The Incredible Crime Read online

  “It wouldn’t never do, miss,” said Mary earnestly. “I have tried to say something about the doctor, but his lordship is very touchy on the subject. ’E would never, never take it that ’is own cousin was—was—” Here Mary began to sob afresh.

  “Mary,” said Prudence firmly, “if you are thinking that the doctor is making any attempt on his lordship’s life, you are quite wrong. I think I know what it is he is trying to do, and though it’s very wrong and must be stopped, it’s nothing like that. Now do you realize what I am saying? It wouldn’t suit the doctor at all if anything were to happen to his lordship.”

  “Yes, miss,” mopping her eyes and stopping crying, “it’s no end of a relief just to have told you.”

  Prudence thought for a bit, then she asked: “Was Woodcock about that day, when that load of wood came?”

  “Yes, miss; at least I didn’t actually see him, but he’s always there when a load comes up; he has to do with all the wood that comes into the house.”

  “Did you see the doctor speak to him at all?”

  “No, miss; I shouldn’t have been in the way to see it even if he had, but Woodcock’s all right, miss—he’d do anything for his lordship.”

  Yes, thought Prudence, but that would not necessarily prevent him from being ready to do a bit more for himself. Was this really, she wondered, the trouble that Captain Studde had warned her of? Was it possible that Doctor Temple and Woodcock were getting drugs through this way, under the cover of Wellende’s position? What was to prevent a motor-boat from Holland or Belgium meeting one of Lord Wellende’s barges of wood at sea and passing them the drug which they bring up the river? Then Dr. Temple comes to stay and gets it. Prudence thought he would have been as much as eighteen years old when the quarrel took place; he might have remembered the way about the old house. What a diabolical plan! And how hard for an outsider to spot! In the ordinary way one could go out and in at the mouth of the river without any interference; in fact, there was very seldom a soul about, it was all lonely marsh country, except for a few cottages where, Prudence vaguely thought, coast-guards had once lived. Studde had just been telling her that this sort of thing was going on for certain, and that he suspected Woodcock of doing something he shouldn’t behind his master’s back. How she wished she could go straight to Ben and tell him everything; but she had promised Studde, so she could not. On the other hand, she couldn’t go to Studde and tell him; if it was true, it was too serious, and she would not care about bringing disgrace on so near a relation of Ben’s. If it was all a mare’s nest, she would have made a fool of herself, and that was what Miss Pinsent would have disliked most of all.

  She looked reflectively at Mary. Now that she had eased her mind of the burden she carried alone, and put it on another’s shoulders, Mary seemed to have ceased to worry. Either because she had always been in a dependent position, and Prudence was one “of the family,” or else because she was really old, and Prudence was so much younger; now that the responsibility was no longer hers, it didn’t even seem to occur to Mary to ask Prudence what she thought the meaning of all this was. For this Prudence was devoutly thankful.

  “His lordship was telling me,” said Prudence, after a long pause, “that the ghosts have been seen and heard again.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Is it possible,” said Prudence slowly, “that there can be any connection between the ghosts and this business we are talking of?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  Prudence looked at Mary with eager interest. Mary went on: “It was that very night the sounds were ’eard. It was only ’earsay on the part of the girls. I was the only one that saw,” grimly, “and I said nothing. Those silly girls sat up all night and then were late down in the morning, but I came down as usual, and the barge of wood was up against the house by six-thirty—that means she came up at night, and that, as you very well know, miss, means that either Woodcock or his lordship was aboard of her, and it wasn’t his lordship, so now I come to think of it, Woodcock must ha’ bin there, though I never see him.”

  Mary paused and thought.

  “But you said you saw something of the ghost,” said Prudence. “What did you see?”

  “It was like this,” said Mary. “One of those girls had woke up screaming because she heard sloppy footsteps round her bed and some water had been left on her face which hadn’t been there before, and well I could believe it of her,” bitterly, “as I told ’er—if ’er face was more used to water it would be the better for all of us.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Prudence impatiently, “but what of the ghost?”

  “She and the other girl that sleeps with her came screaming in to me, but I soon packed them off back again. There was some scuffling sounds, I thought. Anyhow, I looked out of my window before getting back to bed, and I had Snap in my arms; he’d not been well, and he was sleeping with me; and then I’m bothered if I didn’t see what looked like a dog tumble out of one of the cellar windows and go across just that corner of the lawn you can see from my window, and it wasn’t no ghost, for Snap saw it too and barked.”

  “How very odd,” said Prudence. “You mean the cellar window that’s only half underground?”

  “That’s it, miss, the one you can see from my bedroom window.”

  “Was the barge up by then?” said Prudence.

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say, miss. I can’t see the creek from my room.”

  Prudence thought for a little, then she said, “Did Snap actually bark or growl?”

  “Well…perhaps it was half and half…I think,” hesitatingly, “he may have begun with a growl and ended barking,” replied Mary.

  “The reason why I ask,” said Prudence, “is that dogs do see the supernatural more, I think, than humans, and if it had been anything of that sort I fancy he would have growled more than barked. Did he seem much frightened?”

  “I couldn’t really say, miss,” said Mary, somewhat vaguely, for she hadn’t the least idea what Miss Pinsent meant by the “supernatural,” or what she was driving at. “His lordship sleeps so far off that, of course, he ’eard nothing at all. In the morning, when Mrs. Sims told him, ’e was much put about, and angry about it, and he’s locked up all the cellars and sent those silly girls to sleep in the attics of the other wing.”

  Chapter XI

  It was with very mixed feelings that Prudence joined her cousin for dinner. She had made up her mind that there was nothing she could do at present but keep her eyes open and her mouth shut. She found Lord Wellende spread in a comfortable arm-chair in front of the huge log fire in the hall. The hall was a large panelled room; a black and white stone floor was covered by fur rugs near the fire, and bits of old armour and pictures of bygone Temples decorated the walls. There was a bank of chrysanthemums in one corner and a bowl of violets scented the whole place. There were one or two electric bulbs burning against the walls, lighting up the pictures, but most of the light came from the log fire. A more comfortable and peaceful scene would have been hard to find.

  “Why, Prue, where on earth had you got to this afternoon? I looked for you everywhere.”

  “Well, I am ashamed to say I turned back. The two hours we hunted round and round those coverts were enough for me, and when the fox headed straight away from home…I, well, I shirked.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed it of you,” said her cousin with a smile, stretching his long legs and settling down more comfortably than ever into his chair.

  “You and Laura Heale simply don’t know what it means to be out of condition. I shall go all the better on Friday for having taken it easily to-day.”

  “You missed a jolly good run. We ran fast and without a check to Abel Lundy’s, there hounds were at fault for a moment or two, then away again over some plough in the direction of Sedgeford.”

  “How many were up by then?” interrupted Prudence.

  “Oh
, a dozen or two, I should think. I am glad to say I had young Lundy riding in front of me, and softening my fences for me. I have got to that time of life when I like to have ’em eased a bit. Lundy is a thruster, and a real good ’un to go.”

  “Yes,” said Prudence, “you always say young Lundy is so good across country, and there are few who can hold their own with him—largely because he’s the son of one of your own tenants, and you like him; but the Norshires, for instance, I have heard run him down; they say some other young farmer is far the best in the Wellende Hunt; so even among people who really do know, it all seems to boil down into a question of personal liking as to who rides straightest. Why, I have even heard one of your grooms maintain that ‘there is no one can ride across Suffolk like his lordship, when his lordship wants to go! ’”—with a laugh.

  Wellende laughed too; he certainly made no pretence now that he was forty of being in the first flight of thrusters.

  “It’s not as bad as that,” said he; “there’s no mistaking a really good man on a horse, of the class of Lundy, whether you like him or no; as for the groom, that was a bit of loyalty. He knows as well as I do, really, that I don’t go hard now; he isn’t going to admit it, that’s all.”

  The discussion about the day’s hunt went on through dinner.

  “What beats me,” said Prudence, “is how you masters of hounds can sit down and allow the fox to be headed so often as he is; that fox to-day would have broken covert long before he did, if he had had a chance; but you allow groups of people to go all round the covert and all talking and laughing, without any effort to stop them.”

  “We do try to stop it; what do you suppose I have a field-master for, besides myself?”

  “I am sure I have often wondered. I’ve never seen you herd all the field into one corner and keep them there till the fox has gone away; that would be the way to do it.”

  “My dear girl, this is a subscription hunt, and people would be furious if I did that kind of thing. If they moved about quietly without laughing and talking, they wouldn’t head the fox; and, after all, they all want him to break covert; no one wants to head him.”

  “They may not actually want to head him,” said Prudence, “but quite half the people who come out hunting are indifferent and even ignorant as to the real sport. All they think of is so many fences and a gallop; they neither know nor care anything about the real hunting.”

  “Yes,” agreed Wellende, “I suppose there are a large proportion like that; they ought to go out with drag-hounds, of course.”

  “Do you remember that Mrs. Cox who used to be down here? Came from the shires, I think, and had hunted all her life,” said Prudence.

  “Face like a hungry tiger, and lived at Rennsholt. Yes, I remember her,” said Wellende.

  “Well, one day,” said Prudence, “when for a wonder the whole field was boxed up in a lane, Mrs. Cox was near me, and she exclaimed: ‘Oh, I wish they would do something! How dull this is!’ and the hounds were making a cast by themselves in the next ploughed field; she could see it all, and it’s one of the prettiest sights in the world, but her eyes were blind through ignorance, and she never even looked at them. I didn’t make any comment,” said Miss Pinsent, pushing out her chin. “I really didn’t think she was worth it.”

  “That’s right, Prue,” laughed Wellende; “turn up your aristocratic nose at that sort. Anyhow, when all’s said and done, it was a d—d good fox that would take us for two hours round and round those coverts, and then make a six-mile point.”

  “If you’ll excuse me speaking, your lordship,” said Dunning, “but I am of opinion that it was a fresh fox you went away on, because Mr. Woodcock and I was standing together, and we saw the hunted fox heading back for the dyke.”

  “Get out with you, Dunning,” said his lordship good-temperedly; “the fox you saw had been routed out along with the other; there were two on the move, but we went away on the right one.”

  After dinner the cousins moved into the smoking-room.

  “What comfort this is!” said Prudence, as she took a sip of her benedictine and a whiff at her cigarette. She looked across at her cousin; his pleasant, well-bred face, burnt by continual exposure to all weathers, with an expression of peaceful satisfaction; his thoughts still obviously running on the good hunt he had enjoyed that day. It was wildly impossible to think anyone wanted to take this man’s life!

  He was just one of those you would say hadn’t an enemy in the world. Other things, however, were possible.

  “Ben,” she suddenly said, “I rode home with Laura Heale. She told me Professor Temple had been staying here. I was surprised.”

  As she spoke, Wellende’s expression changed completely. Prudence didn’t feel sure if it was caution, or merely that there was no expression at all on his face as he answered:

  “Yes, I am glad to say he has taken to coming here again. It’s high time he should, and he seems to like it.”

  Prudence was longing to ask him what the cause of the quarrel had been, but Lord Wellende was not the sort of person with whom one took liberties, nor, for that matter, was Miss Pinsent the sort of person to take them. The fear that the quarrel might have been something very personal kept her silent.

  “Laura Heale fell very foul of him,” she said instead; “she really thinks he is mad because he didn’t know what the Trinity beagles hunt, and she was very indignant with him for presuming to contradict you about distemper among dogs.”

  Wellende chuckled. “Yes, they didn’t hit it off very well. Francis told me after, he had found old Laura an uninteresting specimen—‘her information is limited, her understanding mean; I should diagnose her as neither male nor female.’”

  “What a shame!” laughed Prudence.

  Here Dunning came in to ask if there were any more orders, and to bring in two old-fashioned bedroom candlesticks, a habit still kept up, in spite of the electric light. When they were alone again she began:

  “Ben, I want a long day out in the motor-boat. I thought I would go the day after to-morrow.”

  “Yes, that would do very well if it’s fine, as I happen to be shooting away from home that day.”

  “I don’t mind about the weather,” said Prudence, “except fog—I do bar that—but a good blow or rain I simply enjoy.”

  Wellende looked at her contemplatively. “I believe there’s a lot of our buccaneering ancestors left in you, Prue, though I can’t imagine anyone who looks less like it. I believe you’d love to ‘run’ a cargo still, and you’d never be suspected of it.”

  Prudence coloured, and remarked with some constraint that of course the time for that sort of thing was long over.

  Wellende did not reply; he sat back in his chair, crossed his legs, and pulled at his pipe. “You can have Stevens with you, only you must let him know to-morrow.”

  “Oh, Ben, you know quite well I hate having anyone with me; it would take away all the pleasure. I like a long day quite alone.”

  “Yes, I know you do, but I don’t half like your doing it. Stevens really wouldn’t be in your way.”

  “Yes, he would; he would just spoil everything.”

  “A wilful woman…” began Lord Wellende.

  “Yes, yes, she must have her way, so you’d better give up the contest.”

  “All right,” replied he, “only don’t blame me if you’re drowned.”

  “I won’t, dear,” said Prudence.

  Chapter XII

  Next afternoon, as the cousins were walking home down the avenue after a visit to the kennels, Wellende informed Prudence that he would be out that evening duck-shooting. There was fog hanging about over the marshes, the cattle were standing knee-deep in it; some sea-gulls came screeching by overhead, hidden by the mist, and as he spoke there came the sound of a foghorn out to sea.

  “There’s the Outer Gabbard braying, and the Shipwash has
been bleating all day; it’s evidently thick out to sea, and it’s getting thick here; you’ll never see enough to shoot, will you?”

  “It may lift,” replied Wellende, “and if it does there’s a good moon, and there’s a flight of widgeon on the river I particularly want a go at.”

  Prudence thought for a bit. “Do you take Woodcock with you, duck-shooting?”

  “No,” said he, “I go alone with my spaniel.” And so it came about that Prudence spent the evening alone. It was one of those rare evenings at Wellende when there was no wind; it had come up thick, as Prudence had foretold, and the absolute silence and stillness round the house was only broken by the faint sounds of the foghorns on the far distant lightships at sea. If ever there was an unsuitable evening for duck-shooting it was to-night, she thought, and wondered at Ben’s considering it worth trying.

  Dunning had been in with one candle which he had put down for her. She was just considering whether she would read or work, when she heard a scuffle; it seemed so nearly under her chair that she leapt from it with a stifled scream, and gathering her petticoats tight round her, she climbed on to the writing-table. From this safe position she peered anxiously into the dark corners of the room. Another scuffle, from another direction, and a thud, and Miss Pinsent realized with relief that it was rats under the floor. She descended from the table, but it had shaken her nerve, and she decided to take her candle and go and finish her reading by her own bedroom fire. The rats at Wellende seemed to be getting worse.

  The heavily engraven “coat” of the Temples on the candlestick she carried set her mind off in another direction. Yes, her forbears on her mother’s side must have had some stirring times in this very same house, and she wondered as she went slowly up the stairs how many of the faces that were looking down at her had smuggled. Probably all of them. There had been a secret stairway to the cellars from the house somewhere, but Ben always said it was filled up a hundred years ago when smuggling ceased, and he had never been very ready to talk about it; said he didn’t know where it was, and as Prudence undressed she began to wonder if it could possibly have been opened again, and in use; but anyhow, she decided, it couldn’t possibly be used by anyone without Ben’s knowledge.