Jack on the Gallows Tree

by Bruce, Leo

  Carolus took an envelope from a man who had entered, ripped it open and read.

  “We are more fortunate than I thought,” he announced. “These most cowardly murders will be avenged and I use the word deliberately, believing as I do that society should avenge itself on those who commit deliberate pre-meditated and brutally cold-blooded crimes of this sort.

  “But first let me clear up a small point which is worrying me and perhaps the more observant of you. How did that lily last night come into the hands of Gabriel Westmacott? He said that he found it. I wonder whether Mrs Plummer can help us here. Did you happen to notice anyone going to Rossetti Lodge last night?”

  “Well, I was just letting the dog out …”

  “Of course.”

  “When I did see someone go up the steps. It was before Mr Gabriel got back. I think he pushed something through the letter box though I couldn’t see what.”

  “But you saw who it was?”

  “I shouldn’t want to say anything to get anyone into trouble …”

  “You needn’t worry about that. After what has been found in the search tonight nothing you say will make the case much stronger.”

  “Well, it was Mr Carew.”

  “That’s a foolish lie. I was too tight last night to find the way to Rossetti Lodge if I had wanted.”

  “Were you, Carew?” asked Carolus whipping round on him. “Did you find him drunk, Mr Johnson, when you were together at the Dragon?”

  “Yes. Pretty drunk. He drank a great many rums and kept pointing at things.”

  “Pointing? What sort of things?”

  “I don’t know. Shapely’s shape …”

  “Really, Mr Johnson!”

  “Or a picture on the wall, or something.”

  “And did you look when he pointed?”

  “I suppose so. Can’t help it if someone points, can you?”

  “That is why the earth in the aspidistra pot on your table has been found to contain the alcohol Carew ordered and did not drink. I knew he was acting when he followed me out of the Dragon, lurching all over the path. No, he was very far from drunk. He was shrewd enough to guess that a trap was laid for him at Bickley’s. He had to do something with the lily and thought it must serve his purpose as well if he made it a sort of death warning.”

  Charlie Carew began to chuckle, apparently with good humour.

  “How well he fits all my conditions,” said Carolus. “But it was the black hat and cloak which gave me my first idea. For except from a theatrical costumier, where could you obtain such things unless your father had been, in Miss Tissot’s words, ‘an artist of the old and most disreputable school. A Bohemian, a vagabond, a character from the Latin Quarter who looked the part’.

  “How easy was it for him to phone Miss Carew that night, disguising his voice from Colonel Baxeter, how easy to persuade her to drive him out to Lilbourne to see Raydell’s ocelot, whose previous appearance in the Dragon bar he had witnessed. How natural that he who knew both Sophia Carew and her dog so well should volunteer to sit behind and leave Skylark his usual place. How easy to get Miss Carew to stop by the quarry which he knew from his cycling days. Then, when his task was done, how easy to leave the car in the car-park with the poor dog in it, having made sure that Gilling was over at the Dragon. Then he could leave the car-park by the back way and show himself in the bar till ten o’clock.

  “Who was more likely to be in urgent need of money than Carew?”

  “Who indeed?” grinned Charlie. “Will you ever stop talking, Deene?”

  “When you begin. But all this would be merely circumstantial. It is true that an important piece of direct evidence has been provided by Mrs Plummer.” Carolus caught an ugly look from Mrs Gosport and hastily adjusted matters. “She saw Carew and no one else pushing Mrs Gosport’s lily through the letter box of Rossetti Lodge.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to say,” admitted Mrs Gosport generously.

  “No more do I,” was Mrs Plummer’s olive branch.

  “But even that is far from final. What is going to hang you, Carew, is the successful search of your house.” “Really?” said Charlie Carew.

  Only Carolus noticed that his right hand was held palm upward in front of him.

  “Stop him!” shouted Carolus.

  But his open hand with its deadly little white burden had shot up to his mouth. Johnson, trying to hold it, was too late and they saw the movement of Carew’s adam’s apple as he swallowed.

  It was some time after the reassembly of the Queen’s School, Newminster, that the last word was said and the last explanation given of the murders at Buddington-on-the-Hill. At first Mr Gorringer seemed too busy to reflect on his remarkable experience of the holidays, and when at last he ventured to refer to it in conversation with Carolus it was only after a roundabout start.

  Carolus had been watching the first school cricket match of the summer term and was about to make his way towards the school buildings from the pleasant little elm-surrounded ground behind them. Cricket and a June afternoon have their own peace and Carolus was enjoying it when he saw Mr Gorringer bearing down on him, resplendent in a boater with some immensely significant colours in its hatband.

  “Ah, Deene,” he said. “A truly magnificent day. I see our excellent matron, Miss Pink, has honoured us this afternoon. Mrs Gorringer made one of her aptest mots at her expense this morning. I had permitted myself to account for a vagary of Miss Pink’s by speaking of the child in her, for there is a little of the child in each of us, Deene. ‘The young person in Pink!’ said Mrs Gorringer and I must say I could not restrain my laughter.”

  “No?”

  “You, however, seem particularly unmirthful this term, Deene. Not dwelling on the unhappy events at Buddington, I trust?”

  “Oh no.”

  “There are one or two things I have long meant to ask you about that. What, in fact, had the police found so incriminating in Carew’s house when you received that note?”

  “Nothing. They hadn’t searched it. Even the police would scarcely break into a house and search it before they had arrested its occupant.”

  “A bluff, eh?”

  “Yes. But backed by sense and reasoning. I was sure there would be something there, but even if there hadn’t been Carew would suppose there was. As a matter of fact they found just what I suggested, a coil of the wire from which the so-called crown or tiara had been made. The cloak and hat have never appeared. He must have burnt them. But his wife (who was separated from him) remembers him having the articles and saying they had belonged to his father.”

  “Interesting,” said Mr Gorringer.

  “I was also bluffing about the aspidistra pot, but it was the obvious place for him to pour the rum he didn’t drink. I never bothered to ask Moore whether I was right.”

  “Perhaps, Deene, you may have realized that I guessed the murderer’s identity some time before you revealed it?”

  “That, headmaster, I must dispute, except in a limited sense. Like a man trying to pick a winner and going over the horses in a race, you may have dwelt on the name with others several times. But when that man has backed another horse, of whichever wins he says ‘I knew that was the one!’ Besides in this case it was no good just guessing Carew if you couldn’t see why he murdered both those old women.”

  “These are mysteries,” said the headmaster sonorously. “Was it ever discovered why Gabriel Westmacott had the lily in his hand when he came across to Bickley’s cottage?”

  “Rather natural, wasn’t it? It was a disturbing thing, in the circumstances, to find in his letter box, and he came to consult Bickley about it. Moore knew that was his explanation, but could not, of course, give information from a man’s statement to the police.”

  “Have you heard from Moore? He has surely expressed his gratitude?”

  “Why? Carew was his suspect from the first. But he has written and told me of a forthcoming wedding.”

  “The young chauffeur’s, no dou
bt?”

  “That’s broken off. Her parents were too respectable to allow their daughter to marry a man concerned in a murder enquiry. No—Gilling is to marry Miss Shapely. I understand that she will not, however, give up her bar.”

  “News indeed,” commented Mr Gorringer. “There is one other point I should like elucidated. When I arrived at Buddington and you gave me a resumé of events, you laid great stress on the fact that there were three blooms on the lily stems and seven ornaments in the crown. Were you merely mystifying me?”

  “Not in the least. Oh, well hit! Priggley is really quite a useful bat when he pleases. No, I wasn’t being mysterious. That was a piece of business by Carew, clever in a nasty and perhaps rather blasphemous way. Knowing Mrs Westmacott’s story, he suggested painting her as Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Blessed Damozel. You know—

  She had three lilies in her hand,

  And the stars in her hair were seven.”

  “I find that in excessively bad taste,” said Mr Gorringer in a harsh voice.

  “The whole thing was,” replied Carolus and walked away.

  THE END