Tragedy at Beechcroft (Musaicum Murder Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ passion for boxes of confectionery, and after a joke or two on the subject he went off to buy little Gudule Broukere a substitute for the lost treasure. He would explain the affair to Lavinia when he went down to Beechcroft.

      He bought a magnificent coffer with a doll on top, for Gudule was just nine, he was told, and drove off to St. Jean, a huge gloomy building, with endless narrow corridors which suggested that the building dated from the Middle Ages. He found Monsieur Broukere, the injured head porter, to be a stout man with a very intelligent look in his dark eyes. Santley thought that he stared rather hard at him when he explained that he came with a little present from Mrs. Moncrieff for Gudule, that it had unfortunately been lost on the way, but he hoped that the English verbs would be sweetened nearly as pleasantly by Belgian chocolates.

      The man sitting in a chair with an arm in plaster strapped to his side, pressed his lips together, and raised his eyebrows until they almost touched the bandage across his forehead. He looked like a man who has to make up his mind about quite a knotty point.

      "I cannot accept your very kind present. Monsieur," he said finally—to Santley's great surprise. "You say the English chocolates from Mrs. Moncrieff were stolen! As it happens, my daughter is no longer here in Brussels. She is in school in Switzerland, and on a walking tour at the moment. I cannot send them on to her. They would spoil before she got them. Also the school does not like sweets sent to the girls. It is severe. An Ursuline convent, you see. The Ursulines are like that." And all the time his shrewd eyes, the eyes of a very experienced head porter, Santley imagined, were raking him from head to foot, in a searching way that seemed to the artist very funny. Had he another daughter, Santley wondered, who was eighteen rather than eight, and who gave him a good deal of trouble with hotel guests and chocolates—or flowers...whose good graces were often wooed through the means of the little one?

      "Yes," Broukere now said finally, "I am much obliged, but as you see, grateful though I am for the kindness intended, I cannot take the box," and he handed it back to Santley with an air of pushing him out of the room.

      Santley left immediately. He stepped in at a sort of inquiry office beside the front door, where a very charming young nun had directed him to Broukere's room, Number 33, and asked her if she would accept the box for some of the children. She thanked Santley, and the artist, charmed with the sweet face in its white setting, stood talking to her about the hospital. Suddenly through the open door bustled a sister whom Santley had met before being allowed into Broukere's room. She smiled at him, handed a paper to the younger nun and scuttled off.

      "A telegram—to go at once—" repeated the sister, mechanically moving towards the telephone. Then her brow—what was visible of it, wrinkled in perplexity.

      "What writing! Oh, of course, he wrote it with his left hand. In French I might make it out, but it is in English! You will perhaps be kind enough to look, monsieur. Is this an f or a p? And what are these letters d g e...is that possible? Would you perhaps write it down for me to spell through the telephone to the cable office?"

      Santley took the paper. It was laboriously printed in characters hard to decipher. But he wrote it down for Sister Genevieve and went his way very puzzled indeed. For the cable ran:

      "Moncrieff. Beechcroft, Totteridge, England. Box of chocolates lost by carrier. Broukere."

      Santley thought of the park bench...the cable was to either of the Moncrieffs apparently...he recalled the glance which Lavinia had sent her husband last night when she heard that the artist was going on to Brussels so soon...He telephoned Lavinia an account of what had happened. He received a reply from her assuring him that the loss was of no consequence whatever, and that he was not to give the matter a second thought. For a minute this assurance in its turn puzzled Santley. If of no importance, and her voice had a genuinely indifferent ring, why had he been asked to carry the box across, why Broukere's refusal to accept a substitute, why...but he gave it up, and devoted his mind to colours and patterns.

      He returned to London by 'plane late on Wednesday, rang up Goodenough, and suggested their going down to Beechcroft together. Something about the other's rather silent personality made Santley like him for a companion. Also Goodenough interested Santley, because the artist never felt quite sure what he was thinking behind that wooden face of his. The artist did not feel by any means sure that Goodenough's thoughts as spoken by him always represented Goodenough's thoughts as thought by him. That he was all but engaged to Ann Bladeshaw surprised Santley. Ann was so straight, so transparent, so "young," so easily impressed by others, that he could easily understand the attraction Goodenough would have for her, but what the rather cold, stiff, man of the world saw in the ardent enthusiastic young reformer was the puzzle. Just lately, Santley had thought that Goodenough too, was beginning to ask himself that fatal question. Now had it been Flavelle Bruton! Goodenough had not met her yet. Well, he would do so shortly. They ought to get on well.

      Goodenough, as usual, was punctual to the minute. He looked very serious, Santley thought, and for a while, as the artist's chauffeur drove them through the London streets, only Santley talked—about Brussels—their splendid tapestry factories—their general artistic feeling—finally he turned to his companion.

      "You seem very silent, Goodenough. Touch of liver?"

      "How dare you jeer at my age!" came the retort. "No, it's not liver...or perhaps it is..." and with that he began to talk in his amusing, cynical way—the way of a man who had not many illusions left. Or perhaps had never had them, for Santley held that you didn't lose your trust in your fellow men. You were born "with" or "without," and you kept what you had to the end. He himself often wished he could lose some of his own, his bank balance would certainly stand higher if he did not believe every yarn told him, no matter how often he had found them to be lies.

      Both men had been to Beechcroft before. It was one of those sprawling houses which take a great deal more to keep up than they are worth. Lavinia always explained that she had got the leasehold for a song, and that, as they did not have to pay for dilapidations, they were letting things look after themselves. The owner intended to pull the place down and put up a block of flats when it should come to him again. The house was shaped like a capital E without its middle projection. Only the front was used. The two wings remained unfurnished. At the back of them was what had once been really good stables and loose boxes. A few of these, quite to one side, had been turned into a garage and lock-ups for visitors' cars, but the bulk of them remained as a little block of buildings enclosing a huge stable yard, and quite private, as only the windows of the unused part of the house overlooked it.

      "There's Ayres!" Goodenough said as they drew up at the front steps. Santley knew Ayres fairly well. "He says Mrs. Phillimore has been dreaming—about the drains. There's no question of Ann not being here for at least some weeks more."

      A gentle-faced rather timid looking man with a diffident manner came forward now with a smile and shook hands. Then he turned and rang the front door bell for them. There was no answer. Ayres looked as distressed as though he were the host.

      "I think the parlourmaid must be busy...it's a busy household...these old houses make a great deal of work...Does your chauffeur know where the garage is? I can show him the—ah, here's Mrs. Moncrieff," he finished in tones of great relief.

      Lavinia welcomed them warmly, hoped they would excuse the lack of men servants, and told them that lunch would be ready in half an hour.

      "What brings you down here?" Goodenough asked Ayres, as the latter volunteered to show them to their rooms. "I thought it was the tableaux, but you've evidently been installed for days."

      "Well," Ayres said importantly, "I'm here really as watchdog. Young Pusey is staying down here. He wants to look into one of our patents on behalf of his firm. That's very nice, but we don't want him to learn too much," and Ayres chuckled. "Moncrieff's a clever СКАЧАТЬ