The Crimson Rambler

by John Russell Fearn

  “Mr. Crespin hasn’t helped you on it at all?”

  “The manuscript? No. Maybe I’ve tossed out an idea or two concerning it, but otherwise he hasn’t seen it. It’s my own idea entirely, but since there is something wrong with it—even apart from the length—I’ll have to call in help.”

  Gossage nodded slowly, then with a smile he got to his feet.

  “I’m simply taking up your time sitting here, yarning, Miss Darnworth—and you’ve doubtless got, a lot to do. I know I have. I’ll be on my way.”

  He turned to look at her frankly.

  “Get a shock when you learned the truth about your mother.”

  “Let’s just say—a surprise,” she countered. “I’m glad it’s all cleared up, though. It’ll make life a good deal easier.”

  “See you later,” he said, and began to stroll back toward the house.

  All the time he walked he kept hearing Sheila’s words over and over again, every detail of the story she had outlined. Of course the conditions were almost identical with those in which her father had been murdered. Yet she did not know—or apparently did not—how her father had been murdered. It seemed, though, that the two methods could hardly be coincidence.

  Gossage spent a busy and profitable afternoon in company with Inspector Hoyle of the local force and Divisional. Inspector Craddock. The afternoon’s work yielded an air-rifle, B.S.A., dredged up from Morgan’s Deep, which Gossage prompt1y dispatched to Scotland Yard’s forensic ballistics department by Blair the moment he had come back from London.

  There were other things Gossage had seen, and was thinking about deeply. Footprints—definitely those of Elaine and Bride from where he had seen them standing beside Morgan’s Deep—and curious gouged markings on the branch of a tree crooked like an elbow and overhanging the pond. There was something about those markings.... Something—

  He was still brooding about it when Blair returned to the manor. As usual he and the chief inspector sought the latter’s bedroom for privacy.

  “Colonel Fordyce made his examination while I waited,” Blair said. “There’s no doubt about it. That rifle fired the slug that killed Darnworth. Specimen shots show an exact striker pin match.”

  Gossage said: “Suppose you wanted to get as high as the roof without ladders. What would you do?“

  “Why,” said Blair, “I’d try and shin up one of the gutter pipes, of it would hold me—if I couldn’t use a ladder.”

  “Any of the three pipes would hold you, Harry. I’ve had a look at them. Solid jobs, and square, too, which maker them easier to climb.”

  “Are you suggesting that somebody climbed on to the roof?”

  “I am. In fact the more I think of it, the more certain I become. After dinner tonight we’re going to have Preston lend us one of the ladders and we’re going up on the roof for a look around.”

  Blair considered. “If somebody did get up to the roof without leaving a trace, what happened then? How did they get in the boxroom?”

  “Presumably by a rope, and the only place to fasten that would be round the chimney.”

  “And the only two people outside who might be accountable for such happenings are Elaine Darnworth and Bride,” Blair said. “So that is the lay of the land, is it? And they were near Morgan’s Deep for no apparent reason except geological. I could think up a better alibi myself.”

  ‘I’ll remember that when you commit a murder,” Gossage chuckled getting to his feet. “Unless, of course, I happen to be the victim…. Well, I suppose we’d better start cleaning up for dinner—”

  Gossage paused, an astonished look on his red face.

  “Anything wrong?” Blair asked in surprise.

  “I don’t know whether to call it wrong or not,” Gossage said. “It’s just that I suddenly remembered Elaine telling me that she is an underwater swimmer, a golf player, a tennis player, and a gymnast.”

  After dinner Gossage found Preston and told him: “I want to borrow a ladder. I’m going up on the roof.”

  The handyman nodded promptly, feeling for his keys.

  “And so y’shall, sir. In fact, I’ll put the ladder up for you. Mighty heavy.”

  “Thanks,” Gossage said. “Which reminds me—Harry, buzz upstairs and get your flashlight. We’re going to need it.”

  Blair nodded and hurried off. When he reached the outdoors again in the still, mild night he found Preston in the act of heaving an extended ladder into position against the end of the front of the manor, Gossage standing close by watching him.

  “Right up to the gutter, Preston, so we can get on the roof.”

  “Y’not going to enjoy it much up there, sir,” Preston told him, his form faintly visible in the starlight. “And it’s a risky job in the dark. The roof’s on a pretty steep slope.”

  “I know, but I’ll risk it. I’ve got soles on these golf shoes of mine. How about your shoes, Harry?”

  Blair flashed on the torch and the beam fell upon the pair of goloshes he had donned, evidently when upstairs.

  “You think of everything,” Gossage murmured, then after sundry heavings the ladder was in place and he said to Preston: “Better stay at the bottom and stand guard—just in case anybody should come out of the house and blunder into it. We shan’t be long.”

  They reached the roof, and started to climb the slates. They were breathing hard when they gained the chimneybreast, clinging to it as though they had met a long lost friend.

  Then they both sat astride the apex of the roof and looked about them.

  Gossage turned the flashlight on the chimneybreast. A low murmur of satisfaction escaped him.

  “Rustic brick, Harry. That’s just the stuff we want! Nothing like it for shearing fibres from a rope—granting that one has ever been used up here.”

  Gossage became silent, busily searching—and Blair, too. They examined every scrap of the brickwork where the beam touched, working their way round, but it was not until they were it the back of the chimney that Gossage found the traces he sought, low down, at the base of the stack.

  “Hairs galore, and unless I’m crazy they’re rope fibres,” he muttered, pointing to traces of them adhering to the rough brickwork. “This is all I need.”

  He pulled a cellophane envelope from his pocket, put several of the hairs into it.

  “Analysis can establish whether or not they are rope fibres. If that should be so we start looking for something to match ’em. Anyway, let’s get down.”

  Gossage reached the ladder first and directed the beam of the flashlight along the slates for Blair’s guidance.

  The sergeant had just grasped the top of the ladder when Gossage muttered something. In swinging the torch beam round it had flashed across the gutter and he turned the beam back on the gutter.

  “What’s the trouble, sir?”

  “I don’t know whether it’s trouble or luck,” the inspector answered. “Won’t take me long to find out, though. Let’s get down.”

  He continued the descent to the ground and when Blair had dropped beside him he turned to Preston.

  “Move this ladder a bit further along, Preston, will you? To about eight feet from the boxroom window.”

  When finally the ladder was in position again Gossage climbed it by himself and from below Blair and Preston could see the flashlight wavering and sweeping as he examined the pipe carefully.

  Presently he descended.

  “Now move it to the same position on the other side of the front door,” he instructed. “I mean about eight feet away from the left end of the house front, near Sergeant Blair’s bedroom window.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WIRE EXPERIMENT

  Again Preston obeyed, and again Gossage climbed.

  When he came down he said: “That’ll be all,” and Preston took the ladder away.

  “What’s all this about, sir?” Blair asked.

  “I don’t know yet for sure—but it may be the answer I’ve been looking for. Let’s see now….”
/>
  Feeling in his pocket Gossage brought out a rule and began to measure carefully along the base of the wall. He started about ten feet from the left of the façade and finished up approximately the same distance from the opposite end. In silence Blair looked on, holding the torch beam steady. At the end of the performance Gossage closed the rule and stood thinking.

  “Very interesting,” he commented finally. “For a distance of approximately nine feet the paint is scraped off the iron gutter.”

  “Oh?” Blair could not help sounding vague.

  “Make the chimney breast the apex of an isosceles triangle,” Gossage said slowly. “Take the left side of the gutter-scrape limit as the B point of the triangle, and make the right hand gutter-scrape limit as the C point. The apex we will call A. The scraped portion of the gutter then becomes the base line of the triangle. And what do you get?”

  “I’m not sure, sir, but I’d suggest a straitjacket.”

  “Harry, I am not trying to be funny!” Gossage said. “That, expressed. geometrically, is the answer to the boxroom riddle. And I’m not trying to imitate our friend Bride with his fourth dimension, either. Hold that torch steady for a moment.”

  Blair did so, and flashed it on Gossage’s scratchpad as he pulled it from his pocket. He turned the leaves until he came to the one upon which he had drawn the design of the front of the manor. Now he drew a slanting line from the chimneybreast to a point on the gutter over the third upper window from the left. The second line he drew from the chimney breast to the gutter at a point over the boxroom window.

  “There!” he said. “A triangle, with the scraped part of the gutter as the base line. Within that base line all the paint has been rubbed away. It’s a true triangle in itself, even though it does not make a true triangle to scale with the house. To do that it would stretch from side to side. As it is, though, it’s the answer to everything. I suppose you don’t see what I’m driving at? You don’t see that there is the explanation of how the killer got in and out of the boxroom?”

  “By means of a triangle? I’ll be hanged if I do. There’s one thing I can see, sir—whoever figured out a geometrical murder must be a first-class mathematician. That seems to fit Gregory Bride. But I don’t think he’d be thorough enough to climb a drainpipe and put a rope round the chimney. In that case I’d say Elaine had something to do with it. She told you that she is a gymnast. Then—”

  Sergeant Blair stopped dead. Gossage could not see his expression, but he did hear a sharp intake of breath.

  “Anything wrong, Harry?” he asked.

  Blair whispered: “No, sir, not at all.”

  At that moment he couldn’t say any more. It had dawned on him suddenly, and with perfect clearness, just how the killer had entered and left the boxroom. And he felt very much like kicking himself that he hadn’t thought of it before. But the killer’s identity remained as obscure as ever.

  * * * * * * *

  “Are you there, Inspector Gossage?”

  The inquiry came floating out of the darkness to the accompaniment of feet crunching on the gravel. The tall, stooped figure of Andrews loomed up suddenly.

  “I’m here.” the chief inspector responded. “Does somebody want me?”

  “On the telephone, sir. Scotland Yard.”

  Gossage headed toward the front door leaving Blair and Andrews to follow. He had the telephone to his ear and was listening intently to the report from the forensic department as he watched Andrews and Blair enter.

  “Okay, I understand exactly,” he said finally. “Thanks Arthur—just what I wanted. I’ll be sending some fibres for analysis. “Let me know what they are and keep them on file in readiness for a checkup when the time comes. Yes, I’ll get the hair you want. ’By.”

  He put the telephone back on its cradle and returned the pipe to his mouth. With a jerk of his bead he had Blair follow him up to his bedroom. Blair waited until his chief had settled in the armchair, then as usual he perched on the edge of the bed.

  Gossage said: “It was Arthur with the results of the ash you found. It comprises wax, rubber burned into solution form, charred paper—that piece you found with the serial number on it—and quite a scattering of human hairs.”

  “Human hairs?” Blair repeated sharply. “But I thought they had come from plaster? Cow hairs.”

  Gossage shook his head. “The hairs are human and blond. And they are the hairs of a man.”

  “There are only two men with blond hair, sir—Crespin and Bride.”

  “Exactly. Anyway, Arthur’s mounted some specimens of the hairs and wants samples for checking purposes. We’ll have to watch our chance to get some combings.”

  “We ought to be able to do that easily enough, sir—but what puzzles me is what are hairs doing in the ashes of the cellar grate? You don’t think a bit further in regard to that triangle that something—horrible has been going on, do you? Something like a dismemberment?”

  “I certainly don’t, and if you’ll think you’ll see why I don’t.”

  Blair frowned and made a troubled movement. “If you don’t mind I’ll concentrate on that later on. I’d like to sort out the other details first. Wax and rubber solution, eh?”

  “Originally rubber, I presume,” Gossage answered. “Heat changed it to that sticky half cindery mass which you found.”

  “For the life of me I can’t see where it fits in! In fact, rubber doesn’t enter into the case at all, does it?”

  “Rubber fits it all right, and so does wax. Have a good think to yourself and see if I’m not right. Anyway….”

  Gossage pulled out his scratchpad again and consulted it.

  “‘C.G.F., four six nine’,” he murmured. “Hmmm—the number on the charred gaper. All right: I think I know where to start tracing that back to its source, and tomorrow that’s what I will do. In the meantime our job is to get some hair combings from the rooms of Crespin and Bride. Just hop down and see if everybody is in the lounge, will you?”

  Blair nodded and went from the room quickly. When he came back he said:

  “Coast’s clear, sir. All of them are down there—Sheila writing, Crespin reading, the old girl reading, too, and Elaine and Bride are—”

  “Don’t tell me!” Gossage raised a hand. “Arguing about the fourth dimension!”

  Blair nodded and grinned. Gossage joined him at the doorway.

  The inspector said: “You take Bride’s and I’ll take Crespin’s.”

  Both doors were unlocked. Gossage glided into Crespin’s room and went over to the dressing table. It only took him a couple of seconds to pass the comb through the hairbrush and collect the result. Then he returned silently to the corridor as Blair reappeared.

  Each set of hairs Gossage put into a cellophane envelope, slipping a note in each to identify them; then he handed them to Blair with the rope fibres.

  “Tomorrow, Harry, take this let to Arthur at the Yard and get a comparison test on the hairs while you wait. They won’t be perfect comparisons since it takes time to mount a hair, but it’ll be near enough for our purpose. While you are doing that I’ll be on my way to trace the catalogue number. Before either of us leaves tomorrow morning, though, we have another job to do—measure the exact distance from the manor to Morgan’s Deep.”

  Blair looked puzzled. “But Bride told us that, sir. It’s a quarter of a mile.”

  “Nevertheless I prefer to be sure. Well, having got this far, we can go no farther, not until daylight. Best thing we can do is return downstairs and look amiable while we give away nothing.”

  It was after breakfast the following morning before the chief inspector made any further reference to the case he was handling. Then, when the meal was over, he said pensively: “How far is it from here to Morgan’s Deep? Quarter of a mile?”

  “That’s right,” Bride nodded. “In a straight line.”

  “I’ve an idea I’d like to make sure of that, but the trouble is I’ve nothing long enough by which to measure. Unless any of
you can help me?”

  All save Elaine looked thoughtful. She got to her feet.

  “If you’ll all excuse me I think I’ll be going to Mr. Findley’s,” she announced curtly. “Tm getting sick and tired of these experiments on your part, Mr. Gossage. In fact, they’re becoming very silly!”

  She stalked from the room, dressed in her usual riding breeches, shirt and jacket.

  “Afraid there’s nothing I can offer,” Crespin said. “That is, not here. I’ve lots of stuff in my radio stores that would do—but that isn’t much use, is it?”

  “As for me—” Bride started to say; then Sheila interrupted him.

  “I believe I’ve got the very thing! A small drum of very fine wire. There’s about half a mile of it. I think it would suit you fine, Inspector.”

  Gossage nodded and got to his feet. “Good. Let’s see it.”

  The girl hurried from the room and Gossage strolled out into the hall, Blair by his side. Behind them, Crespin and Bride stood waiting in obvious interest to see what was brewing.

  Then Sheila came hurrying down the staircase. In one hand she was carrying a fair-sized cardboard drum, round the centre of which was wound gleaming enameled copper wire.

  Gossage raised an eyebrow in some surprise. “It’ll do fine. In fact, almost too good for the purpose. Anyway I shan’t damage it, I hope. Harry, take it up to my room and fasten the end of the wire to the window, then drop the drum down to me.”

  Blair nodded and hurried with the drum up the stairs. Gossage went outside. Crespin, Bride and Sheila followed him as far as the front doorway and stopped there, watching proceedings. It was not long before Blair’s head poked out of Gossage’s bedroom window and the drum came whizzing down for the chief inspector to catch in his arms, a glinting wire trailing back to the window above.

  Gossage started walking, playing out the wire as he went down the drive. The further he went, keeping well clear of trees, the heavier the wire sagged behind him… So out into Manor Lane and along it to the position of Morgan’s Deep. Here, at last, by the old tree, he stopped, approximately half of the wire used up.