The Dartmoor Enigma

by Basil Thomson

  “I understand that he has left everything by will to his widow. Do you know who drew the will?”

  “He told me that he had drafted it himself. At any rate the legal terminology seemed to be all right.”

  “Had he actually paid for the quarry?”

  “Yes; there was some question about turning it into a limited company with himself as chairman, but he wouldn’t hear of it. If he touched it at all, he kept saying, he must buy it outright, and as the price was low, I did nothing to dissuade him.”

  “How much did he pay for it?”

  “Seven thousand pounds.” “Which left about eighteen thousand on deposit with you?”

  “Yes. I can give you the exact figures if you wait till to-morrow.”

  “Do you know what he did when he went out to the quarry?”

  “No. He told me once that he went through the books and orders with the foreman.”

  “You do not know whether he had occasion to sack any of the hands? Because these discharged men are sometimes vindictive if they fail to get another job.”

  “I believe he told me that he had been obliged to discharge one man because he was making the others discontented. I think the man was a communist and had had a row with the foreman, a staunch conservative. It seemed to me a rather inadequate reason for getting rid of a man.”

  “Do you remember the man’s name?”

  “No, I don’t, but he was one of those half-baked political agitators that one finds almost everywhere.”

  “I’ve one more question to ask, Mr. Todd. The motor accident took place on the 29th of September. Did Mr. Dearborn cash a cheque on that or the previous day? I suppose he had to cash cheques regularly to pay the wages at the quarry. What I want to get at is whether he was carrying any larger sum than usual on that day.”

  “If you’ll wait here, I’ll examine his account.”

  In two minutes the manager was back.

  “I find that on September 29 he drew out the same amount, almost to a penny, that he had drawn every Friday since he had the quarry. Saturday was his pay-day; the accident took place on his return journey, and therefore the presumption is that he had very little money in his pockets.”

  “That seems to dispose of the theory that he was waylaid by a highway robber. Thank you, Mr. Todd. Perhaps you’ll let me see you again if any other point arises. I think I will run out to the quarry this afternoon.”

  The driver of the police car seemed to know the road to the Moorstead quarry well. He covered the distance at breakneck speed. Richardson and Jago alighted and went through the quarry gate as if the place belonged to them. The quarry was cut out of the hillside; the cliff exposed by the quarrying operations was of a light rose colour.

  Jago looked round him critically. “They’ve let their spoil-heap encroach; it’ll soon be over the road if they don’t look out. That’s always the way with quarries that are full of orders.”

  Richardson’s attention was fixed on a thick-set little man who was jumping and sliding down the quarry face and making his way towards them. This was John Lawrence, the quarry foreman, who had mistaken them for customers come to order granite. His face fell when Richardson introduced himself.

  “Police officers from London, are you? Well then, just step into my office. If the men know who you are there’ll be no getting any work out of them for the rest of the day.” He was careful to leave the door of the office open to guard against eavesdroppers. “Office” was a strange name to use for the little cubby-hole in which the three men found themselves. A charcoal stove poisoned the atmosphere; a sloping desk, made by hands more inured to dressing granite than to carpentering, filled more than a quarter of the available space. There were two stools in the hut, but only two; Jago had to stand.

  “You want to know whether Mr. Dearborn seemed well the last day he came to the quarry. As far as I could see he was in his usual health. He went through the books and orders; he insisted on going out to see the men at work; he handed over to me their weekly wages to be paid. No, there was nothing wrong with him that day. He drove off at his usual time—a little after four—and that was the last time I saw him. I suppose his executors are in charge of the quarry now and will sell it to someone who knows nothing about quarrying.”

  “Do you have any trouble with the men?”

  “No, the men are all right, if people will only leave them alone.”

  “Do you mean that they have agitators among them?”

  “They had one, but Mr. Dearborn soon gave him the push when I told him what was going on.”

  “Who was that?”

  “A fellow named Dick Pengelly, a Cornishman and a blighter if ever there was one.”

  “Does he come up worrying the men now?”

  “Not now. He used to come up at knocking-off time and tell the men they ought to go on strike because Mr, Dearborn had fired him without any reason. I told Mr. Dearborn about this the day before his accident, and as he was going out of the quarry he saw Pengelly hanging about, and I tell you he gave him a proper dressing-down—talked of going down to the police about him. I believe that he frightened him out of his boots—at any rate I’ve never seen him up here since, and one of the men told me that he’s left the district and gone off to get work somewhere else. I’ll say one thing for him—he was a good quarry-smith.”

  “A smith? Do you mean a blacksmith?”

  “Why, yes, I suppose you’d call him a blacksmith. He’s the man who welds the points on to the jumpers and tempers them. I tell you I had a job to replace Pengelly. It needs good judgment to point and temper a jumper.”

  Richardson put both hands to his forehead. “I don’t even know what a jumper is,” he confessed.

  “Well then, you’d better come out with me and I’ll show you.”

  The foreman liked nothing better than to expatiate on his trade. He took them first to a blacksmith’s shop, where Pengelly’s successor was welding new points to broken jumpers; showed his two visitors the essential tool in granite-quarrying—the jumper, a long crowbar with a huge bulb of metal in the middle of it to give the weight necessary to pierce the hardest granite; took them up to the quarry face where two men were drilling holes.

  “You see, these holes have to be four or five inches deep, and you see this little tool,” taking up a spatula of iron used for lifting the granite dust out of the holes; “now these men have got to drive twelve holes into this granite before we put in the points and feathers.”

  “Points and feathers?”

  “Yes, these are the feathers. The smith cuts them out of old spades and shovels.” He took up two thin slivers of steel. “These are the feathers and this is a point.” He exhibited a steel point slightly larger than the hole made by the jumper. “When the twelve holes are made three inches apart and the points and feathers are adjusted, one of these men goes along with a sledge-hammer and drives in the points one after another. They ring almost like a bell for the first few taps and then there’s a dull sound and you know that the whole block has been detached from the quarry face. Then all we have to do is stick in wedges and roll the block down on to that spoil-heap below, where it falls soft. That’s quarrying and it’s highly skilled labour, I can tell you, because you’ve got to study the grain of the granite and make sure that there are no fissures ahead of you. You know, of course, that there’s copper and tin to be found in the fissures of the granite—the one running south-west and the other north-east—but we don’t find any hereabouts.”

  As they were returning to the office and were out of hearing of the men, Richardson asked, “Where would Pengelly be likely to go to get another job as a quarry-smith?”

  “Ah! There you’re asking me something. He might try Rowe’s Quarry this side of Tavistock, or go off into Cornwall where there are several quarries about, but my men say that he never let anyone know where he was going.”

  “Where did he live when working here?”

  “In lodgings in Moorstead; he’d no family.
”

  “Do you know the address?”

  “Yes, I have it in my book.” He looked through a well-thumbed note-book and gave it. “Mrs. Duke, Sun Lane, Moorstead.”

  Richardson noted this down, shook hands with the foreman, and told him that he had learned more about granite-quarrying than he could ever have found in books.

  Chapter Four

  THE TWO DETECTIVE officers made for the police car.

  “We haven’t wasted our time,” said Jago as he went.

  “I suppose now you’ll have a talk to this Mrs. Duke in Moorstead?”

  “You think that everything points to Pengelly being the murderer?” inquired Richardson.

  “Yes, sir, except for one thing. I should have expected him to have used a crowbar instead of a walking-stick, but I suppose you’ll go into that when you see the woman at his lodgings.”

  “We shall have a lot to go into when we see the woman at his lodgings,” said Richardson thoughtfully.

  They got into the car and gave the address in Sun Lane, Moorstead.

  The driver looked doubtful. “I’ll have to ask the way when we get to the town,” he said. “I’ve never heard of Sun Lane myself.”

  Moorstead was typical of a moorland town. It lay below the level of the moor itself, and what had once been bogland and heather was now under cultivation. For the rest it might have been centuries old, for the whole town was built of granite, the door-posts and lintels of the older houses made of roughly squared stone with the jumper holes still showing; brick had only lately invaded the main street.

  The car pulled up before a public-house, where the driver asked for Sun Lane. It appeared that this was down the second street on the right and the first on the left. “But you won’t be able to get down it with that car, mister; it’s narrow and there’s no way out at the end, nor any way to turn a car as long as yours.”

  So the car pulled up at the end of Sun Lane, which was little more than an alley, very imperfectly kept and cleaned. There were no pavements and the denizens of the lane seemed to be prone to empty their slops before their doors.

  Tousled heads protruded from every window as the officers picked their way along the lane. A woman with a broom in her hand was sweeping her paved kitchen, which appeared to serve also as a chicken-run. To Richardson’s inquiry for the house of Mrs. Duke she had a ready answer. “Mrs. Duke, you’re wanted!” she bawled across the street, and a grizzled head that sorely needed the attention of a comb appeared in a doorway. “There you are; that’s Mrs. Duke herself,” said the woman.

  The lady in question stripped off her apron and smoothed down the front of her skirt in honour of obviously distinguished visitors. The officers crossed the road and Richardson opened the conversation by asking whether she had once had a lodger called Richard Pengelly. It did not escape him that there was a certain stiffening in her manner as she replied in the affirmative.

  “He’s not here now?” asked Richardson.

  “No, he’s left the district some days ago.”

  “Can you tell me where I can find him?”

  “I’d tell you fast enough if I knew, but he just went off—to look for work, he said.”

  “How did he go—by motor-coach or rail?”

  “I can’t tell you that, sir.” A gleam of curiosity shot from her eyes. “What did you want to see him about?” she asked. “Perhaps I can help you.”

  “Nothing much, madam. It was only to ask him a few questions.”

  “Perhaps my daughter Susie might know where he went to. I’ll fetch her if you’ll sit down.”

  Apparently the premises were of some size. Richardson had noticed that there was a gate wide enough to admit a car, and that it led into a yard in which there were the marks of rubber tyres. So the Duke family possessed a motor vehicle of some kind.

  Jago was about to speak, but Richardson held up his hand. He had heard Mrs. Duke approaching with her daughter, and his sharp ears had caught the words uttered in an undertone, “It’s my belief that they’re police, so be careful what you say.”

  Susie Duke was a self-possessed young person with sharp features. She presented herself for questioning with perfect composure and replied to the inquiry as to what had become of their late lodger with almost redundant explanations. “It was this way, sir. I don’t rightly know whether Mr. Pengelly was turned out of his job at the quarry properly or not. He said it was only because he gave a back-answer to his boss. It was nothing to do with his work. Anyway, he had to go and find another job, and that wasn’t easy because you see each quarry has its own smith and they seldom change him. By this time he may be miles away over in Cornwall.”

  “How did he go?”

  “Oh, well, when a man’s looking for work in these parts he tramps it; it makes it easier for him when it comes to seeing the foreman and asking him for a job.”

  “I see you have a car here,” said Richardson indifferently.

  “Oh, you mean my brother’s baby lorry. Yes, he uses it for carrying vegetables and light loads like that, but it isn’t here now. It wanted something doing to it and so it’s at Tavistock being repaired.”

  “Is your brother in Tavistock?”

  “No, he’s on the sick-list upstairs; it was lucky he was well enough to take it into Tavistock before he fell sick.”

  “Is he well enough to talk to us if we go upstairs?”

  “Oh, you mustn’t do that. The doctor wouldn’t like it; you might catch it; he’s got the ‘flu.”

  Sergeant Jago put in a word here. “Do you know which garage your brother goes to in Tavistock? Is it Quilter’s?”

  “I’m sure I can’t tell you. He’d know, of course, but he’s asleep just now and it wouldn’t do to wake him. But it’s Mr. Pengelly you’re looking for, isn’t it? Not my brother?”

  “That’s right. Well, I can’t say that you’ve been very helpful to us, Miss Duke, but perhaps you’ll remember more when we come to see you again. You’ll say good-bye to your mother for us, won’t you?”

  And when they were out of earshot of Sun Lane, Jago delivered himself of the comment, “I don’t know what you think about that young female, Mr. Richardson, but I don’t believe a word of what she’s told us.”

  “Nor I. I suppose that you thought I let her off rather lightly with my questions, but I don’t want to see her again until I’ve got some information about her from other sources. With a young woman of that type you must have some facts up your sleeve if you want to keep her in the straight and narrow path. It will be easy to get at the truth when once we find that small lorry that her brother drives. It’s late now for going round the garages in Tavistock; we’ll have to put it off until to-morrow morning.”

  Superintendent Carstairs came out to them when he heard the sound of the car. “You seem to have had a busy day, Chief Inspector.”

  “Yes, Mr. Carstairs; thanks to you for lending me your car, we have. We’ve seen Dearborn’s bank manager and found out from him that the deceased man had lately bought a quarry near Moorstead.”

  “Why, that must be what they call the Red Quarry. I didn’t know that it had changed hands. Had he been out there on the day of his accident?”

  “He had. We’ve been out there this afternoon and had a talk with the foreman, and now we want to get hold of a man named Richard Pengelly, who was dismissed by Dearborn and may have a grudge against him. He was the quarry-smith. That’s not all we did. We went to the place where he lodged and were filled up with tales by his landlady’s daughter, and so to-morrow, if you’ll lend us your car again, we propose to go to Tavistock to verify some of her stories.”

  “Good. You shall have the car for as long as you like. I see that you officers from the Yard go the same way to work as us in Devonshire. You look first for the motive. We’ve not been idle while you’ve been away. Dr. Fraser and Dr. Symon have made their reports, which don’t coincide with the evidence Dr. Symon gave at the inquest. However, that needn’t concern us; it’s a matter for the
coroner. What does concern us is that the medical evidence leaves the question of foul play open and we can go ahead. Of course in a place like this, it’s impossible to keep things out of the papers. There was a paragraph in both the Plymouth papers this morning and the reporters came here for further details. I had to tell them something. I said it was quite true that there were some further developments and that, at the request of the Chief Constable, two officers from Scotland Yard had been detailed to help us, but that it was no good trying to interview them; they were far too busy. If I hadn’t talked to them straight, they would have printed all kinds of fantastic stories.”

  “I think that was very wise of you, Mr. Carstairs. And now to business. Which of your officers knows Moorstead best?”

  “Oh, Inspector Viggers has known Moorstead man and boy for more than thirty years. As a matter of fact, he was born there.”

  “Can I see him this evening, do you think?”

  “Yes; as it happens he’s in the station now to draw the pay. Step into my office and I’ll send him in.”

  Inspector Viggers was a weather-beaten man with a red face and sandy hair; a little slow of speech and perhaps of apprehension. He looked like a moor man in uniform. If he had ever been trained in gymnastics and marching, he had forgotten what he was taught.

  “Inspector Viggers?” asked Richardson.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know Moorstead well?”

  “I ought to, sir; I ought to know every stone in the place.”

  “And every man, woman and child there.”

  Viggers took time to consider this question before he replied, “Pretty near, sir.”

  “You know the people living in Sun Lane?”

  A slow smile dawned on the rugged countenance—a smile of reminiscence. “Yes, sir—most of them.”

  “What sort of people live there?”

  “They’re the poorest people in the town, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all criminals. They’re just—poor.”

  “Do you know Mrs. Duke?”

  “Yes, sir; she’s had a hard life since her husband died, bringing up those children. If she hadn’t let lodgings she couldn’t have paid her way.”