by Vernon Loder
“I looked at you when the gentleman found it,” said Davis, “but I thought you never saw. Yes, indeed, that was my thought.”
Parfitt looked down at his feet. “Then there was the gaff hook itself, Davis. There was very little rust on it when it was found.”
“It wasn’t that gaff I had when I killed him.”
“I know. It was the long-handled one you got from the postman. But the other would have had more rust on it if it had been in the water since the spring, Davis. I tested that in Cwyll water.”
Davis smiled a melancholy smile. “I hadn’t time for it, sir, as you know. You can’t hasten rust. When I heard that Mr. Rigby over there was telling a story of a salmons that ran off with a gaff, I thought of a bit of pit-prop I had here for firing. That would be as good as a salmons to run off with my gaff.”
Parfitt nodded. “I thought it was mad, putting that about. It sounded as if it might give someone an idea for covering up. But you’re making a statement, Davis. Better sit down and I’ll take it down, if you insist.”
“No. I’ll give it all at Cwyll. I’m just telling you now what a man might have done,” Davis replied with a wintry smile, leaning against the doorpost. “He might have an old gaff, not the one he did it with—for he would clean that, and see that there were no traces on it—but an old one he had put away and no one looked for.”
“That was a mistake of ours,” said Parfitt, watching him.
“May be it was. But this man would go down one night to the river, when the police were taken off. He would know the river as well as his hand, look you. He would go down and fix that log with the gaff stuck in it in the hole where they’d found Hayes. That water would have pushed it down in spite of him, perhaps.”
“Into the pool below, sir? Perhaps that was what he wanted done, for no one could say that it hadn’t come out of the hole lately.”
“Yes, yes. That was his thought. No doubt he would be an uneducated man, and never think how the death could be an accident. Most likely he thought of the lady, who was in gaol because they thought she had used a gaff on Hayes.”
Parfitt had not expected that. He had believed that Davis was cunning enough to fake an accident at the river, but he was convinced now of the man’s sincerity.
“Then he would be pleased when the police made the experiments, and thought Hayes might not have been murdered, after all.”
Davis shook his head. “Indeed, for a little, sir, he was fool enough to be pleased. Life’s got more of a hold on us than we think. Yes, that’s very strange altogether. It didn’t last long. He’d have come along one of these days, if you had waited.”
Parfitt was not an emotional man, but he bit his lip now, and stood up to cut the thing short. There was a gun hanging over the chimneypiece, and he was glad that he stood between it and Davis, who had eyed it once or twice in the last minute. As the man lived alone, and there were no children about, it was probably loaded.
“Well, we must be going, Davis,” he said. “I have my combination on the road. I’ll take your arm.”
Davis looked gloomy at that, but he let the Inspector approach and link his arm in his, and they went together out of the cottage and towards the road.
“Open this gate,” said Parfitt, still holding him in a grip that was light, but could tighten in a fraction of a second. “I’m not putting the handcuffs on you, because I believe you’ll come quietly.”
Davis said nothing to that, but opened the gate, and they both went out on to the road.
Suddenly Parfitt drew him a little to one side. A large and fast car was coming up at speed.
The movement was almost fatal to his plans. With extraordinary agility Davis crooked a leg behind his and gave him a shove that sent him reeling into the hedge. Almost simultaneously, he threw himself in the tracks of the car.
But his attempt at self-immolation was not to be. Parfitt’s cycle and sidecar stood at the other side of the road, and the motorist, seeing the narrow road further constricted by the men emerging from the gate, put on his powerful brakes, reinforcing them with a crash and squeal of the hand-brake as he saw Davis plunge forward.
The car slewed round under that furious braking, and thrust her nose almost into the hedge. The motorist swore, red in the face with rage and fright. Parfitt jumped at Davis and put the handcuffs on him. “Sorry, sir,” he said to the motorist, who was breathing out threatenings and slaughter, “I ought to have held him better.”
“Can I give you a hand?” asked the other, glaring at Davis, who gave back a steady glance.
“No, thank you, sir. Just get on, if you please,” said the Inspector. “Now then, Davis, you must get into the sidecar. No more tricks!”
The motorist got his car straight again, and went off grumbling. Davis did as he was bid.
“I’m sorry I pushed you,” he said in a low voice, “but I thought it was my chance. You don’t blame me?”
“No, I blame myself, Davis. I’m afraid I’ll have to tie you in now. I can’t drive with one hand and hold you with the other.”
“I’ll give you my word—I didn’t give it before.”
Parfitt reflected, then nodded. “It’s up to you.”
It was not what he should have done, but he did it, and was justified.
Davis sat quietly in the sidecar until they reached the door of the police-station. There he got out, and Parfitt took him into the Superintendent’s office.
“Got him?” asked the Superintendent, looking hard at Davis. “You had no trouble?”
“None whatever,” said Parfitt. “He’s volunteered to make a statement. We’ll have the sergeant in, sir, shall we?”
“Yes.” The Superintendent kept his eyes fixed on the man. “Anything you’d like, Davis? A cigarette?”
Davis refused politely. “No, thank you, sir. Nothing. I’m past enjoying a smoke now. I’ve lived too long. I ought to have gone when she did.”
Chapter XXXI
On the Bank
“I CALL it beastly!” said Joan Powis, sitting back after she had read the first newspaper account of the “Sensational confession in the Cwyll murder case,” as headlines called it. “He’s quite right, too. It isn’t fair that Hayes should have spoiled his life, and have him hanged for it, too.”
Harry Wint quite agreed with her feelings. “In one sense, yes. But there’s no way out of the dilemma. The unwritten law opens the door to every kind of murderous rascality. At any rate, the poor devil is asking for it. He refuses to have counsel, though I know Bow and Mrs. Hayes have made the offer to get Tregaskin, and done all they could. The death of that girl seems to have finished things for him.”
Joan looked at him. “I wonder do we love like that, Harry? It seems rather wonderful, doesn’t it?”
He looked uncomfortable. “It’s hard to say, my dear. It’s odd, but, somehow, uneducated people seem to take it harder than we do. They go in off the deep end rather.”
“And we have trained and educated all the emotion out of us that we can,” she said softly. “Perhaps it’s better. I don’t know. I don’t want to go back to the primitive, but there is something about it we miss.”
Harry said nothing. There was nothing to say. Joan took up the paper and read again the account of Davis’s confession.
“I suspected they were meeting,” said the journal before her. “I didn’t know what to do at first, since she had not encouraged me. But I thought he was going to destroy her, and I made up my mind to stop him. I had a talk with him. That was the time it was put about that he had a row with me over some trouble about the fishing. I told him I would chuck him in the river, but he said he had nothing to do with Blodwen, only got her to tie flies for him.
“I never thought at first of the tunnel, though I knew he was a liar, and one of the girls up at the hotel said he was making up to a lady there, too. I have killed fish and birds all my life, but I never killed a man till then. I did not want to do it, but it came at last to me destroying her, or me him
, as I thought then. I did her a wrong in my mind, which has worried me since. I am not sorry for what I did, but I would not have done it if I had known things right.
“One or two nights I managed to let her think indirectly that I was not fishing, but going down to Cwyll to the pictures. I hid below the bridge on the under side, and she came down in the car and met him. It was the second time that I managed to keep close enough to them in the dark to see that they went into the tunnel. I went there next day and saw that they sat there and had an old cushion from the car.
“My mind was on fire after that, though I had not to show it. I had an idea of shooting him, but that meant hanging, and there was no justice in it. It wasn’t any fair exchange, as I said to myself, for whatever I was, I hadn’t been a brute beast like that man. When I worked over it in my mind, I thought of the gaff. You see, there was a lot of gentlemen from the hotel fished there, and some quarrelled with him. I didn’t want it thought that one of them did it. But it had to be done, and the gaff was the only way I could think of that would look like an accident—or at least at first. After, I saw it would be easier to push him in. Then they’d think he’d slipped.
“On our water, if you are fishing after dark, you find a clear pool, and if it’s too light or early, you put your rod and tackle down on the bank, to show it’s yours. I wanted it known or thought that I was on a pool some distance down from where Hayes always fished. I went down there after sunset, and put my things on the bank of the lowest pool. When it was dark I got ready to sneak up, and then I heard the car coming. Blodwen had that man with her, and they went to the tunnel, for I followed them in the dark. She did not stay long.
“That was the last I wanted to make me ready for him. I had my gaff slung on my back, not having taken it off. He left the tunnel with me on his heels, though he didn’t know it. He made a noise as he went, but I didn’t need light to tread there, and he went down and found his rod where he had dropped it in the morning. But he was not on the bank then. Ten feet back was where he was, and I couldn’t throw him in from there, or have a struggle without leaving marks on the bank.
“I was pretty hot by then, having seen that they went into the tunnel to do some love-making, as I took it. I just unslung the gaff and slipped round between him and the river without making a sound. It was old Tysin’s long-handled gaff I had with me, and I meant to hook him with it and have him in, whatever came of it. But just then I hit a stone with the handle, and he came up to see who it was, startled to know someone was near him, I suppose.
“He said nothing. I didn’t give him time. He was a yard from the bank and me when I made the stroke at him. It swung him round and threw him in, and I pulled him a few yards down to where the hole was in the rocks, and gave a shove to the gaff. I held it in the water after, and then I went home. I forgot my tackle on the pool below, and had to go for it before it got light.
“The gaff showed no traces. I’d been quick putting it in and holding it there. I kept it in the spring, that is just behind the cottage, all night, and dried it before I went out again. My old gaff I hid. I had a notion it would be a help later. That was before I heard of what Blodwen had done to herself. I was cut to the heart by that, but I told myself I could live. She had never let me be anything to her, and I had done my best to save her from that man.
“Funny when I think of it now that I said such nonsense. You don’t live when the best part of you is gone—I want you to put this in, Superintendent. I don’t want to whine, but I should like it known that I felt this more than I looked. I killed Hayes, and will abide by it. That is all I can say.”
Joan put down the paper hurriedly. “Will they hang him, Harry?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Mercifully, I think they will. That’s the only way to look at it. It’s one way out for him.”
And that was what the man himself said to Parfitt when the latter saw him for the last time after the trial.
“I heard you praised in court for what you did, Mr. Parfitt,” he said. “And I said ‘Amen’ to it. I’m glad you were so smart and clever. Put me out of my misery, as many a time I’ve done a rabbit. I’ll shake hands with you, if you’ll let me.”
Parfitt held out his hand, silently.
THE END