A Silent Witness

by R. Austin Freeman

  “Yes,” I agreed; “or he might take pot shots at us with a revolver from some dark corner.”

  “It is much more likely,” said Thorndyke, “that he has cleared off in anticipation of the alarm of fire. Still, it is undeniable that we shall be safer outside. Shall I go first and show you a light?”

  He piloted us along the corridor and up the cobbled yard, putting away his lamp as he unlocked the wicket. There was no sign of anyone about the premises nor, when we had passed out of the gate, was there anyone in sight in the street. I looked about, expecting to see some sign of the fire; but there was no smoke visible, and only a slight smell of burning wood. The smoke must have drifted out at the back. “Well,” Thorndyke remarked, “it has been quite an exciting little episode. And a highly satisfactory finish, as things turned out; though it might easily have been very much the reverse. But for the fortunate chance of those gas-bottles being available, I don’t think we should be alive at this moment.”

  “No,” agreed Jervis. “We should be in much the same condition by this time as Batson’s late patient, Mr. Maddock, or at least, well on our way to that disembodied state. However, all’s well that ends well. Are you coming our way, Jardine?”

  “I will walk a little way with you,” said I. “Then I must go back to Batson to settle up and fetch my traps.”

  I walked with them to Oxford Street and we discussed our late adventure as we went. “It was a pretty strong hint to clear out, wasn’t it?” Jervis remarked.

  “Yes,” replied Thorndyke; “it didn’t leave us much option. But the affair can’t be left at this. I shall have a watch set on those premises, and I shall make some more particular enquiries about Mr. Gill. By the way, Jardine, I haven’t your address. I’d better have it in case I want to communicate with you; and you’d better have my card in case anything turns up which you think I ought to know.”

  We accordingly exchanged cards, and, as we had now reached the corner of Oxford Street, I wished my friends adieu and thoughtfully retraced my steps to Jacob Street.

  * * *

  VIII — IT’S AN ILL WIND…

  LONDON is a wonderful place. From the urban greyness of Jacob Street to the borders of Hampstead Heath was, even in those days of the slow horse tram, but a matter of minutes—a good many minutes, perhaps, but still, considerably under an hour. Yet, in that brief and leisurely journey, one exchanged the grim sordidness of a most unlovely street for the solitude and sweet rusticity of open and charming country.

  A day or two after my second adventure in the mineral water works, I was leaning on the parapet of the viaduct—the handsome, red brick viaduct with which some builder, unknown to me, had spanned the pond beyond the Upper Heath, apparently with purely decorative motive, and in a spirit of sheer philanthropy. For no road seemed to lead anywhere in particular over it, and there was no reason why any wayfarer should wish to cross the pond rather than walk round it; indeed, in those days it was covered by a turfy expanse seldom trodden by any feet but those of the sheep that grazed in the meadows bordering the pond. I leaned on the parapet, smoking my pipe with deep contentment, and looking down into the placid water. Flags and rushes grew at its borders, water-lilies spread their flat leaves on its surface, and a small party of urchins angled from the margin, with the keen joy of the juvenile sportsman who suspects that his proceedings are unlawful.

  I had lounged on the parapet for several minutes, when I became aware of a man, approaching along the indistinct track that crossed the viaduct, and, as he drew near, I recognized him as the keeper whom I had met in Ken Wood on the morning after my discovery of the body in Millfield Lane. I would have let him pass with a smile of recognition, but he had no intention of passing. Touching his hat politely, he halted, and, having wished me good-morning, remarked: “You didn’t tell me, sir, what it was you were looking for that morning when I met you in the wood.”

  “No,” I replied, “but apparently, someone else has.”

  “Well, sir, you see,” he said, “the sergeant came up the next day with a plain-clothes man to have a look round, and, as the sergeant is an old acquaintance of mine, he gave me the tip as to what they were after. I am sorry, sir, you didn’t tell me what you were looking for.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Well,” he replied, “we might have found something if we had looked while the tracks were fresh. Unfortunately there was a gale in the night that fetched down a lot of leaves, and blew up those that had already fallen, so that any foot-marks would have got hidden before the sergeant came.”

  “What did the police officers seem to think about it?” I asked.

  “Why, to speak the truth,” the keeper replied, “they seemed to think it was all bogey.”

  “Do you mean to say,” I asked, “that they thought I had invented the whole story?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” he replied, “not that. They believed you had seen a man lying in the lane, but they didn’t believe that he was a dead man and they thought your imagination had misled you about the tracks.”

  “Then, I suppose they didn’t find anything?” said I.

  “No, they didn’t, and I haven’t been able to find anything myself, though I’ve had a good look round.”

  And then, after a brief pause: “I wonder,” he said, “if you would care to come up to the Wood and have a look at the place yourself.”

  I considered for a moment. I had nothing to do for I was taking a day off, and the man’s proposal sounded rather attractive. Finally, I accepted his offer, and we turned back together towards the Wood.

  Hampstead—the Hampstead of those days—was singularly rustic and remote. But, within the wood, it was incredible that the town of London actually lay within the sound of a church bell or the flight of a bullet. Along the shady paths, carpeted with moss and silvery lichen, overshadowed by the boughs of noble beeches; or in leafy hollows, with the humus of centuries under our feet, and the whispering silence of the woodland all around, we might have been treading the glades of some primeval forest. Nor was the effect of this strange remoteness less, when presently, emerging from the thicker portion of the wood, we came upon a moss-grown, half-ruinous boat-house on the sedgy margin of a lake, in which was drawn up a rustic-looking, and evidently, little-used punt.

  “It’s wonderful quiet about here, sir,” the keeper remarked, as a water-hen stole out from behind a clump of high rushes and scrambled over the leaves of the water-lilies.

  “And presumably,” I remarked, “it’s quieter still at night.”

  “You’re right, sir,” the keeper replied. “If that man had got as far as this, he’d have had mighty little trouble in putting the body where no one was ever likely to look for it.”

  “I suppose,” said I, “that you had a good look at the edges of the lake?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “I went right round it, and so did the police, for that matter, and we had a good look at the punt, too. But, all the same, it wouldn’t surprise me if, one fine day, that body came floating up among the lilies; always supposing, that is,” he added, “that there really was a body.”

  “How far is it,” I asked, “from the lake to the place where you met me that morning?”

  “It’s only a matter of two or three minutes,” he answered, “we may as well walk that way and you can see for yourself.” Accordingly, we set forth together, and, coming presently upon one of the moss-grown paths, followed it past a large summerhouse until we came in sight of the beech beyond which I had encountered him while I was searching for the tracks. As we went, he plied me with questions as to what I had seen on the night in the lane, and I made no scruple of telling him all that I had told the police, seeing that they, on their side, had made no secret of the matter.

  Of course, it was idle, after this long period—for it was now more than seven weeks since I had seen the body—to attempt anything in the nature of a search. It certainly did look as if the man who had stolen into that wood that night had been bound for the solita
ry lake. The punt, I had noticed, was only secured with a rope, so that the murderer—for such I assumed he must have been—could easily have carried his dreadful burden out into the middle, and there sunk it with weights, and so hidden it for ever. It was a quick, simple and easy method of hiding the traces of his crime, and, if the police had not thought it worth while to search the water with drags, there was no reason why the buried secret should not remain buried for all time.

  After we had walked for some time about the pleasant, shady wood, less shady now that the yellowing leaves were beginning to fall with the passing of autumn, the keeper conducted me to the exit by which I had left on the previous occasion.

  As I was passing out of the wicket, my eye fell once more on the cottage which I had then noticed, and, recalling the remark that my fair acquaintance had let fall concerning the artist to whom the derelict knife was supposed to belong, I said: “You mentioned, I think, that that house was let to an artist.”

  “It was,” he replied; “but it’s empty now, the artist has gone away.”

  “It must be a pleasant little house to live in,” I said, “at any rate, in summer.”

  “Yes,” he replied, “a country house within an hour’s walk of the Bank of England. Would you like to have a look at it, sir? I’ve got the keys.”

  Now I certainly had no intention of offering myself as a tenant, but, yet, to an idle man, there is a certain attractiveness in an empty house of an eligible kind, a certain interest in roaming through the rooms and letting one’s fancy furnish them with one’s own household goods. I accepted the man’s invitation, and, opening the wide gate that admitted to the garden from a byroad, we walked up to the door of the house. “It’s quite a nice little place,” the keeper remarked. “There isn’t much garden, you see, but then, you’ve got the Heath all around; and there’s a small stable and coachhouse if you should be wanting to go into town.”

  “Did the last tenant keep any kind of carriage?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” said the keeper, “but I fancy he used to hire a little cart sometimes when he had things to bring in from town; but I don’t know very much about him or his habits.”

  We walked through the empty rooms together, looking out of the windows and commenting on the pleasant prospects that all of them commanded, and talking about the man who had last lived in the house. “He was a queer sort of fellow,” said the keeper. “He and his wife seem to have lived here all alone without any servant, and they seem often to have left the house to itself for a day or two at a time; but he could paint. I have stopped and had a look when he has been at work, and it was wonderful to see how he knocked off those pictures. He didn’t seem to use brushes, but he had a lot of knives, like little trowels, and he used to shovel the paint on with them, and he always wore gloves when he was painting; didn’t like to get the paint on his hands, I suppose.”

  “It sounds as if it would be very awkward,” I said.

  “Just what I should have thought,” the keeper agreed. “But he didn’t seem to find it so. This seems to be the place that he worked in.”

  Apparently the keeper was right. The room, which we had now entered, was evidently the late studio, and did not appear to have been cleaned up since the tenant left. The floor was littered with scraps of paper on which a palette-knife had been cleaned, with empty paint-tubes and one or two broken and worn-out brushes, and, in a packing-case, which seemed to have served as a receptacle for rubbish, were one or two canvases that had been torn from their stretchers and thrown away. I picked them out and glanced at them with some interest, remembering what my fair friend had said. For the most part, they were mere experiments or failures, deliberately defaced with strokes or daubs of paint, but one of them was a quite spirited and attractive sketch, rough and unfinished, but skilfully executed and undefaced. I stretched out the crumpled canvas and looked at it with considerable interest, for it represented Millfield Lane, and showed the large elms and the posts and the high fence under which I had sheltered in the rain. In fact, it appeared to have been taken from the exact spot on which the body had been lying, and from which I had made my own drawing; not that there was anything in the latter coincidence, for it was the only sketchable spot in the lane. “It’s really quite a nice sketch,” I said; “it seems a pity to leave it here among the rubbish.”

  “It does, sir,” the keeper agreed. “If you like it, you had better roll it up and put it in your pocket. You won’t be robbing anyone.”

  As it seemed that I was but rescuing it from a rubbish-heap, I ventured to follow the keeper’s advice, and, rolling the canvas up, carefully stowed it in my pocket. And shortly after as I had now seen all that there was to see, which was mighty little, we left the house, and, at the gate, the keeper took leave of me with a touch of his hat.

  I made my way slowly back towards my lodgings by way of the Spaniard’s Road and Hampstead Lane, turning over in my mind as I went, the speculation suggested by my visit to the wood. Of the existence of the lake I had not been previously aware. Now that I had seen it, I felt very little doubt that it was known to the mysterious murderer—for such I felt convinced he was—who must have been lurking in the lane that night when I was sheltering under the lee of the fence. The route that he had then taken appeared to be the direct route to the lake. That he was carrying the body, I had no doubt whatever; and, seeing that he had carried it so far, it appeared probable that he had some definite hiding-place in view. And what hiding-place could be so suitable as this remote piece of still water? No digging, no troublesome and dangerous preparation would be necessary. There was the punt in readiness to bear him to the deep water in the middle; a silent, easily-handled conveyance. A few stones, or some heavy object from the boat-house, would be all that was needful; and in a moment he would be rid for ever of the dreadful witness of his crime.

  Thus reflecting—not without dissatisfaction at the passive part that I had played in this sinister affair—I passed through the turnstile, or “kissing-gate,” at the entrance to Millfield Lane. Almost certainly, the murderer or the victim or both, had passed through that very gate on the night of the tragedy. The thought came to me with added solemnity with the recollection of the silent wood and the dark, still water fresh in my mind, and caused me unconsciously to tread more softly and walk more sedately than usual.

  The lane was little frequented at any time and now, at mid-day, was almost as deserted as at midnight. Very remote it seemed, too, and very quiet, with a silence that recalled the hush of the wood. And yet the silence was not quite unbroken. From somewhere ahead, from one of the many windings of the tortuous lane, came the sound of hurried footsteps. I stopped to listen. There were two persons, one treading lightly, the other more heavily, apparently a man and a woman. And both were running—running fast.

  There was nothing remarkable in this, perhaps; but yet the sound smote on my ear with a certain note of alarm that made me quicken my pace and listen yet more intently. And suddenly there came another sound; a muffled, whimpering cry like that of a frightened woman. Instantly I gave an answering shout and sprang forward at a swift run.

  I had turned one of the numerous corners and was racing down a straight stretch of the lane when a woman darted round the corner ahead, and ran towards me, holding out her hands. I recognised her at a glance, though now she was dishevelled, pale, wild-eyed, breathless and nearly frantic with terror, and rage against her assailant spurred me on to greater speed. But when I would have passed her to give chase to the wretch, she clutched my arm frantically with both hands and detained me. “Let me go and catch the scoundrel!” I exclaimed; but she only clung the tighter.

  “No,” she panted, “don’t leave me! I am terrified! Don’t go away!”

  I ground my teeth. Even as we stood, I could hear the ruffian’s footsteps receding as rapidly as they had advanced. In a few moments he would be beyond pursuit. “Do let me go and stop that villain!” I implored. “You’re quite safe now, and you can follow m
e and keep me in sight.”

  But she shook her head passionately, and, still clutching my sleeve with one hand, pressed the other to her heart. “No, no, no!” she gasped, with a catch in her voice that was almost a sob, “I can’t be alone! I am frightened. Oh! Please don’t go away from me!”

  What could I do? The poor girl was evidently beside herself with terror, and exhausted by her frantic flight. It would have been cruel to leave her in that state. But all the same, it was infuriating. I had no idea what the man had done to terrify her in this way. But that was of no consequence. The natural impulse of a healthy young man when he learns that a woman has been ill-used is to hammer the offender effectively in the first place, and then to inquire into the affair. That was what I wanted to do; but it was not to be. “Well,” I said, by way of compromise, “let us walk back together. Perhaps we may be able to find out which way the man went.”

  To this she agreed. I drew her arm through mine—for she was still trembling and looked faint and weak—and we began to retrace her steps towards Highgate. Of course the man was nowhere to be seen, and by the time that we had turned the sharp corner where I had found the body of the priest, the man was not only out of sight, but his footsteps were no longer audible.

  Still we went on for some distance in the hopes of meeting someone who could tell us which way the miscreant had gone. But we met nobody. Only, some distance past the posts, we came in sight of a sketching box and a camp-stool, lying by the side of the path. “Surely those are your things?” I said.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I had forgotten all about them. I dropped them when I began to run.”