The Layton Court mystery

I know of nobody who likes a detective story more than you do, with the possible exception of myself. So if I write one and you read it, we ought to be able to amuse ourselves at any rate.

I hope you will notice that I have tried to make the gentleman who eventually solves the mystery behave as nearly as possible as he might be expected to do in real life. That is to say, he is very far removed from a sphinx and he does make a mistake or two occasionally. I have never believed very much in those hawk-eyed, tight-lipped gentry, who pursue their silent and inexorable way straight to the heart of things without ever once overbalancing or turning aside after false goals; and I cannot see why even a detective story should not aim at the creation of a natural atmosphere, just as much as any other work of the lighter fiction.

In the same way I should like you to observe that I have set down quite plainly every scrap of evidence just as it is discovered, so that the reader has precisely the same data at his disposal as has the detective. This seems to me the only fair way of doing things. To hold up till the last chapter some vital piece of evidence (which, by the way, usually renders the solution of the puzzle perfectly simple), and to achieve your surprise by allowing the detective to arrest his man before the evidence on which he is doing so is ever so much as hinted to the reader at all, is, to my mind, most decidedly not playing the game.

With which short homily, I hand the book over to you by way of some very slight return for all that you have done for me.

Chapter I

Eight o’Clock in the Morning

William, the gardener at Layton Court, was a man of melancholy deliberation.

It did not pay, William held, to rush things; especially the important things of life, such as the removal of greenfly from roses. Before action was taken, the matter should be studied, carefully and unhappily, from every possible point of view, particularly the worst.

On this summer’s morning William had been gazing despondently at the roses for just over three quarters of an hour. Pretty soon now he would feel himself sufficiently fortified to begin operations on them.

“Do you always count the greenfly before you slaughter them, friend William?” asked a sudden voice behind him.

William, who had been bending forward to peer gloomily into the greenfly-blown intricacies of a Caroline Testout, slewed hastily about. He hated being accosted at the best of times, but there was a spontaneous heartiness about this voice which grated intolerably on all his finer feelings. The added fact that the act of slewing hastily about had brought a portion of his person into sharp and painful contact with another rose bush did not tend to make life any more cheerful for William at that moment.

“Weren’t a-countin’ em,” he observed curtly; and added naughtily under his breath, “Drat that there Mr. Sheringham!”

“Oh! I thought you must be totting up the bag in advance,” remarked the newcomer gravely from behind an enormous pipe. “What’s your record bag of greenfly, William? Runs into thousands of brace, I suppose. Well, no doubt it’s an interesting enough sport for people of quiet tastes. Like stamp-collecting. You ever collect stamps, William?”

“Noa,” said William, gazing sombrely at a worm. William was not one of your chatty conversationalists.

“Really?” replied his interlocutor with interest. “Mad on it myself once. As a boy, of course. Silly game though, really, I agree with you.” He followed the direction of William’s eyes. “Ah, the early morning worm!” he continued brightly. “And defying all the rules of its calling by refusing to act as provender for the early bird. Highly unprofessional conduct! There’s a lesson for all of us in that worm, William, if I could only think what it is. I’ll come back and tell you when I’ve had time to go into the matter properly.”