Читать книгу The Mystery of the Downs - John Selby Watson - Страница 6

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POLICE-SERGEANT Westaway sat in the sitting-room of Cliff Farm preparing an official report, with the assistance of his subordinate, Police-Constable Heather, whose help consisted in cordially agreeing with his superior on any point on which the sergeant condescended to ask his advice.

The constable was a short, florid-face, bullet-headed young man, and he whistled cheerfully as he explored the old farm-house. His superior officer was elderly and sallow, with hollow dark eyes, a long black beard streaked with grey, and a saturnine expression, which was the outward manifestation of a pessimistic disposition and a disordered liver.

Sergeant Westaway looked like a man who found life a miserable business. A quarter of a century spent in a dull round of official duties in the fishing village of Ashlingsea, as guardian of the morals of its eight hundred inhabitants, had deepened his natural bent towards pessimism and dyspepsia. He felt himself qualified to adorn a much higher official post, but he forbore to air his grievance in public because he thought the people with whom his lot was cast were not worth wasting speech upon. By his aloofness and taciturnity he had acquired a local reputation for wisdom, which his mental gifts scarcely warranted.

"Heather," he said, pausing in his writing and glancing up irritably as his subordinate entered the room, "do not make that noise."

"What noise, sergeant?" asked Constable Heather, who gathered his impressions slowly.

"That whistling. It disturbs me. Besides, there is a dead man in the house."

"All right, sergeant, I forgot all about him." Constable Heather stopped in the middle of a lively stave, sat down on a chair, got up again, and went out of the room with a heavy tread.

Sergeant Westaway returned to his official report with a worried expression on his gaunt face. He was a country police officer with no previous experience of murders, and twenty-five years' official vegetation in Ashlingsea, with nothing more serious in the way of crime to handle than occasional outbreaks of drunkenness or an odd case of petty larceny, had made him rusty in official procedure, and fearful of violating the written and unwritten laws of departmental red tape. He wrote and erased and rewrote, occasionally laying down his pen to gaze out of the open window for inspiration.

It was a beautiful day in early autumn. The violent storm of the previous night had left but few traces of its visit. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky, and the notes of a skylark singing joyously high above the meadow in front of the farm floated in through the open window. The winding cliff road was white and clean after the heavy rain, and the sea was once more clear and green, with little white-flecked waves dancing and sparkling in the sunshine.

Sergeant Westaway, gloomily glancing out at this pleasing prospect, saw two men entering the farm from the road. They had been cycling, and were now pushing their machines up the gravel-path to the front door. One of them was in police uniform, and the other was a young man about thirty years of age, clad in cycling tweeds and knickerbockers, with a tweed cap on the back of his curly head. He had blue eyes and a snub nose, and a cigarette dangled from his lower lip. He was a stranger to Sergeant Westaway, but that acute official had no hesitation in placing him as a detective from Scotland Yard. To the eye of pessimism he looked like the sort of man that Scotland Yard would send to assist the country police. His companion in uniform was Detective-Inspector Payne, of the County police headquarters at Lewes, and was well known to Sergeant Westaway. The latter had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that the County Commissioner of Police, having several other mysterious crimes to occupy the limited number of detectives at his disposal, had asked for the assistance of Scotland Yard in unravelling the murder at Cliff Farm. Sergeant Westaway knew what this would mean to him. He would have a great deal to do In coaching the Scotland Yard man regarding local conditions, but would get none of the credit of sheeting home the crime to the murderer. The Scotland Yard man would see to that.

"How are you, Westaway?" exclaimed Inspector Payne, as he stood his bicycle against the wall of the house near the front door. "What do you mean by giving us a murder when we've got our hands full? We've burglaries in half a dozen towns, a murder at Denham, two unidentified bodies washed ashore in a boat at Hemsley, and the disappearance from Lewes of a well-known solicitor who is wanted for embezzling trust funds. Let me introduce you to Detective Gillett, of Scotland Yard. I'm turning the investigation of this murder of yours over to him. You will give him all the assistance he wants."

"Yes, sir," replied Sergeant Westaway.

"Glad to meet you, Westaway," said Detective Gilett, as he shook hands with the Sergeant.

Sergeant Westaway had come to the door to meet the new-comers, and he now led the way back to the room where he had been preparing his report.

Detective Gillett took up a position by the open window, and sniffed gratefully at the soft air.

"Fine view, here," he said, waving his hand in the direction of the cliff road and open bay. "Fine, bracin' air—sea—country—birds—and all that sort of thing. You chaps in the country have all the best of it—the simple life, and no hustle or bustle."

Sergeant Westaway looked darkly at the speaker as though he suspected him of a desire to rob him of the grievance he had brooded over in secret for twenty-five years.

"It's dull enough," he said ungraciously.

"But the air, man, the air!" said the London detective, inhaling great gulps of oxygen as he spoke. "It's exhilarating; it's glorious! Why, it should keep you going until you reach a hundred."

"Too salt," commented Sergeant Westaway curtly.

"The more salt in it the longer it will preserve you," said Gillett. "What a glorious day it is."

"The day is right enough," said Westaway. "But to-morrow will be different."

"Westaway doesn't like to be enthusiastic about this locality for fear we will shift him somewhere else," said Inspector Payne. "However, let us get to business. I must be on my way back to Lewes in an hour."

Sergeant Westaway coughed in order to clear his throat, and then began his narrative in a loud official voice:

"At five minutes past nine last night a gentleman named Marsland came to the police station. I was in my office at the time, preparing a report. He told me that he had found the dead body of a man in this house."

"Who is this Marsland?" asked Inspector Payne. "Does he live in the district?"

"He does not," replied the sergeant. "He lives at Staveley. That is to say, he lives in London, but he is staying at Staveley. He is staying there with his uncle, Sir George Granville."

"I know Sir George," said the inspector. "And so this young gentleman who discovered the body is his nephew. How old is he?"

"About twenty-eight, I should say."

"What sort of young man is he? How did he impress you?"

"He impressed me as being an honest straightforward young gentleman. He gave me a very clear statement of who he was and how he came to call in at this farm last night. Nevertheless, I took the precaution of telephoning to Inspector Murchison at Staveley and asking him to have inquiries made. The inspector's report coincides with what Mr. Marsland told me. He has been in ill-health and came down from London to Staveley to recuperate. He has been there five days. Yesterday he left Staveley for a ride on the downs. He got lost and was caught in the storm which came up shortly after dusk. His horse went lame, and seeing this house he came here for shelter. The horse is in the stable now. There was no light in the house, and when he went to the front door to knock he found it open. He struck a match and lit a candle which was on the hallstand. He could see no one about. Then he lit a lamp in this room and sat down to wait until the storm was over. He was sitting here for some time listening to the rain when suddenly he heard a crash above. He took the lamp and made his way upstairs. In a sitting-room on the first floor he found the dead body of a man in an armchair. At first he thought the man had died a natural death, but on inspecting the body he found that the man had been shot through the body. As the storm was abating, Mr. Marsland made his way down to Ashlingsea and reported his discovery to me."

"And what did you do?" asked Inspector Payne, in an authoritative voice.

"I closed the station and in company with Mr. Marsland I knocked up Police-Constable Heather. Then the three of us came here. I found the body as Mr. Marsland had described. I identified the body as that of Frank Lumsden, the owner of this farm. Leaving Heather in charge of it, I returned to Ashlingsea accompanied by Mr. Marsland, and reported the matter by telephone to headquarters at Lewes, as you are aware, inspector. This morning I returned here to make a minute inspection of the scene of the crime and to prepare my report."

"Is the body upstairs now?" asked Detective Gillett.

"It has been left exactly as it was found. I gave Heather orders that he was not to touch it."

"What sort of a man was this Lumsden?" asked Inspector Payne. "Had he any enemies?"

"He may have," replied the cautious sergeant. "There are some who bore him no good will."

"Why was that?"

"Because they thought he hadn't acted rightly by them. He was the executor of his grandfather's will, but he didn't pay the legacies his grandfather left. He said there was no money. His grandfather drew all his money out of the bank when the war broke out, and no one was ever able to find where he hid it. But there are some who say Frank Lumsden found it and stuck to it all."

"This is interesting," said Detective Gillett. "We must go into it thoroughly later on."

"And what makes it more interesting is that a sort of plan showing where the money was hidden has disappeared," continued Sergeant Westaway. "It disappeared after Lumsden was murdered. Mr. Marsland told me that he found it when he was going upstairs to find out the cause of the crash he heard. It was lying on the second bottom stair. Mr. Marsland picked it up and put it on the table with the candle stuck on top of it. But when we came here this morning it was gone."

"That is strange," commented Inspector Payne. "What was the plan like? And how does Mr. Marsland know it had anything to do with the missing money?"

"Of course he doesn't know for certain. But when I happened to tell him about the murdered man's grandfather and the missing money he called to mind a strange-looking paper he had picked up. As he described it to me, it had some figures written in the shape of a circle on it, and some letters or writing above and below the circle of figures. He did not scrutinize it very closely when he first found it, for he intended to examine it later."

"And it disappeared after Mr. Marsland left the farm to go to the police station?" asked Detective Gillett.

"Showing, to my mind, that the murderer was actually in the house when Mr. Marsland left," added Sergeant Westaway, with impressive solemnity. "In all probability the murderer was hiding in the top floor at the time. I have ascertained that the crash Mr. Marsland heard was caused by a picture being knocked down and the glass broken. This picture I found on the stairs leading to the top floor. It used to hang on the wall near the top of the stairs. My theory is that the murderer, feeling his way in the dark while Mr. Marsland was in this room, accidentally knocked it down."

"I take it that Marsland did not go up to the top floor but left the house after examining the body," remarked Detective Gillett.

"That is so," replied the Sergeant. "He forgot about the crash when he found the body of a murdered man. His first thought was to communicate with the police."

"And the murderer, leaving the house after Marsland had gone, found this plan on the table and took it?" suggested Detective Gillett. "That is my theory," replied Sergeant Westaway. "I forgot to say, however, that the plan was probably stolen in the first place from the murdered man's pocket-book—his pocket-book was found on the table near him. It had been opened and most of the papers it contained had been removed. The papers were scattered about the table. The way I see the crime is this: the murderer had killed his victim, had removed his pocket-book, and had obtained possession of the plan. He was making his way downstairs to escape when he saw Marsland in the doorway. In his alarm he dropped the plan on the stairs and then crept softly upstairs to the top of the house. After Mr. Marsland left, the murderer came downstairs again, looked about for the plan, and after finding it then made off."

"A very ingenious reconstruction, sergeant," said Inspector Payne. "I shouldn't wonder if it proved to be correct. What do you say, Gillett?"

"Westaway is wasting his time down here," said the young detective. "We ought to have him at Scotland Yard."