Death by the Gaff_Black Heath Classic Crime

by Vernon Loder

  Half an hour after that, a tiny but important fraction of it awoke to life. A bell rang, after premonitory noises had half-aroused the sleepy porter. The noises were those of the engine of a car, which he trusted would pass on into the night. But the noises died out, and were succeeded by the bell.

  The porter huddled on some clothes. He spoke Welsh and English fluently, but it was in his native tongue that he murmured the equivalent of: “One of those blinking fishers forgot his key again!”

  Still, as he pondered on his way to open the front door, few if any of their guests took their cars out at night. The hotel water was not more than two miles distant even at its furthest bounds. During the day people used the bus, and by night they walked.

  If this was a late arrival who had booked by wire or telephone, the proprietor would have warned him. It must be a belated traveller, tired of driving in the dark on those hilly and narrow mountain roads, who decided to stop at the “Horn.”

  When he opened the door, the porter saw that a woman stood there. She did not seem very old, or very young; very plain, or at all pretty. She was of middle height rather buxom, and spoke in what the man instantly thought of as a high-toned accent. Her voice betrayed some excitement, and nervousness, which seemed, to the porter, to be accounted for by her explanation that she had had a slight accident on her way.

  She had, it seemed, mistaken a road opening, and tried to turn back a fraction too late, with the result that her car had bumped into a wall, and only been saved by a quick use of the brakes from an almighty smash.

  “That’ll be all right ma’am,” said the porter. “There’s a garage here has a mechanic will soon put that to rights. I’ll come out again and bring your car into the yard.”

  She put a half-crown into his palm, with a hand which was notably unsteady, thanked him, and stepped into the hall.

  “I am Mrs. Hayes. My husband is staying here,” she said, to the surprise of the porter. “If you will take my bag, and show me up to his room——”

  “He’s out ma’am.”

  “Out? At this time of night?”

  Her voice was severe. The porter chuckled inwardly. “You see, ma’am, the gentlemen that fishes all go out late. The sewins take best after dark when the water’s low.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said, though her voice did not sound mollified. “At any rate I shall go up. Show me the way, please.”

  He turned on an electric light on the stairs, and showed the way. As he opened the door of Hayes’s room, he had a look at the visitor. She had been pretty in her youth, but she looked hard and imperious now. She was about fifty, well-dressed, commanding, very pale. In the morning, when he saw her again, the porter wondered at that; for he knew then that she was normally a woman with a fresh complexion.

  But he saw more than that, and spoke of it at once.

  “I never thought to ask were you hurt ma’am,” he said, staring at some spots of blood on her skirt, “if it’s anything serious, I could get the manageress up.”

  “Don’t bother,” she replied hastily. “When I had the accident, I bumped myself on something, and my nose bled. Thank you. That will do.”

  “I could find you something cold in the pantry, ma’am,” said this willing man. “I expect you have come a long way.”

  She may have been impressed by his offer but did not show it.

  “Thank you; no. I am tired, and will go to bed immediately. Put my bag in the corner.”

  He left at once, and strolled out to get the car into the garage. It was a tiresome job at that time of night, with an early rise ahead of him, but Mrs. Hayes had shown early signs of generosity, and that was hopeful.

  As he glanced at the car, prior to handling her, he saw that one of the wings was slightly crumpled in front. Otherwise there seemed no damage.

  Driven by curiosity, and at the last moment, he glanced inside the car, and lit a match. It struck him that the lady’s nose had not bled very extensively. Putting the vehicle into the open garage, he yawned, and turned into the hotel once more.

  Chapter IV

  Head Down

  SOME wag, speaking of the anglers at the Horn Hotel, had once said that the day hands there never knew what the night hands were doing. If he had added: “Until next morning at breakfast” he would have spoken the whole truth.

  They generally balloted for pools, and each stuck to his own, fished as long as he chose, and came back when he wished. Every man, encaged in his silent sport, fished in the dark compartment furnished by the night, and the records of his catch, and the excitements of it, were only canvassed over the eggs-and-bacon which the Briton expects to see greeting him in the morning.

  When Harry Wint, unaccustomed to fishing late, came down at half-past nine, the dining-room was buzzing with speculation. And this speculation had two foci; the wife of Mr. Hayes, who sat at Hayes’s proprietary table, looking very cold and angry, and Mr. Hayes, who was not at breakfast, not in the hotel at all, but somewhere unknown not only to the guests, but also to the angry woman at her lone table.

  Since she was Mr. Hayes’s wife, the buzzing had to be low buzzing. The other guests could not canvass her arrival, or her husband’s absence, in voices which might reach her ears. Not so the waiter who came suddenly into the room, stopped by Mrs. Hayes’s table, and announced that he had rung up the solicitor at Cwyll.

  “And what did he say?” she inquired impatiently, as if bidding him not to make a song about it.

  “He said, ma’am, Mr. Hayes had been in yesterday to see him on business, but he was out first, and Mr. Hayes came again about five, and talked to him, and Mr. Hayes left at half-past for here, so he said.”

  Mrs. Hayes nodded. “I see.”

  But obviously she did not see, for she bit her lip, and stared round at the other guests. It was difficult for any wife to understand how her husband could go a few miles to see a lawyer, leave him at half-past five to go home, and be still absent at half-past nine next day.

  Wint went at once to his table, where he now saw his friend Robert Chance. The latter greeted him warmly, but was, to Wint’s mind, somewhat preoccupied. At another table were Bow and Hoad. They were eating their breakfast in silence, and their voices had not contributed to the buzz which Wint had heard on his entry into the room.

  “I went out for an hour or two last night, Bob,” he told his friend. “I hoped I might run across you, but the bally dark came on, and I didn’t want to risk it among the rocks.”

  “Quite right,” said Chance. “They’re damn slippery in places, and you want to know your ground. Did you have any luck?”

  “I lost a salmon, or a very big sewin,” Wint replied. “And as I found out this morning, I must have lost my gaff. I’m afraid the sling was loose.”

  Chance smiled faintly. “You’ll get it again. Someone is sure to find it.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction of Mrs. Hayes’s table, lowered his voice, and added: “We’ve lost a guest; which is worse!”

  Wint stared. “The Mr. Hayes you wrote about? Hasn’t he come in?”

  “Not a sign of him. His wife arrived suddenly in her car about two. No one knew she was coming.”

  “Is that she?”

  “Yes. I told you my feelings about the fellow, but if a couple of us can slip out just now, without alarming her, we are going to have a search.”

  Wint rubbed his chin. “I say, that sounds rotten! What can have happened to him?”

  Chance shrugged his shoulders. “Ask me another! He may have gone in. One of his favourite places was The Dog’s Leg Pool. There’s a kink in the corner, and an undercut bank which makes a whirlpool.”

  “But surely the river isn’t big enough——”

  “Not broad, but deep and fast enough, in spots. Then there are holes underwater, worn in the rocks, where the water enters a kind of funnel. Get into one of those, wedged, feet up, head down, and you’re for it. You might make a shot at saving yourself by day.”

  Wint looked grave, as his
breakfast was set before him. Chance finished his, and got up.

  “Drop down the bank later, when you’re done,” he whispered. “I’ll be down near the Pass. Anyone will tell you where that is.”

  He went out. A moment later, Hoad and Bow got up and followed. The eyes of most of the guests followed them significantly.

  Mrs. Hayes only favoured them with a quick glance. She looked aloof. No one could tell whether she was anxious or angry, or both. Only the porter, who had seen her in the hall, as she passed in to breakfast, had noticed that there were no red spots on her skirt. Certainly there were spots of a kind, but not red. They were much fainter, and of an indeterminate colour. There was nothing in that. Even well-to-do women try to remove stains from their clothes, especially if they have hurried down to the country, without a change.

  The porter did not ask himself why she had hurried down to the country without announcing her coming. Wives did these things. He was married himself, and knew.

  Harry Wint sat not more than a minute after he had finished his meal. He lit a cigarette, and reflected that Joan Powis would come that evening. Perhaps the rumpus would be over by then, Hayes found, and his wife appeased.

  Wint knew better than the porter about wives of Mrs. Hayes’s class. He inferred that she had come without warning, and she looked as if that meant something. Then what he had heard about her husband proclaimed him a particular, fidgety man; the type that does not marry temperamental wives, and bear with them patiently. If no one knew she was coming, then there was something up.

  He thought all that before he rose and slipped out. In the hall he found Mr. Harmony talking to the porter, with two men, and Celia Mason listening. They broke off to glance at him, and did not begin again till he had taken his hat and gone out. But Harmony bowed, and the others gave him a half recognition.

  He did not ask his way to the Pass. He had come through it on the bus from Cwyll. If the other men were down there at the neck, he might as well strike in at the pool where he had dropped his gaff. He thought he could recognise it. It was at the first sharp bend in the road as you went downstream.

  He saw it presently, and went down a narrow path between the alders, before he came to the wall bounding the road. When he approached the head of the pool he told himself that the fish he had hooked had run down, and he with it. It was stony going, lumps of rock and small boulders cluttered the bank. He had had to course over and between them the previous night, and it was a wonder, as he saw now, that he had not come a nasty purler on his nose. The angel who looks after drunk men and night fishermen had saved him evidently.

  But this was just the sort of place where his loosely fastened gaff might bounce out of its sling as he crashed over the debris. He might as well keep an eye open for that, as well as signs of the missing Hayes.

  He did not know where the Dog’s Leg Pool (Hayes’s favourite) was, and he did not hear the voices of the men who had gone before him, so, possibly it was some way downstream. But there was no sign of his gaff on the bank, and that proved that it had fallen into the stream, or been picked up, for it was a steel gaff, and would show up in the morning sunshine.

  Between that pool and the next there was a short rapid, foaming and treacherous. It led directly into the run at the head of the next pool below. This had a streamy top, narrow and deepsh for five yards, then broadened out, and was between rocks, about ten feet deep in the middle, shallowing at the tail, and then suddenly breaking in a white lather and gleaming spray over the lip of a rock ledge, to form a five-foot fall.

  Chance or instinct often seems to prompt one to look where another human being has appeared. Wint had heard no sound, but he looked up suddenly at the wall behind him and saw a man leaning there. He could see that he had a stiffish rod in his hand; it looked like a spinning-rod. The man himself was short and thick-built, a peasant by his clothes; not ill-looking, but phlegmatic of expression.

  “Haven’t seen a gaff of mine about?” he called up to the man, “I lost one last night.”

  The man shook his head, and called back: “No sir. But I haven’t started yet.”

  Wint called back thanks, and went on. The man moved away from the wall and went upstream.

  Wint did not go far. He drew up suddenly and stiffly, as a pointer who scents game. His face was rather paler now, and his eyes, widened in surprise and horror, were fixed on an undercut rock that jutted out from the further bank, just above the lip of the waterfall.

  In the river, floods had forced uncovenanted channels in strange places, and wayward ribbons of the main stream here and there turned aside, vanished into what looked like cracks in the rocks, and plunged into deep, whirling pot-holes.

  What had attracted his attention, and caused that sudden frozen concentration, was the sight of what looked like two booted feet, and the lower portions of two legs sticking out, immersed in the water, from under that jutting rock. In a moment he knew that here was Mr. Hayes.

  In that quiet air, and reverberating from the rocks and cliffs, a shout carries far. He had only shouted twice, and the echoes of the second cry were still being thrown back from rock to rock, before shouts from below came to him in answer. He moved up the bank, climbed to the wall, straddled it, and was on the road in a minute.

  Farther down, he saw three men running towards him. Bow was leading, Chance and Hoad were abreast. Chance waved to him, and they all came on faster.

  He remembered suddenly that the stream was unfordable there, there was no bridge, and the body was caught under the rock at the farther side. He dashed down towards them, and halted them.

  “The man’s under a rock,” he said violently as he came up. “On the other side in the pool below here.”

  “You’re sure?” said Bow, very pale.

  “Someone’s legs, anyway,” cried Wint.

  “We can ford it four pools up—the bridge is farther away,” said Chance. “Come on!”

  They ran, following his lead, gained the bank of the stream, and tore up to where the river shallowed, and there were rough rocks for stepping-stones, with barely a foot of water covering them.

  As Wint crossed last, he saw the peasant he had seen by the wall come lumbering down the far bank. Evidently he had crossed before them. He had on waders that were wet six inches above the knee. Wint noticed that mechanically. It was to give him food for thought later, but he was too anxious now.

  “That you, Davis?” cried Bow. “The very man we want. It looks as if one of our people’s gone in lower down.”

  Davis joined them with alacrity. He had a long gaff slung across his back. No doubt Bow welcomed his aid as a local expert, who knew the river by night and day, and would be an invaluable assistant in an attempt to recover the body, if body there was.

  “Where is it now, sir?” he asked. “Seen him?”

  Wint explained as they went down, and Davis nodded darkly. “Top of Griffiths—a nasty spot that. Indeed, and it is a very nasty place. But did you only see the legs of the gentleman, sir?”

  “He seemed to be wedged under the rock.”

  They had fallen a few paces behind the others, and now, when they were about ten yards above the waterfall, Chance called out: “Here’s his rod!”

  He bent and picked up an eleven-foot grilse rod. The line was on it, and, attached to that, a tapered cast with a medium-sized salmon fly knotted on. Chance carried it as they went to the jutting rock, and Davis peered into the water, going down on his hands and knees to look better.

  Harry Wint had no desire to look at those legs again just now. He stared down into the stream, and there something twinkling caught his eye. In the moment before Davis spoke he had time to see that it was his missing gaff, lying at the bottom in about four feet of water.

  “He’s not alive down there,” said Davis suddenly, dropping his legs over the rock, where it was shallower, and promptly sliding down into the water so that it came up to his waist. “Who was it, sir?”

  “Mr. Hayes,” said Bow briefly
, staring in a fascinated way at the protruding limbs.

  Davis mode a remark in Welsh, and began to unsling his gaff. “I don’t see indeed how we are to get him up unless with this.”

  “No, no!” Chance cried with distaste, and promptly plunged into the water beside him. “He’s not deep. We’ll get hold of his legs—Hoad, I say, Hoad!”

  “What?” cried the young man, as if waking from a horrid reverie.

  “Run like blazes, and get the policeman and the doctor! Don’t go to the hotel—and see if you can find some sort of stretcher. A hurdle will do, and a bit of tarpaulin.”

  Hoad ran. Davis took off his gaff, and threw it on to the bank. He and Chance moved cautiously forward, an inch at a time, into the deeper water. Davis got a firm footing, asked Wint to hold the handle of his long gaff, and let the other end down to him, took a grip above the hook, and then bent downwards under the water.

  He looked like a swan, stretching down to gather under-water weeds, his groping, free hand the neck. Bent from the waist, his head and back remained under water for twenty seconds, then he rose slowly and laboriously and Wint could see that he had the body by one knee, and was drawing it up easily enough from under the recess in the rock.

  Chance helped now, and Wint let go the gaff, and went down on his knees to give a hand. A minute later, and they had the limp, soaking body of Mr. Solomon Hayes on the bank.

  “Drowned dead enough,” said Davis. “This was to be his last fishing, indeed yes.”

  Chance had his teeth tight shut. He said nothing. Only he pointed to the dead man’s throat, and all three saw what he saw there.

  “You would say he had been stabbed.” Davis was the first to speak. “Yes, indeed, sir, but it’s not like a knife, look you.”

  Wint dropped on his knees by the body. There were certainly no marks to suggest the mark of a knife with an edge, just a round, raw wound, not very large, but obviously deep in the left side of the throat, below, but a little bit forward of, the ear.