August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  "Mr. Pons, it's like this. Harton was quite a man with the ladies. He was engaged for a good while to the daughter of his landlord, Miss Ethel Coster, but their engagement never seemed to get anywhere. A fortnight ago it came out that Harton had taken up with Miss Alice Fisher, and meant to marry her. She'd been engaged to Ronald Farrow, and had broken their engagement. Perhaps she was tired of waiting for him. Sometimes engagements run a long time in the country."

  "Had this one?"

  "Yes, Mr. Pons. Three years. And naturally, Farrow was furious. He put the blame on Harton, though it's my opinion that if there's any blame to be fixed it should be fixed on the lady, since she's the one to make up her mind and the man usually hasn't much to say about it. Now there's talk about that Farrow made some threatening remarks concerning Harton. But Farrow is known to be a blustering sort, unlikely to take any kind of action. All promise and no fulfilment, if you know what I mean, Mr. Pons."

  "Ah, but sometimes the worm may turn, Sergeant."

  "I know, Mr. Pons. I'm afraid that people hereabouts really think it has turned. That's why they're all so close-mouthed and so eager to believe in Harton's suicide. Because, for all his bluster, Farrow is more popular than Harton was. Harton wasn't a good mixer, if it came down to it —didn't drink much, even though he went down to one of the pubs now and then for a game of darts."

  "Everyone is capable of murder, Sergeant," reflected Pons. "Even if you are convinced Farrow is innocent."

  "I am, it's true, sir. But then, you may be right, and I wrong. You come to know people one-sided like, and you set them in your mind in a sort of groove. They might not be that way at all. But here we are at the scene, Mr. Pons. Now you may have a look around for yourself."

  As he spoke, the car drew up into the driveway of a building some sixty feet in length, before which two constables stood on guard. From it rose the voices of several dogs, which carried sharply to the ear in the damp morning air. The mists were now rising a little, but still held to the countryside, filling the vales, so that trees seemed to rise out of them without trunks, making a spectral appearance in the landscape.

  Sergeant Hetherman led the way into that end of the building which was clearly not used for kennels. The door opened upon a large room, obviously that of the manager and trainer. From this room another door on the right opened to an inner room, adjacent to the kennels, and a second door opened into a small room with a desk and some shelving, from which in turn two rather wide windows opened on the lawn outside the building. It was obvious that it was in this small room that Harton had died, for the high stool on which he had been sitting to work at the old-fashioned desk still lay on its side, and chalk marks, together with a splash of congealed blood on the floor, indicated the position of the body when found. Sergeant Hetherman led us directly into this room.

  "As you see, Mr. Pons, this is where the body lay. And there," he said, pointing to the sill of one of the open windows, "is the cord. The bullet entered Harton's head just above and behind the left eye, passed through, and lodged over there in the wall. You can see where we dug it out."

  Pons walked over to the window and examined the cord. "Sixteen-ply," he murmured. "And seven feet of it in over the sill." He looked out the window. "It lies slack down the wall and across the grass. I take it that is the copse over there—just coming through the mist, Sergeant?"

  "Yes, Mr. Pons."

  "Dear me. He would have had to reel in the cord to get a tight enough hold on it to set off the rifle."

  "Yes, sir."

  Pons gazed at the end of the cord. "Cut with scissors, I see."

  "I hadn't noticed."

  "I fancy you can't miss the obvious pressure marks from both sides," said Pons. "A knife tears from one side. The cut is very clean. I submit it was made by small pocket scissors, not by large blades."

  He dropped the cord and scrutinized the window-sill, running his fingertips lightly over it along the course of the cord. He leaned out the window once more, peering intently at the grass-covered ground beneath, and made clucking sounds with his tongue.

  "Prints, too," he murmured. "Did any of your men walk up to this window, Sergeant?"

  "No, Mr. Pons."

  "Well, well, let us just see."

  Pons turned and went out of the building. Presently he came into view outside the window, where he immediately went on his knees to peer intently at scarcely visible footprints in the still wet grass. A heavy dew made a faint outline of footprints leading up to the window and back toward the copse —or, quite possibly, the other way round. They were the prints of a man's heavy shoes, but were not, I judged, exact enough to enable the shoes themselves to be identified from them, for the dew outlined only the general indentation, and some of the grass forming its outline had already sprung back into place from the previous evening, when the footprints had presumably been made, for dew lay in the depression of the prints as well as outside.

  Pons, meanwhile, paced off several of the steps. His stride was manifestly longer than the stride of the man who had made the footprints, even at an area where the steps indicated that whoever had made them had been running. He looked back at us, watching him from the window.

  "Are these not short steps for a man with such large feet, Sergeant?" he asked.

  "I would say so, Mr. Pons."

  "Hm! Singular, singular indeed." He got down on his knees once more, peering intently at one footprint after another. "Uneven, too," he said. "In one area, he has been running. This suggests nothing, Sergeant?"

  "I fail to see it, sir."

  "Would someone about to commit suicide act in such haste? Surely deliberation is the key to suicide."

  "In most cases. An exception certainly isn't impossible."

  "But unlikely."

  Pons picked up a strand or two of what I took to be cobweb; in another place he took from the footprint he was examining what appeared to be the torn fragment of a long leaf.

  He got up finally, brushing at wet patches on his knees. "I commend these prints to your earnest attention, Sergeant," said Pons. "They are highly significant. Come along."

  We hastened outside to join Pons, who was following alongside the line of footprints toward the copse. From time to time he bent down, picked up some minuscule object, and flicked it away or returned it to the place from which he had taken it. He was careful not to tread upon the white cord which lay beside the prints and ran up through the bushes to vanish behind the leaves of the copse. His eyes were aglow with suppressed excitement, as if the footprints told him far more than was visible to any other eye. In this manner we reached the copse.

  Pons walked carefully around to where he could see the rifle propped in the crotch of a tree and supported by a limb under the stock. It was aimed from among leaves and pendant branches directly at the window. The white cord was still tied to the trigger. For the moment, however, he gave this but a cursory examination; he was still intent upon the prints, and he studied their leaving and entering the copse. Not satisfied with his scrutiny from his knees, he lay prone, regardless of the wet grass, and gazed at the prints with singular care. On the far side of the copse the prints were lost in deep grass which divided the copse from a gravel path.

  Having seen so much, Pons returned to the rifle. His face wore the look of a dog on the scent. Without a word, he examined the loop of the cord around the broken branch.

  "Freshly broken, I see," said Pons.

  "Yes, sir."

  "I submit it was for this purpose. Would not the sound of a breaking branch have disturbed Harton?"

  "It might have."

  "He could have heard it, in any event. But there is nothing to show that it was not broken after Harton's death."

  "No, sir."

  "Just come over here, Sergeant. Let me call your attention to the bark of the twig at the point of contact with the cord, and to the cord itself where it passes over the twig."

  Sergeant Hetherman turned puzzled eyes upon the twig and the co
rd. His honest young face reflected his perplexity, but he fore- bore to put it into words.

  "Most instructive," murmured Pons in his most irritating manner, without any intention of enlightening us.

  Pons now turned his back upon the rifle and again resumed his scrutiny of the ground, now and then again dropping to his knees, as he progressed through the copse. When he came to the little open stretch of deeper grass beyond, he paused.

  "Your men have walked through here, Sergeant?" he asked.

  "Only along the near edge, Mr. Pons. We were looking for the footprints."

  "You did not find them."

  "No, Mr. Pons. Someone had passed through during the previous twenty-four hours —a child, perhaps, or a large animal —but certainly not the owner of the shoes or boots which made the prints leading to the kennels."

  "So that it may have been that the tracks we followed came out from the kennels and returned there."

  "We haven't discarded that possibility, Mr. Pons."

  "It is always wise to keep an open mind, Sergeant. The obvious is sometimes most to be distrusted."

  Pons pushed on through the deep grass to the gravel path, at which he looked with some annoyance.

  "Where does this path lead, Sergeant?" he asked.

  "To the road on the one side, and on the other to a lane which doubles back into Haslemere."

  "A pity it is here. And the road?"

  "The road is a continuation of the one we followed to the kennels, sir. It goes on to Bordon and turns north again for Godalm- ing."

  Pons stood for a moment deep in thought. Then he turned abruptly back toward the copse, passed through it, and went on to the Cloverdale Kennels once more, returning to the room where Harton had met his death. We were at his heels.

  "If Harton sat at this desk, he must have been working," Pons said as Sergeant Hetherman came up behind him. "At what?"

  "Mr. Pons, he was writing a personal letter."

  "To whom?"

  "I have it here." The Sergeant took a single sheet of notepaper from a leather folder in his breast pocket and handed it to Pons.

  I read it over Pons's shoulder.

  "The Kennels.

  "Fifth.

  "Look —aren't you making rather a fool of yourself with all this threatening and so on? It sounds like the devil, and it makes you look a good deal worse than if you just kept still. I've destroyed your notes —because you'd really look a fool if they fell into anybody else's hands, wouldn't you? By the way, I'd be obliged if you'd send back my. ..."

  Thus far Harton had got in his letter when he was interrupted. There was, however, nothing to show that he was at work on this letter when he was shot —no blot of ink, or scrawl of the pen,

  which might have been expected if the writer had been shot at this point.

  Pons's thoughts had taken the same direction. "There would seem to be no way of demonstrating that this letter had not been begun earlier in the day, Sergeant."

  "No, Mr. Pons."

  "So that, if he were engaged on a report which someone might find expedient should never see the light of day, for example, such a report could have been abstracted from the desk before the body was discovered."

  "It's quite possible, sir. But I wouldn't know what kind of a report, Mr. Pons."

  "Suppose he were preparing a report on his assistant, Sergeant. There are any number of possibilities."

  "I see, sir," said the Sergeant dubiously.

  "At what time, approximately, did the event take place?"

  "That seems to have been determined quite exactly, Mr. Pons," said Sergeant Hetherman with some animation. "The shot was heard by several people. Roger Ballinger was walking dogs, as was his custom at that hour. Coster was in one of his fields, just finishing trimming the hedge. Mrs. Coster was in the house. Miss Ethel was out beside one of the buildings on the farm teaching a new dog to retrieve. While none of them looked at a clock, all are agreed that the shot sounded just at dusk —a few minutes past nine o'clock I make it."

  "Did anyone investigate it?"

  "No. Coster thought someone was shooting at jackdaws. Mrs. Coster heard it but didn't register it clearly as a shot. Miss Ethel thought it was the backfiring of someone's motor. And Ballinger took it for boys at target practise. He had heard shots earlier in the evening, and seen some boys from Haslemere cycling out to a target range; he thought one of them might have fired a parting shot for the evening before returning to the village."

  "Then Ballinger discovered the body?"

  "Yes, Mr. Pons. When he came back, he put the dogs into their kennels; then he went around to the office and found Harton."

  Pons looked at his watch. "It is now eleven. Presumably Costers will be about the farm. I should like to talk to them."

  "You'll find them very straightforward people, sir," said Sergeant Hetherman. "We follow that lane beyond the copse; that will take us directly to their farm."

  The three Costers were at home when we arrived at their pleasant

  little country house. Learning that Pons and I had not yet broken our fast, Mrs. Coster, a buxom, capable woman with flashing brown eyes, insisted upon preparing bacon and eggs for us, while Sergeant Hetherman explained our presence.

  "It was a great shock to all of us, Mr. Pons," said Mrs. Coster. "Edward was like one of the family, you might say. Of course, he was planning to leave us, now that it was likely he'd be married."

  "Did he at any time show signs of nervousness or irritability, of being afraid for his life?" asked Pons.

  "Never," said Mrs. Coster firmly.

  "He wasn't afraid of nought nor anybody," said Coster in rough tones. His voice rumbled up from deep within his stout, hard- muscled body.

  "But he told me just last week he'd had some threatening notes," said Miss Ethel Coster in a gentle voice.

  "Could we see them?" asked Pons.

  "I believe he destroyed them," she answered. "He didn't take them seriously."

  Mrs. Coster gave her daughter a hard look.

  "How did Harton react to these threats, Miss Coster?" pressed Pons.

  "He was annoyed."

  "He didn't mention their author?"

  "No, Mr. Pons. I suppose they weren't signed — though he didn't say so."

  "Did he acknowledge any enemies?"

  Here Coster put in an answer. "Them as didn't like Pelham didn't like Harton. You know how 'tis with people."

  "Mr. Coster," said his wife warningly.

  "And there are people who don't like Mr. Pelham, I take it," said Pons reflectively.

  "Tain't so much him, as what 'e does with his dogs."

  "Mr. Coster," said his wife again.

  "And what is that, Mr. Coster?" insisted Pons.

  "They do say —crooked racing."

  "I see. And people would quite understandably believe Harton had a hand in it."

  "People who didn't know him might," said Mrs. Coster quickly. "None of us would."

  Pons gazed at her thoughtfully. "Where were you, Mrs. Coster, when you heard the shot?"

  "Right in this room, Mr. Pons."

  "And you, Mr. Coster?"

  "Up in the field."

  Pons turned to Miss Ethel Coster.

  "I was outside," she said.

  "Can you show me, Miss Coster?"

  "Certainly."

  She rose at once and led the way outside. She was not so much attractive as appealing, a woman close to thirty years of age, I judged, and there was a confident ease about her movements. She was plainly what most men would call "all woman." As soon as she stepped outside, her dog fell in at her heels.

  She paused beside a long grain-trough. "I stood about here, Mr. Pons."

  Pons bent, picked up one of a pair of heavy boots lying there beside the trough. He threw it, turning to the dog as he did so to cry, "Fetch, sir!"

  The dog gave Pons a curious look, but did not move.

  Miss Coster began to laugh. "You don't seem to have any power over dogs, M
r. Pons. Perhaps the ladies resist you, too?"

  Pons smiled. "I remain dogless and a bachelor by choice, Miss Coster. But of course your dog is not really a retriever, is he?"

  "No, Mr. Pons. I tried with little success for an hour or more last evening to teach him to retrieve. You see how little he has learned."

  Pons turned and looked back in the direction of the Cloverdale Kennels. "The shot must have been heard quite clearly from here," he said thoughtfully.

  "It was, Mr. Pons. But you know, with all the calling to the dog, and the dog's barking, I couldn't be sure it was a shot. It was only afterwards —when. ..." Here she paused and bit her lip, the only sign of emotion she had so far shown at the death of the man who had until so recently been her fiance.

  "Well, we must not keep Mrs. Coster's food waiting," said Pons briskly.

  After a delicious repast, we started back for the Kennels once more, Pons having expressed the wish to talk to Roger Ballinger. The morning mists had now risen; sunlight shone from every drop of dew, and the countryside glowed with green, touched by heather now beginning to bloom. The great mound of Hindhead rose in the northwest, and the slopes of the generally high country where Haslemere lay —the highest land in Surrey —aglow in the morning sun, set Pons to musing of that distinguished citizen of Haslemere named Oglethorpe who had founded Georgia in the United States, and of the Dolmetsch family of musicians who made the town their home —all this somewhat to Sergeant Hetherman's perplexity, for, being unacquainted with Pons's annoying manner of speaking about anything but the matter in hand, he was woefully bewildered.

  Ballinger was not alone at the Kennels when we arrived. The owner was with him. Ballinger was a lithe young man of twenty- five, while Pelham was a thickset man of fifty or more; the one was as polished as the other was rough.

  "I'm glad Hetherman had the good sense to call you in, Mr. Pons," said Pelham at being introduced to us. "Though it seems perfectly clear to me. I understand they've detained Farrow for questioning. They'll have it out of him."

  "If I have a vice, it is distrust of the obvious, Mr. Pelham," said Pons.

  "Stuff and nonsense, sir," said Pelham gruffly. "It's a simple matter. Either Harton committed suicide or he didn't. He had no reason to commit suicide. ..."