The Lake District Murder (British Library Crime Classics) (26 page)

“This way,” snapped Meredith. “We’ll try the cottage first. I’ve an idea we shan’t find what we’re looking for in the garage itself. Too public, Railton.”

With the constable close on his heels, the Inspector strode up the path and tried the handle of the front-door. As he anticipated, it was locked. The windows, too, were closed and fastened. Skirting round the path to the back of the cottage, he then tried the back door and the two windows of the scullery. This time luck was with him. One of the windows, although shut, was not fastened with an indoor catch. With the aid of a penknife it was the work of moments to slide down the sash and, in a short time, both he and the constable were standing in the stone-floored scullery.

Meredith realized that he had not been inside the building since the tragic night when Clayton’s body had been carried in from the lean-to and laid out on the sofa. He was surprised to find the place so untidy. Mrs. Swinley was evidently adequate rather than efficient. The tiny sitting-room was littered with all sorts of odds and ends—old newspapers, odd garments, hats, coats, books and business letters. There was scarcely a clear space in which to sit down. The same chaos was repeated in the upper rooms, where Meredith set about making a methodical search of every nook and cranny. But at the end of twenty minutes he felt sure that the distilling apparatus was not concealed in the upper part of the house. He even sent the constable up a rickety pair of steps to see what lay beyond a trap-door in one of the bedroom ceilings. But there was nothing under the rafters save an old tin bath, a broken gramophone, and a number of empty packing-cases.

“Now for the sitting-room,” said Meredith briskly, when the constable had safely negotiated the flimsy ladder.

An even more meticulous examination followed on the ground floor. Instructing Railton to move the table on one side, Meredith rolled back the threadbare carpet and went over every inch of the stone floor on his hands and knees. But there was no sign of a trap. The cement between the stones was unbroken, and no single slab appeared to be in any way loose. Replacing the carpet and table, their next move was to inspect the fireplace. It was of an old-fashioned design, with a high mantel-shelf, the three sides of the recess framed in enormous oak beams. An ordinary kitchen-range had been fitted into the recess with the usual damper and flue-pipe arrangements at the back. But despite Meredith’s exhaustive examination, the fireplace failed to yield a single clue.

“Now for these cupboards,” said the Inspector, pointing to the two large, built-in cupboards which flanked the hearth. “You take the right. I’ll take the left.”

The handle of the left cupboard, though stiff, yielded to a little pressure, and a glance sufficed to show that every shelf was loaded with crockery and other ordinary domestic utensils. But scarcely had Meredith shut the door when an exclamation of surprise switched his attention over to Railton.

“Won’t budge, sir. Feels as if it’s jammed,” he said, struggling with the door of the other cupboard.

“Here, let’s take a look.”

Meredith examined the handle and lock closely.

“Naturally it won’t budge,” was his immediate verdict. “It’s locked! No key here, either. Looks as if we’ll have to do a little amateur housebreaking, Railton. Have you got that length of wire and those hooks?” The constable nodded. “Then hurry up and get to work. We can’t afford to waste time!”

Railton, who had studied the niceties of lock-picking in his leisure hours, drew out an array of implements and got down to the job. In less than five minutes there was a sharp click as the lock turned over. Meredith caught hold of the handle and pulled the door open.

Then he swore roundly. Although he had refused to be carried away on a wave of optimism, the locked door had decidedly stimulated his hopes. He had expected to find something, a clue perhaps that would point the way to other more valuable clues. Instead there was nothing. Literally nothing! The cupboard was empty!

But hardly had he swallowed his disappointment when a new thought struck him and his hopes rapidly revived. Why was the cupboard empty? He cast his eye round the room at the litter of hats and coats and newspapers.

“You’d think Higgins could have done with cupboard space, wouldn’t you, Railton? Yet, look here—bare as a bleached bone! There’s something odd here or I’m a Dutchman. Let’s have a look at the flooring.”

Dropping on to his hands and knees, he began sounding the stone floor of the cupboard with a poker he had snatched up from the hearth. Then, with a gleam of triumph in his eye, he looked up at the constable.

“Listen hard, Railton. And then tell me what you think of it?”

He rapped first on the stone in front of the range and then again inside the cupboard.

“A different note, sir,” was Railton’s verdict. “The floor of the cupboard’s hollow!”

“Out of the mouths of babes!” grinned Meredith. “I thought the same thing myself. But there can’t be a trap-door of any sort because these two slabs here in the cupboard project out into the room.”

“I don’t quite see—” began Railton, puzzled.

“Well, look here, man!” said Meredith impatiently.

“There’s a wooden sill across the base of the cupboard that the door shuts on to. And you couldn’t lift either of the stones without first removing this sill, could you?”

“Perhaps they do remove it,” was Railton’s lugubrious reply. “Let’s heave on it, sir!”

Half-heartedly Meredith lent the constable a hand. To his intense amazement, without the exercise of the slightest effort, the wooden sill came away in their hands. Although evidently nailed securely into position, it had only been lightly jammed between the two uprights of the door-frame.

“Good heavens, Railton. Take a look at that!”

He was pointing to that part of the two stone slabs which had previously been concealed by the sill. A wide crack ran across them.

“Then they don’t project out as we thought, sir.”

“Of course not! Come on, out with that penknife of yours. I’ve an idea that we can prise up the whole of the cupboard floor. Got it? Good. Now shove it underneath. Steady! Easy does it!” Then with an exclamation of triumph: “There you are, Railton—what did I say? A trap-door! Come on, man, don’t stand there gaping. Get out your torch and let’s investigate!”

Drawing back the two loosened slabs, Meredith grabbed the constable’s torch and shone it down into the hollowed space under the cupboard. Against the back wall of the shaft he noted the dim outlines of a cat-ladder. Wasting no time, calling on Railton to follow, he got his feet on to the upper rungs and began to descend. In a few seconds his feet encountered solid ground again and he found himself looking down a low horizontal shaft, which he judged to be driven directly under the garage. For the time being, however, he left the exploration of this tunnel, to devote his attentions to an unusual object recessed in the left wall of the vertical shaft. Noticing an electric switch at the foot of the ladder, he clicked it on. Immediately the well in which he was standing and the whole length of the tunnel itself was flooded with light.

“Electrics!” ejaculated the constable, who had now arrived on terra firma. “They’ve made it cosy enough, sir!”

Meredith nodded.

“Not only cosy, Railton, but efficient. Take a squint at this.”

“Good Lord, sir—what’s that?”

“That, if I’m not mistaken, is what the
Encyclopædia Britannica
calls a ‘Coffey’s still’. It’s a patent still for making whisky. I mugged it all up in the public library yesterday evening. It’s pretty obvious that money’s been no object. You couldn’t make a piece of apparatus like that
under
a thousand. Looks as if our investigations are more or less at an end, Constable.”

“What about that shaft, sir?”

“Yes—I’m coming to that in a minute. First of all let’s take a look at the still. Does its position suggest anything to you, Railton?”

The constable shook his head.

“You know,” went on the Inspector admiringly, “they really have made a very neat job of this racket. You may not know it, but during the process of distillation you’ve got to get rid of the fumes—to say nothing of smoke if you’re distilling over an open fire. So they’ve done the sensible thing and shoved this contraption bang under the sitting-room fireplace. Clever, eh? No extra chimney needed.”

The constable was suitably impressed.

“And what about that aquarium up there, sir? What’s that?”

“That aquarium, as you call it, is probably the collecting chamber. You can see it’s half full of spirit now. Yes. There’s the intake pipe from the analysing column and the outlet pipe runs along the wall of the tunnel.”

Railton, who had crossed over to look at the tank in question, observed: “It looks more like water to me than whisky.”

“It would. Newly distilled spirit is colourless. It only takes on colour after it’s matured. Now let’s follow this outlet pipe. It interests me far more than that still, Railton.”

Bent almost double, for the horizontal shaft was not much over four feet high, Meredith and the constable set off to track down the termination of the pipe. As they proceeded on their back-aching way the Inspector’s admiration grew apace. Everything about this subterranean plant had been most beautifully thought out and constructed. The sides of the tunnel were riveted with cement and the ceiling formed by a series of broad stone slabs. The tiny metal pipe dropped in a gradual decline from the glass container beside the still, until about thirty feet up the tunnel, where it ran into a second glass tank.

“What on earth’s the idea of this second container?” demanded Meredith, puzzled.

“Sort of storage tank, maybe, sir. At any rate, we can straighten up now. The roof’s a good seven feet high at this spot.” Suddenly the constable threw out his arm. “What in the name of thunder is that, sir? Another blooming gadget!”

Meredith took a couple of rapid paces forward and bent down to examine the object which had caught Railton’s attention. It was a small piece of machinery, firmly bedded on concrete and evidently wired for electric power. It stood some two yards beyond the second container, linked to it by means of another small-bore metal pipe, which, passing through the machine, continued for a short distance up the shaft and then abruptly disappeared into the face of a blank wall. It was obvious at a glance that this wall completely terminated the shaft.

For a moment Meredith stood stock-still, contemplating these perplexing factors, then with a sharp cry of realization he bent double and raced back up the shaft. Whipping out his flexible steel rule, he began to measure up the length of the tunnel from the base of the vertical shaft to the wall through which the pipe so mysteriously vanished. This done, he jotted down the result in his note-book and called on the constable to follow him.

In a couple of shakes he had gained the top of the cat-ladder, where he perched, for a moment, staring out through the cupboard door into the room.

“Now then, Railton,” he called down, “I’m going to hold out my arm in what I consider to be the direction of that shaft. I want you to stand directly below me and correct me if I’m wrong. Ready?”

“Right, sir.”

Meredith flung out his arm.

“Well?”

After an upward glance, the constable stared down the lighted vista of the shaft, then back again at the Inspector’s rigid limb.

“A few degrees left, sir. Not much. Whoa! That’s it.”

“So?” thought Meredith, following the line of his outstretched arm across the sitting-room, out through one of the front windows, across the garden to the corner of the garage building. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to four. Unless anything unforeseen occurred, Higgins would not return for another forty minutes, at least. Time enough, he felt, in which to prove his supposition up to the hilt.

He looked down on to the head of the waiting constable.

“Look here, Railton—I’ve got to take another measurement. In the meantime, I want you to draw off a sample of that spirit. I shoved a medicine bottle into my pocket. Here it is—catch!”

Leaning over the little well, he dropped the bottle neatly into the constable’s hands.

“There’s probably a tap in that container. I didn’t notice at the time. As soon as you’ve done that, turn off the light down there, get these stones back into place and re-fix the false sill. Then get to work with your fancy bits of wire and relock the cupboard door. After that, if I’m not back, join me outside.”

The moment he had delivered these instructions Meredith fixed his eye on the flue-pipe of the office stove, brought the centre frame of the casement in line with it and began to measure up along this imaginary line. The distance from the cupboard to the skirting-board under the window proved to be a little over twelve feet. Adding to this another foot to include the thickness of the cottage walls, he clambered out through the open window in the scullery and ran round to the front of the house. Again he took a line of sight. Standing directly in front of the centre frame of the casement, he now brought the trunk of an apple-tree, which he had previously marked down in the room as being a point on his imaginary line, into alignment with the flue-pipe projecting from the garage roof. Keeping the trunk always in front of the pipe, he then measured up from under the window to the foot of the tree. Fourteen feet. He made a note of it. He next strode through the wicket gate, which gave on to the cinder track dividing the side of the garage from the garden wall. Taking up his position at a point somewhere below the flue-pipe, he then brought the trunk into line with the middle of the casement. Then, working toward the trunk, he measured up between the wall of the garage and the apple-tree. This time he noted down ten feet.

He was now faced with a problem. How was he to project his imaginary line through the corner of the building and take the necessary measurements? If only he had a ladder! Surely it was within the bounds of possibility that there was a ladder lying about somewhere on the premises? With one eye on his watch, Meredith made a rapid search of the cottage back-garden and the rear of the garage itself. Luck was with him. Lying flat on the ground, half overgrown with rank grass, was a short and rickety fruit ladder. It was a matter of seconds to rush it round to the front of the garage and set it up against the coping. In no time, perched on the top rung, he had brought the flue-pipe, the apple-tree and the casement into line again. Then, climbing up on to the flat roof, allowing a foot for the overhang of the coping at each arm of the angle, he took the necessary measurement. Before descending, he placed his tweed cap on the edge of the coping, thus forming a fourth point along his imaginary line. The rest was simple. Backing out into the road, he brought one of the petrol pumps into alignment with the cap and the flue-pipe, and, with his heart in his mouth, began to take his final measurement. His previous measurements had accounted for forty-five of the tunnel’s fifty-seven feet. He had, therefore, exactly twelve feet to play with. And if the distance from the rear of the pump to the base of the wall beneath his cap proved to be within a foot or so of twelve feet—well ... so much the worse for Messrs. Bettle and Prince!