Читать книгу Sea Fog - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 9

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We left Trawlerson making his arrangements with the landlord and landlady for a bed that night, and went out into the street. By that time I was beginning to feel the reaction of the recent doings, and I should have been thankful to go back to Trace’s cottage and lie hidden away from everybody. But Preece had been busy on telegraph and telephone, and the village was being invaded by police officials from Chichester, and by pressmen from the neighbouring towns. All these people wanted to get hold of me, and Trace had his work set in his self-constituted part of guardian. The pressmen we could elude or choke off, but the police were different, and I had to submit to examination and cross-examination until I almost wished that I was back in Andrew Macpherson’s shop. And once or twice I felt that there was an element of suspicion in the manner of some of these matter-of-fact, hard-faced men: it seemed to be against me that I had chosen to sleep out all night, and once or twice I felt the blood rush about my ears as one or other of them questioned me strictly about myself and my past. I got sick of that, and grew restive, too.

“If you’re having any doubts about me,” I suddenly flared up as a man who, they told me, was a very great personage in the police, was turning me inside and out with his questions, “you’d better ask Mr. Andrew Macpherson, of Horsham, about me! He’ll pretty soon tell you that my word’s as good as his own! He knows me——”

“You needn’t bother yourself, my lad!” said my questioner, with a dry smile “We’ve sent for Mr. Macpherson already. And don’t you get huffy!—this is a case of murder, and a bad one, and we don’t leave any stone unturned in such cases. You tell your tale all right—but we don’t know you, you know.”

They let me go home with Captain Trace after that, but I think there was a secret understanding between them and him about his having charge of me, and for the rest of that day—or, at any rate, until Mr. Macpherson arrived during the late afternoon—I never looked out of Trace’s parlour window without seeing a policeman near at hand; the village seemed to swarm with policemen. But Andrew Macpherson came, and he talked to the bigwigs in his forcible way, and thenceforward the police treated me with the respect due to a credible and trustworthy witness. Still, whenever they returned to their questioning of me, I had to give them keen disappointment—from start to finish I told them flatly that it was an absolute impossibility for me to identify the man I had seen struggling with Kest in the sea fog. I had a vague, general, not-much-to-be-trusted impression of his figure, but not the slightest of his face.

Trace, on the strength of their previous meetings at Quarter Sessions, greeted Macpherson as an old acquaintance, and took him home to his cottage. Andrew favoured me with one of his sly smiles.

“Aweel, Tom!” he said as he sat him down. “Ye were longing for adventure and the like o’ that, and, my certie, ye seem to ha’ lost no time in falling head and shoulders into one, my man!”

“None of my seeking, Mr. Macpherson!” said I. “I didn’t set out to find that sort o’ thing—I’d ha’ been thankful to escape it. But how can anybody tell what’s going to happen to ’em, Mr. Macpherson?”

“And I could dispute that wi’ you, my laddie!” said he. “It’s a fine point, but whether it belongs to the domain o’ logic, or to that o’ theology, or yet again to that o’ metapheesics, I’m no very sure. There’s such a thing as prevention by anticipation, ye ken, and for my part I’d no advise young fellows wi’ good siller in their pouches to sleep otherwhere than in a Christian-like bed. If ye’d no had them Robinson Crusoe notions in your head-piece, and had sought other quarters than yon old mill—but losh, man! what’s the use o’ talking about bygones?—the thing’s done! And beyond a bit smattering o’ the facts, Tom, I’m no very well acquaint wi’ the story—out with it, my man, and I’ll maybe form an opeenion.”

I had to tell it all over again as we three sat round Trace’s tea-table. At the end Andrew began to sniff.

“I’m no liking what I hear o’ that man Trawlerson!” he remarked, when I, supplemented in the final chapter by Trace, had come to a conclusion. “The sound of him is no to my taste! What for is a man that’s retired from his business, and by his own account has a nice bit of property and a mast in his front garden and a glass-house at his rear, going stravaging about the country, seeking an old windmill? There’s more in it than meets the eye!”

“I wish they’d riddle Trawlerson with questions as they’ve riddled me all day!” I exclaimed. “He’s a far more suspicious character than I am!”

They both replied to that pious aspiration that Trawlerson would be questioned, strictly enough, when he got before the coroner and his jurymen. I supposed that would be so, but I was not so confident that they would get much satisfaction from Trawlerson’s answers. Trawlerson, in my opinion, was the sort of man who finds small difficulty in twisting himself out of tight places.

Of Trawlerson himself we saw and heard nothing more until the following afternoon, when the inquest on Kest was opened, in the village schoolroom, close by the inn where his body lay. It was a good-sized place, that schoolroom, and it was packed to the very doors by the folk who came crowding in, not only from the village, but from all round about. In the part railed off for those most closely concerned there were, of course, no end of police, some men in plain clothes whom I took to be detectives, and some others who, said Captain Trace, were lawyers. And with one of these Trawlerson was in close conference; he remained, indeed, sitting by him, and was continually whispering with him until he himself was called to the witness-box. Andrew Macpherson said it looked suspicious that the man should be employing legal help, and he sniffed twice or thrice when Captain Trace told him that the lawyer concerned was one of the sharpest limbs in that neighbourhood. As for me, I was more interested in the coroner and his jury, wondering if their combined wisdom would result in solving the presented problem. Certainly the jurymen showed no great evidence of intellect or power of penetration—still Chissick, who, of course, was on it, looked sharper than ever, and Fewster, who was foreman, wore an air of judge-like profundity. And there was a third man, whose name I did not then know, but whom, that night, I discovered to be one Halkin, a jobbing gardener, who showed particular interest and intelligence from start to finish, and more than once broke in on the evidence with questions of his own.

There was nothing in the earlier stages of that inquest that was new to most of the people there, for by that time, the afternoon of the second day, every man, woman, and child in the district was familiar with the surface facts of the case. There was the evidence of a doctor who testified as to the nature of the dead man’s wound, and to the bruises on his body, which showed that he had been engaged in a struggle. There was the evidence of Trace as to my fetching him; of Preece as to his joining us on the hill. And then came my own. I had got so used to playing the part of narrator by that time, and did it so readily, that they let me tell my tale in my own way, without the usual formality of question and answer. There was immense interest in it, the folk listened as if spellbound; it was first-hand evidence. And nobody was more interested than the coroner, to whom, consequent on a shrewd bit of advice from Captain Trace, I addressed myself, looking at him all the time, and paying no heed to anyone else. When I had finished he gave me an approving nod.

“Very clearly told!” he said. Then he turned to the high police official who had examined me so strictly the previous afternoon. “I understand you have made enquiry into the antecedents of this witness?” he asked. “Are they satisfactory?”

“Quite satisfactory, sir,” replied the official. “He’s a lad of exceptionally good character, and to be fully depended upon. His late employer, who is, in fact, his foster-father, is here to answer any questions about him.”

“We won’t trouble him,” said the coroner. “I’m quite satisfied. Now,” he went on, turning to me, “I want to ask you some questions, Crowe. About the map which this man took from his pocket when you were watching him in the mill—you’re sure it was a map?”

“It was what I call a map, sir,” I replied. “A chart—a plan. Perhaps,” I added, after a moment’s thought, “perhaps it was more like an architect’s drawing—I’ve seen such things.”

“What was it like, now—exactly?”

“It was a sheet of paper, sir, about nine inches square. It looked to me as if it had been folded, creased, a good deal. The man handled it very gingerly, as if he were afraid of tearing it. There was a black dot in the middle, about the size of a threepenny-piece, and then lines and crosses, and, as far as I could make out, there was some lettering.”

“You say you saw this, and all the rest, through a hole in the floor—through which the old chains passed down. How much space was there between you and this map?”

“I should think about ten feet, sir.”

“You could see the marks on it clearly?”

“Some of them, sir. The black dot in the centre quite clearly.”

“And you took that black dot to refer to the mill in which the map was being consulted? Now, why?”

“Well, sir, there was the map, and there was the mill!”

“And you’d already been questioned about a mill by the man you’ve told us about—the man you met at Petworth and saw again at Graffham?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well!” said the coroner, and nodded to me to stand down. “The man last referred to is present, I think?” he went on, glancing at the official. “Let him be called!”

But before Hosea Trawlerson’s name could be pronounced, the man Halkin leaped up from his seat amongst the jurymen, pointing to me.

“I want to ask that young man a question, Mr. Coroner!” he exclaimed. “Let him stand where he is a minute. Now, young man,” he went on, “I want you to tell us something. When you looked out of the mill and saw those two men struggling, could you see their faces?”

“No!” I answered readily. “Not at all!

“Then how did you tell one from the other, young man? Answer that!”

“I don’t know that I did tell one from the other while they were actually struggling,” I replied. “They were fighting like dogs when I first saw them!—they were sort of tied up in a knot! But I knew which was which when I went out and found one dead.”

“You never saw the face of him that ran away?”

“No! That is, not clearly.”

“Could you pick him out, young man, from other men?”

“No, I couldn’t!” said I. “I’ve said all along I couldn’t.”

He looked round at his fellow-jurymen, smiled in an enigmatic fashion, and sat down. And the coroner’s officer called Hosea Trawlerson.

Trawlerson took his time. He exchanged a whispered word or two with his lawyer before stepping into the witness-box, and, once in there, he regarded coroner, jurymen, and everybody with something very like sulky defiance. But as soon as the coroner began to question him, he admitted readily that he could positively identify the dead man.

“Jabez Kest,” he said. “That’s who he is—Jabez Kest. Seafaring man, like me. That is, as I was, being now retired.”

“Do you know where Kest lived?” asked the coroner.

“I don’t! Never seen nor yet heard tell of him these twelve years. Last time I saw him was when him and me left the same ship. That was at Southampton—and, as I say, it’s twelve years since.”

“Was he a man of good character when you knew him?”

“Anything but! He was a main bad’ un, Kest! Bad lot altogether!”

“In what way?”

“Every way you can think of! But particularly in thieving—born thief!”

“Was Kest his real name?”

“Never knew him by any other.”

“How long had you known him at the period you speak of?”

“A few of years. I was with him on two ships. It was a wonder he wasn’t flung overboard off both! Always a bad lot, Kest—sure to come to a bad end!”

The coroner glanced at the police officials.

“I dare say enquiry can be made into the dead man’s antecedents,” he said curtly. “Now, witness, I want to ask some questions about yourself. You have heard the evidence of the last witness—the young man Crowe? There were certain passages relating to you. Is what he told us about his meeting and conversation with you the other night in Petworth churchyard correct?”

Trawlerson folded his hands on the edge of the desk at which he was standing, and nodded his head.

“Quite!” he replied calmly.

“You told him you were very anxious—keen, I think was the word—to find a certain old windmill, here in Sussex?”

“I did! Asked him if he’d seen such a mill.”

“Very good,” said the coroner. “Now, why did you want to find that mill?”

Trawlerson let his eye rest for a second on his lawyer; then he turned it full on his questioner. There was open defiance in it.

“My business!” he answered.

“You don’t wish to tell us?” suggested the coroner.

“I’m not going to tell you!” retorted Trawlerson. “As I said just now—my business!”

The coroner hesitated for a moment; then he leaned nearer his witness.

“Now listen to me, Trawlerson,” he said. “This is a case of murder—of a very brutal murder! The man who was murdered was evidently in search of the old windmill that stands on the downs above this village; he came to it, and there is very good presumptive evidence that he was in possession of a map of it and its immediate surroundings. Now, on your own admission, you, too, have been anxious to find a mill—probably this. You ought to answer my question in the interests of justice. I see,” he went on, as Trawlerson shook his head, “I see you don’t want to answer it. Will you tell me this, then—have you any idea of your own, any theory, as to why Kest, the dead man, came to this mill?”

“Yes!” answered Trawlerson, with sudden vehemence. “Yes!—but I shan’t tell you what it is!”