The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  “I gathered that you were doubtful about his theory that the man who killed Lumsden got in through the window.”

  “Doubtful about it?” echoed Crewe. “Doubtful is a mild word. I am absolutely certain that he didn’t get in through the window.”

  “But the catch was forced.”

  “It was forced from the inside.”

  Marsland looked at him in amazement.

  “How did you find out that?” he asked.

  “By inspecting the sash. I had a good look at it from the inside and out. Apparently it hadn’t been opened for some time before last night, and the marks of the knife which was used to force it were very distinct in the sash in consequence. But the marks were broader and more distinct at the top of the sash inside than at the bottom. Therefore the knife was inserted at the top, and that could be done only by a man inside the house.”

  “But why was the window forced if the man was inside?”

  “In order to mislead us.”

  “But the footprints led up to the window.”

  “No,” said Crewe. “They led away from it.”

  “Surely you are mistaken,” said Marsland. “I don’t like trying to put you right on a matter of this kind, but the marks of the boots were so distinct; they all pointed the one way—towards the window.”

  “Look behind you, at our own footprints in the sand,” said Crewe.

  They had left the rocks behind them some time previously and for five minutes had been walking on a strip of sand which skirted the cliff road—now level with the sea—and broadened into a beach nearer the village. Crewe pointed to the clear imprint of their footsteps in the firm wet sand behind them.

  “We’ll try a little experiment,” he said. “Let us walk backwards for a few yards over the ground we have just covered.”

  He commenced to do so, and Marsland wonderingly followed suit. After covering about twenty yards in this fashion Crewe stopped.

  “That will be sufficient for our purpose,” he said. “Now let us compare the two sets of footprints—the ones we have just made, and the previous ones. Examine them for yourself, Marsland, and tell me if you can see any difference.”

  Marsland did so. With the mystified air of a man performing a task he did not understand, he first scrutinized the footprints they had made while walking forwards, and then examined the backward ones.

  “Find any difference in them?” asked Crewe.

  Marsland stood up and straightened his back with the self-conscious look of an Englishman who feels he has been made to do something ridiculous.

  “I cannot say that I do. They look very much alike to me.”

  “You are not very observant,” said Crewe, with a smile. “Let me explain the difference. In ordinary walking a man puts down the heel of his boot first, and then, as he brings his body forward, he completes the impression of his foot. He lifts his heel first and springs off the ball of his foot for the next step. But in walking backwards a man puts down the ball of his foot first and makes but a very faint impression with his heel. If he walks very carefully because he is not sure of the ground, or because it is dark, he may take four or five steps without bringing his heel to the ground. If you compare the impressions your boots have made in the sand when we were walking forward with the others made by walking backward, you will find that few of the latter marks give the complete impression of your boot.”

  “Yes, I see now,” said Marsland. “The difference is quite distinct.”

  “When I examined the window this afternoon, and came to the conclusion that it had been forced from the inside, I felt certain that a murderer who had adopted such a trick in order to mislead the police would carry it out in every detail,” said Crewe. “After forcing the window he would get out of it in order to leave footprints underneath the window in the earth outside, and of course he would walk backwards from the window, in order to convey the impression that he had walked up to the window through the garden, forced it and then got into the house. As I expected, I found the footsteps leading away from the window were deep in the toe, with hardly any heel marks. It was as plain as daylight that the man who had made them had walked backwards from the window. But even if I had not been quite sure of this from the footprints themselves, there was additional confirmation. The backward footsteps led straight to a fruit tree about twenty feet from the window, and on examining that tree I found a small branch—a twig—had been broken and bent just where the footsteps were lost in the gravel walk. The man who got out of the window had bumped into the tree. Walking backwards he could neither see nor feel where he was going.”

  “I see—I see,” Marsland stood silent for a moment evidently pondering deeply over Crewe’s chain of deductions. “It seems to me,” he said at length, “that this man, clever as he was, owed a great deal to accident.”

  “In what respect?”

  “Because the window where you found the footprints is the only window on that side of the house which has a bare patch of earth underneath. All the others have grass growing right up to the windows. I noticed that when I saw the footprints. If he had got out of any of them he would have left no footprints.”

  “On the contrary, he knew that and chose that window because he wanted to leave us some footprints. The fact that he selected in the dark the only window that would serve his purpose shows that he is a man who knows the place well. He is clever and resourceful, but that is no reason why we should not succeed in unmasking him.”

  “Doesn’t the fact that he wore hobnailed boots indicate that he is a labouring man?”

  “My dear Marsland, may he not have worn boots of that kind for the same reason that he walked backwards—to mislead us all?”

  “I gathered that you do not agree with Inspector Payne that the marks on the stairs were caused by the intruder trying to obliterate with a wet cloth the marks he made by his muddy boots.”

  “Outside the house he does his best to leave footprints; and inside, according to Inspector Payne, he takes special pains to remove similar traces. It is hopeless trying to reconcile the two things,” said Crewe.

  “Well, what do you think were the original marks on the stairs that the intruder was so anxious to remove?”

  “Blood-stains.”

  “But why should he go to the trouble of removing blood-stains on the stairs and yet leave so much blood about in the room in which the body was discovered?”

  “I have asked myself that question,” said Crewe. “At the present stage it is very difficult to answer.”

  “You think it adds to the mystery?”

  “For the present it does. But it may prove to be a key which will open many closed doors in this investigation.”

  “Your mention of closed doors suggests another question,” said Marsland. “Why did this man get out of the window and walk backwards? If he wanted to leave misleading clues it would have been just as easy for him to go out by the front door, walk up to the window from the path so as to leave footprints and then force the window from the outside.”

  “Just as easy,” assented Crewe. “But it would have taken longer, because it is more difficult to force the catch of a window from the outside than the inside. I think that we must assume that he was pressed for time.”

  “But I understand that this man Lumsden lived alone. In that case there would be little danger of interruption.”

  “A man who has just committed a murder gets into a state of nervous alarm,” was Crewe’s reply. “He is naturally anxious to get away from the scene of the crime.”

  “But if this man knew the place well he must have known that Lumsden lived alone, and that the discovery of the crime would not take place immediately. But for the accident of my taking shelter there the body might have remained undiscovered for days.”

  “Quite true. But that does not affect my point that a murderer is always in a hurry to get away.”

  “Isn’t the fact that he went to the trouble of washing out blood-stains on the stairs evide
nce that he was not in a hurry?”

  “No,” said Crewe emphatically. “I should be more inclined to accept it as evidence that he expected some one to call at the farm—that either he or Lumsden had an appointment with some one there.”

  Marsland looked very hard at Crewe as he recalled the greeting Miss Maynard had given him when she opened the door to his knock.

  “I did not think of that,” he said.

  “That supposition gives us a probable explanation why the blood-stains were wiped off the stairs, and not off the floor of the room in which you saw the body. The murderer was expecting a visitor by appointment. The suspicions of this visitor would be aroused if he saw blood-stains on the stairs. But as he was not expected to go upstairs the murderer did not trouble about the stains in the room. This is another indication of pressure of time.”

  Marsland felt that Crewe was on the track of discovering Miss Maynard’s presence at the farm. He began to see in the light of Crewe’s deductions that her chief object in having asked him to keep her name out of the affair was to shelter some one else. But having given his word he must keep it and stand by the consequences.

  CHAPTER VII

  Detective Gillett made a journey to London in order to visit Somerset House and inspect the will left by James Lumsden, the grandfather of the man who had been murdered. He had been able to ascertain, from local sources of information at Ashlingsea, some of the details of the will, but as an experienced detective he knew the value of exact details obtained from official sources.

  His perusal of the will showed him that Cliff Farm and all the testator’s investments and personal property had been left to his nephew Frank, with the exception of legacies to three old servants who had been in his employ for over a quarter of a century.

  Gillett had ascertained from previous inquiries that Frank was at the front in France when his grandfather died. He had been brought up at the farm, but as his inclinations did not tend to a farming life, he had left his grandfather, and gone to London, where he had earned a livelihood as a clerk prior to enlisting in the Army. According to Ashlingsea gossip, old James Lumsden had been a man of considerable wealth: though local estimates of his fortune varied considerably, ranging from £20,000 to five times that amount. Gillett’s inspection of the terms of the will convinced him that the lower amount was somewhat nearer the correct figure; and an interview with Messrs. Holding, Thomas & Holding, the London solicitors who had drawn up the will, supported this view.

  It was the elder Mr. Holding, the senior partner of the firm, who had transacted Mr. Lumsden’s business and had taken the instructions for drawing up the will. The document had been executed seven years ago. Mr. Holden, senior, a white haired old gentleman whose benign appearance seemed out of harmony with the soulless profession he adorned, told Gillett that Mr. Lumsden had consulted him on several occasions about business matters, but the old man was extremely intelligent and capable, and kept his affairs so entirely in his own hands that he was not a very profitable client.

  The solicitor did not even know the extent of the old farmer’s investments, for his client, who hated to disclose much of his private affairs even to his solicitor, had taken care when the will was drawn up not to tell him much about the sources of his income. Mr. Holding had been consulted by Frank Lumsden after he had come into his grandfather’s estate, and on his behalf had made some investigations concerning the time the old man had converted his securities into cash. Of course the grandfather had lost heavily in doing so, for the stock market was greatly depressed immediately after the war broke out. But he had probably realized between ten and fifteen thousand pounds in cash.

  Where this money had gone was a mystery. All the ready money that Frank Lumsden had handled when he came into the property was the sum of eighty-five pounds, which had been standing to the old farmer’s credit in the bank at Staveley. Most of this amount had been swallowed up by the funeral and legal expenses connected with the transfer of the deeds. The young man had naturally been eager to find some trace of the missing money. Mr. Holding was inclined to the belief that the old man’s mental balance had been disturbed by the war. He thought that fear of a German invasion had preyed on his mind to such an extent that he had buried his money, intending to dig it up after the war was over. Frank had sold some of the farming machinery in order to provide himself with ready money. In this way over£200 had been obtained.

  Nothing had been paid to the three old servants who had been left legacies. The old farmer had fractured his skull through falling downstairs, and had died without recovering consciousness, and therefore without realizing the emptiness of the reward he had left to his faithful servants. To Mrs. Thorpe, his housekeeper, he intended to leave £200, and legacies of half that amount to two of his old farm-hands, Samuel Hockridge and Thomas Jauncey.

  Mrs. Thorpe was a widow who had had charge of the domestic management of the house for thirty-seven years. Hockridge, who was over seventy years of age, had spent over thirty years with James Lumsden as shepherd, and Jauncey, another shepherd, had been twenty-eight years at Cliff Farm.

  Detective Gillett had no difficulty in tracing each of these three old servants and interviewing them. Mrs. Thorpe had gone to live with a married daughter at Woolwich. Gillett found her a comparatively cheerful old woman, and, though the loss of her legacy which her old master had intended to leave her was a sore memory, she had little complaint to make against him. She was full of hope that her master’s money would ultimately be found and that she would get her legacy.

  Hockridge had gone into the service of a neighbouring sheep-farmer on the Staveley Downs. It was true that his best days were over, but he had a profound practical knowledge of sheep, and as labour was scarce, owing to the war, the farmer had been glad to get him. When Gillett interviewed him in his new employment he found that the loss of his promised legacy from his old master had soured him. To the detective’s optimistic view that the missing money would be found, he replied that it would be too late for him—he would be in his grave.

  One hundred pounds was more than his year’s earnings, and it represented wealth to him. He dwelt on the ease and comfort he would have been able to command with so much money. He could give no clue regarding the hiding-place of the old farmer’s fortune. He was familiar with every foot of ground on the farm, but he knew of no place that suggested a hiding-place for a large sum of money. If it had been buried, his old master must have buried it himself, and therefore the garden was the most likely place. But the garden had been turned over by zealous searchers under the direction of Master Frank, and no trace of money had been found there.

  It was evident to Detective Gillett that this feeble old man had not killed Frank Lumsden. Although he regarded the loss of the legacy as the greatest disappointment that could befall any man, he felt no active resentment. He accepted it as a staggering blow from fate which had dealt him many blows during a long life. The detective’s inquiries showed that on the day of the murder, and for weeks before it, Hockridge performed his ordinary duties on the farm of his new employer, and therefore could not have been near Cliff Farm, which was ten miles away from the farm on which he was now employed.

  Thomas Jauncey was an inmate of Staveley Infirmary, suffering from a severe attack of rheumatism which rendered him unable to get about except with the aid of two sticks. Gillett’s inquiries established the fact that he was crippled in this way when Frank Lumsden was murdered. Nevertheless, he went over to Staveley to interview the old man. He found him sitting in a chair which had been wheeled into the yard to catch the weak rays of the autumn sunshine. He was a tall old man, with a large red weather-beaten face surrounded by a fringe of white whisker, and his two hands, which were crossed on a stick he held in front of him, were twisted and gnarled with the rheumatism that had come to him as a result of half a century’s shepherding on the bleak downs. The mention of the legacy he had not received brought a spark of resentment to his dim eyes.

  “Seems t
o me I ought to have been paid some’et of what belongs to me,” he said to Detective Gillett, after that officer had engaged him in conversation about his late master. “Why didn’t Master Frank sell the farm and pay his grandfather’s debts according to what the will said? That’s what ought to be done.”

  “Well, of course, he might have done that,” said the detective soothingly. “But there are different ways of looking at things.”

  “There is a right way and a wrong way,” said the old shepherd, in a tone which ruled out the idea of compromise as weakness. “I ought to have been paid some’et. That’s what my son says.”

  “Ah!” said Gillett, with sudden interest. “That is how your son looks at it, is it? And now I come to consider it, I think he’s right. He’s a man with ideas.”

  “No one can’t say as he ain’t always been a clever lad,” said the withered parent, with a touch of pride in his offspring.

  “I’d like to meet him,” said the detective; “Where is he to be found?”

  “He is gard’ner to Mrs. Maynard at Ashlingsea. Mrs. Maynard she thinks a heap of him.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Gillett. “I remember Sergeant Westaway telling me that you had a son there. I’ll look him up and have a talk with him about your legacy. We may be able to do something—he and I.”

  On returning to Ashlingsea, Detective Gillett made inquiries concerning the gardener at “Beverley,” the house of Mrs. Maynard. Sergeant Westaway was able to supply him with a great deal of information, as he had known young Tom Jauncey for over a score of years. Young Tom was only relatively young, for he was past forty, but he bore the odd title of Young Tom as a label to distinguish him from his father, who to the people of Ashlingsea was old Tom.

  The information Gillett obtained was not of a nature which suggested that young Tom was the sort of man who might commit a murder. Mrs. Maynard lived on her late husband’s estate two miles south from Ashlingsea. The household consisted at present of herself, her daughter, a cook, a housemaid and young Tom, who was gardener, groom and handy man. Young Tom bore a reputation for being “a steady sort of chap.” He liked his glass of ale, and was usually to be found at The Black-Horned Sheepfor an hour or so of an evening, but no one had ever seen him the worse for liquor.