The Sussex Downs Murder

by John Bude

  “Want me to turn snout, eh?”

  “That’s about it, Sid. Might do you good, you know. I make no promises, but if you can be of any use to me I’ll do my best to see that the proper people get to hear about it. Well?”

  “Orlrite,” said Sid in a surly voice, after a long pause. “But there weren’t nobody in wiv me on that Rushington’s job if that’s wot you’re ’ooking for. Solo—that was.”

  “Used a bike, didn’t you, Sid?”

  “Yers.”

  “Took the Worthing-Horsham road perhaps—passed through Washington, didn’t you?”

  “Yers.”

  “About midnight?”

  “Arpas one,” corrected Sid.

  “Know the cross-roads in Washington by the ‘Chancton Arms’?”

  “Yers—turnin’ to Steyning almos’ opposite the boozer.”

  “That’s it. Know the Bostal?”

  “Yers—big ’ill just afore you come into Washington.”

  “Right. Now think carefully, Sid—did you notice anybody on the stretch of road between the Bostal and that turning to Steyning—either before or after your little job at Storrington?”

  “Might ’av.”

  “In other words you did?”

  “Yers—mail van going toward Worthing.”

  “On the outward journey, eh?”

  “Yers.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “Yers—chap on a bike.”

  “Chap on a—!” Meredith felt a quick thrill of excitement. “Where was this exactly?”

  “Bottom of the Bostal. Know a little lane wot runs up orf the main road, doncher?” Meredith nodded. He knew it right enough! He recognized it as the rutty track which ran up past the lime-kilns to Chalklands. “Well, ’ee turned orf up there.”

  “Could you describe the man?’’

  “Bowler ’at,” said Sid shortly.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yers—face-fungi.”

  “A beard, eh? What was he dressed in?”

  “Couldn’t rightly say—too muckin’ dark to see much.”

  “Notice anything about him which suggested he might have been injured, Sid?”

  “Nah.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yers.”

  “And the time you reckon was—?”

  “Arpas one,” put in Sid glibly. He was a practised hand in answering questions in cross-examination.

  “Would you be ready to sign a statement about this if it were necessary later on?”

  “If you think it might ’elp I would.”

  “Good.” Meredith rose and glanced round the cell. “Comfortable in here, Sid?”

  “I’ve known worse.”

  “Quite—well, that’s all. Thanks.”

  “Luck. Luck. Luck,” reiterated an inward voice as Meredith made his way back to the station. The first real bit of luck which had come his way since the case had opened. That those two men should have passed one another on that short stretch of road where their separate routes overlapped was nothing short of a miraculous coincidence. But that made no difference to the evidence. Sid’s description tallied on most points with that of Tom Biggins, the landlord of the “Loaded Wain”. There was no shadow of doubt left that the man who had set out from Brook Cottage was the same man who had turned up the lane to Chalklands and later murdered poor William Rother. He had taken a fair time for the journey, but doubtless he had stopped on the way for a cigarette.

  Meredith lost no time back at headquarters in making his way to Major Forest’s office. Unfortunately the Chief was out and would not be back until after lunch. Meredith, curbing his impatience therefore, shut himself in his own office and began to write up his notes. This done he settled down to a piece of personal routine work which he always imposed on himself when dealing with a particularly complex investigation. This was to run through all the documentary matter connected with the case since its outset, and to catalogue all those points which still required elucidation. At the end of half an hour he had drawn up the following list:

  Points In The Case Which Remain Unexplained

  Why had Janet Rother met John Rother with that suit-case on the lawn at Chalklands a week before the blood-stained Hillman was found under Cissbury Ring?

  Why were no buttons, cuff-links, studs, or brace-ends found in the lime along with the severed bones, the identity-disc, and the belt-clasps?

  Who sent the faked telegram from Littlehampton?

  Who is the Cloaked Man?

  Where and how exactly had the body of John Rother been cut up?

  Who placed the portions of the body on the kiln? Had Janet Rother told the truth about burning that diary?

  Who killed John and William Rother? What motive?

  Who typed the false confession purporting to have been written by William Rother?

  Where was John Rother’s skull?

  Why had John Rother spent a number of week-ends in Bramber disguised as Jeremy Reed the naturalist?

  Satisfied that no important point had been omitted, Meredith decided to talk over this list with Major Forest after lunch. New links in a chain of evidence were often forged when two people put all the clues of a case under the microscope.

  Over the cold beef and salad back at Arundel Road Tony asked his father with a false air of innocence:

  “Have you seen Slippery Sid, Dad?”

  “Perhaps,” smiled Meredith.

  “Oh, come on, Dad, you might tell the truth. He was able to tell you something, wasn’t he?”

  “As a matter of fact, Tony, he was—quite a lot.”

  “I thought he might,” crowed Tony, feeling in his pocket and drawing out a crumpled brochure. He handed it across to his father.

  “What the devil’s this?”

  “Illustrated catalogue of those wireless sets I was talking about. I thought you might be interested,” said Tony slickly, adding with commendable cunning, “now.”

  “Such persistence deserves some sort of reward, eh? What time do you leave work today? Six o’clock? All right. If I’m not called away I’ll meet you outside Green’s at ten past. And mind you’re punctual.”

  “You needn’t worry about that, Dad,” grinned Tony. “Can I have another slice of beef, Mother, please?”

  “You’re smart,” barked Major Forest as Meredith entered his office. “Just finished this report you left on my desk. Good work, eh? Moving—what? Sit down and talk. Smoke? Right. Now where exactly are we going to start?”

  Meredith thrust his questionnaire under the Chief’s nose.

  “With number one, sir, if you agree—and work down.”

  Major Forest scooped up the paper and glanced quickly down it.

  “Eh? What’s this? Oh, I see. Catalogue of the outstanding snags. All right, Meredith, we’ll deal with ’em one by one as you suggest. First—‘Why had Janet Rother met John Rother?’ etc. Well—why?”

  “Can’t say, sir. All through this case I’ve been puzzled by the relationship existing between the girl and her brother-in-law. Barnet reckoned that he was head-over-heels, and that the girl was just play-acting. When I questioned her later about that visit to the kiln she suggested the same thing. Playing up to John Rother just for the fun of it. But if that were the case it seems a bid odd that she should risk sneaking out of the house in the dead of night to meet him.”

  “Did you question her about it?”

  “Yes—she denied ever having met him at night.”

  “Witness reliable?”

  “Very.”

  “So we’ve really got no answer to number one? Right. Number two—‘Why were no buttons, cuff links…’ etc. Ah, yes. A strange point this, Meredith. We discussed the matter before, I remember, but didn’t get very far. I suppose we must take it for granted that the
clothes were thrown into the kiln?”

  “I think so,” answered Meredith slowly. “You see there must have been blood-stains, and the chap wouldn’t want to leave evidence like that lying around.”

  “Quite. It certainly looks as if the best thing for him to have done was to chuck the clothes on the kiln and destroy them. Point is he doesn’t seem to have done so. Your men combed through the lime thoroughly, I take it?”

  “Sifted every inch.”

  “Umph!” The Chief rubbed his chin and pondered for a moment. Then: “I suppose you realize, Meredith, that before he dissected the body he would have to undress it? Quite—you did. Well, supposing our man decided for some reason not to burn the clothes, could he have taken them with him when he trekked over the downs?”

  Meredith slapped his thigh.

  “Good heavens! The attaché-case! I reckoned, of course, that he might have a rubber-sheet and surgical saw in the case. I hadn’t thought of the clothes. Yes—he could have got ’em away in that all right.”

  “Was he carrying an attaché-case when Wimble the carrier saw him in Bramber?”

  “No—a suit-case. So Wimble declared. I took it that he had hidden that case up on the downs above Steyning with his Jeremy Reed disguise in it. Perhaps the attaché-case was inside the suit-case.”

  “Very possibly. Anyway, I suggest you hunt around for Rother’s clothes. We’ll assume that they weren’t burnt, eh? Might have buried ’em in the garden at Brook Cottage. All right—number three, then. ‘Who sent the faked telegram?’’’

  “The Cloaked Man, of course,” snapped Meredith at once. “That telegram was mentioned in detail in that faked confession which we found on William’s body. We’ve got to assume now that the Cloaked Man wrote that confession; therefore he must have sent the telegram, or caused it to be sent, otherwise he wouldn’t have known anything about it.”

  “Q.E.D.,” grinned the Chief. “We’ll accept that. Number four. A stinger this, Meredith. ‘Who is the Cloaked Man?’’’

  “Give it up, sir. No idea at the moment.”

  “Same here. Well—number five. ‘Where and how exactly had the body of John Rother been cut up?’ You still stick to your earlier theory, I suppose—that the dissection was done on a large rubber sheet or tarpaulin in those gorse bushes under Cissbury by means of a surgical knife and saw?” Meredith nodded. “And that the remains were then wrapped in the sheet, driven to Chalklands in Rother’s own car by the Cloaked Man, and there hidden away in a metal-lined cabin-trunk, probably in the car inspection-pit?”

  “That’s it, sir.”

  “Any reason to alter your opinion?”

  “None, sir, at the moment.”

  “Six,” went on Major Forest. “ ‘Who placed the portions of the body on the kiln? Was Janet Rother…’ etc. Well?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Rother did that part of the job right enough,” asserted Meredith. “This Continental flight of hers proves, more or less, that she’s guilty. The evidence I gathered from the chalk on her shoes suggested that she visited the kiln more than once during the week following John’s murder. She explained this fact away by saying that the farmhouse was on a mountain of chalk. But I noticed that my own shoes during my investigations up there never once showed chalk scratches on the upper part of the toe-cap. Just a rime of chalk round the welt—that’s all. No—I reckon that her confederate left her to carry out that gruesome act in the tragedy.”

  “Which brings us,” said Major Forest, “to the crux of the whole matter—your main question: ‘Who killed John and William Rother? What motive?’ Far as I can see—if you answer that you ought to be able to answer all the other problems.”

  “Not necessarily, sir,” pointed out Meredith politely. “It’s quite possible to know who committed a murder without being able to prove a single one of the circumstantial facts surrounding the case. This case, for example. I think we’re more or less justified in supposing that the same man committed both murders. That faked confession incorporated so many of the discovered details in the first murder that we can’t help but think that the man who placed that document in William’s pocket knew as much, if not more, than we did about John’s death. All our evidence points to the fact that the Cloaked Man did both jobs. But when it comes to substantiating this claim by proving up to the hilt certain problematic features connected with the two cases, we’re up a tree. Half these questions still remain unanswerable. We’re not even in a position to advance a theory. See how I mean, sir?”

  The Chief chuckled at Meredith’s emphatic exposition.

  “We’ll have you lecturing at the Yard yet, you know. The Problems and Principles of Criminal Investigation. How’s that for a title? But I quite see your point, Meredith. This next question about the faked confession rather illustrates what you were saying. Even if we knew for certain that the Cloaked Man murdered William we should still have to prove that he shoved that confession in the dead man’s pocket. Do you think he did?”

  Meredith nodded.

  “Unless it was Janet Rother, which I’m inclined to doubt. My idea is that the murderer combed through his victim’s pockets before he threw him over the pit, to see if the note, which we assume he must have received fixing the rendezvous, was actually on his person. He probably extracted this note, wearing gloves, and substituted the confession. I can’t prove that, of course. It’s still bound to be pure assumption.”

  “Quite. And are you prepared to assume anything as to the whereabouts of John Rother’s skull? That’s the next query on your list.”

  “No, sir. That’s one of the questions which is absolutely unanswerable. I haven’t the faintest idea where that skull has got to. I’ve already put forward my theories as to why he didn’t pass it through the kiln with the other portions of the body.”

  “Which brings us to your final question—‘Why had John Rother spent a number of week-ends in Bramber?’ etc. Any clearer now on this subject?”

  “Well,” admitted Meredith, “I’ve had no reason to abandon my theory of blackmail. I still think that the Cloaked Man knew something about John’s behaviour toward Janet, and that he was threatening to tell William. Mrs. Rother may even have been in a plot to egg John on and thus get him under the thumb of the Cloaked Man. After all, that pretty pair of rascals were out for money. John and William were murdered for money. They had to be got out of the way before Janet could inherit. Blackmail would naturally appeal to a mercenary-minded couple like that.”

  The Chief Constable nodded an agreement, lit his pipe, leaned back in his chair and stared for a long time at the lazily curling smoke. Meredith, well trained in his superior’s idiosyncrasies, knew better than to interrupt. The Old Man was thinking. Suddenly he came out of his reverie, jerked himself upright, and levelled his pipe at Meredith as if it had been an automatic.

  “Have you ever thought of this?” he began abruptly. “That John’s murderer never really intended to kill William? Struck me as we were running through those questions. I’m inclined to reason something like this. The Cloaked Man murdered John and then tried to work it that suspicion fell on William. You remember yourself how, at an earlier point in your investigation, you felt pretty sure in your own mind that William was the murderer. First there was that false telegram from Littlehampton. The murderer knew well enough that William would set off to see his aunt. He could anticipate more or less what time William would leave Littlehampton, and smashed the dashboard clock so that the hands stopped at a plausible time—plausible, that is, where William’s movements were concerned. He staged the murder near Findon because he knew that William was bound to pass near that village on his return journey from Littlehampton. Place and time were beautifully gauged, as it happens, because William could easily have been under Cissbury at 9.55, which was the hour at which the clock had stopped.

  “To further William’s difficulty in proving an alibi Janet Rother walks up on
to the down, or at any rate is absent from Chalklands, during the time that William could have been doing the job. She avers that she returned to the farmhouse at 10.15 and that William was not then at Chalklands. In other words, knowing that the Cloaked Man was going to stop that clock at 9.55, she was out to make William’s movements appear even more suspicious in our eyes. Even if William had returned before 10.15 he would have been unable to appeal to Janet for corroboration, because she had most annoyingly absented herself. That left us with Kate Abingworth’s word alone. An elderly, emotional woman who would be at the mercy of a clever K.C. in a cross-examination. So much for that.

  “The motive was obvious. John was alienating his wife’s affections. The Cloaked Man knew we shouldn’t be long in finding out that particular bit of gossip. To bring the murder home to Chalklands it was necessary to pass the portions of the body through the kiln. Here Janet came in handy. It was natural that we should suspect William of the murder as soon as we learnt how an attempt had been made to destroy the body on his own door-step, so to speak. This brings me to another very interesting point. That question about the buttons and cuff-links. Suppose the clothes were not passed through the kiln? What then? It was imperative that there should be no question as to the identity of the remains. So what does our murderer do? Gets Janet to drop the identity-disc and John’s belt into the kiln along with some portion of the body, knowing quite well that once the bones were discovered these articles would also come to light.

  “To strengthen the suspicion that William was responsible for his brother’s death was the fact that he was sole heir to John’s estate. Unfortunately the Cloaked Man underrated the intelligence of the police, with the result that William was not arrested. An awkward factor when it came to the fulfilment of their scheme to nab the money. So, aware that the police were not prepared to do away with William, our man decided to take on the job himself. Even then he had not lost hope, as that faked confession clearly indicates. He still hoped to throw dust in our eyes by staging a suicide, the apparent reason for which was to be William’s knowledge that he was under police suspicion. Honestly, Meredith, that second trick might have worked if William had not written that note to Aldous Barnet. That was the unexpected fly in the real murderer’s ointment. That note may hang him yet, Meredith. That’s my theory for what it’s worth. You needn’t adopt it, but I think it’s worth a good deal of careful consideration.”