Читать книгу The Mill House Murder: Being the Last of the Adventures of Ronald Camberwell - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 5

Table of Contents

When my slowly awakening senses fairly realized that this thunderous summoning was intended for me, I jumped out of bed, turned on the light, and reached for a dressing-gown. As I slipped into it I saw, by a side-glance at my watch, that the time was twenty minutes past midnight: I had been in bed and asleep two hours.

I flung open the door. There, in the garments in which I had last seen them—thereby proving that they had not been to bed—stood the housekeeper and the chauffeur. And eager as they had been to rouse me, neither of them, now that they had roused me, seemed capable of speech. They stood, wide-eyed, staring.

“What’s the matter?” I demanded. “Something wrong?”

Mrs. Haines moistened her lips and spoke.

“It’s the master, sir,” she said, “Mr. Martenroyde. He’s never come home.”

It was my turn to stare. But I found my tongue.

“Never—come home?” I exclaimed. “Why—what time does he usually come home?”

“He’s never out more than half an hour,” said Orris. “Just walks round by the mill and back. Half an hour does it, sir. But—he’s been out over two hours this time.”

“Half past ten’s his bedtime,” said Mrs. Haines. “We always sit up for him, me and Orris here, in case he wants aught or has any orders to give for morning. I’ve never once in all these years known him to be out at this time. There’s something wrong.”

Pausing for a moment to reflect on the next thing to be done, I was conscious that since I had gone to bed the weather had changed. I had left one of my bedroom windows fairly wide open, and now as I stood there between it and the door I became aware that a high, rough wind had arisen—I could hear it tearing through the trees in the grounds outside. I could also hear the river foaming along over its rocky bed in the valley. Was it possible that Mr. Martenroyde—

“How does your master get across the river?” I asked. “Does he go round by the road to the mill, or how?”

“He goes over the weir bridge, a foot-bridge, near the mill,” replied the chauffeur. “It’s a narrow plank bridge, sir—dangerous on a night like this.”

I hesitated no longer—Mr. Martenroyde must be looked for.

“Go down and get some lanterns, Orris,” I said. “Find some that won’t get blown out. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

“I’m sure something’s wrong,” repeated Mrs. Haines as they turned away from my door. “Many and many a year he’s gone out for that last look round, but this is the first time he’s failed to come back. Something’s happened him!”

I dressed hurriedly and went down to the front hall, to find Orris awaiting me with a couple of lanterns, and Mrs. Haines still bemoaning her master’s unaccountable absence.

“Now,” I said as I got into my overcoat, “just tell me—is there any house at which Mr. Martenroyde may have called and where he may have stopped talking or been detained?”

“Eh, no, mister,” she answered in surprise. “He’d never call anywhere this time of night!—I never knew him do such a thing. He just walks round by the mill and back again—it’s not likely he’d call anywhere. If he did, it would only be if there was something wrong at the mill, and we should have heard before now.”

“But supposing he found something wrong at the mill,” I said, “where would he call?”

“Why, I can’t think of anywhere but at the Mill House,” she answered. “Mr. Ramsden Martenroyde, his nephew—he’s manager—he has the keys. Orris knows where that is.”

Orris and I went out, each carrying a lantern. The wind was blowing hard round the corners of the house—a keen, sharp wind from the north-west—and I could hear the rushing of the river as an undertone to the sweeping blasts.

“Now,” I said, “take the way by which your master goes every night—I suppose you know it?”

“Every yard of it, sir,” he answered. “This way, sir—to the left.”

He led me along the carriage drive to a gate which admitted us to the kitchen gardens; passing through these we came to another gate beyond which lay the hillside that sloped down to the river. There was a path there, on the left-hand side of which rose a plantation of fir and pine; on the right there was open land. As we followed the path, drawing nearer to the bank of the river, I began, getting used to the darkness, to make out the spume of the surging waters—evidently there was a great press of water coming down from the upper reaches of the valley.

“Does this river ever get in flood?” I asked.

“Yes, sir—comes right over the banks, often,” replied Orris. “There’s a row of stepping-stones a bit farther along, sir, near the bridge over the weir—I should say they’ll be covered tonight, those stones. In dry weather Mr. Martenroyde always goes across them, but he’d have to take the bridge this time. I’ve seen the water cover that, too, more than once.”

Presently we reached the river-bank; the path was alongside it for some distance. Flashing the light of my lantern over the swirling waters, I saw that they were racing along in considerable volume. It was a shallow river, that, and its bed was unusually rocky—great boulders stood up here and there, breaking the face of the stream and sending up clouds of spume and froth. My companion suddenly stopped.

“The stepping-stones, sir,” he said, turning his lantern towards the river. “They’re just about covered.”

I turned my lantern to where he pointed, and saw that except for one or two massive blocks, higher than the rest, the stones were already under water. A few yards farther and we came to our end of the bridge, and I saw that the river was nearly up to its planks. A bridge it was, but not one that I cared about crossing on a wild night like that and with all that mass of water pouring down under it. Not more than a yard wide, it had no protection save a mere hand-rail on its right-hand side—and on the left the river looked black and deep.

I paused, looking about me. Across the river I could just make out the great bulk of the mill on the opposite bank. There was no light in it now, of course, and none in the cottages or buildings near it. But behind us, high above the bank down which we had just made our way, I saw a light twinkling in the upper room of a house whose roof and chimneys I could just see outlined against the grey sky.

“Whose house is that—where the light is?” I asked.

“Mr. Heggus’s, sir,” replied Orris. “He’s an invalid—been ill a long time, sir. I expect his wife’s up with him—he’s often bad at nights.”

“You don’t think Mr. Martenroyde may have called there?” I suggested.

“Shouldn’t think so, sir—never heard of him doing so, this time of night,” he replied.

“Well, show the way across the bridge,” I said. “Be careful.”

A few steps along the bridge showed me that it had been built almost over a weir, above which the river was now rushing with tremendous force. It struck me at once that if anybody slipped from the narrow planking of the bridge into those swirling waters he would have very little chance of escaping from their steady sweep. And the planking was wet and slimy; I had to cling to the rail with one hand while managing the lantern with the other.

We crawled rather than walked along that bridge; here and there, as an extra forceful gust of wind came, the water swept over it. It was some eighty yards across. But at last we came to the end, and the great mill rose up almost immediately in front of us.

What happened to us there was startling in its suddenness. I had been prepared all along for the unexpected; I thought it highly probable that Mr. Martenroyde had met with an accident. But I was not prepared for what we found as we stepped off the end of the bridge on to a sort of landing-place paved with stone. There, lying half in, half out of the water which lapped the shelving bank of the river, lay the man we were seeking. I saw at once that he was dead.