Death by the Gaff_Black Heath Classic Crime

by Vernon Loder

“But why Miss Mason?” asked Joan, having seen Hoad and Celia sneak out of the room a moment before.

  “I am sure I play the part of the sorrowing wife very badly,” said Mrs. Hayes. “As it seems most probable that it will be shown in court later you may as well know that it was an anonymous letter brought me here.”

  Joan started, but Wint looked rather scornful. “I don’t think much of anonymous letters, Mrs. Hayes. If one is going to trouble about that sort of thing——”

  She cut him short. “I am not purely selfish, Mr. Wint. I didn’t rush down here to please myself altogether. If that had been my temperament I should have spent many years dashing hither and thither on similar errands.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Wint bluntly.

  “Well, we shall have a public exhibition of all the dirty linen soon,” she returned, “so I may make myself clear. One does like occasionally to save other people from their folly, especially when they are merely foolish. My amiable adviser suggested that my husband was paying attentions to a girl in the hotel. Miss Mason was apparently the only one who filled the bill.”

  Joan bit her lip. “We didn’t ask you to tell us this, Mrs. Hayes.”

  “Of course not. But are you conversant with the proceedings at courts and inquests, Miss Powis? Don’t you know that people have to go into the witness-box, and be asked the most intimate questions?”

  “I did, of course.”

  “Then you must see that what I have told you only touches the fringe of it. I am not blind. I came down here very late, and I came along the road by the river. No one knew I was coming. Naturally the police will ask why. Do I know why? What were my relations with my husband? Were we happy? Did we quarrel, and why? What am I to say?”

  Wint felt the bitterness behind her seeming composure. “I don’t suppose you will be allowed to slur it over?”

  “Why should I? Naturally, under other circumstances, I should have kept it to myself, but this involves others. If I fail to tell the truth, Mr. Wint, wrong motives may be ascribed, and some innocent person may be held guilty of a crime he never committed. If I suspect the motive, should I do right to keep it dark?”

  “No.”

  “Very well. There can be only one motive here. My husband harmed a few people while he was alive, but I shall not allow him to do so now he is dead!”

  Her frankness amazed them. The history of her marriage was written in it, and the indictment of the dead man. Wint bowed.

  “You must do what you think right, of course,” he said. “There’s the dinner-bell, Joan,” he added, with some relief. “Shall we go in?”

  “Odd woman!” he said in a low voice, when they were seated at table. “What do you think of her?”

  “She is either a wonderful actress; or I am sorry for her,” Joan replied. “It’s so difficult to decide what it all means. I always think it so odd in murder cases when counsel points out how calm and collected the prisoner is. As if an intelligent prisoner would go about showing excitement and fear all over his face! But I am inclined to believe Mrs. Hayes.”

  “I don’t know that I am,” he murmured. “She is so ready to take it that she will be suspected. And she knew there was a lake at Llynithen. How did she know that?”

  Joan reflected. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “I did. She has never been here before. But wait a moment! She may have got that out of a guidebook, though I am not at all sure that the tiny llyn there is mentioned in any of them. It isn’t beautiful, or notable in any way.”

  “I say,” began Joan, “you will come with me, and have a look at those tunnels this evening? Have you got a torch?”

  “I brought one, to help me tie on flies at night.”

  “Then we’ll go,” she said. “Suppose we found something that would help to——”

  “Hang someone?” he suggested rather grimly.

  “Oh, don’t be a dud!” she said. “If it’s the right one!”

  He smiled. “I see what you mean. Funny thing how we dislike hunting people down, and forget that it sometimes means letting the wrong man in for it. I’ll go, and take the torch. We can walk down to the lower bridge after dinner.”

  As they discussed their plans, Mrs. Hayes came in and sat down at Celia Mason’s table. She began to talk to the girl in an animated fashion, and it was presently obvious that Celia rather welcomed her company. Hoad did not. He sat gloomily eating, and staring from time to time at the other tables. The whole affair seemed to have got on his nerves rather badly.

  Chapter X

  The Corpse in the Llyn

  AT a quarter to nine Joan and Harry Wint set out on their expedition. None of the others went down the river. They waited, like most of the village, for news of Inspector Parfitt’s return from Llynithen.

  But Parfitt did not return that evening, and one busybody who ran up to the tarn later, on a motorcycle, came back to say that no one was visible near the lake.

  Yet Parfitt had been there, had made an important and rather gruesome discovery, and telephoned for an ambulance from Cwyll. His sergeant had travelled down in it, and the Inspector himself had taken a detour back to the town.

  Rumour had lied when it said that Blodwen Tysin had left a letter addressed to the Inspector. A visit to the farm told him that her car was gone, and a boy herding sheep had mentioned seeing the girl taking the car over a rough path, little better than a track, which ultimately debouched into the Pengellert-Llynithen road.

  Her use of this track suggested a desire to get away secretly, and although she had had a long start, the Inspector had taken the more direct way to the mountain tarn. Only two roads could be reached by car from there, and on one of them there was an A.A. scout. The other led back to Cwyll, and it was unlikely that the girl would have driven there if she wished to keep her whereabouts secret.

  But the scout, posted about two miles from the lake in the valley had not seen a girl, answering to her description, and driving an old Ford, that day.

  So Parfitt and his sergeant raced back to the lake, and getting down from their motor-cycle combination, began a thorough search of the road and the rough grass verges.

  On the verge to the side of the llyn, they found what they were looking for, the tracks of the car where it had been driven on to the grass. About a hundred yards to their left there was a little steeple of rock, covered with bushes, and between it and the water another clump of bushes. Between these and the rock the car stood empty, invisible from the road.

  A hasty search of it revealed nothing to hint at what had happened. They hurried to the lake-side. Here they found a muddy plash, with the track of feet to either side. Beyond there was a rock outcrop, and deep water beyond that, amber brown in colour, ten feet deep by the bank, but sufficiently transparent to show them some amorphous object near the bottom.

  The sergeant was an excellent swimmer. He took off his clothes, dived in, and came up again in half a minute to report that a woman’s body was lying on the bottom, apparently attached to some heavy object.

  “I think it’s tied by a rope,” he added. “I’ll get my knife and try to cut her loose.”

  “That’s right,” said Parfitt. “We can fish the weight up later. When we have her on the bank, dress quickly and get back to the A.A. telephone-box. We want an ambulance from Cwyll. I don’t like the idea of taking the body back to the village, ’til I ask a few more questions. Didn’t they say Davis and the postman have been courting her?”

  “Trying to, they said,” the sergeant responded, as he opened the big blade of his knife, and prepared to dive again. “She wasn’t easy money, sir.”

  They were fortunate in that there was no farm nearer than a mile away, and they salvaged the body without being disturbed, and examined the rope, and the knot with which it was tied round the neck, before the sergeant dressed, and went off to the telephone.

  Left alone the inspector made a close study of the ground in the vicinity. He saw that the car had been brought
to a standstill by the brakes, that the ignition was switched off, and the gear in neutral. For a distracted suicide this seemed rather strange. He decided to have finger-print impressions taken from the wheel, door-handles, and gear-lever, before the car was moved away. The ambulance, by his directions, would bring up a doctor, a driver, and a constable. The officer could be put in charge of the car until someone was sent up to take the prints, and have photographs taken of the scene.

  Parfitt had made several sketch-plans, and done all he could do before the ambulance came. He had made sure that there was no message or note of any kind attached to or hidden in her clothing. When the doctor came up, his verdict was brief. The girl had been drowned. Her death had taken place more than six hours before the arrival of the police.

  “There is a mark caused by the rope on her neck, and some abrasions on her hands,” he added. “There is one deep scratch on her palm which has bled.”

  “That wouldn’t take place after death, doctor?”

  “No. It may have been caused by stones at the bottom, if you found her there. She wasn’t floating?”

  “No. There’s a weight to which the rope was attached. It’s still down there.”

  The ambulance had brought a rope and grapnel. After some fishing, they drew up the weight. It was a stone about seven pounds in weight, of oblong shape with a curious nick in the middle which had prevented the rope from slipping off.

  The body was removed to the ambulance, the stone put in, and the sergeant, the driver, and the doctor went off. Parfitt put the constable in charge of the car, and mounted the motor-cycle. To avoid running through Pengellert, he took the road by which the car had come, and returned to the farm.

  He searched it room by room this time, and at the end of an hour had made a negative discovery. The gaff which had belonged to old Tysin was not there.

  During his inquiries in the village earlier in the day he had been positively informed that the girl’s father had used a gaff made by binding a steel hook on a five-foot shaft of ash. A certain number of people had seen it at the farm since the old man’s death. The tarn at Llynithen would have to be searched afresh for it, and if that failed, the pools of Cwyll.

  Even a detective-inspector cannot be expected to know the private lives and intimate characters of people who live ten miles from his station. When Parfitt left the farm he went down to a small villa on the upper valley, where a local minister lived. He found him in his little back garden reading a book and smoking his pipe.

  Parfitt felt in a way that his news did not astonish, though it horrified the man. He asked that it should be kept a secret for the present, sat down, and accepted a fill of baccy. When he had lit up, he leaned forward confidentially.

  “You aren’t very much surprised, sir?” he said.

  The minister shook his head. “It is a most dreadful thing, but you are right, Mr. Parfitt. She was a fine girl, though inclined to be prouder than her neighbours liked.”

  “That’s why I came to you first, sir. I want to know something about her character—that sort of thing.”

  He noticed absently that his companion had been reading “Downes on Ethics.” Ethics had something to do with conduct, he thought. The worst of it, in his experience, was that people full of theories hadn’t any common-sense.

  “It’s a thing one rarely gets within touch of,” said the other, as he closed the volume. “What’s your character, and what’s mine, Mr. Parfitt?”

  The Inspector grumbled to himself. There it was, just as he had said. Reading all round things, instead of understanding them.

  “Officially, mine’s fairly good, so far,” he said with a smile.

  “Just what I mean,” said the minister. “Officially. That’s generally as near as we can get to it. But you don’t want that, I think. Tell me exactly what you do want.”

  Parfitt puffed smoke for a few moments. “There’s this murder, and there’s gossip.”

  “Plenty of gossip.”

  “You’ve heard it?”

  “Yes, without wanting to; I’ve heard it. It’s a rotten thing, when you come to think of it, Parfitt, that a girl is so much at the mercy of other people’s tongues. I understand that the dead man went up to the farm two or three times for some flies.”

  “Did you ever see him?”

  “Yes, and I spoke to him once. He was curt, and rather rude.”

  “Are you any judge of faces, sir?”

  “No. I used to think I was, but I found the idea dangerous, and gave it up.”

  “Did Mr. Hayes seem to you the kind of man who would chase after women?”

  “I admit that I haven’t had much experience of that type, Parfitt.”

  The Inspector saw that he was not getting anywhere.

  “Well sir, let me be blunt. There is a suggestion that the girl Tysin was meeting Mr. Hayes—sometimes after dark. Would you believe that?”

  His companion knocked out his pipe. “It is quite possible.”

  “But you consider that she was a girl of good character?”

  “I do. I think she was a girl of decent temperament; inclined to be religious, though she didn’t make a show of it.”

  “I see what you mean, sir. She might have fallen in love with Mr. Hayes.”

  “I am sure she did, if she met him after dark. There are few young women here, I am sorry to say, to whom I could not give a similar testimonial. I take it, of course, that she was unaware Mr. Hayes was a married man.”

  Parfitt reflected for a moment. “From what I hear, it is unlikely that he told her that. His wife came down here late the night of the murder, on account of an anonymous letter she had received, casting aspersions on her husband’s conduct, She was ready enough to believe it.”

  “Poor woman! You can be sure that it was not merely jealousy?”

  “I should say so, sir. She struck me as having endured a lot somehow. But now we come to the murder. We have an idea that Miss Tysin went down in her car to the pass last night. Mr. Hayes was found dead, since, and now she goes and does herself in.”

  “You’re putting it in rather an ugly way, Parfitt. If you mean that she may have killed him, and committed suicide, I should say it was more likely she would have done it there and then. As a rule, if people kill from revenge or jealousy, the remorse comes quick on the deed.”

  “That’s a good point, sir,” remarked Parfitt, who saw that his man was not all futile theorizing. “Why go home, cool off, go to bed and sleep—and then start out next day to drown herself?”

  The other man looked at him. “How can you tell that she went to bed and slept? Surely you’re trenching now on Sherlock Holmes’s domain?”

  “Her bed had been slept in, and her pillow had the mark of her head, sir. She hadn’t tossed about in it, you could see that easy.”

  “Oh, you’ve been up to the farm. Did you expect to find anything there?”

  “I was looking for her father’s gaff. It wasn’t to be seen.”

  “It wouldn’t be,” observed the minister. “She gave it three months ago to the postman. He was always coming up to borrow it—an excuse to see her I suppose—and she wanted to get rid of him.”

  “She disliked him?”

  “No. But she was bit proud, as I told you. I lent her books, sometimes, Parfitt, and she always wanted the same kind. That was romance. Not the noveletty kind. I am afraid I could not have helped her there. There is a certain type of girl, often one who comes of fairly humble origin, who has dreams of a rich, and handsome, and distinguished suitor, who will ride up some day, and marry her. It was a common enough plot in the Victorian days, to which most of my novels belong. You may think it silly of her, but I took it that Blodwen wasn’t really proud because she despised the people here, but because she was waiting in her mind for some imaginary hero.”

  “And the postman wouldn’t fit, sir?”

  “That is my impression. I don’t want you to take all I say for gospel, Parfitt. But I try to observe people, and it isn
’t what they tell me of themselves that I always believe. But I can say that I believe Blodwen was a good girl, using the word in the old sense, and if she met Hayes out, it was because she thought she had met the right man at last.”

  “If he’s the man they say, he would know enough to butter her up, sir, and play on that. But he could hardly offer her marriage.”

  “In a way, Parfitt, I am sorry I don’t know much about the methods of seducers. If all parsons took a course in the subject, they might be able to help more than they do now.”

  The Inspector stared at him for a moment until he realised that the other was speaking of theoretical knowledge.

  “I am afraid I put that badly,” the minister added, before he could speak. “I mean that you can’t warn people adequately until you know what to warn them against. It I knew more about it, I might controvert your argument that Mr. Hayes could not have offered the girl marriage.”

  “Well, he could of course.”

  Parfitt rose as he spoke. He felt that he had not wasted his time there. Unless his companion was merely speaking at random, he had thrown a light on the dead girl’s character which might prove most valuable at the inquest. If she was the dreamy romantic, and Hayes the experienced man of the world, it was easy to see how she had been befooled.

  “Simple love is a most dangerous thing,” said the minister. “Pity! It’s the decent fools who suffer most, Inspector.”

  Parfitt had had a long day but when he left the little manse he drove fast to Cwyll, and called on the Chief Constable, Mr. Rigby.

  The coroner was with the Chief Constable when Parfitt arrived. He had just learned of the finding of Miss Tysin’s body, and had come in to discuss it.

  “There’ll be one post-mortem at least,” said Rigby. “We have decided, Parfitt, that there is no need for one in the case of Mr. Hayes. The doctor is quite convinced that he met his death through that wound in the throat.”

  “I think he is right, sir. But there must be one on the girl. There are several medical points involved.”

  The coroner raised his eyebrows. “Is it right that she was meeting Mr. Hayes clandestinely?”