He tried not to think of what might have happened if the mechanism had not rusted, if he had not moved faster instinctively at the first faint sound, if the thick cloth of his suiting had not gagged the obscene and cruel teeth. Again he put his hand down. The loose fold of the trouser leg was held fast in the iron mesh of the teeth. There was nothing for it but to tear himself free. He stooped down to see if he could wrench the worsted cloth apart on the blunt iron. Even as he did so, there was an explosion from somewhere behind him and a 'twing-g-g . . . twing-g-g' just above his lowered head. A sudden shower of torn leaves fluttered down upon him as he crouched, helpless, in the bracken. There was another abrupt report and this time the shot came whipping among the fronds where he crouched, scything off the fern-like heads. It crossed Verity's mind that whether or not someone had killed Lord Henry Jervis, they were certainly intent on killing him. He planned quickly and instinctively. First rip the cloth loose at any price. Second lie still. Let them come at him. Then jump. If they stayed back, wait for the dark and then crawl through the bracken towards the boundary of the estate. His first wrestling with the trouser-leg was interrupted by a voice, closer now.
'You just stand up, my fine lad, where I can see you nice and clear. You won't poach me out of my cottage, not you nor the rest of your bastard tribe.'
The tone was triumphant rather than angry. It did not sound to Verity like the voice of a murderer.
'If you ain't a-going to stand,' the voice said, 'then it'll be my pleasure to raise 'ee with a pound o' soft shot up the arse.'
Verity clambered to his feet, scarlet with indignation. The man who approached him with gun levelled was slight of build and wiry. His dark eyes seemed restless and cunning, his mouth and chin bristling with coarse, hard stubble. His mouth hung open with the appearance of a ghastly smile, quite unconnected with good humour, so that his few discoloured teeth gave him the look of a panting dog. He was dressed in a high-crowned hat, limp neckerchief, a shabby old greatcoat, breeches and gaiters. The hands which held the gun were rough and coarse, the fingernails long, crooked and yellow. Seeing Verity caught by the trap, he rested the gun against a tree.
'You'm new to this caper, my fine friend,' he said thrusting his grinning face towards the helpless sergeant.
'You'll answer for this, my man!' said Verity furiously.
The gamekeeper laughed uproariously.
'I'll answer for it! Oh, I will, will I?'
He busied himself with a clasp-knife, cutting a long thick switch from a spruce tree.
‘You get this contraption off me, sharp!' roared Verity. 'You'll answer in the dock for setting cruel and unlawful devices!'
The gamekeeper whittled away at the stout switch.
'We don't a-set nothing,' he said, 'only there was so many set under the old law that we ain't never found the half of them. And when a poacher do step into one, and his friends hear of it, you've no idea how they avoid this place for months after.'
'Don't you 'ave the impudence to call me a poacher!' said Verity struggling.
'And what might you be then?'
'I'm a police officer,' Verity snarled, 'Scotland Yard division.'
'Oh!' shouted the wiry little man, 'that's good, that is! Police officer!' And he laughed till he had to wipe his eyes on the back of his hand. 'Now,' he said more seriously, 'I got one way with poachers. No law, no fuss. While you're in that trap, I'm going to thrash you with a big stick. When I'm done you shall go free. You'll probably have to crawl from here, on account of hurting too bad to walk, and you'll keep your bed a week or two. Then you'll be able to hobble about, and the end of next month I daresay you'll be as good as new. Only,' the voice grew sharper, 'you'll be in no hurry to come back poaching on my lands. I got a snug little lodge and a full larder. I ain't a-going to lose my place through villains like you. And as for the traps, there's notices set, "Attention. Mantraps". Supposing you can read 'em.'
He raised the stick.
'There's no notice at the main gate,' said Verity quickly.
The gamekeeper lowered the stick.
'You never came in through the main gate?'
'I'm here on the orders of Mr Richard Jervis.'
'Never mind that. If you came through the main gates, a poacher would hardly do that. Hold on a minute.'
The man walked away and emitted a low mellow whistle. He entered the trees and there was an exchange of voices. Ten minutes passed before he returned.
'Your name ain't Verity, is it?' he asked suspiciously.
'Course it bloody well is!' said Verity angrily. 'You never said so.'
'Fat chance I had of saying, or you of listening!'
'Rumer,' said the man, 'that's me. Jem Rumer. Gamekeeper to Lord Henry and his father before him, and now to Lord William.'
He took a tiny key from his pocket and knelt at Verity's feet. There was a click as the toothed iron relaxed its grip.
'They never said,' Rumer remarked, as casually as though he and Verity were now old acquaintances, 'never said about you coming today. What they know up at the 'ouse and what they tell me about it is two quite different things.'
'You'll answer to Mr Richard Jervis for this,' Verity muttered, freeing his trouser-leg from the iron fangs. Rumer shook his head.
'No I shan't, Mr Verity. Mr Richard don't own a stick of furniture nor a leaf on one of these trees. This is Lord William's land and I'm his lordship's man. It was old Lord Samuel Jervis', then young Lord Henry's, and now Lord William's. The part you was on, I got very strict orders about. That's the scene of the tragedy, that is,' Rumer continued with relish. 'Lord William won't have a soul near it. Not even you. Mr Richard ain't got no rights there, Mr Verity. And nor have you.'
'Should you happen to know why I'm here?' Verity asked, in a calmer, professional tone.
'Course I do,' said Rumer, surveying the damaged trouser-leg. 'There ain't a person in Bole Warren don't know. Mr Richard, being a poor crippled gentleman with nothing to do but fret, gets to thinking. Thinking ain't much good to a person, Mr Verity, when it's fretful thinking. He gets to believing that poor Lord Henry was 'orribly murdered.'
'Which he wasn't?'
'Mr Verity, I ain't saying a word against poor Mr Richard. But when a man is shut in a chair all day, when he can't have the comforts of an ordinary man, it takes his mind, somehow, and gives it a funny turn. Things you or I wouldn't notice gets turned into a funny way.'
'And how might you, Mr Rumer, come to know just what happened?'
'A-cos I was standing not fifteen feet from where we are now, Mr Verity. There was me and the boy and four men hired as beaters that morning. Way behind us, there was the half-sovs, which we call half-sovs because that's all they tip. Up in front there was Lord William, Lord Henry, Mr Richard, and the sovs.'
'How many sovs, Mr Rumer?'
The keeper's mouth opened in the same mirthless smile, displaying his scattered yellow teeth as he thought the matter over.
'There was four. There was Dr Jamieson, Lord Henry's physician. There was the Reverend Mr Cartwright from Bole Warren and the Reverend Mr Harrison from Lewes that was Lord Henry's friend. And there was Captain Loosemore that was a naval gentleman and friend of Lord William.'
'And where was Captain Ransome?'
Rumer laughed.
'He ain't a sov, Mr Verity, nor even a half-sov. He was stood in the trees, as he might be one of the beaters.'
'And might you have been able to see the gentlemen near Lord Henry, Mr Rumer?'
'What I saw,' said Rumer, 'was Lord Henry on the edge of the sunken wall there, walking along it, and a great space all about him. The others was walking through the trees.'
'Not Mr Richard,' said Verity reprovingly, "e wasn't walking anywhere.'
'No,' said Rumer, "e was in a wheelchair. Used to ride a shooting pony until his legs got worse. But he'd shoot from a chair all right.'
'And you saw Lord Henry fall?'
'Saw 'im fall, Mr Verity, and heard the rifle go off.'
'Saw the puff of smoke?'
'No, Mr Verity. Never did. Ain't that odd?'
'It ain't odd, Mr Rumer. Lord Henry was using that Prooshian powder, which don't make smoke. It shows you an honest witness, though. If you'd said you'd seen smoke,
'Well I never,' said Verity. For the first time he was taken aback by one of Rumer's knowledgeable revelations.
'You'll 'ave another jug?' said the gamekeeper hospitably.
'Don't know as I should, Mr Rumer, when duty presses. What I should like most is an understanding between us that I might come back here, if need be, without a soul knowing about it. Not even Mr Richard Jervis himself.'
Rumer sucked his teeth, shook his head and whistled softly.
'It ain't my place to let you, Mr Verity. Nor Mr Richard's.'
'But I gotta do the job proper,' Verity protested. 'I can't just go where Mr Richard Jervis thinks fit. 'e ain't a detective policeman, 'e wouldn't know murder from plum pudding nor a Seven Dials magsman from Prince Albert, poor crippled gentleman.'
Rumer continued to whistle significantly. Wrestling over a decision which caused him visible distress, Verity drew from his pocket the remaining two sovereigns of the three for which he had signed a receipt to Richard Jervis. The keeper's yellow-nailed fingers closed over the coins.
'Don't alter what belongs to Lord William, however,' he said quietly. 'What I don't see don't hurt. But what I do see, I must act upon. I got a place to keep, Mr Verity.'
Verity's face flushed a deeper, port wine shade.
'And that's where I thought we had our understanding, Mr Rumer. You was to be my friend in the business and, consequential on you being such, I wasn't to say a word to a soul about them cruel and felonious traps that has been left about the estate, quite contrary to 'is lordship's instructions, I'll be bound.'
Through the tiny Gothic window of the keeper's lodge, he saw the dog-cart waiting. Rumer nodded, acknowledging that justice, albeit harsh, had now been done.
5
In blazing June sunshine, Verity walked eastward along the Strand from Northumberland Street. Coats in summer linen were unknown in the Private-Clothes detail, so that he still wore the black trousers which were shiny with age, the threadbare frock-coat and tall stovepipe hat. His red face and faint air of decrepitude suggested a long-employed counting-house clerk whose advance in age had not been accompanied by any rise in his professional status.
The square-paned windows of the select little shops caught the sun at a dozen different angles. Someone had called it the finest street in Europe. It was certainly one of the most expensive. A smart olive-green brougham with the crest of a noble family on its door in small, discreet gold figuring, rolled to a gentle halt, and a shopman in a baize apron ran out to its occupant. In the broad thoroughfare, between the rows of pleasantly proportioned buildings, a slow procession of drags, carts, rattling little omnibuses, four-wheel cabs and hansoms, saddle-horses, broughams and chaises, rattled and jangled from Trafalgar Square to Ludgate. Here and there a splendid chariot with the coachman perched on a brilliant hammercloth and with liveried servants behind moved sedately through the throng of vehicles in aloof self-confidence.
Beyond the glitter of the river in the summer afternoon, the dark tenements of Southwark sprawled in close and narrow streets. Their occupants were rarely to be seen in the Strand however, for a wise authority had imposed a penny toll on Waterloo Bridge, which obliged most of those who lived on the Surrey shore to walk round by Westminster Bridge in order to save twopence a day. None the less, Verity noticed a pair of girls, fourteen or fifteen years old, dressed in black and seeming the daughters of the poor, who walked with great self-assurance, gazing in at shop windows. His natural suspicion was aroused. Then a man in a black silk hat and cloak approached them. He spoke to the elder girl, while her sister began to draw away. As Verity passed he heard the bigger girl scolding the younger impatiently. She took the youngster's arm and pulled.
'You are a fool. Oh, you fool! Come, he wants us.'
There was nothing the law of the land required him to do and Verity, moving on uneasily, reflected that his first allegiance now was to the employer who had hired him. Before the windows of Somerville and Pope, gunsmiths, he halted and surveyed the goods offered behind the small square panes. The specimens of the gunmaker's art were such that a man hardly needed to be a follower of the sport in order to admire their beauty. The stocks of the rifles shone with an immaculate auburn gloss, the fine grain polished to a liquid perfection. Brass and filigree blazed like gold in the summer sun, steel barrels sleek as satin and the entire ensemble displayed on velvet of the richest green. Verity pushed open the door.
Somerville looked as though he had returned hastily from a battue on a country estate and had not had time to change into his town clothes. Shooting jacket and gaiters exuded an air of fresh moorland among the smoke of the town and the faint stench of the city river. Around him, the tall glass cases and the solid leather chairs gave the little shop the impression of a gun-room in a country house.
'I was expected,' said Verity firmly, 'with Mr Richard Jervis' compliments.'
'So you were,' said Somerville with a faint Devonian burr which almost matched Verity's intonation. 'To see the rifle.' He seized Verity's hand and shook it with anxious sincerity, then turned about, unlocked a tall display-case and took down a gun from one of the upper shelves. Verity noticed that a label had been tied to it.
'You come,' said Somerville, as though his visitor did not know it, 'about poor Lord Henry. Well, sir, this is the gun that did the bloody deed. Beautiful as sin and twice as treacherous.'
'Might there have been something amiss with the weapon, then, Mr Somerville, sir?' Verity asked with an appearance of innocence.
'Amiss?' Somerville could hardly believe his ears. 'Amiss?
With our finest piece? Why, sir, we made it for Lord Henry five years since, we fitted him for it as though it was his wedding suit. Stock snug to the shoulder, barrel true to the eye.' He raised the gun in demonstration and lowered it again. 'See, Mr. . . .' 'Verity,' said Verity.
'See, Mr Verity. Do see, now. Touch there. That stock is smooth as a girl's skin, ain't it. And the barrels! Damascus laminated steel! Nothing better. None of your old horseshoe nails melted down and beaten round a bar. Them barrels, Mr Verity, I saw made. Best silver steel beaten flat and worked into a beautiful twist. Do touch it, sir, do! None of your Brummagen there. Why, sir, there they still do melt down their old horseshoe nails and make an iron bore. Bust up in no time.'
'It's a fine weapon, Mr Somerville.'
'Rough-bored, smooth-bored, lapped, polished. . . .'
'Rifled, Mr Somerville?'
'French rifling,' said Somerville confidentially. 'None better when this was made. Our weapon, Mr Verity, will hit with unerring precision when held by a steady hand.'
'Your weapon, Mr Somerville?'
'All our weapons, sir! A child might take the top off an apple at a hundred paces, if only he held it steady.'
'That's very nice, Mr Somerville. And what might that bit of ornament be on the piece, that metal bit?'
'Now that,' said Somerville, 'is a game-maker with a little scoring wheel. When a shooter hits his mark, he can move it without altering his hold on the gun. As he does so, the numbers go round on two little wheels. He can mark up to ninety-nine.'
'And what might it say when Lord Henry was killed?'
'Six, Mr Verity,' said Somerville sadly. 'Only six. His lordship wasn't much for the chase.'
'And you, Mr Somerville, having seen the gun, and the bullet what was took from his head, you can imagine how he must a-fell, hit the gun on the ground to jar it, and shot 'isself through the head?'
'Mr Verity,' said Somerville sadly, 'the bullet that killed him had been shot from this gun, which he was carrying when he died. There was little marls on the stock of the rifle, where it fell. When the gun was taken from his grasp it was empty and had been fired, though of course
it was fired anyway that morning at least half a dozen times before.' Verity nodded.
'Mr Somerville, might a man shoot himself on purpose with such a weapon. I know his lordship never did, but might it happen.'
Somerville looked at him disapprovingly.
'He might, Mr Verity, if he could hold it far enough along his arm to turn the muzzle on himself and still press the trigger. However, a poor wretch that's determined on self-destruction is likely to find fifty easier ways of doing it.'
'But for a man that wanted to destroy 'isself, while making it look accidental, it might be the very thing.'
'It might,' said Somerville, 'and there again it mightn't. But I ain't going to go so far as supposing that self-destruction ever crossed poor Lord Henry's mind.'
'Nor am I, Mr Somerville, no more am I. But us detective police has the habit of looking at a thing all sides up.'
'Generally,' said Somerville coolly, 'it's what's most likely that's true.'
'Generally it is, Mr Somerville. Generally it do turn out that way.'
SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments Page 9
