The next thing that Macdonald heard was the rising note of a curlew, and knew that another sentinel had offered him information gratis. The curlew roosts on the ground, preferably on rough grassland: so the other intruder was pretty certainly on the hillside, but not very far away. Standing in the shadow of the thorns, Macdonald could see clearly across the open level ground which lay between him and the low stone wall which divided him from the house. There was nothing in sight, but a moment later he heard a stone dislodged and the sound was clear enough to locate – it came from the stone wall at the back of the house. Macdonald decided to move forward and made his way toward the wall. There was only one door into the house and he decided that he was going to get within sight of that door. He reached the wall without mishap, and crouched beside it to listen, conscious of footsteps beyond.
It was then that the silence was rent by a sound which was almost shattering after the preceding stillness; it startled Macdonald with the sharp impact of the totally unexpected. Just over the wall, the hungry little donkey had scented the presence of one whom its mind connected with fine fat carrots; and it raised its head and hee-hawed with vigor.
“Damn you! Shut up!”
It was not only Macdonald who had been startled by the donkey’s vocal virtuosity. If the donkey’s ears were flapping, so were Macdonald’s; it was not Reeves’ voice which had thus apostrophized the donkey; neither was it the idiom of the potters. Further than this Macdonald could not decide. Still crouching ludicrously beneath the stone wall, he was aware that the donkey was hopefully nosing in the direction of his own head, but footsteps from the grass-grown yard in front of the house made him realize that someone was on the move there. Feeling strongly akin to Bottom the weaver and using the ass’s head as cover, Macdonald raised his head and peered between the long ears of his opposite number and realized with some surprise that a light was still burning in Anthony Vintner’s “studio.” The next moment the unknown in the yard came into collision with an old tin can with an astonishing dividend in the matter of noise. The donkey took to his heels, Belinda bleated querulously, and a moment later the door of the house opened and Anthony Vintner’s voice demanded:
“Who the devil’s there and what the hell do you think you’re up to?”
His voice indicated that he was well pruned with Dutch courage and prepared to have a row with anybody.
The answer came in a quiet propitiatory voice: “I’ve brought you that bottle of whiskey. I was passing and I saw your light; so I thought I’d come along and leave it. Why the deuce can’t you tie that damned donkey up?”
“The donkey’s all ri’. . . more sensible than some people I know. Come along in. Got something to show you. Yes. Something to show you.”
The figure close by the house showed in silhouette for a moment against the vaguely lighted door before it entered the house and the door was shut. Macdonald, listening intently, realized with satisfaction that the bolt had not been shot. There was no light in the kitchen either, save that which shone in from the studio door. Anthony Vintner, true to type, had but one lamp and no candles.
Macdonald made short work of climbing the wall, and heard sounds in the paddock beyond which caused his suspicious ears some inquiry before he had analyzed the sounds to his satisfaction. The explanation was: (1) Reeves; (2) Donkey; (3) Apples.
Macdonald remembered Reeves’ voice saying: “Put some of those apples in your pocket. They’re champion.” Macdonald had done so and forgotten all about them. Reeves, who claimed later that every Cockney understands donkeys, promptly put his apples to suitable use, thereby giving Macdonald an opportunity to make his way unattended to the kitchen door. He opened the door soundlessly and slipped inside into the stuffy kitchen. The further door was just ajar, allowing a gleam of light to shine in, and Macdonald made his way forward until he was able to see through the wide crack at the hinge into the further room, while he himself remained concealed in the shadows.
Anthony Vintner, swaying a little, was cleaning his palette with a palette knife, working with the clumsiness and absorption of the semi-drunk. His visitor, standing by the table, presented a broad back in silhouette.
Vintner was talking garrulously and persistently. “. . .Tell you I’m fed up. I’ve had more than enough of this. . . Police all over the bloody place. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it, by God, I didn’t. ‘Snot my fault. I didn’t do anything. Serve the dirty dog right – but I’m not going to stay here and be pestered. Got that?. . . Going to clear out. Yes, clear out and start again. I didn’t do anything.”
“Have a drink, old chap. You’ll feel better if you have a drink,” suggested the other.
“Not me. . . Want to make me drunk, do you? I’m damned well not going to get drunk to please you. Oh, no. You’ve made a mistake. . . damn’ big mistake. . . trying to bully me. Won’t do. You’ve got to do what I say now. Yes.”
Between his slurred sentences he took strokes with his palette knife, scraping the paint off the palette and then cleaning his knife on the table-top with the solemnity of a drunken man.
“What do you want me to do?” inquired the other wearily. “You said you wanted a bottle of Scotch – well, there it is.”
“Yes. Think that’s enough, do you? I don’t. You’re going to get me out of this. In your car. Police won’t stop your car. Oh, no. Police friends of yours. I know. You talked to them in that cottage. . . said I was a bad lot, I know. You poor flat, you’re kippered. D’you know that? Kippered.”
“No. I don’t know it. You’re drunk, man. You’re pretending to be important.”
“Pretending, am I? See that envelope? The letter’s not inside it any longer. Oh, no. I’m not that drunk. Letter’s quite safe. Ginner left his coat here. He must have written you that letter before he was bumped off. He left it. I read it. Got that?”
Still with the same automatic action the painter went on cleaning his palette, while the man in front of him breathed, slowly, heavily.
Vintner went on obstinately: “You’re going to get me out of this – tonight. Tomorrow won’t do. If I’m here tomorrow I’m going to show the police that letter. It’s no use killing me – if you do, they’ll still get that letter. I thought of that. You’re going to get me out of this tonight. I’m fed up.”
“Look here, Vintner, don’t be unreasonable. I can’t take you anywhere tonight. The police are patrolling all the roads. If you move tonight, you’re done for. I’ll do my best – obviously I’ll do my best – but not tonight. If you’re caught bolting tonight you’ll be arrested – and once you’re arrested you’ll have a precious poor chance. Be a sensible fellow and sleep for a bit. I’ll stay here with you. Come along, have a drink and be sensible.”
There was the sound of a cork being drawn from the whiskey bottle and the gurgle of the spirit pouring into the glass. Macdonald still watched and waited. Vintner suddenly threw his palette down and slumped into a chair and fell to whimpering.
“It’s not fair. Always the same. I came here and I tried. God knows, I tried. . . then that beast came and pestered me. Said he’d tell everyone and get me discredited. . . He’d got an I O U of mine and I’d promised to help his beastly swindles. Why couldn’t he leave things alone?”
“Why couldn’t he leave things alone? Dear God, haven’t I asked that? Just leave things alone. . . that was all.” The words burst from the other man as though he couldn’t contain them. “You’re complaining. . . that’s all you’re capable of. Complaining. I stopped his damned blackmail – stopped it once and for all. Pull yourself together, Vintner. You’re shaking, man. Have a drink and forget it. I’ll get you away tomorrow. I’m a man of my word. He found that out. . . too late. Drink up and forget it!”
The glass was in Vintner’s hand before Macdonald moved and opened the door. He took one of the apples from his pocket and threw it, good and true, so that the apple knocked the glass clean out of Vintner’s hand. The painter screamed, and as he screamed Macdonald sprang
forward and snatched the whiskey bottle away from the other man’s outstretched hand. With a crash the table went over, the lamp with it, and the report of a pistol barked out. Then came the heavy thud of a falling body as Macdonald snatched the flaming lamp up and flung it out of the window. Reeves’ voice called, “You all right, Chief?” as he bent to smother the burning oil on the floor, and all the time Anthony Vintner went on screaming: “There wasn’t a letter! I tell you there wasn’t a letter. Shand believed it all, but there wasn’t a letter.”
Reeves took the painter by the shoulders and shook him until his teeth chattered. “That’s enough from you. Be quiet, or I’ll shake the teeth out of your head.”
Macdonald, torch lamp in hand, was examining the body on the floor.
“Done the job properly, hasn’t he?” inquired Reeves, and Macdonald nodded.
“Yes – right through his brain.”
“Saved the hangman a job – and good thing too,” said Reeves, while Vintner went on sobbing to himself:
“Shand believed there was a letter, but there wasn’t. There never was a letter. I tried it on and he believed it, but there wasn’t a letter.”
Reeves suddenly sniffed: “Potassium cyanide, Chief. I swear I can smell it.”
“Aye; it’s in the whiskey – for Vintner,” said Macdonald.
“Was that the way of it? Suicide and a forged confession,” said Reeves. “Well – it’s been tried before and doubtless it’ll be tried again. They’re all optimists.”
And still Vintner whimpered his one refrain: “You see there never was a letter.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IT WAS nearly a fortnight later that Macdonald spent a night at Netherbeck Farm. He had attended the inquest and later the adjourned inquest, where full chapter and verse had been produced to put the verdict beyond doubt. The bodies of Gordon Ginner and Barton Shand had both been buried, and the Lunesdale farmers were busy plowing. The life of the land was incomparably more important than the deaths of two men who had never realized that tilling is more fundamental to human needs than the accumulation of money.
The quartet sitting around the good wood fire at Netherbeck was made up of Giles Hoggett and his wife, the imperturbable Dr. Castleby (Macdonald was always to remember him as “George”), and the chief inspector himself. They had just had supper and now they were waiting to hear Macdonald tell them just how useful their mutual efforts at detection had been.
“You know you had all the data between you,” began Macdonald. “Speaking as a detective, I have never been so spoon-fed in my life. It is your due that I should acknowledge, here and now, that you are all three first-class witnesses, having accurate memories, a power of detailed observation and a gift of narrative which I have seldom found equalled in the sophisticated south.”
Giles smiled happily; George accepted the bouquet with urbanity; but Mrs. Hoggett spoke trenchantly.
“Yes. We had all the facts and we couldn’t make anything of them. We’re not detectives, none of us. George states his facts and leaves it at that. Giles sees a certain number of things and then uses his imagination to account for them. I notice things accurately – but I’m stumped when it comes to putting the bits of the jig-saw together.”
“Well, let’s go back to Hoggett’s grand effort at re-construction,” said Macdonald. “It was almost classic in style. I’ve noted it down verbatim, and I shall preserve it as a model of its kind. ‘We are considering the death of a man who was murdered in this valley. So far as the evidence goes, he was a stranger here: a man concerned with certain frauds in the industrial Midlands, yet the evidence shows that he met his death at the hands of someone who knew the conditions of this valley and could utilize that knowledge. At the same time the murderer was lacking in a sense of detail and of real understanding of the inhabitants, for it did not occur to him that any intelligent construction would be put on the theft of various trivial objects from the cottage.’ ”
“Yes. I applauded that at the time,” murmured George, and Giles said:
“I see now. . . I was really saying that the murderer was someone who believed that I, personally, was a fool of a farmer.”
“Aye, that’s about it,” said Macdonald cheerfully. “Now let us consider Mrs. Hoggett’s contribution, which is more detailed and shows considerable powers of inductive reasoning. She said: ‘Have you realized what was the murderer’s initial mistake? The thing which really gave him away was interfering with Giles’s wood pile and leaving the logs tumbled about. If it hadn’t been for that, Giles would never have gone inside the cottage that day, or even if he had he probably wouldn’t have noticed that anything was missing, because he wouldn’t have been feeling suspicious. The man who stole the chain and iron dogs was not a careless person; he had swept the floor and cleared the hearth, but he didn’t know how to clear hearths properly. Finally, he was the sort of person who did not know that small valueless articles would be missed – and that,” added Macdonald, “took us a good step further along what we might call the ‘general enunciation.’ ”
“It took you,” murmured Mrs. Hoggett to her knitting. “It didn’t take us.”
“Well, for the Good Lord’s sake, allow me some results from nigh on thirty years’ concentration on reading evidence,” said Macdonald. “You can do a lot of things I can’t, Mrs. Hoggett, and I don’t complain. Every man to his own last. Now let’s get on a bit. I judged that I was safe in an original assumption that the murderer was not ‘a scoundrel from the slums of an industrial city,’ as Hoggett’s wishful thinking made him conclude. The murderer was much too good at utilizing certain features of Wenningby Barns and its surroundings to be a slum product. He knew, for one thing, where to replace the key of the cottage. He knew all about Jacob’s Buttery and the recess in the bank and the willow roots, he knew all about the power of the stream and used chains to make the sack fast. He knew how strong salmon line is – though it doesn’t look it. No. Not a slum-dweller – but a man who regarded the cherished chimney fittings at Wenningby Barns as so much junk; also a man who didn’t consider that the person who carried those iron dogs down the brow would value them.”
“Oh, come; he couldn’t have known I carried them down,” put in Giles.
Macdonald considered. “I may be being irrelevant, but as a Londoner I’d like to claim the privileges of that status,” he said. “We have a museum, called the Victoria and Albert. It contains, among many other relics, a completely furnished cottage chimney, with chains and cranes and other adjuncts. I, who have studied it, know that those iron dogs were no part of the original equipment. Any farm or cottage dweller hereabouts would know it, too. Those iron dogs were a personal touch, Hoggett – but they conveyed nothing to one who was unfamiliar with the equipment of an ancient open chimney.”
“Yes,” murmured George to the fire. “It’s a nice point.”
“Having considered the character of the unknown murderer to some extent,” went on Macdonald, “let us note a few points about the dead man, Ginner. He may have had his good points, but they were not obtrusive. I knew he was a swindler so far as the law was concerned, and I had a good reason for believing that he was a swindler in a viler sense – that of obtaining money from elderly women by promising to marry them. But Ginner was not a rogue who used violence; he was one that lived by his wits. Reeves found plenty of evidence that Ginner was a coward, because he ran away from London Civil Defense duties when the bombing began. In other words, Ginner sought profit without the element of personal danger – he was a trickster and confidence man. Now, I have frequently found that that is the type who tries blackmail, and it’s worth remembering that a man who is being blackmailed has been known to commit murder to rid himself of his tormentor and the fear of exposure.”
“And that was why George’s story of Mrs. Gold’s son interested you,” murmured Giles, but Kate put in:
“You’re jumping at conclusions. What I want to know is the process of detection in detail, step by step.�
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“I’m afraid that it doesn’t always work out like that, Mrs. Hoggett,” rejoined Macdonald. “I try to emulate scientific method. In actual fact I often resemble one of the less methodical birds – say, a starling – who hops about picking up another birds’ food and imitating their voices. In a narrative like this, I tend to make the detective method much more orderly than it is in actual fact, because I omit the irrelevant and the unsuccessful gropings. Your husband is quite right in saying that I seized on Dr. Castleby’s story with avidity – and that brings us to the potters.”
“Aye, the potters,” ‘ said George. “I never believed that Gold was the murderer – but I couldn’t produce any sound reasons for my conviction.”
“Nevertheless, he was such an A-1 suspect he had to be taken seriously,” said Macdonald. “Points against him: the famous orange curtains; the mention of a ‘pottery’ and a row in the lorry driver’s evidence, the fact of his mobility, and the fact that his wife, who had accompanied him for years, had disappeared. Queries: Could Gold, who had never been seen in the valley, know ‘the usual place’ where the cottage key was kept? Would he have disturbed a good woodpile by inexpertly taking logs from the middle instead of from the top? Could he swim? Finally, could he cast a fly, as the old man in the coat was said to have done? In my own judgment, men of the nomad type have their own sort of canning, but they always use it in their own environment. Unlike Dr. Castleby, I was quite willing to believe that Gold was capable of a crime of violence, but if he had committed one I believed it would have been ‘on his own beat,’ somewhere on the lonely fell-side where a man’s body might be hidden with a minimum of trouble. The river valley is alien territory to Gold, and the river, not an ally, but a fearsome enemy.”
The Theft of the Iron Dogs Page 20