Resorting to Murder
Page 27
***
The day after Kenneth packed up his fly rods and left for the north, Arthur went on a walking tour. He went a certain distance by train, and after that he used youth hostels on some nights, and on others nothing at all, for he was an experienced camper, and could make shift for days by himself with a sleeping bag and a small primus stove. Four days later he passed the night in a tangle of thickets just above Howorth’s Farm. He had walked twenty miles the day before without putting his foot on a man-made road. He had provisions for seven days with him, War and Peace in the three-volume edition, and a strong pair of field glasses. Luckily the weather remained fine.
On the fourth day he saw Kenneth, a walking-stick in his hand instead of a fishing rod, coming up the hill by the path which ran past his encampment.
Hastily brushing himself down he slid out of the undergrowth, and made a detour, striking the path higher up.
Thus the cousins met, face to face, on a turn in the track, out of sight of the farm.
When greetings had been exchanged, Arthur said, ‘I’m based on a hostel over at Langdale. I thought I’d take a walk in this direction and watch you catch some fish.’
‘Not today,’ said Kenneth. ‘The dry weather has sucked the life out of the stream. The old boy down at the farm swears it’s going to rain tonight, and that I’ll get some sport tomorrow. Today I’m giving it a rest. Have you any ideas on what it would be fun to do? I don’t know the countryside myself.’
Arthur pretended to consider.
‘It’s the best part of three miles,’ he said, ‘but let’s go and look at that pot-hole I found five years ago.’
His cousin was agreeable.
It took them an hour, and Kenneth’s life depended solely upon whether they happened to meet anyone. A single shepherd, seeing them from a distance, would have made it necessary for Arthur to choose another time.
They met no one, and no one saw them.
Presently they were gazing down into the hole.
‘You can almost hear the water running,’ said Arthur. ‘Look out, man—don’t lean too far—!’
***
A month later Arthur sat again in the room of Mr Rumbold, the solicitor.
‘Tragic,’ said the lawyer. ‘I don’t suppose we shall ever know the truth. He must have gone out for a walk and fallen down one of those holes. There are a lot of them in that district, I understand.’
‘Dozens,’ said Arthur, ‘and it would take a month to explore a single one of them thoroughly.’
‘You were on holiday, yourself, when it happened?’
‘I was on a walking tour. I may have been less than forty miles from the accident when it happened,’ said Arthur. He never lied unnecessarily.
‘A tragic coincidence,’ said the lawyer.
Towards the end of the interview Arthur broached what was in his mind.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘in the circumstances—I know the formalities will take a little time—but might I be able to have a little money?’
‘Well, I’m not sure,’ said the lawyer.
‘But—’ Arthur took a firm hold of himself. ‘You said yourself,’ he went on, ‘that it all went to the survivor.’
‘Can you prove that you are the survivor?’
There was a long pause.
‘I suppose not. Not prove it. Everyone assumes—I mean, he left all his things at the farm. No one’s heard a word from him since.’
‘The law,’ said Mr Rumbold, ‘is very slow to assume that a man is dead. If, in all the circumstances, it appears probable that a man has died, you will, after a suitable time has elapsed, be permitted to deal with his estate—’
‘A suitable time?’ said Arthur hollowly.
‘Seven years is the usual period.’
‘Seven years—but it’s crazy! Mr Rumbold, surely, in a case like this, where it’s obvious that an accident—’
‘If Kenneth is dead,’ said Mr Rumbold, ‘and, as I say, the law will presume no such thing from his mere absence, but if he is dead, then I am not at all sure that it was an accident.’
When Arthur had recovered his voice he said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘I tell you this in confidence,’ said Mr Rumbold, ‘as it was told me. But your cousin has been suffering, since the war, from a deteriorating condition of the spine. One specialist had gone so far as to say that he was unlikely to live out the year. I’m afraid he may have made his mind up, perhaps on the spur of the moment, to end himself. So you see—’
Arthur saw. He saw only too clearly.
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