The subsequent proceedings of the afternoon came as a positive relief. Our guests of course knew nothing of the undercurrents in our party, and to concentrate on the programme that had been arranged for them might at least take our minds off more serious affairs. So at least John Hillyard appeared to think, for when I returned to the house I found him impatiently awaiting me. Without a word on the other matter he plunged at once into a detailed examination of myself to make certain that I had forgotten nothing of what I was to do.
I am bound to say that when John does a thing he does it very thoroughly. The main lines of the scene between Scott-Davies and myself had been settled the evening before; immediately after breakfast he had presented me with a list of the most insignificant details, neatly typed out and including a timetable worked out to the minute, and nothing would then satisfy him but that I should commit it to memory on the spot. Every one of my actions was minutely specified: exactly how long I was to struggle with Eric for the possession of the gun, exactly how far Eric was to be from me when I fired, how I was then to dispose him to give an appearance of accident, how I was to wipe my fingerprints off the gun and substitute others from Eric’s own fingertips, every conceivable detail. It all seemed to me most unnecessary, but John was insistent that it was nothing of the sort.
‘Why, you’ve forgotten the blood,’ I had chipped him after breakfast, when he gave me the list. ‘You can’t have a crime of this sort without blood, John.’
‘There’d be very little blood indeed from a bullet wound through the back, piercing the heart as this is supposed to do,’ quite seriously replied John, who has indeed a very poor sense of humour.
‘But a little, I feel sure,’ I had continued to banter. ‘Eric certainly ought to have the spot of entry of the bullet marked on his coat with a touch of red paint. How otherwise are your detectives to see the exact place of the wound?’
‘Well, really, Cyril, that’s a very sound idea,’ John had positively beamed. ‘And as it happens, I have got a bit of red lead somewhere, if no red paint. Yes, you’re quite right, he ought.’ And he had actually gone off to persuade Eric to allow him to smear one of his coats with red lead!
I do not think I have yet given an account of the mock drama which we were to enact. In order to afford the reader a clear understanding of the events which followed, perhaps I had better do so.
After being accused in the morning by the jealous husband of an affair with his wife, then, Eric was to leave the house after lunch with a rifle under his arm, apparently to relieve his feelings by endeavouring to shoot a rabbit or two. I, as the village policeman, on my way to the house just then with an official message for John Hillyard, would catch sight of him and, desirous of a few words in private, follow him down towards the stream. I had recognized him as a visitor who had been with the Hillyards for a lengthy stay the year before, during which he had acted like a blackguard towards my pretty daughter. I determined to seize the opportunity to have it out with him.
In the meantime, the members of the house party scatter individually, so that when the supposedly fatal shot is fired each may come under suspicion, in so far that no two of them can provide alibis for each other.
Having caught Eric up at the glade which had been selected for the purpose, I was to begin to upbraid him, and a scene of mutual recrimination would ensue, culminating in physical violence as Eric endeavoured to strike me with the butt of his rifle. I, however, seizing the rifle from him, follow him a few paces as he walks away from me, and discharge the rifle point-blank at his retreating back at a distance of four and a half paces (why precisely four and a half I could not discover, but John seemed bent on it). I was then to drag the body to the side of the glade opposite the stream, where the ground rose in a fairly steep bank, dispose it on its face on the top of this bank in such a way that it would look as if it had fallen there in life, and, having carefully wiped the rifle with my handkerchief to remove my fingerprints, impress those of the pretended corpse on it and lay it just behind him as if it had fallen from his grasp. Then I was to make my way up to the house and ask for John Hillyard.
In the meantime Ethel would discover the body on her way to pick bluebells in the woods and, returning also to the house, give the alarm to me and the household. I would then go back again and take official charge, and our detecting guests would, so to speak, be let loose.
I wrote above that the other members of the party were to scatter individually, but this is only what they were supposed to have done. In actual fact they were all, except Ethel, coming down first to watch Eric and myself, and John had reserved one side of the glade for them, with a way of approach and retirement, where footprints were not to be taken into account. Needless to say, nobody had been allowed that day in the glade itself.
With John’s care for detail it was half-past three to the minute that I drew within sight of the house down the steep little lane from the top of the hill behind, clad in a blue reefer jacket (several sizes too large for me) to represent a policeman’s tunic and wearing an actual helmet, a treasured relic of one of John’s wilder escapades at the University, and feeling, if the truth must be told, not a little foolish; and it was precisely one minute past the half-hour when Eric emerged from the house, the rook rifle duly under his arm, and began to saunter down to the stream. The would-be-detectives were in the drawing room, on their honour not to emerge until the alarm was given, according to John’s timetable, in fifteen minutes’ time. The others were already down in the valley.
I followed Eric automatically down the hillside. It is unnecessary to give my reflections as I did so; they were not pleasant. I had little stomach for the business in hand, but it had got to be performed.
In the glade Eric pretended, with exaggerated gestures, to be stalking some wild animal, and I caught him up. Thirty yards away I could see, peering out here and there from among the green leaves, the rest of the party, for the most part smiling tolerantly at Eric’s buffoonery. John, I noticed, had his watch in his hand.
‘Ha!’ Eric cried with a ridiculous grimace, as I emerged from the surrounding thicket. ‘A minion of the law. Constable Pinkie, by Jove; in outsize helmet. Oh, officer, don’t look at me so crossly. You frighten me so. I always was nervous, from a child.’
I am not going to give my own words. Indeed, I do not remember what they were. I said, as concisely as possible, what John had wished me to convey, but my mind was too busy with matters of real importance to pay much attention to the flummery, or to Eric’s characteristic attempts to raise a laugh among the spectators at my expense. As soon as I reasonably could, I advanced towards him and seized his rifle.
‘Oh, do be careful, officer,’ he implored. ‘It’s loaded. You might do yourself such a nasty injury. I’m sorry about your daughter, and all that, but do be careful.’
I pulled back the bolt and examined the interior. A blank cartridge, specially prepared by John, was already in the breech.
Eric was now walking away, with a silly, flouncing step, and I noticed that our audience was actually convulsed with laughter at his antics. I followed him swiftly up (remembering the four and a half paces), took aim at his retreating back, and fired. With quite a convincing start, Eric stumbled on to his knees and collapsed on the ground.
That was the easiest part of my task. The more difficult was to convey his massive form to the gap in the undergrowth at the top of the bank on the side of the glade opposite the stream, and our audience. John had endeavoured that morning to teach me what he called ‘the fireman’s lift’, but apparently I was either extremely stupid or wilfully obtuse, for there had seemed to be no hope of my mastering it.
Eric, too, was plainly now being very dead indeed, for his body had gone completely inert. I endeavoured to pull him, first by his arms and then, more maliciously, by his legs, but could obviously make very little impression. Time, too, was getting short and I had had about enough of the business.
I appealed to John. ‘Look here, I really can
’t do anything if he’s going to play the fool like this. He’s making himself impossible for me to move.’
‘Eric, don’t play the goat, there’s a good chap,’ John shouted.
A sound came from Eric more suggestive of a donkey braying than a goat, and most of the onlookers sniggered loudly; it is astonishing what small things appear to amuse.
It did seem, however, that Eric was ready to pay attention at any rate to John, for this time I did move him; not easily by any means, but by immense labour, which should have left the most convincing footprints, I did succeed in getting him to the required place – though what was happening to his clothes during the process I neither knew nor cared. There I disposed him meticulously as John had ordained, and stood aside in the undergrowth so that my handiwork could be observed and approved. ‘Is that correct?’ I called.
‘Excellent,’ John called back.
Humorous even as a corpse, Eric waved a foot in the air in response.
My part was practically at an end, and thankful enough I was for the fact. The rest was (as Armorel would say) ‘up to’ the others. I retrieved the rifle from the middle of the glade, pretended to wipe my fingerprints off it with my handkerchief, made a great show of impressing those of Eric on it, laid it on the ground just behind him in accordance with my instructions, and began to make my way up the hill. The others hastily scattered to their variously allotted places. So far, so good.
The hillside is very steep from the stream to the house. Feeling quite exhausted by my unnecessary labour in moving Eric I disobeyed John’s instructions for the first time and sat down for a rest at a point where I could overlook the glade and see Ethel discovering the body; it pleased me, too, to be a spectator myself for a change.
Ethel had her directions no less carefully drawn out than Eric and myself. She was to approach the body along a certain line and leave it along another line, so that her two lots of footprints should be distinct from ours; she was to go near enough to the body to have been able to discover that it was a corpse, but not touch or disturb it in any way; she was then to go straight up to the house, outside which she would meet me and give the alarm.
Poor Ethel! It was necessary for her to play her part for the entertainment of her guests; but she could be liking the business no better than myself. As if in derisive greeting, too, I distinctly saw Eric wave his foot in the air to her as she approached; it was all he could wave, for he was lying on his face with his head pillowed on his arms, but poor Ethel must have thought that it would have been in better taste on his part not to wave anything at all. That, however, would hardly have been like Eric Scott-Davies.
She looked at him perfunctorily for a moment with silent distaste, then turned and began slowly to make her way up the path by which I had come. I rose to my feet and hurried on ahead of her.
Loitering purposely as I neared the top, I allowed her to catch me up just outside the house. ‘Oh, constable,’ she said, with a sad smile, ‘I’ve just seen Mr Scott-Davies in the wood down there. He must have met with an accident. I’m afraid he may be dead.’ She looked at me and the smile died out of her face. ‘And I only wish he were,’ she added slowly, and made her way into the house. I was supposed to have asked her to telephone for a doctor, but we were both past bothering over such details.
I went down the hill again.
Eric was still lying as I had left him; the others were not visible. I occupied myself with making a few small improvements to the mise-enscène. Eric did not speak to me and I was glad enough of his silence for once. When I had completed my tasks I moved some little distance away from him, lit a cigarette, and sat down calmly to await the coming of our detectives. During this interval the doctor was supposed to have arrived and examined the body. A copy of his imaginary report to John, together with the constable’s, was to be handed to the three on their leaving the house. As I thought of the real situation that faced us, all this mummery seemed inexpressibly futile.
I can pass quickly over the next half-hour.
None of the three so-called detectives would, I imagine, have proved very formidable to a real criminal. No doubt they tried to do their best, but the atmosphere of farce was too strong. Mrs Fitzwilliam had a foolish little nervous giggle which seemed to be in play all the time (the more I saw of that woman the less I could imagine that she could have anything of intelligence to impart to the readers of her books), Morton Harrogate Bradley (what a name!) looked extremely superior but did nothing at all, only Professor Johnson seemed to be making any real efforts to get to the bottom of our little mystery. The other two asked me questions in a perfunctory way, laughing together, but Professor Johnson was the only one really to attempt to examine the footprints or work the thing out at all on a scientific basis.
My part, of course, was that of a rural constable guarding the body until the inspector should arrive from Budeford. I endeavoured to entertain our guests by giving as faithful a rendering of the part as I could, making great play with my own importance, not letting them confuse the footprints till the inspector had examined them, refusing to allow them too near the body in case they destroyed some valuable clue, and generally portraying a bumptious, ignorant bully of a man thrust by chance into a position of authority and importance. I thought secretly that my impersonation was really, in the circumstances, not without merit, but I have to record (and I will do so without comment) that our guests seemed to laugh a good deal more heartily at the uncouth antics with which Eric favoured us from time to time than at my own small efforts. Eric had now apparently discovered, among other uncouth movements, a way of humping himself up in the middle with a most ridiculous effect rather like the mode of progression of a caterpillar. I do not know whether the onlookers took it for a burlesque of a dying man’s spasms, or just objectless buffoonery, but they certainly appeared to find it highly entertaining.
This scene lasted perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Then, still according to John’s regulations and to my own relief, a move was made at last in the direction of the house. This meant that Eric was no longer required by the game to enact the rôle of the corpse, though I had still to be at hand in case any of the detectives wished to question me further.
I must now be careful to write down very exactly what happened after we left the glade, for we now come to the point in the affair when individual testimony tends to become confusing – with, to me at any rate, possibly disastrous results. I have been given to understand, in the most brutal way, that my own account of the next five minutes cannot be relied on. I will, therefore, with what grace I can in such circumstances, endeavour to limit my account only to facts which can be corroborated elsewhere.
I told Eric that we were now about to depart, but beyond a final enormous humping of his body he took no notice. A reasonable explanation would be that he preferred not to walk up to the house with me, but would wait until we were all out of the way; that at any rate is the explanation I put forward. In any case, be that as it may, the four of us certainly did go on ahead: Bradley and Professor Johnson led the way, I stayed behind to give an arm if required to Mrs Fitzwilliam up the path. As I have said, the path here is very steep indeed and Mrs Fitzwilliam found the ascent correspondingly difficult. I advised her to take it easily, citing the well known habit of mountaineers who invariably slacken their pace considerably when going up even a mediocre rise. The consequence was that before we had gone many yards the two men in front of us were out of sight on the many windings of the path. On such small points, as the reader will see, a man’s life may perhaps depend.
We had gone perhaps fifty yards along the path, though its windings made our direct distance above the glade (hidden now by the intervening undergrowth) not more than a quarter of that figure, when I observed to Mrs Fitzwilliam that my shoelace was undone. I may say frankly at once that my shoelace was not undone at all; my remark was a subterfuge. Mrs Fitzwilliam was much out of breath. In any case the result was that she was able to sit down for a moment on the bank a
t the side of the path while I stooped down a few paces away in pretence of doing up my lace. While I was thus engaged we both heard the unmistakable sound of a shot somewhere in the woods below, and quite near.
I do not think that I betrayed much interest. Shots were common enough in that neighbourhood.
Mrs Fitzwilliam, however, seemed startled. ‘What was that?’ she exclaimed.
I explained. ‘These woods are full of rabbits,’ I added reassuringly. ‘One hears stray shots at any time.’
‘But that sounded so close. Surely it might be dangerous?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said with a slight smile. ‘Sound is very deceptive in these woods. Besides, one does not fire without due precaution.’
I hate the idea of shooting rabbits; they look so horribly like babies when they’re skinned,’ sighed Mrs Fitzwilliam, with feminine irrelevance. ‘Do you shoot, Mr Pinkerton?’
‘No, I do not. My eyesight unfortunately renders it hardly possible.’ This was the excuse I invariably gave for not shooting, and it served me well enough; the truth is that I do not care for the idea of taking wild life in any form – a sentiment which would doubtless be heartily derided by ‘sportsmen’ of the Eric Scott-Davies type.
I observed that Mrs Fitzwilliam’s alarm was by no means allayed, and I therefore offered to go down again and endeavour to find and warn the marksman.
‘But it would be dangerous,’ she protested.
‘I think I could manage to face that amount of danger, Mrs Fitzwilliam,’ I smiled.
‘But he might mistake you for a rabbit.’
I looked at her sharply, but it was evident that she was alluding merely to the rustling in the undergrowth. ‘In any case I left some articles down there which I should be glad of an opportunity to retrieve,’ I was able to assure her, quite truthfully. ‘If you would wait here I shall not be more than a minute or two.’ And I hurried back along the path.
And now comes the crux.
The Second Shot Page 8
