“Later on we heard the evidence of Major Gubbins himself. He said that about seven o’clock he met Captain Marston in the hall of the Institute.
“‘He appeared flushed and agitated,’ the witness went on, very reluctantly it seemed, but in answer to pressing questions put to him by the coroner, ‘and told me he was going for a walk. When I remarked that it was raining hard, he retorted that the rain would do him good. He didn’t say where he was going, but presently he put his hand on my shoulder and said in a tone of pleading and affection which I shall never forget: “Old man,” he said, “I want you to do something for me. Tell Janet that I must see her again tonight; beg her not to deny me. I will meet her at our usual place on the Dog’s Tooth Cliff. Tell her I will wait for her there until nine o’clock, whatever the weather. But she must come. Tell her she must.”
“‘Unfortunately,’ the Major continued, ‘I was unable to deliver the message immediately as I had work to do in my office which kept me till close on nine o’clock. Then I hurried down to the Smiths’ house and just missed Miss Janet who, it seems, had already gone out.’
“Asked why he had not spoken about this before, the Major replied that he did not intend to give evidence at all unless he was absolutely forced to do so as a matter of duty. Captain Marston was his friend and he did not think that any man was called upon to give what might prove damnatory evidence against his friend.
“All of which sounded very nice and very loyal until we learned that William Peryer, batman at the Institute, testified to having overheard violent words between the headmaster and the secretary at the very same hour when the latter was supposed to have made so pathetic an appeal to his friend to deliver a message on his behalf. Peryer swore that the two men were quarrelling and quarrelling bitterly. The words he overheard were: ‘You villain! You shall pay for this!’ But he was so upset and so frightened that he could not state positively which of the two gentlemen had spoken them, but he was inclined to think that it was Major Gubbins.
“And so the tangle grew, a tangled web that was dexterously being woven around the secretary of the Institute. The two Broxmouth visitors were recalled, and they once more swore positively to having met Captain Marston on the ‘Lovers’ Walk’ at about eight o’clock of that fateful evening. They spoke to him and they noticed the stick which he was carrying. They were on their way home from Kurtmoor, and they met the Captain some two hundred yards or so before they came to the Dog’s Tooth Cliff. Of this they were both quite positive. The lady remembered coming to the cliff a few minutes later: she was nervous in the dark and therefore the details of the incident impressed themselves upon her memory. Subsequently when they were nearing home they met a lady who might or might not have been the deceased; they did not know her by sight and the person they met had her hat pulled down over her eyes and the collar of her coat up to her ears. It was raining hard then, and they themselves were hurrying along and paid no attention to passers-by.
“We also heard that at about nine o’clock James Hoggs and his wife, who live in a cottage not very far from the Dog’s Tooth Cliff, heard a terrifying scream. They were just going to bed and closing up for the night. Hoggs had the front door open at the moment and was looking at the weather. It was raining, but nevertheless he picked up his cap and ran out toward the cliff. A moment or two later he came up against a man whom he hailed; it was very dark, but he noticed that the man was engaged in wrapping a muffler round his neck. He asked him whether he had heard a scream, but the man said: ‘No, I’ve not!’ then hurried quickly out of sight. As Hoggs heard nothing more, or saw anything, he thought that perhaps after all he and his missis had been mistaken, so he turned back home and went to bed.
“I think,” the Man in the Corner continued thoughtfully, “that I have now put before you all the most salient points in the chain of evidence collected by the police against the accused. There were not many faulty links in the chain you will admit. The motive for the hideous crime was clear enough: for there was the fraudulent secretary and the unfortunate girl who had suspected the defalcations and was threatening to go and denounce her lover, either to the President of the Institute or to the governors.
“And the method was equally clear: the meeting in the dark and the rain on the lonely cliff, the muffler quickly thrown round the victim’s mouth to smother her screams, the blow with the stick, the push over the edge of the cliff. The stick stood up as an incontestable piece of evidence; the absence from home of the accused during the greater part of that night had been testified by his landlady, whilst his presence on the scene of the crime some time during the evening was not disputed. As a matter of fact the only point in the man’s favour were the strands of wool found sticking to the girl’s hat pin and Hoggs’s story of the man whom he had seen in the dark, engaged in readjusting a muffler around his neck. Unfortunately Hoggs, when more closely questioned on that subject, became incoherent and confused as men of his class are apt to do when pinned down to a definite statement.
“Anyway, the accused was committed for trial on the coroner’s warrant, and of course reserved his defence. You probably, like the rest of the public, kept up a certain amount of interest in the Cliff murder, as it was popularly called, for a time, and then allowed your mind to dwell on other matters and forgot poor Captain Franklin Marston who was languishing in gaol under such a horrible accusation. Subsequently, your interest in him revived when he was brought up for trial the other day at the Barchester Assizes. In the meanwhile he had secured the services of Messrs. Chamton and Inglewood, the noted solicitors, who had engaged Mr. Provost Boon, K.C., to defend their client.
“You know as well as I do what happened at the trial, and how Mr. Boon turned the witnesses for the Crown inside out and round about until they contradicted themselves and one another all along the line. The defence was conducted in a masterly fashion. To begin with the worthy housekeeper, Mrs. Rumble, after a stiff cross-examination which lasted nearly an hour, was forced to admit that she could not swear positively to the exact words which she overheard between the deceased and Captain Marston. All that she could swear to was that the Captain and his sweetheart had apparently had a tiff. Then, as to Miss Amelia Smith’s evidence: it also merely went to prove that the lovers had had a quarrel; there was nothing whatever to say that it was on the subject of finance, or that deceased had any intention either of speaking to the President about it, or of handing in her resignation to the governors.
“Next came the question of Major Gubbins’s story of the message which he had been asked by his friend to deliver to the deceased. Now accused flatly denied that story, and denied it on oath. The whole thing, he declared, was a fabrication on the part of the Major, who, far from being his friend, was his bitter enemy and unsuccessful rival. In support of his theory William Peryer’s evidence was cited as conclusive. He had heard the two men quarrelling at the very moment when accused was alleged to have made a pathetic appeal to his friend. Peryer had heard one of them say to the other: ‘You villain! You shall pay for this!’ And, in very truth, the unfortunate Captain was paying for it, in humiliation and racking anxiety.
“Then there came the great, the vital question of the stick, and of the strands of wool so obviously torn out of a muffler. With regard to the stick, the accused had stated that in the course of his walk he had caught his foot against a stone and stumbled, and that the stick had fallen out of his hand and over the edge of the cliff. Now this statement was certainly borne out by the fact that, as eminent counsel reminded the jury, the stick was found more than thirty yards away from the body. As for the muffler, it was a graver point still; strands of wool were found sticking to the girl’s hat pin and James Hoggs, after hearing a scream at nine o’clock that evening, ran out toward the cliff and came across a man who was engaged in readjusting a muffler round his throat.
“That was incontestable. Of course, Mr. Boon argued, it was easy enough to upset a witness of the type of James Hoggs, but an English jury’s duty was
not to fasten guilt on the first man who happens to be handy, but to see justice meted out to innocent and guilty alike. The evidence of the muffler, argued the eminent counsel, was proof positive of the innocence of the accused. The witnesses who saw him in the ‘Lovers’ Walk’ on that fateful night had declared most emphatically that he was not wearing a muffler. Then where was the man with the muffler? Where was the man who was within a few yards of the scene of the crime five minutes after James Hoggs had heard the scream—the man who had denied hearing the scream, although both Hoggs and his wife heard it over a quarter of a mile away?
“‘Yes, gentlemen of the jury,’ the eminent counsel concluded with a dramatic gesture, ‘it is the man with the muffler who murdered the unfortunate girl. If he is innocent, why is he not here to give evidence? There are no side tracks that lead to the cliffs at this point, so the man with the muffler must have seen something or someone; he must know something that would be of invaluable assistance to the elucidation of this sad mystery. Then why does he not come forward? I say because he dare not. But let the police look for him, I say. The accused is innocent; he is the victim of tragic circumstances, but his whole life, his war record, his affection for the deceased, all proclaim him to be guiltless of such a dastardly crime, and above all there stands the incontestable proof of his innocence, the muffler, gentlemen of the jury—the muffler!’
“He said a lot more than that, of course,” the Man in the Corner went on, chuckling drily to himself, “and said it a lot better than ever I can repeat it, but I have given you the gist of what he said. You know the result of the trial. The accused was acquitted, the jury having deliberated less than a quarter of an hour. There was no getting away from that muffler, even though every other circumstance pointed to Marston as the murderer of Janet Smith. On the whole his acquittal was a popular one, although many who were present at the trial shook their heads and thought that if they had been on the jury Marston would not have got off so easily, but for the most part these sceptics were not Broxmouth people. In Broxmouth the Captain was personally liked, and the proclamation of his innocence was hailed with enthusiasm; and, what’s more, those same champions of the good-looking secretary—they were the women mostly—looked askance on the headmaster who, they averred, had woven a Machiavellian net for trapping and removing from his path for ever a hated and successful rival. The police have received a perfect deluge of anonymous communications suggesting that Major Gubbins was identical with the mysterious man with the muffler, but of course such a suggestion is perfectly absurd, since at the very hour when James Hoggs heard the scream and a very few minutes before he met the man with the muffler, Major Gubbins was paying his belated visit to Miss Amelia Smith and delivering the alleged message. Even those ladies who disliked the headmaster most cordially had to admit that he could not very well have been in two places at the same time. The Dog’s Tooth Cliff is a good half-hour’s walk from Miss Smith’s house to the ‘Lovers’ Walk’ itself and is not accessible to cyclists or motors.
“And thus to all intents and purposes the Cliff murder has remained a mystery, but it won’t be one for long. Have I not told you that you may expect important developments within the next few days? And I am seldom wrong. Already in this evening’s paper you will have read that the entire executive of the Woodforde Institute has placed its resignation in the hands of the governors, that several august personages have withdrawn their names from the list of patrons, and that though the President has been implored not to withdraw his name, he has proved adamant on the subject, and even refused to recommend successors to the headmaster, the secretary or the matron; in fact, he has seemingly washed his hands of the whole concern.”
“But surely,” I now broke in, seeing that the Man in the Corner threatened to put away his piece of string and to leave me without the usual epilogue to his interesting narrative, “surely General Sir Arkwright Jones cannot be blamed for the scandal which undoubtedly has dimmed the fortunes of the Woodforde Institute!”
“Cannot be blamed?” the Man in the Corner retorted sarcastically. “Cannot be blamed for entering into a conspiracy with his secretary and his headmaster to defraud the Institute, and then to silence for ever the one voice that might have been raised in accusation against him?”
“Sir Arkwright Jones?” I exclaimed incredulously, for indeed the idea appeared to me preposterous then, as the General’s name was almost a household word before the catastrophe. “Impossible!”
“Impossible!” he reiterated. “Why? He murdered Janet Smith; of that you will be as convinced within the next few days as I am at this hour. That the three men were in collusion I have not the shadow of doubt. Marston only made love to Janet Smith in order to secure her silence, but in this he failed and the girl boldly accused him of roguery as soon as she found him out. It would be inconceivable to suppose that being the bright, intelligent girl that she admittedly was, she could remain for ever in ignorance of the defalcations in the books; she must and did tax her lover of irregularities, she must have and indeed did threaten to put the whole thing before the governors. So much for the lovers’ quarrel overheard by Mrs. Rumble. I believe that the fate of the poor girl was decided on then and there by two of the scoundrels; it only remained to consult with their other accomplice as to the means for carrying their hideous project through. Janet had announced her determination to go to Kurtmoor that self-same evening, the only question was which of those three miscreants would meet her in the darkness and solitude of the ‘Lovers’ Walk.’
“But in order at the outset to throw dust in the eyes of the public and the police and not appear to be in any way associated with one another, Marston and Gubbins made pretence of a violent quarrel which Peryer overheard; then Gubbins, in order to make sure that the poor girl would carry out her intention of going over to Kurtmoor that evening, went to her house with the supposed message from Marston, and incidentally secured thereby his own alibi. This made him safe. Marston in the meanwhile went to arrange matters with Arkwright Jones. His position was of course more difficult than that of Gubbins. If there was to be murder—and my belief is that the scoundrels had been resolved on murder for some time before—the first suspicion would inevitably fall on the secretary who had kept the books and who had had the handling of the money. The miscreants had some sort of vague plan in their heads: of this there can be no doubt; they were only procrastinating, hoping against hope that chance would continue to favour them. But now the hour had come, the danger was imminent; within the next four and twenty hours Janet Smith, being promised no redress on the part of the President, would place the whole matter before the governors. Unless she was effectually made to hold her tongue. “We can easily suppose that Marston would be clever enough to arrange to meet Arkwright Jones, without arousing suspicion.
We do know that soon after he finally quarrelled with Janet Smith he walked over to Kurtmoor; the two witnesses who spoke with him stated that they met him whilst they themselves were walking to Broxmouth. It was then past eight o’clock. Arkwright Jones had either dined at his hotel or not; we do not know, for it never struck the police to enquire at once how the popular General had spent his time on that fateful evening. You know what those sort of unconventional seaside places are: people spend most of their time out of doors, and there would be nothing strange, let alone suspicious, in any visitor going out for an hour after dinner, even if it rained.
“Then surely you can in your mind see those two scoundrels putting their villainous heads together, and, as suspicion of any foul play would of necessity at once fall on Marston, Jones decided to take the hideous onus on himself. He went to the Dog’s Tooth Cliff to meet Janet Smith himself and borrowed Marston’s stick to aid him in his abominable deed. He was clever enough, however, to throw it over the edge of the cliff some distance away from the scene of his crime. We do not know, of course, whether the poor girl recognised him, or whether he just fell on her in the dark; she gave only one scream before she fell. They were cle
ver scoundrels we must admit, but chance favoured them too, especially in one thing: she favoured them when she prompted Arkwright Jones to put a muffler round his throat. This one fact as you know saved Marston’s neck from the gallows; but for the strands of wool in the girl’s hat pin and Hoggs’s brief view of a man manipulating a muffler, nothing but Jones’s own confession could have saved his accomplice. Whether he would have confessed remains a riddle which no one will ever solve. But as to the whole so-called mystery, I saw daylight through it the moment I realised that Marston’s despair and humiliation during the inquest was a pretence. If he feigned despair it was because he desired temporarily to be the victim of circumstantial evidence. From that point to the unravelling of the tangled skein was but a step for a mind bent on logic.”
“But,” I argued, for indeed I was bewildered and really incredulous, “what will be the end of it all? Surely three scoundrels like that will not go scot-free. There will be an inquiry into the affairs of the Institute: the governors—”
“The governors have talked of an inquiry,” the funny creature broke in with a chuckle, “but if you had any experience of these private charities you would know that the thing their administrators wish to avoid is publicity. The President of the Woodforde Institute had sufficient influence on the committee, you may be sure, to stifle any suggestion of creating public scandal by any sort of inquiry.”
“But the question of the finances of the Institute is anyhow public property now and—”
“And it will be allowed to sink into oblivion. The executive has resigned. Marston and Gubbins will leave the country, and everything will be conveniently hushed up.”
Unravelled Knots Page 13
