Читать книгу The Crime in the Crypt - Carolyn Wells - Страница 4

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WELL, YOU MUST admit it was a surprising sight, to say the least.

A dead man of today, in an old, crumbling sarcophagus, in an old, crumbling crypt in the old, medieval cathedral at Welbury.

No member of a sight-seeing tour would expect to see such a sight or would fail to lose a little of his equanimity if he did see it.

As for me, I not only lost a little of my equanimity, but my whole consignment of that valuable and desirable commodity went by the board.

For I was the one who first saw it,—saw that modern corpse in that ancient casket, and I was so flabbergasted that I almost yelled aloud in my fear and terror.

But though my poise was seriously disturbed, my common sense stood by me, and I quickly realized that I must meet this emergency as a hundred per cent American should meet it, and behave as a member of the Tripp and Hastings Personally Conducted Foreign Tours Company would be expected to behave.

I was ahead of the group being conducted through the old cathedral by a venerable verger, who intoned his lecture in cultivated English accents.

The group numbered about twenty-five, for the Tripp and Hastings concern was of the first class, and limited its clientele as to quality and quantity.

Personally, I was the despair of all vergers and caretakers, for I just couldn’t hang back and listen decorously to their droning voices. I wanted always to forge ahead and see what was coming next, and learn for myself whether I was going to be interested or not.

It was, I often thought, a mistake, my coming over with a conducted party at all. I am by nature a conductor myself, rather than a passive passenger.

But I was only too thankful to make the trip to Europe, and I had wasted no time after receiving my uncle William’s legacy. I betook myself at once to the agencies and was quickly informed that a conducted party was the best way to travel. I was told that all one-time prejudices against such arrangements had been overcome, and that in this year of grace, a conducted tour was just the very best plan ever.

Especially, I was informed, if the tour chosen was one of those engineered by the Tripp and Hastings Company, and so positively was this affirmed, that I came out of their office with my tickets arranged for and my pockets filled with folders and leaflets of many materialized air-castles.

Nor did I really regret it.

The summer had been delightful, the tour most successful, and now, the richer by three months’ travel experiences and several more or less intimate friends, I was about to turn my steps homeward.

These last weeks included glimpses of the southern counties of England, and our leisurely progress gave us the delights of beautiful Devonshire and picturesque Cornwall as well as some cathedral towns on our way to Canterbury and Dover, from which point we were to cross the Channel and go home on a French steamer.

Although an acquired taste, I had grown fond of cathedrals. I had learned, too, to understand and appreciate their points, for architecture was one of my hobbies and antiquity had always held a charm for me.

So our party was personally conducted that lovely August morning to the Welbury Cathedral, where we were handed over to the tender mercies of the old verger.

Absorbed in his discourse, I followed him through nave and transept, choir and shrine, but during some of his more long-winded descriptions or explanations, my attention wandered and I cast about me to see what might happen next.

We were near the dark little staircase that descended to the crypt, and moved by a sudden impulse to explore, I slipped away and ran down the steps.

The crypt was Norman, and passing through a chapel of the undercroft, I came upon a beautiful chantry and then the tombs.

But here there was much evidence of ruin and depredation. Aside from the great tombs, there were many small rooms, which oftener than not, contained a few broken columns, with bits of pilasters and cornices lying on the floor, and stone coffins empty and overturned, here and there among the débris.

There was no untidiness, these stray bits were relics of dead and gone centuries, of interest to the archaeologist and antiquarian.

I was about to examine some of them more closely, when I saw what seemed to be a sarcophagus, containing a human being.

Though not as light as in the church above, the crypt was only a little dusky and in the dimness I discerned the outlines of a man, in modern garb, lying in the stone coffin.

The coffin was on the floor, and as I neared it, to look more carefully, I saw the man was dead. There could be no doubt about that, for it was only too apparent that he had been shot in the left eye.

Stunned at the sight, I stood a moment trying to collect my wits, while my brain functioned with amazing rapidity.

“Shot!” it seemed to say; “Killed! Murdered! In the crypt—dead, in a coffin—” and then I laughed foolishly, as an idiot might, and babbled, “of course, dead—in a coffin—where else should a dead man be?”

The sound of my own half-witted cackle brought me to my senses, and I straightened up and admonished myself.

“Stop your nonsense! Don’t act like a fool! What is to be done?”

Occasion for action always affected me as a stimulant and a spur.

I awoke and became my normal self in a jiffy. I sprinted back to the staircase by which I had descended, and rejoined the group above, still trailing the droning verger on his rounds.

I looked doubtfully at the verger.

No, he was too old, too root-bound, to take any active part in this matter. I must seek some more energetic helper.

So I hunted about until I found a younger and more athletic-looking caretaker or official of some sort.

I had to tell him my story three times before I could get it into his head. But what I had seen was so vivid in my own brain, I finally convinced him it was no figment of the imagination, and he consented to go with me down to the crypt.

He could not doubt his own senses, and stood looking at the strange sight as if petrified himself.

“Will they come down here? The crowd?” I asked.

“I haven’t a notion. It may be. Some parties do,—some not.”

“Well, they mustn’t come,” I said, annoyed at his dazed helplessness. “I’ll go and tell the verger not to. There are ladies in the party, they mustn’t come down here.”

“Who is it?” he said, staring at the dead man.

“Good Lord, I don’t know who it is,” I returned. “We must get the police, or the cathedral authorities or somebody.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding his head, as if agreeing that it was a nice day.

I saw he could be of no help, and that whatever was to be done as a preliminary measure must be done by me.

“All right, buddy,” I said. “You stay here and I’ll go up and see what’s to be done.”

“No,” he said, coming to life at last. “I must go, it is my duty. You stay here. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“No,” said I, as casually as he had spoken, “no, I didn’t kill him.”

He went away, once more the stolid Britisher, and I stayed behind, wondering who the dead man was and who had dealt him his death.

I went a little nearer the coffin, though careful to make no confusing footprints.

But there seemed to be no possibility of indicative footprints, for the floor of the place was a sort of broken and gravelly stone, patched here and there with cement, which, in its turn had broken and gravelled.

There were six coffins in the room, I counted, besides some fragments of others. The room itself was low-vaulted and irregularly shaped. It had two windows, high in the wall, and opening out on fresh green grass.

The atmosphere, though not definitely unpleasant, was old and musty of smell and damp of feeling.

I took a good look at the dead man, and though I didn’t recognize him I felt certain I had seen him before.

He was an American, of that I was sure, and his general effect was that of a tourist. He was not of our party, that I knew, but he had the unmistakable get-up of a man travelling for pleasure.

Moreover, there were several of his belongings, or apparently such, scattered about.

Flung over a near-by coffin was a light-weight overcoat, and a hat; near them, on the floor was an umbrella and a camera, and a folded newspaper.

I stared harder than ever as the strange situation crystallized before me.

Why should that man, or any man, take off his hat and coat, arrange himself comfortably in an old coffin and let himself be shot?

For shot he had been, there was no other explanation of that wound that seemed to include an eye, a portion of the temple and a part of the cheek.

I looked about for the weapon, but saw none, and I had no intention of investigating from any nearer point of vantage than where I now stood.

Again I scanned the floor for footprints, but all the marks there were so vague and indistinct as to be of no indication whatever.

I did see some whitish yellow grains, and I wondered what they could be.

Unable to answer my own questions concerning them, I scraped up a few of them, and placing them in an old letter I had with me, I put it back in my pocket.

And then people came. Two or three dignitaries or custodians of the cathedral and three or four of the constabulary.

They all looked at me sharply, and I wondered anew why it is that the man who first sees a victim of murder is invariably picked for the murderer.

It seems to me absurd. Had I been the man who did that killing, I never should have called attention to the deed!

No, I should have been in the next county by that time.

But here I was, being put through a gruelling by the police in regard to the murder of a man unknown to me.

“Your name, sir?” they said, sternly.

And I answered truthfully, “Mottram Oakley.”

I didn’t like my Christian name any better than they did, but having had it wished on me by my sponsors in baptism, of course, I had to stick it.

I informed them further, in response to their fervent pleas for information, that I was from New York City, U. S. A. and was on a pleasure tour under the auspices of Tripp and Hastings, Ltd.

That I was for the current few days at the Terrace Garden Hotel on High Street.

“Then you belong to that party now being shown through the cathedral!” declared the most inquisitorial of the policemen, and I admitted his deduction correct.

“Do you know this man?” he asked, pointing with his pencil to the quiet figure in the stone coffin.

I hesitated a moment, for I strongly desired to keep out of this mess if possible. But a glint in the eye of my questioner gave me an immediate impression that I’d do better to tell the truth, so I did.

“I don’t know him,” I said, positively, “that is, I do not know his name. But I have an indistinct impression of having seen him before, though this I cannot swear to. I only can say, that I think I have seen him before, but if so, I do not know who he is, and I am sure I have never spoken to him, nor he to me.”

“H’m,” he remarked irritatingly, “you tell it well, but how do I know you are speaking the truth?”

“Look here, Mr. Snelgrove,” I said, wrathfully—I had gathered in his name by this time—” it’s a detective’s business to know when a man is speaking the truth. And, too, if I knew that man’s identity, I should be only too glad to divulge it, for I feel pretty sure he’s an American; and if a countryman of mine has come to grief in a foreign land, I’m ready to do anything I can to track down his assailant. Now, get it into your head that I am telling the truth, and we’ll get along faster. How do you propose to learn who the man is? If, as I think, he is an American tourist, it ought not to be difficult to find out his name.”

“No,” said Snelgrove, looking at me with that provoking dilatoriness that characterizes the British official class. “Do you think he belongs to the party now going through the cathedral?”’

“I do not,” I replied. “That party is a small one, not more than twenty odd, and if he had belonged to it, I should of course have known him. All the members of that party know one another, at least by sight.”

“I see,” said Snelgrove, and fell into one of his brown studies.

“Well,” said another policeman, who, it seemed, rejoiced in the name of Pollard, “if that’s all we can get out of Mr. Oakley, we might better go on with our business.”

Snelgrove nodded silently, and Pollard and an assistant went busily to work on the mysterious occupant of the coffin.

I watched with deepest interest and was surprised at the neatness and despatch shown by the men whom I had deemed apathetic and inefficient.

They fairly sprang into life, and they deftly and gently investigated every detail of the dead man’s person and effects and turned to Snelgrove to render a report at once.

“He’s Warren Glynn,” Pollard announced; “an American, travelling over here. He lives in New Jersey, in the States. He’s staying here at The Lanthorn, on Park Place. There’s no doubt about these things, for his pockets are full of letters and bills, and here’s his initials on his handkerchief, and on his penknife, and on his wrist watch.”

“All right,” said Snelgrove, holding up a hand to stop this flow of identification evidence. “That’s enough. Now, doctor, what killed him?”

A quiet-mannered medical man stepped forward, and after a very short examination, replied that the unfortunate Mr. Glynn was shot and killed by someone standing about two or three feet from the coffin, in which receptacle Mr. Glynn must necessarily have been when he was killed.

“Was he then, unconscious?” I cried out, unable to reconcile otherwise the astonishing circumstances.

The doctor flashed a penetrating glance my way, and ignored my question.

And now Snelgrove came to life himself.

It was uncanny, the way these men had of lying dormant until their turn came, and then becoming suddenly alert.

Snelgrove went to the coffin, looked carefully at the inert body therein and then said:

“Yes, he was shot after he was put in the coffin.”

“Put in?” interrupted Doctor Stapley.

“Well,” said Snelgrove, “I can’t see him climbing into the coffin, lying all straight and proper, as he is, and then calmly accepting a shooting. I assume he must have been put in the coffin after his death, from some other cause, and then shot to give the appearance of a murder by firearms.”

“Won’t do,” Doctor Stapley said, after a further scrutiny of the victim. “The shot that killed him, that shot whose effects you can so plainly see, was fired at the man while he was alive. I could tell in a moment if it had been fired at a man already dead. He may have been unconscious—”

Now that was the suggestion I had made and which had been so summarily dismissed without a word. But I realized that at the time I voiced the question they were not ready for it, and now they were. So I determined to keep quiet unless personally addressed.

“You find no other cause of death, then?”

“None,” returned the doctor.

Snelgrove looked around at the various articles near by, so ordinary in general appearance, so sinister in view of a murder committed there.

He picked up the coat and the hat, and studied them in connection with the clothing the dead man was wearing.

There was nothing inharmonious. The quiet, well-made suit of clothes was such as might be worn by a man who had chosen the overcoat, yet, stay, was it?

The suit was of better quality, and a trifle more expensive-looking than the overcoat. Also, it was of plainer taste.

The suit was of dark blue material, with a hairline stripe of lighter blue. The overcoat was of light weight, and was of brown plaid, an inconspicuous, almost invisible plaid of varying shades of brown.

“Don’t look like the same man’s choice,” I said, and received a snub for my pains.

“It may easily be,” Snelgrove said, coldly, “for the suit of clothes is American-made, while the overcoat was bought in London.”

“No intent of matching, then,” I returned, airily, for I had no intention of being put upon by this superior complex in uniform. “What about the hat?”

“The hat was bought here in town,” I was condescendingly informed.

But there was no doubt as to the identity of the victim of this dastardly crime. Warren Glynn it must be, for the camera had his name inside on a card, and all the belongings and clothing were mute witnesses to the same.

“Send for the hall porter or his representative from The Lanthorn,” Snelgrove said. “And now, what evidences of the murderer can we find? The victim is definitely placed, now for the criminal.”

But this was not so easy. No amount of hunting on the part of the detectives brought forth any evidence or any clue as to the perpetrator of the deed.

Amazed and astounded at the absolute dearth of traces of the villain’s presence, they began to talk of suicide.

“Then where’s the weapon?” I said, unable to keep my vow of silence.

I regretted my speech, however, for with one accord they turned on me as if I had confessed my own complicity in the crime.

“You speak lightly of the weapon,” said the man named Pollard; “perhaps you know something of its whereabouts.”

I was tempted to answer flippantly, but I realized the foolishness of that just in time. I said:

“No, Mr. Pollard, if I knew anything at all about the crime, the criminal, or the weapon, I would tell you. Unless it incriminated myself, in which case I should never have referred to it at all.”

He looked at me dubiously, and I made a fresh resolve to say nothing at all, for that way danger most certainly lay.

In response to the police summons, a messenger appeared from The Lanthorn. He was a pleasant-spoken young man, and though noncommittal in expression and bearing, I felt it not unlikely that he would prove of more importance as time went on.

But he was not that type, after all, and when he was confronted with the grewsome object in the stone coffin, he gave a shriek and covered his eyes.

Had he been the murderer himself he couldn’t have acted more upset and flustered.

“There, there,” Snelgrove said, kindly enough, “pull yourself together, Larkin. We just want you to tell us who this feller is.”

Larkin peered out through his fingers, gave a convulsive shudder as his glance rested on the face, and turned to the pile of clothing and belongings.

“It’s Mr. Glynn,” he said, his voice shaking. “It’s him all right, and that’s his hat and coat and camera, yes, and his guide book, he always carried that guide book, with a yellow ribbon book marker—see?”

We all saw that inch-wide yellow ribbon, and opening the book, we saw that it was at the pages that described the Welbury Cathedral.

But we had no doubt that the dead man was Warren Glynn; what we wanted to know was who had brought him low.

Snelgrove allowed the trembling Larkin to turn his back on the coffin, and then questioned him.

“You knew Mr. Glynn well?”

“Only as I know anybody who stays at the house a few days or so.”

“He had friends there?”

“Everybody was friendly to him. He was a sociable sort. But if you mean personal friends, he came alone, and he didn’t make any real chums, that I know of.”

“Did he make any enemies?

“Oh, I’m sure he didn’t. He was always smiling and jolly. He would sit around and talk and smoke with this one or that one, and they would laugh and joke, but he never quarrelled—oh, no.”

“Then,” Snelgrove said, decidedly, “this is the work of some enemy he had, of whom we know nothing. Somebody who trailed him, perhaps, or shadowed him, but not somebody who had a sudden quarrel with him in this town.”

“He took pictures often?” said Pollard, looking at the camera.

“Most always carried that thing with him. Had a lot of films printed first day he got here. Often showed his pictures to anybody who’d look at ’em.”

“Was he a bore?” asked Snelgrove.

“Oh, no, not quite that. Most folks liked to talk with him. But he was long-winded, I guess. Oh, say, now, he’d only been with us three or four days. I can’t know all about him.”

“No, of course not,” Snelgrove soothed him. “Now, think once more, and if you can’t think of anyone—anyone at all—who had a grievance against him, you can run along.”

“No, I can’t think of such a one,” Larkin declared, after a pause for thought. “But there must be somebody.”

“Yes,” Snelgrove agreed, a little drily, “there must be somebody.”

Larkin was dismissed, and he made a quick getaway, not glancing over his shoulder for another glimpse of that grisly sight.

And yet, save for the disfigurement on one side of his face, Warren Glynn looked no more grewsome than any dead person at his own funeral.

“Now,” Snelgrove said, “we’ll take Mr. Glynn to the morgue, but we’ll first have the cathedral emptied and closed. There’ll be plenty of red tape to this, a deed of blood done in a church, you know. And then we must look up Glynn’s people, and then begins the real work, the hunting down of the murderer. You may go, Mr. Oakley, but be ready to come at once if summoned.”