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Death by the Gaff_Black Heath Classic Crime

Page 2

by Vernon Loder


  But at Pengellert there would be no benevolence; only a bit of Joan to himself, and an opportunity to improve their friendship.

  He was never sure whether it was Joan or he who was difficult; or, perhaps, diffident would be the better word. A few years back he had been famous for the way he tackled fierce forwards in the hottest Rugger match, but he was notably timid, or “sticky,” as some of Joan’s slangy friends put it, when it came to dealing with women.

  He was not the fashionable caveman, and he was, while not overpowered by Joan, decidedly awed at the prospect of asking her to belong to him. A girl like Joan, who could face social workers without a tremor, and cast fly like a magician, was not rudely to be snatched at. There was, as he always reflected, the chance that she might turn him down. Girls weren’t outwardly sentimental nowadays; though he guessed that they were much the same within. Man had an easier job when he was chiefly regarded as a potential husband, and father was turned on to you promptly if you happened to suit.

  The Sunday seemed long, as all days before fishing do. But he got through it, and on Monday was on his way, already debating, as the train hurried through the summer countryside, if he should stick to the old wet style, or try this upstream salmon fishing some chap in the North had started.

  And by the evening, he came to Cwyll, and got into the bus for Pengellert.

  It was at Cwyll, on a blue bay, that the river of the same name entered the sea, by way of a winding estuary that extended four or five miles inland. It ran through flat, lush meadows, and was fringed with reeds and bulrushes there. Just above the tidal water, the flanks of two mountains descended from right and left, and closed the view above, the bus passed through a narrow defile at the edge of the river, and presented a wonderful vista of a green vale, transected by tumbling waters, with a huddle of mountains making a purple background.

  The Horn Hotel stood on the banks of the Cwyll, and its garden was bounded on the south-west by the stream. It was an unpretentious but comfortable inn, and when the bus stopped to unload Wint and his traps, there were half a dozen anglers and their womenkind sitting in the porch, talking earnestly.

  It seemed to Wint that they were not as much interested in his appearance as hotel visitors usually are on the advent of a new rod. They glanced at him as he went in, followed by the Boots, carrying his rods and bag, and then the buzz of conversation started again.

  He did not see Bob Chance, which made him wonder why. He had assumed that his friend would be there to welcome him. Neither did he see any man who corresponded to the description of the high-and-mighty Hayes. Perhaps both were out on the river.

  The Boots appeared to be conversationally inclined. He seemed to be suffering from some sort of repressed excitement, and when Wint reached his bedroom, and asked if Mr. Chance was out, the reason for it became plain.

  The fact was that the place had been the scene of a row, or, more correctly, two rows, though the last and worst had begun in the hotel and finished “off” as murders do in stage plays. Mr. Hayes had been a central figure in both.

  The first trouble had taken place in the morning, when Mr. Hoad an impulsive young man, had accidentally taken Hayes’s landing-net as his own, and had been practically stigmatised as a thief by the excitable and tactless owner. But that affair, after a nasty beginning, had not come to fisticuffs, Mr. Hoad declaring that Mr. Hayes’s age saved him from a thrashing, and Mr. Hayes grabbing his net and marching off, murmuring something about Hoad’s youth saving him from gaol.

  The second business was more serious. Chance and Hayes were on opposite banks, when Hayes objected to Chance fishing the same pool. Chance had got out his copy of the rules, and pointed out that he was entitled to fish his own bank on any pool. Mr. Hayes told him he was no sportsman, and no gentleman, or he would not speak of rules, and Mr. Chance retorted that his opponent was a damned old fool, who was looking for trouble.

  Mr. Hayes, triumphant over Hoad in the morning, chanced his age, and waded across to argue the point; putting down a fish which had just risen to Chance’s fly. Chance, irritated by this, and thoroughly fed up with the tiresome fellow, told him to get back to his own bank. Hayes refused, Chance took him by the arm, and that, strictly illegal, assault so infuriated the other that he struck out at Chance, and was promptly laid flat on his back by a not too heavy uppercut.

  Wint laughed when he heard that part of the account.

  “I’m sure that ended it,” he told the Boots. “Mr. Chance is a friend of mine, and not a bully.”

  “He’s a very nice gentleman, sir,” was the reply. “He picked t’other up, I hear, and said he was sorry he hit him, but Mr. Hayes he went off, and down to the police, and made a charge of assault, and the constable here hardly knew what to do with it. Anyway, Mr. Hayes went off to Cwyll this afternoon to see a lawyer, and Mr. Chance he went off there, to get some flies, he said. He took his rod with him anyway. So I suppose he meant to fish coming back.”

  Wint smiled. “Very likely. Do they fish late here?”

  “Mostly they do, sir, these bright days. The sewin won’t rise well till dark. Some of them stays right till midnight.”

  “Then I’ll have a shot at it for an hour or two this evening,” Wint told him, “it keeps light pretty late, I know.”

  Neither Chance nor Hayes was at dinner that evening, when Wint went down. His place had been laid at the table for two, one seat being usually occupied by his friend; so that he had no nearer neighbours than a pretty girl, and a young man, at a table about six feet away. The former was Miss Celia something; her companion was apparently the hero—or villain—of the morning scene, Mr. Hoad.

  Several genial people at other tables greeted him with smiles or bows, then the soup was served, and he began his dinner, and a general, quiet inspection of his fellow guests. When he had finished, and drunk a hasty cup of coffee, he ran upstairs to get out his rod and tackle, and when he went down once more, only three women were in the porch. The men were in the smoking-room, with the exception of Hoad and another, who had gone off with their rods.

  Wint began to fish at a point just above a bend in the river. There was no one in sight, and at first no fish rose, so he had leisure to survey the scene about him, and reflect on what was to him the strange nature of the fishing. This was the first time he had set out within half an hour of dusk, proposing to stay on the river till eleven or so. If it were true that some of the anglers stayed till midnight, and after, it was amusing to think that, invisible in the dark of night, a later hour might find a dozen to eighteen fishermen all busy on the various pools, unseen by the others.

  Wint was not quite sure that he cared for the idea, but, being assured that the sewin did not take well till night in such low water, he went on, hoping to come across Bob Chance, and forgetting that the latter might leave the river, turn on to the road, which ran alongside it in places, and return to the hotel.

  The scenery, as he admitted, was glorious. The stream ran in a rift, with alternating runs, pools, torrents and miniature waterfalls. On one side, the road separated it from the flanks of the mountains to the south, on the other side rose cliffs, with pines growing in the crevices, and a precipitous and stony path hanging on its lower rim. Above him he heard the mewing of a pair of buzzards and watched with keen interest the high circling of these great hawks above the crags.

  As he made down a little, another sight struck him. It was a little bay in the cliff face, and the black mouth of a tiny tunnel. Puzzled for a moment, he remembered the mountain railway that ran under the flank of Cwyll Fawr, and emerging here and there for a few yards into the light, gave its passengers a brief and glorious glimpse of quick vistas of green, and silver and gold, and black; the slopes of the mountain opposite, the gleam of the tumbling river, the bright glare of the sunlight, the dark rocks that lay tumbled in the river-bed, as if giants on the summit of the crags had been playing pitch and toss with boulders.

  Thrice the little railway emerged into the light in the t
wo miles below the village, until it finally left the womb of the mountain, and had a new birth above ground.

  Looking down river again, Wint wondered that he saw no other fishermen. He had understood that the locals fished, but he did not realise yet that many of them only went out when the floods freshened the appetites of the sewin already in the pools, and brought up fresh shoals from the sea. There had been no rain for a fortnight, and the water was clear as crystal, beautiful in its glassy clarity, but irritating to a man out for fish.

  Wint was using a Teal and Silver fly of a large size, and, hoping he might chance on a salmon, had brought the gaff with him. But he saw no salmon, and not a single sewin vouchsafed a glance at his fly as he went on.

  But now the dusk had come, and the mountains lost their hard shapes, and became soft and amorphous; their purple tops darkening towards night, and the shadows lying deep over the pools. Then the night came at last. Wint reflected. Should he go home? To make up his mind for him he felt a sudden pull, and tightening his line, found himself fast in a gleaming fish. He landed it, a pound bar of silver, chuckled happily, and stayed!

  Chapter III

  Wint Loses a Gaff

  WINT had already seen that the river could be dangerous to a stranger after dark. The shallows might be only eighteen inches deep here and there, but the water ran suddenly into dark pools ten to fifteen feet deep, where a mis-step might be an angler’s undoing. Once in the white whirling rush of a rapid, or down in the slow oily whirlpools in mid-stream a man, encumbered with waders, and blinded by night, would have little chance to save himself.

  So, coming to a long pool as the last light faded, he settled down to fish it carefully, and having got nothing in the first essay, returned to the head of the pool, lit a pipe, and rested, preparatory to a second bout of casting.

  Half an hour later, something rose, and he raised the rod top, and knew that he was into a big one. He never saw it, and was unable to say if it was a large sewin, or small salmon. But it ploughed up and down near the bottom for five minutes, then took to leaping and splashing, and finally went down, to jag viciously at the line.

  When the jagging stopped, it lay at the bottom and sulked.

  Gratified, but anxious, on account of the fine cast he was using, Wint played it carefully until it took that sulking fit. Then he threw in a stone or two to shift it, but without success. At last he decided to wait and see if it would move on again, with the line slightly slackened.

  Suddenly it did move! It ran downstream, like a racehorse turned amphibian; down to the tail of the pool, into the rapid below, making for a welter of whirling waters in a maze of rocks. Wint followed it as best he could, stumbling over stones, barging into boulders, to the detriment of his shins and temper, until at last he had to stop in face of a nine-foot rock on the bank.

  He tried to check his fish there, but failed. He let it run. The reel clacked furiously, nearly all his line was out now. He gave the brute the butt once more, in sheer desperation, and the rod doubled up.

  Then the gut parted, the rod-top flew back, a rejoicing fish slid down into the deep pool below, and Wint swore and panted behind his rock.

  Sufficient for one night was the evil thereof, he reflected, as he wound up his line, took down his rod, and began to climb cautiously up the bank in the direction of the invisible road. As he got up ten feet, there was the humming of the engine of a motor; a car, with headlights stabbing the gloom above, shot by. He made for that line, and found himself in a few moments astride a low wall that skirted the ravine, and was the protective boundary to the narrow road.

  Pleased to have proved that the Cwyll fish were catchable at least—even if one beastie had eluded him, he began to walk back to the hotel. He met only one man all the way, and that was to him only a dark figure that went by him walking fast, without vouchsafing any reply to his speculative “Good night.”

  It was a quarter-past eleven when he got in, and left his fish with the Boots, who told him that neither Mr. Chance nor Mr. Hayes had come back.

  Wint nodded. “Well, I’m tired and will go to bed,” he said. “Let Mr. Chance know. I’ll see him in the morning.”

  “He’s leaving to-morrow at eleven, sir.”

  “Right. But I’ll be down at half-past eight—I expect these little troubles will fizzle out when the men cool down.”

  He went to his room. Meanwhile, in the smoking-room, there was a mixed council of war going on, of which he was quite unaware.

  There were three men and two women. There was the old man with the noticeable nose, called Harmony, Jane Harmony, his wife; a man with an unnoticeable chin called Gayte, another man called Bone, and, lastly, the pretty girl Wint had noticed on his arrival, Miss Celia Mason.

  Mr. Harmony had a deep voice and a portentous manner. He had listened quietly for a while to the speculations of the others, and now made a pronouncement in a tone so funereal that Celia involuntarily smiled.

  “And Mr. Hayes has not returned yet!”

  There are some people who can remark that it is a hot day in such a manner as to produce an illusion that the flames of hell are leaping about their hearers. Mr. Harmony had that art. No one really cared if Mr. Hayes never came back, but Harmony’s dire way of turning a phrase, for a moment, almost cast the shadow of a tragedy over the informal council.

  Mr. Gayte recovered himself first, raised what chin he had, tilted his head back till that inconspicuous feature looked Mr. Harmony right in the eyes, and then observed mildly that Hayes—might be fishing.

  “Without a rod?” said Mr. Harmony. “Without a rod?”

  “And in such a temper,” murmured his wife.

  Celia laughed. “But the fish wouldn’t know he was in a temper, and if he did treat ’em rough when hooked, all the better,” she said.

  Bone, who was normal in every way, including his voice, struck in: “By the way, where is his rod?”

  Everyone sat up. Mr. Hayes had two rods, but he kept them locked in a case when he was not using them; being one of those people who treat their fellows as potential criminals, and their rods as celestial tools no one else could procure honestly.

  “That’s true,” said Mr. Harmony, and glanced at his wife. “I know he sent off one to the makers yesterday, and the case is open. I saw it myself.”

  “But he didn’t take the other to Cwyll,” said Gayte.

  “He didn’t bring it back this morning,” said Celia.

  Mrs. Harmony looked surprised. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I am quite sure. I was in the porch and saw the procession arrive. Mr. Hayes came in first, holding a grotty handkerchief to his nose; and Mr. Chance was behind him, trying to look solemn and sorry. Mr. Chance had his rod, but I am sure, now I think of it, that Mr. Hayes hadn’t. I remember he tried to raise his hat to me with one hand, while staunching the vital fluid with the other.”

  “Then he left it at the keeper’s cottage,” said Bone.

  “I bet he left it on the bank,” interrupted Gayte. “He had that scrap with Chance, and, never having run against a fellow tartar before, forgot his precious property.”

  “Someone would have found it and brought it in,” remarked Harmony.

  “I am not sure,” Celia said, “I don’t think anyone else was fishing that pool to-day, and the local people were not out. At any rate, they are as honest as the day down here, and it won’t hurt.”

  Mr. Gayte nodded. “My impression is this: I expect the lawyer chap down at Cwyll told him not to make a mountain out of a molehill, and that he had no witnesses to make a case. Then he came back, stopped by that pool, and won’t be in ’til morning. You know he creeps out at dark to fish some special place no one else thinks of, the spot where he says he saw, or hooked, a twenty-pounder.”

  They fell in with that view after a little. Night was the festive and successful portion of the twenty-four hours at Pengellert, and the Horn Hotel was popular because it served out latchkeys, and catered for people who might tak
e a fancy to try for a trout in the small hours.

  “I expect he is all right,” Mr. Harmony observed, more cheerfully. “But we are far from right. Speaking for myself and wife, I say that I have thoroughly enjoyed myself here, and the company as much as the fishing.”

  “Here, here!” Celia murmured.

  “Absolutely,” said Mr. Bone.

  “With an exception as to the latter,” boomed Harmony, while Caroline nodded vigorous assent. “I have never quarrelled with anybody before, and I hope not to again, but I cannot and will not stand that man Hayes! If he does not leave, I shall—at the end of the week!”

  There was a chorus of agreement. Mr. Gayte tilted his portion of chin again, and murmured “A Round-robin!”

  This proposal received such support that the gratified Gayte at once got out paper and pen, and proceeded to frame the petition. It was regretfully admitted that it would not be a very agreeable job for the proprietor of the hotel to receive it, or put it into commission, but that could not be helped.

  “I think,” said Mr. Harmony, when he and his wife had signed their names, “we should omit Mr. Chance and Mr. Bow from the thing—also Mr. Hoad. Their personal friction with Haynes might spoil it, and we have enough here to carry the day. This is my tenth year at this hotel, and without boasting I may say that I am as good a client at Mr. Hayes—doubly as good, if one counts my wife.”

  “Who would dare not to count her?” said Bone, smiling, for Jane Harmony was popular.

  “I certainly should not, especially as we are about to retire to bed,” said Harmony, rising and beaming at his wife. “Well, that is done. To-morrow, I’ll hand the Round-robin over, and hear what is said. I have your permission to put it strongly if there is any objection, eh?”

  “Hot and strong,” said three voices promptly. “Let Solomon in all his glory depart!” added Bone.

  The meeting broke up forthwith, the members of it crept to their room with the quietness of sewin fishers who are allowed privileges too precious to abuse, and in twenty minutes the hotel was quiet.

 

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