“I wondher at ye, Dennis Grady; ye must have been dhrunk as a Kerry cow,” and both Mulcahy and Shanahan turned upon the obstinate Grady, and the dispute waxed clamorous till Hewitt stopped it.
“Come, come,” he said, “never mind the time then. Settle that between you after you’ve gone. Does either of you remember — not calculate, you know, but remember — the time you got to Ballyshiel? — the actual time by a clock — not a guess.”
Not one of the three had looked at a clock at Ballyshiel.
“Do you remember anything about coming home again?”
They did not. They looked furtively at one another and presently broke into a grin.
“Ah! I see how that was,” Hewitt said good-humouredly. “That’s all now, I think. Come, it’s ten shillings each, I think.” And he handed over the money. The men touched their forelocks again, stowed away the money and prepared to depart. As they went Larry Shanahan stepped mysteriously back again and said in a whisper, “Maybe the jintlemen wud like me to kiss the book on ut? An’ as to the toime—”
“Oh, no thank you,” Hewitt laughed. “We take your word for it Mr. Shanahan.” And Mr. Shanahan pulled his forelock again and vanished.
“There’s nothing but confusion to be got from them,” Mr. Bowyer remarked testily. “It’s a mere waste of time.”
“No, no, not a waste of time,” Hewitt replied, “nor a waste of money. One thing is made pretty plain. That is that the shot was fired on Tuesday. Mrs. Hurley never noticed the report, but these three men were close by, and there is no doubt that they heard it. It’s the only single thing they agree about at all. They contradict one another over everything else, but they agree completely in that. Of course I wish we could have got the exact time; but that can’t be helped. As it is it is rather fortunate that they disagreed so entirely. Two of them are certainly wrong, and perhaps all three. In any case it wouldn’t have been safe to trust to mere computation of time by three men just beginning to get drunk, who had no particular reason for remembering. But if by any chance they had agreed on the time we might have been led into a wrong track altogether by taking the thing as fact. But a gunshot is not such a doubtful thing. When three independent witnesses hear a gunshot together there can be little doubt that a shot has been fired. Now I think you’d better sit down. Perhaps you can find something to read. I’m about to make a very minute examination of this place, and it will probably bore you if you’ve nothing else to do.”
But Mr. Bowyer would think of nothing but the business in hand. “I don’t understand that window,” he said, shaking his finger towards it as he spoke. “Not at all. Why should Main want to get in and out by a window? He wasn’t a stranger.”
Hewitt began a most careful inspection of the whole surface of floor, ceiling, walls and furniture of the sitting-room. At the fireplace he stooped and lifted with great care a few sheets of charred paper from the grate. These he put on the window-ledge. “Will you just bring over that little screen,” he asked, “to keep the draught from this burnt paper? Thank you. It looks like letter paper, and thick letter paper, since the ashes are very little broken. The weather has been fine, and there has been no fire in that grate for a long time. These papers have been carefully burned with a match or a candle.”
“Ah! perhaps the letters poor young Rewse was writing in the morning. But what can they tell us?”
“Perhaps nothing — perhaps a great deal.” Hewitt was examining the cinders keenly, holding the surface sideways to the light. “Come,” he said, “see if I can guess Rewse’s address in London. 17 Mountjoy Gardens, Hampstead. Is that it?”
“Yes. Is it there? Can you read it? Show me.” Mr. Bowyer hurried across the room, eager and excited.
“You can sometimes read words on charred paper,” Hewitt replied, “as you may have noticed. This has curled and crinkled rather too much in the burning, but it is plainly notepaper with an embossed heading, which stands out rather clearly. He has evidently brought some notepaper with him from home in his trunk. See, you can just see the ink lines crossing out the address; but there’s little else. At the beginning of the letter there is ‘My d — —’ then a gap, and then the last stroke of ‘M’ and the rest of the word ‘mother.’ ‘My dear Mother,’ or ‘My dearest Mother’ evidently. Something follows too in the same line, but that is unreadable. ‘My dear Mother and Sister’ perhaps. After that there is nothing recognisable. The first letter looks rather like ‘W,’ but even that is indistinct. It seems to be a longish letter — several sheets, but they are stuck together in the charring. Perhaps more than one letter.”
“The thing is plain,” Mr. Bowyer said. “The poor lad was writing home, and perhaps to other places, and Main, after his crime, burned the letters, because they would have stultified his own with the lying tale about small-pox.”
Hewitt said nothing, but resumed his general search. He passed his hand rapidly over every inch of the surface of everything in the room. Then he entered the bedroom and began an inspection of the same sort there. There were two beds, one at each end of the room, and each inch of each piece of bed linen passed rapidly under his sharp eye. After the bedroom he betook himself to the little bath-room, and then to the scullery. Finally he went outside and examined every board of a close fence that stood a few feet from the sitting-room window, and the brick-paved path lying between.
When it was all over he returned to Mr. Bowyer. “Here is a strange thing,” he said. “The shot passed clean through Rewse’s body, striking no bones, and meeting no solid resistance. It was a good-sized bullet, as Dr. O’Reilly testifies, and therefore must have had a large charge of powder behind it in the cartridge. After emerging from Rewse’s back it must have struck something else in this confined place. Yet on nowhere — ceiling, floor, wall nor furniture — can I find the mark of a bullet nor the bullet itself.”
“The bullet itself Main might easily have got rid of.”
“Yes, but not the mark. Indeed, the bullet would scarcely be easy to get at if it had struck anything I have seen about here; it would have buried itself. Just look round now. Where could a bullet strike in this place without leaving its mark?”
Mr. Bowyer looked round. “Well, no,” he said, “nowhere. Unless the window was open and it went out that way.”
“Then it must have hit the fence or the brick paving between, and there is no sign of a bullet there,” Hewitt replied. “Push the sash as high as you please, the shot couldn’t have passed over the fence without hitting the window first. As to the bedroom windows, that’s impossible. Mr. Shanahan and his friends would not only have heard the shot, they would have seen it — which they didn’t.”
“Then what’s the meaning of it?”
“The meaning of it is simply this: either Rewse was shot somewhere else and his body brought here afterwards, or the article, whatever it was, that the bullet struck must have been taken away.”
“Yes, of course. It’s just another piece of evidence destroyed by Main, that’s all. Every step we go we see the diabolical completeness of his plans. But now every piece of evidence missing only tells the more against him. The body alone condemns him past all redemption.”
Hewitt was gazing about the room thoughtfully. “I think we’ll have Mrs. Hurley over here,” he said; “she should tell us if anything is missing. Constable, will you ask Mrs. Hurley to step over here?”
Mrs. Hurley came at once and was brought into the sitting-room. “Just look about you, Mrs. Hurley,” Hewitt said, “in this room and everywhere else, and tell me if anything is missing that you can remember was here on the morning of the day you last saw Mr. Rewse.”
She looked thoughtfully up and down the room. “Sure, sor,” she said, “’tis all there as ord’nary.” Her eyes rested on the mantelpiece and she added at once, “Except the clock, indade.”
“Except the clock?”
“The clock ut is, sure. Ut stud on that same mantelpiece on that mornin’ as ut always did.”
“What sort of clock wa
s it?”
“Just a plain round wan wid a metal case — an American clock they said ut was. But ut kept nigh as good time as me own.”
“It did keep good time, you say?”
“Faith an’ ut did, sor. Mine an’ this ran together for weeks wid nivir a minute betune thim.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hurley, thank you; that will do,” Hewitt exclaimed, with something of excitement in his voice. He turned to Mr. Bowyer. “We must find that clock,” he said. “And there’s the pistol; nothing has been seen of that. Come, help me search. Look for a loose board.”
“But he’ll have taken them away with him, probably.”
“The pistol perhaps — althought that isn’t likely. The clock, no. It’s evidence, man, evidence!” Hewitt darted outside and walked hurriedly round the cottage, looking this way and that about the country adjacent.
Presently he returned. “No,” he said, “I think it’s more likely in the house.” He stood for a moment and thought. Then he made for the fireplace and flung the fender across the floor. All round the hearthstone an open crack extended. “See there!” he exclaimed as he pointed to it. He took the tongs, and with one leg levered the stone up till he could seize it in his fingers. Then he dragged it out and pushed it across the linoleum that covered the floor. In the space beneath lay a large revolver and a common American round nickel-plated clock. “See here!” he cried, “see here!” and he rose and placed the articles on the mantel-piece. The glass before the clock-face was smashed to atoms, and there was a gaping rent in the face itself. For a few seconds Hewitt regarded it as it stood, and then he turned to Mr. Bowyer. “Mr. Bowyer,” he said, “we have done Mr. Stanley Main a sad injustice. Poor young Rewse committed suicide. There is proof undeniable,” and he pointed to the clock.
“Proof? How? Where? Nonsense, man. Pooh! Ridiculous! If Rewse committed suicide why should Main go to all that trouble and tell all those lies to prove that he died of small-pox? More even than that, what has he run away for?”
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Bowyer, in a moment. But first as to this clock. Remember, Main set his watch by the Cullanin Town Hall clock, and Mrs. Hurley’s clock agreed exactly. That we have proved ourselves to-day by my own watch. Mrs. Hurley’s clock still agrees. This clock was always kept in time with Mrs. Hurley’s. Main returned at two exactly. Look at the time by that clock — the time when the bullet crashed into and stopped it.”
The time was three minutes to one.
Hewitt took the clock, unscrewed the winder and quickly stripped off the back, exposing the works. “See,” he said, “the bullet is lodged firmly among the wheels, and has been torn into snags and strips by the impact. The wheels themselves are ruined altogether. The central axle which carries the hands is bent. See there! Neither hand will move in the slightest. That bullet struck the axle and fixed those hands immovably at the moment of time when Algernon Rewse died. Look at the mainspring. It is less than half rim out. Proof that the clock was going when the shot struck it. Main left Rowse alive and well at half-past nine. He did not return till two — when Rewse had been dead more than an hour.”
“But then, hang it all! How about the lies, and the false certificate, and the bolting?”
“Let me tell you the whole tale, Mr. Bowyer, as I conjecture it to have been. Poor young Rewse was, as you told me, in a bad state of health — thoroughly run down, I think you said. You said something of his engagement and the death of the lady. This pointed clearly to a nervous — a mental upset. Very well. He broods, and so forth. He must go away and find change of scene and occupation. His intimate friend Main brings him here. The holiday has its good effect perhaps, at first, but after a while it gets monotonous, and brooding sets in again. I do not know whether or not you happen to know it, but it is a fact that four-fifths of all persons suffering from melancholia have suicidal tendencies. This may never have been suspected by Main, who otherwise might not have left him so long alone. At any rate he is left alone, and he takes the opportunity. He writes a note to Main and a long letter to his mother — an awful, heartbreaking letter, with a terrible picture of the mental agony wherein he was to die — perhaps with a tincture of religious mania in it, and prophesying merited hell for himself in the hereafter. This done, he simply stands up from this table, at which he has been writing, and with his back to the fire-place shoots himself. There he lies till Main returns an hour later. Main finds the door shut and nobody answers his knock. He goes round to the sitting-room window, looks through, and perhaps he sees the body.
“Anyway he pushes back the catch with his knife, opens the window and gets in, and then he sees. He is completely knocked out of time. The thing is terrible. What shall he — what can he do? Poor Rewse’s mother and sister dote on him, and his mother is an invalid — heart disease. To let her see that awful letter would be to kill her. He burns the letter, also the note to himself. Then an idea strikes him. Even without the letter the news of her boy’s suicide will probably kill the poor old lady. Can she be prevented hearing of it? Of his death she must know — that’s inevitable. But as to the manner? Would it not be possible to concoct some kind lie? And then the opportunities of the situation occur to him. Nobody but himself knows of it. He is a medical man, fully qualified, and empowered to give certificates of death.
“More, there is an epidemic of small-pox in the neighbourhood. What easier, with a little management, than to call the death one by small-pox? Nobody would be anxious to examine too closely the corpse of a smallpox patient. He decides that he will do it. He writes the letter to Mrs. Rewse announcing that her son has the disease, and he forbids Mrs. Hurley to come near the place for fear of infection. He cleans the floor — it is linoleum here, you see, and the stains were fresh — burns the clothes, cleans and stops the wound. At every turn his medical knowledge is of use. He puts the smashed clock and the pistol out of sight under the hearth. In a word he carries out the whole thing rather cleverly, and a terrible few days he must have passed. It never strikes him that he has dug a frightful pit for his own feet. You are suspicious, and you come across. In a perhaps rather peremptory manner You tell him how suspicious his conduct has been. And then a sense of his terrible position comes upon him like a thunderclap. He sees it all. He has deliberately of his own motion destroyed every evidence of the suicide. There is no evidence in the world that Rewse did not die a natural death, except the body, and that you are going to dig up. He sees now (you remind him of it in fact) that he is the one man alive who can profit by Rewse’s death. And there is the shot body, and there is the false death certificate, and there are the lying letters, and the tales to the neighbours and everything. He has himself destroyed everything that proves suicide. All that remains points to a foul murder and to him as the murderer. Can you wonder at his complete breakdown and his flight? What else in the world could the poor fellow do?”
“Well well — yes, yes,” Mr. Bowyer replied thoughtfully, “it seems very plausible of course. But still, look at probabilities, my dear sir, look at probabilities.”
“No, but look at possibilities. There is that clock. Get over it if you can. Was there ever a more insurmountable alibi? Could Main possibly be here shooting Rewse and half way between here and Cullanin at the same time? Remember, Mrs. Hurley saw him come back at two, and she had been watching for an hour, and could see more than half a mile up the road.”
“Well, yes, I suppose you’re right. And what must we do now?”
“Bring Main back. I think we should advertise to begin with. Say, ‘Rewse is proved to have died over an hour before you came. All safe. Your evidence is wanted,’ or something of that sort. And we must set the telegraph going. The police already are looking for him, no doubt. Meanwhile I will look here for a clue myself.”
The advertisement was successful in two days. Indeed Main afterwards said that he was at the time, once the first terror was over, in doubt whether or not it would be best to go back and face the thing out, trusting to his innocence. He could no
t venture home for money, nor to his bank, for fear of the police. He chanced, upon the advertisement as he searched the paper for news of the case, and that decided him. His explanation of the matter was precisely as Hewitt had expected. His only thought till Mr. Bowyer first arrived at the cottage had been to smother the real facts and to spare the feelings of Mrs. Rewse and her daughter, and it was not till that gentleman put them so plainly before him that he in the least realised the dangers of his position. That his fears for Mrs. Rewse were only too well grounded was proved by events, for the poor old lady only survived her son by a month.
These events took place some little while ago, as may be gathered from the fact that Miss Rewse has now been Mrs. Stanley Main for nearly three years.
THE CASE OF THE WARD LANE TABERNACLE
I.
Among the few personal friendships that Martin Hewitt has allowed himself to make there is one for an eccentric but very excellent old lady named Mrs. Mallett. She must be more than seventy now, but she is of robust and active, not to say masculine, habits, and her relations with Hewitt are irregular and curious. He may not see her for many weeks, perhaps for months, until one day she will appear in the office, push Kerrett (who knows better than to attempt to stop her) into the inner room, and salute Hewitt with a shake of the hand and a savage glare of the eye which would appall a stranger, but which is quite amiably meant. As for myself, it was long ere I could find any resource but instant retreat before her gaze, though we are on terms of moderate toleration now.
After her first glare she sits in the chair by the window and directs her glance at Hewitt’s small gas grill and kettle in the fireplace — a glance which Hewitt, with all expedition, translates into tea. Slightly mollified by the tea, Mrs. Mallett condescends to remark in tones of tragic truculence, on passing matters of conventional interest — the weather, the influenza, her own health, Hewitt’s health, and so forth, any reply of Hewitt’s being commonly received with either disregard or contempt.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 51