The Victorian Mystery Megapack (53 page)

“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.”

John Neville flushed crimson; but he held himself in and nodded without speaking. The two walked on together in silence.

They were not a hundred yards from the great mansion—John Neville’s house—standing high above the embowering trees in the glow of the twilight, when the detective spoke again.

“I’m bound to say, Mr. Neville, that things look very black against you, as they stand. I think that constable Wardle ought to have arrested you.”

“It’s not too late yet,” John Neville answered shortly, “I see him there at the corner of the house and I’ll tell him you said so.”

He turned on his heel, when Mr. Beck called quickly after him: “What about that key?”

John Neville handed it to him without a word. The detective took it as silently and walked on to the entrance and up the great stone steps alone, whistling softly.

Eric welcomed him at the door, for the driver had told of his coming. “You have had no dinner, Mr. Beck?” he asked courteously.

“Business first; pleasure afterwards. I had a snack in the train. Can I see the gamekeeper, Lennox, for five minutes alone?”

“Certainly. I’ll send him to you in a moment here in the library.”

Lennox, the gamekeeper, a long-limbed, high-shouldered, elderly man, shambled shyly into the room, consumed by nervousness in the presence of a London detective.

“Sit down, Lennox—sit down,” said Mr. Beck kindly. The very sound of his voice, homely and good-natured, put the man at his ease. “Now, tell me, why did you come home so soon from the grouse this morning?”

“Well, you see, sir, it was this ways. We were two hours hout when the Squire, ’e says to me, ‘Lennox,’ ’e says, ‘I’m sick of this fooling. I’m going ’ome.’”

“No sport?”

“Birds wor as thick as blackberries, sir, and lay like larks.”

“No sportsman, then?”

“Is it the Squire, sir?” cried Lennox, quite forgetting his shyness in his excitement at this slur on the Squire. “There wasn’t a better sportsman in the county—no, nor as good. Real, old-fashioned style, ’e was. ‘Hang your barnyard shooting,’ ’e’d say when they’d ask him to go kill tame pheasants. ’E put up ’is own birds with ’is own dogs, ’e did. ’E’d as soon go shooting without a gun very near as without a dog any day. Aye and ’e stuck to ’is old Manton muzzle-loader to the last. ‘’Old it steady, Lennox,’ ’e’d say to me oftentimes, ‘and point it straight. It will hit harder and further than any of their telescopes, and it won’t get marked with rust if you don’t clean it every second shot.’”

“‘Easy to load, Squire,’ the young men would say, cracking up their hammerless breech-loaders.”

“‘Aye,’ he’d answer them back, ‘and spoil your dog’s work. What’s the good of a dog learning to down shot, if you can drop in your cartridges as quick as a cock can pick corn?’”

“A dead shot the Squire was, too, and no mistake, sir, if he wasn’t flurried. Many a time I’ve seen him wipe the eyes of gents who thought no end of themselves with that same old muzzle-loader that shot himself in the long run. Many a time I seen—”

“Why did he turn his back on good sport yesterday?” asked Mr. Beck, cutting short his reminiscences.

“Well, you see, it was scorching hot for one thing, but that wasn’t it, for the infernal fire would not stop the Squire if he was on for sport. But he was in a blazing temper all the morning, and temper tells more than most anything on a man’s shooting. When Flora sprung a pack—she’s a young dog, and the fault wasn’t hers either—for she came down the wind on them—but the Squire had the gun to his shoulder to shoot her. Five minutes after she found another pack and set like a stone. They got up as big as haycocks and as lazy as crows, and he missed right and left—never touched a feather—a thing I haven’t seen him do since I was a boy.”

“‘It’s myself I should shoot, not the dog,’ he growled and he flung me the gun to load. When I’d got the caps on and had shaken the powder into the nipples, he ripped out an oath that ’e’d have no more of it. ’E walked right across country to where the trap was. The birds got up under his feet, but divil a shot he’d fire, but drove straight ’ome.”

“When we got to the ’ouse I wanted to take the gun and fire it off, or draw the charges. But ’e told me to go to Hell, and carried it up loaded as it was to his study, where no one goes unless they’re sent for special. It was better than an hour afterwards I heard the report of the Manton; I’d know it in a thousand. I ran for the study as fast as—”

Eric Neville broke suddenly into the room, flushed and excited.

“Mr. Beck,” he cried, “a monstrous thing has happened. Wardle, the local constable, you know, has arrested my cousin on a charge of wilful murder of my uncle.”

Mr. Beck, with his eyes intent on the excited face, waved his big hand soothingly.

“Easy,” he said, “take it easy, Mr. Neville. It’s hurtful to your feelings, no doubt; but it cannot be helped. The constable has done no more than his duty. The evidence is very strong, as you know, and in such cases it’s best for all parties to proceed regularly.”

“You can go,” he went on, speaking to Lennox, who stood dumfoundered at the news of John Neville’s arrest, staring with eyes and mouth wide open.

Then turning again very quietly to Eric: “Now, Mr. Neville, I would like to see the room where the corpse is.” The perfect placidity of his manner had its effect upon the boy, for he was little more than a boy, calming his excitement as oil smooths troubled water.

“My cousin has the key,” he said; “I will get it.”

“There is no need,” Mr. Beck called after him, for he was half-way out of the room on his errand: “I’ve got the key if you will be good enough to show me the room.”

Mastering his surprise, Eric showed him upstairs, and along the corridor to the locked door. Half unconsciously, as it seemed, he was following the detective into the room, when Mr. Beck stopped him.

“I know you will kindly humour me, Mr. Neville,” he said, “but I find that I can look closer and think clearer when I’m by myself. I’m not exactly shy you know, but it’s a habit I’ve got.”

He closed the door softly as he spoke, and locked it on the inside, leaving the key in the lock.

The mask of placidity fell from him the moment he found himself alone. His lips tightened, and his eyes sparkled, and his muscles seemed to grow rigid with excitement, like a sporting dog’s when he is close upon the game.

One glance at the corpse showed him that it was not suicide. In this, at least, John Neville had spoken the truth. The back of the head had literally been blown in by the charge of heavy shot at close quarters. The grey hair was clammy and matted, with little white angles of bone protruding. The dropping of the blood had made a black pool on the carpet, and the close air of the room was fœtid with the smell of it.

The detective walked to the table where the gun, a handsome, old-fashioned muzzle-loader, lay, the muzzle still pointed at the corpse. But his attention was diverted by a water-bottle, a great globe of clear glass quite full, and perched on a book a little distance from the gun, and between it and the window. He took it from the table and tested the water with the tip of his tongue. It had a curious, insipid, parboiled taste, but he detected no foreign flavour in it. Though the room was full of dust there was almost none on the cover of the book where the water-bottle stood, and Mr. Beck noticed a gap in the third row of the bookcase where the book had been taken.

After a quick glance round the room Mr. Beck walked to the window. On a small table there he found a clear circle in the thick dust. He fitted the round bottom of the water-bottle to this circle and it covered it exactly. While he stood by the window he caught sight of some small scraps of paper crumbled up and thrown into a corner. Picking them up and smoothing them out he found they were curiously drilled with little burnt holes.

Having examined the holes minutely with his magnifying glass, he slipped these scraps folded on each other into his waistcoat pocket.

From the window he went back to the gun. This time he examined it with the minutest care. The right barrel he found had been recently discharged, the left was still loaded. Then he made a startling discovery. Both barrels were on half cock. The little bright copper cap twinkled on the nipple of the left barrel, from the right nipple the cap was gone.

How had the murderer fired the right barrel without a cap? How and why did he find time in the midst of his deadly work to put the cock back to safety?

Had Mr. Beck solved this problem? The grim smile deepened on his lips as he looked, and there was an ugly light in his eyes that boded ill for the unknown assassin. Finally he carried the gun to the window and examined it carefully through a magnifying glass. There was a thin dark line, as if traced with the point of a red-hot needle, running a little way along the wood of the stock and ending in the right nipple.

Mr. Beck put the gun back quietly on the table. The whole investigation had not taken ten minutes. He gave one look at the still figure on the couch, unlocked the door, locking it after him, and walked out through the corridor, the same cheerful, imperturbable Mr. Beck that had walked into it ten minutes before.

He found Eric waiting for him at the head of the stairs. “Well?” he said when he saw the detective.

“Well,” replied Mr. Beck, ignoring the interrogation in his voice, “when is the inquest to be? That’s the next thing to be thought of; the sooner the better.”

“Tomorrow, if you wish. My cousin John sent a messenger to Mr. Morgan, the coroner. He lives only five miles off, and he has promised to be here at twelve o’clock tomorrow. There will be no difficulty in getting a jury in the village.”

“That’s right, that’s all right,” said Mr. Beck, rubbing his hands; “the sooner and the quieter we get those preliminaries over the better.”

“I have just sent to engage the local solicitor on behalf of my cousin. He’s not particularly bright, I’m afraid, but he’s the best to be had on a short notice.”

“Very proper and thoughtful on your part—very thoughtful indeed. But solicitors cannot do much in such cases. It’s the evidence we have to go by, and the evidence is only too plain, I’m afraid. Now, if you please,” he went on more briskly, dismissing the disagreeable subject, as it were, with a wave of his big hand, “I’d be very glad of that supper you spoke about.”

Mr. Beck supped very heartily on a brace of grouse—the last of the dead man’s shooting—and a bottle of ripe Burgundy. He was in high good-humour, and across “the walnuts and the wine” he told Eric some startling episodes in his career, which seemed to divert the young fellow a little from his manifest grief for his uncle and anxiety for his cousin.

Meanwhile John Neville remained shut close in his own room, with the constable at the door. The inquest was held at half-past twelve next day in the library.

The Coroner, a large, red-faced man, with a very affable manner, had got to his work promptly.

The jury “viewed the body” steadily, stolidly, with a kind of morose delectation in the grim spectacle.

In some unaccountable way Mr. Beck constituted himself a master of the ceremonies, a kind of assessor to the court.

“You had best take the gun down,” he said to the Coroner as they were leaving the room.

“Certainly, certainly,” replied the Coroner. “And the water-bottle,” added Mr. Beck. “There is no suspicion of poison, is there?”

“It’s best not to take anything for granted,” replied Mr. Beck sententiously.

“By all means if you think so,” replied the obsequious Coroner. “Constable, take that water-bottle down with you.”

The large room was filled with people of the neighbourhood, mostly farmers from the Berkly estate and small shopkeepers from the neighbouring village.

A table had been wheeled to the top of the room for the Coroner, with a seat at it for the ubiquitous local newspaper correspondent. A double row of chairs were set at the right hand of the table for the jury.