Dead Man's Quarry (20 page)

Nora looked through a gap in the trees across the valley to the high ridge opposite, where a shepherd was walking with two small collies on the sky-line. As she watched, he took the sloping footpath and descended into the little valley.

“What do shepherds do all day?” asked Nora dreamily. “Walk about counting their sheep, I suppose, and contemplating the hills. I should like to be a shepherd.”

“There's dipping and shearing and folding and lambing,” said Rampson the realist. “And foot-rot and maggots and—”

Nora laughed.

“Oh, don't! My kind of shepherd just feeds his flocks on the mountain and in the fine weather he sits among the bracken and reads Chaucer, and in the wet weather he sits in his little hut and reads Spenser. There's a shepherd's hut on the ridge side a little farther along, and when I was a child I used to think it the most romantic place, and a shepherd's life the most peaceful in the world. Don't destroy my illusions. Well, John? Am I a possible murderer?”

“You don't comply with either of the two conditions. Morris Price is the first and most obvious one. He was almost too obviously on the scene of the murder about the time it was committed, and he has an almost too obvious motive. And of all people, he most obviously had access to his own revolver. But as he has been arrested, and our business is to prove him not guilty, we'll leave him out of it.”

“Of course.”

“Then there's Mrs. Field. She's obviously a woman of mystery. If, as we suppose, she was the woman who called at Rhyllan Hall last Saturday, she had access to the revolver in the library. She had one of Charles's five-pound notes after the murder. And she left in a hurry on the day of the inquest. We certainly haven't done with her yet. Then there's Waters, the footman. Do you know Waters, Nora?”

“The young one? I've seen him once or twice at the hall. He's new. I haven't noticed him particularly.”

“He could have got hold of the revolver. He's engaged to marry Ellie Letbe, the gardener's daughter— you know, the one there was trouble about. And he looked capable of violent revenges—a cold, crafty face, I thought. Whether he has an alibi or not remains to be seen. It's one of the first things we must look into.”

“Of course, all sorts of people may have been able to get hold of that revolver if it hadn't been seen in the drawer since August the eleventh,” said Nora slowly. “The murderer may be somebody whose existence we don't even know of.”

“Also,” said Rampson, chewing a contemplative harebell stalk, “it doesn't seem to have occurred to you, John, that your Mrs. Maur, the housekeeper, may have been lying when she said she saw the revolver on August the eleventh.”

“Oh, it's occurred to me all right! She may have been the murderer herself, for all we know yet. Though from what Blodwen said, I gather that it is a matter of complete indifference to her who she housekeeps for, as long as she housekeeps for somebody.”

“Funny old soul, Mrs. Maur,” said Nora thoughtfully. “She's been at the hall three years and I've seen quite a lot of her, one way and another. But she always looks at me as if she'd never seen me before. She's not human. She's the perfect servant. And the perfect servant is not human. But Blodwen says she's a marvellous housekeeper.”

John threw a little stone over the edge of the fall, and heard its faint tinkle on the rocks below.

“Does the perfect servant, I wonder, require the perfect master? Or is it part of her perfection that she can adapt herself to any master, even to the kind that dismisses lifelong gardeners and kisses housemaids?”

“My dear John!” Nora half laughed in surprise and opened her grey eyes wide. “You're not going to suggest that Mrs. Maur might have murdered poor Charles because he didn't come up to her standards as an employer? She'd have to be a lunatic to do such a thing!”

“I'm not suggesting anything,” said John lazily. “Only wondering what the perfect servant does when she gets an imperfect employer. And you said yourself that the perfect servant wasn't human.”

Rampson suddenly sat up.

“When you've finished talking nonsense about what a hypothetical creature might do in an imaginary set of circumstances, may I say something sensible?” he asked meekly.

“Say on.”

“Well, listen. You and Nora have mentioned three or four people who, according to you, may have had access to Price's revolver. But it doesn't seem to have occurred to you that there are several million people in the world and that all of them had access to the revolver.”

“No. No,” said John soothingly. “I think not. If the entire population of the world had converged upon Rhyllan Hall any time during the last three weeks we should have heard about it, I feel sure.”

“Any one of them, I mean, you ass. And not at Rhyllan Hall, either. It doesn't seem to have occurred to you that Charles may have been carrying the revolver himself, and that the person who murdered him may have got possession of it from him, and not from the drawer in the library at all.”

There was a pause. John sighed.

“I'm awfully sorry to disappoint you, Sydenham, but it
had
occurred to me. But I think it's unlikely. Of course, ordinary people don't carry revolvers on peaceful bicycling tours through rural England. But Charles may not have been an ordinary person, so I won't press that point. But if one carries a revolver, one carries one's own revolver, not somebody else's. And Charles had a revolver of his own. It was found in the chest in his bedroom the day after the murder, and is still there, so far as I know. You may remember that Felix told us the police had found a revolver in Charles's room when they searched the house.”

Rampson looked a trifle crestfallen.

“Yes, I do remember now. But still,” he added obstinately, “there is no
proof
that Charles wasn't carrying Morris's revolver.”

“No proof,” agreed John, “but a strong presumption. And we're at the stage where one has to work chiefly on presumptions. Proof will come afterwards.”

“That's all very well, as long as you don't let yourself forget that your presumptions, however plausible, aren't proof. It's very easy for a person with a hopelessly unscientific mind like yours to overlook the difference between fact and conjecture.”

“I know,” said John humbly. “But you'll never let me overlook it for long, Sydenham, so it's all right. Still, you'll agree that at this stage of the investigation I'm justified in the conjecture that the revolver was abstracted from the library drawer and not from Charles's person?”

“Certainly,” agreed Rampson gravely. “But you must keep the other possibility always in your mind, until it is definitely disproved.”

“I will endeavour to do so,” responded John with equal gravity. “Now you know, Nora, why I won't let Rampson go back to his microscope. I need a wet blanket, and the scientific mind is the wet blanket par excellence.”

“So I perceive. He won't let even a shepherd be Arcadian.”

“Well, look at your shepherd,” remonstrated Rampson. “There he is, coming along the footpath, followed by his faithful and flea-ridden dogs. Does he look as if he could read his ABC, let alone Spenser? Do you think he ever contemplates the hills except as food for his sheep? Not he! Ask him.”

“I will, if he comes near enough,” replied Nora with a laugh. “I suppose he
is
a shepherd,” she added doubtfully, as the figure approached along the little footpath below. “He's got a funny-looking sort of raincoat on, miles too big for him. And, Sydenham, he's carrying a book under his arm!”

“So he is. But I'll bet you a hundred pounds, if you like, it's not Shakespeare or Spenser, or whoever your selections were. It's probably ‘Diseases of Sheep.'”

“No,” said Nora firmly. “Absolutely not. It's plain you've never met a shepherd, Sydenham. ‘Diseases of Sheep' is the one book you'd never find a shepherd reading. They know all that by the light of Nature. Or think they do, which is the same thing, of course. Hi!”

The little man wavered somewhat in his slow, shambling walk, looked dubiously and shyly up the slope at Nora, and then, evidently mistrusting his ears, walked on, his two dejected-looking collies following dreamily at his ankles.

“It's no use,” said Rampson cheerfully. “He's too much absorbed in contemplating Nature to be bothered with you. That
is
an outsize in raincoats he's got on. I don't believe it is the shepherd, after all. I'm sure he wasn't draped in those classic folds when we saw him on the opposite ridge. After all, everybody who keeps a mongrel collie as a pet isn't a shepherd. Great heavens, John, what is the matter?”

John had jumped to his feet, and making a megaphone of his hands had sent a long “Hi!” echoing down the valley.

The little man on the path below stopped dead in his tracks and looked carefully around him from slope to slope and down the valley, finally examining the clouds with a meek and hopeful air.

“Hi!” shouted John again, fortissimo, and as the man turned with an air of unwillingness in his direction, gesticulated wildly.

The shepherd hesitated, turned and began slowly to retrace his steps. As he approached nearer, they could see that he was a man of fifty or so, with a long, pale face and drooping, light moustache and that look of kinship with his own flock that is sometimes found in the later generation of a long line of shepherds. At a distance so respectful that conversation was practically impossible, he stopped and shouted interrogatively:

“Aye, master?”

“Have some sandwiches,” shouted John, hoping to lure him up the bank.

“No, thank you kindly. I be full.”

“Well—hi!”

“Oh, aye?”

“Hi!”

“Ah!” shouted the shepherd enigmatically, and remained where he was.

John began to walk down the hill towards him, and at this he unwillingly advanced until he was within speaking distance of the trio. His dogs advanced at the same pace, and stood one on each side of him, surveying John with distrustful looks.

“Nice day,” said John affably.

“Oh, aye,” agreed the stranger. “But moisty.”

“Rain? Not it!”

“Bain't going to rain these three days. Body-moisty, it be.”

“You shouldn't wear so many clothes,” said John reasonably. “People are always writing to the papers about it. Why wear a raincoat?”

A look of slow suspicion clouded the shepherd's light and placid eyes.

“Writing to papers?” he repeated uncertainly. “About I?”

“About wearing too many clothes in the hot weather. Why wear a raincoat?”

The other man regarded him sideways and uncertainly. At last he inquired:

“Be this your coat, master? If he be, you shall have he, for I bain't the man to profit by another's loss. But how'll I know as he be yourn?”

“Where did you find it?”

The shepherd made a vague gesture along the footpath. “Near hut. Th' ole bitch sniffed 'un out. He were buried under the bracken, and a bit dampish, as you can see, but good for wear, so I put 'un on. For I thinks, a chap as buries his coat means the world to know as he hasn't no more use for he.”

“No, no,” said John thoughtfully. “He buries it because he doesn't mean the world to know.”

The shepherd looked doubtful.

“If you says as he's yourn, master, you shall have he. Only say the word, and off he comes. He's a bit on the large side for I, it's true, but I were never a man to let things go to waste, so I dug'un out. Hey! Mind my dogs, miss! They be ticklish-tempered.”

Nora, who had suddenly jumped to her feet and approached to examine the cloth of the raincoat, drew back.

“John!” she cried. “But it is Charles's coat! I remember the funny buttons and the little tear in the pocket! But however can it have got up here?”

“If he be a gentleman's coat,” said the honest shepherd, proceeding to strip it off, “let the gentleman have he.”

“The police must have it, I suppose,” said John rather unwillingly.

“They'll be delighted,” observed Rampson. “It'll be evidence for the Crown in the forthcoming trial.”

“Oh, no!” cried Nora. “Need we? Don't you remember, John, Felix's father said he spent the night driving and walking about the Forest?”

“Police?” echoed the shepherd, arrested with one arm out of the disputed coat. “Now, master, I bain't a-stealing of he!”

A slow flush of indignation rose in his cheeks.

“No, no,” said John hurriedly. “But there's been a murder, you know.”

“Oh, aye?”

“Yes. You must have heard about it. Sir Charles Price of Rhyllan was found dead in a quarry.”

“Ah, I heerd.”

“Well, this is his coat.”

There was a pause. The shepherd looked gently from John to Nora, removed his hat, scratched his head, and replaced the hat at a more comfortable angle.

“The gentleman be dead, you says, master?”

“Yes.”

“And this be his coat?”

“Yes.”

“Then he don't need'un,” said the shepherd with sweet reasonableness, and shook himself back into its damp folds.

“No, but the police do,” said John firmly. “And I'm afraid you'll have to take it to them and tell them where you found it.”

The little man fixed John with a slowly calculating eye, and thought this over.

“They'll think as I did the murder.”

“Not they. They'll be pleased with you.”

“Oh, aye? But I be paid for shepherding. I bain't paid for traipsing to police and back.”

“I'll take you in my car. But first will you show me where you found the coat?”

“I bain't paid for traipsing after coats.”

“I'll pay you,” John assured him, fingering his note-case.