Death Comes to Cambers by E.R. Punshon Page A

again. Well, that’s all right, of course, but I didn’t see her making me marry some bally girl I knew nothing about just so she could fix it up with Uncle Albert again.’
    â€˜How? In what way? I don’t follow that quite,’ Lawson said.
    â€˜Oh, well, it’s like this. The girl she wanted me to marry is one of the Cambers family, only another branch. Had the same ancestor somewhere about the Wars of the Roses or thereabouts. Uncle Albert had some sort of sentimental idea of perpetuating the family name by passing on the estate here to these other Cambers. Aunt thought she could kill several birds with the same stone: work a reconciliation with Uncle Albert, get me safely married, settle the destination of both the family estates and her own private money, all together. I did see the girl once. Quite a kid. We bored each other stiff at first sight. I told my aunt right out I wasn’t having any.’
    â€˜Was that what you had come to see her about?’
    â€˜Oh, no. I was just running down to see how she was and all that.’
    Colonel Lawson consulted his notes, asked one or two more quite unimportant questions, and then the young man was allowed to depart. But he was asked to remain in the vicinity for the present, and at any rate not to leave without letting his intention to do so be known.
    â€˜What about this young Dene?’ the chief constable asked next, but had to be told that all efforts to find him had proved unavailing so far.
    Apparently he was neither at his father’s shop nor anywhere else in the village. No one had seen him, and the chief constable scowled and frowned very much on receiving this information. Then Farman appeared, to report that Sir Albert Cambers had rung through to say he was on the way and would arrive shortly. The news of the tragedy had reached him while he was in bed with an attack of influenza, but he got up at once and would have started before, only that he had been obliged to wait so long for the car he had ordered from the Jubilee Garage. Then, too, a message had been received from Scotland Yard agreeing to Detective-Sergeant Owen’s services being placed for the time at the disposal of Chief Constable Lawson, in accordance with the request made. Colonel Lawson was very pleased on receiving this message, and beamed approval on Bobby. No one now could blame him for not calling in the help of Scotland Yard and yet the direction of the case would remain entirely in his own – as he felt – very capable hands: because to Colonel Lawson a sergeant was a person who stood to attention and waited for orders, not moving an inch till he got them.
    â€˜Better make a fair copy of your notes, sergeant,’ he said to Bobby.
    â€˜Very good, sir,’ said Bobby. ‘I was wondering, sir,’ he added carelessly, ‘if I might potter about the village a little first and see if I can pick up any gossip. They all know I was staying here, so they’ll think it natural enough, and they may talk more freely to me than they would to you, sir, or to Mr. Moulland.’
    â€˜Oh, by all means,’ agreed Colonel Lawson, thinking no harm of ‘pottering’, ‘and see if you can get any hint of what’s likely to have become of that young Dene fellow. I dare say there’s no connection, but it seems curious that two people should vanish immediately like this – Dene and the man reported as having roused suspicions by asking questions in the village.’ He paused, hesitated, and added: ‘There’s one thing perhaps you ought to know, but you understand it is for information solely; it is not to be taken into account or allowed to prejudice the inquiry in any way.’
    â€˜Yes, sir; no, sir,’ said Bobby, wondering what this meant.
    Instead of speaking, the chief constable glanced at his superintendent, who cleared his throat and said: ‘We have it on record that Farman served three