Vernon Loder - The Mystery at Stowe

His experience had led him to support a theory that there were five primary motives for murder—anger, jealousy, greed, robbery and hate—and this test he applies in turn to the suspects in order to discover that most baffling thing in a murder case: a motive. Who? How? Why? These are questions which confront Jim Carton—and our readers.

THE EDITOR

FROM THE ORIGINAL DETECTIVE STORY CLUB EDITION

November 1929

‘NED is full of vitality, and Margery hasn’t a backbone even the X-rays could detect,’ said Mrs Gailey, as she chalked her cue, and leaned over to take her shot. ‘That’s the trouble, I am sure, and if it wasn’t for (Oh! rotten miss! I put on far too much side)—I mean to say only for her sweet temper, there would have been a dog-fight before this.’

Mrs Gailey, a vivacious brunette of about twenty-six, was known to be summary in her judgments, and better at jumping to conclusions than negotiating fences in the hunting-field. Miss Sayers, with whom she was playing in the billiard-room at Stowe, strolled round the table to where her ball lay, her face wearing an expression of mild scepticism.

‘I don’t see why there should be a quarrel, and I can’t quite agree with you that she has a sweet temper,’ she remarked. ‘By the way, Netta, you’ve left me in a perfectly beastly lie under the cushion.’

She stabbed at the ball, and, by a marvellous fluke, effected a cannon. Mrs Gailey applauded ironically.

‘I never heard her say a cross word in my life,’ she observed.

Nelly Sayers played a losing hazard, and looked up when her ball rolled gently into the pocket. ‘That doesn’t prove anything either way. I don’t say she has a bad temper. I only say we can’t call it sweet till we know.’

‘Wait till you’re married,’ said Mrs Gailey, with a wise look, ‘you get different ideas of life.’

‘I expect you do. You married people think we are a positive danger to your dear husbands. We have even to be careful where we smile.’

‘You may smile at mine, when he comes down,’ said her companion, laughing, ‘but there is something in what you say. Margery is one of us, and we’re bound to look on Elaine Gurdon as a poacher.’

Nelly Sayers foozled an easy pot, and came round. ‘That strikes me as awfully silly. It isn’t Elaine’s fault that she is handsome, any more than it is yours.’

‘A thousand thanks,’ smiled Mrs Gailey, looking at her ball. ‘Go on! I like to hear that sort of thing.’

‘At any rate, she is jolly good-looking, and she has seen things and done things I should have funked.’

‘But she has no nerves, and she enjoys it. She wouldn’t be happy living all the year round in civilisation. If you enjoy anything there is no hardship in it.’

Miss Sayers sat down on the bank. ‘I don’t say there is. What I mean is this. She travels in all sorts of wild places, and has made one or two discoveries. But she hasn’t the cash to go on.’

‘I thought she wrote books?’

‘So she does, but I suppose they don’t make enough to keep her, and cover the expenses of travel as well.’

While she spoke, Mrs Gailey made twelve, and glanced up with a smile at the scoring-board, where apparently she only needed fifteen more for game.

‘She might go to her bank for it.’

Nelly Sayers shrugged. ‘Banks aren’t too generous. In any case, Ned Tollard is only financing her expedition for the fun of the thing. He’s interested in South America. Isn’t he a director of the Paraguayan railway?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so. But it sounds odd, and I know, if my husband spent half the day consulting a woman like Elaine Gurdon about maps and routes, and things of that kind, I should feel pretty hot about it. That’s why I say she has a sweet temper. She never says a word, but sometimes I have caught her looking at Ned in a sad way.’

Nelly Sayers made six, and broke down. Mrs Gailey took her cue, deciding to risk the pot which would take her out.

‘I expect she is like me. She doesn’t think there is much in it.’

‘Perhaps not. Oh! I’ve done it. That makes game, and I’m going into the garden. Coming?’

‘No, thanks, I must write a letter.’

The house of Stowe, at which they were both staying for a week, had once belonged to a family more noted for warlike fame than wealth. Unlike the builders of the famous house of the same name, they never rose to be great lords or mighty men in the world. Stowe itself was really a very large manor-house, and the family had only parted with it in the nineties, when it had passed into the hands of Mr Magus, a miser and recluse, on whose death it had been sold to the present occupier, Mr Barley.

Mr Barley was fat, and fat-pursed. Rumour had it that he was extremely vulgar, but he was in reality a good-natured man who had not enjoyed a decent education, and was well aware of it. By sedulous cultivation he had picked up all his aitches, and learned to swallow those unnecessary ones that occasionally rose to his lips. He liked society, and though he never ranged in the higher branches, he was able to fill his house with decent people of the upper middle-classes, who could enjoy his hospitality without feeling or showing too open scorn for the humble upbringing of their host. Some of the younger guests did indeed call him ‘Old Barley,’ but most of them liked him, and some were not averse from accepting the tips he gave them with regard to finance.

At the moment when Mrs Gailey and Miss Sayers were playing a game of billiards, the house had only a few guests. Chief among them was Elaine Gurdon. Single, handsome, known as the heroine of an expedition into the wilds of Patagonia, and an enterprise which had penetrated the Chaco, she was sufficiently famous to secure a pretty regular place in the photographic galleries of the illustrated weeklies, and the chairmanship of gatherings at women’s clubs, when travel was the topic.

Associated with her, occasionally in scandal of an ill-natured kind, which had originated in his offer to finance her next trip, was Edward Tollard. He was thirty years of age, a vital, good-looking fellow, fond of exercise and all open-air sports, and a junior partner in a banking firm. He came of a family that had enjoyed money for several generations, a kin that was neither bookish nor artistic, and his marriage, three years before, to Margery the daughter of Gellis, the impressionist artist, had surprised most of his friends.

Those who set store by Old Masters said that Margery was a Botticelli come to life; others said she had never really come to life at all. She was pretty, in a pale way, with very fair hair, blue eyes, a sensitive mouth, a long oval face. She looked excessively fragile, though she was rarely ill, and was in every way a strong contrast to her athletic husband.

There were also in the house, the two billiard players; a Mr and Mrs Head, who were inseparable, and had only one thought between them—bridge. Last came Ortho Haine, a young fellow who was much nicer than his unusual Christian name; and a little old lady reputed cousin to Mr Barley, called Minever. Mrs Gailey’s husband was coming down for the week-end with several other people.

It is perhaps the fate of Botticellis come to life to look reproachful in a gentle way. That set of countenance in Margery Tollard, combined with the fact that her husband was proposing to finance Elaine Gurdon’s next trip into the wilds, had given rise to gossip.

Margery did not hunt, or go out with the guns in the season; she did not care for walking, or yachting, or games. Her function in life was ornamental. She pleased the artists, and made sportsmen furious. This necessarily made a kind of breach between her and her husband, not an open breach it seemed. But, as he needed exercise and enjoyed it, there were a good many days when they were apart.