by Vernon Loder
“That’s mine, sir,” replied Davis, and Joan gave a cracked cheer, that ended abruptly in something like a sob.
“Good work! Dam’ good work!” said Rigby examining the gaff in his turn.
Bow got up from his rock, and stuffed some notes into the diver’s hand. Then he came over too.
“No blood on it?” he asked.
“Not a sign,” replied Parfitt. “Look at this cord too; binding the hook on. That would hold a stain if the wooden handle didn’t. It’s obvious that this didn’t kill Mr. Hayes. It’s been stuck in the shaft up there, and only got free yesterday.”
Rigby nodded, told the diver and his men to pack up and get back to Cwyll, and turned again to Davis.
“You’ll swear to this, of course?”
“I’ll swear that it is my old gaff, sir.”
“Right. Then I don’t think we need keep you. Parfitt, we’ll have lunch at the hotel. The men can go to their duties as usual.”
“I suppose Mrs. Hayes will be released now?” said Bow.
“Not yet, sir, I’m afraid. We shall have to consult the Home Office and the Crown Prosecutor. It may be that it will have to go to the Assizes, if it is only formally to enter a nolle prosequi.”
“I’ll go bail for her, naturally, in the meantime.”
“I shall put it before the authorities, but it is not really in my power to decide, Mr. Bow.”
“Oh, blast your red tape!” said Bow viciously, and left them to walk hastily away.
Rigby smiled faintly and raised his eyebrows. Then he and the others returned to the hotel.
After lunch, the Chief Constable rose and said he must get back to Cwyll, and he nodded approvingly to Joan.
“We’re open-minded enough to appreciate useful help, Miss Powis,” he said. “You both touched the spot this time.”
“It was hearing your story that a salmon once ran away with a gaff that did it,” she laughed. “Especially when I heard that Mr. Davis had let a log get away with him.”
“I was thinking more of your brain-wave about the diver. I don’t think our poking about would have found the gaff in a month of Sundays otherwise.”
Bow came in, in a better temper, an hour later. He looked much relieved since he had reflected that the Chief Constable’s mention of a possible nolle prosequi suggested a changed outlook about the woman’s guilt. Obviously the evidence against Caroline Hayes had not been very strong, if the negative evidence provided by that day’s search had made so much difference.
“The odds are in her favour now, anyway,” Wint remarked, when Bow said this. “Her husband hadn’t a gaff, and we have found the only one in the neighbourhood that was missing.”
Chapter XXVII
Or Was it Murder?
“IT’S my opinion that Hayes wasn’t killed with a gaff at all,” said Wint, that evening after dinner, when he and Joan and Edward Bow were sitting in the billiards-room, to avoid Hoad’s intense curiosity, and had daringly locked the door.
“Why not?” asked Joan.
“Chiefly because, as we agreed before, there wasn’t a spare gaff available. Why, it might have been made—the wound, I mean—by a sharpened bit of strong bull-wire. It was only because it went in at one place and came out at another, that we took it to be a gaff.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bow. “Wire’s rough, and the wound the doctor said was not jagged or ragged, but made by something pointed and polished.”
Joan agreed. “We can’t get away from that. And any weapon like a knife, or a poignard, if they kept such things here, would not make a curved wound such as a gaff could.”
“Well, it’s dashed mysterious, this business,” said Wint, slowly filling his pipe. “Someone killed Hayes. Who was it? From our point of view the affair’s done with—or will be when Mrs. Hayes is released. But I should have an inquiry about young Hoad if I were the police. He may be merely upset about that girl’s suicide, and his rotten letter. But he may be the man who did in Hayes.”
But Joan had not been listening. She was off hotfoot on a theory of her own.
“Wait a moment,” she cried excitedly. “If the gaff went into that poor man’s neck, and stayed there, it would have been brought up with the body, wouldn’t it?”
“Naturally.”
“And if the man who did it pushed Mr. Hayes into the water, he must have taken the gaff out first.”
“Assume it!”
“Well, he must have then thrown the gaff in after Mr. Hayes.”
“He couldn’t, my dear girl,” said Wint. “The body filled up the entrance to the shaft.”
“Quite. That is what I am getting at. If he did not throw it in after him, which is proved by the fact that the gaff must have been in the shaft below the body, not above, what did he do with the gaff after he had killed Hayes?”
Bow stared at her. “That’s good sense. Could he have killed Hayes, pulled out the gaff, and thrown it down the shaft first?”
“How long would that take?”
“Not more than half a minute, if he hustled.”
“Leaving the body on the bank?”
“I suppose so.”
“How can you suppose it? The police agreed that there would be nasty traces on the bank, blood marks, but there were none.”
“True. But suppose the body was in the water all the time.”
“Wasn’t it said that the force of the current would have drawn it into the shaft? Of course. Then, if the body was there, the gaff couldn’t get down.”
The two men exchanged puzzled glances.
“Where is that taking you?” asked Wint. “I see the force of your argument, Joan, but it is only proof that there was no murder at all—which is absurd.”
“Ah, that’s just the point,” she observed. “Was there a murder?”
“Yes, or a suicide. Must have been.”
“Now that is where I am not quite sure,” she replied. “Isn’t there an alternative? The gaff didn’t go down after Hayes, but before.”
“But Parfitt proved that that gaff couldn’t have been used.”
“No, he merely said it couldn’t. But how could he be sure that immersion in the water for days and days did not remove all traces, even from the whipping on the gaff.”
“Have it your own way. What then?”
“Then there is just the chance that the gaff was stuck in that shaft after the flood brought it down, a long time ago.”
“We’ll concede that. But you’re beating the air, old girl.”
“Don’t be so horribly impatient! Is it possible to deny that Mr. Hayes may have had a faint, or slipped and gone in? Of course not.”
Bow looked at her interestedly. What was mere speculation to them was a matter of supreme importance to him.
“I suppose we must not ignore the chance that it was so,” he said. “It’s worth looking into, anyway. He wasn’t a young man, and, of course, the doctor who examined the body only looked at the actual injuries. Do go on!”
His earnestness made Joan hope that she had not hit upon a wild theory. “Well, if we imagine that he fell in, or had a seizure of some kind, he wouldn’t be dead when the water drew him into the shaft, and as the gaff was obviously below him there, can we swear that he didn’t get his injuries that way.”
“Great Scott! I never thought of that,” Wint cried. “I say, Bow, what about it? Miss Powis is quite right. If the gaff was stuck there when Hayes fell in——”
Bow interrupted. “Sorry to stop you, but let’s get this right. I assume that Miss Powis thinks the gaff was jammed point upwards in the hole through which the water rushes down, and Hayes was drawn in by the force of the current and impaled, in a way, on the gaff point. But surely there are two things to be said about that; first, would the gaff, jammed and fixed in one position, do it—two openings I mean? Then what about the log in which the point was supposed to be stuck?”
“Suppose it wasn’t still stuck?” Joan argued. “I mean to say, the water would have been pulling and p
ushing at the wood, and got it free from the gaff.”
“I know. But we found the bit of wood floating in that backwater in the pool below, Miss Powis. While it might stay some time in the eddy, half a day or so, it wouldn’t go round and round for months. It must have been stuck in the gaff, or jammed in a crevice until yesterday, when the poking about of the diver, or the jointed canes yesterday removed it.”
Joan nodded. “I see what you mean. I suppose it is so. But you admit that, if the gaff was not stuck in it, it was jammed somewhere. Let’s take that alternative. Then the gaff-point was free, and may have penetrated Mr. Hayes’s throat when he was drawn down by the rush of water.”
Wint had been eager to say something. He cut in now: “A top-hole idea, Joan, which I hope is true. But, if that is so, why didn’t the gaff come up with the body when Hayes was found and pulled up?”
“I don’t know that that is an objection, Wint,” said Bow, before Joan could reply. “If a body going downwards was impaled on the hook of a gaff it stands to reason that the hook was curving upwards. Davis had a bit of a job, with help, to get the body out, and no doubt the gaff—the shaft of which must have been jammed in the rocks, or it would have fallen down into the pool before, came out under the strain. That is what I make of it.”
Joan beamed. She was proud of her idea now, and hoped that it might finally convince the police of Mrs. Hayes’s innocence. It would at least be positive evidence; not negative, like the mere failure to find a weapon with which the murder had been committed.
“I vote we tell Inspector Parfitt about it. He can make some kind of practical experiments, on the lines of those made by the water-bailiff. If he gets a dummy, and sees with his own eyes that the thing could have happened in the way I suggest, then we score a point.”
Bow grasped her hand, and shook it warmly. “You’re worth any three of us! I expect we can get on the telephone to Cwyll. There is a chance that Parfitt hasn’t gone to roost yet. Shall I go, or will you?”
“Please do,” said Joan, who felt that he was dying to discover the Inspector’s reactions to the new theory. “Now you know what I mean, I expect you will put it to him much more clearly than I.”
When Bow had unlocked the door and gone to the telephone, Wint made sure that Hoad had retired for the night, and would not disturb them, and came back to smile at Joan.
“Bow beats me,” he said in a low voice. “He was in love with Mrs. Hayes more than twenty-five years ago; he’s devoted to her still; and he managed to say nothing about it to her for all that time. Most unusual self-repression, I think.”
Joan’s eyes twinkled. “I suppose people may be in love for some time without blurting it out, Harry? I don’t know that many would wait so long, of course, though I do know one or two people who would require an earthquake to make them reveal their feelings.”
“Do I know any of these weird people?” he demanded, laughing.
“You know one very well, indeed,” she rejoined. “Better than I do, probably.”
“I do? You’re joking! What’s his name?
“It begins with a ‘W,’ and his initial is ‘H,’ and I’m hanged if I am going to propose!” said Joan. “Harry, you utter old donkey! It’s quite two years since you began to haunt our house, and a man who can stand committee meetings in every room for two years must have some ulterior motive for coming. But perhaps you came to see Dad?”
“I didn’t, but I will the moment I get back,” he said, and got up. “But this is all wrong. What you say you have unsaid. Let me make a start this time, late as it is. Darling——”
Then Bow came in hastily, and the two jumped apart, self-consciously.
“I got Parfitt, and he comes first thing to-morrow!” Bow cried. “He seemed impressed by your theory, Miss Powis, and will try it out practically. I’m tremendously relieved.”
“So am I,” said Joan. “I think I have made a most important discovery. Mr. Wint agrees with me.”
Bow shook his head. “Don’t scoff at it, Miss Powis!” he replied, his mind on the matter that concerned him more nearly. “I am sure it will be the greatest help.”
“What did Parfitt say?” she demanded, dropping the little joke she and Wint had between them. “Doesn’t he, or does he, see that, if my theory is practicable, it exonerates Mrs. Hayes completely? I know they can’t release even an innocent person without formalities, but once they are sure of her innocence, they could admit her to bail. And that would mean actual freedom.”
“Parfitt more or less agrees to that. He does not think that we could carry out the experiments in the actual shaft, since the rush of water and the confined space would make it impossible to observe things. But he thinks a sort of rough model could be made with plaster, and a gaff fixed there, for trial with a dummy figure. I must say the police are willing to go to any amount of trouble to get a light on the tragedy.”
“You ought to write to Mrs. Hayes,” said Joan. “For all we know, Mr. Hayes may have suffered from heart-attacks or something. You can’t get too much evidence in these cases, can you?”
“No,” he agreed. “If he was a full-blooded man, or had a weak heart, it makes your theory look better. I don’t think he slipped in merely. His position when found suggested that he was unconscious. At any rate, I shall write to Caroline and put it to her.”
Chapter XXVIII
Proof Enough?
PARFITT rang up the hotel in the morning. He said it was decided that the experiments should be made at Cwyll, and that the models for the trial were being put in hand at once. If Bow, Miss Powis, and Mr. Wint would care to come down by the afternoon bus, they could attend the experiments, which would be carried out in a corner of a quarry just above the town.
There was nothing for it but to wait. Even plaster or concrete models would take a little time to complete.
They left by the bus and found their way easily enough to the disused quarry, which was railed off, and had a gate, at which a local constable stood.
Mr. Rigby was there, consulting with the Town Surveyor, also a foreman under the council, the Superintendent of Police, Mr. Bass, the Coroner, and Inspector Parfitt.
As the three saw at once, the slanting side of the quarry had been utilized in one place to form part of the rough model of the hole in the rocks of the river in which Hayes’s body had been found fixed. Plaster sides had been built up, with laths embedded, to represent the other sides of the shaft, leaving a strip about six inches wide open on the near side, through which observation could be kept.
A dummy wax figure of a man had been borrowed from one of the tailors in the town, and stood grotesquely upright against a projecting knob of rock in the side of the quarry face.
The disposition of the hypothetical gaff had been a difficult matter, but it had been assumed for the purposes of the first experiment that it was jammed with the point of the steel hook upwards. It could be reset in the reverse position later for the second experiment.
“Since you’re all here,” said Mr. Rigby, when he had spoken for a few moments with the new-comers, “I think Williams can get his camera ready to take any shots needed. It’s pretty clear that we could do nothing at the actual site of the tragedy. We couldn’t see what happened in the tunnel full of water, and there was no means by which we could have fixed the gaff in there, in what we assume to have been its position before it was dislodged by our grapnel the other day.”
“This isn’t exactly to scale, for the same reason,” said the Surveyor, “but it’s near enough, and I take it that the object is to demonstrate whether the dead man could, or could not, have been impaled on the gaff stuck in the rocks.”
“That’s it,” said Rigby. “Well. Someone bring the dummy over here, and get that ladder up. The dummy will have to be thrust downwards by hand, instead of being more realistically drawn in by a strong current of water.”
Had the occasion been a less serious one, or its possible results less important, Joan could have laughed at the sigh
t of a policeman who gravely climbed up the ladder, the dummy figure in one arm, and thrust it head downwards into the model shaft, until the neck came in contact with the gaff hook fixed below.
“Shall I push it further down, sir?” the policeman asked expectantly. “Don’t know if it’ll be soft enough to——”
“No. Wait a moment!” Rigby interrupted. “We never thought of that. Haul it out again, and we’ll have a neck made of something more penetrable. We can compensate Mr. Richards if we damage his wax figure.” Finally, the head was removed, connected again to the dummy by a neck made of straw sewn up in strong butter-muslin, and by delicate manipulation, was hoisted and pushed once more into position.
The gaff penetrated the neck, and, by means of a little twisting, the point emerged at another point.
“Now, you must pull the dummy up,” was the next instruction. “Actually Mr. Hayes’s body was brought up leaving the gaff behind.”
Joan was disappointed to see that, on the attempt being made, the hook threatened to tear the material rather than slip out of it.
“That’s a snag,” commented the Chief Constable, frowning. “There was no sign on Hayes’s body of a ragged or torn wound. What do you think, Parfitt?”
Parfitt stepped close up. “It certainly hasn’t come off quite according to plan, sir. But, perhaps, Mr. Wint here, and Mr. Bow, will say if they recollect exactly how the body was disengaged by Davis from the river?”
Bow did not remember that the body had been extricated in a way at all differing from that at present being adopted in the experiment, but Wint did.
“I think Davis pushed a bit down when it did not come up at the first go,” he said. “You know the way one does, when anything sticks? You pull, then shove away from you.”
Parfitt nodded. “That is my own recollection of the account, sir.”
“And I think we must remember that, though the handle of the gaff—which is straight—was jammed in the shaft, it may have been easily turned—on its axis, if you know what I mean,” Rigby added. “That is to say, the actual hook may not have remained in the one fixed position when the body was pulled out.”