“I hung around picking up scraps of local talk, and I was told that Bayliss hadn’t overstated the case. One man said: ‘If Alcock were on a rocking-horse he’d get somewhere,’ which might be intended as a compliment, but made the story Grey was spreading sound a bit more likely than before.
“Bayliss told me he hadn’t any intention of taking any notice of the threats, but all the same he wanted some assurance that no harm should befall his jockey. I asked him what proof he had that Grey had actually written the letters, and he had to admit that there was none.
“‘Still,’ he urged, ‘no one else has a motive, while Grey’s reeks to Heaven. He’s running a horse of his own, and he backed him some time ago at very heavy odds. He’s not a bad horse, either, but he won’t stand a chance with Bluebeard and both of us know it. Grey’s in desperately low water, and everything depends on his beast winning the race.’
“It appeared that Grey’s horse was second favourite, but there didn’t seem much doubt in the minds of those best qualified to know that Bluebeard would beat him, though it might be a close thing. I found out, too, that Bayliss’s story of Grey being very deeply dipped was no more than the truth. So the position was pretty ticklish.
“‘He’d get me warned off, if he could, but since he can’t, he’ll stop at nothing to put Bluebeard or Alcock or both where they can’t threaten his security.’
“You can see for yourselves it wasn’t a very easy position. I couldn’t accuse Grey of being the author of the anonymous letters, but it didn’t seem to me any harm going round to see him. After all, he might have had one himself. Grey was a laconic sort of fellow; no, he said, he hadn’t been pestered; people with nothing to hide generally weren’t, which shows you how much he knew about human nature, or life, for that matter. I must say I didn’t take to him, a big swaggering sort of chap, too well dressed for me. I like tailor’s dummies in a window, but nowhere else. Besides, his manner irritated me. You could see him putting a policeman in his place every time he opened his mouth. I came away feeling a good deal of sympathy for Bayliss, but reminding myself that a man isn’t a bad hat because you don’t take a fancy to him.
“Coming through the village I ran against Bayliss again, a lot more agitated than he’d been up to now.
“‘Look here, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I’ve had another of these damned things; it’s just come, and this time it’s deadly serious.’
“The new letter read:
You had better withdraw your horse while you have the chance. Alcock will never ride him.
“‘That’s tantamount to a threat of murder,’ said Bayliss excitedly, but, of course, I couldn’t allow that.
“‘Threat of bodily harm perhaps,’ I agreed, ‘or it might just mean there’s some monkey trick on foot to keep him out of the way till after the race. You’d better keep an eye on him.’
“I wasn’t able to get any definite evidence against Grey, but I thought I’d feel a lot more comfortable when the race had been run. Going back, I thought it all sounded a bit silly; this is England, not Chicago, and you don’t kidnap men in broad daylight. But it didn’t sound so silly twenty-four hours later when a man as white as paper came to find me and said: ‘If you please, sir, there’s been an accident. It’s Alcock. They’ve just found him in a clump of bushes over by Milton Heath.’
“‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked sharply, and though I think by this time I expected the answer I got, I felt a bit sick when the fellow said: ‘He’s dead all right. Been dead for some hours. Mr. Bayliss is half crazy.’
“‘Thrown?’ I asked, and the chap looked sick in his turn and told me: ‘Must have been. And Bluebeard lost his head—he was always an excitable brute; no one but Alcock could ride him—and trampled on him. His head’s smashed…’
“I went along. They hadn’t moved the body, because Bayliss, as soon as he heard, swore it was foul play, though it was as clear a case of a man being kicked by a horse as ever I’d seen. Alcock must have gone clean over the beast’s head, we decided. Bluebeard had pitched him alongside a bracken clump, and the horse, either frightened by the accident or hurt itself, had done the rest.
“‘It looks as though he saw Bluebeard meant trouble,’ said Bayliss, who, I believe, was upset about the boy for his own sake, quite apart from losing the race. ‘Look at the grass here; he must have tried to drag himself out of the horse’s way. It’s all crushed and trampled.’
“‘Did he know this part of the country?’ I asked, and was told that he brought the horse here every day.
“‘Of course, I never supposed he’d come to grief, riding, and you can say what you like, Inspector, this isn’t a natural death. Someone scared the horse crazy. He wouldn’t have lashed out at his jockey if he hadn’t been terrified out of his wits.’
“I suggested the usual things—a sudden shot, though who’d be shooting there I couldn’t suggest—a piece of paper blowing under Bluebeard’s nose, though there was no sign of any—but Bayliss wasn’t satisfied. Bluebeard, he said, wouldn’t have stampeded his jockey for a mere spasm of fright.
“All the same, it was difficult to see what else could have happened. The doctor said there could be no doubt about cause of death. Evidence showed that the upper part of the head had been crushed by a horse’s hoof. He was a pretty grisly sight, and I was sorry for the boy’s mother, who would have to attend the inquest.
“‘Are there any marks of ill-usage on the horse?’ I asked, and Bayliss said he was all right except for a pair of cut knees, but naturally he wouldn’t be able to run in the race forty-eight hours hence. That was when I began to think that, after all, there might be something fishy about the whole affair. A fall on turf and bracken doesn’t result in cut knees. Grazing and scraping—yes—but cuts—no. When I saw the horse I got more suspicious still; I’m handier with a motor cycle, I confess, when it comes to getting about, but even I know a bad cut when I see one. The place where the accident had happened was just over a slope where a few trees grew, and as I thought about it a new idea came to me. I walked up to the trees and began to examine them, and I found, as I’d half begun to expect, marks on the trunks of two of them, where the bark had been rasped very recently.
“‘What’s the matter?’ Bayliss demanded, and he sounded as though I might have had a hand in the affair.
“‘Just what I want to know,’ I told him, and I began to hunt on the ground. I was remembering Bayliss’s comment that the grass round the place where Alcock lay had been badly trampled. Well, I found the same condition here. Half a dozen men might have been stamping on it. Alcock hadn’t threshed about much—the doctor was of opinion that he must have been killed outright by the blow—because there were no blood-stains anywhere, and in any case he had pitched several yards away from the trees. That looked as though it might have been trodden on purpose, and the purpose was to conceal footprints. You couldn’t get the smallest trace from that mess. Presently, after about forty minutes, during which I thought Bayliss was going to break a blood-vessel—I found what I was looking for—two or three little chips of wire snipped clean at the edges.”
“You mean, someone had stretched wire across the path to make the lad take a toss?” That was my neighbour who had talked about luck.
“Exactly. And it must have been someone who knew that Alcock would be coming hell-for-leather down that stretch. Well, that accounted for the cuts on the horse’s legs, and whoever was responsible must have slipped out afterwards and cut the wire with a pair of tweezers. That got us on a certain way, proved that Bayliss was right when he spoke of foul play; but it didn’t mean that Grey was the man responsible. Even when we found the wire that had been used, pitched in a pond near-by, it didn’t help us. It was common or garden wire and anyone might have bought it, or had it.
“Bayliss nearly drove me off my head following me round and saying: ‘It’s murder, I tell you, murder. Bluebeard wouldn’t t
rample his own jockey if he hadn’t been frantic.’
“Someone suggested he might have had his back to the jockey and so didn’t know what he was doing, but that wouldn’t work either. The position in which the lad was lying showed that. The queer thing was that, if Bluebeard had been in a state of frenzy, he shouldn’t have smashed in the whole head. It looked as though there had been just one blow and that he’d cantered back to his stable.
“Well, I thought of this and that, tested a theory and turned it down, and then I asked to see the horse. He’d come back all right on his own account, so it didn’t look as though there had been a plot to kill him. I wasn’t even convinced yet that whoever was responsible had intended to kill the jockey. After all, there was no need to do that, and murder’s an ugly game, with ugly consequences for the murderer.
“At the stables the grooms were looking a bit askance at Bluebeard. Nobody likes a horse that kills its jockey; besides, he was known to have a queer temper at the best of times. I said I wanted to see his feet. For a minute no one moved, then Bayliss came shoving past me in a cursing rage and lifted the great feet, one after the other, for me to examine. As he stood back, saying: ‘Well?’ I felt myself sweating.
“‘You’re right, sir,’ I told him. ‘There’s more than a toss to this. It’s murder or I’m a Dutchman.’
“You see, there wasn’t a trace of blood on any of those four hoofs. And yet Alcock had been killed by a blow from a horse, and the wound was too deep, too frightful, for no trace to be left on the shoe.
“Bayliss was still shouting that Grey was behind this, and I went off to inquire into Grey’s movements, though I had to handle the affair pretty carefully. I hadn’t an iota of evidence against the fellow. I asked him whether he’d been in the neighbourhood of Milton Heath that morning, and if so, if he’d seen anyone hanging about, but he told me he’d spent his time at the golf club, going round on his own.
“‘I don’t want to find myself one of these fellows who turns up beaming to find that every other chap is unfortunately paired off, or is feeling groggy and not up to play,’ he told me, ‘and it seemed to me my eye wasn’t quite as straight as it used to be.’
“Several people remembered seeing Grey at the club, and one man agreed that he had lunched with him. I asked if he’d employed a caddie, but it appeared he hadn’t. He felt he might foozle half his shots, he explained, and he’d feel less of a fool if he were by himself. Well, that was reasonable enough. Few men are heroes to their caddies. I inquired about Grey’s stable, but it appeared none of his horses had been out that morning, and he hadn’t hired a hack. Besides, he’d been on the golf course, and a man can’t be in two places at the same time. The only thing I did discover that might conceivably help was that the course ran quite close to the place where Alcock had been found.
“I thought and I thought. Suppose he’d timed himself to be at this particular spot at the time when Alcock would probably be passing? Even so, how could he have been responsible for the jockey’s death? He’d been carrying golf-clubs, certainly, but Alcock hadn’t been killed by a golf-club, but by a blow from a horse’s hoof.
“And then, suddenly, I knew what had happened. Don’t ask me how. If it wasn’t for these gleams of inspiration the life of a policeman would be harder than it is, and it’s hard enough, heaven knows, what with criminals being so unsporting and detective writers giving them so many hints. I went down to see the village blacksmith.
“‘Shod any horses for Mr. Grey lately?’ I asked him.
“‘One,’ he told me. ‘A mare. About a week ago.’
“‘Going a bit lame, wasn’t she?’
“‘Well, no, not that I could see. Don’t know what he wanted her shod for, come to that.’
“But I knew. Grey had come down himself, which was a bit unusual, for he was one of these high and mighty chaps, who think themselves a cut above the rest of the world. After that I went up to Mr. Grey’s house, choosing a time when he wasn’t there, and told the servant that I was expected and I’d wait. They put me in the library and I routed among his books and found what I’d expected. Mind you, in a way I don’t know that I wanted to find it, because even a policeman doesn’t like to think of what humanity is capable of. But I was right. I even got the weapon in due course, as ugly an object as ever I’ve seen.” He took a pencil out of his pocket and began to draw something on the back of an envelope. “Know what this is?” he asked us.
Well, there wasn’t much question as to that. It was a stick like a club, with a horseshoe on one end. When we began to understand, we knew what he meant when he said he’d half-hoped he wouldn’t find it. There was a famous Continental criminal called The Spider, who’d liked making use of it. Paris was his happy hunting-ground, till they ran him down at last. His method was to get a couple of horseshoes and fasten them on to a wooden club, and you had as murderous an implement as any criminal could desire. Grey had read his story, and seen in it a fine chance to put Alcock out and secure his own future. He must have waited till the boy came past, took a toss over the wire, and then walked in and deliberately murdered him.
“But was that necessary?” we asked. “Wouldn’t it have been enough if he’d incapacitated Bluebeard? Why risk his neck in that foolhardy fashion?”
“He couldn’t afford not to put the jockey out of the way,” Field told us, with a shade of contempt for our slower intellects. “Alcock would know the horse hadn’t come down by himself. And Grey had got to clear the wire before anyone discovered his share in the plot. He literally didn’t dare let Alcock live. And I suppose he thought he was safe enough. Any doctor would have sworn death was caused by the kick of a horse. There’d been a horse on the spot, a queer-tempered horse at that. Grey thought Bluebeard would get the blame, and he’d save his own skin. He was steeped in debt and worse; if he couldn’t put up a considerable sum of money he’d have got five years, and I suppose he thought it was worth risking his life. He planned it all pretty carefully; the anonymous letters began arriving long before any hint of danger threatened Bayliss and his jockey. A more feeble criminal would have sent one to himself, but he didn’t make that mistake. But it’s a fact that no criminal ever remembers everything, and what Grey forgot was that there would be no blood on Bluebeard’s hoofs. Or perhaps he thought no one else would think of that. And so,” he wound up, passing his tankard to be refilled for the third time, “when I hear about horseshoes being lucky, I remember two men who were killed by them, as you might say, and it’s not the kind of luck I’d appreciate, even if it came my way.”
The Cockroach and the Tortoise
“Talking of cockroaches,” observed Inspector Field, guilefully bringing the conversation round to his own subject, “reminds me of a queer thing that happened to me once. It was a good many years ago; I was a sergeant in the K District. That’s a fairly well-to-do part of London, and most of the cases we had were shoplifting and bag-snatching. Not much scope for an ambitious man, but there’s generally a chance if you keep your eyes open. One morning I was on duty in the station when I heard a scuttering movement outside and a woman burst into the room. She was a little thing, very plainly dressed, rather taking if you like ’em small, with big eyes and curly lashes. She stood there, staring, and panting as if she’d been running in a race.
“I thought she was another of these people who’ve had their bags emptied while they left them on the counter in order to look at a sweetly pretty thing in the bargain basement. But it turned out not to be that at all. In fact, it was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me.” He polished off his tankard and shoved it across the counter. “I was so sure it was a shop-thieving affair that I’d already picked out the right form. Forms are more useful where women are concerned than you’d ever guess; seem to impress them that there’s something serious going on.
“When I began to ask what was wrong, though, she just gasped at me: ‘I want you to help me. I
want some advice. I never meant to come here, but where else am I to go?’
“Well, of course, that wasn’t precisely what I’d expected, but you soon learn in a job like ours not to be surprised at anything, so I said as nicely as I could that we’d be glad to help her, and she went on in a jerky sort of voice: ‘Of course, I know the proper thing would be to go to a lawyer and make him do something. But I daren’t. I don’t know any. Only Harry’s, and he wouldn’t be safe.’
“Harry was her husband, she explained. I told her there were other lawyers, but she said: ‘I wouldn’t dare trust them. If I picked a dishonest one, and a lot of them are rogues, for I’ve heard Harry say so, I’d be even worse off than I am now. So I thought perhaps the police could do something.’
“‘You’ll have to tell me a bit more,’ I encouraged her, and bit by bit, a word here and another there, I got the story out of her. It was what I’d begun to expect—blackmail—and for the commonest of reasons where a woman’s concerned.
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