Collected works of j s f.., p.899
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 899
“There’s the possibility that the murderer had hid himself somewhere in these old rooms before the mayor came,” remarked Milgrave. “That’s how it strikes me, anyhow. Hid himself, did his work, and sneaked out while Learoyd was busy with his supper. It wouldn’t take him a second, you know, to slip out into the market-place.”
They were standing on the threshold of the mayor’s parlour just then, and Milgrave turned back into it and took another look round. The room had been left exactly as it was found when Learoyd made his terrifying discovery: the desk, the chair were precisely as the ill-fated young mayor had left them. There on the carpet and hearthrug was the terrible stain which signified so much. But Milgrave, who had already seen all this, did not look at it again. This time he was noting the antique beauty of the room — its groined roof, its vast fireplace, the mullioned windows, the fine oak panelling, black with age, the dusky oil-paintings of dead mayors and local celebrities, the fine old Queen Anne furnishings, the big oak chest. It was a fit scene for many things — for the deliberations of the town grey-beards, for the dispensing of that hospitality for which mayors are so famous — but not for a foul murder. He suddenly turned away, and, tapping his companion on the arm, went silently out of the room.
“Do you know what I’m wondering, superintendent?” he asked abruptly, when the elder man had locked the door, and they were going side by side down the wide stone stairs. “Can you guess?”
“Not at all, sir,” replied the superintendent. “Something deep, eh?”
Milgrave laughed — a grim, slightly cynical laugh.
“Not so deep, perhaps,” he answered. “No; I’m just wondering, not who it was that killed Mr. Hannington, but why he killed him — why? Motive, you know, superintendent, motive! If I could lay my mind on a motive — ah, I think I should soon lay my hands on a man. However, at present I’ll get my bag, put myself up at the Lyncaster Arms yonder, eat my supper, and reflect.”
Milgrave began to reflect as soon as he had quitted Superintendent Sutton’s company, and he continued to reflect, and to surmise, and to speculate, and to invent theories, and to devise all manner of suggestions and possibilities during the next twenty-four hours — all without result. That evening, having installed himself at the old-fashioned hotel in the market-place and refreshed his inner man, he interviewed several people in Sutton’s company. He interviewed more people next morning and at various intervals during the day. He got no light from anybody — no one had a single suggestion to make. The dead man’s relatives could tell nothing beyond what Milgrave already knew; the great men of the town, aldermen, councillors, magistrates, were frankly puzzled. The corporation officials were utterly bewildered.
The inquest, held at noon on that second day, revealed nothing; the only fact that was beyond dispute was that someone evilly disposed had obtained access to the mayor’s parlour, while the mayor was in it on that evening of December 8, and had stabbed him to death. How the person had obtained access did not seem a very important point. The hall of the Moot Hall was not over well lighted at night. Learoyd and his wife were at supper for some time; anyone having this murderous intention in his heart could easily have slipped up the stairs unobserved.
The only point raised at the inquest which interested Milgrave was the opinion of the doctor as to the nature of the weapon used by the murderer. The doctor said that that weapon must have been a stiletto or finely-pointed dagger; the rapier of other days would have caused such a wound. The mention of stilettos made those present think of the vindictive Italian who had muttered what had appeared to be threats against Hannington when sent to prison. But during that day a telegram informed Sutton that the Italian was pursuing his career as showman in a far-off part of the country, and had certainly not been within a hundred miles of Lyncaster on the night of the murder. And at nightfall, on the second day of his arrival in the town, Milgrave was as wise as ever. There was no clue; nobody had come under suspicion. The Lyncaster murder promised, in good sooth, to be one of those mysteries which are never solved.
Milgrave was sitting over a late supper that second night, wondering if the reason of the murder might not be found in some by-gone passage of young Hannington’s life — some episode, say, of his college days — when Sutton came to the hotel, evidently primed with news. The superintendent closed the door of Milgrave’s private sitting-room with great caution, and, in spite of their privacy, he dropped his voice to a whisper as he advanced to the detective’s chair.
“Now then,” he said, “I’ve heard something.”
“Much?” asked Milgrave.
“Can’t say whether it’ll turn out to be much, little, or nothing; but it’s something,” answered the superintendent. “Did you notice, when you were at the inquest this morning, a queer-looking old chap that sat in a corner of the court — strange character in appearance?”
“No,” replied Milgrave. “I never looked round the court at all. This old man, then—”
“Old chap of the name of Antony Mallalieu, but commonly called Snuffy Mallalieu, from a habit of his,” answered Sutton. “He’s one of the oldest men in Lyncaster, a regular patriarch, and one of the characters of the town. Keeps a queer odds-and-ends shop where he sells all sorts of old things. He’s a bit of an antiquary and so on. I saw him in court to-day, and just now I got this from him.”
He handed the detective a scrap of the whitey-brown paper which is used in small shops for wrapping up odds-and-ends. On it Milgrave saw a few words traced with what had evidently been the sediment of a very muddy bottle of cheap ink.
“Mr. Sutton. — If you like to come and see me to-night, and bring that London gentleman with you, it may be to your advantage. — Yours truly,
A Mallalieu.”
Milgrave smiled at the crabbed handwriting as he handed the scrap of paper back to his visitor.
“You think — what?” he asked.
“He’s a deep ‘un, is Snuffy Mallalieu,” said Sutton. “He knows something. I noticed this morning how he was taking everything in at that inquest. We’d best go round and see him.”
Milgrave had seen some strange places in his long experience, but never anything quite so extraordinary as the house and shop to which Sutton presently led him. The shop, which opened on a quiet alley behind the Moot Hall, was crammed from floor to ceiling with what most people would have called rubbish — old furniture, old glass, old brass, old pictures — odds-and-ends of every description without order, arrangement, or sequence, thick and black with the accumulated dust of ages.
There was scarcely room to turn in it; there seemed to be less room in the gloomy house behind, where passages, stairs, every nook and corner was piled high with similar goods.
A shadowy figure piloted them from the half-lighted shop through a narrow passage to a parlour beyond, filled with strange things and permeated with an atmosphere of gin, onions, and strong tobacco. Then the shadowy figure turned up the wick of a lamp, and Milgrave found himself staring at the queerest old man he had ever seen in his life, the sort of man who might have been imagined by Dickens or drawn by Doré.
He was very old and very dirty; his garments, of the style of the Regency, would have disgraced any scarecrow; there was a strong probability that he never took them off, and only put on a clean shirt once a year. Altogether, he was anything but nice to look at or be near, and Milgrave was thankful that he and Sutton were smoking strong cigars. But out of the old fellow’s face, so wrinkled and scarred that it looked as if its skin — properly stretched — would have covered half-a-dozen human countenances, gleamed a pair of unusually bright, knowing eyes, and one of them favoured the two men with a decided wink as a hand, that was suggestively like a bird’s claw, pointed them to a dilapidated sofa — the only thing in the room on which a seat was available.
“All safe here,” said the old man, in a much stronger and firmer voice than Milgrave expected to hear from such an ancient atomy. “I slipped the bolt in the shop door when you came in, Sutton, so we shan’t be interrupted. Your servant, Mr. Man-from-London — you look a sharp ‘un! Quiet and close and sharp — them’s the sort — eh, Sutton? Well, well! but you must have a drop to drink. I drink gin myself, but I’ll give you some whiskey that’s been in bottle — ay, five-and-twenty years. I’ll lay aught neither of you ever put lips to its like!”
Milgrave would have refused this offer of hospitality, but Sutton gave him a nudge and a look; he therefore remained quiescent while the queer old figure, bustling about in its strange surroundings, produced a sealed bottle and dexterously drew the cork.
“I bought two dozen of that whiskey at Lord Felbrough’s sale twenty-five years ago,” he said. “I had it all specially corked and sealed and I’ve seen to the renewing of the corks at proper times. Now, then, here’s what you might be surprised to see in this den, Mr. Man-from-London — clean glasses and pure water. Best crystal in two respects, eh, Sutton? Now, I’ll help you, and then I’ll help myself to a drop of my liquor — never touch aught but gin — and then we’ll talk. A bit of talk — illuminative talk — is what you both want, eh?”
“Light — certainly,” answered Milgrave.
“Ay, light!” exclaimed the old man, seating himself on a pile of leather-bound folios. “Light on darkness — what? You want to know who killed young Hannington, my lads, don’t you?”
“Do you know?” asked Milgrave.
Snuffy Mallalieu’s sharp eyes fastened themselves on the detective’s with a shrewd twinkle. He suddenly bent forward and slapped Milgrave’s knee with the claw-like hand.
“How old do you think I am, young man?” he asked.
“Eighty,” replied Milgrave, promptly.
“You’re wrong. I was an old fellow when Sutton there was a young man,” retorted Snuffy Mallalieu. “I’m ninety-seven years old. If you doubt it, you can go and search the parish register. Ninety-seven! And sound in mind, body, and estate. Never wore glasses in my life, and still got the necessary teeth, and still as good of hearing as ever. I shall live to be well over a hundred.”
“You’re a marvel!” said Milgrave. He was wondering what all this was going to lead to, but he knew it was best to let the old fellow take things in his own way and at his own pace. “A marvel! Ninety-seven! A great age.”
“Naturally, a man that’s lived ninety-seven years in a place knows something about it,” remarked the old man. “Sutton there can tell you that there’s not much that I don’t know about Lyncaster.”
“Nobody knows more, I’ll be bound!” assented Sutton heartily. “That’s a certainty.”
“Happen I know a bit more than I’m known to know,” said Snuffy Mallalieu, with another glance at Milgrave. “Well, now, there’s been a bit of doubt as to whether whoever it was that killed the young mayor went into the Moot Hall by the front — eh?”
The two listeners pricked their ears, this was something like coming to a point. But neither spoke, and the old man laughed with the slightly teasing glee of conscious knowledge. Then his face changed and became serious.
“Until this affair happened,” he said, bending towards his visitor, “I believed that there wasn’t a soul but me who knew a secret about our Moot Hall. I thought I was the last to know it. Now I think — nay, I’m sure — somebody else knows it. It’s this — there’s a secret way into the old place!”
CHAPTER III.
“WHAT!” EXCLAIMED SUTTON.
“That’s so,” said the old man. “My father, and his father, and his grandfather, lived in our Moot Hall, where Learoyd lives now. They all knew of this secret way, and they passed the knowledge down. It’s a way that cuts through the walls, goes down below the market-place, and ends — where do you think?”
Milgrave made no answer. His sharp wits told him that the usually stolid man at his side was waking up under the influence of that crafty, wrinkled old face; there was a new atmosphere in those strange surroundings — he himself was falling under its spell. He kept silent. But Sutton’s big form stirred uneasily.
“Well — where?” he asked, almost with a growl. “Where, then?”
Snuffy Mallalieu thrust his face still nearer to the two so intently bent on his own. He sank his voice to the ghost of a whisper.
“In a secret staircase in the Bank House!” he answered.
Milgrave felt the superintendent jump in his seat. Then he turned on his companion with a strange look, his back to the old man.
“What!” he exclaimed. “Mr. Leggett’s! You don’t say!”
“Sure,” answered Snuffy Mallalieu.
He, too, relapsed into the same silence as the other when he had spoken that one word. Milgrave wondered what the silence meant — to the others, at any rate; to him it merely signified waiting. It seemed quite a long time before Sutton relieved his feelings with a big letting loose of his held-in breath, and a fervent exclamation.
“By Jove!” he said, in a tense whisper. “Who’d ha’ thought it?”
“Just so,” assented the old man. He pulled out an ancient snuff-box, took a hearty pinch, and looked at the superintendent. “You see what that means, Sutton?” he continued. “It’s struck you! Mr. Man-from-London here doesn’t see.”
“Frankly, I don’t,” said Milgrave.
“Simple,” remarked Snuffy Mallalieu. “Mr. Leggett, who lives at the Bank House, is a gentleman with a taste for antiquities and archæology. Also, he’s for a good many years been manager of Hannington’s Bank — trusted and responsible manager. Further, for ten years he’s been borough treasurer. Eh?”
Sutton, who had been sitting open-mouthed, holding his glass in his hand, suddenly drank off his whiskey and rose. He rapped the old man’s shoulder.
“You can show us where this secret way is?” he said.
“Ay, for sure!” answered Snuffy Mallalieu. “And whenever ye like.”
“Now, then,” said Sutton. “Sooner the better. Come across with us.”
The old man shook his head.
“Not till you’re certain that we shall be by ourselves,” he said. “You’d better go and arrange matters with Learoyd. Let him send his missis to bed at their usual time, and then let us in. I’ll meet you outside there at just after ten. Mind you, Sutton, I don’t want all the town to know that I’ve told you. It’s been a family secret up to now, but — now—”
“What?” asked Sutton.
Snuffy Mallalieu laughed mirthlessly.
“Now I think Leggett’s found it out,” he replied. “Well, till ten, then.”
Sutton took Milgrave out of the odds-and-ends shop and drew him into a quiet corner.
“Do you know what that means — may mean, mister?” he whispered. “You heard Leggett’s name mentioned? Manager of the bank — borough treasurer — ay, but he’s more than that — he’s trustee for I don’t know how many families in town! There’s been a pile of brass entrusted to Leggett in this place of late years. A quiet, very respectable, smooth-tongued gentleman — universally respected, as the term is. Leggett! But by the living jingo — suppose — suppose—”
“I want to hear more before I suppose anything,” said Milgrave. “You know more than I do. Suppose — what?”
“Young Hannington was a keen ‘un about business matters,” replied Sutton. “I know he was beginning to go into things. Supposing he’d found something out — wrong, eh, with money matters? Bank funds, borough funds — what? Now, do you see? And what’s to be done?”
Milgrave’s mind was already made up on that point. “Have you two or three men that you can thoroughly depend upon?” he asked. “Men to whom you can tell a little and rely on fully?”
“Half-a-dozen,” answered the Superintendent, promptly. “Good ‘uns!”
“Two will do,” said Milgrave. “Let those two keep a quiet eye on that Bank House, back and front, while you and I find out what this old man’s got to show us. If it’s as he says, and if it’s as you think it might be, why then—”
He ended with an expressive shake of his head, and hurried the superintendent away in the direction of the police-station.
Milgrave, naturally quick to observe things, had noticed on the first night of his arrival in Lyncaster that the townsfolk were evidently in the habit of keeping early hours. By half-past nine the lights began to be transferred from the lower to the upper windows, by ten the little town was wrapped in silence and in darkness, save for the two or three lamps left burning in the market-place. It was in this silence and semi-gloom that he and Sutton presently met Snuff Mallalieu, who, buttoned to the chin in an old horseman’s cloak, so ancient that it might have served some eighteenth century highwayman, awaited them in a corner of the Moot House entrance. Silently the three were admitted by Learoyd; in silence they went up the stone stairs. At its head Sutton produced a couple of bull’s-eye lanterns.
“There are three windows in the mayor’s parlour that look out on the market-place,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to see any big light on in here, so we’ll use these things. They’ll be useful, too, if we’re going to explore this passage that we’ve heard of.”
He unlocked the door of the mayor’s parlour as he spoke, and when they had entered he relocked it. Then he set the two lanterns on a centre table and turned to the old man.
“Now, then, Mr. Mallalieu,” he said. “It’s your turn. What’s this that you’ve got to show us?”
Snuffy Mallalieu had moved over to the further end of the room, near the big fireplace, and was looking down at the stain on the carpet and hearthrug, which Milgrave had viewed, and made no comment on, at his first inspection. He looked up from it at the desk and the chair, and slowly nodded his head.
“Ay!” he said, reflectively. “Ay! Just as I expected it would be from what was said at the crowner’s ‘quest this morning — just! I see how it was done, my lads.”
“How what was done?” asked Sutton.
“The murder, of course,” answered the old man. “An easy job, though a clever one. Now, attend to me, both of you. As I told you, my father and grandfather were keepers — caretaker you call it now — of this Moot Hall, and their grandfather before them — ay, for two hundred years, as the town books’ll show, Sutton. Consequently, there’s not much about the old place that I don’t know of. Now, then, you see this mayor’s parlour? There’s the front, looking on to the market-place, with three windows. Here’s the side, overlooking Finkle Gate — it’s two windows. By this last window, on this Finkle Gate side, young Hannington had his private desk placed. There it is — there’s the chair he sat in when he was stabbed. What’s behind that chair? You see — a fine old tapestry curtain, divided in the middle. What’s behind that? Come and look.”
