Ardsley nodded in agreement.
“So long as a brute gets his deserts, it doesn’t seem to me to matter how he gets them. And I agree with you about making an innocent family suffer through no fault of their own.”
Sir Clinton acknowledged Ardsley’s support.
“That’s how I looked at the Shandon case,” he said. “I could have arrested the brute. Then we’d have had a trial. And the Hawkhursts would have been branded as relatives of a murderer. I thought things could be done just as efficiently by making Ernest Shandon his own executioner. In fact, my method was a stiffer one than mere hanging, as you know. And if it failed—well, the law would take its normal course.
“I’d found a suitcase packed ready in the Maze on the night that young Hawkhurst was attacked. I expected something of the sort and went specially to look for it. I’d a notion that he wouldn’t care to sneak out of the house with a suitcase in his hand at the last moment, if he bolted. He’d have it cached somewhere, so that he could leave with empty hands, quite unsuspicious, you know. I knew he’d need a complete change of clothes so as to be able to alter his appearance and put the hue and cry off his track. He’d shown a penchant for the Maze all along. He’d even dragged it into his story of the attack on himself; so it was clear he had it very much in mind. I banked on that when I looked there for his suitcase. It was a good enough choice. He could sneak out of the house, pick up the suitcase, go across to the boathouse, and row himself down to the village without having to be seen carrying the bag on the public road at all—quite a good plan, if you ask me.”
“I hadn’t seen why he went to the Maze, I admit,” said Stenness. “It seemed rather like a bit of magic on your part to have foreseen that.”
“Once I’d found the suitcase,” Sir Clinton went on, “all that remained was to arrange the moment for his bolt, so that I could grip him. There was no use waiting on his good pleasure to fix the time. I gave him a plain hint that I’d be glad to see him go—let him think I wanted to avoid the scandal of a trial. There was no lying in that. I certainly did want to avoid putting him in the dock.
“Now as it happened, Stenness had been realising some capital at that time; so I got him to put his cash into the study safe that night. And I told friend Ernest that the money was there—a good round sum. That gave him the sinews of war for his bolt, free of charge, you see? He’d only to grab it in passing. And as soon as I felt he was nibbling, I telephoned a code-message to the police-station: some rot about Navy Cut tobacco. From that prearranged message, they knew they’d only to open an envelope and carry out their sealed orders which I’d left with them. They came up to the Maze during the night; watched Ernest into it about 6 a.m.—I’d been keeping an eye on his room during the night, so he couldn’t have given us the slip anyhow. Then, as soon as he went into the Maze my men closed the gates behind him—and the game was up!
“You know the rest. We had to hold an inquest, of course; but you must have seen that we gave the bare legal minimum of evidence; just enough to prove suicide. Of course there’s sure to be some talk. One can’t help that. But we’ve stifled it as far as we possibly could; and the reporters got so little that the thing was hardly talked about in the papers.”
Sir Clinton smiled with a tingle of sardonic amusement.
“I wonder what they’d have made of it if they’d known all about our methods! Perhaps I wasn’t quite orthodox. Perhaps I ought to have got him nicely hanged—and incidentally run the public in for a big bill for his prosecution. I can only say that my conscience is quite clear; it doesn’t give me a twinge. Consciences are weird things.”
He glanced across at Stenness with a glint of humour in his eye which the rest failed to see.
“And now, what about some bridge?”
Colophon
Murder in the Maze
was published in 1927 by
J. J. Connington.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Ron Stewart,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2023 by
Brian Raiter and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Surrey Garden,
a painting completed in 1924 by
Elliott Seabrooke.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
December 12, 2024, 8:16 p.m.
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