Collected works of j s f.., p.795
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 795
“On being sentenced, sir, he said he’d settle Mr. Weekes when he came out, if he swung for it. He repeated this when, a little later, I took him his tea. Later on, when I conveyed him to prison, he said a good many things of the same sort. They were all of a threatening nature.”
“All against Mr. Weekes?”
“Yes, sir. I never heard him mention any other person.”
“He never mentioned Sir Stephen?”
“No, sir — in my hearing. He appeared to have a bitter feeling against Mr. Weekes.”
“Can you remember any one distinct threat against Mr. Weekes?”
“Yes, sir. Just before I was handing him over to the prison authorities he said: ‘You can tell that blank blank Weekes next time you see him that I’ll put him where he’ll think hell-fire’s a back number of the polar regions when I come out! — I know how to fix it!’ Just those words, sir.”
“Dear me!” said the Coroner. “Now, what particular significance did you attach to those words?”
“None, sir. But I bore them in mind.”
The Coroner, who, I think, was a naturally inquisitive gentleman, reflected on the cryptic nature of Batty’s threat for a moment; then he nodded to the witness, and the witness picked up his helmet and gloves and withdrew.
Next came the estate foreman carpenter, another elderly employee of the Maxtondale family.
“Mr. Weekes,” said the Coroner, “has told us that a certain saw was found to be missing from the estate carpenter’s shop when inquiries began to be made about the damage to the railing of Lady Sybil’s Bridge, and that you reported the loss of it. When did you discover that loss?”
“Not so very long after the accident, sir. With Mr. Weekes I examined the railings when they had been brought up from the cutting, and I was so convinced that the severance had been made by a certain type of hand-saw that I went off to the carpenter’s shop and examined our stock. I found then that a saw which I myself had used the previous afternoon was missing. I made the very fullest inquiry about it from my men and came to the conclusion that the workshop had been entered during the night and the saw taken from it. It was a new saw with fine-set teeth. I am certain that it was the saw used at the bridge.”
“You heard Mr. Weekes’s evidence about Batty and a key to the workshop. Do you know anything about that?”
“Yes, sir. Batty had a key, as Mr. Weekes says.”
“What was he doing with a key to the workshop?”
“He was — I mean, he had been before his discharge — doing extra work, sir. He was a very clever workman, a first-class hand, superior to any of my other men, if he’d only kept off the drink and owned a less violent temper. He was doing this extra work — some ornamental woodwork — at nights, so I let him have a key. We have — or had — three. Mr. Weekes had one; I had two. It was one of my two that Batty had. When he was discharged by Mr. Weekes, he didn’t give the key up; he told Mr. Weekes he’d lost it.”
The Coroner looked across at an official who was mounting guard over a brown-paper parcel; at his nod the official made haste to untie string and unwrap paper, and presently he produced a carpenter’s saw and handed it to the witness.
“Is that the saw you have been speaking of — the missing saw?” asked the Coroner.
“This is it, sir,” replied the witness promptly.
“How do you identify it? How do you know it from any other saw?”
“Easily, sir. It’s got the estate-office burnt mark on it, and also the date when I put it amongst the tools. That’s the saw, sir.”
“You’re absolutely sure of that?”
“Dead sure, sir.”
The Coroner turned to the jurymen.
“This saw, gentlemen, was found yesterday morning in a back room of the cottage formerly occupied by the woman Kitteridge, who was murdered in company with the late Mr. Robson, at the home farm, one evening a few weeks ago. Call William Champness.”
A young man — evidently, from his dress, a farm-labourer — looking somewhat sheepish, entered the box. The Coroner directed his attention to the saw at once.
“Did you take this saw to Mr. Weekes, the steward, yesterday morning?”
“I didn’t take it to him, sir,” replied the witness. “I fetched him to it.”
“Where was that?”
“In Mother Kitteridge’s place — back room. On the bed.”
“What were you doing in Mother Kitteridge’s cottage yesterday morning?”
“Well, sir, I hadn’t anything to do then,” said the witness, looking more sheepish than before, “but I was passing, and I’d heard the place was open, so I just went in and looked about. And when I saw that saw, I went and told Mr. Weekes about it, because I’d heard there was a saw missing from the workshop.”
“Who’d told you that, now?”
“Don’t know, sir. It was common talk. Some of the carpenters had talked about it.”
The Coroner, apparently, had no more to say on this point. I nudged Chaney’s arm.
“Are you going to tell them that the saw wasn’t there when we examined the cottage?” I whispered.
“No!” he replied. “Leave them alone. Let them go their own way. We shall be hearing more soon.”
The Coroner was talking to Mallwood, in whispers. Presently Mallwood left the room. He was away several minutes, during which the Coroner busied himself with his papers, the jurymen waited in stolid silence, and the spectators muttered to each other. Mallwood came back. Once again he and the Coroner put their heads together. Then Mallwood disappeared again, and the Coroner turned to his jurymen.
“An eleventh-hour witness has come forward, gentlemen,” he said, “a witness who is evidently seriously afraid of appearing! We have, however, succeeded in reassuring her that she will come to no harm by telling us what she knows, and we shall now hear her evidence.”
Mallwood came back at that moment escorting an obviously timid and shrinking woman whom I recognized as having seen once or twice near the cottages.
CHAPTER XXI. MR. PILSEY’S SHOP
THE DEMEANOUR OF this new witness was so shrinking and frightened that the Coroner, before ever asking her for the necessary particulars of herself, considered it necessary to reassure her.
“Don’t be afraid, my good woman!” he said encouragingly. “No harm can come to you from anything you say here, as long as you speak the truth. You’re not frightened of telling the truth, are you?”
The woman hesitated, looking doubtfully round the court.
“I’m not sure about what might happen, sir,” she replied. “I’d rather have kept quiet.”
“You are frightened, then?” said the Coroner. “Who is it, now? Somebody been threatening you?”
“Why, not exactly threatening, sir, but Mr. Batty, he’s that violent—”
“Oh, it’s Batty, is it?” interrupted the Coroner. “Well, Batty is not here and he’s not likely to molest you. The police—”
“The police can’t be watching my cottage night and day, sir,” said the woman. “And if Mr. Batty comes back—”
The Coroner turned in Mallwood’s direction.
“How did you get hold of this information?” he said.
Mallwood pointed to a small boy who had been ushered into court behind himself and the witness.
“This boy says he saw Batty go to the witness’s cottage the other night, sir,” he answered. “The night before the accident to Sir Stephen.”
“Is that true?” asked the Coroner, turning to the woman.
“Yes, it’s true enough, sir. He did come there — and I wish he hadn’t. I didn’t want to have anything to do with Mr. Batty.”
“You’d better go into the witness-box and tell me all about it,” said the Coroner. “The police will see that you come to no harm. Name? Hannah Mallinson? Married woman? Widow? Living at the cottages, Heronswood Park. Well, Mrs. Mallinson, I understand that Batty came to your cottage the other night. What night was that?”
“Night before Sir Stephen’s accident, sir.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Positive, sir.”
“What did Batty want? But, first, what time was it when he came to your cottage?”
“Just when it was getting dark, sir — I couldn’t say to ten minutes, nor twenty. He came in through the door without knocking and gave me quite a turn. He wanted to know if I would let him have something to eat.”
“To give him a meal, I suppose?”
“No, sir. He wanted something to take away with him — he said he’d pay for it. He said he’d come to fetch some property of his from Mrs. Kitteridge’s cottage and was going to stay the night there.”
“Did you oblige him?”
“Yes, sir. I got him a loaf of bread and some butter and cheese and a tin of salmon. He said he’d some bottles of beer in his pocket.”
“Did you have any talk with him?”
“I didn’t talk, sir — I wanted to get him away; he looked to be in a very bad temper. He talked a lot while I was putting the food together for him.”
“What did he talk about?”
“Well, sir, it was principally about Mr. Weekes. He said Mr. Weekes had had his knife into him for a long time before he sacked him, but he’d have his knife into Mr. Weekes before long. And a lot more of that sort, sir.”
“And you didn’t reply, eh?”
“Why, I did say to him that if I’d been in his shoes, I’d have gone right away from Heronswood and never come back again — that was all, sir.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He said he’d leave Heronswood fast enough when he’d done what he wanted to do, sir.”
“He didn’t say what it was he wanted to do?”
“No, sir, not in particular. He muttered a lot about Mr. Weekes.”
“Did you hear him say anything against Sir Stephen Maxtondale?”
“No, sir, not against him. The opposite, sir. He said Sir Stephen was a good old sort, but that Weekes, sir — he used language then which I couldn’t bring myself to repeat, sir.”
“Did Batty give you anything for the food you supplied?”
“He put half a crown on the table, sir.”
“And went away then, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you see him again that night or next morning, Mrs. Mallinson?”
“No, sir, I’ve never set eyes on him since!”
There was nothing more to be got out of Mrs. Mallinson, except that she professed herself in mortal fear of Batty coming back to revenge himself on her for splitting, and presently, with another reassuring word, the Coroner let her go and began a whispered consultation with Mallwood. Eventually he turned to the jury.
“After talking things over with Superintendent Mallwood,” he said, “I have come to the conclusion, gentlemen, that this will be a convenient stage at which to adjourn the inquiry. I shall adjourn for a fortnight — and it may be,” he added significantly, “that we shall then only meet, formally, for a further adjournment.”
The Heronswood butler was sitting next to me. He turned sharply towards my shoulder.
“What’s he mean by that, sir?” he asked.
“He means that police proceedings may render any definite decision by a coroner’s jury unnecessary,” I replied.
“Ah, I see, sir, I see!” he said. “But they’ve got to catch somebody yet, haven’t they?”
That catching of somebody formed the subject of a discussion between Mallwood, Chaney, and me as soon as we got to ourselves, outside the room in which the inquest had been begun. For Chaney now thought he had better tell Mallwood what he knew about the finding of the saw.
“Look here, Mallwood,” he said when we had taken the Superintendent aside, “you may as well know something that we know. About that saw, now. According to the woman, Mallinson, Batty went to sleep in Mrs. Kitteridge’s cottage on the night previous to the affair at Lady Sybil’s Bridge. Now, am I right in thinking that your conclusion is that during that night Batty, in possession of a key, went to the estate carpenter’s shop, got out the saw, and sawed through the railings of the bridge? Eh?”
“Just about,” admitted Mallwood. “Yes, I think that’s my conclusion after what we’ve heard.”
“And you think, further, that Batty, having done the necessary damage to the bridge, in the hope that Weekes would break his neck there, returned to the cottage and left the saw where it was found — on the bed in the little back bedroom? That right?”
“Yes, I guess so,” said Mallwood. “Must have been.”
“Well, he didn’t!” retorted Chaney. “How do I know? Because the saw wasn’t there, Mallwood, when you, Camberwell, and I inspected Mother Kitteridge’s cottage on the afternoon of the accident. You didn’t know, but when you and Camberwell went nosing round some of the antiques downstairs, I was examining the room upstairs which I knew, from certain things I saw there, to have been occupied by Batty when he lodged with the old woman. And I turned over the quilt which lay on the bed, and the bedclothes, and the pillows, and there was no saw there then. No, I hadn’t any object in turning these things over — I just did turn ’em over, that’s all. But there was no saw there that afternoon, Mallwood. The saw was put there during the night that followed our visit!”
Mallwood gave a sigh of relief.
“Oh, well,” he exclaimed, “that’s all right! Batty, of course, stopped a second night there. Maybe he’d had the saw hidden somewhere else. That’s how I fix things.”
Chaney remained silent a moment, regarding Mallwood with speculative eyes, as if wondering.
“Is it?” he said at last. “Um! Well, let’s do a bit of supposing — favourite amusement of mine. Let’s suppose that Batty stole the saw, sawed through the bridge, meant Weekes to break his neck, didn’t care a damn if Sir Stephen broke his, too. We suppose all that — good! Now, are we to suppose that, having done this, Batty by nine o’clock next morning didn’t know the results of his misdeeds? And are we to suppose that he then hung around the district — in danger of being seen? And that he came back next night to the cottage and put the saw on the bed he’d slept in the previous night, under the quilt? Are we to suppose all that?”
Mallwood began to look uneasy.
“What’re you getting at, Chaney?” he asked, suspiciously. “Seems to me that you don’t believe Batty put the saw there!”
Chaney stared at him.
“I don’t!” he answered.
“You don’t? Who did, then?” demanded Mallwood. “Who, now?”
“Damned if I know!” replied Chaney. “But I think we shall know before we’ve done. Well, what’re you going to do next?”
“Do what we’re already doing,” said Mallwood, sulkily. “Comb the place out till we find Batty.”
Chaney and I left him and went to our hotel at Monkseaton. During the rest of that day he remained strangely reticent, saying next to nothing about the events of the morning. The two youthful pressmen from the local journal had heard of our return and called to see us; they tried to get Chaney’s ideas on the latest development. Chaney appeared to have no ideas to communicate. But I could see that he was thinking, and thinking hard; I knew, too, that in due time he would tell me the result of these mental exercises. In the mean time I stood by the old adage: Hurry no man’s cattle.
Next morning as we were concluding a leisurely breakfast, a message arrived from Mallwood — would we go round to see him? We went round. Mallwood’s car stood at the door of the police station; behind it was another car, in which were already seated two plain-clothes men and another man in uniform. Mallwood was just coming out to us.
“Don’t know if it’s anything to do with our joint case,” he said, “but I thought I’d let you know. We’ve had a report of a burglary at a village shop a few miles away, and from what we’ve heard, I’ve a notion that the burglar was Batty. However, we can soon tell — the burglar left some clothes behind him in exchange for a suit of the shopkeeper’s. We’ll call at Heronswood and take along with us a man who can tell if the things were Batty’s. Like to come?”
“In lack of anything more exciting, yes!” said Chaney. “What’s missing from the shop besides the clothes?”
“That’s what makes me feel sure it’s Batty,” replied Mallwood. “Food, chiefly. Tinned stuff. Looks as if Batty was hiding — and hungry.”
We drove off and at Heronswood stopped to pick up a man from the carpenter’s shop who assured us that he could readily identify any garment worn by Batty during the last year or two. Our course ran through the Sedbury woods, stretching for miles in an undulating countryside, to the village wherein the rifled shop stood — a little, out-of-the-way place called Wilferton, consisting mainly of one street, two or three farmhouses, a score or so of cottages, and the general store, at which our two cars pulled up and before the door of which stood the local policeman. He grinned widely as he saluted Mallwood.
“Not very much missing, sir,” he said as we entered the little garden in front of the shop. “Only some bread and cheese and a tin or two of canned meat and suchlike. But Mr. Pilsey, he’s mad because the thief’s taken his best suit o’ clothes, what he wears Sundays. He’d had ’em on last night, going to a meeting, and got ’em a bit wet, so he hung ’em before the kitchen fire, to dry, when he went to bed; and when he came down this morning, they’d vanished.”
Mr. Pilsey, a round-faced man with a stubble of fiery beard on his aggrieved countenance, bore out the policeman’s statement.
“Two tins of best ox-tongue, two ditto salmon, two ditto lobster, one loaf white bread, one ditto brown bread, two tea-cakes, one fruit-cake, a tin-opener, box plain chocolate — them,” said Mr. Pilsey, waving a fat hand, “I only mention to show the precise nature of the depredations. Not of great value, to be sure — if I’d known the man was starving, I’d have imparted of my substance to him—”
“Any money missing?” asked Mallwood.
“Not my habit to leave money about,” replied Mr. Pilsey. “What money there is in the shop at nightfall I take to my bedroom. No money, no — but a suit of clothes — good dark-blue serge for which I recently paid four pound, nineteen and six — clean gone! To say nothing,” added Mr. Pilsey, sadly, “to say nothing at all of my Sunday boots — nearly brand-new — as was drying in the hearth!”
