Читать книгу The Hand in the Dark - Arthur J. Rees - Страница 9

Table of Contents

It was the morning after the murder, and five men were seated in the moat-house library. One of them attracted instant attention by reason of his overpowering personality. He was a giant in stature and build, with a massive head, a large red face from which a pair of little bloodshot eyes stared out truculently, and a bull neck which was several shades deeper in colour than his face. He was Superintendent Merrington, a noted executive officer of New Scotland Yard, whose handling of the most important spy case tried in London during the war had brought forth from a gracious sovereign the inevitable Order of the British Empire. Merrington was known as a detective in every capital in Europe, and because of his wide knowledge of European criminals had more than once acted as the bodyguard of Royalty on continental tours, and had received from Royal hands the diamond pin which now adorned the spotted silk tie encircling his fat purple neck.

The famous detective's outlook on life was cynical and coarse. The cynicism was the natural outcome of his profession; the coarseness was his heritage by birth, as his sensual mouth, blubber lips, thick nose, and bull-neck attested. It was a strange freak of Fate which had made him the guardian of the morals of society and the upholder of law and order in a modern civilized community. By temperament and disposition he belonged to the full-blooded type of humanity which found its best exemplars in the early Muscovite Czars, and, if Fate had so willed it, would have revelled in similar pursuits of vice, oppression, and torture. As Fate had ironically made a police official of him, he had to content himself with letting off the superfluous steam of his tremendous temperament by oppressing the criminal classes, and he had performed that duty so thoroughly that before he became the travelling companion of kings his name had been a terror to the underworld of London, who feared and detested his ferocity, his unscrupulous methods of dealing with them, and his wide knowledge of their class.

He was a recognized hero of the British public, which on one occasion had presented him with a testimonial for his capture of a desperado who had been terrorizing the East End of London. But Merrington disdained such tokens of popular approval. He regarded the public, which he was paid to protect, as a pack of fools. For him, there were only two classes of humanity—fools and rogues. The respectable portion of the population constituted the former, and criminals the latter. He had the lowest possible opinion of humanity as a whole, and his favourite expression, in professional conversation, was: "human nature being what it is. … " He was still a mighty force in Scotland Yard, although he had passed his usefulness and reached the ornamental stage of his career, rarely condescending to investigate a case personally.

His present visit to the moat-house was one of those rare occasions, and was due to the action of Captain Stanhill, the Chief Constable of Sussex, who was seated near him. Captain Stanhill was a short stout man, with a round, fresh-coloured face, and short sturdy legs and arms. He wore a tweed coat of the kind known to tailors as "a sporting lounge," and his little legs were encased in knickerbockers and leather gaiters, which were spattered with mud, as though he had ridden some distance that morning. He was a very different type from Superintendent Merrington—a gentleman by birth and education, a churchman, and a county magnate. He never did anything so dangerous as to think, but accepted the traditions and rules of his race and class as his safe guide through life. Like most Englishmen of his station of life, he was endowed with just sufficient intelligence to permit him to slide along his little groove of life with some measure of satisfaction to himself and pleasure to his neighbours. He was a sound judge of cattle and horses, but of human nature he knew nothing whatever, and his first act, on being informed of the murder at the moat-house, was to ring up Scotland Yard and request it to send down one of its most trusted officials to investigate the circumstances. In reply to this call for assistance, Superintendent Merrington, not unmindful of the county standing and influence of the Herediths, had decided to investigate the case himself, and had brought with him two satellites—a finger-print expert who was at that moment paring his own finger-nails with a pocket-knife as he stared vacantly out of the library window, and an official photographer, who was upstairs taking photographs in the death chamber.

Seated near the finger-print expert was a police official of middle-age, Inspector Weyling, of the Sussex County Police. He was a saturnine sort of man, with a hooked nose, a skin like parchment, and a perfectly bald sugar-loaf head, surmounted at the top by a wen as large as a duck-egg. His deferential attitude and obsequious tone whenever Superintendent Merrington chose to address a remark to him indicated that he had a proper official respect for the rank and standing of that gentleman. Inspector Weyling was merely a police official. He had no personal characteristics whatever, unless a hobby for breeding Belgian rabbits, and a profound belief that Mr. Lloyd George was the greatest statesman the world had ever seen, could be said to constitute a temperament.

The fifth man was Detective Caldew, who had just completed a narrative of the events of the previous night for the benefit of his colleagues, but more especially for Superintendent Merrington, in whose hands lay the power of directing the investigations of the crime. It was by no wish of Detective Caldew that Superintendent Merrington had been brought into the case. Caldew thought when the county inspector arrived and found a Scotland Yard man at work he would be only too glad to allow him to go on with the case, and he anticipated no difficulty in obtaining the consent of his official superiors at Scotland Yard to continuing the investigations he had commenced. But Inspector Weyling, when notified of the crime by Sergeant Lumbe, had telephoned to the Chief Constable for instructions. The latter, distrustful of the ability of the county police to bring such an atrocious murderer to Justice, had begged the help of Scotland Yard, with the result that Superintendent Merrington and his assistants appeared at the moat-house in the early morning before the astonished eyes of Caldew, who was taking a walk in the moat-house garden after a night of fruitless investigations.

In the arrival of Merrington, Caldew saw all his fine hopes of promotion dashed to the ground. He was by no means confident that Merrington would permit him to take any further share in the investigations, but he was quite certain that if he did, and the murderer was captured through their joint efforts, very little of the credit would fall to his share when such a famous detective as Merrington was connected with the case. Merrington would see to that.

Caldew, in his narration of the facts of the murder, laid emphasis on the mysterious nature of the crime, in the hope that Merrington might deem it wiser to return to London and leave him in charge of the case, rather than risk a failure which would greatly damage his own reputation. Merrington listened to him gloomily. He fully realized the difficult task ahead of the police, and his temper was not improved in consequence.

"Apparently the murderer has got clean away without leaving a trace behind him?" he said.

"Yes."

"No sign of any weapon?"

"No."

"Anything taken?"

"No. Miss Heredith says nothing was taken from the room, and nothing is missing from the house."

"The motive was not robbery then," remarked Captain Stanhill.

"It may have been," responded Merrington. "Caldew says the first intimation of the crime was the murdered woman screaming. The scream was followed in a few seconds by the revolver shot. If she screamed when she saw the murderer enter her room, he may well have feared interruption and capture, and bolted without stealing anything."

"Why did he murder her, then, in that case?" asked Captain Stanhill.

"To prevent subsequent identification. Many burglars proceed to murder for that reason. I know plenty of old hands who would commit half a dozen murders rather than face the prospect of five years' imprisonment. I do not say that burglary was the motive in this case, but we must not lose sight of the possibility."

"It seems a strange case," murmured Inspector Weyling absently. He was thinking, as he spoke, of his rabbits, and wondering whether his wife would remember to give the lop-eared doe with the litter a little milk in the course of the morning.

"It's a very sad case," said Captain Stanhill. "Poor young thing!" The Chief Constable was a human being before he was a police official, and his face showed plainly that he was stricken with horror by the story of the crime.

"It's a damned remarkable case," exclaimed Merrington, in his booming voice. "I do not remember its parallel. An English lady is murdered in her home, with a crowd of people sitting at dinner in the room underneath, and the murderer gets clean away, without leaving a trace. No weapon, no finger-prints or footprints, and no clue of any kind."

Caldew had been hoping to get an opportunity of telling Merrington privately about the missing trinket, but he realized that he was not doing his duty by delaying the explanation.

"There was something which might have helped us as a clue," he said. "Last night, while I was examining Mrs. Heredith's bedroom, I saw a small trinket lying on the floor near the bedside."

"What sort of a trinket?" asked Merrington.

"A small bar brooch."

"Where is it?"

"I do not know," replied Caldew awkwardly. "I left it where I saw it, hidden in the carpet, thinking it possible that the person who had lost it might return in search of it, but while I was downstairs it disappeared."

"It is rather strange," said Merrington thoughtfully. "I am not inclined to think there is anything in it to help us," he added, after a moment's consideration. "Still, I will look into it later. Why did you leave the trinket in the room, Caldew?"

"I thought it possible that if the owner had anything to do with the crime he—or she—might return for it," said Caldew. "So I left it where I found it, and watched the room from the end of the passage."

"A murderer doesn't go about wearing a cheap trinket, and, if he did, he wouldn't risk his neck coming back to look for it. The brooch was more likely dropped by one of the maidservants, who picked it up again."

"Would a girl go into a room where there was a dead body?"

"A country wench would. English countrywomen have pretty strong nerves. You ought to know that. But why did you leave the room if you expected the owner of the trinket to return in search of it?"

"I was called downstairs to see Mr. Musard. An unused outside door which is generally kept locked was discovered unlocked by the butler before the murder was committed. As the door opens on a staircase leading to the left wing, Mr. Musard thought the butler's discovery had some bearing on the crime."