The Dartmoor Enigma

by Basil Thomson

  “I’m wondering how you’re going to begin your questioning, Mr. Richardson,” said Jago.

  “That will depend upon the young lady and how she receives us. I never look ahead too far. The great point in questioning women is to feel one’s way and not antagonize them. If you do that they turn mulish and you get nothing out of them.”

  Jago munched his scone, ruminating. “It seems to me that the questioning of witnesses and getting statements from them is one of the fine arts/’ he said at last.

  “Psha! It’s a question only of being quick in the uptake and knowing something about the case before you begin. I mean to play upon the tender spot that this young woman has in her heart for her late lodger. If I have any luck I believe that something will come out that will surprise you.” He looked at the watch lying on the table. “The time’s nearly up. Swallow your tea while I pay the bill.”

  As they walked down the lane they saw through open doors that the housewives were busy at their kitchen sinks and that their daughters were carrying out scraps to the poultry in the back-yards. They pushed on to the “Dukeries” and knocked at the door. Mrs. Duke, with her sleeves turned up and a rough canvas apron on to protect her dress, opened the door. She recoiled in alarm at the sight of her visitors.

  “Why, you are the same police officers that called yesterday. Is it about the lorry?”

  “We have called to see your daughter, Mrs. Duke. There is nothing to be alarmed about. Perhaps you will kindly call her.”

  “I don’t know that she’s not gone out.”

  “I hope not, Mrs. Duke, because that would mean that we should have to wait in the lane outside until she came in, and that might set the neighbours talking.”

  “Well, I’ll go and see whether I can find her, if you’ll stop here.”

  The search was successful; footsteps were heard again upon the stairs and Miss Susie Duke bustled in, dressed in her best walking-suit with its rabbit-skin necklet and her latest hat. She nodded to him with a smile; her last experience with detectives having been that they were easy to bluff.

  “We’ve called about that drive you took in your brother’s lorry on the 29th of last month, Miss Duke—the time you took it into Tavistock. Never mind what you told us before; people are apt to make mistakes when they are first questioned by police officers. Now that you’ve had time to think things over I’m sure you’ll see that it’s best to tell the truth,” said Richardson.

  “I don’t remember what I told you last time.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, and I’m sure that you don’t want Dick Pengelly to get into worse trouble than he’s in already for driving a car without a licence.”

  To Richardson’s surprise the girl changed colour and seemed about to burst into tears. “I ought to tell you, my dear,” he said, “that we’ve seen Dick Pengelly and that he’s made a clean breast of it—that he drove the lorry without a licence with you sitting at his side; that you took the road to Tavistock through Sandiland. He made a written statement which I have here and I want you to do the same; then the case of driving without a licence will be quite cleared up.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Oh, he’s all right. He’s got a job as a smith’s striker in Rowe’s Quarry near Tavistock.”

  The girl seemed to be immensely relieved by this intelligence. “I didn’t want him to get into trouble on my account,” she faltered. “I ought not to have let him drive.”

  “If the county police prosecute him for driving without a licence it’s not a very serious offence, and as he said, he can easily pay the fine out of his wages. Now, about this statement of yours; it can be quite short. I’ll dictate it for you if you like.” Richardson turned back the tablecloth and opened his attaché-case to get out writing materials. “Now take this chair, Miss Duke, and don’t worry any more about it.”

  The girl hesitated; it was one thing to use her tongue, but quite another to commit words to paper. “I’d sooner not write anything. I’m quite ready to answer your questions, but not to stick things down on paper.”

  “That’s a pity,” said Richardson with a sigh, beginning to return paper and ink to his writing-case. “I thought you would have been glad to help Pengelly.”

  “How would my statement help him?”

  “Well, by confirming what he told me. But of course if you won’t, you won’t, and for all I know to the contrary the police may bring other charges against him—far more serious charges.”

  The girl moved to the chair. “What do you want me to write?”

  “Only a few words which I’ll dictate to you if you like. ‘I, Susan Duke, feel it my duty to admit that on September 29 last, having business to do in Tavistock, I allowed Richard Pengelly to drive my brother’s lorry into Tavistock though he had no driving-licence, and I went with him.’ Then sign it. You see, it’s nothing very dreadful.”

  The girl took up the pen, saying, “Go ahead then.” She wrote rapidly and signed her name with a flourish.

  Chapter Six

  RICHARDSON picked up the statement and examined it. The word “business” was written “bisness” just as it was in the letter to the Commissioner; the handwriting, too, was obviously the same as in both anonymous letters.

  “I’ve seen this handwriting somewhere before, Miss Duke. Yes, and the same kind of spelling, too. I see you spell ‘business!’ ‘bisness!’”

  “Lots of people do that,” said the girl defiantly.

  “Yes. I’ve seen it spelt like that by someone who wrote to Scotland Yard. I have a photograph of the letter here.” He fumbled among the papers in his writing-case. “Here you are. You see, the letter has been photographed, and for the matter of that so has another anonymous letter addressed to the Superintendent of Police at Winterton. And now, almost by accident, I have the writer of both letters before me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Then let me make my meaning clearer. You were ready to tell untruths to the police when it was only a question of driving without a licence, but when it came to murder you didn’t want to see a murderer go unpunished. You couldn’t come forward openly, because you were afraid that the police might fix the crime on Dick Pengelly, since he had a legitimate grievance against the murdered man. Wasn’t that it?”

  The girl made no reply. She stared at the floor.

  “I think we understand each other now,” said Richardson, “and I feel sure that your best way to help Pengelly is to tell us the whole truth about what you saw that afternoon. Pengelly has already told us that he saw Mr. Dearborn’s car standing outside the Duchy Hotel. No doubt he pointed it out to you.”

  The bravado was not crushed out of her. “You think yourself very clever, don’t you? But there’s nothing to show that I wrote those letters.” She picked up the photograph of the letter addressed to the Chief Constable of Scotland Yard from Tavistock. “Why, look here, the writing in this letter is sloping backwards. The other isn’t.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Well then, how can you have the face to fix the writing on me?”

  “Only because if you were to copy this letter in a hand sloping backwards, your writing would be just like this. People can’t disguise their handwriting by sloping words backwards. No, Miss Susie, you committed no offence by writing the letters; on the contrary you were doing your best to help the police. Why not help them a little further? You don’t want a murderer to get off, do you? You don’t want people to try to attribute the murder to Dick Pengelly. Why not tell us the whole story, exactly as it happened?”

  “I suppose you thought it was a clever game to trap me into making that written statement. All you wanted was to get a specimen of my handwriting. It was a dirty trick.”

  “Well you see, Miss Duke, we had to get evidence as to who wrote these anonymous letters because the writer, whoever she was, was likely to be an important witness in the case. You think that we are trying to fasten the guilt on to Dick Pengelly. You’re quite wrong. I, for o
ne, don’t believe that he had anything to do with the murder and I’ll tell you why. The weapon used was a heavy walking-stick with a silver band round it—not the kind of stick that a quarryman would care to buy—and that rules out Pengelly as the man who struck Dearborn. As an eye-witness you are in a position to support my view, and so you ought not to hold anything back.”

  “My! But aren’t you detectives clever to think of that walking-stick being a way of clearing Dick Pengelly!” There was real admiration in her voice now. “Very well, I’ll tell you the truth and you can believe it or not as you like. Dick didn’t want to drive through Duketon; the policeman there hasn’t enough to do and so he’s a busybody, always poking his nose into other people’s affairs.”

  “Why did Pengelly drive the lorry at all if he hadn’t a licence?”

  “Well, you see, my brother was going to drive him into Tavistock with his luggage to look for a job there. But when Ernie was taken ill he said, ‘It’s rotten luck for you, but why shouldn’t you take the lorry and drive her yourself, with Susie to keep you on the right road. She has to go to Tavistock to get the money the fruiterer owes me. You can leave the lorry at the garage for me to call for when I’m better.’”

  “But when you turned off towards Sandiland it wasn’t only because Pengelly was afraid of the Duketon constable. He must have had another reason.”

  “Well, as soon as he saw Mr. Dearborn’s car, he thought he’d stop him down the road and tell him off, so we drove on down the hill a bit of the way, parked the lorry there, well into the roadside, and then him and me went back up the hill to a place where we got a clear view of the top. We got off the road and sat down among the heather to wait for Mr. Dearborn. Dick says to me, ‘As soon as his car comes in sight I’ll step out into the middle of the road and hold up my arms; that’ll stop him; he won’t dare drive over me.’”

  “And then?”

  “Well, then a funny thing happened. Just as Mr. Dearborn’s car came in sight on the top of the hill, another chap jumped out of the heather and stuck out his arms just like Dick meant to, and he had a whacking great stick in his hand. He didn’t see us.”

  “What happened then?”

  “It was all so quick that it was difficult to see exactly. Mr. Dearborn jumped out of his car with the starting-handle in his hand, and there was a bit of a set-to between them. I saw the fellow with the stick bring it down with a whack on Mr. Dearborn’s head, and I saw Mr. Dearborn drop the starting-handle. The man picked it up and threw it into the heather. He’d broken his stick and he threw the pieces away, after the starting-handle. Then he made off down into the gully, and there was Mr. Dearborn lying beside the car.”

  “Didn’t you go up the hill to help him?”

  “I wanted to, but Dick wouldn’t let me. He said, ‘They’ll blame me for this, that’s certain. We must get out of it as quick as we can and keep our mouths shut.’ And he took me by the arm and dragged me down to the lorry. I don’t believe we spoke a word till we got well-nigh into Tavistock.”

  “What made you write the anonymous letters?”

  “I knew one of the jurymen at the inquest, and he told me that they’d brought it in as death from an accident. Well then I thought, ‘Here’s a pretty state of affairs. A man’s murdered in broad daylight on the moor and the murderer gets away with it. It might be our turn next.’ So I just sat down and dropped a line to the Superintendent. And then when I thought what a slow lot they were in Winterton, I dropped a line to the big man in Scotland Yard.”

  “But you posted one letter in Moorstead and the other in Tavistock.”

  “That’s right. A friend of mine was going that way and I asked him for a lift. I wanted to find Dick Pengelly and get him to come with me to the police. I tried the garage, but they’d never seen him since the day we left the car there. So I bought a sheet of paper and an envelope and a stamp and wrote the letter in a tea-shop and posted it.”

  Sergeant Jago had been making notes of her admissions and was embodying them in the form of a statement. Richardson read this over to her.

  “Lord! I didn’t know that I’d told you all that,” said she; “but it’s gospel truth.”

  “You don’t want to add anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then will you sign it?”

  “What! Sign another statement?”

  “Yes. The first would be no use in a court of law.”

  “Do you mean that you’re going to have me up as a witness?”

  “Not until we catch the man who used the stick. When we do catch him, both you and Pengelly will be wanted to give evidence.”

  “You mean I’ll have to go to Exeter Assizes and swear to all this and have my picture taken in the newspapers and be badgered by a barrister in a wig?”

  “You’ll get all your expenses paid by the Crown.”

  “I dare say. You’ll be telling me next that the King will want me to come up to Buckingham Palace to be thanked for what I’ve done. No, I tell you straight; it’s not good enough.”

  “It’s the duty of everyone to do what is best for the country. None of us want murderers to be at large.”

  “When I told you all this, it was because you’d told me about that walking-stick and somehow, I don’t know why, I trust you, though you are a policeman, and I’m sure you’ll do your best to keep Dick Pengelly out of this business, because you know as well as I do that he had no hand in it. Now then, where am I to sign?”

  Richardson indicated the place, blotted the ink and stowed away his writing materials. “You’ve nothing to fear, my girl, and I’m sure that we are all very much obliged to you. Good-bye.”

  They found the police car waiting at the corner of the lane.

  “Have you had any luck?” asked Richardson.

  “No, Chief Inspector. I’ve been round to every shop where they sell walking-sticks; they all told me the same thing. The only place where you would be likely to find a stick like that would be in Plymouth or Exeter. You wouldn’t even find one in Tavistock.”

  “Good. Then we’ve cleared up one point. Now we had better get back to Winterton.”

  Richardson found Superintendent Carstairs in his office.

  “You’ve been busy to-day,” said the Superintendent.

  “Yes, Mr. Carstairs; we have. We’ve seen Pengelly, and we’ve cleared up the question as to who wrote those anonymous letters. It was a young woman in Moorstead.”

  “The devil it was! Who is she?”

  “The daughter of the woman with whom Pengelly lodged.”

  “What was her object in writing them?”

  “She has made a long written statement which I have here. You had better read it.”

  The Superintendent read the statement and shook his head over it. “All the way through she has apparently been shielding Pengelly. Perhaps there’s a love-affair between them?”

  “I think there is.”

  “Well then, this statement of hers is so much waste paper. You know what women are, Mr. Richardson, quite as well as I do. They do the wildest things when they’re in love.”

  “They do, but what motive could she have had in writing those letters if they weren’t true? All she had to do, if she wanted to shield Pengelly, was to keep her mouth shut. Then there’s the question of that walking-stick. We got the driver of your car to make a round of the shops in Moorstead where sticks are sold, and the answer was always the same—that you can’t buy a stick like that nearer than Plymouth or Exeter.”

  Carstairs stroked his beard. “Everything points to Pengelly having been the guilty one—motive, opportunity and character. All the girl does is to introduce another character and make him do exactly what she saw Pengelly do. As for the stick, it may have belonged to the murdered man himself; he could have bought it in Plymouth when he went to the bank there, or he may have had it for years. I don’t want to queer your pitch, Chief Inspector, but if the case were mine, and there was any danger of Pengelly clearing out of the county, I sho
uld lay him by the heels on the charge of motoring without a licence, and see whether the truth couldn’t be shaken out of him.”

  “It’s perfectly open to you to do that, Mr. Carstairs, because I shall have to interview him again and put the girl’s statement to him. He only told us a quarter of the truth. I should also like to see the widow and ask her whether her late husband possessed a stick such as the broken one.”

  Superintendent Carstairs had his full share of the dogged obstinacy that is found among South Devon men. “If you’ll excuse my saying so, Mr. Richardson, I think you’re giving yourself a lot of unnecessary trouble.”

  “I hope not, Superintendent, because I should be very sorry to see you take some step which you would afterwards regret. Of course, you haven’t had the advantage of sizing up the girl when interviewing her, as I did.”

  “Still, I don’t think that the question of that stick is sufficient to clear Pengelly.”

  “There’s another factor in my mind. Don’t you think that if Pengelly had attacked Dearborn after holding up his car, Dearborn would have complained to the police as soon as he recovered consciousness?”

  “After a crack on the head like that you can never tell how much a man remembers.”

  “But Mr. Dearborn was not suffering from loss of memory; he invented a story for his wife’s benefit, that the brakes had refused to act. Yet Sergeant Jago found the brakes in perfect order. Don’t you think the girl’s story is supported by the fact that Dearborn was anxious to conceal all indications of the attack made upon him? You must remember that he has been mysterious about his past ever since he came to Devonshire. He may have recognized in his assailant some private enemy of whom we know nothing.”

  “That’s all very well, but it will mean that we have to go chasing all over England for a mystery man, when we have the real assailant right under our noses.”

  Richardson tactfully changed the subject. “Did the funeral take place to-day?”

  “No, it’s fixed for to-morrow morning.”

  “And the doctors’ report? What did the coroner think of it?”