The Hanging Captain

Book 652: Murder Room

by Henry Wade

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Sir Herbert Sterron is found dead, hanging by the neck from a curtain cord. He had good reason to want to kill himself, so nobody is unduly surprised. But then hints of foul play start to emerge: Sterron's wife, Griselda, was desperately unhappy with the marriage; and shocking evidence is uncovered that incriminates not just the County Sheriff but a Catholic priest. Now what looked to be a straightforward suicide is turning into something quite different - a complex case of murder . . .

Release date: May 14, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 301

Sample

“A HANDSOME couple, don’t you think?”

Sir James Hamsted appeared to give the matter careful consideration before replying solemnly:

“They are, indeed. Mrs. Sterron, if I may be allowed to say so, possesses a genuine beauty which one sees too seldom in these days. Your brother is indeed a fortunate man.”

Gerald Sterron smiled. His companion was a casual visitor, otherwise he might have hesitated before venturing upon that particular assertion.

The two men were standing upon a sloping lawn which ran down to the grass tennis-court on which a man and woman, unconscious of the admiration they had evoked, were engaged in a hard-fought
game, in which skill was nicely tempered with recklessness. Base-line rallies of immaculate length generally ended in one or other of the players trying to hit the cover off the ball and sending it
crashing into the net-cord or soaring over the stop-nets at the end into the shrubbery beyond. The latter was generally the fate of Griselda Sterron’s attempted “winners,” whilst
her opponent’s tactful efforts to prolong the set generally found a more controlled ending in the center.

“Oh, heavens, there goes another! Gerald, would you be a dear?”

Griselda’s laugh was infectious and, though her brother-in-law might have been regarded as immune from the attraction of her flushed face, there was a smile of genuine pleasure on his own
as he pursued the soaring Slazenger into a clump of tangled weigela.

His companion, Sir James Hamsted, too old and stiff now to take part in either game or pursuit, remained watching the flying figures of the players, as they dashed from side to side of the court
or darted up to the net for the final smash. They were certainly an attractive pair to watch: Griselda Sterron, tall, well made, graceful as a professional dancer, her short chestnut hair curling
back from a high forehead to cling lovingly round the slender nape of a neck now delicately flushed, brown eyes flashing with joy of the game, red lips slightly parted over even white teeth, arms,
bare to the shoulder, dazzlingly lovely against the apple-green of her tennis frock, was a picture fair enough to hold the eye of any man; it was impossible to believe, now, that she was in her
fortieth year, though when Sir James had first seen her on the previous evening he had thought her ill and tired. Then the disparity between her age and her husband’s had not been too
apparent; now it must have been very noticeable if Herbert Sterron had been present.

But it was not with her husband that Griselda was playing. Her opponent, hardly less striking in appearance than herself, was a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty-five. Black hair,
close-cropped to hide a natural curl, framed a face of striking character. The short, battered nose of the fighter was in itself anything but beautiful, but taken with the square jaw, the straight
brows, and the hard, blue eyes, it formed a picture of manly attraction that women had found difficult to resist. And opportunities of resistance had not been infrequent.

“Quick on his feet for his size, isn’t he?” said Gerald Sterron, returned, somewhat disheveled, from his successful search.

“Who exactly is he?”

“Carle Venning; Sir Carle Venning to be up to date; he only succeeded last year.”

“A neighbor?”

“He is now. He’s been everybody’s neighbor in his time—a rolling stone, if ever there was one. But he’s rolled to some purpose—left his mark wherever he
went.”

“He sounds a young man of character.”

Sir James’s prim phrases were in keeping with his appearance.

“Oh, yes, plenty of character,” returned Sterron. “He’s had every chance to develop it. He was at some public school, but his father, who was a bit of a character
himself, took him away early because he thought he was getting stereotyped and sent him round the world—on his own legs, not with a Cook’s courier. He crossed the Atlantic before the
mast, I believe, sold papers in Chicago, got smashed up by a bronc in the West, found his way to Australia and dug for gold, made a small fortune before he was twenty-five and was robbed of it in
a night on his way down to the coast. Then the War came and he stowed away on some boat to get back to England, got held up at Suez but managed to tack on to Lawrence, quarreled with him and made
his way through Persia into Georgia, where the Reds caught him and tried three times to shoot him. He escaped each time and eventually joined Kolchak or Denikin—I forget which—and
commanded a crowd of international scalliwags, soldiers of fortune like himself. When Kolchak failed he disappeared but turned up a year later in London. Nobody knows to this day what he did in
that year, but he’s led a comparatively quiet life since then, hunting big game in different parts of the world.”

“It seems curious to find such a man in your quiet part of the English countryside,” said Sir James.

“Oh, he’s still hunting,” replied Sterron with a short laugh.

Sir James threw a quick glance at his companion, but remained silent.

“The joke is,” continued Sterron, “they’ve taken the opportunity of his coming home on his father’s death to make him High Sheriff of the county! A sense of humor
that one hardly expects from the county bumpkins.”

Sir James raised his eyebrows.

“County bumpkins? The expression is strange to me.”

Sterron shrugged his shoulders.

“A combination of county big-wig and country bumpkin, I suppose. Much the same thing, anyhow.”

“You are not yourself a—county bumpkin?”

“I? Oh, no, far from it. I’m a merchant—or was till a year or two ago. Shanghai. But I saw what was coming just before the others did and sold out while there was still
something to sell—and Americans with dollars to buy it.”

“But you live in England now? In town, perhaps?”

“No, small house at Hindhead—next door to L.G., nearly. We aren’t either of us bumpkins—whatever else we may be.”

Sterron laughed, but his companion appeared unamused.

“But this appointment of Sir Carle Venning’s,” he persisted. “Why do you describe it as a joke? The office, surely, is a sinecure. Some money and two or three Assizes a
year?”

“Yes, but nominally responsible for the administration of law and order! A man like that!”

“Is he disorderly? A law-breaker?”

Sterron opened his mouth to reply, but paused. After a time he went on:

“I don’t know the details of his career sufficiently well to say, but he is certainly without fear and—I suspect—without scruple. What he wants he will get.”

Sir James nodded.

“Yes, his physiognomy suggests that,” he replied.

The set had ended and the two players, talking eagerly and intimately, strolled across to a bench beside which was a table with a tray of iced drinks. Sir James Hamsted, feeling perhaps that,
while a game might be watched, a tête-à-tête conversation might not, turned away up the lawn towards the carriage drive.

“I have some letters to post,” he said. “I will stroll down to the village.”

“The box in the hall is cleared in time for the next post,” said Sterron.

“A walk will be not unwelcome; the afternoon is cooler now.”

With an imperceptible shrug Gerald Sterron let him go; the man, however distinguished his career, was an old-fashioned bore. He himself lit a cigarette and strolled up the garden towards the
house. As he walked, his mind followed a chain of thought which had been started by his late companion’s remark about his brother’s good fortune. It was, perhaps, a natural, if rather
rash, assumption. To be the husband of so lovely a creature as Griselda and the owner of the historic Ferris Court were foundations enough upon which to build a fairy-tale of good fortune.

Twenty years ago there was no one in his world who would not have envied young Herbert Sterron. At the age of thirty-three, the dashing Dragoon captain, rich, popular, already the owner of
Ferris, but well launched on a successful military career, had captured beautiful Griselda Hewth in the height of her first, victorious London season, sweeping her away from under the guns of rival
dukes and diamond merchants. For three years the young couple—for Herbert Sterron was still young, though fifteen years older than his wife—had followed in the full tide of pre-War
social life, ideally happy, popular, with all the world before them. Then suddenly he had resigned his commission, carried Griselda off to Ferris and buried himself and her in the inaccessible
country in which his family home lay. There were rumors of illness, of money troubles, even of marital quarrels, but nobody knew anything—only that the pair had disappeared. The one known
cause of possible unhappiness was their childlessness (in those days people expected and wished to have children), but this seemed hardly reason enough for voluntary banishment.

The War came and Herbert Sterron rejoined his regiment, but almost before his old comrades had had time to notice the change in him he had been passed unfit for active service and drafted to a
remount depot on the French coast. There or thereabouts he had remained until the Armistice sent him back to Ferris Court—and his young wife. For Griselda had remained with him through
whatever tribulations had caused his disappearance from their world, though after the War it soon became apparent to their old friends that she remained with him on principle rather than by
inclination. For, though she had not lost her beauty, Griselda was a changed woman; her friendships and affections had taken on an unstable—almost a fickle—quality, while her natural
high spirits had developed into something very like hysteria.

Until two years ago, Gerald Sterron had hardly seen his brother and sister-in-law since their marriage. His business, prosperous until after the War, had kept him closely tied to China and,
owing to the prior claims of the senior partner, his share in that conflict had been limited to a nominal defense of the Shanghai Bund. Their letters had been few and guarded, so that it had been a
severe shock to him, when he had returned to England two years previously, to find his brother (senior by little more than a year) an old and haggard man, sullen in spirit, violent in temper, and
utterly changed from the care-free, high-spirited dragoon whom he had seen marry lovely Griselda Hewth.

As for Ferris Court, the Tudor home of twelve generations of Sterrons, that second pillar upon which the good fortune of Herbert Sterron had appeared to rest, a glance at the garden was
sufficient hint of the shadow which overhung the fine old house. Weed-encumbered beds and paths, untrimmed edges, overgrown shrubberies, told their tale of straitened means—or neglect sprung
from a broken spirit.

His mind, full of memories of his childhood, when these lawns and flowerbeds were weedless and immaculate, when sleek gardeners jostled each other at every turn and glasshouses gave forth their
rich crops of fruit in season and out, Gerald walked disconsolately along the reproachful paths. The garden had been laid out in terraces, cleverly divided by borders of flowering shrubs which yet
disclosed vistas of view from end to end. Now the shrubs had shot up in search of a sun which the crowding of their neighbors denied them, so that each part of the garden was shut completely from
the rest—except at one spot on a higher terrace from which a view of the tennis-court below was still obtainable, and here Gerald Sterron found his brother.

Herbert Sterron had always been a big man, perfect specimen of a Heavy Dragoon; now, the muscle which had kept him fit and active had changed to fat, his shoulders drooped, the flesh of his face
hung in pouches from eyes and jowl. He still wore the pre-War cavalryman’s heavy mustache, but it failed to hide the deep lines which dragged down the corners of his mouth and gave his once
handsome face a morose expression. Just now, when his brother joined him, there was a flash of anger in his dark eyes that rather improved than marred his appearance.

Captain Sterron was standing on the neglected terrace, looking down through a gap in the shrubs at the figures of his wife and her companion, sitting on the small bench in intimate conversation.
He hardly noticed his brother’s approach.

“Shrubberies want thinning out a bit, Herbert,” said Gerald, brushing from his gray flannel trousers some traces of his late explorations.

Herbert shot his brother a quick look, then turned his eyes back to the court as if a magnet were drawing them.

“Damned swash-buckler!” he muttered angrily.

The object and the intensity of his feelings were too obvious to be ignored, even if Gerald had felt inclined to be tactful.

“Venning? Fine figure of a man, isn’t he?”

“Fine . . . ! My God, he’ll look fine before I’ve finished with him!”

Gerald laughed.

“I should leave him alone if I were you,” he said. “He’d break you up in about thirty seconds.”

Herbert Sterron turned his gaze back upon his brother, a crafty gleam replacing, and not improving, the previous look of anger.

“Oh, I shan’t play into his hands,” he said. “I’ll break him without touching him!”

Gerald carefully filled and lit his pipe, watching the expressions on his brother’s face with detached interest as he did so.

“Very laudable—perhaps desirable. But how are you going to set about it?”

Herbert eyed his brother cautiously, as if balancing the pros and cons of confidence; apparently the pros had it, aided, no doubt, by the natural pride of creation.

“Two ways,” he said; “either would do, but one might suit me better than the other.”

“Let’s hear it then.” Gerald stifled a yawn—perhaps a tactical yawn.

“Divorce! He’s trying to become respectable—county gentleman, High Sheriff, perhaps Lord Lieutenant some day. Divorce’ll smash all that!”

“It certainly would, but . . .”

Herbert Sterron broke in, not listening to him:

“He’d have to marry her. He likes her hanging round his neck for an hour or two now, I don’t doubt, but how’ll he like it for a lifetime, eh? How’ll he like
that?”

His brother eyed him distastefully.

“It’s difficult to believe you were once an officer and . . . a gentleman, Herbert,” he said coolly. “In any case, you’ll never divorce her. You couldn’t live
here alone and you wouldn’t get any other woman to marry you, let alone live with you.”

Herbert flinched as if his brother had struck him. His face whitened, but the color quickly flooded back into it.

“Wouldn’t I?” he exclaimed. “Wouldn’t I? You wait. I . . .” he broke off, as if he regretted having said so much.

“And what’s your alternative plan?” asked Gerald. “A bit more effective than the other, I hope.”

A grin of almost malignant enjoyment spread over Herbert Sterron’s lined face.

“So effective that I might positively not enjoy it myself,” he said, then turned on his heel and slouched away.

Gerald Sterron watched his brother’s retreating form till it disappeared round a corner, then turned himself and strolled towards the house, frowning as if in disapproval of the malicious
imaginings to which he had been treated. Almost mechanically he mounted the shallow stone steps of each familiar terrace and picked his way through the rose garden towards the side door of the old
house. In the dark passage—dark by contrast with the sun outside—he almost collided with a young woman carrying a handful of papers.

“Oh, Mr. Sterron, I’m so sorry!” exclaimed the girl, “I’m trying to find Captain Sterron to sign some letters before the post goes.”

“He went towards the west walk; you’ll probably find him in the pigeon house, Miss Nawten.”

“Thank you so much. I must fly if I’m to get these done in time.”

The girl—she was barely thirty—flew, with a grace of movement that even the unsusceptible Shanghai merchant could not fail to notice.

For a moment Gerald watched her with an unconscious smile, but the pleasure soon faded from his expression, leaving his face set in a frown of concentrated thought. Crossing the hall he entered
the library, a long room which occupied a large part of the west wing of Ferris. Although faded and cracked the quiet, green paint with which the room was decorated had a restful effect upon the
eye—especially on such a glaring day as this; the handsome bookcases, too, filled with their treasures in dull brown and faded gold, were well calculated to have a soothing effect upon a
troubled mind. Gerald Sterron, however, appeared immune from these influences; he wandered restlessly from bookcase to bookcase, took out a volume or two, pushed them back into place, flung himself
into a chair and picked up a newspaper which lay on the floor beside it. For a time he appeared to read, then the paper subsided gradually into his lap, while his eyes remained fixed steadily on
the door straight in front of him.

For a long time there was silence in the room, then a bumble-bee blundered in at the open window and, after a noisy circuit, tried to go out again, but only succeeded in banging himself heavily
against all the windows that were closed. The sound seemed to disturb Gerald’s train of thought; he frowned, dragged himself out of his chair, captured and released the intruder, and went out
again into the hall. Here there was even more complete silence than in the library, a silence with a peculiar quality of depression rather than of peace. Standing in the middle of the hall, Gerald
looked about him, as if in search of occupation or companion, took a step or two towards the door of the study, changed his mind and mounted slowly to his bedroom on the first floor. Here he seemed
no better at ease but wandered aimlessly about the room, fiddling with first one thing and then another, lighting a cigarette and throwing it out of the window. Then, his attention attracted by
something outside, he picked up a pair of field-glasses that lay on the sill and leveled them at a square brick building that peeped from among the trees at the far end of the large garden. For
more than a minute he gazed, then lowered the glasses slowly to their former resting-place. His face was almost expressionless, save that the mouth pursed into a silent whistle.

“So that’s where the wind lies,” he murmured.

WHEN he saw his hostess again at dinner, Sir James Hamsted was once more struck by the change in her appearance. The flush and sparkle of the
afternoon had given place to pallor and an expression of weary boredom. Perhaps the vigor and speed of the game had been too great; the body no longer equal to the demands of the spirit—Mrs.
Sterron was, after all, no longer a young woman. In these days of rush and worry people exhausted themselves easily; they had no reserves of strength to fall back upon. It was regrettable, thought
Sir James, to see that lovely face marred by lines of fatigue, though the brown eyes seemed even larger by reason of the dark shadows beneath them.

Mrs. Sterron’s clothes, too, had changed their character. The sleeveless, apple-green tennis frock had given place to a high, black evening dress of almost nun-like simplicity. A fichu of
old lace at the neck alone relieved the somber effect, though Sir James was struck by the beauty of the slim white hands emerging from the close-fitting sleeves. Even her hair seemed changed, for
Mrs. Sterron had pressed the chestnut curls closely against her head with a fillet of black velvet. Her lips seemed colorless by comparison with the afternoon, though a woman would have realized
that a stick of lighter shade had emphasized the beauty of their shape.

But there was no other woman present in the dining-room at Ferris Court and Sir James Hamsted alone seemed conscious of the change, though once he caught Herbert Sterron looking at his wife with
a half-smile that was uncomfortably suggestive of a sneer. Conversation took the form of reminiscences exchanged between Sir James and Gerald Sterron, chiefly on the subject of commerce and
diplomacy in the East. Gerald Sterron, though his style was dry and unemotional, talked well; this was his subject and he did not often get the chance to ventilate it; Sir James Hamsted, though
speaking as an observer rather than an expert, evidently knew what he was talking about and had formed opinions of his own on the subject. Probably, thought Gerald—who knew nothing about his
fellow-guest—Sir James was the sort of man who read extensively, talked freely with members of clubs like the Athenæum and the Royal, and was prepared to lay down the law on any topic
from the depth of an armchair. It was a useful accomplishment, at least on an occasion like the present, for Captain Sterron was silent and morose, and his wife, though a conscientious hostess,
became distraite as soon as her guests were comfortably launched upon their discussion.

Dessert had hardly been put upon the table when Mrs. Sterron rose. She smiled at Sir James, who opened the door for her, and held out a slender hand.

“I will say good night, Sir James, if you will excuse me,” she said. “I have a couple of long letters to write, and then I shall go to bed with a book. A solitary woman is an
encumbrance, I know, among a number of men.”

Sir James tried to murmur an adequate denial, but his hostess passed on into the hall without waiting for him to frame his words.

The three men sat on for a time, talking and enjoying the fine port which the Ferris Court cellars could still produce. At least, two of them enjoyed it; Herbert Sterron had touched no wine
during dinner and now sat nibbling at a rather unexpected chocolate. To remain silent and sober while other men talk and drink is an indifferent pastime, but Gerald Sterron paid no heed to his
brother’s obvious impatience and saw to it that the decanter circulated between Sir James and himself until it was empty. As Sir James tilted his glass for the last time, Herbert pushed back
his chair.

“Come and smoke your cigar in my study, Hamst. . .