“Don’t make a sound…you’ll wake him,” whispered the voice. “Come out here…”
As though hypnotised the man by the bed turned and crept towards the eye of light and the unknown whispering voice. “Come!” it repeated.
The boy on the bed breathed more heavily and turned in his sleep, and the watcher who had crept up to the bed groped towards the light.
“Who are you?” he breathed, and there was terror in his voice.
The beam of light retreated a little, and in a panic the other leapt towards it, lost to all reason, overcome by the one mad desire to reach the whispering voice behind the beam of light. He sprang into the passage and the bedroom door swung to, shutting in the sleeping boy. The tiny swathe of light was still shining full on the watcher’s face, bewildering him, as that other voice whispered, “Come! Come quickly!”
There was a sound of running footsteps along the passage as the watcher flung himself in pursuit and then a light was switched on which seemed to have the glare of a searchlight after the tiny beam which had preceded it. In that glare two men stood face to face and recognised each other. Charles Garth saw Macdonald only a yard away from him.
“God! It’s you!” he gasped, and the silence of the house was rent by a report which echoed madly along the empty corridors, followed by the thud of a falling body.
* * *
Marion Garth had not slept since she went to bed that evening. She still did not fully understand what was in Macdonald’s mind, but she instinctively trusted him. He had told her to go to bed or to stay quietly in her room, for he was coming back to the house to keep watch himself that night.
“I have trusted my own judgment in telling you that,” he had said, “because I know you won’t repeat what I say. Don’t tell anybody that I shall be here.”
“Very well. I won’t tell any one,” she had replied, and then asked, “And Malcolm?”
“I’ll look after him,” Macdonald had replied.
Hour after hour she had lain on her bed in the darkness, listening for she knew not what. She heard the strike of the grand-father clock, each hour seeming more interminable—and then she drowsed a little. She was awakened by the crash of a shot—a report which seemed like a bomb exploding in the echoing house, and she leapt up and ran outside along the passages, towards a beam of light at the stair head. “Malcolm!” she cried. “Malcolm!”
Macdonald’s steady voice answered her.
“Malcolm’s all right. Go to his room and tell him there’s been an accident. He will probably think he’s been dreaming.”
Elizabeth Meldon appeared at that instant, and Macdonald said:
“Go and tell the Moffats there’s no cause for alarm now—try to get them back to their rooms quietly. I’ve got a job to do.”
“Malcolm?” She asked the one word, and Macdonald replied:
“He’s all right… Charles shot himself. I’ll tell you about it later.”
She stood still for a few seconds and said, “I’ll never forgive him for trying to put it on to Malcolm.” And then she turned and ran down the echoing corridor calling softly: “It’s all right, Mrs. Moffat. I’m coming. There’s no need to be frightened any longer.”
* * *
Long before daylight that same morning, Macdonald went into the kitchen and found Marion and Elizabeth drinking tea. Marion said, “We always make tea here when things are difficult. Won’t you have a cup?”
“Thank you very much, there’s nothing I should like better,” replied Macdonald. “Is that lad all right?”
“Yes. I told him he was having a nightmare. He went to sleep again quite quickly. He was still a bit dopey after those sleeping tablets.”
“Good. I was afraid of the effect of a shock on him. He’s a nervy lad—but the doctor who saw him yesterday told me he wasn’t likely to get unbalanced, he’s quite tough in his own way.”
Marion looked across at him, her eyes tired but very bright. “Can’t you tell us what really happened, and get it over? I’m so sick and weary of this awful ‘I wonder’ feeling.”
“Very well. If you’d rather hear it now, you’ve a right to,” said Macdonald. “You’ve had a grim time, I realise that—and I’m sorry, but since things were as they were, it’s better that it’s all over, and that you haven’t the misery of giving evidence at a criminal trial.” He paused, and offered a cigarette to the others before he started his statement.
“I told you that Superintendent Layng gave me an excellent detailed statement, in which he included some shrewd comments on the various persons in the case, as well as a full report of the evidence you gave him. In addition to this, John Staple talked to me. I liked Staple, and I regarded him as a trustworthy judge of the folk he knew. He was certain that Ashthwaite had had nothing to do with the actual shooting, and he absolutely refused to consider for a moment that Richard Garth was responsible. Of course there was always the possibility that Jock had hidden in the hull—but I didn’t believe that Ashthwaite would have risked letting Jock have his gun. Thinking the thing over after I had studied Layng’s report, I considered who had a potent motive for shooting Mr. Garth. Motives can be reduced to a few elementary characters: hatred, jealousy, and desire to profit are the most usual. Take the first—hatred. Ashthwaite hated Mr. Garth, but, as Staple said, it didn’t seem to make sense that he had waited so long to pay off his grudge, and had then done it when it was obvious to all the world that he had the opportunity. Ashthwaite is cautious, and he’s also canny.”
Marion nodded. “Yes. I always thought that. He isn’t the type to take a risk.”
“And if it was improbable on those grounds that he shot Mr. Garth, I thought it still more improbable that he gave Jock a gun and trusted him to do it. Jock might have shot anything or anybody, including himself,” continued Macdonald. “Of necessity, I had to regard everybody here as suspect,” he went on, “and I included Richard among those here. Yet I didn’t believe that a son would wait for twenty-five years to shoot his father—and in any case Richard was heir to Garthmere. He had waited a long time for his heritage, but in the nature of things it wasn’t likely that he would have to wait much longer. However—he had to be included as a Class A suspect. Then came Malcolm. He did not stand to gain much in the way of profit, if anything, but because he was a nervy, highly-strung lad, it was possible that he might have done such a thing in a fit of fury. Now as to Charles—and I pondered a lot over Charles. He had lost everything in Malaya. He was living a life he hated here, and he had very few prospects. It was plain enough that little profit would accrue to him on his father’s death while Richard was alive—but if Richard were dead, then Charles was heir to the land, and Charles would have rather fancied himself as a landowner, or so it seemed to me.”
“That’s all true,” said Marion slowly, “but I just didn’t think it out.”
“Well, now let us get down to the possibilities as I saw them last night,” said Macdonald. “Richard Garth had been seen by Malcolm, and Malcolm told Miss Meldon about it in the orchard. Where was Charles at that moment? He had had tea with you, and grumbled bitterly about having to do more harvesting. Miss Garth went to telephone to Staple, Miss Meldon and Malcolm talked in the orchard—until Charles called them in. They hadn’t noticed Charles while they were talking, but it seemed quite possible that he could have eavesdropped.”
Marion nodded sombrely. “Again, I didn’t think of that, but it was just like Charles. He did listen in, and I knew it, though I never said so to anybody else.”
“The situation could have been reconstructed thus,” went on Macdonald. “Charles saw, in one of those flashes that come over an unstable mind, that here was an opportunity. Richard was known to have been in the district. If he could eliminate Richard, and then kill his father, it was about a hundred to one that the blame for his father’s death would be put on Richard. Now go back to that evening when
you carted John Staple’s oats—Miss Meldon remembers it.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, turning to Marion. “You and Malcolm and I all came in here for a hot toddy. We supposed that Charles had gone to bed—but none of us saw him. Next morning at breakfast Charles wasn’t there. We supposed he’d gone into Lancaster by the early lorry.”
Marion looked puzzled, and Macdonald went on: “Charles knew from overhearing Malcolm that Richard was going to stay at the Wheatsheaf at Panstone. I haven’t actual proof of the following points, but I expect to get it. I think Charles walked over to Panstone, spent the night in a barn, and watched early next morning to see if Richard would leave the Wheatsheaf and what he would do. Richard left after an early breakfast, and set out over Ingleborough. His body was found at the bottom of one of the deepest pot holes in the limestone, but he had been shot through the head. When the bullet that killed him is examined, I expect it will show the same breech markings as the bullet with which Charles shot himself a few hours ago.” He paused here, and said to Marion, “I told you it was a grim story, but you wanted to know.”
“Yes,” she said resolutely, “I wanted to know.”
“The actual facts otherwise are all at your disposal,” said Macdonald. “I believed that the person who shot your father had reason to believe that he would go to the hull after the fox hunt, in order to get a post and mall to mend a fence. Probably Charles broke that fence deliberately. He had what must have seemed a marvellous opportunity with that fox hunt. Everybody was out with a gun—it would obviously be difficult to determine who did the shooting. Charles, on his own admission, went to Lawson’s Wood and saw how the guns were placed. After that he came home and watched for his chance. He could overlook the fields from the ladder in the barn, and he went to the hull with his gun and shot Mr. Garth when he appeared at the door of the hull. He then hurried back—knowing exactly what everybody in the household was doing—cleaned the gun and replaced it in the rack. The gun he used was one he had often complained of—it was covered with his own fingerprints, and he was sensible enough to see that he ran no risk there. That’s a general outline. I may have missed a few points. For instance it was Charles who put the twenty-five cent piece in the hull—to incriminate Richard, and Charles, doubtless, who put Miss Garth’s loaded gun in the office—to incriminate everybody else. He believed in confusing the issue.”
“But why did he try to put it on to Malcolm?” demanded Elizabeth indignantly, and Macdonald replied:
“Throughout the case he sought to confuse the issue: the more suspects the better, though he was convinced, I am certain, that a verdict would be brought in against Richard. It was for that reason that Charles felt he could afford to be so magnanimous about Richard. No one would have appeared more surprised than Charles had it been proved that Richard was guilty. Malcolm was only a second string—up to last night. I deliberately told Charles that Richard’s body had been found, but that the postmortem had not yet been held. Charles knew that the postmortem would prove that Richard had been shot through the back of his head—and the situation looked desperate. I was convinced that if Charles were guilty—as I believed him to be, he would make a desperate bid to remedy the situation, either by bolting himself, or by a last effort to weigh the evidence against Malcolm. That was what he did. He meant to shoot Malcolm and fake a suicide by leaving the pistol in his hand. That last tragedy, at least, was prevented. I suppose I could have prevented Charles shooting himself—but I’m not sorry. A murder trial in which the conclusion is foregone is a horrible business for those who have to give evidence.” He turned again to Marion: “Don’t think I don’t realise what this recital has meant to you, Miss Garth. Again, I’m deeply sorry.”
Marion stood up and took a deep breath, a tall, dignified woman with a worn face.
“There’s something else to be remembered,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for you, Mr. Macdonald, it might have happened that Malcolm was killed, too, and a verdict of murder and suicide given against him. In which case Charles would have inherited Garthmere. Oh, I know it’s been horrible—but at least it’s a nightmare from which there is an awakening. It might have been an endless nightmare—believe me, I’m not ungrateful.”
She walked quietly out of the room, and Macdonald turned to Elizabeth. “Before I go I should like to thank you for all the things you remembered to tell me when you talked to me last night. They all helped.”
“I never liked Charles,” she said slowly, “and I liked him less when he began to be so nice to Marion after Mr. Garth was shot. It didn’t ring true. The only queer thing I noticed at first was that Charles—who never had any money unless we lent him some, suddenly produced his own cigarettes in plenty, and took to going to the pub. Whisky costs money these days. I felt awful when I found myself wondering if he’d taken the money…from a dead man’s pocket.”
“Yes,” said Macdonald. “It’s an ugly thought—but I’m afraid it was true.”
Elizabeth walked with him to the door, and as she opened it she gave a cry of relief. Above the stark blue line of the fells the sky was flushing to dawn, and the white mists of the valley were opalescent and luminous.
“Thank goodness for the beasts and the land!” she cried. “Presently Marion will come and help milk the cows and feed the calves and count the eggs, and do all the decent commonplace things which make life good… Listen! That’s the calves calling already—they can hear our voices. Doesn’t it smell good out here?”
“It smells very good,” said Macdonald. He held out his hand to her. “Good-bye and good luck. I’ve liked this place so much… I wish I’d learnt to milk a cow…”
She laughed at that. “Come back again one day and try! If I possess a cow of my own by then I’ll let you learn to milk her. Do you know the motto of Lancaster, by the way?”
“No. What is it?”
“Luck to Loyne. You wished me luck, you know.”
“I repeat the wish,” said Macdonald, “and—Luck to Loyne!”
A Short Story:
The Live Wire
“Now you think it over, Lorimer. It’s not as though you hadn’t any brains. You have. Use them to advantage. You can if you try.”
Jeff Lorimer pondered over the Prison Visitor’s well-meant words, applying them in his own manner, but in a sense very different from that implied by his mentor. Jeff had just served a three-month sentence, and he had had plenty of time to think while he was “inside.”
The final talk with the official visitor had, to Jeff’s way of thinking, “just put the cap on it” Wasn’t he always thinking—thinking hard? He had been using his wits ever since he was a small boy.
“Our Jeff, he’s a live wire, he is! You’d never believe a nipper could be so smart!”
Jeff’s father had been full of pride in his offspring once, and yet now, at the age of fifty, Jeff Lorimer was leaving prison to start again at scratch, in his mind a sense of grievance that his abilities had brought him no reward.
“Use your brains…”
Jeff Lorimer fairly laughed when he remembered the words. “Not half I won’t!” he chuckled to himself. “If only they’re still at the same old game, I reckon I’ve got them bending!”
Jeff had plenty of friends. He used his first days of liberty to get into touch with them again, and to inform them about the results of his “thinking” while he had been absent from them. Bill Higgins, an out-of-work navvy, and Bert Simpson, a powerful ex-stevedore, were old allies of Jeff. Truly, their association had brought them little profit so far, but, as Jeff said, “Luck had gone against ’em.”
“It’ll be all right this time, mates,” he declared, with the optimism which had earned him the sobriquet of “Sunny Jeff.”
“That beats the band! Cripes! How you think of it I don’t know. That’s what I calls brains!” gasped Higgins. “I should never ’a thought o’ that if I’d tried till I was pink!”
>
“Now don’t you bother with thinking, mate. Leave that to me,” said Jeff. “You just do what I says—and then we’ll see!”
Having organised the necessary assistance, Jeff Lorimer spent some days in observing the scene of his objective. He was much too intelligent to try to bring off a coup until he had studied the conditions under which he would have to work.
Jeff spent a long time pondering over the time-tables so generously supplied by the railway company of his choice at its London terminus.
He put some of the funds supplied by Higgins and Simpson to the unaccustomed eccentricity of paying railway fares to various places within a short distance of London. Jeff did not habitually pay railway fares. He knew a few tricks which rendered such an extravagance redundant, but on these occasions Jeff was full of virtue. He was thinking.
Money had also to be expended on essential apparatus. Jeff bought some yards of strong steel chain. He knew just where to get what he wanted, and he bought the best. Higgins and Simpson tested the strength of that chain, and pronounced it “O-kay.”
* * *
Finally Jeff bought a steel grapnel—a well-made gadget, whose jaws gripped tight with the simple law of the lever when the chain attached to it narrowed the compass of its business ends.
During several evenings Jeff sat with his chain and grapnel practising pitch and toss. He had a good eye and threw unerringly, with the skill of a lassoist—an art he had learned in a circus in his younger days.
“Funny how things comes in useful when you thinks,” pondered Jeff darkly, harking back to the prison visitor. He remembered, too, the thrashings he had received from the circus owner while he fumbled with a lasso, years ago.
“Just shows—you never know when a chap’s doing you a good turn,” he said to his friend Bill, speaking with the optimism which had never quite left him. “I reckon I got this turn just so, mates!”
“Beautiful I call it!” agreed Higgins. “Seems you can’t miss. ’And and eye workin’ together. Oh, pretty!”
Fell Murder Page 20