Crow's Inn Tragedy

by Annie Haynes

  John Steadman nodded.

  “Yes, you would have a fair chance of becoming acquainted with her voice that way. Better, I think, than at the inquest. The words that you overheard, I take it you reported as accurately as possible.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.” Mr. Brunton moved restlessly from one leg to the other. “You see, I recognized Mr. Thompson’s voice with the first words and, knowing how important it was that the police should find him, I listened for all I was worth.”

  “I take it from the words you have reported that Thompson had some hold over the girl?” Mr. Steadman pursued. “Had you previously had any idea of any connection between them?”

  Mr. Brunton shook his head in emphatic negative.

  “Not the least, sir. If you had asked me I shouldn’t have thought Mr. Thompson would have known Miss Hoyle if he had met her.”

  “And yet Miss Hoyle’s portrait was found in Thompson’s room,” Mr. Steadman said very deliberately. “One might say the only thing that was found there in fact.”

  “Was it, indeed, sir?” Young Brunton looked dumbfounded. “Well, if they were friends, there was none of us in the office suspected it,” he finished.

  “And that was rather remarkable among such a lot of young men as there were at Luke Bechcombe’s, remarked John Steadman. “They generally have their eyes open to everything. Now as to where they were when you overheard them. You do not think you could recognize the place again?”

  “I am afraid not, sir. You see, the fog alters everything so. I seemed to have been wandering about for hours when I heard Thompson’s voice, and it appeared to me that I walked about for hours afterwards before the fog lifted. When it did I was quite near home, but I haven’t the least idea whether it meant that I had been sort of walking round about in a circle, or whether I had been further afield.”

  “Anyway we shall have all that neighbourhood combed out,” interposed Inspector Furnival. “If Mr. Thompson is in hiding anywhere there I think that we may take it his capture is only a matter of time. I am much obliged to you, Mr. Brunton. I will let you know in good time when your evidence is likely to be required.”

  “Thank you, sir.” With an awkward circular bow intended to include both men Mr. Brunton took his departure.

  The inspector shut the door behind him.

  “What do you think of that?”

  “I was surprised,” Steadman answered. “Surprised that they were not more careful,” he went on. “There is nothing more unsafe than talking of one’s private affairs abroad in a fog. Buses and trains are child’s play to a fog.”

  The inspector smiled.

  “Oh, well, don’t criminals always overlook something? Which reminds me—this came an hour ago.”

  He handed a piece of paper to Steadman. The latter regarded it doubtfully. It had evidently been torn out of a notebook, and looked as though it had passed through several hands, for it was dirty and thumb-marked and frayed at the edges as though it had been carried about in some one’s pocket. Across one corner of it were scrawled some letters in pencil. He put up his pince-nez and looked at it more closely. The few words scrawled across it were very irregularly and illegibly written in printed characters. After scrutinizing it for some time through his glasses Steadman made them out to be: “Wednesday night, 21 Burlase Street, Limehouse. Chink-a-pin.”

  “What is to take place at 21 Burlase Street on Wednesday night?” he questioned as he laid it down.

  “A meeting of the Yellow Gang, and I hope the capture of the Yellow Dog,” the inspector answered pithily and optimistically.

  “And this comes from—?” Steadman went on, tapping the paper with his eyeglasses.

  “One of the Gang. It is pretty safe to assume that sooner or later there will be an informer.”

  “You will be there?”

  The inspector nodded. “But we are taking no risks. The informer may be false to both sides. The house will be surrounded. Whole squads of men are being drafted to the neighbourhood, a few at a time, to-day. I fancy we shall corner the Yellow Dog at last. With this password I shall certainly get into the house and arrest the Yellow Dog. Then at the sound of the whistle the house will be rushed.”

  “I will come with you,” said John Steadman. “I fancy an interview with the Yellow Dog may be extraordinarily interesting.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  “I cannot live without you, Cecily. This bogy of yours shall not separate us. Surely my love is strong enough to help you to bear whatever the future can hold. Till the last hour of my life I shall be your devoted lover, Tony.”

  A momentary sensation of warmth and light ran through Cecily’s cold frame as she read the impassioned sentences. Very resolutely she had put Anthony Collyer’s love from her. She had told herself that she was a moral leper set far apart from all thoughts of love or marriage. It was not in the nature of a mortal girl to read such words and remain unmoved.

  She was sitting at her table in Madeleine Bechcombe’s private sitting-room. As she finished reading her letter she made a movement as though to tuck it in the breast of her gown, then, changing her mind, she tossed it into the very centre of the bright fire on the hearth.

  At this same moment Mrs. Bechcombe came into the room. She glanced curiously at the paper just bursting into momentary flame.

  “I wish you would not burn papers here, Miss Hoyle,” she said fretfully. “It does litter up the hearth so and there is a waste-paper-basket over there.”

  “I am very sorry, I quite forgot,” Cecily said penitently. “Mrs. Bechcombe, this is a letter from Lady Chard-Greene. She wants you to go to them for a week-end, the 3rd—or the 10th if that would suit you better.”

  “They will neither of them suit me at all,” Mrs. Bechcombe said decisively. “You can tell her so. I wonder whether she would feel inclined to go about week-ending if her husband had been cruelly murdered?”

  Cecily shivered as she took up the next letter.

  “This is from Colonel Chalmers. He has just returned to England, and—”

  “I don’t care what he has done,” Mrs. Bechcombe interrupted. “I really only came in to tell you that I do not feel well enough to attend to letters or anything else this morning. So you need not stay—it will give you a little more time to yourself.”

  “Thank you very much.” Cecily hesitated. “But can I not do anything for you, Mrs. Bechcombe? Perhaps if your head is bad again, you might let me read to you.”

  “No, no! I could not stand it. It would drive me mad,” Mrs. Bechcombe responded, with the irritability that was becoming habitual with her. “No, when I feel like this, I must be alone. I mean it.”

  Cecily was nothing loath to leave her work and go out into the air. It was a lovely day. The sky was blue as Londoners seldom see it, tiny fleecy clouds of white just floating across it emphasized the depth of colour. Spring seemed to be calling to the youth in her to come into the country and rejoice with the new life that was springing into being everywhere. And Cecily must go to Burford. She had intended to go when her day’s work was over, but now she could start at once. Like a great black thundercloud over the brightness of the day the thought of Burford and of her errand there overhung everything. She made up her mind to take the first train down and get the thing over.

  She made her way to the station at once, Trains to Burford ran fairly frequently and she had not long to wait. She occupied the time by getting a cup of tea and a bun in the refreshment room, but though she had had nothing but a piece of dry toast for her breakfast she could not eat. She only crumbled the bun, one of the station variety, while she drank the tea thirstily. She did not notice that a shabbily dressed small boy who had been loitering outside the house in Carlsford Square had dogged her steps to the station and now sat reading a dilapidated copy of “Tit-Bits” outside on the seat nearest the refreshment room.

  The station for Burford was soon reached. Cecily, who was fond of walking, made up her mind to walk to Rose Cottage instead of taking the shabby one-
horse cab that stood outside the station, but she was out of practice and she was distinctly tired when she reached her destination.

  The housekeeper received her with evident amazement.

  “Miss Hoyle! Well, I never! And I have been expecting your pa down every day this past week!”

  “Well, I have come instead, you see. I hope I am not a dreadful disappointment,” Cecily said, calling up a smile with an effort as she shook hands. She did not know much of Mrs. Wye and what little she did know she did not much like, but she knew that the woman had been a long time with her father and felt that it behoved her to make herself pleasant.

  The housekeeper held open the sitting-room door and Cecily walked in and sat down with an air of relief.

  “My father has been ill, Mrs. Wye. That is why he has not been down here lately. He is much better now and I am hoping to take him to the sea soon to convalesce. In the meantime he wants some papers from the desk in his bedroom and I have come to fetch them.”

  “I am very sorry to hear Hoyle has been ill, miss,” and the woman really did look concerned. “We have had several people here asking after him of late and there is a lot of letters. But I never know where to forward them. I take it Mr. Hoyle will have been in a nursing-home, miss?”

  “Er—oh, yes.” Cecily began to feel that even this woman might want to know too much. “Perhaps you would get me a cup of tea, Mrs. Wye,” she went on. “I hadn’t time for lunch before I started and though I had some tea at the station it wasn’t up to much. It never is at stations, somehow.”

  “You are right there, miss,” Mrs. Wye agreed. “And is the master out of the nursing-home now, might I ask, miss?”

  “Oh, yes. He is with friends,” Cecily said vaguely. Her colour deepened as she spoke.

  The housekeeper’s little eyes watched her curiously.

  “Perhaps you would give me an address I could forward the letters to, miss.”

  “Oh, of course!” Cecily got up. She could not sit here to be badgered by this woman who she began to feel was inimical to her.

  “I will get the things my father wants,” she went on. “For I must catch an early train back. I do not want to be away longer than necessary.”

  She went upstairs to the front bedroom which she knew to be her father’s. It was spotlessly clean and tidy, but it had the bare look of a room that has been unoccupied for a long time. The desk stood on a small table near the window. Cecily had the key, and the envelope for which she had come down was lying just at the top. A long rather thin envelope inscribed 11260. Doubled up it just fitted into Cecily’s handbag. She pushed it in and shut it with a snap. Then she sat down in a basket-work chair near the open window. She really could not start back without some rest, and she was not anxious to encounter Mrs. Wye again. As she sat there her thoughts went back to Tony’s letter; and though she told herself that nothing could come of it the recollection of his love seemed to fall like sunshine over her, cheering and enveloping her.

  She was feeling more herself when her eyes, mechanically straying past the little garden with its ordered paths and flower-beds fixed themselves on the road that ran beyond. Suddenly they focused themselves upon an object nearly opposite the cottage gate. Slowly the colour ebbed from her cheeks and lips, her eyes grew wide and frightened, the hands lying on her lap began to twitch and twine themselves nervously together.

  Yet at first sight there seemed nothing in the road outside to account for her agitation—just a heap of broken stones and sitting by it a worn, tired-looking old tramp. Just a very ordinary-looking old man. Yet Cecily got up, and, craning forward while keeping herself in the shadow as much as possible, tried to view him from every possible angle. Surely, surely, she said to herself, it could not be the very same old man to whom she had seen John Steadman give a penny outside the house in Carlsford Square only that very morning! Yet try to persuade herself that it could not be the same as she might, she knew from the first moment beyond the possibility of a doubt that there was no mistake. And that could mean only one thing, that she was being followed, that they suspected—what? She began to shiver all over. Then one idea seemed to take possession of her. Almost she could have fancied it had been whispered in her ear by some outside unseen agency. She must get back to town without delay, by the very next train, she must take that mysterious envelope to its destination at once. She ran downstairs. Mrs. Wye was laying the table.

  “I thought maybe you would relish a dish of ham and eggs. Butcher’s meat is a thing we can’t come at out here at the end of the week, not unless it is ordered beforehand.”

  “Oh, no, no! Please don’t trouble to cook anything. I will just have a bit of bread and butter. Indeed I would rather,” Cecily protested. “I find I must get back again as quickly as possible, I have forgotten something in town.”

  She sat down and drawing the plate of brown bread and butter towards her managed to eat a piece while she drank a cup of the strong tea Mrs. Wye poured out for her.

  “It isn’t any use your hurrying,” the housekeeper babbled on. “You will have plenty of time to make a good meal and walk slowly to the station and still have time to spare, before eight o’clock.”

  “Ah, but I want to get the half-past six,” Cecily said quickly. “I shall have time if I start at once, I think.”

  “You might, but then again you might not,” Mrs. Wye said in a disappointed tone. The hour’s gossip to which she had been looking forward was apparently not coming off. “You would save a few minutes by taking the footpath at the back,” she added honestly. “You cut off a good bit beside Burford Parish Church that way.”

  The back! Cecily’s heart gave a great throb. Would she be able to escape that watcher in the front after all?

  “Do you mean at the back of this cottage?” she questioned.

  “Dear me, yes, miss. It is a favourite walk of the poor master’s. If you go out of the front you just go round the house. Or you can get on to the path by our back door and the little gate behind we use for bringing in coal and such-like.”

  “I will go by the back, please,” Cecily said, standing up. “No, thank you, Mrs. Wye, I really can’t eat any more. And I will write and let you know how my father is in a day or two.”

  She made her escape from the loquacious housekeeper with a little more difficulty, and sped quickly on to the path pointed out to her, clutching the precious handbag tightly to her side. She almost ran along the footpath in her anxiety to reach the station and was delighted to find herself there with a quarter of an hour to spare. She got her ticket and then ensconced herself in the waiting-room in a corner so that she could watch the approach to the station and find out whether the old beggar was on her track.

  As soon as the train was signalled she went out on to the platform, and managed to get a seat in an empty carriage. It did not remain empty long, however. There were more people waiting for the train than she had expected. Evidently the 6.30, slow though it might be, was popular in Burford. The carriage, a corridor one, was soon full. Cecily took her seat by the window, clutching her handbag closely to her, and winding the cord tightly round her wrist. Opposite to her was a young, smart-looking man, who showed a desire to get the window to her liking which was distinctly flattering. Next to him sat a young woman, very pale and delicate-looking. Beyond her again was an elderly woman apparently of the respectable lodging house keeper type. The other seats were occupied by a couple of working men, one with his bag of tools on his shoulder. Cecily, after one look round, decided that she was certainly safe here. She had brought a pocket edition of Keats’s poems with her, and she took it out now and, opening the book at “Isabella and the Pot of Basil,” was soon deep in it.

  The man opposite was reading, the old lady beside him was sleeping, the two working men were staring at the flying landscape with uninterested, lack-lustre eyes, half open mouths and one hand planted on each knee. Cecily after her unwonted exercise in the open air felt inclined to sleep herself, but she remembered the con
tents of her bag and resolutely resisted the inclination of her eyelids to droop. Still she was feeling pleasantly drowsy when they ran into the long tunnel between Rushleigh and Fairford. The man opposite her put down his paper and leaned across her to draw up the window with a murmured “Excuse me.”

  At the same moment the light went out. There was a chorus of exclamations, a shriek from the old lady beside Cecily, something very like a swear word from the man opposite. In a trice he had lighted a match and held it up. “It is not much of a light,” he said apologetically, “but it is better than nothing and I have plenty to last to the end of the tunnel.”

  Then he uttered a sharp exclamation. Cecily’s eyes followed his. She saw that the old lady next her had slipped sideways, the pretty apple colour in her cheeks had faded, that the pendulous cheeks had become a sickly indefinite grey. The man in the corner dropped his match and lighted another. He moved up the seat and struck another.

  “She has fainted,” he announced. “In itself that is not serious, but I am a doctor and I should say she has heart trouble. She certainly ought not to travel alone.”

  Already they were getting through the tunnel. Cecily felt the old lady lurch against her and lie like a dead weight against her arm. The girl put out her other hand and held the helpless form tightly. As the light spread the doctor leaned over and felt the woman’s pulse.

  “She must be laid flat,” he said briefly. “Will you help me?” He beckoned to the man at the other end, and between them they raised the woman, and laid her down. Cecily unfastened a scarf that was twisted tightly round the flabby neck. The doctor’s quick, capable fingers produced a pair of scissors from a case and cut down the woollen jumper in front, then from a handbag he produced a tiny phial. From this he poured just one drop into the poor woman’s mouth, while Cecily by his directions fanned her vigorously with a sheet of newspaper. By and by they were rewarded by signs of returning consciousness, and presently the patient opened her eyes and gazed round questioningly at the strange faces. Then she began to sit up and try to pull her jumper together with shaking fingers.