Death by the Gaff_Black Heath Classic Crime

by Vernon Loder

  “I could swear that as far as I knew, no one did pass. That is to say, I didn’t hear anyone. They might get by if I was busy casting, and had the luck to go quietly.”

  “No one asks anyone to bear witness to something that he does not know,” observed Wint, thinking the youth was hedging. “Even the police only ask you to swear to what you actually saw or heard.”

  “Then I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Will you stick to that, if the police ask you?”

  “Oh, yes; I will, Mr. Wint. I don’t see how anyone could have got over that rock in the dark, if they did not know it well. But what would Mrs. Hayes be doing there?”

  “We don’t know that she was there,” said Wint evasively, and rose.

  “Have you heard that Miss Mason goes to-morrow morning?” he added. “The police have nothing against her, and they told her she could clear out.”

  Hoad looked rather dismayed, whether because of Miss Mason’s departure next day, or a fear which he translated into words, no one could say.

  “Then, if he did not suspect—us, we could go too?” he asked.

  “He certainly does not suspect me—if you mean Parfitt,” said Wint. “But that ought not to worry you.”

  It did worry Hoad, however, and he went off to look for Celia Mason, wearing an expression of utter despondency, while Wint found Joan, and told her the result of his interview with Hoad.

  “He’s very nervy,” he added. “But he’s that type, and it may mean nothing. I wonder how Mrs. Hayes got on with the Inspector.”

  The object of his solicitude had not got on very well with Parfitt. The Inspector took a grave view of her suppressions, and naturally felt that they made a case against her for the first time. It might be true that her purpose in going to the tunnel was what she represented it to be. On the other hand, she knew that her husband was engaged in an intrigue, she had no respect or affection for him, and she had been near, or at, the scene of the crime about the time when Hayes was killed.

  She had had the motive and the opportunity; she was a strong-minded woman of great composure, and though the evidence was circumstantial, it was stronger than that on which a good many people have been committed for trial.

  She remembered the rock of which Joan had spoken, and mentioned it as a corroboration of the evidence she had given, but Parfitt was not impressed.

  “It is perfectly true,” he said, “that the path by the actual river runs over projecting rock, which it wouldn’t be easy to get by at night. But that is assuming that you left the second tunnel, and went upstream along the bank. There was nothing to prevent you from passing through the third—that is, counting the long tunnel towards Cwyll as the first—and reaching the pool, where your husband was found dead, from a point above and beyond the rock.”

  When she had made and signed her statement, Parfitt had a short interview with Hoad. He must give the woman fair play; even if he did not accept the theory about her movements on the night of the tragedy. Hoad stuck to the story, as he had promised Wint, and Parfitt made him read and sign a statement before he went back to Cwyll.

  The Inspector was a cautious man, and was not sure that he himself would ask for a warrant against Mrs. Hayes. But the Chief Constable and the Superintendent must decide that between them. If they decided to go ahead, there was little doubt that a bench of magistrates would commit her to the assizes. There, the efforts of counsel, the acumen of the judge, and the possible sentimentality of a jury, hearing a woman arraigned for the murder of a good-for-nothing husband, might lead to an acquittal.

  Parfitt had nothing to do with that. If a warrant was issued, he would have to concentrate on finding the weapon. The intensive search for a lost gaff, which had just been set on foot, might help. He felt little doubt that the murderer had used a gaff, and the angry wife might have struck out at her husband with that weapon, not meaning perhaps to kill, or forgetting that there was a steel hook on the end of the shaft.

  At this point Parfitt thought of Davis. He reproached himself for not thinking of him before.

  Davis was not the kind of man to buy or keep two gaffs, but, on his own showing, he had bought a gaff from the postman, who had got it from Blodwen Tysin. Parfitt stopped and reflected. Then he turned about and set off for Davis’s cottage.

  Davis had readily admitted that he had the gaff which had belonged to old Tysin, but he had not explained what had happened to the one he had formerly used. He had been a regular salmon-fisher there for fifteen years or more, and no one could land a salmon in the rocky pools above the bridge without the aid of a gaff.

  Davis happened to be at home. He looked gloomy; thoroughly miserable, Parfitt said to himself; but that was to be expected. There was no doubt that the girl’s suicide had been a dreadful blow to him. But his face became expressionless when the Inspector informed him that he had come to make further inquiries.

  “Your constable was here already, sir,” said the man. “Asked me about a hundred questions, he did.”

  “Well, I’ll just ask you one more. What happened to your old gaff?”

  Davis stared at him. “What old gaff?”

  “The one you had before you bought the other. Don’t tell me you used to land salmon with your hands here. You couldn’t tail a fish in most of the pools.”

  “Oh, that!” Davis seemed relieved. “I lost it.”

  Parfitt looked annoyed. “Then why the devil didn’t you tell us before? You knew we were looking for a lost gaff, you lost yours, and you let us go on hunting when all the time you knew yours was missing. What do you mean by it?”

  “Mean by it, sir? Why should I tell you? I lost it months ago, and it can’t be evidence now. I told you how long ago I bought the other from the postman. I couldn’t tell then that Mr. Hayes would come here, or that he’d try to make a fool of poor Blodwen, could I?”

  “No. I see that. But if you lost it even months ago, someone might have found it the other night, and used it. Many a thing is passed over, and passed by, for months before someone finds it.”

  “They wouldn’t find it where I lost it,” said Davis grimly. “I lost it in the river.”

  Parfitt looked sceptical. “Didn’t get it into a fish, and see him go off with the thing, I suppose?”

  “No, sir. When I get my gaff in a salmons, I don’t lose it.”

  “Well, what happened then? Tell me exactly.”

  Davis nodded. “I was fishing the Churn pool with a worm just about seven o’clock this spring. I got what I thought was a big bite, and gave it the butt, for you have to hold them there, and not let them take you into the run below. But there wasn’t any life in the thing, so I pulled slowly to save my cast.”

  “Were you in a rock at the bottom?”

  “No, Sir, though I thought I was. But when I pulled slowly, it bit, and I got it to the edge of the whirl, and it was a bit of log about three feet long that had got swept down by the flood. But I couldn’t lift it on the gut, being so weighty, and I couldn’t reach down to get it out by hand.”

  “So you took your gaff?”

  “That’s it, sir. Yes, indeed, I stuck the gaff-hook in it, and was going to lift it up when I slipped. Do you know the Churn, sir?”

  “Not by name. Which pool is it?”

  “About a hundred yards above where Mr. Hayes was found, sir. It’s a great pool, a lovely pool, for the salmons, but ugly to fish the right place. They lie below the boil, and you have to sit on a ledge of the rock above. It’s just about four feet over the water, in a flood, and you have to set your feet on a knob of rock that sticks out below.”

  “I think I know the place now.”

  “Well, I had my rod in one hand, and the gaff in the other hooked in that log, sir. My foot slipped on the knob when I bent down, and I had either to drop the rod or the gaff to save myself. So I let the old gaff go, and hung on with a clutch till I got my foot right on the knob again. If you’ll come with me, sir, I’ll show you how it happened.”

 
; His picture of the incident was graphic enough, but Parfitt thought it might be better to have the scene reconstructed, so that he could decide if there were any flaws in the story. Davis got his rod, and a long stick to take the place of the gaff, and they set out for the Churn pool on the river.

  There he demonstrated to the Inspector’s satisfaction what had taken place, and returning to the road, asked if Parfitt wanted any further information.

  Parfitt did not. He was convinced that a gaff could be lost in the way described.

  “But we might have got on a bit faster if you had told us before,” he added.

  “I don’t see it, sir. I don’t think yet it has anything to do with it.”

  “Why, the wood would float.”

  “Not that wood, sir. No, indeed! It was soaked proper, and it was at the bottom when I hooked it.”

  “All right. We’ll look into it,” said Parfitt. “But I’m inclined to think that, sink or swim, it was your old gaff that killed Hayes.”

  “I’d like to think it,” said Davis, his face saturnine now. “I wouldn’t be sorry if something of mine had a hand in it. No, indeed!”

  Parfitt shook his head. “The man’s dead, Davis.”

  “Yes, damn him—he’s dead,” said Davis. “There would have been some happier people if he’d been dead earlier.”

  Chapter XX

  Parfitt Makes an Arrest

  “I THINK there is sufficient evidence to send Mrs. Hayes before the magistrates, Parfitt,” said Mr. Rigby, at the end of an hour’s discussion, in which he and the Superintendent and the Inspector had taken part. “Mr. Chance was at loggerheads with the man, but he worked it off on the assault, and we have nothing to prove that he was near the place where Hayes was fishing. I think we may count him out.”

  Parfitt agreed. The Superintendent leaned forward. “Mr. Hoad does not seem to have created a favourable impression, sir,” he said. “Do you think we can disregard him?”

  Mr. Rigby pursed his lips. “I don’t think we can quite dismiss him from our minds, and yet Parfitt here thinks his whole conduct is due to a silly compound of cowardice and jealousy. He sent that anonymous letter, but he did not attempt to contend that he was not on the pool below Hayes that night.”

  “That is the strongest part of the case against Mrs. Hayes, no doubt,” chimed in Parfitt. “That and her former acquaintance with Bow, which she tried to conceal, even to the extent of pretending not to know him when she saw him at the hotel. Hoad admitted where he was, but she tried to make out that she had been delayed by an accident on the road.”

  “Quite,” said Rigby. “On the other hand, though, it isn’t strictly speaking evidence, only a deduction drawn from one’s observation of human nature. We must agree that, if she was a guilty woman, her action was a profoundly foolish one.”

  “Why, sir?” asked the Superintendent, who was not a great believer in deductions. “It was to cover herself up.”

  “Yes. But what I mean is this: if she was not guilty she would not have the same fear of us. She would be inclined to think it would be easy to persuade us that she had no hand in it. If she were guilty, she would assume that we might suspect her guilt, and in that case we would make the closest inquiries into her past life. Then we would be bound to find out about Mr. Bow, and their former friendship. She tried to keep—may have tried to keep it dark about that, because she thought she would be dismissed from the list of suspects, and there would be no occasion to mention Bow.”

  “Who might be jeopardised if it was known that he had once been a suitor,” said Parfitt. “What about Mr. Bow, sir? He had quarrelled with Hayes—really quarrelled over Mrs. Hayes, though Hayes did not know that. And he was on the river that night. But we haven’t a shred of evidence to connect him with the murder.”

  Rigby reflected. “No, I agree. He may have done it, of course, to get Hayes out of the way, but then four or five of those out on the river that night might have killed Hayes. I went along the bank last night myself, and it struck me that an angler at any of the pools up or down, if he was cautious, and knew his way, could have crept past the other fishermen, and attacked Hayes.”

  “But there’s the rocks and stones, sir,” said the Superintendent. “And most of the witnesses say they did not hear anyone moving behind them.”

  “I know. But two at least did not appear to have noticed the girl Tysin, passing along the road in her car. The fact is that we fail to notice lots of things if we are not on the watch for them, and there is the rushing water to help drown sounds. Further than that, no one need tell me that keen anglers, casting all the time, and on the look-out for a run in the dark, would bother about sounds near at hand. Now the last of our lot is Davis. What is your impression about him, Parfitt? He was in love with that girl, you know.”

  “He makes no bones about it, sir. I should say he has had a tremendous blow. And he was quite frank in telling me that he had the gaff which used to belong to old Tysin.”

  “Well, I’ve seen the man, and I admit he strikes me in the same way. But I agree with what you said to him about his old gaff. He ought to have mentioned its loss.”

  “In a way, sir, he should, but I have been thinking it over, and there was sense in his contention. He lost it so long ago that he did not realise it could have any bearing on this case.”

  “But he can’t prove he lost it long ago. There is only his word,” the Superintendent grumbled. “Who knows he did?”

  Mr. Rigby smiled. He felt that the man was getting past his work.

  “You evidently failed to hear what Parfitt said about that. Davis is a poor man. He wouldn’t keep two gaffs. No! As I said, We may not be right, but on the balance of the evidence, Mrs. Hayes is the only one who can be more or less linked up with the crime. Now what are we going to do about it?”

  “It’s for you to say, sir,” remarked Parfitt. “Unless we find the gaff, we may have difficulty in persuading a jury, but it might be as wise to leave it to the magistrates’ discretion. By the way, it struck me as another point in Davis’s favour that he did not believe the lost gaff could have been used. It was something, too, that he could not have foreseen the trouble Hayes was to make with that girl at the time he lost the thing.”

  Mr. Rigby nodded. “Very well. If the case falls through against Mrs. Hayes, we had better go closely into a possible case against young Hoad. He looks the sort of chap who will blurt a lot out if he once gets the wind up.”

  “Yes, sir. I don’t think it would be fair or wise to press him now, since we have the stronger case against Mrs. Hayes. But if the magistrates let her off, I’ll have a heart-to-heart talk with Hoad. Our present assumption is that he is so worked up about the death of Tysin, his cowardly letter, that his nerves have given way. But, if it’s not that, then he has the other thing on his mind, and pressure may bring it out.”

  The Superintendent turned to Rigby. “Shall we apply for a warrant, sir?”

  “Against Mrs. Hayes—yes. Put that in hand at once. Parfitt here will execute it, and charge her.”

  Parfitt philosophically accepted the duty, and was about to go when a police-sergeant opened the door, and announced that the postman from Pengellert was anxious to speak to the Inspector.

  “I hope this is something new, and true, and good!” said Rigby. “Show the man in, sergeant.

  But the postman’s information was nothing new, only by way of corroborating what they had heard from Davis. He had received the gaff from Blodwen Tysin, and had sold it later to Davis. He gave the approximate date of the sale.

  The Chief Constable looked at him grimly. “You’re another fellow who ought to have let us hear about this before,” he said. “You knew we wanted to find a gaff.”

  “But it was so long ago,” said the postman, with an aggrieved air. “And the gentleman was only killed the other day.”

  “We know very well when he was killed,” said Rigby. “Now then, when you sold the gaff to Davis, I suppose you asked him what had happen
ed to the other?”

  “No, I didn’t, sir.”

  “What the dickens did you think he wanted two for?”

  “The one I had had a longer handle, sir.”

  “More useful for the ugly pools, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have seen the other?”

  “Many a time, sir.”

  “Lately?”

  “No sir.”

  “Have you seen Davis out fishing lately?”

  “Several times, sir. Yes, indeed, I have seen him with the one I sold him.”

  “Very well. You may be wanted to swear to the date of the sale. You’ll get into trouble if your memory’s bad.”

  The postman looked more aggrieved than ever, but he said nothing, and was presently dismissed.

  “Well, that settles the question of the gaff,” remarked Rigby, when the door closed behind the man. I take it that he is speaking the truth.

  “The more so that he and Davis were rivals,” agreed Parfitt. “Both were after that poor girl.”

  “Good. Well, Davis lost a gaff, and that has to be found, if it is humanly possible to do it. We must have another search on the banks, and up the cliff among the rocks; in fact, everywhere within two miles. We’ll send up every man we can spare, and any we can get from the other stations. If it was the gaff used, then the murderer must have taken the point of the hook out of the log, and hidden the instrument. If it was Mrs. Hayes, she wouldn’t get very far in strange country, and we have a narrower area to search.”

  “She might have thrown it from her car on the way to the hotel. The hedges ought to be searched,” said the Superintendent.

  “Anywhere and everywhere. You see to that.”

  “What about the river?” asked Parfitt.

  “Quite impossible. A woman of intelligence, or a man for that matter, would know that the river was a silly place to throw it. It was too near the scene of the crime, and he or she would be afraid to make a splash. Besides, the water is always clear here, and the thing would be found.”