by Annie Haynes
Stoddart here called a halt for refreshment, and when Mrs. Marlow’s ale had been disposed of asked in which direction the woman had run, and the tramp resumed his story.
The woman had run along the road towards Medchester, which went past the lodge, and he had crept out of the shadows and followed her. But she had stopped suddenly, so suddenly that he had only just time to fling himself flat in the long grass beside the road or she would have seen him. She stood in the middle of the road, passing her hand over her neck and shoulders and peering on the ground as if she’d lost something. She shook her dress and the bag she had in her hand, and came a step or two back along the road – stopped again and took a step or two in the direction she had come.
Then she seemed to make up her mind, turned again and went off along the road round a comer and out of sight.
“Towards the lodge?” Stoddart asked.
Yes, towards the lodge, or it might be Medchester, or there was a short cut he had heard tell across the park to Holford village – he couldn’t say where she went. He got on to his feet and followed, and when he arrived at the spot where she had hesitated and turned round he saw something white lying on the road close to where she had been standing.
He picked it up. It was a bit of paper with something written on it; not being a scholar, and the moon having gone behind a cloud, he couldn’t tell what it was – looked like marriage lines or something – and he hastened after the woman, thinking he might get a shilling or two for giving it back to her. But he couldn’t catch up with her, and never saw her again.
“And so you’ve brought the paper here?” the inspector remarked. “And time, too, considering weeks have gone by. Why didn’t you take it at once to the police?”
“I ain’t brought it with me, coz I ain’t got it,” the man replied sulkily, “and if you be kind enough to listen to me, mister, you’ll ’ear as ’ow I did take it to the police.”
“Go on,” Stoddart said shortly, with a glance at Harbord; were they going to know at last what it was Mayer had learnt that had cost him so great a price?
The man threw a suggestive glance at the empty beer jug and continued.
Not catching up with the woman he had slipped the paper into his pocket, spent the night under a convenient haystack, and resumed his tramp in the morning; not very early because he had overslept himself. He put the paper in his pocket and forgot all about it.
Having tramped the country for he didn’t remember how long, he found himself back at Holford, heard of the murder of a bloke called Saunderson, and thought of the slip of paper still lying forgotten in his pocket. The police might be willing to give him a bit for it; anyway, it was worth trying.
He had passed the lodge, which he knew pretty well by this time, by about half a mile when he met a policeman walking along the road from the direction of Medchester. A bit of a boss he was, with a cap instead of a helmet and a bit of braid about him. He had never seen him before, didn’t – begging their pardons – see more of the police than he was obliged to, but had learnt since the officer’s name was Mayer.
Thinking to save himself a visit to the police station, he had stopped the officer and handed it over to him, with the request that if it should prove to be of any value he wouldn’t be forgotten. It was just as well, he went on, to stand in with the police when you didn’t do yourself any harm by it, a remark that had brought a grin to Stoddart’s lips.
“What then?” the inspector asked shortly. “Did it seem to be of any importance?”
The man nodded.
“He seemed all dithery-like when he’d read it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Well, I be damned!’ twice over – very slow.”
Stoddart moved impatiently. “Was that all he said? Get on, man!”
“There ain’t nothin’ more to tell – leastways ’e told me to report myself at the station at Medchester next mornin’ at ten o’clock and I’d probably ’ear o’ something to my advantage.”
“And did you do so?”
The tramp drew the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Not me! By evenin’ it was all over the place that a man ’ad been murdered – and a policeman at that – close to the ’Olford lodge, near where we’d been talkin’ in the mornin’, so I makes myself scarce. ’Tweren’t no manner o’ use gettin’ mixed up in a murder case – and havin’ awkward questions asked. So I ’ops it, and let any reward for the findin’ of the paper that might be comin’ to me go ’ang.”
There was a pause; the pair of cunning little eyes wandered vaguely round the room to come again to a halt at the beer jug. But nobody took the hint.
“What have you been doing with yourself since?” Stoddart asked.
“Trampin’ the country – and doin’ no ’arm,” was the defiant reply.
“Umph?” the detective looked doubtful. “Why have you come here now?”
The flamboyantly red head leaned forward confidentially.
“I picked up a noospaper lying in the road as I was trampin’ into Mapsdale and there I reads about the inquest. ’Twas an old noospaper – days and days. That was last Wednesday. There I sees the policeman’s name was Mayer, and as ’ow ’e’d told the lady at the lodge ’e’d got a line on summat an’ no one knew ’ow ’e’d got it. So I thinks to meself –” He hesitated, looking doubtfully at his interrogator. “You’ll play fair, you gentlemen,” he whined, “you won’t let nothink I say be used agin me? I needn’t ha’ come ’ere if I ’adn’t wanted to –”
“Tell us all you know and you’ll be none the worse for it,” Stoddart said curtly.
“Well,” he drew back with an air of relief, “I come ’ere now because I could see I ’ad a bit o’ information and thought it might be worth a bit o’ money. Nobody knows I met the cop ’cept ’im and me, and if you put ’im out of it there’s only me – and if you arsk me, I tell yer I believe he got a bit o’ vallyble information out o’ that there bit o’ paper.”
“What did he do with the bit of paper?” Both detectives bent forward eagerly.
The tramp shook his head.
“I can’t tell yer that, gentlemen, for I knows no more than the babe unborn. When I left ’im ’e was standin’ in the middle of the road a-readin’ of it over again. I went my ways, and when I ’ears about the murder I ’ooks it, and never ’eard no more till I picked up the noospaper in the road outside o’ Mapsdale.”
Stoddart muttered a strong word under his breath.
“You didn’t see him put it in his pocket? Think,” he urged, signing to Harbord to get the beer jug replenished.
“I didn’t stop to see what ’e done with it. I tell ’ee – ’e was a-standin’ in the middle o’ the road ’oldin’ the paper in ’is ’and – like so.” He held up both hands in front of him as if grasping a visionary slip of paper. “I turned my back to ’im, a-walkin’ along the road towards Medchester, and I went round a corner and didn’t see ’im no more. Then when I ’ears about the murder –”
The inspector held up his hand. “We know all that,” he said curtly, “you ’opped it. Would you know the woman again who came through the little gate?”
“Ay, that I would. I seed ’er face plain enough in the moonlight.”
Stoddart drew the page his colleague had cut from the illustrated paper from his pocket and laid it on the table before him.
“Anything like that?” he asked, spreading it out flat.
The man pushed his red-crowned head forward and studied the picture; frowned, put his head on one side and pulled the sheet nearer to him.
“That’s ’er,” he said shortly, “that’s the face I saw in the moonlight.”
“You’re certain?” the inspector pressed.
He nodded. “That’s ’er all right,” and added thoughtfully, “so ’elp me, Gawd.”
CHAPTER 24
The two detectives, having got rid of their visitor for the time being, looked at one another with raised brows.
/> “Well,” Stoddart remarked, “that’s that. Pretty exasperating about that paper, but we’ve got something definite to go on at last. I’d like to know what that bit of paper was about, and whether poor Mayer was shot for the sake of it. Seems to me, Alfred, our theory looks like holding good – the same hand fired both shots. Mayer knew too much.”
He paused a moment lost in thought.
“I rang up Mrs. Burford,” he went on, “while you were away in Medchester and said I should like another bit of a talk with her, but I’m not sure after this that I want it, not straight off. You might ring up and cry off for me. The story wants a bit of thinking out, and the sooner we get on to it the better – and keep a line on Mr. Ted Watson.”
The message had found Anne nearly at the end of her tether.
It is one thing to face a dramatic moment with calmness and fortitude; it is quite another to face life day in day out, week by week, the sword of Damocles suspended by the slenderest of threads, and yet to keep up a brave, unflinching attitude towards a world that will certainly judge you through its head rather than its heart.
For Anne could gauge the situation into which by her own act she had precipitated herself fairly accurately. Judged on the merits of the case, to put it colloquially, she hadn’t a leg to stand upon; she was well aware of that, even though ignorant of the fact that owing to Lady Medchester’s evidence the police knew she had been in the summer-house that night. If she stood firm in her refusal to admit her brother’s part in the meeting arranged between herself and Saunderson – and she had every intention of doing so – her assignation, were she to admit it, would bear inevitably a sinister interpretation, would connect her with his death in a manner more sinister still.
Over and over, round and round her brain, every conceivable aspect of the affair revolved. Night and day she got no peace; her last thought at night, it greeted her when she opened her eyes in the morning; and adding the last straw to the burden was Harold’s coldness, his curt, unsympathetic message sent through a woman he knew she detested, and, worst of all, his continued absence. Considering all the circumstances and the supreme sacrifice she had been prepared to make for him and for the sake of the family name, dragged by his action through the mud, it seemed unbelievable that he should stand aloof now that she was in trouble.
Not even to her husband had she divulged the true circumstances of that night. He knew as much as she had told the police – no more. It would be part of the reward of the trials she had faced that her brother and the family name should go unscathed, especially in the eyes of the man who had stood by her and whom she loved with all her heart. Her loyalty had withstood every temptation, but when the message came that Inspector Stoddart proposed to pay her another inquisitorial visit she found herself at breaking point, and in something approaching panic had flung herself into her husband’s study where he was busy over the day’s correspondence, and to his surprise and distress burst into tears.
“Michael,” she sobbed, “I can’t stand it! That inspector is coming again, and I know I shall – shall go mad – and say something I don’t mean – and” – as he drew her on to a low seat in the window beside him – “which probably won’t be true!”
He slipped a protective arm round her. “Why should you mind?” he soothed. “Whatever others may think, we know Harold is innocent and, knowing that, nothing you say is likely to incriminate him.”
But Anne remained silent, desperately undecided whether to make a clean breast of it to him or not. She was so passionately anxious to keep her brother’s character unstained in the eyes of the man who had so generously joined his fortunes with her own in the moment of her trouble. If she told him half the truth only, how explain her presence in the summer-house that night? She was torn two ways, shaken by slow sobs as her husband, not understanding, tried to calm her obvious terror of being raked by the fire of Scotland Yard methods again.
The truth was he himself was a little puzzled. Harold’s attitude with regard to his marriage was not the attitude of a happy bridegroom; still less that of a man whose actions were free and independent. He seemed rather in the position of a man forced to do something against his will, and, although Anne continued to reiterate her faith in his innocence, her husband found himself subconsciously adding a question mark whenever the subject was mentioned. There was something behind it all he did not understand, and Michael Burford hated mysteries.
But the immediate necessity was to comfort Anne and soothe her fears, and patiently he recapitulated the arguments in favour of her brother’s innocence, Anne knowing all the time he was in possession of only half the facts, and therefore quite unaware of the motive that might have spurred Harold into a criminal act.
In that lay the difficulty of her position. It was so hard that now Harold had made good, had, as she knew privately, redeemed the incriminating paper the moment his heritage as Lord Gorth enabled him to raise sufficient money for the purpose, her tongue must still remain tied as to her motive for arranging the meeting with Saunderson that evening. The fact still remained that Harold’s misdemeanour had forced her into consenting to marry a man she hated, and that her brother had accepted the sacrifice; further, a knowledge of all the facts would certainly justify the police in regarding Harold with the gravest suspicion.
It amounted to this, that if she were to tell Michael of her visit to the summer-house, she must suppress the reason, and leave it to his generosity to put upon it an innocent interpretation.
And now, here were her nerves giving way when she wanted all the backing they could give, and she sobbed incoherent phrases into her husband’s broad shoulder while he silently breathed fire and brimstone against the Yard and all its ways, and determined to pay the detective a visit on his own account and extort from him an explanation of his conduct and suspicions.
Then, at breaking point, Stoddart’s second message came through, and Anne, in an ecstasy of relief, was in danger of being overcome by an attack of hysterical laughter. With the resilience of youth the hope once more reasserted itself that, if only the real murderer could be found, Harold’s forgery of Saunderson’s name, and her own assignation with him might never transpire, but lie, buried between them, till the day when according to general belief no secrets will be hid. Such secrets, she thought optimistically, might not loom so large in a world where all cupboards will be opened and skeletons invited to walk out. Some of them, at all events, might be overlooked in the crowd.
Anyway, it was a respite, and, to her husband’s relief, Anne dried her eyes and joyfully accepted his offer to drive her into Medchester in the car.
It was a radiant autumn day, the glowing tints of beech and elm, the more vivid for the deep blue background of an almost cloudless sky, and in the reaction from her black hour Anne felt almost happy as she slipped in beside Michael and pulled the door of the car to after her. There is an exhilaration in rapid motion that will dislodge dull care from most shoulders, and the colour began to creep back into Anne’s cheeks, the life into her eyes.
At the corner where the roads from East Molton and from Holford to Medchester forked, they met the bus heading for Holford. Anne glanced at it indifferently, little thinking that it carried with it the key to the riddle they had all been so vainly trying to solve, and upon which hung so much of vital importance to her own future and to that of her brother.
Anne Burford was not the only woman in the neighbourhood who had been fighting her way through an emotional storm that day, the main difference in the situation being that whereas the one found herself almost submerged by circumstances brought about by no fault of her own, the other had brought them on herself, and was in addition therefore confronted by remorse and a sense of ill-doing.
It had been Mrs. Mayer’s last day at her home in Medchester police station. The new superintendent had proved to be unmarried and, being of a kindly disposition, had begged her not to hurry herself, but to transport herself and her belongings to other quarters at her own conven
ience. So she had packed at her leisure, and it was not until she had emptied the drawers in the old-fashioned bureau, standing against the wall in her bedroom, of their contents that she made an overwhelming discovery.
In the first flush of it she had stood, rigid, gazing into space, her eyes filled with dismay, fear, and a sense of right struggling for mastery. Then, coming to a sudden decision, she had closed her lips in a thin, hard line, put on coat and hat, and with a parcel in her hand had caught the bus for Holford.
Inspector Stoddart, having finished lunch at the “Medchester Arms,” was on the point of starting for the Hall when he was told by Mrs. Marlow’s maid there was some one to see him. He was inclined to be impatient at the interruption.
During the last twenty-four hours events had been shaping themselves more satisfactorily, but the whole case was still too much in the air for any definite action to be taken. Harbord’s discovery in the dentist’s waiting-room of the ownership of the crystal beads, added to the redhaired tramp’s evidence, had given substantial grounds for a well-defined line of inquiry, but there still remained a most important point which would have to be established before proceeding further.
So when it transpired that the some one’s name was Mayer, the widow of the murdered superintendent, Stoddart decided to postpone his visit to the Hall and to receive her in their sitting-room, with Harbord in attendance to take notes or bear witness should witness be required.
Mrs. Mayer was ushered in, breathless from her journey and, as she would have said herself, upset, whether through fear or shock it was impossible to say at first sight. She sank into the chair placed for her by Harbord, hugging to her the parcel she was carrying as if loath to part with it.