The Boathouse Riddle

by J. J. Connington

  “Apparently that was Horncastle’s track that I struck over there,” he explained, as they rejoined him. “I saw two marks of a nailed boot on a patch of mud, with a nail pattern corresponding to the arrangement of the heavy nails on the boots of the body. So far as I can see, there’s no other trail across the grass.”

  Severn opened his notebook and drew a rough diagram.

  “That’s it, more or less, isn’t it, sir?” he asked, showing it to Sir Clinton, who nodded in confirmation.

  “Um . . .” the Inspector mused aloud. “Horncastle came here and didn’t go away; that’s correct. Cley came and went; that fits his story. The third man went away; but there’s no sign of his incoming trail. He must have come along the shingle, I suppose.”

  “Suppose we examine Horncastle’s body, now,” Sir Clinton suggested. “There’s no need to leave it here longer than is necessary. Once the news gets out, we shall have a crowd around us, if we don’t hurry.”

  When they reached the body again, however, Sir Clinton’s first action was to kneel down and examine the smooth surface of the clay where the bank had been abraded. Severn, peering over his superior’s shoulder, could not help wondering what the Chief Constable found to interest him on that almost polished surface which showed no trace of scores or scratches. Sir Clinton did not enlighten him, however; for as soon as he had completed his examination of the clay, he rose to his feet and began to study Horncastle’s corpse.

  Wendover, coming up on the other side, found himself shuddering at the spectacle of the ghastly wound inflicted by the gun.

  “It looks as if he’d come down with a smash and the gun had gone off and blown his head in, poor devil,” he commented. “You can see the charge has spread a bit and torn the turf slightly just below the place where the main bulk hit him. That proves the gun was fired along the ground, clearly enough. It’s the old hammered double-barrel he always used.”

  Sir Clinton seemed to be thinking hard as Wendover spoke; but for a few seconds he said nothing.

  “We’d better take things in their order, Inspector,” he suggested at last. “The police surgeon ought to be here very shortly, so we’d better leave the body itself alone till he comes. Let’s start with the gun.”

  He bent over it for a moment, pegged in some matches along the line of the barrel, and scrutinised the dead man’s hand which still loosely clasped the weapon.

  “The second hammer’s at full cock,” he pointed out indifferently. “Just measure how far his hand is from the muzzle, Inspector, please, and make a note of it.”

  “Six and a half inches from the muzzle to his thumb, sir,” Severn reported.

  Sir Clinton nodded. Then, taking the dead man’s wrist, he shook it slightly.

  “He’s got hardly any grip on the barrel,” he reported. “Make a note of that too. It might be important. Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet, you’ll notice, at least not to any marked extent. Now we’ll have a look at the gun.”

  He gently disengaged it from the dead man’s hand, taking care to hold it in such a way as to leave no fingerprints on vital points.

  “Got your insufflator with you?” he demanded. ‘“There’s no wind, and we may as well be sure about things before we go any further. Just powder it, please. You won’t find much, I expect.”

  Severn obediently tried the experiment.

  “Why, there’s nothing here!” he exclaimed in astonishment, as he completed the distribution of the powder on the surface of the weapon. “That’s dashed rum. He must have handled that gun pretty freely and left finger marks all over it; and yet there’s nothing here but . . . Somebody’s been rubbing the thing—cleaned the whole affair . . . H’m! I didn’t give Cley credit for being as sharp as that.”

  “I never expected you’d get much,” Sir Clinton explained. “See that bit of broken grass sticking to the lock? That was on the top side of the gun as it lay on the turf, so it didn’t come there by accident during the recoil. I guessed from that that you wouldn’t find much. Somebody’s cleaned the gun after the discharge; and I’m inclined to bet that if you hunt around here a bit, you’ll find the tuft of grass he used in wiping off the finger marks.”

  Wendover, more convinced than ever that the poacher was the culprit, searched zealously; but the Inspector was the lucky man.

  “Here it is, sir,” he announced, as he held it up.

  His expression showed that his respect for Sir Clinton’s acuteness had risen considerably.

  “We needn’t trouble to be careful in handling the gun now,” the Chief Constable said, picking it up as he spoke. “Let’s just be sure about things. . . . Yes, that’s all right. There’s an exploded cartridge in the right barrel and a live one in the left. It looks as though he’d been shot with his own gun, all right.”

  “And while he was lying on the ground,” Wendover put in, returning to his earlier point. “But Horncastle was a big hefty beggar. That’s what puzzles me, Clinton. If he was shot like this, by Cley, why didn’t he struggle? He was about a match for Cley, and I can’t see Cley holding him face down on the grass and shooting him with his own gun.”

  “Neither can I, Squire. But here’s the surgeon coming, I believe. He’ll perhaps be able to give us a hint or two.”

  The police surgeon proved to be a businesslike person, who wasted little time in talk.

  “Not much need for me to come here,” he said, rather crossly, as though annoyed at having been dragged from bed before the normal hour. “Cause of death’s clear enough—gunshot wound in the head. The rest’s a matter of an autopsy, which can be done in the proper place.”

  As he was beginning his examination of the body, Sir Clinton arrested him for a moment.

  “The two things I’m interested in, Doctor, are what hour of the night he died, and whether you can find any signs of a bruise on the point of his jaw. And when you do your P.M., would you mind examining the back of the skull to see if there are any traces of a blow there?”

  The surgeon seemed slightly surprised.

  “Eh? Bruise on the jaw? All right. Inspector, give me a hand, will you, to turn him over.”

  When the body was face upwards, he examined the chin.

  “Yes, there’s a bruise on the skin just at the point of the jaw. What of it? He must have come down on his face when he fell. Nothing in that.”

  Sir Clinton has been scrutinising the turf at the edge of the pool of blood in which the corpse’s head had been lying.

  “Just come here, Doctor,” he suggested. “Feel the softness of that grass and the earth underneath. Do you think you’d get that kind of bruise from it? And is the bruise large enough to fit your notion?”

  Hardly concealing his vexation at being caught napping, the surgeon had to admit that his explanation would not fit.

  “H’m! No, I suppose you’re right. Bruise looks as if it had been made with a small hard object. A stone perhaps? No, no stones on the turf hereabout. H’m!”

  “And the approximate time of the man’s death?” Sir Clinton inquired.

  “Tell you in a minute or two. Got to take the temperature before I can make a guess at it.”

  While the surgeon busied himself with this work, Sir Clinton seemed preoccupied. With downcast eyes, he wandered aimlessly to and fro about the shingle, as though he could not bring himself to leave the immediate neighbourhood of the body. The doctor completed his test, examined his watch, and made a mental calculation.

  “Death occurred somewhere about midnight, most likely,” he declared at last. “Rigor’s developed at the head and neck but hasn’t reached the chest yet. That confirms the temperature evidence. Round about midnight’s as near as I’d care to put it.”

  Sir Clinton nodded, as though his thoughts were elsewhere, and drew out a pocket diary. Wendover was somewhat puzzled to note that the page which the Chief Constable consulted was one headed: “Moon’s Phases.” Pulling out his own diary and turning to the corresponding data, he discovered that the moon was thirteen
days old and that it had southed at about half-past ten on the previous night; but this suggested nothing important to his mind. Meanwhile the doctor had packed his bag and, with a rather surly farewell, had gone off to his car.

  The Chief Constable suddenly awoke from his reflections and turned to Eccles.

  “Was it cloudy, last night?” he demanded. “Heavy clouds?”

  Eccles thought for a time before replying.

  “Well, sir, it wasn’t what you’d call just exactly a cloudy night,” he answered at last. “What I mean to say is, there was mostly a clear sky and one or two bright stars shining, as well as the moon ’d let ’em, and the moon itself was bright most of the time; but now and again, every half hour or so, a big cloud would drift up.”

  “And cover the moon, perhaps?”

  “Sometimes that did happen, sir, and things got fairly dim then, as you can understand. I remember that clearly enough. That was just the kind of night it was.”

  “The moon had set before Cley got hold of you?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Long before that.”

  “That’s just what I wanted to know,” Sir Clinton said, in a tone which conveyed to Eccles the idea that he had been of considerable assistance. “Now just look here, Inspector. This seems rather interesting.”

  He led them to a point on the shingle about ten feet from the body. Wendover, following the Chief Constable’s finger, saw a spent match lying between two stones. Sir Clinton fished it out carefully and held it up for them to examine.

  “It’s burned down a bit, but it’s obviously a Norwegian match with a square cross-section—exactly like the ones that Cley had in his box. So at any rate that part of his story is true enough. He lighted matches to look at the body. This match is quite dry, so it must have been thrown down after the dew fell last night.”

  He moved a few steps, stooped down, and pointed to a second spent match on the stones.

  “See that? Now when I pick it up you’ll see something different.”

  “It’s a round-stemmed match—a Swan vesta by the look of it,” Wendover exclaimed.

  “Exactly,” Sir Clinton confirmed. “And, like the other, it’s quite fresh.”

  “So there must have been a second person lighting matches beside the body?” Wendover said, rather disconcerted.

  “Wait a bit,” the Inspector broke in. “I’d like to have this clear, sir. If you believe Cley’s story, he came here after the moon had set, so he had to light matches to see anything clearly. That’s all right. But if the death took place at about midnight, then the moon was shining its best. . . . Oh, I see now why you were asking these questions about clouds. You mean this match must have been struck in a cloudy interval, when the moon wasn’t giving enough light?”

  “It’s quite probable, but not certain.”

  The Inspector pondered for a moment.

  “Whoever struck this match was the man who left the fourth trail, then, sir?”

  “Quite likely.”

  “What could he be doing here at that time of night?” Wendover demanded.

  “Committing a murder, for one thing,” Sir Clinton retorted. “He may have had other objects in view as well, of course.”

  “You seem very sure it’s a murder case,” Wendover said in a critical tone. “At first sight, I thought Cley might have killed Horncastle; but it might just as well have been a pure accident. I don’t see that an extra trail and a Swan vesta make so much difference as all that. Look at the way the keeper slipped and fell. The second barrel of his gun was at full cock even after the affair, so likely the first hammer was cocked too. When he slipped on the bank and came down with a smash, his gun went off and shot him.”

  “And then he got up and cleaned his fingerprints off his gun? He must have been an amazingly tidy fellow.”

  Wendover flushed with vexation at having forgotten this glaring piece of evidence.

  “Perhaps you’ll describe your supposed murderer,” he suggested ironically, to cover his mistake. “We might recognise him.”

  “I don’t much care for following in the footsteps of Sherlock,” Sir Clinton said mildly. “But if you insist on it, I’ll do my best. The murderer belongs, probably, to the middle class or higher up on the social scale. He’s a person of fair physique at any rate. I should guess that he’s got some knowledge of boxing. His boots and socks were thoroughly soaked last night. And I should think he has his wits about him, on most occasions. Does that help much?”

  Severn saved Wendover from the necessity of a reply.

  “I’d like to know just how you’ve worked that out, sir,” he interjected. “Some of it I can follow, but not all of it.”

  “It’s obviously a murder and not an accident,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “If it had been an accident, then Horncastle slipped on the bank and knocked his gun in his fall, so that it went off and shot him. But on that basis, the scrape on the bank here must have been made by Horncastle’s boot. It wasn’t. Horncastle’s boot has a pattern of heavy nails on the sole. They would leave grooves on the surface of the clay when they slipped in making a scrape. There aren’t any grooves on the surface of that scrape. Ergo, that scrape wasn’t made by Horncastle slipping as he got up the bank; it was made by a second person who wanted to suggest the slipping idea and to make it seem self-evident that the affair was accidental. Only one kind of person would fake evidence of that sort—a murderer trying to cover up his crime.”

  “Then that clears Cley, sir,” the Inspector pointed out. “His boots . . .”

  “Have boot protectors on the soles which would leave marks? Exactly. Cley didn’t commit the murder.”

  “Well, what about this fellow being middle class?” Wendover demanded. “How do you prove that?”

  “You can get foreign safety matches for ninepence a dozen boxes,” Sir Clinton reminded him. “That’s the brand used by Cley and the working class generally. It’s only a plutocrat like yourself who thinks of buying Swan vestas at three-halfpence a box. But I’ll admit that isn’t absolutely sound evidence. It’s more to the point that this scrape was made with a smooth-soled boot, the kind of boot you find on town pavements. The country people round here wear sole leather with nails or boot protectors, seeing that they do their walking on rough roads. So a smooth boot sole points to a middle-class type of wearer. Neither bit of evidence in itself means much; but put the two together and you can’t help thinking the man must have been a cut above a ploughboy.”

  “I don’t need the wet feet business explained,” Severn confided, rather sheepishly. “That business of making Eccles walk through the pool yonder makes that quite clear. But you say this murderer was a man of fair physique. A man of fair physique couldn’t have held Horncastle down with one hand while he used his other hand on the gun. Horncastle was a tough ’un, sir. It would have taken a pocket Hercules to manage a job like that.”

  “A jujutsu expert might have managed it, all the same, I think,” Sir Clinton suggested. “But as a matter of fact, I don’t imagine that jujutsu came into the business. I said he was probably something of a boxer.”

  “I see what you mean!” Wendover exclaimed. “You’re thinking of that bruise on the keeper’s jaw? You mean the murderer knocked him out and then fixed him up while he was unconscious and could make no struggle? Is that it?”

  “Something of the sort,” Sir Clinton admitted. “It’s quite certain that Horncastle put up no sort of struggle. There are no marks to show anything like that. Obviously Horncastle must have been unconscious when he was shot. The knock-out on the angle of the jaw would keep him quiet for a short time; but it’s quite on the cards that he was knocked out down there on the shingle, and that when he fell he got concussion through falling back on to the stones. That would keep him quiet for quite long enough for the murderer to do his work.”

  “Oh, so that’s why you asked the surgeon to examine the back of the head for a bruise?”

  “Naturally one wants to know what happened.”

 
The Inspector had been thinking hard during this exchange.

  “Then I take it, sir,” he said at length, “that your idea of the business is something of this sort. Horncastle met the murderer on the shingle, and they had a quarrel about something. The murderer hit Horncastle on the point of the jaw and knocked him out; and most likely Horncastle fell backwards, limp, and came down bang on a stone with the back of his head and got concussion of the brain with the blow. That put him to sleep and left the murderer a free hand. He carried Horncastle up to the bank—that’s where your ‘fair physique’ comes in, since Horncastle was a fairly heavy man. By that time there was a cloud over the moon and the murderer had to strike matches to see what he was doing. He blew Horncastle’s head in with his own gun and then he went off by the track you found, and he landed up on the high road over yonder.”

  “After faking the scrape on the bank with his own boot,” Sir Clinton amended. “It was that touch that made me fairly certain he had his wits about him. A neat idea, though it didn’t work out quite as well as he expected. And, by the way, you’d better make a note of another point, Inspector. Suppose you slip while you’re carrying something in your hand. You grip hard on the thing you’re carrying, usually. It’s instinctive to tighten your hold. Now if Horncastle was holding his gun by the barrel and had slipped normally, he’d have gripped his gun tight. In suicide cases, it’s usual to find the weapon tightly grasped; all the more so in this case, if it had been an accident. But you saw for yourself that there was no grip on the gun at all. Horncastle’s hand was quite loose on it. From the look of things, I expect the murderer arranged it so as to look as though the recoil had carried the gun through Horncastle’s hand, so that he was left gripping it near the muzzle. I think I was right in saying he had his wits about him. But it didn’t convince me.”

  “He must have had his wits about him to think of cleaning his own finger marks off the gun,” Wendover admitted.