by E.
CHAPTER XIV
FOOTPRINTS
Chief Detective Inspector Harry Manson, D.Sc., and detective Sergeant Merry, B.Sc., lowered themselves into two chairs in a way-side café on the high road five miles outside Tremarden, and called for tea.
For two hours they had trudged a devious way over fields, guided by mysterious marks which the scientist had drawn on an Ordnance Survey map of the district. They had peered into ditches and skirted round ponds. The result was, as Manson admitted, nil.
The colonel hadn’t died in any of them.
“Where the heck DID he die, then?” Merry asked between gulps of tea.
“Beyond the fact that it wasn’t in the Tamar, I don’t know,” answered Manson. “And what is more, I haven’t the faintest idea. I know, and so do you, the conditions required for his death, but I do not know where we can find those conditions.”
The two men had devoted the afternoon to following the two pieces of concrete evidence which the Doctor had outlined to Superintendent Burns to prove that the colonel did not drown at the spot suspected. They had reached the café at the end of the search, and had pulled in for refreshment.
“Well. . . .” Manson looked at his watch. “We had better be making our way back. I want to walk down the river bank.”
The burly figure of the café proprietor bore down on them. “You gents want anything else?” he asked.
“No thanks,” Manson answered. “You make tea like a Yorkshireman,” he added, with a smile.
“Ah am an’ all,” was the reply. “Joe Smithwaite’s the name. Sithee, we knaws how to put tea i’ pot oop theer. That’ll be two bob, and thank ye very much.”
“I suppose if we go across the fields here, we can reach the river?” asked Manson.
“No, sir. Tha can’t go that way. All private property, like, and private fishin’ on river. T’water belongs to Lunnon gents, and, sides, it’s all cornfields. Now what you gennelmen CAN do is to take the bus down t’road for about three miles and then tha can cut down right of way which’ll put thee on t’riverside. Then, tha walks reight down t’river past Tremarden Arms fishin’ water.”
“That will do us excellently. What time is there a bus?”
“Due most any minute now, sir. Ask Joe—he’s the conductor—to put thee down at Tremorres’s farm and tha’ll see the path. It’s t’one fishermen use.”
Ten minutes later the bus dropped the couple at the footpath; another five minutes and their eyes saw the glint of the Tamar. In a further five they were at the bank, looking at dozens of widening rings on the surface of the water, as trout came up for the late afternoon rise of fly.
“Whereabouts are we, Harry?” asked Merry. “I don’t recognise the spot.”
“Looks like Number Four beat. . . . Yes, there’s the board. This will be where the major was fishing on the day of the colonel’s death.”
Together, the couple turned and began to stroll downstream, drinking in the beauty of the afternoon, the warmth of which was steadied by a light breeze which rippled the water gently on the wind-ward side of the stream. They had strolled some twenty minutes when Manson looked ahead and stopped. “Now this would be the spot, I should think, from which the major saw the woman he took to be Mrs. Devereux. What did he say? That she was standing at the edge of the Avenue, the other side of the pylons?”
Manson sat on the bank, his legs dangling over the water and gazed towards the pylons. “Yes,” he decided, “he could have seen a woman quite easily from here. And he is right in saying that he could not recognise her. It’s too far away for that. Well, that is one point for the major.”
They resumed their walk in the direction of the flow of the river. A few minutes brought them within reach of the pylons, two tall, square spindled towers that bridged electric power cables across the water to carry the light that now flooded cottages at the pressing of a switch, where once paraffin and a wick had provided the only luminant. Merry saw nothing of the light of progress, but only the ugliness that had destroyed the beauty of the river scenery. He said so.
“But think, Merry,” retorted Manson. “Think of the advantages that it brings to these isolated areas. The harnessed power, the . . .”
His voice broke off suddenly. Merry, looking up for the reason, found the scientist staring, incredibly, down at his feet, and followed his gaze. After one glance his eyes stared with the dazed look of a man dealt a sudden blow on the solar plexis.
Bulging out from the river and widening from a narrow neck, was a circle of muddy water. At a rough estimate, Merry calculated, it measured ten feet in diameter and twelve feet in depth from the river bank. A piece of barbed wire guarded the neck, where it joined the Tamar.
Deep indentations of hoofmarks, round the shelving edges showed its purpose plainly enough; it was a drinking pool for cattle; one obviously dug out for the purpose, and set below the water level so that the river might feed it, and keep it supplied with water. The water was still muddy from the wading of cows, now grazing some distance away after their cooling stand in the pond. At the landward extremity, the pond was covered with a surface weed, light green, in contrast to the darker green of the grass in the field.
Manson walked gingerly down to the water edge. Pulling a piece of the weed towards him with a branch, he examined it. He answered Merry’s glance of inquiry with a nod. The sergeant, feeling in an inside pocket of his coat, produced an envelope, and squeezing the weed free of surplus moisture, he slipped it inside, replacing the envelope in his pocket.
“Footsteps?” he asked, as the two men stared at the pool.
“I should say not a chance, Merry,” was the scientist’s reply. “The place has been trodden down by cattle. We’ll have to look, of course; but it’s a forlorn hope.”
The pessimistic view of the scientist was justified. Though the two men scanned, on hands and knees, the circumference of the pool, no print of human feet, identifiable as such, could be found. The only possible footstep visible was on the dried mud, along one side of the neck of the pool, and it had been so washed by the lapping water, flowing through the neck, as to be useless for any purpose of possible identification.
Similar disappointment resulted from the examination of the area surrounding the pool; the ankle-deep grass, on land baked by rainless days, showed no traces of any comings and goings. Manson let his gaze wander over the field and along the river bank. Fifty yards away, the Avenue began its shadowed length of the water. The scientist measured the distance with his eyes. “The major saw a woman at the entrance to the Avenue,” he said. “At that distance the shortening of vision might easily be some forty or fifty yards. That would bring the real position of the woman to, roughly, level with this pool. Do you agree?”
Merry nodded. “That would be about right, Harry,” he confirmed.
“It doesn’t make sense, Merry.”
“Why not?”
The scientist threw out his arms. “All open . . . full view of everyone, and everything.” He surveyed the scene again, letting his gaze pass from the river, past the pool, and along the direction from which they had lately walked. His eyes stopped at a little cluster of three trees, the lower part of their trunks half hidden by a mass of thick bramble bushes. “I wonder?” he said, and walked towards them.
One glance was sufficient to justify his premonition. There were signs, in plenty, of a struggle. The long grass in the centre showed it; a number of twigs from the lower tree stems were lying where they had fallen, broken off by violent contact with some force or other.
Manson commenced a methodical examination of the scene. It was obvious, however, that the hard ground, covered with long grass, was not likely to provide any evidence beyond that, plain to see, that more than one person had been engaged in violent exertion. The grass was torn, and trodden in a circle of some three yards wide. The two eyed it. Manson bent down and examined the nearest blades.
“Any indication of how long ago?” asked Merry.
Manson n
odded. “I think so,” he said. “Doctor Johnson, you know, said that one green field was like another green field. There was a lot of ignorance in Doctor Johnson. He took the view that grass is just grass. Robert Gibbings knew better. ‘There is no greater competition for existence anywhere than in a meadow,’ he wrote. ‘Even human footsteps will encourage those grasses which prefer a firm tilth, to the detriment of those which like a looser soil. Hence, the clearly marked line of a footpath where the grasses which thrive happen to be a dark colour.’ But not the kind of footsteps we’ve had here,” Manson added.
He was examining the bruised blades through his glass. “You know, Merry,” he proceeded, “there’s a man named Waldie at Reading University who devotes all his life to grass. No quadruped is a greater connoisseur. He knows every blade and he’ll tell you the amount of minerals, carbohydrates, proteins and fats possessed by each. And he’ll tell you, too, at what week in the year they start growing and what week they finish growing. And I’m quite sure he could tell us to within an hour just when this bruising took place. I know a little about such matters myself, and I should say the struggle occurred two or three days ago. The blades of grass you notice are beginning to recover from their wounds and are recovering slightly to their upright condition. Now, if anyone had just laid on them, they would have recovered before now and they would not have been broken and bruised.”
He pulled aside a low hanging branch of one of the trees and peered through the opening thus caused. In a patch of firm ground, beside one of the bramble bushes the distinct print of a boot lay revealed. That it was there was one of those fortunate chances which sometimes occur in crime detection. There had been no rain for days; everywhere the ground was baked hard, and the chances of footprints were a hundred to one against. But the shade of the bramble bushes had kept the clayey soil sufficiently moist with dew to take an impression. Then the hot, dry atmosphere of the days which had followed, had cemented it firmly, almost as though it had been baked in a kiln.
The print was that of a man’s boot. “Size eight or nine,” Merry suggested. “And as good an impression as ever I have seen,” he added.
Glass in hand, Manson bent over the print. The enlarged vision, represented by the magnification, revealed several peculiarities not immediately obvious to the unaided vision. On the left side of the sole—it was a left boot—a patch had, at some time, been cobbled on. Through the patch a hobnail had been driven, to match a similar nail on the opposite side, and a further row of three round the toe and four at the heel.
“I don’t like it, Merry.” The scientist’s face was very grave.
“Looks very much like a fisherman’s brogue,” was the sergeant’s verdict.
“That is just what I meant.”
“We ought to have a cast of it, Harry. What do we do about that?”
For reply the scientist emptied an inside jacket pocket of a collection of letters and papers. He selected a letter on foolscap paper and, opening it out, placed it carefully over the footprint. With a pencil, he marked, roughly, the outline. Then, with a pair of pocket scissors he cut out the pattern. Carefully shaving the edges, a little at a time, he gradually fitted the pattern into the print until it lay, closely, in the impression. Satisfied of its accuracy, Doctor Manson, using his wallet as a support, meticulously drew in the print’s peculiarities, exactly as they appeared in the impression, measuring with his pocket calipers the size of the patch, and the positions of the hobnails.
“We will have to have a cast, if possible, Merry,” he said. “But anything may happen before we can get back here with the plaster. A cow may wander in and put her foot on it . . .”
“Or the owner may come along and obliterate it.”
“Quite. We have now, at least, something which can, quite feasibly help us if the worst happens. Meanwhile, we’ll break off a few branches and cover the print over. It may guard it against chance destruction. Then, I think, we had better hurry to the hotel and back here with the plaster.”
The plan was, however, to be delayed by a further, and equally unexpected, discovery. As Merry turned away, a glint of light from the tangled grass at the edge of the bushes caught his eye. He bent down and picked up a fragment of glass. He was about to throw it away again, when the thinness of the glass took his attention. Closer examination caused him to drop hurriedly to his knees. Parting the grass circumspectly, he retrieved a second piece, about the size of a sixpence. Manson, who had turned away and commenced the walk back to the hotel, turned at his Sergeant’s whistle. A beckoning wave of a hand caused him to retrace his steps. One look at the fragments of glass was sufficient to tell him the importance of the Sergeant’s discovery. “Spectacle glass, of course,” he said. “We’ll have to search the spot thoroughly, Merry. This may put a noose round somebody’s neck.”
Together, the men combed the copse as though with a toothcomb, parting carefully each blade of grass from the next and peering beneath it. It was nearly an hour before they were satisfied that no further recoverable particle remained to be salvaged. There were then about twenty pieces of glass in the envelope into which they had been dropped as they were recovered, some of the pieces little more than splinters. Manson regarded them in the mass. “I should say we have nearly enough for a pair of spectacles, Merry,” he announced. “Certainly, there will be enough for the grinding of them to be decided with certainty.”
The sergeant stood up, and dusted his trouser knees. “This,” he said, “looks as if we are getting somewhere at last. A fisherman’s brogue print and a pair of spectacles.”
“Not necessarily,” interrupted Manson. “We haven’t proved they are brogue prints.”
“No. But it’s most likely, is it not?”
“Yes, I think from the place and the circumstance we might concede that point,” the scientist agreed. “And if we find a fisherman who is minus a pair of glasses, we shall have to put him under very vigilant surveillance.”
They began the walk back to the road which had been interrupted by Merry’s discovery. The sergeant shuffled uncomfortably for some moments. Then he spoke his thoughts:
“Emmett told me that he had lost his spectacles, Harry,” he said, slowly.
“Yes . . . I know, Jim.”
The pair walked on in silence.
CHAPTER XV
THE COFFIN MAKER
Superintendent Burns looked up as Sergeant Barrett entered his room and announced his presence with a cough. “What is it, Sergeant?” he asked. “I’m busy.”
“Sorry, sir, but there’s a man in the outside office who insists on seeing you, personally. Says he knows something about the colonel. He won’t tell us anything.”
“Who is he, Sergeant?”
“Name of Cobley, sir. He’s a labourer on Tremorres’s farm.” The superintendent put down his pen and pushed back the paper on which he had been working. “All right, Barrett, show him in. And you had better come in yourself, and bring a note-book. Take down anything he says—if he says anything worth taking down.”
“Very good, sir.”
He left the room and returned with a stockily-built man, dressed obviously in his Sunday best for the occasion of his visit. “Mr. Cobley,” the sergeant announced.
“Mornin’ to ’ee,” said Cobley.
“Good morning, Mr. Cobley.” The superintendent waved him to a chair. “The sergeant here says you have something to tell us about Colonel Donoughmore’s drowning. Is that right?”
Cobley scratched his head. “Well, zur, I doan’t be zure about it,” he said. “Policeman Lewis, now, he said ef be anyone saw a woman on the river on day Colonel was drowned, he was to tell ’ee.” He waited anxiously for confirmation.
“That’s quite right, Cobley,” the superintendent agreed. “Did you see a woman there?”
“Ay. A shouldn’t a cum ef a hadn’t.”
“Where did you see her?”
“Wud ’ee know Varmer Tremorres’s big field of oats down theer by ’lectric wires?”
Burns nodded.
“I was workin’ at top of field when I see her runnin’s down the path to road.”
“What time was this?”
“It’ud be about one o’clock. A was a’goin’ to have some dinner.”
“Did you recognise her?”
“Ay, I reckoned it were the Trepol girl.”
The superintendent started as though he had been stung. “Ann Trepol!” he ejaculated.
“Ay, that were her.”
For some seconds the two officers stared at the visitor. Whoever they had expected the man to identify, it certainly wasn’t Ann Trepol. They had hoped that he would have given them a description of, say, Mrs. Devereux; the superintendent still cast doubtful eyes on the Tavistock alibi. But Ann Trepol. . . . !
The superintendent leaned forward and spoke quietly, but gravely, to Cobley. “That is a very serious statement, Cobley,” he said, warningly. “Are you quite sure that it was Ann Trepol whom you saw?”
“Ay, A reckoned as how it were her, cos why? Cos I saw Master Trepol no longer’n two more minutes.”
“What!” The superintendent stared incredulously as he spoke after this second shock. “Willie Trepol?”
“That’s what a said.”
“And what was Mr. Trepol doing when you saw him, Mr. Cobley?”
“Goan down path arter his girl, as a works it out.”
Sergeant Barrett leaned across to the superintendent and spoke quietly. Burns nodded in reply and then addressed himself again to Cobley. “Now, Mr. Cobley, that field is a pretty big field, isn’t it? And you would be a pretty good way from the path. Are you sure that it was Mr. Trepol you saw there?” He held up his hand as the man began to speak. “Now, think carefully. Anybody might be misled. Why, I went across the market place only yesterday evening to speak to a man I thought I knew. He looked like my friend, but when I got to him I saw that he was a perfect stranger. There I was, thinking of my friend, and was led to be sure that I saw him. Now, think carefully and decide if you feel sure about it.”