Death by the Gaff_Black Heath Classic Crime

by Vernon Loder

  Their chairman was a M.F.H., an ardent angler, and a good shot, but he rarely read a book, and conducted private arguments with a clumsiness that would have disgraced a schoolboy. His colleagues, with one exception, were landowners, shots, fishermen, game-preservers, and patriots; the kind of men who would be shot to pieces in battle rather than yield a foot, but could be routed by any lawyer in a wordy combat. And they were all modest men in this connection, and recognised their limitations. Not one of them wanted to try Mrs. Hayes, and one and all were resolved in their own minds either to grant an acquittal, or to pass the prisoner on to men more legally and mentally equipped to deal with the case.

  As jurymen, they could act excellently, when directed and shepherded by a judge. There they would not be lacking; but as magistrates—judge and jury in one—they shied at the responsibility.

  The one magistrate who was not a landowner and sporting man was even worse. He was a small builder, who was better at measuring masonry than minds, obstinate as a mule, and the fond possessor of a secondhand law book, which had given him more dangerous and inaccurate knowledge than he knew what to do with. Armed with this, he was prepared to deal summary injustice to anyone.

  The man instructed to prosecute for the Crown was a small man with a thin voice. He was fair, slow, reasonable; and disappointing to those who expected legal pyrotechnics.

  The solicitor who represented Mrs. Hayes was bluff and burly, too fond of sensational appeals to the emotions, and the last man in the world to carry conviction to sporting squires, who regarded any emotion as “Slop” or “Mush.”

  The case as outlined against Mrs. Hayes was not superficially a weak one. It suffered from the lack of a weapon, though not from that of a motive. Police inquiries are close and voluminous. While Parfitt had been doing his own specialist work, dozens of others had been at work on outlying ramifications of the case.

  The guests at the Horn Hotel were not prepared to hear the details brought forward by the police with regard to Mr. Hayes and his many intrigues. They learned for the first time that most of his strayings into angling country, and the pays du tendre, had been investigated by the law, and now presented in court.

  If there had been any doubt as to Mr. Hayes’s complete vileness as a man and a husband, there was none when the prosecution had had its say. Examined later, Mrs. Hayes admitted that she had heard something of some of these incidents. She admitted that she had gradually come to hate the man to whom she was tied; or, rather, proclaimed the fact without being asked.

  Evidence was given as to the finding of the body, the nature of the wound, and the cause of death. Davis was stolid, Hoad half-hysterical, Bow cold but angry, Chance quiet and composed. Every now and again the builder asked questions, which were not admissible, and showed a complete ignorance of the point at issue. All the other magistrates were sorry for Mrs. Hayes, but secretly convinced that she had killed her husband. A few of them, with Continental experience, wished that they were in France. There they could have regarded it as a crime passionel, and gallantly acquitted the lady.

  Mrs. Hayes elected to give evidence. She told her story with a calm, firm voice, repeating exactly the statement she had last made to Inspector Parfitt. Examined by her own lawyer, she declared that she had not killed her husband.

  Joan and Harry Wint wondered that this question was so frequently asked in court. Did anyone expect the prisoner to say she had committed the murder?

  Questioned again by the prosecutor as to her relations with Edward Bow, she stuck to her story, denied that she had seen him, or had any relations with him, since her marriage, and explained anew that her only motive for pretending not to know Mr. Bow when she met him in the hotel was to keep his name out of the case.

  “Because he had formerly been in love with you?”

  Mrs. Hayes bowed slightly when the prosecutor put this question.

  “And because he had quarrelled with my husband, and was on the river that night,” she said. “I knew he had not killed my husband, but I did not wish him to be dragged into the case.”

  Inspector Parfitt’s evidence was awaited with interest. He went into the box, and began in the dry way superior policemen adopt when they present their evidence in court. He explained what he had done to investigate the case, and the conclusions to which he had come. He admitted that while an intensive search was still being made for the gaff with which the murder was probably committed, it had not yet been found, and was then asked by the builder if there was any legal warrant for proceeding with the case, since none of them knew that Mr. Hayes had been killed with a gaff, and no one had found a gaff.

  “I think you’re ultra vires, Inspector,” he added, with a learned look. “So far as I can see, there is no prima facie case here. Wouldn’t it be better to enter a nolle prosequi?”

  The Chairman hid a smile at this torrent of misapplied Latin, and the Clerk to the Magistrates rose to whisper to the builder, who turned rather red, and then smiled, as if he had received a laurel wreath rather than a mild rebuke.

  “I see,” he said. “I was thinking of another statute probably.”

  Inspector Parfitt proceeded imperturbably. He finished his account of his doings on and near the scene of the crime, and told the magistrates of his journey to the Hayes’s house, and the inquiries he had made there. The Chairman interrupted him once.

  “You found no gaff in the house, Inspector, only a ‘tailer.’ There is no proof that Hayes ever possessed a gaff?”

  “No, sir.”

  The Chief Constable had hurriedly wired the previous evening, on Parfitt’s return, to secure the presence of Mrs. Hayes’s servants at the inquiry. When Parfitt stepped down, they appeared in turn, and testified reluctantly to the relations between their mistress and her husband. Jane caused some amusement by her scornful comments on the late Mr. Hayes, and Ellen repeated nervously what she had told Parfitt about the projected cleaning of the snuggery.

  “In other words,” said the Prosecutor, leaning forward, “Mrs. Hayes proposed soon to have something done which she knew would be resented by her husband. “How do you account for that? For years she did not attempt——”

  “Excuse me,” said the Chairman, “but I fail to see the relevance of that question.”

  “Your Worship may take it from me that it has a bearing on the case—at least in my opinion.”

  “Proceed then, please.”

  The prosecutor proceeded. “Now Miss Tuke, did it not seem to you that Mrs. Hayes, in proposing to do something that her husband would object to, may have had it in her mind that, very soon, he would not be there to resent it?”

  Mrs. Hayes’s solicitor rose. “I object, your Worships. It is bad enough that my innocent client should have so many painful details of her married life brought up to harrow her, but when Prosecutor for the Crown tries to lead witnesses, with a view to getting their quite worthless views on a hypothetical point, I say it is a dastardly perversion of his duties!”

  “The objection is upheld,” said the Chairman, after a short consultation with his colleagues. “It is impossible for witness to say what she thought was in her mistress’s mind, and not evidence of fact, in any case. But I am sure that myself and my fellow magistrates will consider the case without being influenced by this suggestion.”

  Having made his point, prosecutor sat down well pleased. He had anticipated an objection, but got his shot in first.

  The solicitor for the defence rose. He had consulted with his client, and wore an air of derisive scorn.

  “With the permission of the Court, I will endeavour to clear up a point which should never have been mentioned, your Worships,” he said. “My client is prepared to give evidence on oath that she had at last decided to take proceedings for divorce against her husband. That was after she had received the anonymous letter, and the pathetic epistle written to her by the late Miss Tysin, one of the victims of Hayes’s foul intrigues.”

  “Have you any evidence of this, other than
the lady’s word?” asked the Chairman.

  “I have none, and I wish none better than the word of this brave and persecuted lady!” the solicitor exclaimed dramatically. “You may search the records of history, the files of many past trials, but——”

  “But you have no factual evidence here?” said the Chairman.

  “No, sir. My client, however, wishes to make this statement on oath.”

  “I am not sure if it is irregular,” said the Chairman, “but I think that may be done.”

  So Mrs. Hayes went into the box again, and affirmed that she had decided to procure evidence for a divorce, following on the letter from Miss Tysin. But she had started soon after on her journey to Wales, and had not had time to communicate with her solicitor.

  “You will forgive me,” said the prosecutor mildly, “but I think you elected to make this further statement with a view to explaining your meaning when you made that remark to your under-housemaid, Miss Ellen Tuke. How would a divorce from your husband, if you were able to secure one, enable you to set your husband’s wishes at defiance? I assume that, to prevent any suspicion of collusion, you would have left his house at once.”

  Mrs. Hayes smiled faintly for the first time during the trial.

  “Certainly not, sir. The house was mine. I bought it some time after our marriage. I should have remained at home, and forbidden my husband to enter it.”

  Her lawyer beamed, and there was some slight applause in court. Inspector Parfitt bit his lip. There seemed to have been a small flaw in his logic after all.

  “That disposes, I think, of the interpretation mistakenly put on Mrs. Hayes’s remark to her maid,” said the Chairman.

  “It certainly seemed to me a bit of special pleading,” said the learned colleague at his side.

  The case went on, until the time came for the prosecutor to state the views against the prisoner, and it became clear that the defence could only rely on the truthfulness of Mrs. Hayes, who was, of course, unlikely to incriminate herself. She had no alibi for certain hours of the night of the murder; she had undoubtedly been near the actual scene of the crime, she had had motive and opportunity to commit it, and, finally, she had at first suppressed wilfully certain facts which suggested an intention later to renew her acquaintance, to put it mildly, with Mr. Edward Bow.

  The magistrates retired to their room to consider. To them all it seemed that there was no case against any of the other people who had come into contact with Hayes, or even into conflict with him. But there was a case against Mrs. Hayes—ultimately not murder, maybe, but perhaps manslaughter. They came to the conclusion that the poor lady, driven to despair, had furiously resented her husband’s conduct, had gone down to the pool where he was fishing, and dealt him a blow which ended his life.

  “I think we have no other course open to us but to commit her for trial at the Assizes,” the Chairman remarked at last. “That blackguard of a husband of hers deserved no mercy, but that is not our pidgin. I suppose we are all agreed.”

  They were all agreed; unwillingly and reluctantly, perhaps, but undoubtedly of one opinion that Mrs. Hayes had killed the ruffian whose name she bore.

  Mrs. Hayes received their decision calmly. She bowed to them, and made no comment.

  “She’s a well-plucked un!” said the Chairman, as he got into his car fifteen minutes later to go home. “Pity we aren’t in France. Our jolly old laws won’t run to it. Cramp your style a lot!”

  “I’d have let her off,” said his wife, who had been in court.

  “You women have no conscience!” said the Chairman jovially.

  Chapter XXIV

  Joan’s Idea

  INSPECTOR PARFITT got on to Scotland Yard a few minutes after the court rose. Bow had gone to London by train, slipping out a short time before the magistrates had given their decision. Parfitt asked that he should be shadowed on arrival, and his movements noted. He did not actually believe that Bow had had a hand in the murder, but it would be as well not to lose sight of him until more was known about his doings on the night of the tragedy.

  Back at the station again, he discovered that his subordinates engaged on the inquiries with regard to the gaff had made no further progress. It seemed probable that the gaff lost by Davis might have been that used in the murder. If so, it would now be necessary to trace it. He called off his men who had been interrogating the locals, and told them to begin a further search in the country surrounding and bounding the river.

  Mrs. Hayes’s safety might now depend on the finding of the weapon. If it could be discovered, and traced to hands other than hers, her acquittal was sure enough. If it was merely found, even at some distance from Pengellert, it would be another matter. Since she was in possession of a powerful car, and had several hours to account for that night of her husband’s death, she would have been able to hide the weapon many miles from the river-bank.

  Some hours later a telephone message from Scotland Yard told Parfitt that Bow had gone straight from the train to the offices of an eminent firm of lawyers, who specialised in criminal cases. A watch would be kept on him, and any suspicious movements reported to the police at Cwyll.

  While a reinforced body of police, amounting now to three dozen, were scouring the district round Pengellert, Harry Wint and Joan Powis were feverishly concerting plans for assisting Mrs. Hayes. Both felt convinced now that she was innocent, and their own well-meant efforts to assist the cause of justice appeared to have been in part responsible for her plight.

  The Boots at the hotel, always a collector and dispenser of news when discreetly tapped, had a piece of information which appeared to them to be distinctly valuable. Davis had been approached by several villagers after his last interrogation by Parfitt, and had said quite frankly that the Inspector was anxious to know something about an old gaff he had lost in the spring. He had recounted for the first time the manner of its loss, and was perhaps surprised to hear that his questioners considered that that settled the responsibility for the affair on the lady who had come so unexpectedly to Pengellert.

  Her guilt, they thought, was unproven as long as no weapon could be traced to her. But Davis had lost a gaff, obviously the lady had found it, and used it to kill her husband. They had once hastily made up their minds that Hayes had been killed by Blodwen Tysin, they were now as quickly agreed that Mrs. Hayes was the culprit. Her husband had made a fool of her, she was carrying on with the gentleman at the hotel, she had blood on her skirt when she arrived late at the hotel, so that there was no getting away from the fact that she had murdered her unfaithful spouse.

  Davis’s observation that it would be hard to find his old gaff in the river in the dark, when he had looked into every pool for days after its loss, was lost upon them. If she hadn’t killed Hayes with that gaff, whose gaff had she used?

  Davis went up to the hotel to see Wint and Joan when they all returned from Cwyll. He refused a drink, and said he was anxious to hear what they thought of Mrs. Hayes’s chances.

  “I can’t help wondering, sir,” he said to Wint, “what Mr. Rigby meant by telling that tale of a gaff lost in a salmon. The constable couldn’t explain proper, and the Inspector couldn’t, or wouldn’t. But we’d never have heard of it if it hadn’t meant something.”

  Wint had given some hard thinking to that matter himself. “I take it that it did mean something,” he replied, “but it doesn’t mean so much now that it is known you lost a gaff in the spring, and did not find it again.”

  Davis appeared puzzled. “How does that make any difference, sir?”

  “Well, that’s obvious enough. The police had to find a weapon; a gaff, as the most likely weapon, for preference. And they had to find one actually owned by someone who might have killed—that is, had the motive and opportunity to kill, Hayes. Failing that, they had to pre-suppose a lost gaff, which might have been picked up and used by the murderer.”

  “I see that, sir, but——”

  “Wait a moment, my dear fellow. My gaff was
found, but for one reason or another they did not believe it to have been used. Now, if a gaff had been left on the bank, the hundreds of anglers who fish here in a month or two would have seen it, and picked it up. If it was not on the bank, it was in the water.”

  “Ah, there you are!” said Davis, nodding.

  “But how did it get into the water? It might have slipped, though as a rule one doesn’t drop a gaff into the river. If one did, one would search for it, and try to get it dragged up, if it fell in a place where it couldn’t be seen on the bottom. If you dropped your gaff into a pool, say, wouldn’t you get it out?”

  “I didn’t mine, but it was stuck in a log of wood.”

  “Quite so, and the Chief Constable, casting about for an explanation of a gaff getting into the river, and not being recovered, remembered what he had heard of a Scotch salmon running off with a gaff. In other words, a salmon might run some considerable distance up or down stream, carrying a gaff fixed in it. In heavy water, such as a flood, the course the salmon took would not be traced, and the gaff when finally shaken out by the fish’s movements, or a rock striking the handle, might be deposited where the owner did not look for it.”

  “If it was a strong salmons, and went down, it might be in the mud of the estuary, that gaff; indeed, yes,” said Davis.

  “I am sure that is all Mr. Rigby meant by his speculation, anyway,” Wint replied. “Being top-dog, the police would have to look into his theory whether they believed it or not. Though I should think it would not appeal much to Parfitt.”

  “It was not a bad theory, though, look you,” replied Davis, “for my gaff went off in the water.”

  Joan intervened thoughtfully. “Mr. Davis, if your gaff is still in some pool far down, or in the estuary, as you said, then Mrs. Hayes could not have used it, could she?”

  “No, Miss, that was what I was thinking.”