Collected works of j s f.., p.741
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 741
“There’s another possible theory about the Phillips murder,” remarked Mr. Gavin Smeaton. “According to what you know, Mr. Elphinstone, this Meekin is a man who has travelled much abroad — so had Phillips. How do we know that when Meekin and Phillips met that night, Meekin wasn’t recognized by Phillips as Meekin — and that Meekin accordingly had a double incentive to kill him?”
“Good!” exclaimed Mr. Lindsey. “Capital theory! — and probably the right one. But,” he continued, rising and making for the door, “all the theories in the world won’t help us to lay hands on Meekin, and I’m going to see if Murray has made out anything from his search and his questioning.”
Murray had made out nothing. There was nothing whatever in the private rooms of the supposed Sir Gilbert Carstairs and his wife to suggest any clue to their whereabouts: the servants could tell nothing of their movements beyond what the police already knew. Sir Gilbert had never been seen by any of them since the morning on which he went into Berwick to hear the case against Carter: Lady Carstairs had not been seen since her departure from the house secretly, two mornings later. Not one of all the many servants, men or women, could tell anything of their master or mistress, nor of any suspicious doings on the part of Hollins during the past two days, except that he had been away from the house a good deal. Whatever share the butler had taken in these recent events, he had played his part skilfully.
So — as it seemed — there was nothing for it but to look further away, the impression of the police being that Meekin had escaped in one direction and his wife in another, and that it had been their plan that Hollins should foregather with them somewhere on the Continent; and presently we all left Hathercleugh House to go back to Berwick. As we crossed the threshold, Mr. Lindsey turned to Mr. Gavin Smeaton with a shrewd smile.
“The next time you step across here, sir, it’ll be as Sir Gavin Carstairs!” he said. “And we’ll hope that’ll not long be delayed!”
“I’m afraid there’s a good deal to do before you’ll be seeing that, Mr. Lindsey,” answered the prospective owner. “We’re not out of the wood yet, you know.”
We certainly were not out of the wood — so far as I was concerned, those last words might have been prophetic, as, a little later, I was inclined to think Maisie’s had been before she went off in the car. The rest of them, Mr. Lindsey and his group, Murray and his, had driven up from Berwick in the first conveyances they could get at that time of night, and they now went off to where they had been waiting in a neighbouring shed. They wanted me to go with them — but I was anxious about my bicycle, a nearly new machine. I had stowed it away as securely as I could under some thick undergrowth on the edge of the woods, but the downpour of rain had been so heavy that I knew it must have soaked through the foliage, and that I should have a nice lot of rust to face, let alone a saturated saddle. So I went away across the park to where I had left it, and the others drove off to Berwick — and so both Mr. Lindsey and myself broke our solemn words to Maisie. For now I was alone — and I certainly did not anticipate more danger.
But not only danger, but the very threatening of death was on me as I went my way. We had stayed some time in Hathercleugh House, and the dawn had broken before we left. The morning came clear and bright after the storm, and the newly-risen sun — it was just four o’clock, and he was nicely above the horizon — was transforming the clustering raindrops on the firs and pines into glistening diamonds as I plunged into the thick of the woods. I had no other thought at that moment but of getting home and changing my clothes before going to Andrew Dunlop’s to tell the news — when, as I crossed a narrow cut in the undergrowth, I saw, some distance away, a man’s head slowly look out from the trees. I drew back on the instant, watching. Fortunately — or unfortunately — he was not looking in my direction, and did not catch even a momentary glance of me, and when he twisted his neck in my direction I saw that he was the man we had been talking of, and whom I now knew to be Dr. Meekin. And it flashed on me at once that he was hanging about for Hollins — all unconscious that Hollins was lying dead there in the old tower.
So — it was not he who had driven that murderous knife into Hollins’s throat!
I watched him — myself securely hidden. He came out of his shelter, crossed the cut, went through the belt of wood which I had just passed, and looked out across the park to the house — all this I saw by cautiously edging through the trees and bushes behind me. He was a good forty yards away from me at that time, but I could see the strained, anxious expression on his face. Things had gone wrong — Hollins and the car had not met him where he had expected them — and he was trying to find out what had happened. And once he made a movement as if he would skirt the coppices and make for the tower, which lay right opposite, but with an open space between it and us — and then he as suddenly drew back, and began to go away among the trees.
I followed him, cautiously. I had always been a bit proud of what I called my woodcraft, having played much at Red Indians as a youngster, and I took care to walk lightly as I stalked him from one brake to another. He went on and on — a long way, right away from Hathercleugh, and in the direction of where Till meets Tweed. And at last he was out of the Hathercleugh grounds, and close to the Till, and in the end he took to a thin belt of trees that ran down the side of the Till, close by the place where Crone’s body had been found, and almost opposite the very spot, on the other bank, where I had come across Phillips lying dead; and suddenly I saw what he was after. There, right ahead, was an old boat, tied up to the bank — he was making for it, intending doubtless to put himself across the two rivers, to get the north bank of the Tweed, and so to make for safety in other quarters.
It was there that things went wrong. I was following cautiously, from tree to tree, close to the river-bank, when my foot caught in a trail of ground bramble, and I went headlong into the brushwood. Before I was well on my feet, he had turned and was running back at me, his face white with rage and alarm, and a revolver in his hand. And when he saw who it was, he had the revolver at the full length of his arm, covering me.
“Go back!” he said, stopping and steadying himself.
“No!” said I.
“If you come a yard further, Moneylaws, I’ll shoot you dead!” he declared. “I mean it! Go back!”
“I’m not coming a foot nearer,” I retorted, keeping where I was. “But I’m not going back. And whenever you move forward, I’m following. I’m not losing sight of you again, Mr. Meekin!”
He fairly started at that — and then he began looking on all sides of me, as if to find out if I was accompanied. And all of a sudden he plumped me with a question.
“Where is Hollins?” he asked. “I’ll be bound you know!”
“Dead!” I answered him. “Dead, Mr. Meekin! As dead as Phillips, or as Abel Crone. And the police are after you — all round — and you’d better fling that thing into the Till there and come with me. You’ll not get away from me as easily now as you did yon time in your yacht.”
It was then that he fired at me — from some twelve or fifteen yards’ distance. And whether he meant to kill me, or only to cripple me, I don’t know; but the bullet went through my left knee, at the lower edge of the knee-cap, and the next thing I knew I was sprawling on all-fours on the earth, and the next — and it was in the succeeding second, before even I felt a smart — I was staring up from that position to see the vengeance that fell on my would-be murderer in the very instant of his attempt on me. For as he fired and I fell, a woman sprang out of the bushes at his side, and a knife flashed, and then he too fell with a cry that was something between a groan and a scream — and I saw that his assailant was the Irishwoman Nance Maguire, and I knew at once who it was that had killed Hollins.
But she had not killed Meekin. He rose like a badly wounded thing — half rose, that is, as I have seen crippled animals rise, and he cried like a beast in a trap, fighting with his hands. And the woman struck again with the knife — and again he sank back, and again he rose, and … I shut my eyes, sick with horror, as she drove the knife into him for the third time.
But that was nothing to the horror to come. When I looked again, he was still writhing and crying, and fighting blindly for his life, and I cried out on her to leave him alone, for I saw that in a few minutes he would be dead. I even made an effort to crawl to them, that I might drag her away from him, but my knee gave at the movement and I fell back half-fainting. And taking no more notice of me than if I had been one of the stocks and stones close by, she suddenly gripped him, writhing as he was, by the throat, and drawing him over the bank as easily as if he had been a child in her grasp, she plunged knee-deep into the Till and held him down under the water until he was drowned.
There was a most extraordinary horror came over me as I lay there, powerless to move, propped up on my elbow, watching. The purposeful deliberation with which the woman finished her work; the dead silence about us, broken only by an occasional faint lapping of the river against its bank; the knowledge that this was a deed of revenge — all these things produced a mental state in me which was as near to the awful as ever I approached it. I could only lie and watch — fascinated. But it was over at last, and she let the body go, and stood watching for a moment as it floated into a dark pool beneath the alders; and then, shaking herself like a dog, she came up the bank and looked at me, in silence.
“That was — in revenge for Crone,” I managed to get out.
“It was them killed Crone,” she answered in a queer dry voice. “Let the pollis find this one where they found Crone! You’re not greatly hurt yourself — and there’s somebody at hand.”
Then she suddenly turned and vanished amongst the trees, and, twisting myself round in the direction to which she had pointed, I saw a gamekeeper coming along. His gun was thrown carelessly in the crook of his arm, and he was whistling, gaily and unconcernedly.
I have a perpetual memento of that morning in my somewhat crippled knee. And once, two years ago, when I was on business in a certain English town, and in a quarter of it into which few but its own denizens penetrate, I met for one moment, at a slum corner, a great raw-boned Irishwoman who noticed my bit of a limp, and turned her eyes for an instant to give me a sharp look that won as sharp an answer. And there may have been mutual understanding and sympathy in the glance we thus exchanged — certainly, when it had passed between us, we continued on our separate ways, silent.
THE END
Murder at Wrides Park (1931)
BEING ENTRY NUMBER ONE IN THE CASE-BOOK OF RONALD CAMBERWELL
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. WHO IS THIS MAN?
CHAPTER II. DENGO IS HERE!
CHAPTER III. THE SWORD-STICK
CHAPTER IV. THE ORDEAL BEGINS
CHAPTER V. THE ORDEAL CONTINUES
CHAPTER VI. THE ORDEAL CONCLUDES
CHAPTER VII. WHAT IS THE SECRET?
CHAPTER VIII. EX-INSPECTOR CHANEY
CHAPTER IX. LITTLE COPPERAS STREET
CHAPTER X. REVELATIONS
CHAPTER XI. THE SWISS WALKING-STICK
CHAPTER XII. FOR A CONSIDERATION
CHAPTER XIII. FOR THE PROSECUTION
CHAPTER XIV. THE SECRET OUT
CHAPTER XV. STEPS FORWARD
CHAPTER XVI. UNDER INSPECTION
CHAPTER XVII. IN CONFIDENCE
CHAPTER XVIII. THE ISLINGTON SOLICITOR
CHAPTER XIX. WHO WAS IT?
CHAPTER XX. THE CAUTIOUS LOVER
CHAPTER XXI. THE ANXIOUS SERVANT
CHAPTER XXII. LEFT BEHIND
CHAPTER XXIII. THE MARKED BRADSHAW
CHAPTER XXIV. ROOM 31
CHAPTER XXV. THE SUSSEX ADDER
CHAPTER I. WHO IS THIS MAN?
I CAME TO man’s estate-legally speaking-on the first day of March 1920, and on that day the trustee guardians who had looked after me and my interests from childhood paid over to me the sum of six thousand pounds, my entire fortune. Six thousand pounds, invested, as this was, at five per cent, means an income of three hundred pounds a year; clearly, I had got to do something to supplement it. The question was-what to do? I had never felt the least inclination for the Navy, and still less for the Army, and neither Church, Stage, Bar, nor Medicine made any appeal. But I had to do something-for which reason the first thing I did, after leaving the solicitors’ office whereat I had received my patrimony, was to buy a copy of that day’s Times. And there, in the Personal Column, I read the following somewhat curious but decidedly intriguing advertisement:
Advertiser desires the companionship of a young, good-tempered, well-educated gentleman with a taste for books, a preference for English country life, and a liking for occasional foreign travel: some skill at billiards a knowledge of and love of whist (in preference to bridge) would be a strong recommendation: to one who satisfies advertiser in these respects a salary of £500 a year would be paid. Apply, in the first instance, enclosing photograph, full particulars, and two unimpeachable references, to Box X.Y.C. 3748, The Times, E.C. 4.
I had just sat down to a bit of lunch in the Holborn Restaurant when I noticed this advertisement, before I finished eating I had made up my mind to reply to it, for it seemed to me-always supposing that the advertiser turned out to be a man I could take to-just the sort of thing I was seeking. I certainly possessed a taste for books, already I owned a small, carefully chosen library of my own. I preferred country life and all its amenities to town life, vastly. I had no objection to foreign travel-far from it! I was a pretty good hand at billiards; in an amateur fashion, of course. And having been brought up under the roof of a guardian who was old-fashioned enough to loathe and detest bridge and had a passionate love of whist, I was proficient enough in that king of all card games. And I wasn’t ashamed of my looks; the photograph I could send represented a good-looking, well-set up sort of chap. As to references — the very best. Taking everything into consideration, I thought this job would suit me, and before evening I had made my application through the medium of The Times office.
For a fortnight I heard nothing. Then, when I was beginning to think that I was not going to hear, I heard. There came one morning a letter, as follows:
Wrides Park, Havering St. Michael
Surrey, March 15th, 1920
Mr. Christopher Nicholas presents his compliments to Mr. Ronald Camberwell, and desires to acknowledge Mr. Camberwell’s letter of the 1st instant. Mr. Nicholas will be greatly obliged to Mr. Camberwell if Mr. Camberwell will call upon him at Claridge’s Hotel tomorrow, March 16th, at four o’clock in the afternoon. Should this appointment not be convenient to Mr. Camberwell, will he kindly notify Mr. Nicholas of the fact, and at the same time fix a date and time of his own choosing?
It was quite convenient for me to call on Mr. Nicholas at his own time, and at five minutes to four o’clock that afternoon I walked into Claridge’s and asked for him. My impression had been that Mr. Nicholas had come up to town with the idea of interviewing certain picked candidates for his job, and I was quite prepared to find myself one amongst many. But I was immediately taken away to a private suite and shown into Mr. Nicholas’s presence.
There were two people in the room into which I was ushered, and as they figure largely in this story, I had better say at once what my first impressions of them were. One was a tall, sparely built man of I should have said sixty to sixty-five years of age (he was actually ten years less than that) whose thin hair and sparse beard and moustache were whitening; a somewhat stooping carriage and the pallor of his cheeks gave me the idea that he was something of an invalid. He was very smartly dressed in check tweeds, set off by a blue tie with large, white spots-the bird’s eye tie largely affected by old-fashioned country squires; the country gentleman, indeed, was written big all over him, from his sporty tie to his thick-soled boots. But I looked closer than at his mere outward semblance. There was a curiously care-worn look about him; either he had some present great trouble or had once had one from which he had not yet made recovery. Otherwise he had a kindly, gentle expression, and the reception he gave me was almost paternal in its nature, mingled with a certain shyness which I soon found to be one of his chief characteristics.
The other occupant of the room was a young woman of, I supposed, two or three and twenty. She was a bit odd-looking; more masculine than feminine, I thought-a strongly, squarely built figure, suggestive of considerable strength, shoulders square and muscular; waist indefinite; hands as capacious as a man’s. She was not beautiful-a square jaw, a snub nose, a mane of brown, reddish hair over a pair of sombre, yet shrewd eyes these features gave the impression of solidity rather than of charm, and the impression was added to by the somewhat mannish attire affected by its wearer-a tailor-made suit of rough tweed, finished off with a hunting-stock in which was fixed a horseshoe pin. I set this young lady down, at once, as a devotee of anything relating to country life.
“My niece, Miss Starr,” said Mr. Christopher Nicholas. “Miss Rhoda Starr”.
I made my obeisances to Miss Rhoda Starr, who, from my first entrance into the room, had been taking me in, microscopically. Mr. Nicholas motioned me to sit between him and his niece; he began to talk; as for Miss Starr, I had not been there ten minutes before I came to the conclusion that she was gifted with a really brilliant reserve of speech and never talked unless she was obliged to. Her uncle, however, was talkative enough, and in a few minutes he and I understood each other pretty well; I, at any rate, had gathered what he wanted. And that, to put it plainly, was to have a young man about the house who would play billiards and whist with him, go abroad with him, share in country pursuits and pastimes with him, and play the part of what, unfortunately, as he said, he hadn’t got-a son. He showed a good deal of nice and kindly feeling in putting all this before me, and I began to take to him.
