The Crystal Beads Murder E-Book

Annie Haynes

• Herausgeber: Dean Street Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 384

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

"Early this morning a gruesome discovery was made by a gardener employed at Holford Hall in Loamshire..." Robert Saunderson's murdered body is found in the summer house at Lord Medchester's country mansion. Some crystal beads, broken off a necklace and found on the scene, form the primary clue. But where is the necklace, and whose could it be? Detective inspector Stoddart and his assistant Harbord have to unravel a mystery that cost two men their lives and destroyed the reputation of others. The Crystal Beads Murder, first published in 1930, was the last of the Inspector Stoddart mysteries, and Annie Haynes' final book overall. She died, after a long illness, before completing it and it was finished by an unknown friend and fellow writer. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans. "An uncommonly well-constructed tale…throughout the reader is kept continually on the 'qui vive'" Western Australian

Leseprobe

ANNIE HAYNESThe Crystal Beads Murder

“Early this morning a gruesome discovery was made by a gardener employed at Holford Hall in Loamshire...”

Robert Saunderson’s murdered body is found in the summer house at Lord Medchester’s country mansion. Some crystal beads, broken off a necklace and found on the scene, form the primary clue. But where is the necklace, and whose could it be?

Detective inspector Stoddart and his assistant Harbord have to unravel a mystery that cost two men their lives and destroyed the reputation of others.

The Crystal Beads Murder, first published in 1930, was the last of the Inspector Stoddart mysteries, and Annie Haynes’ final book overall. She died, after a long illness, before completing it and it was finished by an unknown friend and fellow writer. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

“An uncommonly well-constructed tale... throughout the reader is kept continually on the ‘qui vive’” Western Australian

The Mystery of the Missing Author Annie Haynes and Her Golden Age Detective Fiction

The psychological enigma of Agatha Christie’s notorious 1926 vanishing has continued to intrigue Golden Age mystery fans to the present day. The Queen of Crime’s eleven-day disappearing act is nothing, however, compared to the decades-long disappearance, in terms of public awareness, of between-the-wars mystery writer Annie Haynes (1865-1929), author of a series of detective novels published between 1923 and 1930 by Agatha Christie’s original English publisher, The Bodley Head. Haynes’s books went out of print in the early Thirties, not long after her death in 1929, and her reputation among classic detective fiction readers, high in her lifetime, did not so much decline as dematerialize. When, in 2013, I first wrote a piece about Annie Haynes’ work, I knew of only two other living persons besides myself who had read any of her books. Happily, Dean Street Press once again has come to the rescue of classic mystery fans seeking genre gems from the Golden Age, and is republishing all Haynes’ mystery novels. Now that her crime fiction is coming back into print, the question naturally arises: Who Was Annie Haynes? Solving the mystery of this forgotten author’s lost life has taken leg work by literary sleuths on two continents (my thanks for their assistance to Carl Woodings and Peter Harris).

Until recent research uncovered new information about Annie Haynes, almost nothing about her was publicly known besides the fact of her authorship of twelve mysteries during the Golden Age of detective fiction. Now we know that she led an altogether intriguing life, too soon cut short by disability and death, which took her from the isolation of the rural English Midlands in the nineteenth century to the cultural high life of Edwardian London. Haynes was born in 1865 in the Leicestershire town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the first child of ironmonger Edwin Haynes and Jane (Henderson) Haynes, daughter of Montgomery Henderson, longtime superintendent of the gardens at nearby Coleorton Hall, seat of the Beaumont baronets. After her father left his family, young Annie resided with her grandparents at the gardener’s cottage at Coleorton Hall, along with her mother and younger brother. Here Annie doubtlessly obtained an acquaintance with the ways of the country gentry that would serve her well in her career as a genre fiction writer.

We currently know nothing else of Annie Haynes’ life in Leicestershire, where she still resided (with her mother) in 1901, but by 1908, when Haynes was in her early forties, she was living in London with Ada Heather-Bigg (1855-1944) at the Heather-Bigg family home, located halfway between Paddington Station and Hyde Park at 14 Radnor Place, London. One of three daughters of Henry Heather-Bigg, a noted pioneer in the development of orthopedics and artificial limbs, Ada Heather-Bigg was a prominent Victorian and Edwardian era feminist and social reformer. In the 1911 British census entry for 14 Radnor Place, Heather-Bigg, a “philanthropist and journalist,” is listed as the head of the household and Annie Haynes, a “novelist,” as a “visitor,” but in fact Haynes would remain there with Ada Heather-Bigg until Haynes’ death in 1929.

Haynes’ relationship with Ada Heather-Bigg introduced the aspiring author to important social sets in England’s great metropolis. Though not a novelist herself, Heather-Bigg was an important figure in the city’s intellectual milieu, a well-connected feminist activist of great energy and passion who believed strongly in the idea of women attaining economic independence through remunerative employment. With Ada Heather-Bigg behind her, Annie Haynes’s writing career had powerful backing indeed. Although in the 1911 census Heather-Bigg listed Haynes’ occupation as “novelist,” it appears that Haynes did not publish any novels in book form prior to 1923, the year that saw the appearance of The Bungalow Mystery, which Haynes dedicated to Heather-Bigg. However, Haynes was a prolific producer of newspaper serial novels during the second decade of the twentieth century, penning such works as Lady Carew’s Secret, Footprints of Fate, A Pawn of Chance, The Manor Tragedy and many others.

Haynes’ twelve Golden Age mystery novels, which appeared in a tremendous burst of creative endeavor between 1923 and 1930, like the author’s serial novels retain, in stripped-down form, the emotionally heady air of the nineteenth-century triple-decker sensation novel, with genteel settings, shocking secrets, stormy passions and eternal love all at the fore, yet they also have the fleetness of Jazz Age detective fiction. Both in their social milieu and narrative pace Annie Haynes’ detective novels bear considerable resemblance to contemporary works by Agatha Christie; and it is interesting to note in this regard that Annie Haynes and Agatha Christie were the only female mystery writers published by The Bodley Head, one of the more notable English mystery imprints in the early Golden Age. “A very remarkable feature of recent detective fiction,” observed the Illustrated London News in 1923, “is the skill displayed by women in this branch of story-telling. Isabel Ostrander, Carolyn Wells, Annie Haynes and last, but very far from least, Agatha Christie, are contesting the laurels of Sherlock Holmes’ creator with a great spirit, ingenuity and success.” Since Ostrander and Wells were American authors, this left Annie Haynes, in the estimation of the Illustrated London News, as the main British female competitor to Agatha Christie. (Dorothy L. Sayers, who, like Haynes, published her debut mystery novel in 1923, goes unmentioned.) Similarly, in 1925 The Sketch wryly noted that “[t]ired men, trotting home at the end of an imperfect day, have been known to pop into the library and ask for an Annie Haynes. They have not made a mistake in the street number. It is not a cocktail they are asking for….”

Twenties critical opinion adjudged that Annie Haynes’ criminous concoctions held appeal not only for puzzle fiends impressed with the “considerable craftsmanship” of their plots (quoting from the Sunday Times review of The Bungalow Mystery), but also for more general readers attracted to their purely literary qualities. “Not only a crime story of merit, but also a novel which will interest readers to whom mystery for its own sake has little appeal,” avowed The Nation of Haynes’ The Secret of Greylands, while the New Statesman declared of The Witness on the Roof that “Miss Haynes has a sense of character; her people are vivid and not the usual puppets of detective fiction.” Similarly, the Bookman deemed the characters in Haynes’ The Abbey Court Murder “much truer to life than is the case in many sensational stories” and The Spectator concluded of The Crime at Tattenham Corner, “Excellent as a detective tale, the book also is a charming novel.”

Sadly, Haynes’ triumph as a detective novelist proved short lived. Around 1914, about the time of the outbreak of the Great War, Haynes had been stricken with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that left her in constant pain and hastened her death from heart failure in 1929, when she was only 63. Haynes wrote several of her detective novels on fine days in Kensington Gardens, where she was wheeled from 14 Radnor Place in a bath chair, but in her last years she was able only to travel from her bedroom to her study. All of this was an especially hard blow for a woman who had once been intensely energetic and quite physically active.

In a foreword to The Crystal Beads Murder, the second of Haynes’ two posthumously published mysteries, Ada Heather-Bigg noted that Haynes’ difficult daily physical struggle “was materially lightened by the warmth of friendships” with other authors and by the “sympathetic and friendly relations between her and her publishers.” In this latter instance Haynes’ experience rather differed from that of her sister Bodleian, Agatha Christie, who left The Bodley Head on account of what she deemed an iniquitous contract that took unjust advantage of a naive young author. Christie moved, along with her landmark detective novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), to Collins and never looked back, enjoying ever greater success with the passing years.

At the time Christie crossed over to Collins, Annie Haynes had only a few years of life left. After she died at 14 Radnor Place on 30 March 1929, it was reported in the press that “many people well-known in the literary world” attended the author’s funeral at St. Michaels and All Angels Church, Paddington, where her sermon was delivered by the eloquent vicar, Paul Nichols, brother of the writer Beverley Nichols and dedicatee of Haynes’ mystery novel The Master of the Priory; yet by the time of her companion Ada Heather-Bigg’s death in 1944, Haynes and her once highly-praised mysteries were forgotten. (Contrastingly, Ada Heather-Bigg’s name survives today in the University College of London’s Ada Heather-Bigg Prize in Economics.) Only three of Haynes’ novels were ever published in the United States, and she passed away less than a year before the formation of the Detection Club, missing any chance of being invited to join this august body of distinguished British detective novelists. Fortunately, we have today entered, when it comes to classic mystery, a period of rediscovery and revival, giving a reading audience a chance once again, after over eighty years, to savor the detective fiction fare of Annie Haynes. Bon appétit!

The Crystal Beads Murder

The Bodley Head published Annie Haynes’ detective novel The Crime at Tattenham Corner just three weeks before the author passed away, on 30 March 1929. Haynes’ death from heart failure at the age of 63 likely was not entirely unexpected to those who knew her, given her long illness. However, it presented the publishers with a dilemma. In addition to an eleventh mystery that Haynes had completed before her death (which, under the title Who Killed Charmian Karslake?, was published in the UK in the fall of 1929), there was an unfinished manuscript, which concerned a fatal shooting in a summer-house and a broken strand of crystal beads. Haynes at the time of her death having finished not quite fifteen manuscript chapters (about half the story), The Bodley Head was compelled, in order to have one last Annie Haynes mystery to put before her sizable reading public in 1930, to find a crime writer who could complete the book.

Haynes’ surviving companion, Ada Heather-Bigg, wrote a moving foreword to The Crystal Beads Murder, in which she discussed not only Haynes’ struggles against physical adversity but also the matter of the authorship of her final novel. “One of Miss Haynes’ friends, also a popular writer of this type of fiction, offered to undertake the work of completion,” Heather-Bigg explained, “and it says much for her skill that she has independently arrived at Miss Haynes’s own solution of the mystery, which was known only to myself.” This author friend has never been formally identified. Prominent English women detective novelists at the time of the completion of The Crystal Beads Murder in 1929-30 included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Beatrice Malleson), A. Fielding (Dorothy Feilding), Molly Thynne and Margaret Cole. Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers seem unlikely candidates, given that had either woman done the deed it would likely be known by now. However, there are certain clues to the mystery woman’s identity.

Stylistically, the use in the second half of the novel of the phrase “flotsam and jetsam” suggests to me that the author might be Lucy Beatrice Malleson (still at this time a relatively inexperienced crime writer), “flotsam and jetsam” being a term Malleson recurrently used in her fiction. After writing two non-series mysteries, published in 1925 and 1927 under the pseudonym J. Kilmeny Keith, Malleson launched her Anthony Gilbert pseudonym in 1927 with The Tragedy at Freyne. Remaining single all her life, Malleson wrote authoritatively about the lives of England’s so-called “superfluous women,” a subject that would have been of interest to Annie Haynes and Ada Heather-Bigg as well. My suggestion is conjectural, to be sure, yet whoever completed The Crystal Beads Murder, she made good work of her effort.

The novel opens with the orphaned Anne Courtenay being pressured by a debauched swine, William Saunderson, into acceptance of an unwanted marriage proposal. Her brother Harold Courtenay is in deep financial debt to Saunderson, a familiar presence in horseracing circles, though “[n]obody knew exactly who he was or where he came from.” For their part, the Courtenays are impecunious but well-connected socially, being cousins of Lord Medchester. Anne in fact is engaged to Lord Medchester’s horse trainer, Michael Burford, “second son of old Sir William Burford and half-brother of the present baronet”; but Saunderson has no intention of letting that fact stand in his way.

When Saunderson is found murdered in the summer-house of Holford Hall, Scotland Yard’s Detective-Inspector William Stoddart and his redoubtable assistant Alfred Harbord are called into the case by the Loamshire constabulary. They confront a sizeable cast of suspects, including Lord Medchester’s wife, Minnie, said to have had “a distinct penchant for Saunderson.” But what of the three white crystal beads, linked by a thin, gold chain, that Harbord finds in Saunderson’s overcoat pocket? Lady Medchester scoffs at the idea that she might have owned such a cheap trinket, “though so many people wear this sort of thing nowadays”; and Anne Courtenay produces for police inspection her own crystal bead necklace, quite unbroken. Just what are Stoddart and Harbord to make of the cryptic crystal beads?

Annie Haynes’ half of The Crystal Beads Murder is composed in the author’s best vein, with intriguing plot complications and interesting characters capturing the readers fancy. In Joseph Wilton, the “clean-looking, clean-shaven” Holford Hall gardener in “whole and tidy” working clothes who discovered Saunderson’s corpse in the summer-house, one glimpses sturdy Victorian-era Midlanders who worked for the author’s Scottish-born grandfather Montgomery Henderson, the highly-respected superintendent of the gardens at Coleorton Hall in Leicestershire. The novel’s summer-house crime setting also recalls England’s infamous Edwardian-era Luard murder case. Two decades previous to the composition of The Crystal Beads Murder, before her crippling rheumatoid arthritis made such activity unthinkable, Haynes had cycled some thirty miles from her home near Hyde Park in London to Ightham, Kent, to inspect “La Casa,” the summer-house where in 1908 Caroline Luard was found, like the fictional Robert Saunderson, slain by a single gunshot wound.

Haynes lived long enough to introduce the colorfully vulgar variety performer Tottie Delauney to readers of The Crystal Beads Murder, and she nearly completed the inquest scene in chapter fifteen. In the last eleven chapters of the novel, however, the keen Haynes reader may detect certain differences in narrative style, such as a comparatively greater reliance on authorial voice rather than dialogue. Nevertheless, the new author accurately deduced Haynes’s intended murderer, as Ada Heather-Bigg noted in her foreword to the novel, and she finished her challenging task quite creditably. Haynes’ final mystery is, as one reviewer noted, “uncommonly well-constructed”; and it stands as a fitting tribute to the career of a Golden Age mystery writer who overcame tragic physical limitation to achieve true distinction in her chosen form of fictional endeavor. “She wrote in pain, and kept her head clear,” admiringly observed the British writer and critic Charles Williams of Annie Haynes after her death: “could any genius ask a nobler epitaph.”

Curtis Evans

FOREWORD

This, the last of twelve mystery stories written by the late Annie Haynes – who died last year – was left unfinished. One of Miss Haynes’s friends, also a popular writer of this type of fiction, offered to undertake the work of completion, and it says much for her skill that she has independently arrived at Miss Haynes’s own solution of the mystery, which was known only to myself.

It is not generally known that for the last fifteen years of her life Miss Haynes was in constant pain and writing itself was a considerable effort. Her courage in facing her illness was remarkable, and the fact that she was handicapped not only by the pain but also by the helplessness of her malady greatly enhances the merit of her achievements. It was impossible for her to go out into the world for fresh material for her books, her only journeys being from her bedroom to her study. The enforced inaction was the harder to bear in her case, as before her illness she was extremely energetic. Her intense interest in crime and criminal psychology led her into the most varied activities, such as cycling miles to visit the scene of the Luard Murder, pushing her way into the cellar of 39 Hilldrop Crescent, where the remains of Belle Elmore were discovered, and attending the Crippen trial.

It would be a dark and sombre picture if it were not mentioned how this struggle with cruel circumstances was materially lightened by the warmth of friendships existing between Miss Haynes and her fellow authors and by the sympathetic and friendly relations between her and her publishers.

Ada Heather-Bigg, 1930

CHAPTER 1

“My hat! Nan, I tell you it is the chance of a lifetime. Battledore is a dead cert. Old Tim Ranger says he is the best colt he ever had in his stable. Masterman gave a thousand guineas for him as a yearling. He’d have won the Derby in a canter if he had been entered.”

“It is easy to say that when he wasn’t, isn’t it?” Anne Courtenay smiled. “Don’t put too much on, Harold. You can’t afford to lose, you know.”

“Lose! I tell you I can’t lose,” her brother returned hotly. His face was flushed, the hand that held his card was trembling. “Battledore must win. My bottom dollar’s on him. Minnie Medchester has mortgaged her dress allowance for a year to back him. Oh, Battledore’s a wonder colt.”

“What is a wonder colt – Battledore, I suppose?” a suave voice interposed at this juncture. “Mind what you are doing, Harold. Best hedge a bit. I hear Goldfoot is expected. Anyway, the stable is on him for all it’s worth.”

“So is Ranger’s on Battledore. Old Tim Ranger says it is all over bar the shouting. Oh, Battledore’s a cert. I have been telling Anne to put every penny she can scrape together on him.”

“I hope Miss Courtenay has not obeyed you,” Robert Saunderson said, his eyes, a little bloodshot though the day was still young, fixed on Anne Courtenay’s fair face. “It’s all very well, young man, but I have known so many of these hotpots come unstuck to put much faith in even Tim Ranger’s prophecies. I’d rather take a good outsider. Backing a long shot generally pays in the long run.”

“It won’t when Battledore is favourite,” Harold Courtenay returned obstinately. “He ran away with the Gold Cup. It will be the same.”

“H’m! Well, you are too young to remember Lawgiver. He was just such a Derby cert that he was guarded night and day and brought to the tapes with detectives before and behind, but he sauntered in a bad fifteenth.”

“Battledore won’t,” young Courtenay said confidently. “Wait a minute, Nan. There’s young Ranger. I must have a word with him.” He darted off.

Robert Saunderson looked after him with a curious smile. Saunderson was well known in racing circles and was usually present at all the big meetings. He was sometimes spoken of as a mystery man. Nobody knew exactly who he was or where he came from. But as a rich bachelor he had made his way into a certain section of London society. At the present moment he, as well as the Courtenays, was staying at Holford Hall with the Courtenays’ cousin, Lord Medchester.

Rumour had of late credited Lady Medchester with a very kindly feeling for Saunderson. Holford was within an easy driving distance of Doncaster, and the house-party to a man had come over on Lord Medchester’s coach and a supplementary car to see the St. Leger run. The Courtenays were the grandchildren of old General Courtenay, who had held a high command in India and had been known on the Afghan frontier as “Dare-devil Courtenay”. His only son, Harold and Anne’s father, had been killed in the Great War. The Victoria Cross had been awarded to him after his death, and was his father’s proudest possession. The young widow had not long survived her husband, and the two orphan children had been brought up by their grandfather.

The old man had spoilt and idolized them. The greatest disappointment of his life had been Harold’s breakdown in health and resultant delicacy, which had put the Army out of the question. General Courtenay was a poor man, having little but his pension, and the difficulty had been to find some work within Harold’s powers. The Church, the Army and the Bar were all rejected in turn. Young Courtenay had a pretty taste in literature and a certain facility with his pen, and for a time he had picked up a precarious living as a journalistic freelance. For the last year, however, he had been acting as secretary to Francis Melton, the member for North Loamshire.

Earlier in the year Anne Courtenay had become engaged to Michael Burford, Lord Medchester’s trainer. It was not the grand match she had been expected to make, but Burford was sufficiently well off, and the young couple were desperately in love.

There was no mistaking the admiration in Saunderson’s eyes as he looked down at Anne.

“You could not persuade the General to come to-day?”

Anne shook her head.

“No; it would have been too much for him. But he is quite happy talking over old times with his sister.”

“He was a great race-goer in his day, he tells me.”

“I believe he was an inveterate one. He still insists on having all the racing news read to him.”

Anne moved on decidedly as she spoke. She did not care for Robert Saunderson. She had done her best to keep out of his way since his coming to Holford. Unfortunately the dislike was not mutual. Saunderson’s admiration had been obvious from the first, and her coldness apparently only inflamed his passion. He followed her now.

“The Leger horses are in the paddock. What will Harold say if you don’t see Battledore?”

Anne quickened her steps. “I don’t know. But we shall see them all in a moment. And I must find my cousins.”

Saunderson kept up with her, forcing their way through the jostling crowd round the paddock.

“Lord Medchester’s filly ran away with the nursery plate, I hear. The favourite Severn Valley filly was not in it,” he began; then as she made no rejoinder he went on, “We shall see a tremendous difference here in a year or two, Miss Courtenay. There will be an aerodrome over there” – jerking his head to the right – “second to none in the country, I will wager. And a big, up-to-date tote will be installed near the stand. Altogether we shan’t know the Town Moor.”

“I heard they were projecting all sorts of improvements,” Anne assented. “But it will take a long time to get them finished and cost a great deal of money. Harold is frightfully keen on the tote, I know.”

“Ah, Harold!” Saunderson interposed. “I wanted to speak to you about Harold. I am rather anxious about him. I don’t like this friendship of his with the Stainers. He ought never to have introduced them to you. They’ve had the cheek to put up at the ‘Medchester Arms’ – want to get in touch with the training stables, I’ll bet! Stainer’s no good – never has been – he is a rotter, and the girl – well, the less said about her the better.”

Anne recalled the red-haired girl who had seemed so friendly with Harold just now, but she let no hint of the uneasiness she felt show in her face.

“I am sure Harold does not care for her. Of course she is very good-looking. But why do you trouble about Harold?”

Saunderson looked at her.

“Because he is your brother,” he said deliberately.

Anne’s eyes met his quietly.

“A very poor reason, it seems to me.”

“Then suppose I say, because I love you, Anne?” he said daringly.

Anne held up her head.

“I am engaged to Michael Burford.”

“To Burford, the trainer!” Saunderson said scoffingly.

“No; to Burford, the man,” she corrected.

A fierce light flashed into Saunderson’s eyes. A whirl of sound of cheering, of incoherent cries rose around them. The St. Leger horses were coming up to the post.

“Battledore! Battledore!” Harold’s choice was easily favourite. Masterman’s scarlet and green were very conspicuous. Under cover of the tumult Saunderson bent nearer Anne.

“Michael Burford. Pah! You shall never marry him. You shall marry me. I swear it.”

Anne’s colour rose, but she made no reply as she hurried back to the Medchester coach. Most of the party were already in their places, but Lady Medchester stood at the foot of the steps. She was a tall, showily-dressed woman, whose complexion and hair evidently owed a good deal to art. Her mouth was hard, and just now the thin lips were pressed closely together.

“I hope you have enjoyed your walk and seeing Battledore,” she said disagreeably.

Anne looked at her.

“I did not see Battledore.”

Lady Medchester laughed, but there was no merriment in her pale eyes.

“I can quite understand that. Oh, Mr. Saunderson” – turning to the man who had come up behind her young cousin – “will you show me –”

Anne did not wait for any more. She ran lightly up the steps. Her brother hurried after her.

“I believe one gets a better view from the top of this coach than from the stand,” he said unsteadily.

Anne looked at him with pity, at his flushed face, at his trembling hands.

“Harold, if you –”

She had no time for more. Harold sprang on the seat. There was a mighty shout. “They’re off! They’re off!” Then a groan of disappointment as the horses were recalled. A false start – Battledore had broken the tapes. Bill Turner, his Australian jockey, quieted him down and brought him back to the post.

“Goldfoot was sweating all over in the paddock just now,” young Courtenay announced to nobody in particular. “He was all over the place, too, taking it out of himself. Doesn’t stand an earthly against Battledore – he’s a real natural stayer – isn’t a son of Sardinia, a Derby second and Greenlake the Oaks winner for nothing –”

His voice was drowned by a great roar as the horses flashed by, Battledore on the outside.

“Better than too near the rails,” Harold consoled himself. “The luck of the draw’s been against him, but he doesn’t want it. He’ll do, he’ll do!”

“Battledore! Battledore!” the crowd exulted.

But now another name was making itself heard – “Goldfoot! Goldfoot! Come on, Jim!” – “Goldfoot leads – No – Partner’s Pride! – No – Battledore! – Battledore!” Harold Courtenay yelled. “Come on, Bill! He’s winning, he’s winning! Partner’s Pride is nothing but a runner-up.’’

Followed a moment’s tense silence, then a mighty shout: “Goldfoot’s won! Well done, Jim Spencer! Well done!”

Anne dared not look at her brother’s face as the numbers went up.

“Goldfoot first,” a voice beside her said. “Proud Boy second, Partner’s Pride third. Battledore nowhere.”

Anne heard a faint sound beside her – between a moan and a sob. She turned sharply.

“Harold!”

Her brother was leaning back in his seat on the coach. His hands had dropped by his side, his face was ghastly white, even his lips were bloodless.

Anne touched him. “Harold!”

He gazed at her with dazed, uncomprehending eyes.

“Don’t look like that!” she said sharply. “Pull yourself together! It will be all right, Harold. I have a savings box, you know. You shall have it all.”

“All!” Harold laughed aloud in a wild, reckless fashion that made his sister wince and draw back hastily. “It means ruin, Anne!” he said hoarsely. “Ruin, irretrievable ruin. That’s all!”

The Dowager Lady Medchester was an old lady who knew her own mind, and was extremely generous in the matter of presenting pieces of it to other people. She and her brother, General Courtenay, were too much alike to get on really well together. Nevertheless, they thoroughly enjoyed a sparring match, and looked forward to their meetings in town and country. The house-party at Holford this year was an extra and both of them were bent on making the most of it.

This afternoon the old people were out for their daily drive, and in the smallest of the three drawing-rooms Anne Courtenay and her brother Harold stood facing one another, both of them pale and overwrought.

“Yes, of course we must find the money. My pearls will fetch something, and I can borrow –”

Anne was anxiously watching her brother’s white, drawn face.

He turned away and stood with his back to her, staring unseeingly out of the window.

“That isn’t the worst. I – I had to have the money, you understand? I was in debt. I put every penny I had on Battledore and – more.”

Anne stared at him, every drop of colour ebbing slowly from her cheeks.

“What do you mean, Harold? You put more – you are frightening me.”

“Can’t you see? I stood to make my fortune out of Battledore. If he’d won I should. I didn’t think he could lose, and money of Melton’s was passing through my hands. I put it on.”

“Harold!” Anne’s brown eyes were wide with horror. “You – you must put it back. I – I will get it somehow.”

“I have put it back. I had to. I don’t know whether Melton suspected, but he talked of going through his accounts, and it had to be paid into the bank.” The boy’s voice broke. “I went to a money-lender and he lent me money on a bill that didn’t mature till next May. He wouldn’t give it to me at first. I couldn’t wait – the money had to be replaced at once. The bill had to be backed – I knew it was no use asking Medchester, and the money-lender wouldn’t take Stainer – else Maurice would have got it for me like a shot.”

“I don’t like Maurice Stainer,” Anne interposed, “or his sister, either. He is no good to you, Harold.”

“Well, anyway, the old shark wouldn’t look at him and I couldn’t wait – or I should face exposure. I knew I could meet the bill all right if Battledore won. He – the money-lender – suggested I should get Saunderson’s name. I knew I couldn’t – Saunderson’s as close as a Jew, but I had to have the money somehow, and I was mad – mad! I wrote the name.”

The fear in Anne’s eyes deepened.

“You – you forged!”

A hoarse sob broke in her brother’s throat.

“I should have met it – I swear I should have met it, and it gave me six months to turn round in. But it is too late. He has found out – Saunderson. He has got the bill and he swears he will prosecute. He will not even hear me.”

“But he cannot – cannot prosecute! He is your friend.”

“He will,” Harold said hopelessly. “He is a good-for-nothing scoundrel and he will send me to gaol and blacken our name for ever – unless you –”

“Yes?” Anne’s voice was low; she put her hands up to her throat. “I don’t know what you mean. Unless what?”

“Unless you go to him, unless you plead with him.” Harold brought the words out as if they were forced from him. “He thinks more of you than anybody.”

Anne threw her head back. In a swift, hot flame the colour rushed over her face and neck and temples.

“Unless I ask him – that man? Do you know what that means? I – I hate him! I am afraid of him.”

“I know. I hate him. He is a damned brute, but – well, if I blew my brains out it would not save the shame, the disgrace –” Her brother broke off.

A momentary vision of General Courtenay’s fine old face rose before Anne, of his pathetic pride in his dead son’s Victoria Cross, in the Courtenay name. A sudden, fierce anger shook her. This careless boy should not cloud the end of that noble life with shame and bitter pain.

Harold slipped forward against the side of the window-frame.

“That’s the end.”

Anne watched him in unpitying silence. Then old memories came back to her – of their early childhood, of the handsome, gallant father who had been so proud of his little son, of the sweet, gentle mother who had dearly loved them both, but whose favourite had always been Harold. Her heart softened. She looked at her brother’s head, bent in humiliation. For the sake of her beloved dead, no less than for the living whose pride he was, Harold must be saved at whatever cost to herself.

She went over and touched his shoulder.

“I will do what I can,” she promised. “I will ask him; I will beg him. I will save you, Harold, somehow.”

CHAPTER 2

In her room at Holford Hall Anne Courtenay was twisting her hands together in agony. The Medchesters and their guests were amusing themselves downstairs in the drawing-room, the gramophone was playing noisy dance music. In the back drawing-room her grandfather and his sister were having their usual game of bezique. Anne had pleaded a headache and had gone to her room directly after dinner. The hands of the clock on the mantelpiece were creeping on to ten o’clock. In five minutes the hour would boom out from the old church on the hill. It was no use delaying, that would only make matters worse. She sprang up. Purposely to-night she had worn black. She threw a dark cloak round her, and picking up a pull-on black hat crushed it over her shingled hair. Then she unlocked a small wooden box on her dressing-table and took out a piece of notepaper. Across it was scrawled in Robert Saunderson’s characteristic bold black writing: “To-night at the summer-house at ten o’clock.” That was all. There was neither beginning nor ending. Not one word to soften the words that were an ultimatum. Anne’s little, white teeth bit deeply into her upper lip as she read.

The summer-house stood in a clearing to the right of the Dutch garden. From it an excellent view of the moors could be obtained with the hazy, blue line of the northern hills in the distance. It was a favourite resort with Lady Medchester for the picnic teas which she favoured. That Anne Courtenay should be giving an assignation there at this time of night seemed to her to show the depths to which she had fallen. Saunderson had left the Medchesters the day after the St. Leger. He had turned a resolutely deaf ear to all Harold’s appeals, and his ultimatum remained the same. He would only treat with Anne. Anne herself must come to him, must plead with him. To her alone he would tell the only terms on which Harold could be saved.

Anne drew her cloak round her as she stole quietly down the stairs to a side door. There was a full moon, but the masses of fleecy cloud obscured the beams; little scuds of rain beat in Anne’s face as she let herself out. Through the open windows the laughter and the gaiety of her fellow-guests reached her ears. She crept silently by the side of the house into the shadow of one of the giant clumps of rhododendrons that dotted the lawn and bordered the expanse of grass between the house and the Dutch garden.

Anne looked like a wraith as she flitted from one bush to another and finally gained the low wall that overlooked the Dutch garden. A flight of steps led down to the garden and from there, through a hand gate at the side of the rosery, a path went straight to the summer-house.

It all, looked horribly dark and gloomy, Anne thought, as she closed the gate. She waited uncertainly for a minute. All around her she caught the faint multitudinous sounds of insect life that go on incessantly in even the quietest night. Already the leaves were beginning to fall. They lay thick upon the path and rustled under her feet; in the distance she caught the cry of some night-bird. Then nearer at hand there was a different sound. She stopped and cowered against a tree, listening. What was it? It could not be the cracking of a twig, footsteps among the withered leaves, the dead pine-needles that lay thick on the ground? It could not be anybody watching her – following her? Then a sudden awful sense of fear assailed her, a certainty that something evil was near her. For the time she was paralysed as she caught blindly at a low branch. She listened, shivering from head to foot. Yes, undoubtedly she could hear light footsteps, with something sinister, it seemed to her, about their very stealthiness. Yet, as the moon shone out from behind a passing cloud, there was nothing to be seen, no sign of any living thing or any movement. All was quiet, and as she stole softly to the summer-house, casting terrified glances from side to side, she did not see a figure standing up against the trunk of a tall pine near at hand, a face that peered forward, watching her every movement.

She had expected to find Saunderson waiting for her – she told herself that he must be – but there was no one to be seen, and somewhat to her surprise the door of the summer-house was nearly closed. She stopped opposite; there was something sinister, almost terrifying, to her in the sight of that closed door, in the absence of any sound or movement. At last very slowly she went forward, halting between every step. Surely, surely, Saunderson must be waiting for her?

“Mr. Saunderson,” she whispered hoarsely, “are you there?”

There came no faintest sound in answer; yet surely, surely she could catch the faint smell of a cigarette?

Very softly, very gingerly she pushed open the door.

“This,” said Inspector Stoddart, tapping a paragraph in the evening paper as he spoke,” is a job for us.”

Harbord leaned forward and read it over the other’s shoulder.

“Early this morning a gruesome discovery was made by a gardener in the employ of Lord Medchester at Holford Hall in Loamshire. In a summer-house at the back of the flower garden he found the body of a man in evening-dress. A doctor was summoned and stated that the deceased had been shot through the heart. Death must have been instantaneous and must have taken place probably eight or nine hours before the body was discovered.”

“Look at the stop press news.” Stoddart pointed to the space at the side.

“The body found in the summer-house at Holford has been identified as that of a Mr. Robert Saunderson, who had been one of Lord Medchester’s guests for the races at Doncaster but had left Holford the following day.”

“Robert Saunderson,” Harbord repeated, wrinkling his brows. “I seem to know the name, but I can’t place him. Isn’t he a racing man?”

“He would scarcely be a friend of the Medchesters if he wasn’t,” Stoddart replied, picking up the paper and staring at it as if he would wring further information from it. “Regular racing lot they belong to. Oh, I have heard of Saunderson. A pretty bad hat he was. He had a colt or two training at Oxley, down by Epsom. Picked up one or two minor races last year, but he’s never done anything very big. Medchester’s horses are trained at Burford’s, East Molton. Lord Medchester’s a decent sort of chap, I have heard. Anyway, a victory of his is always acclaimed in the North. He generally does well at Ayr and Bogside, and picks up a few over the sticks. Rumour credits him with an overmastering desire to win one of the classic races. His wife is a funny one – I fancy they don’t hit it off very well. His trainer, Burford, is a good sort. His engagement to a cousin of Lord Medchester’s was announced the other day.”

“Not much of a match for her, I should say.”

“Oh, quite decent. Burford makes a good thing out of his training. He’s a second son of old Sir William Burford and half-brother of the present baronet. This Saunderson was pretty well known in London society too, and I have heard that he was one of Lady Medchester’s admirers. I believe he was an American.”

“Anyway, so long as he wasn’t English, he wouldn’t have much difficulty in getting on in London society,” Harbord remarked sarcastically. “A bachelor too, wasn’t he?”

“As far as anyone knows,” Stoddart answered.

A copy of “Who’s Who” lay on the table. He pulled it towards him. “‘Saunderson, Robert Francis,’” he read. “‘Born in Buenos Aires 1888. Served in the Great War as an interpreter on the Italian frontier. Invalided out in May 1917. Clubs, Automobile, Junior Travellers.’”

“H’m! Not much of a dossier – wonder why they put him in?” Harbord remarked.

“No; more noticeable for what it leaves out than for what it puts in,” Stoddart agreed.

“Well, I have received an S.O.S. from the Loamshire police, so you and I will go down by the night express to Derby. From there it is a crosscountry journey to Holford. Take a few hours, I suppose.”

“I wonder what Saunderson was doing in that neighbourhood when he had left the Hall?” Harbord cogitated.

Stoddart shrugged his shoulders.

“I dare say we shall find out when we get there.”

CHAPTER 3

“This is the principal entrance, I suppose,” Stoddart said, stopping before the lodge at Holford, and looking up the avenue of oaks that was one of the chief attractions of the Hall.

As he spoke a small two-seater pulled up beside them and two men sprang out. One of them Stoddart had no difficulty in recognizing as the local superintendent of police; the other, a tall, military-looking man, he rightly divined to be the Chief Constable, Major Logston.

The Major looked at the two detectives.

“Inspector Stoddart, I presume. I was hoping to catch you. I missed you at the station – had a break-down coming from home. This is a terrible affair, inspector.”

“I have only seen the bare account in the papers,” Stoddart said quietly. “Before we go any further I should very much like to hear what you can tell us.”

“I shall be glad to give you all the details I can,” Major Logston said, entering the gates with him and leaving the superintendent to bring up the rear with Harbord in the two-seater.

“Of course we have had quantities of those damned reporters all over the place.” the Major began confidentially. “But we have told the beggars as little as possible, and now we are not allowing them within the gates.”

The inspector nodded.

“Quite right, sir. Reporters are the very devil, with what they pick up and what they invent. They’ve helped many a murderer to escape the gallows.”

“I entirely agree with you.” The Chief Constable paused a minute, then he said slowly, “This Robert Saunderson had been staying at Holford quite recently. He had been one of the house-party for the races, you know, inspector, for the St. Leger. But he left the next day like most of the other guests, and deuce knows why he came back. An under-gardener – Joseph Wilton by name – was clearing up rubbish and such-like for one of those bonfires that always make such a deuce of a stink all over the place at this time of the year. He was round about the summer-house and, glancing inside, was astounded to see a man lying on the floor. He went in, as he says, to find if one of the gentlemen had been ‘took ill,’ and discovered that he was dead and cold. He gave the alarm to his fellow-gardeners and then he and another man went up to the Hall to acquaint Lord Medchester with his discovery; Medchester went back with them, imagining Wilton had exaggerated, and was amazed and horrified to find not only that Wilton’s story was too true, but that the dead man was no other than Robert Saunderson, who had so recently been his guest. Of course they got the doctor there as soon as possible. He said the man had been dead for hours, had probably died the night before the discovery.”

“Presumably I should not be here if the case was one of suicide?”