The Draycott Murder Mystery: A Golden Age Mystery Read online

  Fayre stared at him in astonishment.

  “Don’t you realize that, if you are going, you must go now?” he expostulated. “Edward, there’s no time to lose. For God’s sake, don’t take a chance like that!”

  “There’s time for that,” said Kean dryly. “I will go straight from there. I can catch the night boat to Ostend. I don’t suppose we shall meet again, Hatter, and it’s the last thing I shall ask you to do for me. Will you do it?”

  “I’ll do it,” answered Fayre reluctantly, “but I think it’s sheer madness at this juncture.”

  “I want you to go to her now and ask her if I can come round. Don’t tell her anything else. If she can see me, ring me up here and I’ll start at once. After I am gone you can tell her the whole story, but get this through as quickly as you can first.”

  Fayre moved to the door. Half-way he stopped as though he had been shot.

  “Good God, Edward!” he cried. “Sybil! You can’t leave her without a word!”

  Kean straightened his shoulders with a jerk, as though he were bracing himself to face something he was seeing clearly for the first time.

  “Sybil died about an hour before I telephoned to you this evening,” he said slowly.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Afterwards, in bitter anguish and remorse, Fayre cursed himself for his blindness. At first he had been deceived by Kean’s attitude of cold detachment towards the whole gruesome business and the impression he had managed to convey that he had definitely decided on flight. Later, the news of Sybil Kean’s death had stunned him and he had gone blindly on his errand to Cynthia, dazed with grief and consternation. But he could not forgive himself for not having insisted on staying by his friend in his extremity.

  Instead, he had carried out Kean’s instructions to the letter, had found Cynthia still up and had interviewed her in the rather dreary little room that had been her uncle’s study.

  He had sent a message by the servant, asking to see her alone, and she came to him, curiosity and apprehension in her eyes.

  John Leslie was never out of her mind in these days and, though it would seem that the worst had happened, she lived in hourly dread of some further attack on her fortitude.

  “Have you come from John?” she asked piteously. “When will they let me see him?”

  He took both her hands in his and drew her to him.

  “Listen,” he said gently. “It’s all right about John. He is cleared absolutely. In a short time you will be together and all this will seem like a bad dream. Steady, now,” he added sharply, for the girl had swayed away from him and, for a second, he thought the news had been too much for her. But even as he spoke, a great rush of colour flooded her face and she drew herself erect.

  “It can’t be true!” she whispered. “Say it again, Uncle Fayre. John, free!”

  Her hands were on his shoulders and she almost shook him in her eagerness.

  “John’s safe,” he repeated. “Edward has cleared him. I have come from Westminster now. Edward wants to speak to you. Can I ring him up now and tell him you will see him?”

  “Of course. Tell him to come quick. Does John know?”

  “Not yet. Grey will see him to-morrow.”

  “Couldn’t the news be got to him to-night? It’s cruel to make him wait,” she pleaded.

  Fayre shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not. But you can ask Edward when he comes. Where’s your telephone?”

  She led the way into the hall, and in another moment Fayre was ringing up the house in Westminster.

  Kean’s butler answered the call.

  “Can I speak to Sir Edward Kean?” asked Fayre. “He is expecting a call from me. Mr. Fayre speaking.”

  “Mr. Fayre?” The man’s voice was eager and hurried. “If you could come round, sir? We’re in great trouble here and the responsibility … There’s no one …”

  The broken sentences tailed off oddly and Fayre was suddenly seized with an ominous sense of foreboding.

  “What is it?” he asked sharply.

  “Sir Edward, sir. He shot himself just after you left. …”

  “Is he dead? Quick, man!”

  “Yes. He must have died at once. The doctor’s here now. If you could come at once, sir …”

  “I’ll come now.”

  Mechanically Fayre hung up the receiver and put the telephone down on the table. Then he collapsed completely, his face buried in his hands, his whole body shaking uncontrollably.

  When he pulled himself together sufficiently to look up he found Cynthia standing by his side.

  “What is it, Uncle Fayre? Not Sybil?”

  In as few words as possible he explained the situation to her, omitting any mention of Kean’s confession. He could not bring himself to speak of that yet to her.

  She was terribly shaken, but she held back her tears until she had taken him into the dining-room and mixed him a stiff drink. While he was drinking it she telephoned for a taxi and within five minutes he was on his way back to Westminster.

  It was late before he got back to the club, utterly worn out and shaken with remorse. If he had had the sense to stay with Kean he might have averted this final catastrophe.

  Then, as he sat in his room, too tired and disheartened to face the task of undressing, his sanity reasserted itself and he knew that Kean had taken the only possible way out. Sybil was dead and nothing could hurt her now. If only he could be sure that she had not guessed!

  With an exclamation he rose to his feet and picked up the note-case he had thrown on the table on first entering his bedroom. He drew out her letter and opened the enclosure. He had not read a dozen lines before his worse fears were confirmed.

  “It is terribly difficult to write this,” it ran, “and yet I must tell some one. I am so desperately afraid of what Edward may do. And the awful thing is that I may be wrong and yet I cannot ask him to explain. If what I think is true and he has kept this from me it is because it would break his heart for me to know. There is some extraordinary mystery behind it all. I can only tell you this, Hatter. I am almost certain that the pen you found after the murder was mine and, the day Edward motored me up to London in the car, I found some of the sequins from Mrs. Draycott’s brown evening-dress between the cushions of the back seat of the car. The papers said she had it on when she was found and she wore it at Staveley the night before she left. And yet I know that the car was in London then! I can’t understand it. But, Hatter, the night before Mrs. Draycott left Staveley I came out of my bedroom to go down to dinner and she and Edward were standing by the door of her room, talking. I must have opened my door very quietly, for they did not hear me, but I heard Mrs. Draycott say: ‘This is the second time you’ve put it off. You know what to expect if you don’t come up to the scratch this time.’ I went back into my room and shut the door and they never saw me. I don’t understand it, Hatter. Edward could not have been at the farm that night. He went up to town that afternoon. My reason tells me that I must be mistaken, and yet, all the time, I know that something is going on, something horrible that I cannot understand. Edward has never been like this over a case before. For once, his nerves are beginning to go back on him. I do not know what to do, but I am haunted by the fear that I may die before the trial is over and that Edward, in his desire to save me, may do something. … I do not know what I am writing, Hatter; I am so stupidly weak still and my brain does not seem to work properly; but I want you to show this to Edward and tell him that, for my sake, he must not let John Leslie suffer. I am haunted by the thought that he may be led into doing something utterly unlike everything I know of him, something he may regret to his dying day, and I shall not be here to save him. I am so tired. I cannot write any more, but do your best for me, Hatter.”

  The letter dropped from Fayre’s nerveless fingers and fluttered to the floor.

  Shaken with pain and horror as he was, he could still give thanks for two things: Kean had never guessed that his wife knew and had gone to his grave bel
ieving that the crime he had committed for her sake had not been in vain, and Sybil had died in ignorance of her first husband’s tragic survival.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  On one of those perfect July days which are occasionally vouchsafed to the inhabitants of the British Isles Cynthia Bell and John Leslie were married.

  They had chosen an old church, tucked away in an unfashionable corner of South London, as the scene of their wedding and had asked to the ceremony only those whose friendship they really valued.

  Lady Galston had flatly refused to sanction the marriage or to be present at it, but Cynthia’s father had, once more, asserted himself and had brought his daughter to London and insisted on giving her away himself.

  “A good thing Lady Galston has taken that line,” was the comment of that other woman who had mothered Cynthia so efficiently in her time of trouble, as she and Hatter Fayre drove together from the church to the Staveleys’ house in Eaton Square which they had insisted on lending for the occasion.

  “She’s never been an atom of good to that child since the day she was born and, in her present mood, she’d cast a blight over a Bacchanalian orgy!”

  They found Cynthia and Leslie in the hall on their arrival and it certainly did not seem as if Lady Galston’s antagonism had served to dim the girl’s radiance on this, the happiest day of her life.

  She stood, her arm through Leslie’s, talking to old Mrs. Doggett and surrounded by a shy, beaming crowd of Galston retainers who had come of their own accord all the way from Cumberland to see her married. Fayre, looking round, recognized the Gunnets and, with them, his own special protégé, Albert Small, late tramp, now boot-boy, dog-washer, bicycle-cleaner, etc., at Fayre’s newly acquired cottage in Surrey. He was resplendent in an old suit of his master’s and looked a very different being from the furtive and defiant tatterdemalion who had slept in John Leslie’s barn on the fatal night of March 23rd.

  At the sight of Fayre and his companion, Cynthia gave a little cry of pleasure and came forward eagerly to greet them.

  “It’s all much too wonderful to be true!” she said. “Even now, I feel as if I may wake up at any minute!”

  “It’s wonderful. But it’s not my idea of a quiet wedding,” gibed Fayre, looking round the crowded hall. “The whole village of Keys and all the tenants seem to have migrated from the North to wish you luck!”

  “Aren’t they pets? It never occurred to me that they would dream of coming so far, but Father received a sort of deputation, headed by Gunnet, to ask if they might be present. Gunnet said that, after what had happened, he’d take it as a kindness if he might be allowed to attend! They’re all going back by the night train. There are some old friends waiting to see you upstairs. Even Dr. Gregg has turned up. I asked him, though I didn’t think it was much in his line, and he said that, as he’d be in London anyhow on business, he’d be very pleased to look in. Do go and be kind to him; he looks so miserable and he’s already been quite rude to Father, just to show that he isn’t shy!”

  “I’m glad you’re not going too far away from them all,” said Fayre. “Bill tells me that the farm is finished. It sounds charming.”

  Leslie had resigned his tenancy of the farm near Galston and built a comfortable, roomy house on some farm-land on the Staveley estate. After what had happened he had not cared to take Cynthia to the ill-fated house up the lane nor had he wished to settle down in the immediate vicinity of his mother-in-law. The Staveleys had been glad to have Cynthia as a neighbour and, Fayre suspected, had done a good deal towards giving Leslie a good start in his venture.

  “It’s lovely and the land’s gorgeous. John’s simply delighted. You’re going to be our first guest, Uncle Fayre. Promise you’ll come soon!”

  Hatter Fayre’s face grew a shade pinker than usual.

  “I’ll come with pleasure, on one condition,” he said.

  His voice seemed suddenly to have grown curiously hoarse and unmanageable.

  “You can make any conditions you like, so long as you come,” was Cynthia’s cheerful rejoinder. “You don’t want to bring that horrid old bicycle with you, do you?” she finished, struck by a sudden suspicion.

  Fayre shook his head.

  “I’ve finished with that old friend for the present. No, I want to bring something quite different. By the way, I’ve been busy with the stables.”

  “Hunters?”

  “Yes, when I’ve finished my alterations. The stabling’s too inadequate for my needs and there’s a good deal to be done.”

  “Do you propose to travel with a couple of mounts? If so, John will have to put them up in the barn. After all, though, it’s only July now and we expect you long before the winter—or do you take them about as pets in the off season? Is that your condition?”

  “Oh, no. I’m not bringing any livestock—at least, not of that kind. …”

  “Well, I’m blessed!” ejaculated his companion suddenly and indignantly.

  Then, as Fayre cast a helpless glance in her direction and began to flounder hopelessly, she took the matter firmly out of his hands.

  “Livestock indeed!” she exclaimed. “The man’s impossible! What he’s trying to do, my dear, is to ask if he may bring his wife. And why he’s behaving like a self-conscious schoolboy over it, heaven only knows!”

  In spite of her brave words she was blushing vividly.

  Cynthia fell on her neck.

  “Oh, you darlings!” she exclaimed. “You haven’t really done it! You and Miss Allen! Now I know I am going to wake up and find it’s all a dream. It’s too perfect to be true!”

  “Not Miss Allen, but Mrs. Fayre!” he corrected, with immense satisfaction. “We stole off all by ourselves and did it yesterday. And we’re not a bit ashamed of ourselves, either, thank you.”

  THE END

  About The Author

  MARY ‘MOLLY’ THYNNE was born in 1881, a member of the aristocracy, and related, on her mother’s side, to the painter James McNeil Whistler. She grew up in Kensington and at a young age met literary figures like Rudyard Kipling and Henry James.

  Her first novel, An Uncertain Glory, was published in 1914, but she did not turn to crime fiction until The Draycott Murder Mystery, the first of six golden age mysteries she wrote and published in as many years, between 1928 and 1933. The last three of these featured Dr. Constantine, chess master and amateur sleuth par excellence.

  Molly Thynne never married. She enjoyed travelling abroad, but spent most of her life in the village of Bovey Tracey, Devon, where she was finally laid to rest in 1950.

  By Molly Thynne

  and available from Dean Street Press

  The Draycott Murder Mystery

  The Murder on the Enriqueta

  The Case of Sir Adam Braid

  The Crime at the ‘Noah’s Ark’: a Christmas Mystery

  Death in the Dentist’s Chair

  He Dies and Makes no Sign

  Molly Thynne

  The Murder on the Enriqueta

  News travels quickly and mysteriously on board ship. By the time lunch was over, the rumour began to spread that Mr. Smith’s death had not been due to natural causes.

  The bibulous Mr Smith was no pillar of virtue. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the Enriqueta, he met someone he knew on board at midnight – and was strangled. Chief Inspector Shand of the Yard, a fellow traveller on the luxury liner, takes on the case, ably assisted by his friend Jasper Mellish. At first the only clue is what the steward saw: a bandaged face above a set of green pyjamas. But surely the crime can be connected to Mr Smith’s former – and decidedly shady – compatriots in Buenos Aires?

  The Murder on the Enriqueta (1929: originally called The Strangler in the US) is a thrilling whodunit, including an heiress in peril and a jazz age nightclub among its other puzzle pieces. This new edition, the first in many decades, includes an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  Unless I’m much mistaken, you will find yourself unwilling

 
; To lay aside a yarn so crammed with situations thrilling.

  (To say nothing of a villain with a gruesome taste in killing.)

  Punch

  CHAPTER I

  The Enriqueta was a new boat with her reputation still in the making and, so far, luck had been on her side. She had accomplished her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Buenos Aires in record time, partly owing to her speed, but more largely to phenomenally good weather, and now, on her return journey and already thirteen days out from Brazil, it looked as though she were going to repeat the performance.

  She was carrying her full complement of passengers and the crowd in the smoking room was of the size and quality that only goes with calm weather and an oily sea. Even the most saffron-hued among the Latin-Americans were enjoying their cigars wholeheartedly and the smoke clouds hung motionless on the heavy air of the stuffy, over-decorated saloon. To one fresh from the coolness of the deck the atmosphere, a rich compound of mingled tobacco, alcohol and humanity, came almost as a physical rebuff and, by eleven o’clock, it had driven all but the most hardened of the card players to their cabins. At a few of the tables, however, the play still went on steadily, accompanied by an almost equally steady consumption of liquid refreshment.

  It was close on midnight before the first of the card-parties broke up. The interruption came from a plump little man whose luck had been out for the last three nights and who had earned for himself the reputation of being one of the heaviest drinkers on board.

  “I’m through,” he announced, rising unsteadily to his feet. “God, what a night!”