Читать книгу The Solution of a Mystery - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 4

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The houses to which Sevidge and I now repaired made a little colony of their own, set in a narrow valley on the western side of Hagsdene Wood, and near the main entrance to Wrenne Park. I knew something about them and their owner. A few years previously a retired tradesman of Ullathwaite, Mr Stephen Winterbotham, having the chance of securing it at a fairly low price, had bought up the land in this valley, and had thereupon caused to be built some twelve or fifteen residences of the small villa type. Once erected, they had let readily, and were now all in occupancy. Mr Winterbotham, having amused and occupied himself by watching their construction, had, as soon as they were all finished and let, retired to enjoy the rest of his life at Scarborough, and had entrusted the collection of his rents to Roger Maidment. And Maidment, as I quickly ascertained, always called in person for the rents on the 17th day of each month. Why on that particular date I do not know, unless it was that the leases or agreements dated from some previous 17th.

I had no difficulty in getting the information I wanted. Maidment had been there the night before, and, going from house to house, had duly collected his rents. Some of the tenants had paid him by cheque; some in banknotes; some in gold; the total amount he received came to something like £112. More than a half of this was in notes and gold. Whether he had other moneys on him in addition to this when he was attacked, murdered, and robbed it was not, of course, possible to say: perhaps he had.

Nor had I any difficulty in ascertaining particulars about a highly important matter in reconstructing Maidment’s doings—the matter of exact time. Maidment had made his first call at the houses in Hagsdene Park—the general name of the little colony—at a quarter to nine the previous evening; his last at ten o’clock. He had stayed chatting a little at the last place; it would, they said, be about a quarter past ten when he left. As far as Sevidge and I could reckon things it would take him about twenty minutes to walk from this house to where his dead body was found in Hagsdene Wood.

Sevidge and I were coming away with this information—I had made a note of the various amounts collected by Maidment, and of the times concerned—when I heard my name called from one of the houses, and turned to find a tenant named Collingwood hailing me from his window.

‘Will you come back a minute, Superintendent?’ he called. ‘I’ve something to tell you.’

We went back; Collingwood met us at his door and took us into his parlour. I had, of course, told him, as I had told all the other tenants, of what had happened.

‘I’ve just thought of something that may be of use to you,’ he said. ‘It’s a small matter, but I suppose it’s in these cases as in most others—every little helps. As I told you before, I paid Maidment my month’s rent, six pounds, last night in gold—six sovereigns. Now amongst the six there was a sovereign with a hole in it!’

‘A hole?’ I exclaimed.

‘A small hole—just drilled through, under the rim,’ he answered. ‘As if it had been used as a pendant on a watch-chain. I don’t know where I got it—in change, somewhere, I suppose. I’d never noticed it, never known that I had it until I was counting out the six sovereigns to Maidment. Then we both noticed it. He made some remark about defaced coinage. I offered to go upstairs and get him another. No, he said, it wasn’t worth the trouble: he’d shove it into the bank amongst all the others; he said they’d never notice it. But—there it is! A sovereign with a hole in it. Worth anything as a clue, Superintendent?’

It was a very small clue, but, after all, it was a clue, and I made a note of it. A sovereign ... through which a small hole had been drilled.