was, she thought; the holiday feeling about it all; the hunting she was going to have soon, the good hot meal, after a cold drive, that she was going to have at once, and always the same sort of company to eat it with, in the “Great White Horse.” So different from her Cambridge environment. Here was a table of business men, eagerly discussing some project; there was a stout, well-to-do farmer (if there is such a thing nowadays!) and his stout, well-to-do wife, eating in stolid silence; and there again, as sure as fate, over in a quiet corner by himself, a young man who somehow or other managed to have a flavour of salt water about him, though how it was done Prudence could never quite say. She knew, however, from experience that he was certainly living in a small boat on the Orwell, and had probably taken advantage of having to come into Ipswich to get something, to drop in at the “Great White Horse” and enjoy a really good hot meal. This sort is invariably very unobtrusive, and even furtive of expression—due, not as one might suppose, to a criminal past, but merely to the fact that he has not been able to shave! Prudence smiled to herself, as she observed all these familiar types, and then, just as she was beginning on her first mouthful of sizzling hot, juicy sausage, her eye fell on a distinguished-looking, grey-haired man in uniform, who came into the room.

  “Why, it can’t be—but it is—” And then aloud: “Why, it’s Harry Studde,” and Captain Studde turning round at that moment, the recognition was mutual.

  “Well,” said he, “this is delightful and unexpected—I don’t believe we’ve met for something like twenty years, and then to run across you in Ipswich in this way. Here, wait a moment, and I’ll get my meal moved and eat it at your table.”

  “Yes, this is quite delightful,” agreed Prudence. “And now I come to think of it, I did hear you had a coast-guard’s job somewhere on the East Coast, but I never realized that you came as far south as this.”

  “Yes, I do, though—worse luck!”

  “Why worse luck?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, and certainly not since it’s brought about meeting you. What brings you to these parts?”

  “I’m constantly this way,” said Prudence. “I have a cousin living hereabouts I have always been very fond of, and I go there for hunting.”

  “I have always been meaning to come over to Cambridge some time and look you up. How’s the Bishop?”

  Prudence replied.

  “What’s that you’re drinking?” Studde went on. “Draught Bass? It looks excellent.—I am tired and can just do with a good meal.”

  Harry Studde was a retired naval officer, a simple, straightforward gentleman, with a deal more shrewdness to him than his bluff, hearty manner might have led one to suppose. His father had been squire of the parish where Bishop Pinsent had once been parson, and he and Prudence had known each other as children. Studde’s brother was now squire, and he himself, with a rising family and a younger son’s portion, was glad when he retired from the Navy to get an Inspector of Coast Watchers job. After he had eaten a bit, and taken a good pull at his beer, Studde began again:

  “Yes, it seems only like the other day that we were all running wild together in the country. Now I’m a family man, and you, I suppose, are a person of some importance at Cambridge. The Bishop holds a big position there, doesn’t he, and I suppose you know all the dons and all their little foibles?”

  “Father is Head of a College, certainly,” admitted Prudence, “but as for the rest of your remark, the generic term ‘don’ applies, I suppose, to hundreds of men up at Cambridge, and I certainly don’t know them all, and still less ‘their little foibles.’”

  “Oh, well, but you know a good many of them? All the important ones, the professors?” hopefully.

  “I suppose I know most of the professors,” said Prudence doubtfully, “but certainly not all. But why this sudden interest in my academic friends?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am very much interested in your academic friends, but I haven’t made up my mind whether I will tell you why.”

  “You arouse my curiosity,” said Miss Pinsent, “and my sense of good manners compels me to inquire after your smuggling friends. I suppose you know them all, and their little foibles?”

  “It’s odd you should say that,” said Studde, suddenly giving her a keen look, “for I would give a good deal at this moment to know one of them, and his little foibles.”

  “Why, Harry, you don’t mean to say there is any smuggling done, do you?” said Prudence with surprise. “I was only joking when I referred to your smuggling friends.”

  “I do mean it, though, but talk of something else while the waiter comes.” The meat plates were changed, and the two friends settled down to an excellent Gorgonzola cheese; one could not, as Captain Studde said, eat a sweet with draught beer or after so excellent a grill.

  “And who,” said he to Prudence, as the waiter handed him the cheese, “is the cousin round about here with whom you so often stay?”

  “Round about here is a bit of a phrase, perhaps, since he’s about fifty miles off. His name is Ben Wellende, you may have heard of him?”

  Studde, who was helping himself to cheese at the moment, clumsily shot the contents of the dish on to the carpet. “Sorry, waiter, very stupid of me,” he said, rather breathlessly. “You’ll have to fetch us a fresh bit. Do you, by any chance, mean Lord Wellende, in Suffolk—I didn’t know you were relations.”

  “Oh, yes, we are cousins, and I have known him all my life and am very fond of him.”

  Captain Studde, thought Prudence, seemed more upset by the small accident than need be. He was rather red in the face and, curiously enough, a little breathless. Was it possible that something else had upset him? What were they talking of when it happened? Lord Wellende—that could have been nothing to distress him. They ate for a time in silence until Studde laid down his knife and said in a low voice: “Look here, Prudence, the chance circumstances of our meeting, for one thing, and the lines our conversation have run along, for another, are so odd—they look to me like Providence, and I am going to do a rash thing and take you into my conf
idence. I don’t like talking secrets with a woman, it’s d—d risky, they nearly always blab, but there—is there anywhere we can talk in private?”

  Prudence’s first impulse was to point out to him the unwisdom of belittling the trustworthiness of women in general, to the woman he apparently proposed to trust, but seeing how much in earnest he appeared, she refrained; besides which, she was really curious, and quite at sea as to what she was going to hear. How could possible smuggling be helped or hindered by her? So she contented herself by suggesting that they might find the comfortable lounge upstairs empty and go up there. On going through the downstairs lounge they ordered coffee.

  “Am I going to hear something startling, Harry?” said Prudence.

  “You are,” was the grave reply—“really startling.”

  “In that case,” said Miss Pinsent, “we’ll have liqueurs too.”

  They were in luck, the long lounge was empty, and they established themselves in front of a good fire. Studde shut the door after the waiter, and then came back slowly and stood in front of the fire, stirring his coffee.

  “You’ll understand better,” he said slowly, “when I have finished, why I have ever begun.” With a short laugh—“If you talk about what I am going to tell you, you will get me into grave trouble; I think you might help me a lot, but if you don’t feel you can, will you just hold your tongue about what I tell you? Can you promise me that, Prudence?”

  By now Prudence’s curiosity was thoroughly aroused, and she was prepared to promise almost anything to get it satisfied.

  “Do you remember,” went on Studde, “when we were children, and some of the elder ones took the peaches off the tree in our stable yard? And there was all that fuss, and you knew all the time and never spoke. You can’t have been more than ten years old. Well, it’s partly because I remember that, that I dare trust you now.”

  “Yes, I do remember, now you mention it,” said Prudence slowly. “I thought it rather shabby of them, not much better than outright stealing, but I don’t remember that it ever occurred to me as possible to give them away.”

  “No, that would be the child’s, a nice child’s point of view, but I hope now your sense of morality has changed.”

  There was a long pause, while Captain Studde pulled at his pipe, then he began again: “I dare say you know something of the history of smuggling, so much fiction has been written about it, and the fiction, or anyhow what I’ve read of it, is mainly true. They used to smuggle in gangs, and when the gangs began to get too big and strong for the preventive men to contend with, the coast-guards were started to assist the preventive men. Some families were smugglers generation after generation, and even used to intermarry with their same sort on the French side!—But the worst aspect of it all was that so many highly-placed people were in it, sub rosa. Why, there was a case not so very long ago of a hoard of schnapps in bottles being found under the altar of a little West-country church. Obviously the parson had been in the business, and his share of the swag had been hidden under the altar. One supposes the poor chap died and his secret with him. Eventually the gangs got broken up, preventive men and coast-guards together got too many for them. For various reasons smuggling ceased to be so feasible or profitable, and it more or less died out. Now it’s begun again—and in somewhat the same way.”

  “Go on, Harry,” said Prudence; “this is perfectly entrancing.”

  “It’s not entrancing, Prudence,” returned Studde soberly and sternly; “it’s puzzling—degrading—it’s worse—it’s rotten and bestial…They are landing drugs along this coast; they may be, probably are, bringing in a certain amount of silk, but I fancy, though I may be wrong, they would bring in bulky things at the larger ports. Anyhow, it is not with that I am concerned, it’s drugs I am on the track of.”

  “How do you ever know that drugs are being brought in? Have you caught any?”

  “I stopped some the other day, but not the stuff I was after. There are various things which make us suspicious, chiefly that the C.I.D. know that there is a perfectly awful stuff, which we will call for short XYZ (I can’t even remember its official name, though I’ve heard it), being circulated, which has no business here at all, and they say it is coming in from the East coast. I can’t really tell you, Prudence,” said Studde, getting up in his earnestness and standing over her as he spoke, “what an awful thing this drug is; they tell me its power is simply superhuman; taken in one way, it gives the most lovely sensations of peace and well-being, it stimulates the brain to an incredible extent, and then when after a short time he can’t give it up, it degrades a man into nothing more than a low, criminal beast. It ought never to exist.”

  “It sounds awful; I never somehow thought such things really could exist.”

  “They not only exist, they are among us; and I think, Prudence,” said Studde slowly and grimly, “friends of yours are handling that stuff.”

  “Good heavens, Harry!” exclaimed Miss Pinsent, sitting up in her chair and looking earnestly at him; “it would be idle to ask you to assure me that you are not joking—because I know by your manner that you are not—but do remember I am a respectable spinster, and be careful what you say to me; and my circle of friends are all that’s most learned and respectable in the kingdom. Here, you’ve given me such a shock, I think I’ll drink your liqueur brandy, which I see you haven’t touched; I’ve finished my own.”

  “All right,” said Studde grimly; “having drunk two liqueur brandies, I think you are now sufficiently fortified to withstand a further shock.”

  Prudence sank back into her chair with a weary sigh. “Well—if you won’t respect my age and infirmities, go on and do your worst.”

  Studde knocked the ashes out of his pipe, put it back into his mouth and began sucking it as he continued: “It’s quite impossible to watch a coast like this; there’s miles of seaboard where the marshes come with never a house anywhere in sight, and handy little creeks that a barge or boat can push up at high tide; it would require hundreds of men to patrol it, and we don’t really hope to stop the small stuff coming in except by a lucky accident—at least, that’s my view; it’s the distributing centres you have to get at for the drugs, and that’s the work of the C.I.D.”

  “Then,” said Prudence, “I don’t quite see where you come in.”

  “Ah,” said Harry Studde, “I come in because I rather hope I may have struck a lucky accident; and you come in, because the C.I.D. is saying the distributing centre is in Cambridge.”

  Chapter V

  There was a long pause. Studde sat forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on the fire, pulling at his empty pipe. Prudence sat up suddenly and gazed at him in speechless astonishment; it was absurd; only a few hours ago she had been breakfasting in the familiar dignified atmosphere of a College Lodge, watching the various members of the University going about on “their lawful occasions.” Now she was being asked to believe that among them was a criminal, a criminal of the very worst type, destroying the souls and bodies of men and women for the sake of filthy lucre, and it was no good to try and persuade herself that Studde was “pulling her leg”—he was sincere enough, even if he was mistaken. But what was that he had said? The C.I.D. knew the distributing centre was in Cambridge. At last she found her voice.

  “And you really mean me to understand that someone in the University, someone whom I probably know, is doing this dreadful thing?”

  “Yes,” said Studde solemnly; “someone, too, probably, in a good position; that is why I think it’s a hundred to one it’s someone you know; not a chemist, I should say, but just the last person in the world you would believe it of—that’s the person who is doing it. Has anyone you know lately come in for some money from an unexpected source?” he said after a pause. “Because—” here to his immense consternation he was interrupted by Miss Pinsent beginning to swear. For into her mind had leapt the memory of Thomas’s mysterious source
of money, which enabled him to buy expensive cars; and the insolent possibility of anyone really daring to suspect him even, made her quite unreasonably and furiously angry; she swore slowly, steadily, and ably for two solid minutes, never pausing for a word, and never, as far as Studde’s bewildered senses could tell him, repeating herself once. Then she stopped quite suddenly.

  “For the daughter of a bishop,” gasped Studde—“for the daughter of a bishop…I say, Prue, where did you learn it all—the daughter of a bishop?”

  “I feel better now,” said Miss Pinsent complacently; “you know I don’t care about being completely taken in, especially by an old ass like you, and you really had got me to believe you were in earnest. If you think I was swearing you were mistaken; I was merely quoting the classics to relieve my feelings.”

  “Oh, you were, were you?” said Studde, giving her a shrewd look; “well, there were parts certainly somewhat reminiscent of the Old Testament, but, by Jove, you’ve made me regret having missed a ‘classical education’ as I never did before. For the daughter of a bishop…there are some boatswains and sergeant-majors I know who would give a good deal to have your ability, and—it isn’t decent, Prudence!”

  “Look here, you’ve had no consideration for my parentage up to now—so you just leave it alone.”

  “The daughter of a bishop,” still repeated Studde helplessly to himself. “Do you know, if you don’t mind I think I will ring for a brandy; I feel I need something.”

  The bell was rung, the order given, and while the waiter was fetching it the two friends sat silent. When they were alone again, Studde began: “Now tell me something about some of the prominent people in the University. On the face of things, who are the most eminently respectable?”

  “I know who your man is,” said Prudence nastily; “he’s as good as condemned already—my father, a retired bishop and the Master of his College; what could you have more suspicious? He’s come in for a little more money, too, lately; it’s true he got it from a cousin, whose will can be seen in Somerset House, but don’t let that deter you.”