“good morning, sergeant.”
“good morning, miss maynard. what can i do for you?”
it was seldom that sergeant westaway was so obliging as to make a voluntary offer of his services, but then it was still more seldom that a young lady of miss maynard’s social standing came to seek his advice or assistance at the police station. as the daughter of a well-to-do lady, miss maynard was entitled to official respect.
the sergeant had known miss maynard since her mother had first come to live at ashlingsea fifteen years ago. he had seen her grow up from a little girl to a young lady, but the years had increased the gulf between them. as a schoolgirl home from her holidays it was within the sergeant’s official privilege to exchange a word or two when saluting her in the street. her development into long dresses made anything more than a bare salutation savour of familiarity, and the sergeant knew his place too well to be guilty of familiarity with those above him.
with scrupulous care he had always uttered the name “miss maynard,” when saluting her in those days, so that she might recognize that he was one of the first to admit the claims of adolescence to the honours of maturity. then came a time with the further lapse of years when she reached the threshold of womanhood, and to utter her name in salutation would have savoured of familiarity. so the salute became a silent one as indicative of sergeant westaway’s recognition that his voice could not carry across the increased gulf between them.
“i have something very important to tell you,” said miss maynard, in reply to his intimation that the full extent of his official powers were at her disposal.
“ah!”
the sergeant realized that a matter of great personal importance to miss maynard might readily prove to be of minor consequence to him when viewed through official glasses; but there was no hint of this in the combination of politeness and obsequiousness with which he opened the door leading from the main room of the little police station to his private room behind it.
he placed a chair for her at the office table and then went round to his own chair and stood beside it. there was a pause, due to the desire to be helped with questions, but sergeant westaway’s social sense was greater than his sense of official importance, and he waited for her to begin.
“it is about the cliff farm murder,” she said in a low voice.
“oh!” it was an exclamation in which astonishment and anticipation of official delight were blended. “and do you—do you know anything about it?” he asked.
“i am not sure what you will think of my story—whether there is any clue in it. i must leave that for you to judge. but i feel that i ought to tell you all that i do know.”
“quite right,” said the sergeant. his official manner, rising like a tide, was submerging his social sense of inequality. “there is nothing like telling the police the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. it is always the best way.” his social sense made a last manifestation before it threw up its arms and sank. “not that i suppose for one moment, miss maynard, that you had anything to do with it—that is to say, that you actually participated in the crime.”
he looked at her inquiringly and she shook her head, smiling sadly as she did so.
“but there is no reason why, after all, you might not know who did it,” said the sergeant in a coaxing voice which represented an appeal to her to do her best to justify his high hopes. “in some respects it is a mysterious crime, and although the police have their suspicions—and very strong suspicions too—they are always glad to get reliable information, especially when it supports their suspicions.”
“and whom do you suspect?” she asked.
sergeant westaway was taken aback at such a question. it was such an outrageous attempt to penetrate the veil of official secrecy that he could refrain from rebuking her only by excusing it on the ground of her youth and inexperience.
“at present i can say nothing,” was his reply.
she turned aside from his official manœuvring and took up her own story:
“what i came to tell you is that i was at cliff farm on the night that poor mr. lumsden was shot.”
“you were there when he was shot?” exclaimed the sergeant.
“no; he was dead when i got there.”
“did you hear the shot?”
“no.”
“but you saw some one?”
“i saw mr. marsland.”
“ah!” the commonplace tone in which the word was uttered indicated that the sergeant was deeply disappointed with her story. “we know all about his visit there. he came and told us—it was through him that we discovered the body. he has been straightforwardness itself: he has told us everything.”
“did he tell you i was there?”
“no; he has not mentioned your name. perhaps he didn’t see you.”
“we were in the house together, and i was with him when he went upstairs and discovered the body.”
“he has said nothing about this,” said the sergeant impressively. “his conduct is very strange in that respect.”
“i am afraid i am to blame for that,” she said. “as he walked home with me from the farm on his way to the police station i asked him if he would mind saying nothing about my presence at the house. i told him that i was anxious to avoid all the worry and unpleasantness i should have to put up with if it was publicly known that i had been there. he readily agreed not to mention my name. i thought at the time that it was very kind of him, but in thinking it all over since i am convinced that i did wrong. i have come to the conclusion that it was a very extraordinary thing for him to agree to as he did, not knowing me—we had never met before. i felt that the right thing to do was to come to you and tell you all i know so that you can compare it with what mr. marsland has told you. in that way you will be able to make fuller inquiries, and to acquit him of any sinister motive in his kind offer to me to keep my name out of it.”
the sergeant nodded his head slowly. there was much to take in, and he was not a rapid thinker.
“any sinister motive?” he repeated after a long pause.
“of course i don’t wish to cast any suspicions on mr. marsland,” she said looking at the police officer steadily. “but it has already occurred to you, sergeant, that mr. marsland, in kindly keeping my name out of it, had to depart from the truth in the story he told you about his presence at cliff farm, and that he may have thought it advisable to depart from the truth in some other particulars as well.”
the sergeant’s mental process would not have carried him that far without assistance, but there was no conscious indication of assistance in the emphasis with which he said:
“i see that.”
“let me tell you exactly what happened so far as i am concerned,” she went on.
“yes, certainly.” he sat down in his chair and vaguely seized his pen. “i’ll write it down, miss maynard, and get you to sign it. don’t go too fast for me; and it will be better for you if you take time—you will be able to think it over as you go along. this promises to be most important. detective gillett of scotland yard will be anxious to see it. i am sorry he’s not here now; he has been recalled to london, but i expect him down again to-morrow.”
“on friday, the night of the storm, i left my house about dusk—that would be after five o’clock—with the intention of taking a walk,” she began. “i walked along the downs in the direction of cliff farm, intending to return along the sands from the cliff pathway. i was on the downs when the storm began to gather. i thought of retracing my steps, but the storm gathered so swiftly and blew so fiercely that i was compelled to seek shelter in the only house for miles around—cliff farm.
“the wind was blowing hard and big drops of rain were falling when i reached the door. i knocked, but received no answer. then i noticed that the key was in the door. owing to the darkness, which had come on rapidly with the storm, i had not seen it at first. the door had a yale lock and the key turned very easily. i was wearing light gloves, and when i turned the key in the lock i noticed it was sticky. i looked at my glove and saw a red stain—it was blood.”
“ah!” interrupted sergeant westaway. “a red stain—blood? just wait a minute while i catch up to you.”
“i was slightly alarmed at that,” she continued, after a pause; “but i had no suspicion that a cruel murder had been committed. in my alarm i took the key out of the lock and closed the door. i felt safer with the door locked against any possible intruder. i went into the sitting-room and sat down, after lighting a candle that i found on the hallstand. then it occurred to me that mr. lumsden might have left the key in the door while he went to one of the outbuildings to do some work. the blood might have got on it from a small cut on his hand.”
“what did you do with the key?” asked the sergeant.
“i brought it with me here.” she opened her bag and handed a key to the police officer.
sergeant westaway looked at it closely. inside the hole made for the purpose of placing the key on a ring he saw a slight stain of dried blood. he nodded to miss maynard and she continued her story.
“i felt more at ease then, and when i heard a knock at the door i felt sure it was he—that he had seen the light of the candle through the window and knew that whoever had taken the key had entered the house. i opened the door, but it was not mr. lumsden i saw, but mr. marsland. he said something about wanting shelter from the storm—that his horse had gone lame. he came inside and sat down. i told him that i, too, had sought shelter from the storm and that i supposed mr. lumsden, the owner of the house, was in one of the outbuildings attending to the animals. i saw that he was watching me closely and i felt uneasy. then i saw him put his hand to the upper pocket of his waistcoat.”
“what was that for?” asked the sergeant.
“i think he must have lost a pair of glasses and temporarily forgotten that they were gone. he was not wearing glasses when i saw him but i have noticed since that he does wear them.”
“i’ve noticed the same thing,” said the sergeant. “he was not wearing glasses the night he came here to report the discovery of mr. lumsden’s body—i am sure of that.”
miss maynard, on resuming her narrative, told how mr. marsland and she, hearing a crash in one of the rooms overhead, went upstairs to investigate and found the dead body of the victim sitting in an arm-chair. when she realized that a dreadful crime had been committed she ran out of the house in terror. she waited in the path for mr. marsland and he was kind enough to escort her home. it was because she was so unnerved by the tragedy that she had asked mr. marsland to keep her name out of it not to tell any one that she had taken shelter at the farm. it was a dreadful experience and she wanted to try and forget all about it. but now she realized that she had done wrong and that she should have come to the police station with mr. marsland and told what she knew.
“that is quite right, miss maynard,” said the sergeant, as he finished writing down her statement. “does mr. marsland know that you have come here to-day with the intention of making a statement?”
“no; he does not, and for that reason i feel that i am not treating him fairly after he was so kind in consenting to keep my name out of it.”
the sergeant had but a limited view of moral ethics where they conflicted with the interests of the police.
“he should not have kept your name from me,” he said. “but, apart from what you have told me, have you any reason for suspecting that mr. marsland had anything to do with the murder of frank lumsden?”
“that it was he who left the key in the door?”
“well—yes.”
“if that is the case, his object in leaving the house for a few minutes might be to destroy traces of his guilt. but i saw nothing of a suspicious nature in his manner after i admitted him to the house.”
the sergeant was impressed with the closeness of her reasoning—it seemed to shed more light. clearly she had given the matter the fullest consideration before deciding to make a statement.
she added with a slight laugh:
“you cannot call his action in feeling for a missing pair of glasses suspicious?”
“no, no,” said the sergeant generously. “we can scarcely call that suspicious.”
“what i do regard as suspicious—or, at any rate, as wanting in straightforwardness—is the fact that mr. marsland did not tell me that he knew mr. lumsden in france. they were both in the london rifle brigade—mr. marsland was a captain and mr. lumsden a private.”
“where did you learn this, miss maynard?” was the excited question. “are you sure?”
“hasn’t he told the police?” she asked in a tone of astonishment. “then perhaps it is not true.”
“where did you hear it?”
“in staveley. i was talking to a wounded officer there on the front—mr. blake. he knew mr. marsland as captain marsland and he knew mr. lumsden as well. i think he said poor mr. lumsden had been captain marsland’s orderly for a time.”
“i must look into this,” said sergeant westaway.
“unfortunately mr. blake has returned to the front. he left staveley yesterday.”
“no matter. there are other ways of getting at the truth, miss maynard. as i said, detective gillett will be down here to-morrow and i’ll show him your statement. he will probably want to interview you himself and in that case i’ll send for you. but don’t you be alarmed—he’s a nice gentlemanly young fellow and knows how to treat a lady.”
he was about to bow her out of the station when he suddenly remembered that she had not signed her statement.
“would you please read through this and sign it?” he asked. “a very important statement—clear and concise. i feel i must congratulate you about it, miss maynard.”
she read through the sergeant’s summary of her narrative, but was unable to congratulate him on the way in which he had done his work. she felt that the statement she and her lover had compiled, to guide her in her narrative to the police, was a far more comprehensive document.
