Death by the Gaff_Black Heath Classic Crime

by Vernon Loder

  They found their tongues suddenly. Davis, said with conviction that it might have been caused by a gaff. They debated it, and were not agreed. Davis turned the head gently, and there they saw a smaller wound. It seemed surer now that he had found the solution. If the point of the steel gaff-hook had been driven into the throat, the smaller wound was where its point had just emerged.

  “But there’s no blood about here,” said Wint.

  “And no gaff,” said Bow.

  “He hadn’t a gaff with him yesterday morning,” Chance put in. “He was after sewin.”

  Harry Wint suddenly remembered the bright thing he had seen on the bottom. “Wait a moment, Bob,” he begged. “I lost mine last night. I told you—I believe I saw it here.”

  He showed it them, and Davis, after a quick, strange look at him, took up his own gaff with the long handle, and fished up the telescopic one Wint had missed.

  “Is this yours, sir?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Wint. “But how could he have had it?”

  “Did you drop it here, Harry?”

  “No, at the pool above, and on the bank!”

  Davis was full of suggestions and resource. “It may be that the gentleman found yours, sir, and took it along with him.”

  “That’s it,” said Bow. “But, look here, isn’t it just possible that Hayes had his rod in one hand and the gaff loose in the other as he came down to this pool in the dark? Could he have slipped, and got the hook stuck in his neck, pulled it out as he stumbled on the edge, and gone into the pool before he could save himself?”

  “It may be so, though I don’t see how it could happen,” said Wint, examining the gaff. “There’s no blood on it.”

  “It’s been in the water.”

  “It must have struck the jugular, and if Hayes fell in, there would be no signs by this time,” suggested Bow.

  “Well, we can do nothing till the ‘Bobby’ comes,” Chance remarked. “At least, nothing here. I tell you what. There is an A.A. telephone across the road. I’ll go over and telephone the chap at the ‘Horn,’ and it might do no harm to get the police station at Cwyll. Constable Jones won’t be allowed to do any investigation.”

  He ran upstream and crossed. Bow sat down and lit a cigarette. Davis stared at Wint.

  “Did you know the gentleman, sir?” he asked.

  “I never saw him in my life before,” said Wint. “I only came here yesterday evening.”

  Chapter V

  Mrs. Hayes is Calm

  SOME instinct, unexplained by anything he could read in Davis’s voice or manner, told Wint that here was the man to whom Bob Chance had referred in his letter. He looked the kind of man who would stand no nonsense, and there was in his eye a smouldering hint of the quick, Celtic temper. There was nothing to prove that this was the fellow who had quarrelled with Hayes, and threatened to throw him into the river, but the conviction was strong in Wint that it was so.

  Now his mind reverted to the slight circumstance he had observed that morning. Davis had spoken of just starting to fish, he had gone across the stepping-stones which would not wet his waders above the knee, and yet they were wet above the knee.

  Either he had been out at night—and late at that, for the wet waders still glistened a little in the sun—or he had been in the river that morning.

  Davis said nothing, but chewed on the stem of an old pipe which he took from his pocket, but did not light. It struck Wint that he looked rather anxious now.

  The latter went over to Bow, who had laid the rod down, and was lighting a fresh cigarette at the butt of the old.

  “So he was out fishing last night?” he said.

  Bow pointed to the rod. “He must have come back here, looked for his rod, and started to fish—that’s after he got back from Cwyll. What do you think, Davis?”

  Davis started a little. He had heard in the village about the rumpus the previous morning. All the details had been canvassed in the local pub, and it had provided a meaty bone for the gossips to worry.

  “Looks as if he had, sir, if this is his rod.”

  Bow picked it up, and looked at it. “It’s his all right. But what do you make of that big ‘Jock Scott’? Water’s low for that sort of thing, even after dark.”

  Davis leaned forward and took the gut cast in his hand. “Fine gut, too, sir—and look at this!”

  He held up the salmon-fly, and they both moved closer and stared at it. Wint raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  “D’ye mean the knot?”

  Davis nodded. “A queer knot.”

  Bow now studded the fly and its attachment. “You’re right,” he said, with a puzzled air. “I never saw a fly tied on to gut that way before. Why, it’s just the common knot you would tie in string. It would cut if you gave it a heavy pull.”

  Davis seemed suddenly full of a queer satisfaction. “That knot wasn’t tied by Mr. Hayes, sir. He was no friend of mine, but he could fish, indeed, very well.”

  “You had a row with him once, hadn’t you?” Wint asked bluntly.

  “I’m not the only one had, sir.”

  “Were you out fishing last night?”

  Davis gave him a black look. “I was sir, but not here. I was a mile down, on another pool.”

  “You didn’t see him pass you?”

  “I saw nothing of him.”

  There was no time to ask any more questions, for the constable, with Hoad, the local medical man, Dr. Grey, and Chance, who had joined them on the road, came hot-foot across the river.

  Griffiths, the constable, was a tall, good-looking fellow, certainly not cut out temperamentally or mentally for detective work, but an excellent officer as far as his ordinary duties went. He looked rather excited as he greeted the three men, and got out his note-book.

  Dr. Grey did not waste time. He knelt by the body, glanced at the throat, then looked up. “I don’t suppose it matters if we move him, if you took him out of the river.”

  “No, sir,” said Griffiths. “But I hope these gentlemen know how he was lying.”

  “Not much help at that,” said Bow sardonically. “But I can tell you what I saw, while Dr. Grey gets on with his job.”

  So, while the constable took down the statements of Wint, Chance, Bow, and Davis in turn, the doctor examined the primary wound, and then turned the body over on its side, and examined the point where the point of the steel gaff had made its exit. Then he got up, directed Hoad and the constable while they put the body on the stretcher they had brought with them, and made a short pronouncement.

  “I don’t know if the Chief Constable will want a post-mortem, but you had better take the body up this side to the bridge, and put it in Jones’s empty garage. I don’t think it would be wise to take it to the hotel with so many women there.”

  “And Mr. Hayes’s wife,” said Wint.

  Grey looked at him. “Didn’t know he had one! Well, you’d better get along with it. Will you give them a hand, Davis?”

  He looked hard at Davis as he spoke, but the man nodded, and seemed willing enough, so Hoad left it, and Griffiths and Davis took it up, and went off along the bank towards the bridge. The other men accompanied the doctor back across the stepping-stones, and so to the road.

  “What do you think happened?” Wint asked, as they got over the wall. “We think he got a jab with a gaff.”

  Grey acquiesced. “It looks like that. But not exactly a jab. That suggests a straight blow, and a gaff-hook is pulled towards you.”

  Bow cut in. “That was my idea, too. If the wound was made by a gaff, then the man who did it must have stood behind Hayes, reached forward, so that the gaff-point was in front of the throat, and then snatched back.”

  “It cut the jugular, anyway,” said Grey. “That’s a messy business. In view of that, I think Griffiths ought to have examined the ground.”

  “We did,” said Wint. “No signs. You’re overlooking one fact which occurred to me at once.”

  “What’s that?”

  �
��Simply that Hayes was wading near the bank, and fell into the water the moment he was attacked. How long do you think he was dead?”

  “Difficult to be exact since he was lying in the stream. I should say roughly six to nine hours.”

  He glanced at his companions, and added grimly: “You people will have a disagreeable time with the police, I’m afraid.”

  Bow laughed harshly. “There appears to be nothing very secret in what takes place here.”

  “There isn’t! After all, you people at the hotel are our chief show. And if three or four of you have rows with one, and gladiatorial combats on the river-bank, who are we not to be entertained?”

  Hoad looked nervous. “I say, Doctor, we’re not the only ones. Davis——”

  “Oh, you can be sure they will put Davis through it too,” said the doctor dryly. “Fortunately, they have an intelligent man at Cwyll. Inspector Ivor Parfitt isn’t a bad specimen. They’re sure to have him over. The Superintendent is on the point of retiring.

  “That will be the man I spoke to over the telephone,” said Bob Chance. “I was going away to-day, but, of course, I told him I would stop till the business was settled.”

  They were now near the hotel, and a word from Wint halted them in hesitation.

  “Good heavens! Here’s Mrs. Hayes, and alone!”

  Hoad and Bow turned aside. Chance and the doctor went on, with Wint at their heels. Mrs. Hayes came quickly forward and spoke.

  “There is something wrong. I am sure of it! Is it my husband?”

  Dr. Grey was used to death, and the breaking of it to relatives. He believed that nothing was ever gained by stupid quibblings. People of intelligence saw through that at once, and if they did not, the blow, when it came, was more severe from being suspended.

  He raised his hat gravely. “I am sorry to say that it is,” he told her, watching her face with a professional eye. “I am sorry.”

  She drew herself up. “Was he drowned?”

  “He was found in the river. That is as much as I can say at the moment.”

  Hoad and Bow and Chance slipped on, and went to the hotel. Wint hesitated for a moment, and then followed them. He was thinking that Joan Powis would be here that evening. She must have already started from London, and there was no way to warn her.

  Grey concluded that the bereaved wife was cool rather than frozen or stunned by grief.

  “It’s dreadful!” she said, almost mechanically. “Will there be an inquest? I suppose not.”

  “Undoubtedly there will be,” he told her, and relaxed a little, seeing that she was not going to faint, or give him trouble. “I see Mrs. Harmony, one of your fellow guests, coming out, Mrs. Hayes. If you take my advice, you will go in and lie down for a little.”

  She did not ask if she might see the body, or where it had been put. She bowed, turned stonily away, and walked to where Mrs. Harmony was watching her anxiously. Grey stood where he was until she had entered the hotel porch with the older woman, then went home quickly.

  “Not much love lost there!” he reflected, as he ignored some attempts to stop him, to hear what had happened. “Either she had been gradually frozen to death, or she’s cut out of a bit of flint.”

  The former alternative, judging what he had heard about Hayes, was the most likely. Even some model husbands have the properties of the Gorgon’s head.

  Bow and Chance had gone to their rooms when Wint went in. Hoad and Celia Mason were talking in the smoking-room, and when the newest guest looked in there, the girl greeted him as if she had known him for weeks.

  “Isn’t this a terrible thing? Mr. Hoad says someone killed him. I can’t believe it. Everyone disliked him, but you don’t kill people you dislike. It may have been an accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, and I don’t think you disliked him,” said Hoad obstinately. “He was always talking to you, wasn’t he?”

  Evidently he was still jealous of a memory. Celia coloured and looked momentarily uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t dislike him at first. I signed the Round-robin last night. I wish I hadn’t now. But I am sure Mr. Harmony tore it up.”

  Wint sat down, and lit up. He watched Hoad’s face which was worried again.

  “No, he didn’t! He handed it over before he heard. But when did you get fed-up with the man?”

  She was on the defensive at once. “I never liked to be rude to him. And he wasn’t young. I’m old-fashioned enough not to be rude to older people.”

  Wint gathered from this that Mr. Hayes had been at least mildly friendly with one person in the hotel, and that Hoad had pretensions, and did not like it. He intervened lightly.

  “It doesn’t seem to matter much who liked or disliked him, does it? He’s dead now, though he seems to be likely to give more trouble than when he was alive.”

  Celia nodded. “Did you hear about his wife coming in the night? Mr. Hayes never mentioned her coming, and the manageress says she did not book. The Boots says she came about two in her car, and had had an accident somewhere.”

  Hoad stared. “Did he? But I saw the poor thing just now, and she looked all right. What happened? It can’t have been very much.”

  Celia agreed. “It wasn’t. She ran into something, and only bled her nose, bumping her head.”

  “Did she tell the Boots that in the middle of the night?” asked Wint, who rather imagined that the young woman was romancing.

  “Doesn’t sound likely that she would have made a confidant of Evans,” added Hoad.

  “But she did. He said there were a few spots of blood on her skirt, and he thought she might be hurt, and asked her. She told him what it was. It might happen to anyone.”

  The men agreed. A collision with something in the dark is quite likely to dash a driver forward against the wheel.

  “I wonder shall we all be questioned by the police?” said Hoad, after a pause. “If I’m asked, I’ll tell them I did have a row with Hayes.”

  “And you said he was a vieux marcheur,” said Celia. “Whatever that is—‘old soldier,’ I suppose.”

  Wint fought down a grin which would have been unsuitable at that time. “It will serve as a free translation,” he murmured, conscious that Hoad was red in the face, and sorry that anger had moved him to utter an expression he now felt to be dubious; for these sportsmen at angling resorts were not of the Bohemian kidney. “Well, I have nothing to confess, except that I lost my gaff last night, and it was found in the same pool as that unfortunate man.”

  Celia uttered a startled exclamation. “Then it may have been the one Mr. Hayes was killed with—if he was murdered!”

  Wint had already thought of that. It was a gruesome idea, but not improbable. The murderer might have picked it up on the bank, and used it for the ghastly deed.

  “I can’t be responsible for the actions of my mechanical agents,” he observed. “But I must say that I can’t see any way in which a man could have killed himself with a gaff by accident. We’d better wait till we hear what the police say.”

  “I think so too,” said Celia, who excused herself and went out.

  Wint looked at Hoad. “Anything behind your unfortunate remark about the man?” he inquired.

  Hoad pursed his lips. “I spoke rather hastily, but I think there was. Hayes was as stiff as the devil with men, awfully high-and-mighty, and so on, but he gave me a nasty impression when he looked at—at women. It may be rotten to say so now, but his expression was a sort of refined leer, if you know what I mean.”

  “Like an Irish Bull, it does convey something,” said Wint. “I wonder if his wife ever surprised that kind of look on his face?”

  Chapter VI

  Anonymous!

  INSPECTOR IVOR PARFITT, who descended on the hotel a few minutes later, accompanied by a sergeant, was tall and keen. He had a kindly look, too, though his eyes were a frosty grey, and his rather large mouth had a habit of setting sharp like a trap between sentences when he spoke.

  He had been to see the bo
dy, dispatched an officer with a camera to take some shots of the place where the body had been found, and Constable Griffiths with him, to see that sightseers were not allowed within fifty yards of the spot. Reaching the hotel, he had an interview with the proprietor, another with the secretary, who supplied him with a list of the guests, and a short talk with Evans, the Boots.

  Everyone in the village knew that a lady had arrived early in the morning by car, and the proprietor had admitted that Evans let her in.

  Evans knew Parfitt by sight, but was distinctly nervous when the Inspector faced him alone in the hotel billiards-room. He told him that Mrs. Hayes had arrived very late, and admitted that they were not expecting her.

  Parfitt raised his eyebrows. “But her husband was here, of course. Did she explain why she arrived at that hour?”

  Evans nodded. He repeated what she had told him about the accident, which might have been much more serious than it was. Parfitt did not comment on that. He wondered how such a thing could have kept her so late, however, and when Evans told him of the spots of blood on her skirt, he stared at the man.

  “If your nose bleeds violently, it is difficult to escape with a drop or two,” he commented now. “Was there any sign of blood on the floor of the car?”

  “No, sir. I looked this morning.”

  Parfitt dismissed him, and went back to the secretary’s office. “I wonder if you could do something for me Miss Pole?” he said. “I am anxious to see Mrs. Hayes for a few minutes——”

  “I’ll ask her if she feels fit to see you, Inspector.”

  “Thank you. But that isn’t it. I want you to visit her room while she is with me. Did she bring much luggage?”

  Miss Pole looked startled. “No; only a bag.”

  “Then her husband had intended to leave here soon?”

  “No, he was staying some weeks.”

  “And he did not appear to know that his wife was coming?”

  “He never told me so. And we had no wires or telephone messages.”