by Vernon Loder
“What exactly did you do when you left the car?” Wint asked.
“I found a path about sixty feet above the river; at least where it strikes in at the bridge. I followed it with some difficulty. The noise of the water told me roughly where the river ran below, but I could not be sure of its exact position. Half-way to the mouth of the first tunnel, I saw a torch flash for a few moments——”
“But not who held it?” Wint interrupted.
“No. But I saw the light gleam on what looked like a rod, and I took it that one of the anglers was changing a fly. That was certainly further down the river than the place where my husband was found. It was just above the spot where the path forked, if you know the spot?”
“Had you a torch?” said Joan.
“You mean how did I see the fork? No. I had a box of vestas, and lit one for a moment. As one fork seemed to turn down, I imagined that to be the way to the bank, and as the other led to the sloping cliffs to my right, I supposed it led to the first opening of the railway track.”
“It does. Miss Powis and I saw it when we went to look in the tunnels.”
“I took it, at least, and reached the tunnel. I walked in. I don’t know what I expected to find. But my husband”—her lips curled scornfully—“my husband was a man who loved comfort. The place seemed hardly suited for a rendezvous after his own heart. I wanted to be very sure that the Blodwen Tysin of the letter was not one of the same kidney as the writer of the anonymous letter.”
“Did you find anything, and remove it?” asked Wint.
“I found one of the butts of his favourite cigarettes, but I did not soil my fingers with it. Incidentally, I struck my face against the wall of the tunnel in the dark, and made my nose bleed.”
“So that’s what made the stain on the railway sleeper!” cried Joan.
Mrs. Hayes nodded. “Ah, you saw that. I am afraid so. I had come out without a handkerchief, and the moment I began to bleed, I bent forward, so that it should not splash my dress. Then I remembered that the best thing to do is to throw one’s head back. I did that, and the bleeding stopped. I rested for a little, then looked into the other tunnels. After that I knew that my husband had been there. There was a seat improvised with an old cushion from a car.”
Wint and Joan exchanged glances. Bow stared at them for a moment, and then spoke.
“Now you see what the devil of a muddle it all is for us,” he remarked. “We’ve got to tell the truth. I see that as clearly as you do. Parfitt will follow up what you told him and ferret it out for himself. But, frankly, how does it look to you, if you put yourself in the skin of the Inspector for a few minutes?”
“Not too good,” said Wint promptly. “Motive and opportunity are what the police look for, they say.”
“Wait a moment,” said Joan. “How could Mrs. Hayes know the exact pool where her husband was fishing? She may have stumbled along the path to the tunnel, because there was a path. But she would not know what was his pool, or on which bank he fished.”
Mrs. Hayes smiled faintly. “Do I compound with the truth here, or do I not? Just as my husband assumed that I did not officially know many things I knew very well, he also assumed that I was particularly interested in the minutiæ of his doings. He religiously described the scenery, his favourite pool, where it was, the flies he used, and a dozen other things in which I had no interest whatsoever.”
“But you destroyed those letters, I suppose?” Wint asked.
“I destroyed all his letters.”
“Then I don’t see that you need mention what you have told us.”
“So you are inclined to believe me innocent, Mr. Wint?”
Wint nodded. “All the second-hand description of scenery in the world wouldn’t enable you to get to that pool in the dark without a torch. The path degenerates into a switchback, over and round stones and boulders, once it leaves that fork.”
Joan nodded vigorously. “There’s another thing, too. I am sure the path, even a little distance below where Mr. Hoad was fishing, is only about two feet wide, and cut on the side of a rock over the water.
Bow agreed. “You mean where there is a little cliff directly above the rock? The path had to be blasted there. On a windy day, with gusts coming up the gorge, you have to sidle against the wall, or chance being blown over.”
“That must be the place,” said Joan. “Now where do you stand to fish that pool? I should say you could only fish it properly from just above the rock where the rapid runs in.”
“That’s right,” said Bow. “The sewin, and an occasional salmon, lie in behind the stones at the tail but you can’t cast from below. There’s a stunted pine, and some bushes that get your fly every time.”
“I thought that,” observed Joan. “I don’t really see how Mrs. Hayes could have passed there without being seen and heard by the man who was fishing that pool.”
Mrs. Hayes smiled at her. “It is nice to have such resourceful champions; but what are we to make of these speculations?”
“We’ll tell the Inspector, and he can interview the man who fished that pool,” said Wint. “It seems to me an odd thing that no one heard Mr. Hayes cry out.”
“I don’t agree,” said Bow. “The nature of the wound——”
He stopped there, and glanced in some embarrassment at Mrs. Hayes. But she was not looking at him just then. She had turned her head towards the road, and their glances quickly followed hers.
Inspector Parfitt had left his cycle-combination in the village, dropping his sergeant there, made inquiries for Mrs. Hayes, and come on to look for her.
“I think you had better go down and see him at once, Caroline,” said Bow. “The secret has been kept overlong as it is. What do you think?”
The sound of the voices, carried on the still, warm air, made the Inspector look up, in an effort to locate them. Mrs. Hayes got up, and murmuring something to Bow, left the little party, and went down to the road.
“Won’t you go with her, Mr. Bow?” Joan asked anxiously.
“I think not,” he replied. “I’ll have a talk with Parfitt later.”
Parfitt himself watched Mrs. Hayes approach, with somewhat mingled feelings. Seeing her single herself out from the others, he wondered if she had made some discovery she thought it wiser to communicate to him, or was actually on the point of clearing up some matter which she had wilfully left obscure. He was now aware, of course, that her previous statements to him had not been entirely disingenuous.
“I came out to have a talk with you, Mrs. Hayes,” he said, saluting gravely as she came up.
“But how odd!” she said, still faintly smiling. “I wanted to speak to you. I am afraid you will think me a dreadful coward for doing what I did, or leaving undone what I ought to have done, but I mean to be very frank now.”
He was astonished, and showed it. “Really, madam, you wish to make a statement?”
“And to correct the last,” she said. “You know we civilians are all dreadfully afraid of you—not personally, of course—I mean the police. I’m afraid we don’t give you the credit for fair play which is your due.”
She did not speak like a guilty woman, but then, in his experience, few educated people in trouble gave open evidence of their anxiety. Their minds were sufficiently trained to realise that poise and calm carry one over many doubtful places.
“Very well, madam,” he said, in his most official tones. “I suggest that you should accompany me to the police-station at Pengellert. You had better make a statement, which I will then ask you to sign. You have no objection to that, I hope?”
“None whatever, Inspector. In fact, I should prefer it. And the sooner the better.”
Chapter XIX
A New Theory
THE sergeant from Cwyll descended upon Constable Griffiths, who was looking at his potatoes in the garden, a quarter of an hour before Parfitt led Mrs. Hayes back to the village to make a statement.
“Got another small hive going at Cwyll,” said the f
ormer in a grumbling tone, “so I want your help, Griffiths.”
“Hive of what, sergeant?” inquired the constable.
“Bees! Chief Constable’s bonnet this time, and a silly bee, look you. I’ve questioned forty-nine people so far, and there’s a gaff wanted now.”
“There was one indeed found in the river,” said Griffiths.
“Yes, but we want one now lost in the river.”
“And what do we want it for, sergeant?”
“I don’t know whatever, or when it was lost; but we’ve got to ask everyone.”
“It might be lost last year.”
“Or ten years ago. Yes, yes! It has to be found.”
The constable thought it unlikely that a gaff lost ten years ago would be found now. He asked what he was supposed to do.
“It was this way,” said the sergeant patiently. “The Chief Constable and the Inspector were talking about it a long time. The Chief Constable tell him a gaff was stuck in a fish in Scotland, and the fish got off——”
“A salmon in Scotland?”
“Yes, in Scotland. There is no one can tell if salmons come here from Scotland,” he added, with irony, “and with that gaff wagging in him, look you; but you will go round here, and ask everyone if they ever lost a gaff in a salmons, it doesn’t matter how long ago it was.”
“But how do we know it was long ago?” asked Griffiths.
“The Chief Constable read it in a book, and so it can’t have been this week,” replied the irritated sergeant, “but you will start now and ask everyone, and I will go over to Pendreath and ask there.”
Griffiths began to button himself up. Though it wearied the sergeant, he himself found the process of questioning people stimulating to his pride. It was one of the things which raised him above the mass, this right to ask annoying questions, and note down their answers.
Five minutes later, and he set off in search of victims for interrogation, while the sergeant, swearing at the heat, and the task which begins to bore after reaching his rank, pounded off towards Pendreath.
When dinner-time came in the hotel, three or four of the objects of the constable’s quest had already drifted into the hotel-yard with the news. Had anyone lost a gaff? This year, next year, sometime—it didn’t matter, but had anyone lost a gaff?
The general view was that Cwyll sea-air had gone to the heads of officialdom there. Surely the police had been looking for the gaff that killed Hayes since the moment the murder was discovered? What was this new hue-and-cry?
Naturally, as it passed from mouth to mouth, the scope of the inquiry was enlarged. When it reached the smoking-room, where some of the hotel guests sat, it sounded very strange, indeed.
“In fact, it’s damned nonsense!” remarked Hoad, as his companions stared at each other. “The theory is that someone in Scotland—the Chief Constable himself, the Boots says—hooked a salmon, and lost his gaff in it. He can’t account for his gaff being lost except by that silly story. But why do they suspect him of the crime?”
“They don’t, you ass! You’ve got it all wrong!” said Chance. “No one suspects the Chief Constable. He tells Parfitt that there is a possibility someone lost a gaff in the way some fellow in Scotland did. It has happened before, with one of those gaffs you screw on, and may not screw on tightly enough; but if it had happened here there would be a legend about it.”
“What do you mean by a legend?” Hoad asked.
“Everyone would know about it. In these places anything odd is news, and remains news for donkeys’ years. Haven’t we all heard how Miss Tysin’s father once caught a twenty-pound salmon with a section of stale eel for bait, and how a lady of fifteen hooked a grilse on 4X gut in the Pengwyr rapid, and landed it half a mile down? If anyone here had seen a salmon cut away with his gaff sticking out of it, they’d have put up a memorial—a salmon argent, with a gaff proper, couchant.”
Harry Wint smiled. “Yes, but Bob, there must be something behind this inquiry. The police don’t ask questions for fun.”
“I grant it. I expect they are sick, sore, and tired of asking. But what can it mean? Let’s have your version. I can’t think of one.”
“Well, I expect they feel pretty sure that my gaff didn’t do the deed. I suppose they take it that there would be some traces of blood down the handle, where it telescopes, and they wonder if the murderer found a lost gaff, and used that. If they get it, and find the owner——”
“But that won’t work, either,” said Chance. “If there was another gaff, it’s unlikely that the owner would just find it when he had made up his mind to kill Hayes. No. If the murder was done with one lost some time ago, the odds are that it will be no clue to the man who used it. Unless, of course, there are finger-prints on the handle.”
“Do finger-prints stick on a gaff-handle if it has been in the water?” asked Hoad.
Wint stared at him. “Heaven alone knows. I don’t. I have no experience of such things.”
Chance got up and went out; the other men, with the exception of Wint and Hoad, followed. There was a short silence while the young fellow fidgeted with his cigarette-case, and finally lit a cigarette.
“I say, Mr. Wint,” he said gloomily, “what’s the matter with everybody? I had quite a good time before this rotten thing happened.”
“Perhaps you only imagine there’s a change,” said Wint. “What do you complain of?”
“I don’t know, but things seem different. You didn’t tell anyone about that dam’ silly letter I wrote, did you?”
Wint shook his head. “Not any of the men.
“And Miss Powis wouldn’t say anything to—to Miss Mason?”
“Certainly not.”
Hoad threw his cigarette into the fireplace. “I say,” he began again, “you don’t think that poor girl’s suicide came of it, do you?”
“I don’t,” said Wint, not unkindly. “Mrs. Hayes had had a letter from the girl herself, and she was coming down anyway. But, look here, young fellow, you’re making people look askance at you because you’re going about looking like the second murderer in a play. Nothing on your mind you’d like to get off is there?”
“No. But it looks beastly ugly for me, Mr. Wint. I was on the pool below. I know you were above, but then you cleared off early. And you hadn’t any grudge against Hayes.”
“What was yours?” said Wint bluntly.
Hoad turned red. He was a very ingenuous youth. “You must have heard the old brute was making up to Miss Mason.”
Wint filled a pipe. “Yes, I heard that. But what saved Hayes from a scrap with you—his grey hairs, or what?
“You’re laughing at me!” Hoad complained. “You all do! I know I look strong, and so on, but I’m not. I’ve got a rocky heart.”
“Don’t you think you might have chanced that, rather than write an anonymous letter? It didn’t occur to you, probably, that a man’s absent wife might have a heart—a sensitive one, if not rocky?”
Hoad bit his lip. “I admit it was a filthy thing to do. But I was in such a paddy, and I’m an awful funk, Mr. Wint. You know what I mean. I knew, if he went on, I would have to go for him, or bust, and I never fought anyone in my life. Sometimes, one way or another, I felt as if I could stick the brute.”
Wint looked at him steadily over the flame of the match he had lit. “I know the feeling; I had it once when I went to my first prep. school, and a little boy—who looked to me two yards high—punched me on the nose. But I got over it.”
As he spoke, he was thinking that Hoad was indeed of that timid, but hot-tempered, tribe which makes innocent murderers. Unable to revenge themselves by healthy, open violence, they lose their heads when provoked, and catch up the nearest weapon to hand.
“I wish I had got over it,” said Hoad dismally.
Wint nodded. “Safer so. But I want to hear something you may be able to tell me, Hoad. The pool you fished is where the rock sticks out over the water, and there is a sort of narrow path cut over the spur.”
“Chance says it’s best fished from the head—above that rock.”
“Yes. You can do it with a Spey cast from below, but the fly comes out the wrong side of the pool, where the fish don’t lie.”
“Then you were at the head, fishing down-stream?”
“That’s right.”
“Noisy stand, is it?”
Hoad looked perplexed.
“I didn’t hear Hayes yell out, or anything of that kind. But there isn’t as much noise from the water as there is at some of the other pools.”
“Why did you go there? Did you draw lots for pools, or what?”
“No; we don’t here, Mr. Wint. Hayes always bagged his pool, and he made such a fuss about it that no one tried to get it.”
“I see. You knew he would be there, then?”
“I expected he would. I went out with Mr. Chance.”
Wint pursed his lips. “You must know that the police rather suspect Mrs. Hayes,” he said. “But I take it that anyone trying to reach Hayes’s pool from the bridge below would have to scramble over the rock spur.”
“I have managed to get over it after dark, but I don’t like it.”
“No, it’s awkward. But what I want to know is this: did you hear anyone near you? I don’t expect you could see anyone that night.”
“I didn’t see Mrs. Hayes.”
“But did you hear her? Did you hear a foot on the rock? Then, once you are past that spur, there’s a little shale and débris to get down. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes, rather. You can hardly get over it without shifting a stone or two.”
“And in the dark it would be worse?”
“Absolutely. You can’t see where you put your foot. You have to feel about.”
Wint puffed at his pipe in silence for a few minutes. “I suppose you would be ready to swear that no one passed you?”
Hoad looked at him nervously. He was thinking that such a statement would prove that none of those fishing below Hayes’s pool could be guilty, save for himself. But he replied, after some reflection: