The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales

by Charles Dickens

  His cousin turned to him a handsome, manly face, ghastly pale now even to the lips.

  “Eric, my boy,” he answered falteringly, “this is too awful. Uncle has been murdered—shot stone dead.”

  “No, no; it cannot be. It’s not five minutes since I saw him quietly sleeping,” Eric began. Then his eyes fell on the still figure on the sofa, and he broke off abruptly.

  Squire Neville lay with his face to the wall, only the outline of his strong, hard features visible. The charge of shot had entered at the base of the skull, the grey hair was all dabbled with blood, and the heavy, warm drops still fell slowly on to the carpet.

  “But who can have—” Eric gasped out, almost speechless with horror.

  “It must have been his own gun,” his cousin answered. “It was lying there on the table, to the right, barrel still smoking, when I came in.”

  “It wasn’t suicide—was it?” asked Eric, in a frightened whisper. “Quite impossible, I should say. You see where he is hit.”

  “But it was so sudden. I ran the moment I heard the shot, and you were before me. Did you see anyone?”

  “Not a soul. The room was empty.”

  “But how could the murderer escape?”

  “Perhaps he leapt through the window. It was open when I came in.”

  “He couldn’t do that, Master John.” It was the voice of the gardener at the door. “Me and Master Eric was right under the window when the shot came.”

  “Then how in the devil’s name did he disappear, Simpson?”

  “It’s not for me to say, sir.”

  John Neville searched the room with eager eyes. There was no cover in it for a cat. A bare, plain room, panelled with brown oak, on which hung some guns and fishing-rods—old-fashioned for the most part, but of the finest workmanship and material. A small bookcase in the corner was the room’s sole claim to be called “a study.” The huge leather-covered sofa on which the corpse lay, a massive round table in the centre of the room, and a few heavy chairs completed the furniture. The dust lay thick on everything, the fierce sunshine streamed in a broad band across the room. The air was stifling with heat and the acrid smoke of gunpowder.

  John Neville noticed how pale his young cousin was. He laid his hand on his shoulder with the protecting kindness of an elder brother.

  “Come, Eric,” he said softly, “we can do no good here.”

  “We had best look round first, hadn’t we, for some clue?” asked Eric, and he stretched his hand towards the gun; but John stopped him.

  “No, no,” he cried hastily, “we must leave things just as we find them. I’ll send a man to the village for Wardle and telegraph to London for a detective.”

  He drew his young cousin gently from the room, locked the door on the outside, and put the key in his pocket. “Who shall I wire to?” John Neville called from his desk with pencil poised over the paper, to his cousin, who sat at the library table with his head buried in his hands. “It will need a sharp man—one who can give his whole time to it.”

  “I don’t know any one. Yes, I do. That fellow with the queer name that found the Duke of Southern’s opal—Beck. That’s it. Thornton Crescent, WC, will find him.”

  John Neville filled in the name and address to the telegram he had already written—

  Come at once. Case of murder. Expense no object. John Neville, Berkly Manor, Dorset.

  Little did Eric guess that the filling in of that name was to him a matter of life or death.

  John Neville had picked up a timetable and rustled through the leaves. “Hard lines, Eric,” he said; “do his best, he cannot get here before midnight. But here’s Wardle already, anyhow; that’s quick work.”

  A shrewd, silent man was Wardle, the local constable, who now came briskly up the broad avenue; strong and active too, though well over fifty years of age.

  John Neville met him at the door with the news. But the groom had already told of the murder.

  “You did the right thing to lock the door, sir,” said Wardle, as they passed into the library where Eric still sat apparently unconscious of their presence, “and you wired for a right good man. I’ve worked with this here Mr. Beck before now. A pleasant spoken man and a lucky one. ‘No hurry, Mr. Wardle,’ he says to me, ‘and no fuss. Stir nothing. The things about the corpse have always a story of their own if they are let tell it, and I always like to have the first quiet little chat with them myself.’”

  So the constable held his tongue and kept his hands quiet and used his eyes and ears, while the great house buzzed with gossip. There was a whisper here and a whisper there, and the whispers patched themselves into a story. By slow degrees dark suspicion settled down and closed like a cloud round John Neville.

  Its influence seemed to pass in some strange fashion through the closed doors of the library. John began pacing the room restlessly from end to end.

  After a little while the big room was not big enough to hold his impatience. He wandered out aimlessly, as it seemed, from one room to another; now down the iron steps to gaze vacantly at the window of his uncle’s room, now past the locked door in the broad corridor.

  With an elaborate pretence of carelessness Wardle kept him in sight through all his wanderings, but John Neville seemed too self-absorbed to notice it.

  Presently he returned to the library. Eric was there, still sitting with his back to the door, only the top of his head showing over the high chair. He seemed absorbed in thought or sleep, he sat so still.

  But he started up with a quick cry, showing a white, frightened face, when John touched him lightly on the arm.

  “Come for a walk in the grounds, Eric?” he said. “This waiting and watching and doing nothing is killing work; I cannot stand it much longer.”

  “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” Eric answered wearily; “I feel completely knocked over.”

  “A mouthful of fresh air would do you good, my poor boy; you do look done up.”

  Eric shook his head. “Well, I’m off,” John said.

  “If you leave me the key, I will give it to the detective, if he comes.”

  “Oh, he cannot be here before midnight, and I’ll be back in an hour.”

  As John Neville walked rapidly down the avenue without looking back, Wardle stepped quietly after, keeping him well in view.

  Presently Neville turned abruptly in amongst the woods, the constable still following cautiously. The trees stood tall and well apart, and the slanting sunshine made lanes of vivid green through the shade. As Wardle crossed between Neville and the sun his shadow fell long and black on the bright green.

  John Neville saw the shadow move in front of him and turned sharp round and faced his pursuer. The constable stood stock still and stared.

  “Well, Wardle, what is it? Don’t stand there like a fool fingering your baton! Speak out, man—what do you want of me?”

  “You see how it is, Master John,” the constable stammered out, “I don’t believe it myself. I’ve known you twenty-one years—since you were born, I may say—and I don’t believe it, not a blessed word of it. But duty is duty, and I must go through with it; and facts is facts, and you and he had words last night, and Master Eric found you first in the room when—”

  John Neville listened, bewildered at first. Then suddenly, as it seemed to dawn on him for the first time that he could be suspected of this murder, he kindled a sudden hot blaze of anger.

  He turned fiercely on the constable. Broad-chested, strong limbed, he towered over him, terrible in his wrath; his hands clenched, his muscles quivered, his strong white teeth shut tight as a rat-trap, and a reddish light shining at the back of his brown eyes.

  “How dare you! How dare you!” he hissed out between his teeth, his passion choking him.

  He looked dangerous, that roused young giant, but Wardle met his angry eyes without flinching.

  “Where’s the use, Master John?” he said soothingly. “It’s main hard on you, I know. But the fault isn’t mine, and you wo
n’t help yourself by taking it that way.

  The gust of passion appeared to sweep by as suddenly as it arose. The handsome face cleared and there was no trace of anger in the frank voice that answered. “You are right, Wardle, quite right. What is to be done next? Am I to consider myself under arrest?”

  “Better not, sir. You’ve got things to do a prisoner couldn’t do handy, and I don’t want to stand in the way of your doing them. If you give me your word it will be enough.”

  “My word for what?”

  “That you’ll be here when wanted.”

  “Why, man, you don’t think I’d be fool enough—innocent or guilty—to run away. My God! Run away from a charge of murder!”

  “Don’t take on like that, sir. There’s a man coming from London that will set things straight, you’ll see. Have I your word?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Perhaps you’d better be getting back to the house, sir. There’s a deal of talking going on amongst the servants. I’ll keep out of the way, and no one will be the wiser for anything that has passed between us.”

  Half-way up the avenue a fast-driven dog-cart overtook John Neville, and pulled up so sharply that the horse’s hoofs sent the coarse gravel flying. A stout, thick-set man, who up to that had been in close chat with the driver, leapt out more lightly than could have been expected from his figure.

  “Mr. John Neville, I presume? My name is Beck—Mr. Paul Beck.”

  “Mr. Beck! Why, I thought you couldn’t have got here before midnight.”

  “Special train,” Mr. Beck answered pleasantly. “Your wire said “Expense no object.” Well, time is an object, and comfort is an object too, more or less, in all these cases; so I took a special train, and here I am. With your permission, we will send the trap on and walk to the house together. This seems a bad business, Mr. Neville. Shot dead, the driver tells me. Any one suspected?”

  “I’m suspected.” The answer broke from John Neville’s lips almost fiercely.

  Mr. Beck looked at him for a minute with placid curiosity, without a touch of surprise in it. “How do you know that?”

  “Wardle, the local constable, has just told me so to my face. It was only by way of a special favour he refrained from arresting me then and there.”

  Mr. Beck walked on beside John Neville ten or fifteen paces before he spoke again.

  “Do you mind,” he said, in a very insinuating voice, “telling me exactly why you are suspected?”

  “Not in the very least.”

  “Mind this,” the detective went on quickly, “I give you no caution and make you no pledge. It’s my business to find out the truth. If you think the truth will help you, then you ought to help me. This is very irregular, of course, but I don’t mind that. When a man is charged with a crime there is, you see, Mr. Neville, always one witness who knows whether he is guilty or not. There is very often only that one. The first thing the British law does by way of discovering the truth is to close the mouth of the only witness that knows it. Well, that’s not my way. I like to give an innocent man a chance to tell his own story, and I’ve no scruple in trapping a guilty man if I can.”

  He looked John Neville straight in the eyes as he spoke.

  The look was steadily returned. “I think I understand. What do you want to know? Where shall I begin?”

  “At the beginning. What did you quarrel with your uncle about yesterday?”

  John Neville hesitated for a moment, and Mr. Beck took a mental note of his hesitation.

  “I didn’t quarrel with him. He quarreled with me. It was this way: There was a bitter feud between my uncle and his neighbour, Colonel Peyton. The estates adjoin, and the quarrel was about some shooting. My uncle was very violent—he used to call Colonel Peyton ‘a common poacher.’ Well, I took no hand in the row. I was rather shy when I met the Colonel for the first time after it, for I knew my uncle had the wrong end of the stick. But the Colonel spoke to me in the kindest way. ‘No reason why you and I should cease to be friends, John,’ he said.

  ‘This is a foolish business. I would give the best covert on my estate to be out of it. Men cannot fight duels in these days, and gentlemen cannot scold like fishwives. But I don’t expect people will call me a coward because I hate a row.’”

  “‘Not likely,’ I said.”

  “The Colonel, you must know, had distinguished himself in a dozen engagements, and has the Victoria Cross locked up in a drawer of his desk. Lucy once showed it to me. Lucy is his only daughter and he is devoted to her. Well, after that, of course, the Colonel and I kept on good terms, for I liked him, and I liked going there and all that. But our friendship angered my uncle. I had been going to the Grange pretty often of late, and my uncle heard of it. He spoke to me in a very rough fashion of Colonel Peyton and his daughter at dinner last night, and I stood up for them.”

  “‘By what right, you insolent puppy,’ he shouted, ‘Do you take this upstart’s part against me?’”

  “‘The Peytons are as good a family as our own, sir,’ I said—that was true—‘and as for right, Miss Lucy Peyton has done me the honour of promising to be my wife.’”

  “At that he exploded in a very tempest of rage. I cannot repeat his words about the Colonel and his daughter. Even now, though he lies dead yonder, I can hardly forgive them. He swore he would never see or speak to me again if I disgraced myself of such a marriage. ‘I cannot break the entail,’ he growled, ‘worse luck. But I can make you a beggar while I live, and I shall live forty years to spite you. The poacher can have you a bargain for all I care. Go, sell yourself as dearly as you can, and live on your wife’s fortune as soon as you please.’”

  “Then I lost my temper, and gave him a bit of my mind.”

  “Try and remember what you said; it’s important.”

  “I told him that I cast his contempt back in his face; that I loved Lucy Peyton, and that I would live for her, and die for her, if need be.”

  “Did you say ‘it was a comfort he could not live for ever’? You see the story of your quarrel has traveled far and near. The driver told me of it. Try and remember—did you say that?”

  “I think I did. I’m sure I did now, but I was so furious I hardly knew what I said. I certainly never meant—”

  “Who was in the room when you quarrelled?”

  “Only cousin Eric and the butler.”

  “The butler, I suppose, spread the story?”

  “I suppose so. I’m sure Cousin Eric never did. He was as much pained at the scene as myself. He tried to interfere at the time, but his interference only made my uncle more furious.”

  “What was your allowance from you uncle?”

  “A thousand a year.”

  “He had power to cut it off, I suppose?”

  “Certainly.”

  “But he had no power over the estate. You were heir-apparent under the entail, and at the present moment you are owner of Berkly Manor?”

  “That is so; but up to the moment you spoke I assure you I never even remembered—”

  “Who comes next to you in the entail?”

  “My first cousin, Eric. He is four years younger than I am.”

  “After him?”

  “A distant cousin. I scarcely know him at all; but he has a bad reputation, and I know my uncle and he hated each other cordially.”

  “How did your uncle and your cousin Eric hit it off?”

  “Not too well. He hated Eric’s father—his own youngest brother—and he was sometimes rough on Eric. He used to abuse the dead father in the son’s presence, calling him cruel and treacherous, and all that. Poor Eric had often a hard time of it. Uncle was liberal to him so far as money went—as liberal as he was to me—had him to live at the Manor and denied him nothing. But now and again he would sting the poor lad by a passionate curse or a bitter sneer. In spite of all, Eric seemed fond of him.”

  “To come now to the murder; you saw your uncle no more that night, I suppose?”

  “I never sa
w him alive again.”

  “Do you know what he did next day?”

  “Only by hearsay.”

  “Hearsay evidence is often first-class evidence, though the law doesn’t think so. What did you hear?”

  “My uncle was mad about shooting. Did I tell you his quarrel with Colonel Peyton was about the shooting? He had a grouse moor rented about twelve miles from here, and he never missed the first day. He was off at cock-shout with the head gamekeeper, Lennox. I was to have gone with him, but I didn’t, of course. Contrary to his custom he came back about noon and went straight to his study. I was writing in my own room and heard his heavy step go past the door. Later on Eric found him asleep on the great leather couch in his study. Five minutes after Eric left I heard the shot and rushed into his room.”

  “Did you examine the room after you found the body?”

  “No. Eric wanted to, but I thought it better not. I simply locked the door and put the key in my pocket till you came.”

  “Could it have been suicide?”

  “Impossible, I should say. He was shot through the back of the head.”

  “Had your uncle any enemies that you know of?”

  “The poachers hated him. He was relentless with them. A fellow once shot at him, and my uncle shot back and shattered the man’s leg. He had him sent to hospital first and cured, and then prosecuted him straight away, and got him two years.”

  “Then you think a poacher murdered him?” Mr. Beck said blandly.

  “I don’t well see how he could. I was in my own room on the same corridor. The only way to or from my uncle’s room was past my door. I rushed out the instant I heard the shot, and saw no one.”

  “Perhaps the murderer leapt through the window?”

  “Eric tells me that he and the gardener were in the garden almost under the window at the time.”

  “What’s your theory, then, Mr. Neville?”

  “I haven’t got a theory.”

  “You parted with your uncle in anger last night?”

  “That’s so.”

  “Next day your uncle is shot, and you are found—I won’t say caught—in his room the instant afterwards.”