Read Online The Polo Ground Mystery by Robin Forsythe - Free Book Online

firmly fastened and hadn’t been tampered with.”
    â€œYou’re talking poppycock, Heather. You don’t mean to tell me that Armadale clambered over the balustrade and slithered down a pillar after his man?”
    â€œIt looks mighty like it, anyhow,” replied the inspector. “How is the French window of the library fastened?”
    â€œWith an ordinary handle catch and a lock and key. One-half of the window is made fast, of course, with a bolt into the transom and a bolt into the floor. This half was closed and bolted; the other half was ajar.”
    â€œThe thing’s as simple as pie, Heather. One of the servants was in collusion with the burglar and kindly left the window open for him. This servant coached the crook as to the concealed safe, got an impression of the safe key for him, and disconnected the burglar alarm on the safe door, so that you’ve just got to choose him out of the staff and clap the bracelets on him as an accessory. Arrest the trusted butler for choice!”
    â€œI’ve got my eyes on the staff, Mr. Vereker. There’s a lot in your suggestion,” said the inspector gravely.
    â€œI’m going to concentrate on the guests, Heather. There’s a Raffles among ’em. Life’s daily creeping up to fiction, or vice versa. Bothered if I know. The tragedy of this problem is that nobody will ever know exactly what wakened Armadale in the early hours to go down to the library.”
    â€œHis bedroom is right above the library,” interrupted the inspector. “The noise below probably woke him up.”
    â€œThen that’s the first logical thing I’ve heard about this astounding affair, Heather.”
    â€œThe second is that we’ve arrived at the polo ground,” added the inspector.
    At these words, Vereker’s lackadaisical manner was at once sloughed, and for some moments he stood silent, his eye taking in every detail of the scene. From the polo ground with its boarded edging it crossed to the gates opening from the stable-yard, thence to the upper windows of Vesey Manor, peering over the enclosing walls of the grounds and kitchen garden and now aflame with the westering sun. He noted that a good view of the polo ground could be obtained from the upper windows of the second and third stories. Thence his glance swept northward to where Hanging Covert frowned over the valley. It was an ideal covert, he could see, for driven pheasants. With their homing habits they would make for Wild Duck Wood to the south-east, flying across the narrow intervening valley, and supply the rocketers beloved of every good shot. Due east of Hanging Covert his eye picked up a puff of bluish smoke issuing from a red chimney-pot burning like a tiny flame against the dark green of the surrounding foliage.
    â€œThat’s Collyer’s cottage nestling on the slope of the hill, I suppose, Heather?”
    â€œThat’s it, Mr. Vereker. Collyer was making for, and had nearly reached the fringe of, Hanging Covert when he spotted Armadale’s body lying near the goal flags at the end of the ground.”
    â€œIt would take him a good twenty-five minutes to reach the covert after leaving his cottage even at a steady jog-trot. He probably walked, and that would give the murderer half an hour to make himself scarce before Collyer came into a position from which he could view the polo ground. He could have been spotted from the manor windows, but evidently no one was roused or took the trouble to look out. It would probably be more than an hour before Captain Fanshaugh suggested combing the surrounding grounds and woods, so that the man had plenty of time to clear without being seen. In any case, he was careful enough, it seems, to pick up his ejected cartridge cases—a nice point, Heather, don’t you think? I should say a man who had committed a murder would be desperately eager to quit the scene of the crime without stopping to hunt