by David Pirie
I was aghast. ‘So you were in the woods on those nights?’
‘I was, sir. I suppose most would think I was a wolf,’ he said shyly.
His ignorance staggered me. Bell had made a cache of all the newspapers containing the story and they were laid out in a pile by his bed. I crossed there now, seizing the most sensational of all and pushed it in front of Morton, pointing to the headline:
HOWLING MAN SEEN
‘But did you see this?’ I asked.
He glanced at it uneasily and turned to Bell. ‘No, sir. What is it, sir?’
Bell had been watching and came over to him. ‘Well, it is just a description of how some people heard you, Mr Morton,’ said the Doctor kindly. And it was only then I realised that, of course, Morton could not read and was too, I suspected, very short-sighted. ‘I think you can go back to your people now,’ Bell added. ‘They will be waiting and I know you all have to get on to Ipswich.’ He took some coins and handed them to him. ‘You have been a great help to me and we are agreed if you hear from these gentlemen again you will talk to your manager and he will know what to do.’
‘Yes, sir. That is agreed, sir. I am grateful, sir, and much obliged for the refreshment you laid on for my people too.’ And with a bow to me, he took up his coat and left the room.
‘He cannot read or write,’ said Bell quietly. ‘He knows nothing of the sensation. I can be certain from his descriptions the gentlemen who employed him in such confidence were Jefford and Cream. He met them both in London, where the thing was first discussed. Later he met Jefford only, around the twenty-eighth of November in Lowestoft, where he was given precise instructions regarding the first appearance. Mr Morton has limited eyesight but he has a very good memory and an excellent sense of direction and of geography. The second unexpected engagement, though in the same spot and of shorter duration, was delivered via an intermediary, the stage manager. I have interviewed this man. He believed the employment offered to Mr Morton was some kind of private performance. As to Mr Morton’s transport, it was a cab from Lowestoft, instructed again at second hand. The cab driver set him down for a fixed period of about sixty minutes on the first occasion, much less on the second.’
‘So he cannot lead us to them?’ I said.
‘No, I am persuaded,’ said Bell, ‘he knows no more than what he told us. He only met Cream once several weeks ago.’
‘But he terrified Miss Jefford,’ I said bitterly. ‘Why? Did her brother wish it?’
‘That is very doubtful,’ said Bell.
‘Then what was the purpose?’
‘Certainly to resurrect the legend, also to confuse and distract. It has already wasted my time, as we saw to our cost today. But Mr Morton’s second commission was, I believe, rather different. There was another reason for it which gives me hope, though I do not wish to speculate on it further.’
‘So that,’ I asked, ‘was the purpose of your trips to Lowestoft?’
‘In part. Though to be fair, it has also yielded other fruit.’
Bell started to rearrange the room, closing the curtain. ‘You see, Doyle,’ he explained, ‘the effect of the howling man was so theatrical and yet I did not think either witness was lying. And that left only two real possibilities. The first that it was some remarkable amateur trick or illusion like our friend Hanbury’s lethal box in Rotherhithe. However, the more I studied the description, the less plausible this seemed. Everything about this apparition sounded like a full-blooded performance. And, if so convincing, surely a professional one? Of course that seemed an absurd notion at first, and then my thoughts turned to Mrs Marner’s theatrical associations. I could find nothing to implicate her, but unwittingly she led me to the music hall in Lowestoft.
‘The more I read in the local newspaper, to your great frustration I recall, the more interesting it became. A troupe from London were performing and fortunately for me the newspaper has an excellent reviewer with a passion for the halls. In the course of his notices, he alluded to Mr Morton’s skills as a contortionist and ventriloquist, even recalling his “Human Wolf” of days gone by. My interest naturally became intense, all the more when I established Morton did not go on stage on either of the nights the howling man was seen. But then I arrived at an impasse. You will recall how frustrated I was that day, for just as I felt I had my man, there was no reply to my telegram. Had he flown? Or perhaps all my assumptions were unfounded. It was only when I got to the town that I realised the stupidity of my error. How could there be a reply? It was sent to Mr Morton’s lodgings and he was unable to read it.
‘Finally I encountered him personally. At first he was guarded but, when I alluded to his “private engagements” and indicated I knew about them, he saw no harm in revealing his odd commission. Earlier today, when you were with me, I also talked to the stage manager. I was a little wary of him, fearing he might be implicated in some way, so I took you with me but in the event he proved perfectly helpful and certainly innocent.’
He had sat down back at his desk now, the paper in front of him. ‘However, I fear Mr Morton is only the dressing of the affair and now I must return to its heart. It will be a long night.’ Soon he was again engrossed in the rune and I left him.
That night, I slept very deeply and dreamt that I was in a dark well whose water was rising below me. Somehow I managed to wedge myself in a semi-horizontal position to stop myself falling. But it was impossible to climb further and, below me, the level rose remorselessly. I could feel the cold wetness of the water on my legs and elbows, and then my back. Outside and above someone was banging on the side of the well. The noise became louder and I awoke.
It was already dawn. The banging continued, for it was coming from my bedroom door. I got up, pulled on my dressing gown and opened it. Langton stood there, grim-faced. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘You must come at once, Bell is already downstairs.’
It took me only a few moments to dress and descend. Bell, Langton and Angus Hare were standing in the hall of the inn in outdoor clothes
‘What is it?’ I asked.
Bell came close up to me and I could see the deep concern on his face as he spoke softly. ‘Come with us, Doyle. We have been out already, but the site is secure so we returned here to raise you. Langton also had to arrange for certain messages to be sent.’
They moved out of the door. It was early dawn and the frost had gone but a wind was beginning to blow and there were white clouds overhead.
‘But why did you not wake me when you went out?’ I asked.
‘What?’ said Bell, obviously greatly preoccupied. ‘Oh, I was awake anyway — I have been working all night on the rune and made an early visit to the asylum. I encountered Langton on my return.’
We had no distance to go. I could see at once that the policeman Wallace stood at the end of the street, close to the small church that served the community. The place was not very old, for it had been built in 1830, but it was picturesque, with a small, overgrown graveyard. And a well, which reminded me at once of my dream.
A second uniformed constable from a nearby village stood in the graveyard itself. Beside him something lay on the ground and the gravestone beyond this shape was red, as if covered in paint.
But it was not paint, of course. That was obvious as I drew closer.
And then I saw the object. I was unable to assemble any proper thoughts as I stared at it, but the word Godhead came to me, for there was something saint-like in these features while the wind blasphemously blew the fair hair around the face.
What lay below me at an odd angle on the grass was Charlotte Jefford’s head.
THE LINE OF REASON
The body’s torso was, as I soon saw, not so far away, but my view of it had been blocked by the gravestone. In other respects, below the bloody neck it looked absurdly normal.
I moved forward to take all this in, but it seemed my investigative instincts had failed me entirely. For I found I had no appetite at all for lingering at the scene. Logically, I su
ppose, I could have made some argument to myself that there was little for me to do there, that Bell would miss nothing. But I can scarcely pretend I was feeling logical. The sight of that mutilated body lying by the grave had aroused memories in me even more painful than those triggered by the murder on the beach. I had been moved by Ellie Barnes’s death, but I had had no real personal relationship with the victim and she had asked for no help or protection. Charlotte, on the other hand, had come to me, making an appeal as a friend. She had confided in me her secrets, including even the fact she was engaged. Here was her reward.
It was, I felt in my heart, a completely needless death: one which could and should have been prevented by the slightest vigilance on our part.
Naturally, Bell was setting about his usual investigations, studying the atrocity in detail and all the marks around it. But, very unusually in such circumstances, he was also concerned enough about me to come over to where I stood by the wall that divided the churchyard from the countryside beyond.
‘It is a desperate development, Doyle. I am closer now but I could not have foreseen this. What was she doing here?’
‘She told me she liked to get up early and walk. This was a favourite spot.’
‘A crime of opportunity then. The hardest to anticipate.’
I gave him a look then, for the truth was I thought this a contemptible excuse. He had only needed to talk to Charlotte, discover more about her, counsel her as to her safest strategies, establish a reasonable relationship, offer her some protection. He had done none of these things, he had merely issued a peremptory instruction that she should go home, blithely ignoring the fact she was only there because she desperately awaited news of her brother. Following that, he had not talked to her at all. I turned my back on him and left the graveyard.
In one way my behaviour was cowardly, though I am sure I was right to delay telling the Doctor what I thought. I had no intention of betraying the solemnity of Charlotte Jefford’s death with an acrimonious and emotional row between us, especially one that would be witnessed by everyone present. But, looking back, it was cowardly not to stay in that place and do what I could, even if that amounted to almost nothing. As it was, I suppose those around me thought I had been given some instruction by the Doctor and was striding away urgently to carry it out. They could have had no idea of the real state of affairs.
I found myself in the street and walked back along the road, turning on to the little path that led to the beach. Of course, nobody was about at this hour. I did not want to walk in the direction where we had found Ellie so, for a time, I headed the other way and trudged along the beach below the great cliffs. Soon I was repelled by the tide but I noticed that, before you came to the ruined church, where the cliff was sheer, there was one spot where the landslide had been gradual and it might be possible to climb from the beach to the woods.
Later, I retraced my steps and took the path from the beach to the cliffs, plunging into the trees at the top.
When I emerged on the part of the path that skirted the cliff, I felt the wind picking up. The surf boomed out below me, for the tide was still very full but I could see a great bank of black clouds forming on the far horizon.
These clouds were much more ominous than any I had seen before here. A real storm was coming, even if it would not be upon us for many hours. I thought of Charlotte’s face, the hair blowing around it in the graveyard, and felt almost as if I had killed her myself. Why in heaven had I not counselled her to be careful? I knew the danger well enough and yet last night I had talked to her as if we were friends meeting at some Surrey house party. But, if I could not forgive myself for this lapse, it seemed to me the Doctor was more culpable still. She had sought out his help and he had effectively rebuffed her altogether.
I do not know how long I stayed on that path, but eventually I crossed inland and walked back to the village via the road. By then, the graveyard had evidently been exhaustively searched and the body removed.
I entered the inn, ready to talk to Bell, for I knew my feelings must be expressed sooner or later. In the hall I saw Dr Hare, who was conversing quietly with one of the constables. He turned and nodded when he saw me. ‘Yes,’ he was saying to the constable, ‘if you take the preliminary report, we will await instructions.’ And then he turned to me, with a small smile. ‘So, Dr Doyle, on which important errand did Bell send you, I would like to know? What a bloodhound the man is!’
I was astonished by his joviality. Had he not been in the churchyard and seen what I had seen? The brutal extinguishing of a life for no reason? But then I recalled Langton telling me Hare had worked with the police in the north before he came here. No doubt he felt experienced in such things. ‘Did you reach a conclusion as to the weapon?’ I asked, ignoring the question.
‘Oh we have the weapon,’ he said, ‘or rather Langton does. It was behind the grave. A sharp little beast of a knife too.’
‘Were there any other indications?’ I asked.
‘Not that I am aware.’ He broke off, for Bell had come down the stairs now, looking somewhat grey and worried.
‘Doyle,’ he said, ‘the post-mortem will not take place till tonight. I want to go back to Harding’s house, I fear we may have missed something.’ His tone was so matter-of-fact you would never have guessed I had left him at the scene of a crime without explanation, something, in all our time together, I had never done before.
We set off along the road together, quite alone, for Hare had other business and Langton was busily involved in the aftermath of Miss Jefford’s death. The storm clouds were not yet overhead but they were massing in the western sky and the trees swayed noisily around us.
I suppose the Doctor’s worried appearance should have softened my anger a little but, as is the way with these things. It did not. And yet for some reason, I could not bring myself to say what I was feeling. So the silence continued and the wind blew around us as the only outward expression of this turbulence.
Harding’s cottage was now occupied by someone else but a message had been sent to Sir Walter and a key was brought down by one of the servants, who stood by to wait until we were finished.
Bell entered the house, which was hardly changed except that Harding’s clothes and personal possessions had been removed and another groundsman’s things replaced them. Obviously, Bell had no interest in these at all. Beyond that, the place was bare. The Doctor’s examination of this room last time had been very thorough and I could not remotely see how he hoped to find anything more.
But on this occasion he was even more painstaking though to absolutely no effect. He moved out all the furniture and studied all the walls, even laying his hands upon them. He went to the little chest of drawers, removing each drawer one by one and running his hand down the back.
Then he took a chair and began to examine the surfaces that were out of reach of the ground, not that there were many. He searched above the frames of windows and on the top of the shutters. A small shelf aroused his attention but there was nothing on or behind it. I could not think where else he could possibly look.
He stared around him for a time, then he moved the chair over to the door. He climbed on it and ran his hand over the high lintel. His expression changed.
He had grasped something and now he brought it down for closer inspection. From his look of triumph, I thought at first he must have found some weapon. But all Bell had in his hand was a stick of hazel wood with two short branches at the end.
It was, admittedly, a strange thing to find in such a place, but what could it possibly tell us? The Doctor, however, was delighted. He ran his hand over it, examining the way the branch had been cut by some skilled person. Then he quit the place at once and returned the key to the servant.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now, Doyle, we must go to Jefford’s house.’
I nodded, though it seemed futile, for the place would be locked. But we turned and walked back through the woods till we came to the track. The wind had dropped a little
, it was quite still and not very cold, but the clouds still gathered and the air seemed so full it was almost an effort to walk through it.
Eventually Jefford’s house stood before us with its barren and stunted fruit trees. There was, of course, nobody about. What, I wondered, did the Doctor propose to do? The place was locked and we could hardly break in.
For a time, the Doctor stood outside the house, studying it carefully. Then he took out a piece of paper and looked at some markings he had made on it. Finally he started to walk around the perimeter.
At last he arrived at the north-western corner and produced a pocket compass. He stood with his back to the house and moved the perimeter of the compass so he had a line running a few degrees off the angle of the house’s north-west corner. I saw him look along this line and fix his eye on a landmark — in this case it turned out to be a Scotch pine — that would give him exactly the direction he required. Then he started out towards it and I walked beside him. In one hand he held the compass, in the other the hazel wood branch.
When we reached the pine, he checked the compass and found another tree, albeit a slightly nearer one and set out again, holding precisely the same line.
‘This will take a long time,’ he said as we walked. ‘It may be a mile or more but it is the only way to be sure.’