Collected works of j s f.., p.445
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 445
“Puzzling!” admitted the Professor. “Yet I suppose that a man who had much at stake wouldn’t mind sticking it out in these woods for a few hours — the nights are warm now, and there’s a lot of shelter here, in these valleys. Now, what amazes me is — if this man murdered Guy Markenmore, as I’m sure he did, why didn’t he murder him on Monday night and get away in the darkness?”
Blick laughed.
“I’ll tell you why,” he answered. “He was a man whom Guy Markenmore had taken into his confidence about this dye affair. He had come down with him, fully acquainted with what Guy was doing. He knew that the money business was likely to be settled that night. And he waited until morning so that he could possess himself of the cash as well as the formula you have told us of — with your opinion attached to it. Probably he is the man of whom Markenmore’s clerk at Folgrave Court told you, and we’ll have to try and find him. But the clue’s thin and poor, so far.”
The Professor nodded, paused, and looked about him. While talking, they had strolled slowly along the hill-side into a still wilder stretch of country. They were now standing on the edge of a deep ravine, which cut into the land beneath to a depth of some two hundred feet; here and there the fall was precipitous; in the dark and gloomy recesses far below great masses of yew and pine were broken by huge blocks of grey limestone; over everything hovered a sombre and mysterious silence. But suddenly the Professor broke it.
“There is somebody signalling to us!” he exclaimed. “Down there! A woman!”
Blick looked in the direction indicated, and started in surprise. Far away below them, a little to their right, he saw a woman’s figure standing near a grove of trees which lay at the foot of the most precipitous part of the ravine. And, as the Professor said, she was certainly endeavouring to attract their attention.
“Good Heavens!” he said. “That’s Miss Valencia Markenmore! Whatever is she doing down there? Do you know what they call this place? — the Devil’s Grip! Grip, I suppose, means a sharp cut in the surface of the land. But what can she want?”
“Let us make our way down,” suggested the Professor. “We are evidently wanted. Hello! there are men, too!”
Two figures had just emerged from amongst the cluster of pine trees near which Valencia stood. Blick suddenly recognized them as those of Harborough and Mr. Fransemmery. They, recognizing the detective, also began signalling to him.
“There’s something afoot down there!” he muttered. “Looks to me as if they’d made some discovery. Look here, sir! — that tall man is Harborough, who, as I told you, was accused of the murder by Mrs. Tretheroe; the other is Mr. Fransemmery, the old gentleman who has figured in the case.”
“I know Fransemmery by name,” replied the Professor. “He’s a member of an archaeological society to which I also belong — I’ve corresponded with him. Now, how can we get down there without breaking our necks.”
“There’ll be a sheep-track somewhere along here,” said Blick. “Where a sheep can go, we can — at a pinch.”
But some minutes passed before they found a means of descending into the depths of the ravine wherein the others there awaited their coming. Once in its recesses the Professor wondered at the precipice-like character of the cliff down which they had made their way. Above the spot at which Valencia and her two companions were standing, the granite walls rose high and cliff-like; at one place there was a sheer drop of two hundred feet, terminating in a wild and broken mass of rock and shrub; it was at the lower edge of this wilderness that the three stood, looking alternately into its recesses and at the men hurrying along the level floor of the ravine towards them. At Mr. Fransemmery’s heels, held in a leash made out of his master’s handkerchief, the Airedale terrier fretted and whimpered, evidently desirous of once more penetrating into the gorse bushes from whence he had been unceremoniously dragged.
“That’s Fransemmery’s dog — the chap that unearthed the automatic pistol!” said Blick. “I wonder if he’s made another discovery?”
Harborough came slowly towards them. As he approached he gave Blick a warning look and pointed to the pine trees.
“I say!” he said in a hushed voice, as they drew near. “There’s a man lying dead in there! — he must have fallen over the cliff. The terrier found him — we couldn’t get him away, so I went in for him and saw this man — dead, I say. Come and see!”
They were up to the other two by that time, and Blick, without further question or any ceremony, plunged in amongst the trees, followed by the three men.
“Where is he? Who is he?” he asked. “Anybody you know?”
“A stranger — looks like a tourist,” said Harborough. “Here, at the foot of the rocks!”
He thrust and held aside the clinging branches of the pines, and suddenly revealed the body of a man, lying in a curiously twisted attitude across a mass of sharp-edged stone. One glance upward was sufficient to show what had befallen him; he had slipped from the edge of the precipice far above, and crashed without a break, on the place where he lay: a little distance from him lay the walking-stick which he had dropped from his hand as he fell.
With a sharp exclamation Blick sprang forward and turned the face, hitherto crushed in amongst a cushion of moss and heather, to the light. He rose, staring at it.
“Good God!” he said. “It’s Crawley — the man I met — —”
But a stronger, far more astonished exclamation came from the Professor, as he in his turn saw the dead man’s face.
“Crawley?” he said. “Crawley? Man alive! — That’s Carter! Carter! Carter, I tell you!”
Blick felt as if an ice-cold wave of illumination had washed across his brain. He turned on the Professor with searching eyes.
“Carter!” he exclaimed. “Your assistant?”
“My assistant!”
“The man who carried your sealed letter to Guy Markenmore?”
“That very man!” affirmed the Professor solemnly. “Good Lord! What does all this mean?”
Blick suddenly dropped on his knees by the dead man’s side and abruptly plunged a hand into an inner pocket of the clothing — into a second — a third. Just as suddenly he produced a letter-case, and from it drew out a wad of bank-notes and two papers. He dropped the notes unconcernedly on the stones, and hastily unfolded the papers; a second later he thrust these into the Professor’s hand.
“That’s what it means!” he said quietly. “There’s Spindler’s formula, and there’s your opinion about it. And — this is the chap who killed Guy Markenmore!”
Then he looked round at the three men. The Professor was staring blankly at the papers just handed to him; Mr. Fransemmery was staring at the Professor; Harborough, anxious and puzzled, was looking doubtfully at the dead man. It was he who spoke first, turning to the detective.
“You think he — that he killed Guy Markenmore in order to get possession of — those?” he asked, in a low voice.
Blick rose from his knees.
“What else?” he said calmly. “I see the whole thing now! Sir Thomas, there, and I already know something of it, but up to a few minutes ago I didn’t suspect this man. But, as I say, now I see it — clearly enough. This man, whom I met a few nights ago at the Sceptre, posing as Crawley, a holidaymaker, taking a walking tour round this country, is in reality Carter, an assistant of Sir Thomas’s at his laboratory at Cambridge. It was he to whom Sir Thomas entrusted a sealed packet for direct conveyance to Guy Markenmore in London; he, Carter, was passing through London on his way here for his holiday. Now, although Carter did not know the nature of the precise contents of that packet, he had learnt from Sir Thomas that they were of immense scientific and monetary value. He was charged to put the packet into Guy Markenmore’s own hands. He did so. Later that day Guy Markenmore travelled down here. So did Carter. Probably they met on the train; probably they travelled in company. But, at any rate, Sir Thomas and I have just found out that Guy Markenmore and Carter were together on these downs late that night, talking confidentially. Now from what I’ve learned about him, Guy Markenmore was a talkative, free-and-easy sort of a man, open and candid; probably, knowing that Carter was Sir Thomas’s assistant, Guy took Carter into his confidence about the secret. And Sir Thomas and I have just ascertained that Guy told Carter that he would be at or about Markenmore Hollow at a very early hour next morning. What does Carter do? He forms the plan of hanging about all night — a warm night, mind! — waylaying Guy early in the morning and murdering him for the secret and for the money which was to be put together for it that night by Guy, Lansbury, and Baron von Eckhardstein. And — he carries all this into execution. What does he do, then? Goes quietly away amongst these hills and woods on his walking-tour — who’s going to suspect an innocent-looking pedestrian? But, having in the meantime read the newspapers, he works round, in his character of tourist, to the Sceptre, where I met him, and where, I confess, he thoroughly took me in. The murderer’s old trick, you see, of hanging round the scene of his crime, full of a morbid curiosity to know what’s been said and done. Nobody suspected this man in the slightest degree — I, myself, never dreamed of connecting him with this affair. He stayed his night at the Sceptre and went away, crossing these downs. And here! — here he met with this fatal accident, and if he hadn’t, and if we hadn’t found this, and those papers on him, I don’t believe we should ever have known who it was that killed Guy Markenmore! But — we know now.”
He stooped down and drew the dead man’s soft cap more closely over his face. When he looked up again the Professor was still staring thoughtfully at the papers in his hands and Mr. Fransemmery, unusually grave, was watching him. But Harborough was already striding away through the trees, towards Valencia.
The Root of All Evil (1921)
CONTENTS
Part the First: RISE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
Part the Second: FALL
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
Part the First: RISE
CHAPTER I
Applecroft
HALF-WAY ALONG THE one straggling street of Savilestowe a narrow lane suddenly opened out between the cottages and turned abruptly towards the uplands which rose on the northern edge of the village. Its first course lay between high grey walls, overhung with ivy and snapdragon. When it emerged from their cool shadowings the church came in view on one hand and the school on the other, each set on its own green knoll and standing high above the meadows. Once past these it became narrower and more tortuous; the banks on either side rose steeply, and were crowned by ancient oaks and elms. In the proper season of the year these banks were thick with celandine and anemone, and the scent of hedge violets rose from the moss among the spreading roots of the trees. Here the ruts of the lane were deep, as if no man had any particular business to repair them. The lane was, in fact, a mere occupation road, and led to nothing but an out-of-the-way farmstead, which stood, isolated and forlorn, half a mile from the village. It bore a picturesque name — Applecroft — and an artist, straying by chance up the lane and coming suddenly upon it would have rejoiced in its queer gables, its twisted chimneys, in the beeches and chestnuts that towered above it, and in the old-world garden and orchard which flanked one side of its brick walls, mellowed by time to the colour of claret. But had such a pilgrim looked closer he would have seen that here were all the marks of ill-fortune and coming ruin — evident, at any rate, to practical eyes in the neglected gates and fences, in the empty fold, in the hingeless, tumble-down doors, in the lack of that stitch in time which by anticipation would have prevented nine more. He would have seen, in short, that this was one of those places, of which there are so many in rural England, whereat a feckless man, short of money, was vainly endeavouring to do what no man can do without brains and capital.
Nevertheless — so powerfully will Nature assert her own wealth in the face of human poverty — the place looked bright and attractive enough on a certain morning, when, it then being May, the trees around it were in the first glory of their leafage, and the orchard was red and white with blossom of apple and plum and cherry. There was a scent of sweetbriar and mignonette around the broken wicket gate which admitted to the garden, and in the garden itself, ill-kept and neglected, a hundred flowers and weeds, growing together unchecked, made patches of vivid colour against the prevalent green. There were other patches of colour, of a different sort, about the place, too. Beyond the garden, and a little to the right of the house, a level sward, open to the full light of the sun, made an excellent drying ground for the family washing, and here, busily hanging out various garments on lines of cord, stretched between rough posts, were two young women, the daughters of William Farnish, the shiftless farmer, whose hold on his house and land was daily becoming increasingly feeble. If any shrewd observer able to render himself invisible had looked all round Applecroft — inside house and hedge, through granary and stable — he would have gone away saying with emphasis, that he had seen nothing worth having there, save the two girls whose print gowns fluttered about their shapely limbs as they raised their bare arms and full bosoms to the cords on which they were pegging out the wet linen.
Farnish’s wife had been dead some years, and since her death his two daughters had not only done all the work of the house, but much of what their father managed to carry out on his hundred acres of land. They bore strange names — selected by Farnish and his wife, after much searching and reflection, from the pages of the family Bible. The elder was named Jecholiah; the younger Jerusha. As time had gone on Jecholiah had become Jeckie; Jerusha had been shortened to Rushie. Everybody in the parish and the neighbourhood knew Jeckie and Rushie Farnish. They had always been inseparable, these sisters, yet it needed little particular observation to see that there was a difference of character and temperament between them. Jeckie, at twenty-five, was a tall, handsome, finely-developed young woman, generous in proportion, with a flashing, determined eye, and a mouth and chin which denoted purpose and obstinacy; she was the sort of woman that could love like fire, but whom it would be dangerous to cross in love. Already many of the young men of the district, catching one flash of her hawk-like eyes, had felt themselves warned, and it had been a matter of astonishment to some discerning folk when it became known that she was going to marry Albert Grice, the only son of old George Grice, the village grocer, a somewhat colourless, tame young man whose vices were non-existent and his virtues commonplace, and who had nothing to recommend him but a good-humoured, weak amiability and a rather good-looking, boyish face. Some said that Jeckie was thinking of Old Grice’s money-bags, but the vicar’s wife, who studied psychology in purely amateur fashion, said that Jeckie Farnish had taken up Albert Grice in precisely the same spirit which makes a child love a legless and faceless doll, and an old maid a miserable mongrel — just in response to the mothering instinct; whether Jeckie loved him, they said, nobody would ever know, for Jeckie, with her proud, scornful lips and eyes full of sombre passion, was not the sort to tell her heart’s secrets to anybody. Not so, however, with her sister Rushie, a soft, pretty, lovable, kissable, cuddlesome slip of a girl, who was all for love, and would have been run after by every lad in the village and half the shop-boys in the neighbouring market town, if it had not been that Jeckie’s mothering and grandmothering eye had always been on her. Rushie represented one thing in femininity; her sister typified its very opposite. Rushie was of the tribe of Venus, but Jeckie of the daughters of Minerva.
Something of the circumstances and character of this family might have been gathered from the quality of the garments which the sisters were industriously hanging out to dry in the sun and wind. Most of them were their own, and in the bulk there was nothing of the frill and lace of the fine lady, but rather plain linen and calico. An expert housewife, fingering whatever there was, would have said that each separate article had been worn to thinness. Thus, too, were the sheets and pillow-cases and towels; and of such coarse stuff as belonged to Farnish himself — all represented the underwear and appointments of poor folk. But while there was patching and darning in plenty, there were no rags. If her father allowed a gate to fall off its posts rather than hunt up an old hinge and a few nails, Jeckie took good care that her needle and thread came out on the first sign of a rent; it was harder to replace than to repair, in her experience. And now, as she put the last peg in the last scrap of damp linen, it was with the proud consciousness that if the whole show was poverty-stricken it was at least whole and clean.
“That’s the lot, Rushie!” she said, turning to her sister as she picked up the empty linen basket. “A good drying wind, too. We’ll be able to get to mangling and ironing by tea-time.”
