Death by the Gaff_Black Heath Classic Crime

by Vernon Loder

  “Please tell me that you are not angry. I would be a good wife to him, and do all I could to please you.

  “If you could let me know this privately, without telling him that I wrote to you, I should feel happier.

  “I apologize for troubling you, madam,

  “Yours sincerely,

  “BLODWEN TYSIN.”

  When he had read the letter twice, Parfitt folded it up, and looked thoughtfully at the cold, self-composed woman in the chair.

  “You came down to put a stop to this?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I don’t know how often I have been made to play the part of my husband’s mother, Inspector, but I admit that it seemed to me the limit! Naturally, too, I saw that young woman was in more danger than she deserved.”

  “Did you intend to see her?”

  “Of course. Refreshing innocence like hers is rare, Inspector. However I felt about the matter, it was my obvious duty to enlighten her.”

  “I agree,” he said, putting the letter in his pocket. “I may have to put this in as evidence later on. Meanwhile, I must carry on with my inquiries for a minute or two. For the purposes of the inquest I shall want your maiden name, and birthplace.”

  She gave him both, but did not know the quick sense of triumph he had at that moment.

  “I shall go down to Cwyll by the first bus in the morning,” she added. “Some of the other guests are going by that.”

  “Very good, madam,” he replied. “The inquest will be held in the court-house off the square. I think that is all for the present, thank you.”

  After a minute’s reflection, Parfitt sent for the Boots. He came in, obviously wondering why he had been sent for, and was reminded that he had admitted Mrs. Hayes to the hotel on the night of the murder.

  “I want you to tell me again exactly what the lady told you about her accident,” said the Inspector. “And let me hear if you suggested that she had met with some injury, or if it was her own suggestion?”

  “I asked her, sir, if she was hurt,” said the Boots, and went on to repeat what he had said before about the arrival of the dead man’s wife after midnight. Parfitt listened gravely until he had finished, and then put another question.

  “You saw spots on her skirt which suggested that she had been scratched, or something had produced slight bleeding?”

  “Yes, sir. It looked like blood to me, but I couldn’t swear. Only she said she got bumped, and her nose bled.”

  “Those spots were not visible next day?”

  “No, sir, not as they were anyway. I expect the lady cleaned them off a bit.”

  “All right. That will do,” said Parfitt.

  He left the hotel, and hurried back to the tunnel.

  When he reached the spot where the bloodstain had been found on the sleeper, he made a very thorough search of the walls of the tunnel, which at this point were roughly blasted out of rock. Nothing was visible there, so he switched off his torch, and began to walk down the tunnel, keeping to the space between the near rail and the wall, in the dark.

  He was not tremendously surprised when, at a slight bend, he walked into the wall, and moved back a pace, rubbing his forehead ruefully.

  His men had worked more than a mile down the tunnel towards Cwyll, and he did not attempt to rejoin them, but walked back into the daylight, and drove back to Cwyll.

  As he drove, he was pondering on the new complication with regard to Mrs. Hayes and Edward Bow.

  Though he was not a trained psychologist, the Inspector had an eye for faces, and was a fairly sound judge of character. Bow had not struck him as a man who worried much about moral issues. He looked a man of the world; no worse and no better than others of his type.

  In his interview with Bow, when the latter had talked of his visit to the place near Pau, and described his first meeting with the late Mr. Hayes, the Inspector had been surprised by Bow’s moral indignation. It would have been premature and absurd to conclude that Bow was not on that occasion disgusted with Hayes’s pursuit of a young girl. What struck Parfitt was that Bow declared he had gone out of his way to interfere actively. There are a dozen passive, if disgusted, spectators of an ugly scene to one who actively intervenes. Parfitt did not deny that Bow might have disliked Hayes’s morals, but he had wondered why Bow had taken officious, though salutary, action.

  Whatever his private code may be, there is nothing your man of the world dislikes so much as posing as a reformer, and coming in for the sneers that that rôle unfortunately carries with it. Three possibilities at once occurred to Parfitt. Bow might have invented the French incident, to justify or explain his dislike of Hayes; he might have been philandering with the daughter of his landlord, and acted through jealousy; or he might have spoken the truth.

  The third possibility, taking his estimate of Bow’s character to be correct, was now supported by the assumption that Mrs. Hayes and Bow were former acquaintances. In fact, it was likely that Bow, at an earlier age, had fallen in love with the girl who later became Mrs. Hayes. There might be a dozen reasons why this affair had come to nothing, even if Bow still cherished a feeling of affection for the woman he had lost.

  Bow might also have assumed that Mrs. Hayes retained her love for the man she had married, and resented Hayes’s conduct on that account. This vicarious resentment would explain why he had intervened and cut short what, to Hayes, must have seemed a promising beginning to an amorous campaign.

  When he reached the station, Parfitt got a trunk-call through to the police at Devizes, and asked to speak to the Superintendent. The latter was away, but he spoke finally to a sergeant, now on the verge of retirement, who had been stationed in the district, in various villages, for many years.

  Mentioning Mrs. Hayes’s maiden name, he discovered that the Wiltshire officer knew the family very well. He had begun as a constable in the hamlet which was a part of her family’s estate, and married one of the housemaids from the house.

  Parfitt was delighted to hear it. He made the closest inquiries about the neighbouring families with whom Mrs. Hayes’s people had been friendly, and asked if the sergeant remembered Mrs. Hayes’s marriage.

  “I had moved on then, but my wife went to see the presents, sir,” was the reply. “She married a Mr. Hayes—a good-looking gentleman, my wife said.”

  “Her family had friends near Devizes, you said?”

  “Yes, sir, she was specially friendly with some folk who lived at The Manor, Towton.”

  “You were never stationed there?”

  “No, sir, but we have a constable here now that was, before the lady got married.”

  Parfitt smiled to himself. “Might I have a word with him, if he’s in?”

  “He’ll be off duty in half an hour, sir. He’s out on his beat now. I’ll get him to ring you up when he turns in.”

  Half an hour later, there was a ring, and Parfitt found himself in communication with the Wiltshire constable who had lived at Towton.

  “I expect your sergeant told you I wanted some information about the people who used to live at The Manor, Towton?” he began.

  “Yes, sir. They’re still there, sir.”

  “Good. I wonder if you remember the lady who married Mr. Hayes later staying at The Manor?”

  The constable assented. Like most people in tiny hamlets he knew a great deal about what went on in the “big house.” They had been great people for country-house cricket, too, and as the constable had once been a cunning bowler of off-breaks, he had generally played two or three times a year against the team of guests and visitors.

  “I saw her often enough,” he said. “And a very nice lady, too. She was Miss Enid’s greatest friend.”

  Parfitt was in luck’s way. “I see. I wonder if you remember any of the other guests who stayed there; any of the men for instance?”

  The constable had done a bit of detecting in his time, even if it was nothing more involved than investigating poaching affrays, and the Inspector’s inquiries for the name of m
ale guests who had stayed at The Manor, coupled with his anxiety to hear something about Mrs. Hayes, gave the shrewd man a hint what was wanted.

  “You wouldn’t be speaking of Mr. Bow, sir, would you?” he asked.

  He would have been pleased if he could have seen the start Parfitt gave.

  “Bow? Why do you ask?”

  “Well, sir, seeing as you were asking about the lady, and wanted to know the gentleman——”

  “One up to you, constable!” said Parfitt, laughing. “I can see that you are the man for me. Was Mr. Bow friendly with the lady—specially, I mean?”

  The gratified voice of the constable agreed again. “Yes, sir, he was. Some of us thought they were to make a match of it, but it fell through somehow. They do say Mr. Bow lost his money, and was too proud to come back. Anyway, we never saw no more of him.”

  “Though, before that, he came often?”

  “Yes, sir. He was a treat to watch, was Mr. Bow. He was a terror to hit, sir, and I only bowled him once that I remember.”

  “How many years would that be before the other wedding?”

  “Lemme see, sir. Ah, about two years it was.”

  When Parfitt finally rang off, he had a pretty good idea of the relations between Mrs. Hayes and Bow.

  They had certainly once been on the verge of an engagement. Whether they had met or corresponded since, he was, naturally, unable to say.

  The fact that they had not mentioned their previous acquaintance when he had interviewed them, or given any hint to the other guests at the Pengellert hotel, might be significant of guilt, though it might not. If they had conspired together to kill Hayes, they would naturally think it necessary to conceal their former intimacy. On the other hand, Bow had been on the river on the night of the murder, and when he discovered that Mrs. Hayes had arrived late at the hotel, and that her husband had been found dead, he might think it necessary to make no mention of their earlier association for fear it should seem to provide a hint of a murderous conspiracy between them.

  The latter possibility was obvious. Bow had been in love with the young woman who had married Hayes, he had quarrelled with Hayes on two occasions, and, if he were still in love with Mrs. Hayes, there was a motive for the husband’s removal.

  The sergeant who had superintended the operations on the tunnel now came in. He and his men had found nothing to suggest that Hayes had been killed there, or brought through on a trolley. But he had gained a little information elsewhere which interested Parfitt.

  On his way back, he had met the village postman, and had a talk with him. The man had not been difficult to question. In fact, he had spoken frankly and freely about Blodwen Tysin and Mr. Hayes. On the afternoon of the day when Chance and Hayes had come into open conflict, and Hayes had gone to Cwyll to consult a solicitor with regard to bringing a charge of assault against his fellow-guest, Blodwen had been in one of her fields beside the road, looking at a Friesian cow she had lately bought.

  The postman had just heard of the fracas by the river, and was inclined to gloat over the injury sustained by Hayes. He had greeted the girl, and managed to find an opening to retail the story of the rather one-sided fight, and Hayes’s pusillanimous retreat to Cwyll in search of legal aid.

  Blodwen had looked rather white and sick about it, he averred; and acidly told him he ought to be ashamed of himself, when he remarked that Hayes had been “asking for it” for some time. She had then turned away without another word, and hurried back to the farm. The postman, having gone on, was unable to say if she had taken her car out then, but she had heard from him that the injured Hayes was on his way to Cwyll, and it was quite on the cards that she had driven after him to see the extent of his injuries. No doubt the vengeful and jealous gossiper had painted them in lurid colours.

  “Then there’s a job you must do at once,” said Parfitt decidedly, when the sergeant had finished. “Get out along that Pendreath Road; and if that doesn’t help, the road to Pengellert, and inquire at every house you see. If the girl went towards Cwyll that day, she drove; she didn’t fly! Someone must have seen her.”

  Chapter XV

  The Ring

  THE inquest on Mr. Hayes was held next day. The police did not ask for an adjournment, seeming content that the jury should return an open verdict. This was not a tactical move on their part, but due to a feeling that the investigation would be a very protracted one, and that there was nothing to be gained by successive postponements.

  There was indeed at this point no definite proof of the time when Hayes met his death, or the place of it. There was merely the doctor’s guess as to the number of hours the body had been lying in the water, and a supposition that Hayes had been killed while on the bank. Since the police had decided that Blodwen Tysin had had no hand in the affair, her name was not mentioned during the proceedings, though it probably occupied the minds of most of those in the little court. Examination of some of the witnesses merely repeated what was already known: that some of the guests at the hotel had had differences with the dead man, and that in one case, fisticuffs had followed an exchange of heated words.

  Inspector Parfitt did not mention the discoveries in the tunnel. It was obvious to him that the injuries to Hayes’s throat were of such a nature that extensive hæmorrhage must have taken place, and there was no link between the body found in the water and the bloodstain on the railway sleeper. Parfitt took it that the latter had made by Mrs. Hayes. He felt sure that she had gone down the tunnel that night, and collided at one point with the rock wall. She admitted that her nose had bled as the result of a collision with something. Substitute the rock for the steering-wheel as the cause of that trouble, and you explained the stain which aroused so much excitement in Joan Powis and Harry Wint when they first came upon it.

  But Parfitt made no attempt to connect Bow or Mrs. Hayes with the affair. The evidence against them was too frail as yet, and he might come upon some other evidence which would exonerate them altogether.

  The evidence of the doctor was clear enough. He felt certain that the nature of the dead man’s injuries suggested that a gaff was the weapon. He agreed that extensive bleeding must have taken place, and assumed that if Hayes had been struck while on the bank, he had fallen forward immediately, and dived, or been drawn by the force of the water, into the curious, almost vertical, rock funnel in which he had been found wedged.

  At this point in the inquiry, sketches were put in, and photographs, showing the nature of this shaft in the river bed. It had originally been a narrow rift between two immense boulders wedged in the stream, just at the foot of a rapid. Below the boulders was a deep pool, and the action of winter floods over many centuries, and the constant friction of stones and pebbles dashed into the rift, had ended by sinking a species of shaft in the rock, down which the water rushed, to emerge some feet below the surface of the pool below.

  One of the water-bailiffs, when examined, said he had made experiments when instructed to do so by the police, and proceeded to detail their nature. He had taken two sacks, sewn them together, and filled them with stuffing and weights, roughly to represent the body of the dead man. He had attached a rope to each end of this dummy, and, standing on the bank where it was presumed Hayes had fallen, or been thrown in, had tumbled it into the stream. A few moments later he had seen it sucked into the funnel in the rapid, and had had to pull vigorously on his rope to remove it from the narrow shaft.

  “It is quite possible then, that the man was still alive when he was drawn into the funnel under the rock?” asked the coroner. “He was not necessarily thrust there after death?”

  “No, sir,” said the bailiff. “If he’d been alive in the water there during the day, sir, he might have seen the hole, and splashed about to avoid it, but when it was dark he wouldn’t see it, and he might have gone down it before he could save himself.”

  “You mean that he might have avoided the danger, had he seen it?”

  “Well, sir, it isn’t a very big hole, and if he
saw it, and was swimming, a kick would take him into the side of the rapid and past it.”

  “Down the main rapid into the pool below, you mean?”

  “Yes, sir. I don’t see how anyone could have killed him and then pushed him down the funnel. His head went down first, and how could a man on the bank hold him up above the funnel?”

  “No. But a man might have killed him, and pushed him into the rapid, knowing he would go down that funnel. I take it that, if he was helpless when he went into the water, he would go down it.”

  “Yes, sir. Anyone or anything going in near the bank, and not able to strike out further into the rapid, would go down.”

  The bailiff then left the witness-box and the question of the gaff found in the pool there was brought up. Wint identified it as his, explained how and where he had lost it, and was allowed to go.

  “We come now to a rather curious circumstance,” said the Coroner next,” looking at Inspector Parfitt, who nodded slightly. “It is a circumstance which rather troubled the police at first, and raised a point which would not have appeared significant to anyone but an angler. As we have heard, Mr. Hayes had a slight fracas with another guest at the hotel. He conceived himself to have been wantonly assaulted, and, leaving his rod on the bank, hurried here to see a solicitor. He was advised by the solicitor to let the matter drop, and left Cwyll again early in the evening. It is fairly obvious that he returned after dark to the river to retrieve his rod. This rod was found the morning after his death on the bank beside the pool where he fell, or was thrown in.

  “Davis, in his evidence, has told you that he was struck by a curious fact. He examined the cast on the line, and discovered that a ‘Jock Scott’ salmon-fly had been attached to it. The ‘Jock Scott’ is not unknown here, and this particular fly was a variant on the original which Davis had invented. A number of these flies had been tied for him by a local tyer. But that was not the point. It was that the knot by which the gut had been attached to the eye of the hook was not the type used by anglers, but that used by anyone who knots a string. A string is soft, and will not cut on knotting, but gut is liable to cut in a knot unless that knot is of a special type.