“Quite admitted,” Sir Clinton agreed. “In fact, here are three cases got by firing from the right barrel of young Brandon’s gun; and they’re absolutely identical, with no marks on the brass. Still, there are variations, if one keeps one’s eyes open for them.”
He picked up two empty cases and handed them to Wendover who examined them side by side. The inspector leaned forward so that he also could see them.
“Just have a look at the ends,” Sir Clinton suggested. “If you examine closely, you’ll see that the indentation made by the striker on the cap isn’t in the same place. In the one case, it’s quite concentric with the rim of the cap—that’s the cartridge I fired myself from the right barrel of young Brandon’s gun. In the second case, the indentation’s just a trifle off the centre. That’s the cartridge-case that Stoke removed from the same barrel when the gun was back in the gun-room.”
A is the cartridge fired by Sir Clinton.
B is the cartridge removed from the gun by Stoke.
“They’re different,” Wendover acknowledged after a careful scrutiny. “You fired several shots, and they all gave the same result?”
“Yes. The indentation of the striker’s central in them all. You can see for yourself if you like; the cases are on the table, here.”
The inspector rose and began to examine them sceptically; but Wendover’s experience raised a further objection.
“What about the left barrel? Couldn’t it come in?”
“I tested it, too,” Sir Clinton rejoined. “Its striker gives a central indentation very like the right barrel’s.”
“Wait a moment till we think this out,” Wendover requested. “It comes to this, doesn’t it? The cartridge-case that Stoke found in young Brandon’s right barrel hadn’t been fired in young Brandon’s gun at all, but had been fired in some other gun.”
“That’s correct,” confirmed Sir Clinton.
“Therefore,” Wendover pursued his argument, “someone must have slipped this spent cartridge into young Brandon’s gun after the fatal shot was fired. But why should anybody do a thing like that? What was the point in hanky-panky of that sort?”
“This is where we leave sure ground and come to guess-work,” Sir Clinton admitted cautiously, while the inspector pricked up his ears. “Now suppose young Brandon had reloaded after his last shot at a rabbit. He’s found dead, with his head blown in. Accident with his own gun? Hardly, when both barrels have unfired cartridges in them. To make it look like an accident, you have to exchange one of these live rounds for a spent cartridge. They were all using the same make of cartridges, remember, so the exchange wouldn’t be noticeable on a casual inspection. But on this hypothesis, that spent cartridge must have been fired in the gun of the murderer.”
“Fits very neatly, that,” Wendover admitted, while the inspector resumed his seat in glum silence. “And that gun must have been in the hands of one of the four people on the spot—Laxford, Hay, James Brandon, or Dunne. But wait a moment! It couldn’t have been Dunne. He had two empty cases in his gun and no other ammunition of any sort. So he hadn’t a third case to put into young Brandon’s barrel.”
“And James Brandon’s cleared as well,” Hinton asserted. “He was on the other side of the stream—far too far off to shatter young Brandon’s skull with a shot, the way it was shattered. I’ve proved that in these experiments of mine. So it comes down now to proving whether it was Hay or Laxford that fired the shot. Well, we’ve got ’em both under lock and key.”
“I think we’d better get back on to the safe ground of hard fact,” Sir Clinton suggested mildly. “That was mere hypothesis, you know. The crucial question is: ‘Which gun fired the cartridge that Stoke found, empty, in young Brandon’s gun?’ I needn’t beat about the bush and play the mystery man.” He took a cartridge-case from his pocket and handed it to the inspector. “That’s what I got when I fired a shot from James Brandon’s gun. It’s got the characteristic off-centre indentation, exactly the same as Stoke’s one. There’s no mistake possible. And none of the other guns gives anything like it.”
The inspector compared the two brass ends in a fervid though unsuccessful effort to find some vital difference between them; but finally he gave in and handed them across to Wendover, who was waiting to examine them.
“I see no differences between ’em, sir, I admit,” he conceded, though his tone suggested that very likely there might be a difference after all. “Still, you can’t get over the fact that Brandon couldn’t get to close range with his brother, and the boy was shot at close range.”
“Young Brandon was shot on the right side of the head,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “That is, on the side towards the stream.”
“He might have turned his head to look towards his brother, sir, and Laxford or Hay, shooting from behind the bushes, could have hit him on the right side as he turned.”
“And then how would the glancing charge have hit the twigs where you found the greatest breakage? It would have gone over the stream, on the line you’re supposing.”
Hinton gave up his objection, though not very graciously.
“You’re quite right, sir. Still, the thing’s impossible.”
Sir Clinton cleared a space on the table and placed on it Jim Brandon’s gun and the little ring which he had got from Dunne.
“I think we’ll fall back on Mr. Wendover’s expert knowledge here,” he said to the inspector. “Just tell us, Wendover, how one can alter the spread of shot from a sporting gun.”
Wendover considered the problem for a few moments.
“Well, of course, if you use a smooth bore you get more spread than you do with a choke bore,” he began. “That’s one way of doing it. Or if you change the thickness of the felt wadding between the powder and shot, you can alter the spread. If you make the wadding thinner, you get more spread. Or you can get a bigger scattering by putting one or two thin card wads between layers of shot and using thin felt wads on top and bottom. Or else you can crimp your cartridge with an extra big turn-over. But that gives a nasty recoil and a poor shot-pattern.”
“But suppose you want to doctor your cartridge to get less spread,” Sir Clinton asked, “how would you go about it?”
“Some people make a little cage of wire-gauze to hold the shot,” Wendover explained. “I’ve used that trick, but I’m not very keen on it. . . . By Jove! So that’s why you asked the inspector if he’d seen any wire-gauze lying about. I ought to have tumbled to the point when you said that.”
“Yes; but it wasn’t done with wire-gauze,” Sir Clinton rejoined. “It was done with this.”
He held up the little ring of pasteboard with its broken inscription:
BRI
SMOK
CART
Wendover pored over it for awhile, then his eyes went to Jim Brandon’s gun, and his face lighted up with comprehension.
“Oh, I see! With a cylinder barrel, of course, it’s possible. I’d forgotten his gun was a smooth bore. Is this how it was done? He cut into the pasteboard of the cartridge just at the powder end of the wad and left it hanging by a mere shred. When he fired, the shreds would give, and the whole mass of shot in this little tube, with a wad at top and bottom, would go out like a solid block. It would keep together for a fair distance and then the different momenta of the various components would begin to sift them out, and the thing would disintegrate. But for a fair distance the whole contraption would hang together as if it were a single projectile; and even after the ring dropped away, the shot would be lumped together and give the effect of a short-range normal shot. Of course it only works with smooth bores; a choke in the barrel would block the way and probably burst the gun. That’s the general idea of the business, isn’t it?”
“More or less,” Sir Clinton agreed. “And that accounts for Dunne finding this ring of pasteboard casing on the slope between the ha-ha and the stream. One had to fit in that cut cartridge somehow, and you see it gives roughly the line of fire, for it must have lain somewhere be
tween young Brandon and his brother’s gun.”
“Then where did James Brandon shoot from, sir?” the inspector inquired sceptically.
“As I work it out, roughly, he was hidden amongst the bushes a little down-stream from the elbow that the river makes just opposite the glade. We’ll have to go there to-morrow and see if we can find any footprints. It was muddy weather and there may be some. Bring a quarter stone of plaster of Paris and a tin basin, on the off-chance that we may be lucky to get a cast.”
“Well, sir,” the inspector admitted grudgingly, “you seem to have an answer for everything. But there’s one thing you haven’t brought out,” he added, fighting grimly to the last.
“And that is?”
“The motive, sir. You haven’t produced any reason why James Brandon shot his brother.”
Sir Clinton gave him a quizzical glance.
“Ever read Lewis Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark? No? It’s a pity to see the classics neglected. As the Snark says:
Let me tell you, my friends, the whole question depends
On an ancient manorial right.’
A curious old custom, at least. I believe that in the course of this case you heard the phrase, ‘borough English.’ Do you remember what it means?”
The inspector shook his head gloomily. There seemed to be no end to the things he had overlooked in this infernal case.
“It’s a system of inheritance still in vogue in the case of a few estates. A kind of survival, like gavel-kind. Instead of the estate going to the eldest son, as in the normal case, under ‘borough English’ it goes to the youngest surviving son. Young John Brandon was the heir to the Brandon estate, so long as no younger heir was born. I gather that no younger heir is likely to be born, owing to the particular disease that old Brandon suffers from. So when his father died, John Brandon would have come into the estate if he had survived. You can see how that made him so important, both to the Brandon family and to Laxford, who was man[#339;]uvring to get a finger into the pie. But supposing young Brandon was out of the way, who came next in the succession? James Brandon, of course. And even in my short acquaintance with him, I got the idea that money bulked very large in James Brandon’s cosmos. He talks as if it did, anyhow. There’s your motive, Inspector; and a big enough one, too, for the Brandon estate isn’t three acres and a cow, as you’ll find if you look it up. That was what James Brandon stood to gain in this affair.”
“Then you mean to arrest him, sir?”
“Immediately, of course. In fact, Mr. Wendover will give you a warrant now, and you’d better take him at once. That gives you three people under lock and key, and if I were you, I’d keep them well apart. For one reason, they won’t be friendly to one another.”
“And Hay, sir? Is there anything against him? I mean, do I detain him after to-morrow?”
“We want him as a witness. Beyond that, he’s no concern of ours. We can’t prove that he was actually a cognisant partner in Laxford’s insurance swindle, though I suspect he was. Laxford might try to implicate him, but a jury would hardly take Laxford’s word against Hay’s, and that’s all there is in it. It will pay us better to make sure of Hay giving evidence against Laxford.”
“Very good, sir. If Mr. Wendover will give me the warrant, I’ll execute it at once.”
Inspector Hinton’s dream had vanished. The ‘big case’ had actually come within his reach, and he had failed to clear it up. With his eyes fixed on the will-o’-the-wisp of Laxford’s guilt, he had let himself be led away from the real trail and had landed himself in a bog. Just what an ordinary bungler might have done. More bitter still, to a man of Hinton’s temperament, was the realisation that the Chief Constable had shown himself to be the cleverer man. He had used the very evidence that Hinton himself had collected so laboriously, and he had known how to interpret it correctly. That was what stung the inspector as he stood waiting for Wendover to complete the formalities and hand over the warrant for Jim Brandon’s arrest.
“Here’s your warrant,” Sir Clinton said. “Now, Inspector, it’s for you to get up this case. I’ve only given you the outline of it, and I trust you to make it lock-fast. You’ve got a free hand. It’s your case. And I shouldn’t wonder but it’ll make something of a splash when it comes into court. Good luck!”
Inspector Hinton was not the sort of man to show gratitude. The feeling that he had been outstripped was too rankling to fade out under a favour. He received his warrant with some rather ungracious words of thanks and took himself off.
“Not a very grateful type,” Wendover commented when he had gone.
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with him,” Sir Clinton declared. “Not so clever as he thinks he is, probably. And you know, Squire, it must have been a bit vexing for him when he found the case being handled over his head, so to speak. He’s a bit uncouth, I admit; but he dug out the evidence wonderfully well, and his reports are first-class.”
Wendover sat down again in his arm-chair.
“To be honest,” he admitted, “I’ve no reason to crow, myself. I missed the main point, just like Hinton. Laxford was a fellow I never could manage to like, somehow. Still, I ought to have seen the truth when ‘borough English’ came into the affair. And your talk about wire-gauze should have put me on the scent. Tell me how you piece the thing together, Clinton. I know your methods, Watson; but I’d like to have it reconstructed as you see it.”
“If I do that,” Sir Clinton retorted, “I’ll have to copy the Snark’s treatment of the evidence when it
. . . ‘Summed it so well that it came to far more
Than the Witnesses ever had said!’
There’s a lot of guess-work in it that Hinton will have to find chapter and verse for, before he’s ready for the Crown Prosecutor. Still, here it is as I see it.”
He helped himself to a cigarette, lit it, and sat down before opening his exposition.
“Start with the affairs of the Brandon estate,” he began. “By the custom of ‘borough English,’ young Brandon—still a minor—is the heir, since his father can’t have any more children who might oust Johnnie. When Johnnie comes of age, there are two courses before him. He can either stand pat and wait for his father’s death, in which case he comes into the rent-roll for life; or else he can agree to bar the entail and drive a bargain with his father which will lose them the estate but will bring in a fair amount of hard cash. The first course is the sound one from Johnnie’s point of view; the second is the one that appeals to the Brandon family, naturally.
“Now the Brandon family made a very bad blunder when they took on Laxford as tutor to Johnnie. One admits the difficulty of their position and the old man’s desire to do his best for the boy. Still, in choosing Laxford they made a hash of things. Laxford saw his chance. If he could get the boy under his influence, he would be able to sway him to take either of the courses open when Johnnie came of age. Which would pay Laxford best? The first one, obviously. Old Brandon couldn’t live long at the best, and by sitting tight and waiting till he died, Johnnie would come into an unencumbered income of thousands a year. And that would be very convenient for Laxford, if he had gained an ascendancy over the boy. Further, he could recommend that course as being in the boy’s own best interest, as indeed it was. Naturally, Laxford set about gaining an influence over his pupil. And when the Brandons discovered how great that influence was, they naturally got the wind up.
“Now we come to these insurance transactions. If Tom, Dick, or Harry insures his life, pays one premium, and then tries to raise money on the policy, the most he’s likely to raise will be something less than the amount of the premium he’s paid over. The policy, as a security, is worth only its surrender value; and if only a single premium has been paid, the surrender value is far less than the figure of the premium. But Johnnie Brandon wasn’t Tom, Dick, or Harry. He had the expectation of coming into the Burling Thorn estate. So if anyone were approached and asked to lend money on Johnnie’s insurance policy, they’d do it qui
ck enough. If he died before coming into Burling Thorn, they could get their money back out of the policy payment; if he lived to inherit the estate, they could get repayment then easily enough. So Johnnie’s insurance policy was quite a good security to back up any debts he incurred.
“Laxford’s first attempt—to insure Johnnie in his wife’s name—looks a pretty black business, if you assume that Laxford’s plan was to murder the boy. But my own impression is that Laxford had no such notion. Most likely he intended to get some document out of Johnnie which would give Mrs. Laxford a claim equivalent to the value of the insurance—something on the same lines as the assignment. That broke down, as you know from the insurance people’s evidence. Laxford seems to have been too lazy to find out the legal position. He’s like a lot of other criminals, very sharp on one side and a perfect bone-head in another direction. Then he tried a fresh line and got Johnnie to insure his own life and assign the policy to Mrs. Laxford. Again he was too lazy to look up things beforehand, or he would have learned that Johnnie couldn’t make a valid assignment till he came of age. Incidentally, to raise money for the first premium, he seems to have double-crossed the moneylender who was financing the Laxford ménage and got the money out of him by some cock-and-bull tale about buying Edgehill.”
“He’s a rank unscrupulous liar, on the face of it,” Wendover interjected.
“Oh, quite,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Well, he pays the premium, and then, somehow or other, he discovers that the boy can’t make a valid assignment. If the boy dies before he comes of age, Laxford gets precisely nothing for his pains. And if the boy lives till he’s twenty-one, Laxford has a shrewd idea that the rest of the Brandon family will make a violent effort to get their own way, as soon as it’s possible to bar the entail. In the middle of a storm like that, it might be difficult to induce Johnnie to execute a legal assignment.
The Ha-Ha Case Page 28
