Death by the Gaff_Black Heath Classic Crime

by Vernon Loder

  “But ’twas the other gentleman’s gaff we found, sir.”

  “That confuses matters, but there may be some explanation. Say the other man came along the bank, found the gaff dropped by—Mr. Wint isn’t it?—and did the murder with that. If he was a stranger, he might think Hayes had dropped it.”

  “I’ll bring Mr. Hayes’s tackle-book and boxes we found on the body.”

  He went away again, and Davis looked at the “Jock Scott” with an air of uneasiness. It was gone when Parfitt came back.

  A search through Hayes’s tackle did not reveal a single “Jock Scott.” And the few salmon-flies he had were on much smaller sized hooks.

  Parfitt said he must go, and Davis rose. The Inspector called the man back when he was already at the door.

  “Did you ever hear that Mr. Hayes was after any women about here?” he demanded.

  “Mr. Hayes after women, sir?”

  “Yes, paying any attentions to anyone locally?”

  “No, indeed, sir. He was always fishing during the day, and when would he meet her?”

  Parfitt did not give the obvious reply. “All right, Davis. Good day to you.”

  “Good-bye now,” said Davis, and went out.

  “That’s a pattern of yours, Mr. Davis, or I’ll eat my hat!” mused the Inspector, when the door closed. “A variant on the usual ‘Jock Scott.’ I remember Mr. Rigby showed me one.”

  While Cwyll is not informed of all that goes on in Pengellert, the places are sufficiently near, and sufficiently small, to enjoy a mutual information service. News is news in the country, and small events have to pass for greater. Most of the sportsmen of Cwyll went up to Pengellert for a day’s fishing when the sewin were running, and Davis’s fame as an accomplished angler was known for miles.

  He had invented a few flies on his own account, and altered others to suit local requirements, but he lacked the deftness and skill to tie them himself.

  Those he used were tied by a young woman, who lived alone in a little hill-farm on the slopes of the mountain above the village. Her mother had been dead ten years, her father died the previous year, and she had inherited from him the farm, with a sheep-run, a grey-stone home, a three-year-old Ford car, and three hundred and fifty pounds. Two men helped her with the farm and the sheep, but they lived in the village.

  Just as there are, no doubt, makers of golf-clubs who do not frequent the links, even play the game at all, so Blodwen Tysin did not fish, but was something of an expert at fly-tying. She had learned that from her dead father, who had been a mighty angler, and earned quite a little in the season by tying flies for visitors. Within the last year she had also got a small connection, through one of the angling papers, with sportsmen at a distance, who sent her orders to despatch by post.

  Parfitt had had flies from her once, and remembered her well. She was tall and well-made, on generous lines. Her hair was dark as a raven’s wing, her eyes big and soft. In fact, for her type, she was a handsome young woman, and would have been pestered by local admirers if she had not had the reputation, reinforced by fact, of being decidedly high-and-mighty—“swanky,” they called it locally. She had been educated at a small private school, and it was this education which was blamed by the Pengellert quidnuncs for Blodwen’s cool attitude to her neighbours.

  Parfitt put that thought away for future reference, and went back to the hotel to complete his interrogations. Bob Chance was his first care. Chance was frank about his relations with the late Mr. Hayes, and admitted that he had committed at least a technical assault on him.

  “He was really intolerable,” he added. “I only regret it because he was an older man than myself. I lost my temper, and he got in an almighty fright and bolted.”

  “Even leaving his rod behind. Did you see what fly he was using? But I suppose you couldn’t.”

  “Not the fly. But I saw him casting, before we had the row, and I am quite sure it was a small one. You know the flop a salmon-fly makes—oh, wait a moment. He trod on his line when we had the row, and may have snapped the fly off.”

  “If you’ll tell me the exact spot, we’ll have a close search made for it,” said Parfitt. “Do you remember?”

  “I’ll show it to you when you’ve finished your questions,” Chance replied, “or have you finished?”

  “No, sir. I understand that you met Mr. Hayes before you came here. Can you tell me where that was, and when?”

  Chance looked surprised at this. “How did you know? Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway. Let me see—I think it was four years ago. He and I were staying at a fishing inn in Devon, though I was not fishing that year. I had broken my wrist playing hockey. That was at Totte Combe.”

  Parfitt made a note of that. “You wouldn’t come in conflict with him over fishing, sir, in that case. I suppose you actually did not have much to do with him?”

  “Very little. I didn’t care for the type.”

  “May I ask what type you mean, sir?”

  Chance reflected. “A rather greasy fondness for the young of the other sex,” he said at last, smiling faintly. “He was one of your patters. I hate people who pat girls’ hands on every possible occasion.”

  “That was all then, sir?”

  “That was all. You know, Inspector, that we all have our particular hates. It’s something we can’t help or easily account for.”

  “You thought him an unpleasant type?”

  “So did the girls he patted! There were four, about eighteen there, and they were frank enough to show him that paternal manner ought to be kept for daughters of one’s own. Don’t make a mountain out of my mole-hill, please. I know one quite decent old chap who has the habit. It’s sheer benevolence and kindness on his part—for he is absolutely straight—but I wasn’t so sure of Hayes.”

  Parfitt finished writing down his answers, and asked Chance to read and sign them. “I don’t quite like that,” said the other. “Mrs. Hayes is to be considered. I shouldn’t like to make her unhappy.”

  The Inspector assured him that the notes would not be read at the inquest. “They’re not evidence anyway in this case,” he added.

  Wint came in when Chance had left the room. His interview was short. Parfitt accepted his explanation about the lost gaff, after telling him to explain exactly where he had dropped it, and then asked him if he had heard any out-of-the-way sounds that night on the river.

  Wint shook his head. “No. I heard the water, and a car passing. That is not an unusual sound.”

  Parfitt smiled faintly. “Can you tell one car from another by the sound, sir? I can tell a Morris at night, and one or two others.”

  Wint smiled too. “I never made a habit of it. The only thing I think I could swear to is the sound of an old Ford.”

  “So you wouldn’t know what kind of car passed late yesterday night, sir? The lady—Mrs. Hayes came here in an Austin.”

  “When I was in bed, too, Inspector. But it was a Ford passed on the road I’ll swear, and not a new one.”

  “What time would that be, sir?”

  Wint guessed it as nearly as he could. Parfitt nodded.

  “Going which way?”

  Wint told him, and was asked if he would be good enough to send Mr. Bow along.

  Bow came in, smiling sardonically. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and stared at the Inspector.

  “Rounding up the goats?” he asked, ironically. “I know Chance and I are supposed to have horns since we had rows with Hayes.”

  “There are horned sheep, too, sir,” said Parfitt diplomatically. “I just wanted to ask you one or two questions. About your former acquaintance with Mr. Hayes, for instance.”

  Bow eyed him steadily.

  “I came across him years ago, but I shouldn’t call it an acquaintance.”

  “May I ask where it was?”

  “In the Pyrenees, near the Gave d’ Oloron. There’s a bit of salmon fishing there, and he was at the hotel.”

  “And you, sir?”

  “I was
putting up with a French farmer, Inspector. I’ve fished a good deal in France, but mostly in Brittany. I always put up with a farmer there.”

  “Then how did you run across Mr. Hayes?”

  “I dined with a friend at the hotel twice, and I met him on the river.”

  “Had any disagreement with him then?”

  “Of a sort, yes. He was making up to the farmer’s daughter, and she was meeting him clandestinely.”

  Parfitt raised his eyebrows. “I hope you won’t be offended, sir, if I ask you what business it was of yours? Unless, of course, the French lady was——” he paused momentarily, and Bow interrupted with a laugh.

  “Don’t put me down as a cradle-snatcher, Inspector! The kid was a nice kid, but only sixteen or so. Hayes wouldn’t play cricket.”

  “So you umpired for him, sir,” said Parfitt dryly.

  “I told him to keep off the grass, and he made some offensive remark, which I resented. As he refused to play the game, I informed the farmer, and he sent his daughter off to an aunt.”

  “What was the approximate year and date of your visit to the Pyrenees, sir?”

  Bow gave him both, and they were noted down. Parfitt ended by producing a rough sketch of the course of the river, and asking what pool he had been fishing on the previous night.

  “I have marked the various pools, as you will see, sir,” he added.

  Bow studied the sketch. “I can tell you pretty well where we all started,” he said. “May I put the names down, and then you can check them?”

  Parfitt agreed. “If you will, sir.”

  Bow put them down as follows:—

  POOL 1. Miss Celia Mason, until ten p.m., when she returned to hotel.

  POOL 2. Mr. Bone. He left with Miss Mason.

  POOL 3. Mr. Wint. He seems to have stopped between Pool 3 and the head of Pool 4.

  POOL 4. Mr. Hayes.

  POOL 5. Mr. Hoad.

  POOL 6. Mr. Chance.

  POOL 7. Myself (Bow).

  Parfitt thanked him. “I shall have a better idea now, sir. Of course, we cannot say that any of you fishermen did not leave his pool, climb back on to the road, and drop down alongside a pool higher up, or lower down.”

  “Some of us couldn’t,” said Bow dryly. “I, for one, was fishing from the far bank. The road, as you know, is on this side.”

  “You were on the side where Mr. Hayes was found. Anyone else?”

  “Chance, I think.”

  “Did you hear a car go past earlier that evening?”

  “I did. An old Ford, sounded like Miss Tysin’s—that’s got a sort of special wheeze—but I couldn’t swear.”

  “Going towards the hotel?”

  “I heard it go both ways, if it was the same car. But, I say, Inspector, I wonder if you were right about one of us leaving his place, and making a detour. Just about eleven, or after, I was resting, and filling a pipe, when I heard someone walking on the loose ballast of the open track.”

  “The railway?”

  “Yes. At least I am sure I heard the stones clatter a little.”

  Parfitt noted that. “I’ll ask the others, sir. I think that will do for the present,” he said.

  Chapter VIII

  A Woman in the Case

  THE remaining party at the hotel had discussed the affair ad nauseam, and Harry Wint fervently hoped that they had now done with it for the present. Joan Powis would be down that evening, and after her high hopes of fishing, it would be a nasty jar not only to be robbed of her sport, but plunged into a nasty, sordid affair like this.

  After a little cogitation, he looked up the time for her train, and then studied the local bus table. He found that a bus would take him to Cwyll with half an hour to spare before she arrived. He told Chance, who knew Joan slightly, and added that he would like to see Inspector Parfitt before he left.

  “I don’t want him to imagine I am making a bolt, Bob,” he said.

  Chance smiled. “I’ll tell him, if I see him, old man, but I believe he’s gone up to Miss Tysin’s farm. He didn’t say so, but I overheard his sergeant telling Griffiths.”

  Wint stared. “What does he want with her?”

  “Bow thinks she must have gone by last night in her car.”

  “But how could she be in this?”

  “I don’t know that she was.”

  “Did she know Hayes?”

  Chance raised his eyebrows. “Hayes ran up sometimes to get a few sewin-flies tied.”

  “Didn’t most of you give her orders?”

  “We left ’em at the post office. Hayes went up to get!”

  Harry Wint whistled.

  “Great Scott, old chap! You’re not suggesting that old Hayes——”

  Chance pursed his lips. “I do know I heard the old Ford go past quite a few nights, Harry.”

  “But Hayes was found t’other side of the river.”

  “Absolutely. But there’s the lower bridge. Anyone could drive down, cross there, leave the car in that lane, and go along to the first open cut in the tunnel. Bow thought he heard someone walking there last night. He told the Inspector so.”

  Wint whistled again. “Hayes seems to have been like Satan, seeking whom he could devour.”

  “Yes, if it was she, and she went there to meet him. I wouldn’t swear it isn’t possible. Hayes was a good fisherman, but he had had a few perfectly blank nights lately.”

  “My hat! But it isn’t like a woman to do a man in with a gaff. I always heard they abhorred messy murders.”

  “Unless she was defending herself. Worse weapons than a gaff,” said Chance. “I expect it’s all nonsense, though. None of us heard any sounds suggesting a struggle.”

  Wint nodded. “What do you think of Mrs. Hayes, Bob? I hate to say it, but she doesn’t seem to be worrying much.”

  Chance shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps she understood Hayes!”

  As Wint drove to Cwyll in the bus, he found himself wondering again why Mrs. Hayes had come down to the hotel. Naturally, he did not know of the anonymous letter she had showed Parfitt, but he felt pretty certain that she had not warned her husband of her coming for very good reasons. Hayes’s disagreeable character, and his wife’s present attitude, convinced Wint that husband and wife had not agreed too well in the past.

  Yet, had he seen that other letter, in which the man now dead had told his wife of Bow and Chance, he would have been hard put to it to believe in his own theory. It was the letter of a decent, if not very gushing husband, and he would have had to know something more of Hayes’s curious temperament to understand it.

  There are some men who are determined to keep up a pretence of being in the right, even when they are in the wrong, and are aware that their nearest and dearest know it. Hayes was one of them. In spite of his naturally vicious propensities, he persisted in an attitude which suggested that his peccadilloes were hardly real. When his wife found him out, he would have thought it unendurable to admit what he had done. To find himself placed in a lower scale, mentally or morally, than a mere woman was a blow to his amour propre which he could not face, but evaded, in the very discovery, by a refusal to discuss the facts. To remain his wife’s superior, he had to be her devoted husband, and he remained that, at least, on paper: a hypocrisy of which he seemed hardly conscious.

  “Saving face” to yourself alone is an unsatisfactory business to most people, but it appeared to content Hayes. It was part of his pose, and a necessity called for by his egotistical temperament. He did not care so much what his wife thought of him, so long as he could hug a flattering image of himself to his bosom, and believe it the man his wife had every right to respect. After all, there are no limits to self-deception. It is the easiest cheating.

  If what Chance had hinted at was true, that Miss Tysin had got entangled with that blatant humbug Hayes, and Mrs. Hayes had come to hear of it, there was an explanation of the latter’s sudden arrival in the village. Hayes could have left his orders for flies at the post office as the other
anglers did. Knowing his ways, it was suggestive that he alone had gone up to the farm.

  Wint had heard something about the girl. She was better educated than many of her neighbours, and held herself a little aloof. A man like Hayes, rich, imposing, and pretentious, might make an impression on her. People who hold themselves apart from their fellows are generally ambitious. To be taken up by a wealthy guest at the hotel might impress the lonely girl at the hill-farm.

  Wint could not believe that Bow or Chance, or young Hoad, could have had anything to do with the murder. Mrs. Hayes looked an unlikely criminal, it is true, but she had had time to get off her car on the way to the hotel. But, to implicate her, there must be some motive discovered, of which there was as yet no more than a hint—the speculation that Mr. Hayes had recently and sharply provoked his wife’s jealousy.

  Wint knew, of course, that fatal injuries are sometimes inflicted in a quarrel without premeditation. That would be manslaughter, he assumed, not murder. A heated argument might have resulted in the wife taking up the gaff—Wint’s own, perhaps; which Hayes had picked up—and striking at her husband with it. Hayes might then have fallen down, and the weight of his body having driven the steel hook further into his flesh. The same thing might apply if Miss Tysin had been the wielder of the gaff, though what her motive could be in using it was difficult to see.

  When later Wint saw Joan Powis step off the train, excited and happy, a couple of rods in her hand, he forced a smile.

  “How’s the fishing, Harry?” she asked, when he had got a porter for her luggage, and escorted her out to the waiting bus. “I was wondering if I could have an hour before it got dark.”

  Wint looked about him. There were ten minutes before the bus was due to leave, and it was empty at the moment.

  Hastily explaining that he would have wired her, had he known in time, he told her briefly of the tragedy, and added that if she wished, he would take a room for her at another hotel. She could then return to London next day.