Death Locked In

by Douglas G. Greene (ed)

  He looked John Neville straight in the eyes as he spoke.

  The look was steadily returned. “I think I understand. What do you want to know? Where shall I begin?”

  “At the beginning. What did you quarrel with your uncle about yesterday?”

  John Neville hesitated for a moment, and Mr. Beck took a mental note of his hesitation.

  “I didn’t quarrel with him. He quarreled with me. It was this way: There was a bitter feud between my uncle and his neighbor, Colonel Peyton. The estates adjoin, and the quarrel was about some shooting. My uncle was very violent—he used to call Colonel Peyton ‘a common poacher.’ Well, I took no hand in the row. I was rather shy when I met the Colonel for the first time after it, for I knew my uncle had the wrong end of the stick. But the Colonel spoke to me in the kindest way. “No reason why you and I should cease to be friends, John,” he said. “This is a foolish business. I would give the best covert on my estate to be out of it. Men cannot fight duels in these days, and gentlemen cannot scold like fishwives. But I don’t expect people will call me a coward because I hate a row.”

  “Not likely,” I said.

  “The Colonel, you must know, had distinguished himself in a dozen engagements, and has the Victoria Cross locked up in a drawer of his desk. Lucy once showed it to me. Lucy is his only daughter and he is devoted to her. Well, after that, of course, the Colonel and I kept on good terms, for I liked him, and I liked going there and all that. But our friendship angered my uncle. I had been going to the Grange pretty often of late, and my uncle heard of it. He spoke to me in a very rough fashion of Colonel Peyton and his daughter at dinner last night, and I stood up for them.”

  “By what right, you insolent puppy,” he shouted, “do you take this upstart’s part against me?”

  “The Peytons are as good a family as our own, sir, “ I said—that was true—’’and as for right, Miss Lucy Peyton has done me the honor of promising to be my wife.”

  “At that he exploded in a very tempest of rage. I cannot repeat his words about the Colonel and his daughter. Even now, though he lies dead yonder, I can hardly forgive them. He swore he would never see or speak to me again if I disgraced myself by such a marriage. “I cannot break the entail,” he growled, “worse luck. But I can make you a beggar while I live, and I shall live forty years to spite you. The poacher can have you a bargain for all I care. Go, sell yourself as dearly as you can, and live on your wife’s fortune as soon as you please.’’

  “Then I lost my temper, and gave him a bit of my mind.”

  “Try and remember what you said; it’s important.”

  “I told him that I cast his contempt back in his face; that I loved Lucy Peyton, and that I would live for her, and die for her, if need be.”

  “Did you say it was a comfort he could not live forever? You see the story of your quarrel has travelled far and near. The driver told me of it. Try and remember—did you say that?”

  “I think I did. I’m sure I did now, but I was so furious I hardly knew what I said. I certainly never meant—”

  “Who was in the room when you quarreled?”

  “Only Cousin Eric and the butler.”

  “The butler, I suppose, spread the story?”

  “I suppose so. I’m sure Cousin Eric never did. He was as much pained at the scene as myself. He tried to interfere at the time, but his interference only made my uncle more furious.”

  “What was your allowance from your uncle?”

  “A thousand a year.”

  “He had power to cut it off, I suppose?”

  “Certainly.”

  “But he had no power over the estate. You were heir-apparent under the entail, and at the present moment you are the owner of Berkly Manor?”

  “That is so; but up to the moment you spoke I assure you I never even remembered—”

  “Who comes next to you in the entail?”

  “My first cousin, Eric. He is four years younger than I am.”

  “After him?”

  “A distant cousin. I scarcely know him at all; but has a bad reputation, and I know my uncle and he hated each other cordially.”

  “How did your uncle and your cousin Eric hit it off?”

  “Not too well. He hated Eric’s father—his own youngest brother—and he was sometimes rough on Eric. He used to abuse the dead father in the son’s presence, calling him cruel and treacherous, and all that. Poor Eric had often a hard time of it. Uncle was liberal to him so far as money went—as liberal as he was to me—had him to live at the Manor and denied him nothing. But now and again he would sting the poor lad by a passionate curse or a bitter sneer. In spite of all, Eric seemed fond of him.”

  “To come now to the murder; you saw your uncle no more that night, I suppose?”

  “I never saw him alive again.”

  “Do you know what he did next day?”

  “Only by hearsay.”

  “Hearsay evidence is often first-class evidence, though the law doesn’t think so. What did you hear?”

  “My uncle was mad about shooting. Did I tell you his quarrel with Colonel Peyton was about the shooting? He had a grouse moor rented about twelve miles from here, and he never missed the first day. He was off at cock-shout with the head gamekeeper, Lennox. I was to have gone with him, but I didn’t, of course. Contrary to his custom he came back about noon and went straight to his study. I was writing in my own room and heard his heavy step go past the door. Later on Eric found him asleep on the great leather couch in his study. Five minutes after Eric left I heard the shot and rushed into his room.”

  “Did you examine the room after you found the body?”

  “No. Eric wanted to, but I thought it better not. I simply locked the door and put the key in my pocket till you came.”

  “Could it have been suicide?”

  “Impossible, I should say. He was shot through the back of the head.”

  “Had your uncle any enemies that you know of?”

  “The poachers hated him. He was relentless with them. A fellow once shot at him, and my uncle shot back and shattered the man’s leg. He had him sent to hospital first and cured, and then prosecuted him straight away, and got him two years.”

  “Then you think a poacher murdered him?” Mr. Beck said blandly.

  “I don’t well see how he could. I was in my own room on the same corridor. The only way to or from my uncle’s room was past my door. I rushed out the instant I heard the shot, and saw no one.”

  “Perhaps the murderer leapt through the window?”

  “Eric tells me that he and the gardener were in the garden almost under the window at the time.”

  “What’s your theory, then, Mr. Neville?”

  “I haven’t got a theory.”

  “You parted with your uncle in anger last night?”

  “That’s so.”

  “Next day your uncle is shot, and you are found—I won’t say caught—in his room the instant afterwards.”

  John Neville flushed crimson; but he held himself in and nodded without speaking.

  The two walked on together in silence.

  They were not a hundred yards from the great mansion—John Neville’s house—standing high above the embowering trees in the glow of the twilight, when the detective spoke again.

  “I’m bound to say, Mr. Neville, that things look very black against you, as they stand. I think that constable Wardle ought to have arrested you.”

  “It’s not too late, yet,” John Neville answered shortly, “I see him there at the corner of the house and I’ll tell him you said so.”

  He turned on his heel, when Mr. Beck called quickly after him: “What about that key?”

  John Neville handed it to him without a word. The detective took it as silently and walked on to the entrance and up the great stone steps alone, whistling softly.

  Eric welcomed him at the door, for the driver had told of his coming.

  “You have had no dinner, Mr. Beck?” he asked co
urteously. “Business first; pleasure afterwards. I had a snack in the train. Can I see the gamekeeper, Lennox, for five minutes alone?”

  “Certainly. I’ll send him to you in a moment here in the library.”

  Lennox, the gamekeeper, a long-limbed, high-shouldered, elderly man, shambled shyly into the room, consumed by nervousness in the presence of a London detective.

  “Sit down, Lennox—sit down,” said Mr. Beck kindly. The very sound of his voice, homely and goodnatured, put the man at his ease. “Now, tell me, why did you come home so soon from the grouse this morning?”

  ‘‘Well, you see, sir, it was this ways. We were two hours hout when the Squire, ‘e says to me, ‘Lennox,’ ‘e says, ‘I’m sick of this fooling. I’m going ‘ome.’”

  “No sport?”

  “Birds wor as thick as blackberries, sir, and lay like larks.”

  “No sportsman, then?”

  “Is it the Squire, sir?” cried Lennox, quite forgetting his shyness in his excitement at this slur on the Squire. “There wasn’t a better sportsman in the county—no, nor as good. Real, old-fashioned style, ‘e was. ‘Hang your barnyard shooting,’ ‘e’d say when they’d ask him to go kill tame pheasants. ‘E put up ‘is own birds with ‘is own dogs, ‘e did. ‘E’d as soon go shooting without a gun very near as without a dog any day. Aye and ‘e stuck to ‘is old ‘Manton’ muzzle-loader to the last. ‘Old it steady, Lennox,’ ‘e’d say to me oftentimes, ‘and point it straight. It will hit harder and further than any of their telescopes, and it won’t get marked with rust if you don’t clean it every second shot.’ “

  “‘Easy to load, Squire,”‘the young men would say, cracking up their hammerless breech-loaders.

  ‘“Aye,” he’d answer them back, “‘and spoil your dog’s work. What’s the good of a dog learning to “down shot,” if you can drop in your cartridges as quick as a cock can pick corn.’

  “A dead shot the Squire was, too, and no mistake, sir, if he wasn’t flurried. Many a time I’ve seen him wipe the eyes of gents who thought no end of themselves with that same old muzzle-loader that shot hisself in the long run. Many a time I seen—”

  “Why did he turn his back on good sport yesterday?” asked Mr. Beck, cutting short his reminiscences.

  “Well, you see, it was scorching hot for one thing, but that wasn’t it, for the infernal fire would not stop the Squire if he was on for sport. But he was in a blazing temper all the morning, and temper tells more than most anything on a man’s shooting. When Flora sprung a pack—she’s a young dog, and the fault wasn’t hers either—for she came down the wind on them—but the Squire had the gun to his shoulder to shoot her. Five minutes after she found another pack and set like a stone. They got up as big as haycocks and as lazy as crows, and he missed right and left—never touched a feather—a thing I haven’t seen him do since I was a boy.

  ‘“It’s myself I should shoot, not the dog,’ he growled and he flung me the gun to load. When I’d got the caps on and had shaken the powder into the nipples, he ripped out an oath that ‘e’d have no more of it. ‘E walked right across country to where the trap was. The birds got up under his feet, but divil a shot he’d fire, but drove straight ‘ome.

  “When we got to the ‘ouse I wanted to take the gun and fire it off, or draw the charges. But ‘e told me to go to—, and carried it up loaded as it was to his study, where no one goes unless they’re sent for special. It was better than an hour afterwards I heard the report of the ‘Manton’; I’d know it in a thousand. I ran for the study as fast as—”

  Eric Neville broke suddenly into the room, flushed and excited.

  “Mr. Beck,” he cried, “a monstrous thing has happened. Wardle, the local constable, you know, has arrested my cousin on a charge of willful murder of my uncle.”

  Mr. Beck, with his eyes intent on the excited face, waved his big hand soothingly.

  “Easy,” he said, “take it easy, Mr. Neville. It’s hurtful to your feelings, no doubt; but it cannot be helped. The constable has done no more than his duty. The evidence is very strong, as you know, and in such cases it’s best for all parties to proceed regularly.”

  “You can go,” he went on, speaking to Lennox, who stood dumfounded at the news of John Neville’s arrest, staring with eyes and mouth wide open.

  Then turning again very quietly to Eric: “Now, Mr. Neville, I would like to see the room where the corpse is.”

  The perfect placidity of his manner had its effect upon the boy, for he was little more than a boy, calming his excitement as oil smooths troubled water.

  “My cousin has the key,” he said: “I will get it.”

  “There is no need,” Mr. Beck called after him, for he was halfway out of the room on his errand: “I’ve got the key if you will be good enough to show me the room.”

  Mastering his surprise, Eric showed him upstairs, and along the corridor to the locked door. Half unconsciously, as it seemed, he was following the detective into the room, when Mr. Beck stopped him.

  “I know you will kindly humor me, Mr. Neville,” he said, “but I find that I can look closer and think clearer when I’m by myself. I’m not exactly shy you know, but it’s a habit I’ve got.”

  He closed the door softly as he spoke, and locked it on the inside, leaving the key in the lock.

  The mask of placidity fell from him the moment he found himself alone. His lips tightened, and his eyes sparkled, and his muscles seemed to grow rigid with excitement, like a sporting dog’s when he is close upon the game.

  One glance at the corpse showed him that it was not suicide. In this, at least, John Neville had spoken the truth.

  The back of the head had literally been blown in by the charge of heavy shot at close quarters. The grey hair was clammy and matted, with little white angles of bone protruding. The dropping of the blood had made a black pool on the carpet, and the close air of the room was fetid with the smell of it.

  The detective walked to the table where the gun, a handsome, old-fashioned muzzle-loader, laid, the muzzle still pointed at the corpse. But his attention was diverted by a water-bottle, a great globe of clear glass quite full, and perched on a book a little distance from the gun, and between it and the window. He took it from the table and tested the water with the tip of his tongue. It had a curious, insipid, parboiled taste, but he detected no foreign flavor in it. Though the room was full of dust there was almost none on the cover of the book where the water-bottle stood, and Mr. Beck noticed a gap in the third row of the bookcase where the book had been taken.

  After a quick glance round the room Mr. Beck walked to the window. On a small table there he found a clear circle in the thick dust. He fitted the round bottom of the water-bottle to this circle and it covered it exactly. While he stood by the window he caught sight of some small scraps of paper crumbled up and thrown into a corner. Picking them up and smoothing them out he found they were curiously drilled with little burnt holes. Having examined the holes minutely with his magnifying glass, he slipped these scraps folded on each other into his waistcoat pocket.

  From the window he went back to the gun. This time he examined it with the minutest care. The right barrel he found had been recently discharged, the left was still loaded. Then he made a startling discovery. Both barrels were on half cock. The little bright copper cap twinkled on the nipple of the left barrel, from the right nipple the cap was gone.

  How had the murderer fired the right barrel without a cap? How and why did he find time in the midst of his deadly work to put the cock back to safety?

  Had Mr. Beck solved this problem? The grim smile deepened on his lips as he looked, and there was an ugly light in his eyes that boded ill for the unknown assassin. Finally he carried the gun to the window and examined it carefully through a magnifying glass. There was a thin dark line, as if traced with the point of a red-hot needle, running a little way along the wood of the stock and ending in the right nipple.

  Mr. Beck put the gun back quietly on the ta
ble. The whole investigation had not taken ten minutes. He gave one look at the still figure on the couch, unlocked the door, locking it after him, and walked out through the corridor, the same cheerful, imperturbable Mr. Beck that had walked into it ten minutes before.

  He found Eric waiting for him at the head of the stairs. “Well?” he said when he saw the detective.

  “Well,” replied Mr. Beck, ignoring the interrogation in his voice, “when is the inquest to be? That’s the next thing to be thought of; the sooner the better.”

  “Tomorrow, if you wish. My cousin John sent a messenger to Mr. Morgan, the coroner. He lives only five miles off, and he has promised to be here at twelve o’clock tomorrow. There will be no difficulty in getting a jury in the village.”

  “That’s right, that’s all right,” said Mr. Beck, rubbing his hands; “the sooner and the quieter we get those preliminaries over the better.”

  “I have just sent to engage the local solicitor on behalf of my cousin. He’s not particularly bright. I’m afraid, but he’s the best to be had on a short notice.”

  “Very proper and thoughtful on your part—very thoughtful indeed. But solicitors cannot do much in such cases. It’s the evidence we have to go by, and the evidence is only too plain, I’m afraid. Now, if you please,” he went on more briskly, dismissing the disagreeable subject, as it were, with a wave of his big hand, “I’d be very glad of that supper you spoke about.”

  Mr. Beck supped very heartily on a brace of grouse—the last of the dead man’s shooting—and a bottle of ripe Burgundy. He was in high good-humor, and across “the walnuts and the wine” he told Eric some startling episodes in his career, which seemed to divert the young fellow a little from his manifest grief for his uncle and anxiety for his cousin.