The Boathouse Riddle

by J. J. Connington

  “Here’s the constable bringing Cley, sir,” Severn said, with a gesture to draw Sir Clinton’s attention to the two approaching figures. “Will you question him yourself? I’ve got all I can out of him already.”

  The Chief Constable nodded and turned to examine the poacher as he came up to the group. A tall, powerful man of about thirty, Cley would probably have made a good impression in normal circumstances; but now his coarsely handsome face bore an expression of sullenness and uneasiness which gave him something of a hang-dog look.

  “Tell the Chief Constable what you know about this business,” ordered Severn curtly.

  Cley, evidently taken aback to find himself confronted by so high an official, stared sulkily at Sir Clinton for a moment or two before opening his mouth.

  “If you think yer goin’ to trip me up by askin’ me to tell it all over again,” he said grudgingly, “yer makin’ a mistake, as ye’ll see. I’ve told ye nothin’ but what was the plain truth; but if ye want it again, then this was the way of it. I got up this mornin’ about an hour afore dawn for to do a bit o’ business I had on hand.”

  “You didn’t look at your watch, I suppose?” Sir Clinton asked.

  Cley gave him a glance charged with suspicion.

  “I don’t need no watch for to tell me the time; I can guess it, near enough for my business. It was about an hour before dawn. I made some tea to warm me up, seein’ it was a chilly mornin’. Mebbe one o’ my brothers’ll remember hearin’ me rattlin’ the kettle an’ stirrin’ up the fire.”

  He glanced defiantly at Severn and stung the Inspector into a retort.

  “They’ll remember it if you remind them, I’ll bet.”

  Sir Clinton checked his subordinate with a look.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “After I’d had my tea, I went out for a walk.”

  “A moonlight stroll, eh?” interjected the Chief Constable, with no irony in his tone.

  “No, there warn’t no moon then. I just went out for a stroll, as you say; an’ by chance I happened for to walk down to the lake, here.”

  “You could find your way all right, I suppose? You knew where you were going?”

  “Seein’ as I was born within half a mile o’ here, I did know my way.”

  “Then where did you cross the road to get to the lakeside?”

  Cley considered for a moment.

  “It’d be a matter o’ a hundred yards—no, say fifty yards—along the road from here, towards the Grange, as near as I can remember. There’s a bank of ferns there, an’ I got off the road just on the near side o’ them. I can show ye the place easy enough.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I walked over the grass down to the waterside where the shingle is, an’ I turned this way along the shingle till I came to Friar’s Point.”

  “You heard nothing unusual during this stroll of yours?”

  “Nothin’ that I’d call unusual. The night’s full o’ sounds, o’ course, but there warn’t any sound as caught my attention in pertic’lar, if that’s what you mean; nothin’ of that sort. Just the ord’nary night noises. I was walkin’ quietly along, when all of a sudden I near stumbled over him, just saved myself from trampin’ on him in the dimness, ’cause I wasn’t payin’ much attention to what was under my feet.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened then,” Sir Clinton said, as Cley paused in his narrative.

  “I thought as how it was likely a tramp havin’ a doss; or else some drunken swine sleepin’ off his dose, more like, for he was half on the bank and half on the shingle an’ no tramp would sleep that way, ’less he was off his chump. So I was for leavin’ him alone, and then somethin’ about him made me think—I dunno why, but there was somethin’—an’ I thought I’d have a look at him. Now I come to think about it, I remember I didn’t hear any breathin’, so it’s like enough that that was what pulled me up. My hearin’s pretty good. Anyway, I out with my matches an’ struck a light, an’ with the first flash I made out ’twas Horncastle, by the look o’ his clothes. That match just flared an’ went out, so I stooped down an’ struck some more. Ugh! It was plain enough Horncastle’s got his touch; I’ve never seen anythin’ like that. I saw his gun beside him, that old-fashioned thing he always used to carry with him. Thinks I, ‘He’s been steppin’ up on to the bank an’ slipped an’ shot himself, just as I expected he would, some day, with that slovenly way he had with guns.’ An’ then I thought of goin’ for to give the alarm, an’ it came to my mind as how Eccles here patrols this trip o’ the road, so I left Horncastle an’ I cut up on to the road again.”

  “You didn’t touch the body or the gun?”

  “No, I did not. I’ve sense enough for that.”

  “And what happened after that?”

  “I got off the grass over yonder, about where you see that big stone”—he pointed to a spot about thirty yards along the road towards Ambledown—“an’ then I felt queer. I wasn’t sick, but I was mighty near it; an’ I sat down on that stone for a while till I felt better; an’ then I set off towards Ambledown, expectin’ to fall in with Eccles or else meanin’ to rouse up some people at a house further along the road. It was just about dawn when I come on Eccles; I know that, an’ he can vouch for it too, ’cause he looked at his watch.”

  He glanced sullenly from face to face in the group as he stopped speaking, but nowhere did he detect a friendly expression. Sir Clinton, though not hostile, seemed purely businesslike. The police were obviously suspicious; and Wendover’s features plainly betrayed his dislike for the poacher.

  “That’s just the plain truth of it,” Cley said, with a faint touch of hopelessness in his tone. “Ye needn’t think I had any hand in it, for I hadn’t. I never laid a finger on him.”

  Sir Clinton disregarded this completely.

  “I may have a question or two to ask you, later on,” he said. “In the meantime, you and the constable can take a stroll up the road. You’re fond of strolls, I gather. Take him around that bend, out of sight,” he added to the constable, “and bring him back again if we whistle for you.”

  Cley, his sullenness tinged now with a very apparent fear, moved off in company with his watchdog.

  “And now, Inspector,” Sir Clinton suggested, “I think we may take a look around for ourselves.”

  Chapter Three

  The Pearls

  WENDOVER, his mind concentrated upon Friar’s Point, where the body lay, was surprised when Sir Clinton led the way along the road towards the Grange instead of going down to the waterside. Then it occurred to him that a detour was advisable, lest they should obliterate earlier tracks.

  “Did Cley’s second story tally with the one he told you before, Inspector?” Sir Clinton demanded, as they walked along.

  “Practically,” the Inspector admitted. “He gave me more details about the look of the body when he examined it, but so far as his own movements were concerned, he didn’t change anything in repeating the thing, sir.”

  “And you?” the Chief Constable inquired, turning to Eccles.

  “What he told me, sir, wasn’t just word for word what he told you; but so far as his own movements were concerned, it was the same story both times. He was a bit strung up when I saw him first, and the way he told it was different—calling on God and all that sort of thing, sir—but it came to much the same thing really.”

  “We can check some of it, at any rate,” Sir Clinton said in an indifferent tone. “The dew won’t evaporate for a while, and so long as it lies, his tracks should be clear enough on the grass.”

  He halted where a large clump of ferns grew on the bank by the roadside, examined the turf carefully before stepping on it, and then climbed to the top of the low ridge.

  “Part of his tale’s accurate,” he reported, after scanning the tract between the road and the lake. “There’s a fairly plain trail with the dew brushed off the grass. Just go along the road for about ten yards, Inspector, please. . . . A bit farther. . . . There. Stop! .
. . Would you mind having a look at the bank just in front of you?”

  “There’s a mark here that might have been made by a boot slipping and scraping the turf as some one clambered up the bank,” Severn reported, after a careful examination.

  Sir Clinton came down from his post of observation, inspected the place indicated by Severn, and marked the spot by placing two or three stones in the ditch immediately below. This done, he drew from his pocket a large packet of notepaper.

  “I raided your writing room while you were dressing,” he said to Wendover, with something suspiciously like a grin. “Your expensive deckle-edged notepaper with the artistic azure tinting is hardly likely to be common hereabouts, which makes it very suitable for this sort of work. Where’s that rainwater pool I noticed?”

  The thundershower of the previous afternoon had left its traces in the ditch beneath the fern clump. Sir Clinton stooped and immersed the notepaper in the water until the sheets were limp and saturated.

  “Less chance of it blowing about, in that state, if the wind does happen to rise,” he pointed out, as he tore the paper into fair-sized fragments. “And now, I think, we might go on the trail. Will you follow me, one at a time, and keep directly in my tracks, all of you? We mustn’t go trampling all over the place.”

  Following Sir Clinton, Wendover reached the top of the bank. Before him, on the gentle slope down to the lake, he could see the plain track along which the dew had been brushed from the grass. Here and there, along it, the tall blades had been bent forward by the foot of the walker. Evidently Cley had spoken the truth when he described that part of his route.

  Sir Clinton, keeping well to one side of the trail, scattered his fragments of notepaper along Cley’s actual track until it ended on the shingle which fringed the lake. Here the party halted for a moment.

  “Beyond this,” Sir Clinton pointed out, “Cley seems to have walked for part of the time on the turf—you can see the track if you look carefully—but when he came to rough ground he got down on to the shingle. In the main, his tale’s correct. Now we’d better take to the shingle ourselves. No use leaving tracks if we can help it.”

  Fifty paces brought them behind the screen of the firs which extended outward from Friar’s Point, so that they lost sight of the highroad; and a few steps farther on, they came to the fatal spot. Horncastle’s body lay half on the bank and half on the shingle, as though he had slipped while mounting the low ridge and had slid downward in his fall. He lay face downward, his chest on the grass, his arms asprawl; and the gun, gripped in his right hand by the barrel, had its muzzle directed towards the ghastly wound above his ear.

  Sir Clinton, after a cursory survey, turned to gauge the altitude of the rising sun.

  “The first thing is to check Cley’s tale before that dew gets any thinner,” he pointed out. “We can come back here any time and go into things thoroughly. And we needn’t waste time in hunting for tracks in the pine spinney just now; it’ll be easier to go through it and pick up his trail on the wet grass beyond.”

  He led them along the shingle for thirty or forty yards and then through the shallow arcade of the pines to where the grass grew, beyond the shadow of the spinney.

  “H’m! Here’s a clear trail going in the right direction,” he reported, as the others came up. “There’s no need for all of us to tramp along it. Will you take this paper and mark the line, Inspector? We can watch you from here and see where it takes you.”

  He accompanied Severn to the edge of the trail, glanced at the grass, and then turned back to rejoin the rest of the party.

  “It looks as though Cley’s story were all right. Whoever made that track was going in the same direction as the Inspector.”

  Severn’s expedition was a very short one. The trail crossed the slope and reached the highroad just at the point where lay the big stone on which the poacher said he had seated himself.

  “That may prove part of Cley’s story to be true,” Wendover argued, as they waited for Severn’s return, “but it doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t shoot Horncastle.”

  “Quite correct,” Sir Clinton admitted at once. “But we needn’t waste time in inferences just now, with the sun rising higher and the dew getting thinner every minute. We’ve got another trail to look for—the one that Horncastle made in coming here.”

  “Perhaps he came along the shingle,” Wendover objected.

  “Perhaps he did,” Sir Clinton acquiesced. “But personally I’d walk on grass rather than shingle any day, if I had the choice, more especially if I were a keeper who wanted to move quietly instead of advertising his presence to all and sundry. At any rate, it’s worth the trouble of hunting, even if we find nothing.”

  While Severn was returning, the Chief Constable strolled along the outskirts of the spinney in the direction of the Grange, scanning the grass as he went. In a few minutes he beckoned to the remainder of the party. Wendover, as he came up, saw a third trail before him, fainter to his eye than the others, but still clear enough.

  “Oh, that’s Horncastle’s trail, is it?” he said, in a rather disappointed tone. “So you were right, after all. He must have come down almost straight from the road, apparently.”

  “If Horncastle took the trouble to walk backwards from the road to the beach, then it may be his trail, certainly,” Sir Clinton retorted. “Go and look at the way the grass is disturbed, Squire. That trail was made by some one going up from the spinney towards the road.”

  This irony was reserved for Wendover’s ear. When the two officials came up, Sir Clinton dropped persiflage.

  “Here’s an extra track leading up from the spinney to the road,” he pointed out. “Cley may have made it or he may not. If he did, then there must be a second downward track of his somewhere. And we’ve still got to find the keeper’s track if we can. What I want you to notice about this track is that it’s a shade fainter than the tracks which correspond to Cley’s story. Now we’ll follow up this trail first of all.”

  Halfway between the shore and the road, the track dipped into a little cup in the ground, and on the floor of this was a small pool of standing water, evidently a relic of the heavy thundershower of the previous afternoon. The trail lay straight through this and became clear again upon the further side. Sir Clinton cautiously approached the side of the pool and examined the bottom.

  “The water’s lying on the grass,” he said over his shoulder to the waiting group. “There aren’t any footprints, since there’s no mud that I can see. Still, with luck, it’s a gift from the gods. I’m sorry, Constable, but I want to try an experiment and you’re the victim. Come down here.”

  Rather mystified, Eccles gingerly descended the slope of the cup. Sir Clinton took his arm and placed him in position.

  “I’ll have to blindfold you, I think,” he explained. “The other fellow came along in the dark, and blindfolding is the nearest we can get to that.”

  Taking out his handkerchief, he bandaged Eccles’ eyes.

  “You can see nothing? Right, then. Now I’m going to give you a turn or two around and I’ll leave you facing the road. Go straight ahead. I’ll see you come to no harm.”

  Eccles walked forward as directed; and, to his obvious disgust, trudged straight into the pool of standing water. From the expression of his mouth, it was clear that he thought poorly of this sort of experiment. But any idea of a practical joke was swept from his mind by the seriousness of Sir Clinton’s face as he removed the bandage.

  “Feet soaked? Clean over the boot tops? Just unlace ’em and let’s see the exact extent of the damage.”

  Eccles, puzzled by this strange method of obtaining evidence, sat down and took off his boots. Sir Clinton examined them and then felt the constable’s socks.

  “Completely soaked. I’m sorry, but you’ll see the point in a minute or two. It had to be done. Now we’ll follow up the trail till it reaches the road.”

  This took a very short time, and when they reached the highway, Sir Clinto
n asked the Inspector to summon the other constable whom they had left in charge of Cley. When the poacher and his guardian arrived, Sir Clinton told Cley to take off his boots. The poacher at first demurred, but gave in after some argument. Sir Clinton picked up one of the boots, heavy with steel boot protectors, and felt the inside.

  “The outside’s wet with walking through the grass, of course,” he said to the others, “but the inside’s fairly dry. Just feel his socks, will you, Inspector, over the instep.”

  “Practically dry too,” Severn reported.

  Eccles, who now saw the point of Sir Clinton’s experiment, could not repress a grin at the sight of Cley’s obvious bewilderment at the turn of events.

  “You can put your boots on again, my man,” said Sir Clinton. “That’s all I wanted. And after that, the constable here will go home with you and check that story about your early morning tea. If I were you,” he added drily, “I’d keep my mouth shut while he’s questioning your relations. That advice is in your own interest.”

  Cley seemed unable to settle in his own mind whether this was encouraging or not; but a glance at the Chief Constable’s face assured him that he would gain nothing by further protestations. As he bent down to lace his boots, Sir Clinton spoke again:

  “Give me your box of matches.”

  Cley, evidently taken aback, handed over a cardboard box, about two inches in length, marked with the name of a Norwegian firm and bearing the legend: SAFETY MATCH. When the poacher and his watchdog had gone off down the road, Sir Clinton turned to his companions.

  “We haven’t seen Horncastle’s own track yet; and we ought to find that, even if it’s only for the sake of completeness. The easiest way will be to walk from lakeside to lakeside around the spinney’s edge, between it and the high road. That arc is bound to cut Horncastle’s trail if he walked over the grass into the spinney. Just wait here. I’ll have a look around.”

  Starting from the shore of the lake on the Grange side of Friar’s Point, he carried out his scheme; and just before he reached the shingle on the far side of the Point, they saw him halt and then begin to follow a fresh trail inward towards the border of the spinney. Having completed his task, he called to them to come down to the beach.