“If you’ve followed me you’ll understand this gave me a loop of fine silk connecting the handles at the corner and the door. It was the colour of the carriage, and was nearly invisible. Then I took my seat again.
“When the time came to do the job, I first wedged the corridor doors. Then I opened the outside window and drew in the end of the cord loop and tied the end of the rope to it. I pulled one side of the cord loop and so got the rope pulled through the corner bracket handle and back again to the window. Its being silk made it run easily, and without marking the bracket. Then I put an end of the rope through the handle-guard, and after pulling it tight, knotted the ends together. This gave me a loop of rope tightly stretched from the door to the corner.
“I opened the door and then pulled up the window. I let the door close up against a bit of wood I had brought. The wind kept it to, and the wood prevented it from shutting.
“Then I fired. As soon as I saw that both were hit I got outside. I kicked away the wood and shut the door. Then with the rope for handrail I stepped along the footboard to the buffers. I cut both the cord and the rope and drew them after me, and shoved them in my pocket. This removed all traces.
“When the train stopped I slipped down on the ground. The people were getting out at the other side so I had only to creep along close to the coaches till I got out of their light, then I climbed up the bank and escaped.”
The man had evidently made a desperate effort to finish, for as he ceased speaking his eyes closed, and in a few minutes he fell into a state of coma which shortly preceded his death.
After communicating with the police I set myself to carry out his second injunction, and this statement is the result.
BLIND GAP MOOR
J. S. FLETCHER
I
Etherington, manager of the Old Bank at Leytonsdale, in Northshire, was in the first week of his annual month’s holiday, and he was celebrating his freedom from the ordinary routine of life by staying in bed an hour longer than usual every morning. Consequently, on this particular—and as fate would have it, eventful—morning, it was 10o’clock when he came down to breakfast in the coffee-room of the Grand Hotel at Scarborough, in which place he meant to stay a fortnight before going on for a similar period to Whitby. It would not have mattered to him if the hands of the clock had pointed to 11, for he had no plans for the day. His notion of a perfect holiday was to avoid plans of any sort, and to let things come. And something quite unexpected was coming to him at that moment—the hall-porter followed him into the room with a telegram.
“For you, sir,” he said. “Come this very minute.”
Etherington took the envelope and carried it to his usual seat near the window. He gave his order for breakfast before he opened it, but all the time he was talking to the waiter he was wondering what the message was about. He was a bachelor—his mother and sister who lived with him were such excellent administrators that he scouted the idea of any domestic catastrophe; neither of the two would have dreamed of bothering him for anything less than a fire or an explosion. His under-manager, Swale, was a thoroughly capable man, and all was in order at the bank, and likely to be so. Nor could he think of anyone who could have reason to wire him about business outside the bank affairs, nor about pleasure, nor about engagements. But just then the waiter retired, and Etherington opened the buff envelope, unfolded the flimsy sheet within, and read the message in one glance.
“Swale found shot on Blind Gap Moor at 6 o’clock this morning. Believed to be a case of murder. Police would like you to return. Please wire time arrival LEVER.”
It was characteristic of Etherington, always a calm, self-possessed man, that he folded up the message, put it carefully in his pocket-book, and ate steadily through his substantial breakfast before asking the waiter to get him a railway time-table. But he was thinking all the time he ate and drank.
Murder? who would wish to murder Swale? He mentally figured Swale—a quiet, inoffensive fellow of thirty, who had been in the service of the Leytonsdale Old Bank ever since his schooldays, and had lived the life of a mouse. And what could have taken Swale, a man of fixed habits, to a wild desolate spot like Blind Gap Moor before 6 o’clock of a May morning? He knew Swale and his habits very well and he had never heard that the sub-manager was fond of getting up to see the sun, rise—and yet Blind Gap Moor was a good hour’s walk from the town. Perhaps he had been shot during the night, or during the previous evening—in that case, what was he doing there ? For Swale was not a fellow to take long, country walks—he was a bookworm, a bit of a scribbler, in an amateur fashion, given to writing essays and papers on the antiquities of the town, and he accordingly liked to spend his evenings and burn the midnight oil at home. Odd—the whole thing! But—murder? That was a serious business, murder! Still, no one who ever knew Swale would ever have dreamed of connecting him with suicide.
As for himself, he must act. He beckoned the head waiter to his side with a nod.
“You’ll have to get me my bill,” he said. “I am called home—unexpectedly. But first—a railway guide and a telegram form.”
It was a long journey across country to Leytonsdale, involving three changes and two tedious waitings for connections, and 5 o’clock had struck before Etherington got out of the branch train at the little station of his small market town. Lever, the junior clerk who had wired to him that morning, was awaiting him; together they walked out into the road which led to the centre of the place.
“Well?” asked Etherington, in his usual laconic fashion. “Anything fresh since morning?”
“Nothing,” replied Lever. “But the police are now certain it’s a case of murder; they say there’s no doubt about it.”
“Give me the facts,” said the manager. “Bare facts.”
“One of Lord Selwater’s gamekeepers found him,” answered the clerk. “Just before 6 this morning. He was lying dead near that cairn of stones on the top of Blind Gap Moor—shot through the heart. The doctors say he would die at once, and that he was shot at close quarters. And—he’d been robbed.”
Etherington made a little sound which denoted incredulity.
“Robbed!” he exclaimed. “Bless me! Why, what could Swale have on him that would make anybody go to the length of murder?”
“His watch and chain were gone,” began Lever, “and—”
“Worth three pounds at the outside!” interrupted Etherington.
“Yes; but he’d a lot of money on him,” proceeded the clerk. “It turns out that for this last year or two he’s collected the rents for those two farms up on the moor—Low Flatts and Quarry Hill. He’d been there last night. Marshall, the farmer at Low Flatts, says he paid him £56; Thomson, at Quarry Hill, paid him £48. So he’d have over £100 on him.”
“All missing?” asked the manager.
“There wasn’t anything on him but some coppers,” replied Lever. “Watch, chain, purse, pocket-book—all gone. That ring, that he used to wear, was gone.”
“How had those men paid him?” asked Etherington. “Cheque or cash?”
“Notes and gold,” answered Lever.
The manager walked on in silence for a while. Certainly this seemed like murder preceding robbery.
“Do they suspect anybody?” he asked. Lever shook his head.
“They haven’t said so to me if they do,” he replied. “The superintendent wants to see you at once.”
Etherington went straight to the police station. The superintendent shook his grizzled head at the sight of him.
“Bad business this, Mr. Etherington,” he said as the manager sat down. “First murder case we’ve had in my thirty years’ experience of this district.”
“Are you sure it’s murder?” asked Etherington quietly.
“What else?” demanded the superintendent. “If it had been suicide the revolver that killed him would have been lying close by. No, sir—it’s murder! And we haven’t the shadow of a clue.”
“I’ve heard the main facts from o
ur clerk, Lever,” remarked Etherington. “Is there anything you haven’t told him?”
“There’s precious little to tell, Mr. Etherington,” answered the superintendent. “I’ve got at everything connected with his doings yesterday. He was at the bank all day, as usual. Nothing happened out of the common, according to your staff. He left the bank at 5 o’clock and went home to his lodgings. All was as usual there. His landlady says he had his dinner at 6 o’clock—just as usual. He went out at 7—didn’t say anything. He called on Matthew Marshall at Low Flatts Farm at a quarter past 8. Marshall paid him half a year’s rent. He was at James Thomson’s, at Quarry Hill, just before 9; Thomson paid him a half year’s rent, too. He stopped talking a bit with Thomson, and left there about 9.20.
“Thomson walked out to his gate with him, and saw him strike across the moor; it was getting darkish by that time, of course, but he saw him going towards that old cairn, near which he was found this morning. There was naught on him—he’d been robbed as well as murdered, sir.”
“How far,” asked Etherington, “is this place where he was found from these two farms?”
“A good mile from Quarry Hill—mile and a half from Low Flatts,” replied the superintendent.
“Everything is very quiet on those moors at night,” observed Etherington. “Did no one hear the sound of a shot?”
“I thought of that and inquired into it,” answered the superintendent. “Nobody heard any shot. If somebody had heard a shot, you know, they’d only have thought it was one of Lord Selwater’s keepers shooting at something. But so far I’ve heard of nobody who noticed aught of that sort. You see, except those two farms, there isn’t a house on that part of the moors.”
“There’s Mr. Charlesworth’s place—up above that cairn,” suggested Etherington.
“Ay, but it’s over the brow of the hill,” said the superintendent. “That ‘ud prevent the sound being heard there. I called at C harlesworth’s; they’d heard nothing.”
“Any suspicious characters about?” asked Etherington.
“My men haven’t heard of any,” answered the superintendent. “There were some gypsies in the neighbourhood a fortnight ago, but they cleared out.”
“Poachers, now??” suggested the manager. “There are men in this town who poach on those moors.”
“Just so. But we’ve no reason to suspect any particular one of ‘em,” said the superintendent. “I know of two men who do go up there after what they can get, but I’ve found out they were both safe in the town all yesterday evening and last night. No, sir, I think the whole thing’ll go deeper than that.”
“How?” asked Etherington.
“Somebody must have known Mr. Swale was going to collect those rents last night,” said the superintendent meaningly. “He was laid in wait for. And yet, so far as I can make out, there wasn’t a soul knew he collected them except Marshall and Thompson.”
“I didn’t know,” remarked Etherington.
“Just so. According to the two farmers he’s collected them ever since old Mr. Sellers died,” continued the superintendent. “Those farms belong to Mrs. Hodgson, a London lady. Now, if somebody had got to know that Mr. Swale would have £100 in cash after he’d been to these farms last night—eh?”
“You don’t suspect either of the two farmers?” asked the manager.
The superintendent shook his head firmly.
“No, sir; both decent, honest, straightforward fellows,” he replied. “Oh, no! No, it’s a deeper job than that, Mr. Etherington.”
Etherington rose to go. After all, in this particular matter he could do nothing.
“Of course, there’ll be an inquest?” he asked.
“To-morrow, at lo,” answered the superintendent. “But, beyond what I’ve told you we’ve no evidence. It’ll be a case of ‘Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown,’ you know, unless something comes out, and where it is to come from I don’t know.”
Nor did Etherington know, and he said so and went away. And after he had dined with his mother and sister, and discussed with them the tragic affair which had interrupted his holiday, he took his walking-stick and set off out of town to the scene of the murder. And there, in the gathering dusk, he met Charlesworth, the man who lived at an old house called Hill Rise, on the edge of the moor, well above the cairn near which Swale’s body had been found. Etherington knew Charlesworth well; he was an old customer of the bank, a man who did a big trade in timber. He was evidently on his way home at that moment, and was glancing inquisitively at the cairn when Etherington came up.
“Nothing to see,” he remarked, as the manager advanced. “They were looking for footmarks all day, but they found none. The grass is too close and wiry for that.”
“I didn’t expect to see anything,” said Etherington. “It’s some years since I was up this way. I came now to look around, to try to make out how it was nobody heard that shot last night. I understand nothing was heard at your place?”
Charlesworth, a big, athletic man, turned and pointed to the top of the moor above him.
“My place is just three-quarters of a mile over there,” he answered. “There’s all this rise between it and us, and a thickish belt of wood between, too. We couldn’t hear a pistol shot from here. We heard nothing.”
“What about those farms?” asked the manager. Charlesworth pointed in another direction.
“You can’t see Low Flatts,” he said. “It’s down in that hollow yonder. And you can only see a chimney of Quarry Hill—that’s it, peeping up behind that line in the moor. They’d hear nothing. It’s an easy thing to try, as I told the police. Whoever killed Swale selected a good place. It isn’t once in a month there’s anybody about here o’ nights—at this time of the year.”
Etherington made no answer for the moment. He stood staring about him in the fast-gathering dusk. A wild and lonely place, indeed! Miles upon miles of ling and heather, and, beyond the chimney of Quarry Hill Farm, not a sign of human habitation.
“I wonder who did kill him?” he muttered absent-mindedly at last.
Charlesworth turned towards the hill-top with a nod of farewell.
“There’s only one man living who knows that,” he said; and went away.
II
No evidence was brought forward at the inquest on this unfortunate sub-manager’s body which threw any light on the mystery of his murder or incriminating any person. Yet one small, possible clue was produced. A booking clerk from an obscure wayside station in a neighbouring dale came forward, and said that, at 5:30 o’clock on the morning of the discovery of the body, he, on going to his station to issue tickets for the first train, then about due, found walking up and down the platform a rough, sailorlike man, a perfect stranger, who presently took a ticket for Northport.
As he could give no very particular description of him, and as Northport was a town of some 250,000 inhabitants, the chances of finding this man were small. Nevertheless, there was the fact that such an individual, a stranger to the district, was within five miles of the cairn on Blind Gap Moor within a few hours of the time at which Swale was probably murdered.
Nothing came of this. Nothing came of anything that was brought forward in evidence. Only one matter seemed strange. The Leytonsdale Old Bank was one of the very few country banks which issued notes of their own; both the farmers had paid their rents to Swale in these local bank-notes. At the end of a month none of these notes had reached the bank, where a careful lookout had been kept for them, each man having been able to furnish Etherington with particulars of their numbers.
And the manager came to the conclusion that the thief-murderer was a man sharp enough to know that there would be danger in dealing with those notes, and was making himself content with the small amount of gold, and the watch, chain and ring, which he had secured, or was so much more sharp as to change notes at some far off place, whence they would reach the bank slowly and at long intervals.
Six weeks passed, and one day Etherington, ent
ering the bank after his luncheon hour, asked Lever, now promoted to the sub-managership, if anything had happened during his absence.
“Nothing,” replied Lever, “except that Mr. Charlesworth retired the first of those bills drawn on Folkingham & Greensedge. It was due next week. He said he’d take it up now, as he had cash of theirs in hand.”
“That’s the second time he’s done that, isn’t it?” asked Etherington, glancing at a memorandum which Lever put before him.
“Third,” answered Lever. “He retired one in April and one in January. We hold three more yet. One August, October, December.”
The manager made no further remark. He went into his own room and sat down to his desk. But he began to think, and his thoughts centred on a question. Why had Charlesworth got into a practice of taking up the bills of his drawn on Folkingham & Greensedge a few days before they were due for presentation? Why, as in the case of the last three, did he come to the bank and retire them by paying cash, instead of following the usual course of having them presented on maturity to their acceptors? Once in a way this might have been done without remark, but it was becoming a practice. Charlesworth was a timber merchant in a biggish way of business. He did a lot of business with a firm in Northport—Folkingham & Greensedge, agents and exporters. For twelve or fifteen years, to Etherington’s knowledge, Charlesworth had been in the habit of drawing upon this firm for large amounts against consignments of timber. Up to about six months before this the bills so drawn had always been allowed to mature and to be presented in due course for payment, which had always been prompt. But, as Lever just said, Charlesworth had himself retired the last three before they could be presented. Why?
That question began to bother Etherington. Why should a man bother himself to retire a bill which would fully mature in a week, and would be promptly met? It was a strange course—and since the New Year it had been repeated three times. Again—why?
The Best Crime Stories Ever Told Page 12
