by Mike Ashley
He told me then. He told me all. A madder tale I never heard in my life before.
XXIV
I skirted the edge of the common, making my way towards a coppice. As I reached the first line of trees, I saw a familiar figure ahead of me, flitting noiselessly from tree to tree, intent upon God knows what game.
The figure disappeared into the wood.
There was a dazzle of wings as a covey of birds rose, startled by the report of a gun. The shot had sounded away to my left and I turned in that direction. Silently I plunged between the saplings and forged ahead in the direction of the shot.
A cry rang out through the woods. The cry of some strange demented bird.
I broke into a run, crashing through the trees like a wild boar. Branches flailed at my arms and whipped my back as I pushed through the dense thickets. With a gasp, I braked short at the edge of the trees. A thin branch caught my cheek as I fell into the clearing. I stared, amazed.
“My lord!”
Lord Wroth stood drooping against a tree, his pale face contorted. The fowling-piece he had carried lay where it had fallen in the bracken.
His lordship twisted towards me, his face a livid white.
“Help me!”
Half fainting with pain, he pointed down to where one elegant ankle lay caught in the fierce embrace of a fearsome looking mantrap. He had run into it unsuspecting.
It was an odd mistake for a man to make on his own land, but then Lord Wroth was not on familiar ground. Slope Manor was a good many miles from Stukeley, a remote and unconsidered possession, little used by his family, and a perfect place from which to manage a kidnapping!
Despite her condition, her ladyship had sent for me, demanding to be told all. She lay back upon her pillows, her face the colour of cheap tallow.
I lay the receipts upon the bedcover, Oliver Wroth having allowed me this privilege. She plucked at them merely, regarding them with icy eyes. The Dowager Lady Wroth looked her great age. I gave her, at best, five more months of life.
“Well, Sir,” she said gruffly. “I suppose you are to be congratulated on a successful detection.”
I bowed my thanks for the reluctant compliment.
A sound escaped her. I could not tell whether she sobbed or spat.
“Tell me what you know, Captain Nash.”
I glanced at Oliver Wroth, who stood by the bed’s canopy. He frowned slightly and shook his head. Her ladyship, looking up, caught the gesture.
“I will be told!” she snapped. “And I will have the truth. It was I who paid for your services, was it not? I want the truth.”
Oliver shrugged, and gave his unwilling assent.
So I began from the beginning. I first explained about my attempts to break the code of Murrell’s book and what my efforts had revealed.
“You learned something from the book?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady. I subsequently learned something very important. I learned that neither your name nor his lordship’s figured among the many distinguished names in it.”
“And what did that tell you, Sir?”
“It told me that Murrell was double-dealing his partner Pelham. For you may be sure that Sir Harry would not have countenanced exposing his lordship to scandal.”
That brought a muddy flush to her worn cheeks.
“Sir?”
“Rightly or wrongly, Pelham believes himself to be the father of Miss Kitty and Lord Wroth.”
She waved away the suggestion with the ghost of a theatrical gesture. But it was a theatrical gesture, empty as air.
“Though, of course,” I continued as she lay back, “Murrell was double-dealing Sir Harry, and no doubt Sir Harry knew it in some fashion. But he didn’t murder the old man. I know this to be true, for Pelham knew nothing of Lord Wroth’s involvement and he was genuinely shocked by the old charlatan’s death. Moreover, he was dependent upon him. I ruled him out quite early on with regard to that death. Murrell was murdered by his other partner.”
“Pelham’s other partner?” Lady Wroth asked with a sharp drawn breath. Her old eyes flashed fearfully towards her grandson. That young man was staring gloomily out of the window, as if he would penetrate the depths of the clouds with his naked eye.
“No Ma’am, Murrell’s. Murrell was not the man to manage such a business on his own,” I said. “He had not the style. Nor, in this particular case, the required knowledge. That knowledge could only have come from a peculiarly placed confidant.”
“D’Urfey?”
“Yes, young d’Urfey, though even he was not acting on his own account. He was also in partnership.”
Her diamond eyes widened in a chilling gleam, and again she looked towards Oliver Wroth.
“. . . Who, Sir?”
But she did not need to ask. She knew the answer in her heart.
“Lord Wroth, Madam.”
She half rose in a feeble attempt at protest, but the effort was too great for her and the gesture again too empty. She fell back, her fingers plucking at the counterpane.
“What makes you suppose that?”
“It is no supposition, Lady Wroth. It is a deducible fact. I can give you evidence of it. And as you yourself said, his lordship is rogue-wild. He is heavily in debt and still years away from his inheritance. He needed money and you denied him. So, he was offered a way out of his difficulties.”
“Offered a way?”
She seemed to be grasping at this straw of comfort.
“It was d’Urfey’s idea originally, Ma’am. It was he who put his lordship up to it.”
“But he was killed, and the demands still came!”
“That is why I had to rule him out as being the sole candidate. He simply set the scheme in motion. And afterwards with Murrell dead and both his servants murdered and the receipts still not found, I had to admit that there was yet another partner.”
“Pelham,” she said stubbornly. “Why could it not be Pelham?”
“Pelham was still looking for the receipts as late as three days ago,” I said gently. “He sent his man for them. So, with all the obvious suspects removed, there remained only the one.”
She would not allow me to name the one.
“When Mr. Oliver told me the receipts had been mysteriously returned, but would not say by whom, my suspicions were confirmed. I knew it could only be – ”
Again, a gesture stopped me from speaking the name aloud.
From his place by the window, Oliver spoke.
“I discovered them in Charlie’s room,” he said harshly.
With a dazzle of diamonds, the old lady swept the offensive papers from the bed.
“So you see,” I said reasonably, “I could scarcely return property which was already beneath your roof.”
She turned away, her expression hidden by the lace edge of her pillow.
“When you hired me to retrieve the receipts,” I went on, “I think Lord Wroth took fright. He was afraid that you would discover his complicity in the matter. Accordingly, he tried to warn me off. When I refused to be intimidated, he made a mad dash up to town and tried to put a stop to the whole affair. But Murrell was a greedy fellow and he, in turn, I think, refused to be dissuaded. So d’Urfey arranged for his . . . removal.”
“D’Urfey?” she asked dully, her face still hidden.
I spared her what I thought to be the absolute truth, and detected a grateful look in her grandson’s eye.
“Your grandson was here at Stukeley on that night.”
She didn’t move. I had no idea from the unyielding way in which she lay, whether I had been believed or not.
“The black woman, Betty, must have recognized d’Urfey in some manner. In her primitive fashion, she saw her duty to her master. D’Urfey was left to poison a well. Similarly, she felt an obligation to try to eliminate Pelham, since he also could easily have had a motive for assassinating Murrell.”
“And my grandson? Why was he not murdered if she knew him to be in partnership with d’Urfey?”
“It is a miracle that he was not, Ma’am. The black woman had a protector of sorts. A man called Smith. For a time I thought he believed that Lord Wroth had revenged himself upon the Negress.”
Her head reared sharply from the pillow. She could not frame the question on her lips.
“It was Pelham’s coachman, my lady,” I reassured her happily. “He was seeking information.”
She sank back upon her pillows, sucking what comfort she could from my words.
“And the kidnapping?”
“That was partly Smith’s notion . . . but largely your grandson’s.”
She huddled deeper beneath the bedclothes, shivering slightly.
“Why?” Her voice cracked. She sounded infinitely old, tired, and broken.
“The business with the receipts had failed and Lord Wroth’s debts were still unpaid. He grew desperate, and he had only one acquaintance left in St. Giles’: the grey man, Smith. He was equally desperate. He had every encouragement to leave the country, but lacked the wherewithal. Your grandson sought him out to try to raise the rhino, and between them they concocted the scheme.”
There was a silence. Oliver continued to stare out of the window, and her ladyship lay like an effigy in her ponderous bed.
“And are you happy with your piece of detection?” she asked at last.
I bowed for lack of an answer.
The old fingers scrabbled angrily at the counterpane. Her yellowish face appeared suddenly to disintegrate into a hundred ugly lines. Pain and humiliation were stamped funereally behind her eyes. She raised herself upon an elbow and stared accusingly, her voice flailed me like a thin, worn lash.
“Why, Sir! I don’t believe a word of it!” she cried. “I think you are completely wrong! You are a rash amateur, Sir, and have no business to meddle! You are nothing but a raw beginner!”
She sank back upon her pillows and dismissed me with a limp wave of her hand. She was spent. Dulled forever.
I bowed slightly, having no words. Oliver came and took me gently by the arm. Quietly, politely even, he led me from the room.
“I thank you, Captain Nash,” he said gravely.
“You thank me, Sir?”
“For not seeking to defend yourself to my grandmother.”
“I saw no point, Sir.”
“No,” he mused sadly, “she is not open to reason and is in no condition to judge.”
“To judge what, Sir?”
“Your performance, Captain.”
I smiled at his oblique compliment, knowing I would receive no other kind.
“Why, Sir,” I replied, “as to that, I must agree with your grandmother. I am a raw beginner and what else can I be but a sort of amateur? Mine is scarcely yet a profession!”
EPILOGUE
So ended my first investigation. Jogging back to town, I contemplated my future. Although I had brought the Wroth affair to an end, I had not done so without damage to myself, having made two very powerful enemies in Sir Harry Pelham and Lord Wroth. True, I had gained the respect of young Oliver, but I did not yet know whether he would gain the Wroth inheritance. (It so turned out that he did not after all try to claim his rights, possibly because to level a charge of bastardy at his cousin would raise doubts about his own birth and bring the whole family into disrepute. A family in the elevated social position of the Wroths would avoid an open scandal at all costs, as I had seen. Lord Wroth grew from a wild youth to a wilder man, married his heiress and sired fourteen children on her before dying in 1835 of gout and old age.)
But to return to the present affair: I was much concerned as to how I was to explain my involvement in the deaths of five people. I would have to take this problem to my cousin Scrope in the Commissioner’s Office.
Scrope relieved my fears by putting the situation into some perspective: a young rake had murdered an old charlatan and been slain in turn by a half-savage. She had been done to death by Sir Harry’s sadistic coachman, who had come to a bad end himself. His slayer, “Coffin” Smith, had died of gaol fever two days after his committal. Thus the various assailants were all conveniently dead, and death being beyond the Law, the Law would therefore remain silent on the subject.
“But what of the Cunning-man’s assistant?” I asked. “He was murdered in Pelham’s house.”
“Aye, in Pelham’s house,” my cousin answered. “But what proof have you that it was at Pelham’s hand? Pelham was confined to his sick-bed at the time.”
I remembered my own ordeal whilst Pelham lay in his sick-bed.
“But he may have ordered his death.”
“Aye, he may have. But it would be his word against yours. And should you lose the suit . . .”
He had no need to elaborate further. Pelham was a potent enough enemy under the present circumstances and there would be little purpose in provoking him further. Though the thought of an unproved murder rankled.
“I seem not to have come out of this too well,” I said.
My cousin clapped me on the shoulder encouragingly.
“Not so! Not so, George! You have done middling-well. Fielding’s Runners could not have done better given the strange nature of the Wroth affair.”
“But I feel that I should have done better. Fielding’s men lack science.”
“Why, man!” he cried. “What chance have you under the present system? We live in a state of legal anarchy. Would you try to overturn the Constitution at one blow? It has taken Fielding twenty years to show that crime can be suppressed without serious damage to that mythological entity. He has rid us of street gangs and cleared the roads of highwaymen, but is his work fully appreciated? Bones-a-me, if it is! Yet change is coming, cousin! Change is coming! There will be a place for your scientific detection yet. Take heart, George.”
He clapped me on the back once more, and misquoted the Bard at me:
“Thus far thy fortune keeps an upward course,
And thou art graced with wreaths of victory.”
“Well,” thought I wryly. “Not a wreath perhaps, on this proceeding, but a chaplet certainly.”
My cousin Scrope, caught in the poetic vein, poured out a bumper of Canary and, with further recourse to the Bard, offered this health.
“All the gods go with you! Upon your sword
sit laurel victory! And smooth success
be strew’d before your feet!”
1Watered silk.
1A professional duellist.
1Flowery: a notorious thief-taker, subsequently hanged for perverting the course of justice.
1A pleasure-garden after the fashion of Vauxhall.
1Handkerchief.
1Tracker.
1Handkerchief.
1Woman. A near-harlot.
2Flash-crib: lodging house.
3A fool.
1Hanging in chains inside iron cages. To preserve them for as long as possible, as a warning to evil-doers.
1Skip-kennel: footmen.
1A famous bone-setter of the period.
THE DOOMDORF MYSTERY
Melville Davisson Post
Post (1871–1930), was an American attorney in the final years of the last century before turning to writing full-time. His first book, The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason (1896), featured a rather unorthodox lawyer who often bent the law in the defence of his clients. The character later reformed, and the collection, The Corrector of Destinies (1908), is regarded as one of the cornerstones of American crime fiction. In creating Uncle Abner, though, Post made a bold move forward. It was the first fictional character to be set in an historical period and who used detective methods. Abner was a country squire in Virginia, in the early days of the nineteenth century. He was an intensely righteous, God-fearing man and a keen observer of human nature, and brought the skills of detection to a peak rivalled only by Sherlock Holmes. Surprisingly the stories never really caught on in Britain, but in America they remain highly respected. Ellery Queen regarded them as “second only to Poe’s Tales among all the books of d
etective short stories written by American authors”, calling them the “crème du crime”. The story reprinted here originally appeared in the Saturday Evening Post for 18 July 1914, and is one of the most intriguing of the whole series.
The pioneer was not the only man in the great mountains behind Virginia. Strange aliens drifted in after the Colonial wars. All foreign armies are sprinkled with a cockle of adventurers that take root and remain. They were with Braddock and La Salle, and they rode north out of Mexico after her many empires went to pieces.
I think Doomdorf crossed the seas with Iturbide when that ill-starred adventurer returned to be shot against a wall; but there was no Southern blood in him. He came from some European race remote and barbaric. The evidences were all about him. He was a huge figure of a man, with a black spade beard, broad, thick hands, and square, flat fingers.
He had found a wedge of land between the Crown’s grant to Daniel Davisson and a Washington survey. It was an uncovered triangle not worth the running of the lines; and so, no doubt, was left out, a sheer rock standing up out of the river for a base, and a peak of the mountain rising northward behind it for an apex.
Doomdorf squatted on the rock. He must have brought a belt of gold pieces when he took to his horse, for he hired old Robert Steuart’s slaves and built a stone house on the rock, and he brought the furnishings overland from a frigate in the Chesapeake; and then in the handfuls of earth, wherever a root would hold, he planted the mountain behind his house with peach trees. The gold gave out; but the devil is fertile in resources. Doomdorf built a log still and turned the first fruits of the garden into a hell-brew. The idle and the vicious came with their stone jugs, and violence and riot flowed out.
The government of Virginia was remote and its arm short and feeble; but the men who held the lands west of the mountains against the savages under grants from George, and after that held them against George himself, were efficient and expeditious. They had long patience, but when that failed they went up from their fields and drove the thing before them out of the land, like a scourge of God.
There came a day, then, when my Uncle Abner and Squire Randolph rode through the gap of the mountains to have the thing out with Doomdorf. The work of this brew, which had the odors of Eden and the impulses of the devil in it, could be borne no longer. The drunken Negroes had shot old Duncan’s cattle and burned his haystacks, and the land was on its feet.