Читать книгу The Secret of High Eldersham - Cecil John Charles Street - Страница 6

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Inspector Young had despatched Viney on his errand as much to be left alone as in the hope that the constable would secure any useful information. He realised that he was thrown entirely upon his own resources, and rather gloried in the fact. He recognised in Colonel Bateman a chief constable who, while anxious to help in every possible way, had no knowledge of police work other than routine. Bass, he gathered, was bitterly jealous of the affront put upon the local force by the summoning of the man from Scotland Yard, and it was pretty certain that he would not be sorry to see the failure of the investigation. And Viney—well, he was just the usual village constable, nothing more and nothing less.

The Inspector smiled as he considered Viney and his queer stories. It was perfectly plain to him that the man, an ordinary countryman with a veneer of police training, had been so long in High Eldersham that he had become saturated with local legend. In his own interests, thought Young, he ought to be transferred to a town where he would have a chance of coming into contact with the realities of life. But, for the present, he could be useful, if only as a means of introducing Young to the local worthies.

Now, as to the crime itself. It seemed quite obvious from the position of the body as first seen by Viney, and also from Dr. Barrett’s examination, that Whitehead had been taken unawares. The probability was that he was dozing in his chair over the fire, and that his assailant had crept up from behind without being heard. The Inspector had already examined the bar very carefully, and had found no signs of blood in any other part of the room. This disposed of the possibility of the body having been moved after the blow was struck.

The next point of interest was the state of the doors and windows upon Viney’s arrival. There were only two doors to the house. The front door, which was the one used by the customers, opened directly into the bar. This had been locked, but the key had not been in place. The back door, opening into the kitchen, had also been locked, and Viney had found the key on the inside. All the windows had been closed and fastened.

Where was the key of the front door? If Whitehead had been alive at ten o’clock, when the bar closed, he would, according to his usual habit, have locked the front door. He might either have left the key in the lock, or have put it in his pocket. Had the latter been the case, any one possessing a duplicate key could have opened the front door from outside and entered the bar.

Young approached the body, which had by now been laid out upon a table, and with deft fingers searched the pockets. He found several trifles of no importance, among which was a bunch of keys, all obviously too small to fit the door. This was interesting. The front door would not have been locked till ten o’clock. Suppose that Whitehead’s customers had retired early, say about half-past nine. Whitehead might well have seated himself in his chair by the fire, leaving the door unlocked in case some belated customer would present himself before ten o’clock, and then dozed off. If any one had been awaiting the opportunity to murder Whitehead, he could have crept in silently, committed the crime and departed, locking the door behind him and taking the key with him. This would have been a perfectly natural procedure on his part, in order to ensure that no one should enter the house and discover the crime. He would have also taken the precaution of putting out the lamps. This theory placed the time at which the crime had been committed between the moment when the last customer left the house and ten o’clock.

The Inspector had reached this stage in his analysis when Viney returned, in an obvious state of suppressed excitement. He closed the door carefully behind him, and walked down the room to where the Inspector sat. “I’ve found out something I’d like to tell you about, sir,” he said impressively.

“Very well, Viney, fire away!” replied Young cheerfully.

“It’s like this, sir. You remember me telling you about Ned Portch, him that Mr. Whitehead turned out and refused to serve? Well, sir, Portch was up here last night, and didn’t get home till eleven o’clock.”

“That sounds curious. Are you quite sure of your facts, Viney?”

“Quite sure, sir, Mrs. Portch told me herself. Now this is the way I look at it, sir. Portch was no friend of Mr. Whitehead’s, as anybody in the village can tell you. He would have jumped at the chance of doing him an injury, to get his own back for being turned out of the house. And there’s more in it than that, sir. Mrs. Portch went all of a dither as soon as she saw me. She’d got something on her mind, I could see that at once. She didn’t ask me into the house, and she wasn’t going to tell me any more than she could help. She knows something about the business, I’ll warrant, sir.”

“That certainly sounds interesting, Viney,” remarked the Inspector. “You didn’t see Portch himself, I suppose?”

“No, sir, he wasn’t back from work. He’s one of Farmer Gulliford’s men, and has worked for him since he was a boy. Quiet sort of chap, except when he’s got a drop of liquor in him, when he’s apt to fly into a temper for nothing.”

“I see. And what time does Portch usually get home in the evening?”

“Depends upon the season of the year, sir. I reckon he ought to be back between six and seven this evening, sir.”

“I think that I will go down to the village about seven, and interview this man Portch, leaving you up here in charge. Now, tell me exactly what passed between you and Mrs. Portch, what you said to her and what she said to you.”

Viney complied with this demand, and, when he had finished, the Inspector lighted a pipe and smoked for some minutes in silence. Portch, it appeared, had remained among the last of the customers at the Rose and Crown the previous evening. He might well have left the house before closing time, and waited about outside until Whitehead was alone. Then, when the coast was clear, he could have peeped in through the window as Viney had done later. The lamps would have been alight, and he could have seen clearly the interior of the room. Then, when he was satisfied that Whitehead was dozing, he could have entered once more and committed the crime.

The deed accomplished, his natural instinct would have been to get rid of the weapon and the key. He had probably carried them to some remote place, possibly an unfrequented spot on the bank of the river. Having disposed of them, he would have returned home, all of which would have taken some time, and would account for his not having reached his cottage before eleven.

This was no more than a possible theory which fitted in with the circumstances. But to the Inspector it seemed not improbable. He knew from experience that brutal murders, inspired by some entirely inadequate motive, were not uncommon. They were nearly always due to the workings of an unbalanced mind, brooding over some fancied grievance, until the lust of blood was awakened. Then the hitherto harmless and peaceful individual became a criminal, endowed with the cunning and ruthlessness of a savage. He would await his opportunity and deliver the blow. And, the deed once perpetrated, he would return to normal sanity. It was not unlikely that the murder of Whitehead was due to such causes.

At a few minutes to seven, the Inspector left the Rose and Crown and walked down towards the village. He had obtained from Viney an exact description of Portch’s cottage, and had no difficulty in identifying it. It stood surrounded by a well-kept garden, at the end of which was a fowl-house and a pigsty. Young glanced round him as he walked up the path, and then knocked sharply at the door.

Mrs. Portch answered his summons, and Young saw at once that Viney was correct in his statement that she had something on her mind. Her face dropped at the sight of this stranger standing on her doorstep, and she remained for a few seconds wild-eyed, incapable of speech or motion.

The Inspector took advantage of her bewilderment to advance into the doorway. “Mrs. Portch, I believe?” he said. “I am Detective-Inspector Young from Scotland Yard, and I should like a few words with you and your husband.”

She recoiled a step with a pitiful, half-strangled cry. Young closed the door behind him and continued. “I should like to see your husband first, Mrs. Portch. He is back from work by this time, I expect?”

At last Mrs. Portch found her voice. “Yes, sir, he’s been home, but he’s gone out again, and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“That is rather unfortunate, as I wanted to speak to him,” said Young. “Never mind, perhaps you will be able to help me, Mrs. Portch. I am looking for a man who is believed to be hiding in this part of the country. He is believed to be with a party of gipsies. Constable Viney tells me that your husband was out late last night, and I thought that possibly he might have seen a stranger about.”

Mrs. Portch’s face lost something of its terror at this explanation. “Yes, sir, Portch was out the whole evening,” she replied eagerly. “He was only in here for a mouthful of tea about seven, and then he went straight up to the Rose and Crown. I didn’t see him again till nigh on eleven o’clock, and then he came straight to bed. But he didn’t say nothing to me about seeing no strangers, sir.”

During this conversation the Inspector had gradually advanced into the kitchen, Mrs. Portch retiring before him and giving ground slowly. It was plain that she wished to get him out of the house, and was at her wits’ end how to do so without arousing his suspicions. That there was some secret hidden within the walls of the cottage, the Inspector was certain. Perhaps it was that Portch was actually in one of the rooms.

Without waiting for an invitation, the Inspector seated himself, and began to search in his pockets. His every sense was on the alert; from where he sat he could see both the front and the back doors, and he listened intently for any sound which would reveal the presence of a third person in the house. At last he produced a bundle of official looking papers, of which he selected one. “That is a description of the wanted man, Mrs. Portch,” he said deliberately. “I will read it to you. Height about five feet eight, slightly built, swarthy complexion, black eyes and hair. Has a mole on the right side of his chin and a thick, dark moustache. When last seen was wearing breeches, a long coat and a cloth cap. You haven’t seen anybody answering to that description about the village lately, have you, Mrs. Portch?”

“No, sir, that I haven’t,” replied Mrs. Portch positively. “Nor Portch either, or he’d sure to have mentioned it. ’Tisn’t often we get strangers in High Eldersham, sir, and a man like that would never pass without being noticed.”

This reply scarcely astonished the Inspector, who had invented the description as he went along. He was merely endeavouring to gain time, in which to examine every inch of the room in which he sat. His penetrating glance was already absorbing every detail. One side of the room was occupied by the fireplace, with a cupboard on either side of it. Against the opposite wall stood a massive dresser, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, the shelves of which were crowded with miscellaneous objects. It was clear that Mrs. Portch had recourse to these shelves when she was at a loss where to put anything. Besides the household china, displayed in all the glory of its garish pattern, there were stockings awaiting darning, useless ornaments bearing the legend “A present from Clacton,” or some other popular seaside town. It seemed as though the shelves themselves did not suffice to hold all the objects that Mrs. Portch consigned to the dresser. Hooks had been screwed at the sides, and upon these hung things like toasting forks and tea cosies. Among them was a crudely moulded wax doll, apparently used as a pin-cushion, since into it was stuck a darning needle, with a piece of tape threaded through the eye.

All these trifles Young noticed, while he sought for some means of driving Mrs. Portch from the room for a moment. At last an idea came to him, and he acted upon it without any great hopes that he would achieve his end. “Well, I am very sorry to have troubled you, Mrs. Portch,” he said pleasantly. “I am sorry your husband was not in, I shall have to ask him if he saw any strangers last night, if only to satisfy my own mind. Perhaps I shall meet him in the village somewhere. By the way, how shall I recognise him if I do? I suppose you haven’t got a photograph of him you could show me?”

Mrs. Portch hesitated, and for the moment Young thought he had failed. Then, apparently, she decided that there was no harm in complying with the request. “If you’ll wait a minute, sir, I’ll get you one,” she said. “It is in the front room.”

She had scarcely passed through the door when Young sprang from his chair with the swiftness and silence of a cat. He opened the drawer of the dresser, peered into it eagerly and, with a sudden smile of triumph drew from it something that flashed for an instant before he thrust it between his waistcoat and his shirt. By the time that Mrs. Portch returned, he was seated once more in his chair, his coat buttoned as though for departure.

Mrs. Portch handed him the photograph. “That’s my husband, sir,” she said, with a strange tremor in her voice.

Young studied it for a moment. “Thank you, Mrs. Portch,” he said as he returned it. “I shall recognise him now if I meet him.” He rose to his feet and turned towards the door. “By the way, Mrs. Portch, have you any children?” he asked, as he stood on the threshold.

“Two girls, sir,” replied Mrs. Portch. “But they’re grown up and in service in Gippingford.”

“It must be lonely for you without them, Mrs. Portch. Good-evening, I hope I have not troubled you.”

Young walked swiftly back to the Rose and Crown. Viney had pulled the curtains and lighted the lamp in his absence. The Inspector passed into the kitchen, beckoning to Viney to follow him. There he withdrew the object which he had hidden under his waistcoat and laid it on the table. It was a butcher’s knife, bright and recently sharpened.

“Well, Viney, what do you think of that?” he asked in a tone of satisfaction.