Murder at the Manor

by Martin Edwards

  On the strength of these facts, the magistrate duly committed Job Panton to take his trial at the next assizes, on a charge of murder, although there was not a scrap of evidence forthcoming to prove that he had ever been in possession of any of the darts or the poison; and unless such evidence was forthcoming, it was felt that the case for the prosecution must break down, however clear the mere guilt of the man might seem.

  In due course, Panton was put on his trial at Chester, and the principal witness against him was Hester Downie, who was subjected to a very severe cross-examination, which left not a shadow of a doubt that she and Panton had at one time been close sweethearts. But her cousin Jessie Turner proved a tempter of great subtlety. It was made clear that she poisoned the girl’s mind against her humble lover. Although it could not be proved, it is highly probable that Jessie Turner was a creature of and in the pay of Mr Charnworth, who seemed to have been very much attracted by him. Hester’s connection with Charnworth half maddened Panton, who made frantic appeals to her to be true to him, appeals to which she turned a deaf ear. That Trankler knew her in Charnworth’s time was also brought out, and after Charnworth’s death she smiled favourably on the young man. On the morning that Trankler’s shooting-party went out to Mere Forest, Panton was one of the beaters employed by the party.

  So much was proved; so much was made as clear as daylight, and it opened the way for any number of inferences. But the last and most important link was never forthcoming. Panton was defended by an able and unscrupulous counsel, who urged with tremendous force on the notice of the jury, that firstly, not one of the medical witnesses would undertake to swear that the two men had died from the effects of poison similar to that found in the old chest which had belonged to the prisoner’s uncle; and secondly, there was not one scrap of evidence tending to prove that Panton had ever been in possession of poisoned darts, or had ever had access to the chest in which they were kept. These two points were also made much of by the learned judge in his summing up. He was at pains to make clear that there was a doubt involved, and that mere inference ought not to be allowed to outweigh the doubt when a human being was on trial for his life. Although circumstantially the evidence very strongly pointed to the probability of the prisoner having killed both men, nevertheless, in the absence of the strong proof which the law demanded, the way was opened for the escape of a suspected man, and it was far better to let the law be cheated of its due, than that an innocent man should suffer. At the same time, the judge went on, two gentlemen had met their deaths in a manner which had baffled medical science, and no one was forthcoming who would undertake to say that they had been killed in the manner suggested by the prosecution, and yet it had been shown that the terrible and powerful poison found in the old chest, and which there was reason to believe had been brought from some part of the little known country near the sources of the mighty Amazon, would produce all the effects which were observed in the bodies of Charnworth and Trankler. The chest, furthermore, in which the poison was discovered, was in the possession of Panton’s uncle. Panton had a powerful motive in the shape of consuming jealousy for getting rid of his more favoured rivals; and though he was one of the shooting-party in Mere Forest on the day that Trankler lost his life, no evidence had been produced to prove that he was on the premises of Dead Wood Hall, on the night that Charnworth died. If, in weighing all these points of evidence, the jury were of opinion the circumstantial evidence was inadequate, then it was their duty to give the prisoner—whose life was in their hands—the benefit of the doubt.

  The jury retired, and were absent three long hours, and it became known that they could not agree. Ultimately, they returned into court, and pronounced a verdict of ‘Not guilty’. In Scotland the verdict must and would have been non proven.

  And so Job Panton went free, but an evil odour seemed to cling about him; he was shunned by his former companions, and many a suspicious glance was directed to him, and many a bated murmur was uttered as he passed by, until in a while he went forth beyond the seas, to the far wild west, as some said, and his haunts knew him no more.

  The mystery is still a mystery; but how near I came to solving the problem of Dead Wood Hall it is for the reader to judge.

  Gentlemen and Players

  E. W. Hornung

  Ernest William Hornung (1866–1921) was a talented but unlucky man. He suffered poor health in his teens, and spent time recuperating in Australia; following his return to England, and the death of his father, he turned to journalism. He also started to publish fiction, often drawing on his knowledge of Australian life. His early stories about A. J. Raffles, the amateur cracksman, earned widespread acclaim, but after his son was killed at Ypres, grief as well as continuing health problems brought an end to his literary career, and he died relatively young.

  The background of “Gentlemen and Players” reflects Hornung’s love of cricket; he was a member of the same cricket club as Arthur Conan Doyle, and married Conan Doyle’s sister, Connie. He dedicated the first book of Raffles stories to his brother-in-law, although Conan Doyle had reservations about the daring concept of making a criminal the hero. Yet the best Raffles stories are highly entertaining. Ironically, it was only in later years, when Hornung tried to present Raffles in a more conventionally heroic light, that the quality of his work slipped.

  ***

  Old Raffles may or may not have been an exceptional criminal, but as a cricketer I dare swear he was unique. Himself a dangerous bat, a brilliant field, and perhaps the very finest slow bowler of his decade, he took incredibly little interest in the game at large. He never went up to Lord’s without his cricket-bag, or showed the slightest interest in the result of a match in which he was not himself engaged. Nor was this mere hateful egotism on his part. He professed to have lost all enthusiasm for the game, and to keep it up only from the very lowest motives.

  “Cricket,” said Raffles, “like everything else, is good enough sport until you discover a better. As a source of excitement it isn’t in it with other things you wot of, Bunny, and the involuntary comparison becomes a bore. What’s the satisfaction of taking a man’s wicket when you want his spoons? Still, if you can bowl a bit your low cunning won’t get rusty, and always looking for the weak spot’s just the kind of mental exercise one wants. Yes, perhaps there’s some affinity between the two things after all. But I’d chuck up cricket to-morrow, Bunny, if it wasn’t for the glorious protection it affords a person of my proclivities.”

  “How so?” said I. “It brings you before the public, I should have thought, far more than is either safe or wise.”

  “My dear Bunny, that’s exactly where you make a mistake. To follow Crime with reasonable impunity you simply must have a parallel, ostensible career—the more public the better. The principle is obvious. Mr Peace, of pious memory, disarmed suspicion by acquiring a local reputation for playing the fiddle and taming animals, and it’s my profound conviction that Jack the Ripper was a really eminent public man, whose speeches were very likely reported alongside his atrocities. Fill the bill in some prominent part, and you’ll never be suspected of doubling it with another of equal prominence. That’s why I want you to cultivate journalism, my boy, and sign all you can. And it’s the one and only reason why I don’t burn my bats for firewood.”

  Nevertheless, when he did play there was no keener performer on the field, nor one more anxious to do well for his side. I remember how he went to the nets, before the first match of the season, with his pocket full of sovereigns, which he put on the stumps instead of bails. It was a sight to see the professionals bowling like demons for the hard cash, for whenever a stump was hit a pound was tossed to the bowler and another balanced in its stead, while one man took £3 with a ball that spread-eagled the wicket. Raffles’s practice cost him either eight or nine sovereigns; but he had absolutely first-class bowling all the time; and he made fifty-seven runs next day.

  It became my pleasure to accomp
any him to all his matches, to watch every ball he bowled, or played, or fielded, and to sit chatting with him in the pavilion when he was doing none of these three things. You might have seen us there, side by side, during the greater part of the Gentlemen’s first innings against the Players (who had lost the toss) on the second Monday in July. We were to be seen, but not heard, for Raffles had failed to score, and was uncommonly cross for a player who cared so little for the game. Merely taciturn with me, he was positively rude to more than one member who wanted to know how it had happened, or who ventured to commiserate him on his luck; there he sat, with a straw hat tilted over his nose and a cigarette stuck between lips that curled disagreeably at every advance. I was therefore much surprised when a young fellow of the exquisite type came and squeezed himself in between us, and met with a perfectly civil reception despite the liberty. I did not know the boy by sight, nor did Raffles introduce us; but their conversation proclaimed at once a slightness of acquaintanceship and a licence on the lad’s part which combined to puzzle me. Mystification reached its height when Raffles was informed that the other’s father was anxious to meet him, and he instantly consented to gratify that whim.

  “He’s in the Ladies’ Enclosure. Will you come round now?”

  “With pleasure,” says Raffles. “Keep a place for me, Bunny.”

  And they were gone.

  “Young Crowley,” said some voice further back. “Last year’s Harrow Eleven.”

  “I remember him. Worst man in the team.”

  “Keen cricketer, however. Stopped till he was twenty to get his colours. Governor made him. Keen breed. Oh, pretty, sir! Very pretty!”

  The game was boring me. I only came to see old Raffles perform. Soon I was looking wistfully for his return, and at length I saw him beckoning me from the palings to the right.

  “Want to introduce you to old Amersteth,” he whispered, when I joined him. “They’ve a cricket week next month, when this boy Crowley comes of age, and we’ve both got to go down and play.”

  “Both!” I echoed. “But I’m no cricketer!”

  “Shut up,” says Raffles. “Leave that to me. I’ve been lying for all I’m worth,” he added sepulchrally as we reached the bottom of the steps. “I trust to you not to give the show away.”

  There was the gleam in his eye that I knew well enough elsewhere, but was unprepared for in those healthy, sane surroundings; and it was with very definite misgivings and surmises that I followed the Zingari blazer through the vast flower-bed of hats and bonnets that bloomed beneath the ladies’ awning.

  Lord Amersteth was a fine-looking man with a short moustache and a double chin. He received me with much dry courtesy, through which, however, it was not difficult to read a less flattering tale. I was accepted as the inevitable appendage of the invaluable Raffles, with whom I felt deeply incensed as I made my bow.

  “I have been bold enough,” said Lord Amersteth, “to ask one of the Gentlemen of England to come down and play some rustic cricket for us next month. He is kind enough to say that he would have liked nothing better, but for this little fishing expedition of yours, Mr.—, Mr.—,” and Lord Amersteth succeeded in remembering my name.

  It was, of course, the first I had ever heard of that fishing expedition, but I made haste to say that it could easily, and should certainly, be put off. Raffles gleamed approval through his eyelashes. Lord Amersteth bowed and shrugged.

  “You’re very good, I’m sure,” said he. “But I understand you’re a cricketer yourself?”

  “He was one at school,” said Raffles, with infamous readiness.

  “Not a real cricketer,” I was stammering meanwhile.

  “In the eleven?” said Lord Amersteth.

  “I’m afraid not,” said I.

  “But only just out of it,” declared Raffles, to my horror.

  “Well, well, we can’t all play for the Gentlemen,” said Lord Amersteth slyly. “My son Crowley only just scraped into the eleven at Harrow, and he’s going to play. I may even come in myself at a pinch; so you won’t be the only duffer, if you are one, and I shall be very glad if you will come down and help us too. You shall flog a stream before breakfast and after dinner, if you like.”

  “I should be very proud,” I was beginning, as the mere prelude to resolute excuses; but the eye of Raffles opened wide upon me; and I hesitated weakly, to be duly lost.

  “Then that’s settled,” said Lord Amersteth, with the slightest suspicion of grimness. “It’s to be a little week, you know, when my son comes of age. We play the Free Foresters, the Dorsetshire Gentlemen, and probably some local lot as well. But Mr. Raffles will tell you all about it, and Crowley shall write. Another wicket! By Jove, they’re all out! Then I rely on you both.” And, with a little nod, Lord Amersteth rose and sidled to the gangway.

  Raffles rose also, but I caught the sleeve of his blazer.

  “What are you thinking of?” I whispered savagely. “I was nowhere near the eleven. I’m no sort of cricketer. I shall have to get out of this!”

  “Not you,” he whispered back. “You needn’t play, but come you must. If you wait for me after half-past six I’ll tell you why.”

  But I could guess the reason; and I am ashamed to say that it revolted me much less than did the notion of making a public fool of myself on a cricket-field. My gorge rose at this as it no longer rose at crime, and it was in no tranquil humour that I strolled about the ground while Raffles disappeared in the pavilion. Nor was my annoyance lessened by a little meeting I witnessed between young Crowley and his father, who shrugged as he stopped and stooped to convey some information which made the young man look a little blank. It may have been pure self-consciousness on my part, but I could have sworn that the trouble was their inability to secure the great Raffles without his insignificant friend.

  Then the bell rang, and I climbed to the top of the pavilion to watch Raffles bowl. No subtleties are lost up there; and if ever a bowler was full of them, it was A. J. Raffles on his day, as, indeed, all the cricket world remembers. One had not to be a cricketer oneself to appreciate his perfect command of pitch and break, his beautifully easy action, which never varied with the varying pace, his great ball on the leg-stump—his dropping head-ball—in a word, the infinite ingenuity of that versatile attack. It was no mere exhibition of athletic prowess, it was an intellectual treat, and one with a special significance in my eyes. I saw the “affinity between the two things,” saw it in that afternoon’s tireless warfare against the flower of professional cricket. It was not that Raffles took many wickets for few runs; he was too fine a bowler to mind being hit; and time was short, and the wicket good. What I admired, and what I remember, was the combination of resource and cunning, of patience and precision, of head-work and handiwork, which made every over an artistic whole. It was all so characteristic of that other Raffles whom I alone knew!

  “I felt like bowling this afternoon,” he told me later in the hansom. “With a pitch to help me, I’d have done something big; as it is, three for forty-one, out of the four that fell, isn’t so bad for a slow bowler on a plumb wicket against those fellows. But I felt venomous! Nothing riles me more than being asked about for my cricket as though I were a pro. myself.”

  “Then why on earth go?”

  “To punish them, and—because we shall be jolly hard up, Bunny, before the season’s over!”

  “Ah!” said I. “I thought it was that.”

  “Of course, it was! It seems they’re going to have the very devil of a week of it—balls—dinner-parties—swagger house-party—general junketings—and obviously a houseful of diamonds as well. Diamonds galore! As a general rule nothing would induce me to abuse my position as a guest. I’ve never done it, Bunny. But in this case we’re engaged like the waiters and the band, and by heaven we’ll take our toll! Let’s have a quiet dinner somewhere and talk it over.”

  “It seems rather
a vulgar sort of theft,” I could not help saying; and to this, my single protest, Raffles instantly assented.

  “It is a vulgar sort,” said he; “but I can’t help that. We’re getting vulgarly hard up again, and there’s an end on ’t. Besides, these people deserve it, and can afford it. And don’t you run away with the idea that all will be plain sailing; nothing will be easier than getting some stuff, and nothing harder than avoiding all suspicion, as, of course, we must. We may come away with no more than a good working plan of the premises. Who knows? In any case there’s weeks of thinking in it for you and me.”

  But with those weeks I will not weary you further than by remarking that the “thinking,” was done entirely by Raffles, who did not always trouble to communicate his thoughts to me. His reticence, however, was no longer an irritant. I began to accept it as a necessary convention of these little enterprises. And, after our last adventure of the kind, more especially after its dénouement, my trust in Raffles was much too solid to be shaken by a want of trust in me, which I still believe to have been more the instinct of the criminal than the judgment of the man.

  It was on Monday, the tenth of August, that we were due at Milchester Abbey, Dorset; and the beginning of the month found us cruising about that very county, with fly-rods actually in our hands. The idea was that we should acquire at once a local reputation as decent fishermen, and some knowledge of the countryside, with a view to further and more deliberate operations in the event of an unprofitable week. There was another idea which Raffles kept to himself until he had got me down there. Then one day he produced a cricket-ball in a meadow we were crossing, and threw me catches for an hour together. More hours he spent in bowling to me on the nearest green; and, if I was never a cricketer, at least I came nearer to being one, by the end of that week, than ever before or since.