CHAPTER X
Colwyn went to bed, but not to sleep. Hour after hour he lay awake,staring into the darkness, endeavouring to put together the facts he haddiscovered during the afternoon's investigations at the inn. But theyresembled those irritating odd-shaped pieces of a puzzle which refuse tofit into the remainder no matter which way they are turned. Try as hewould, he could not fit his clues into harmony with the police theory ofthe murder.
On the other hand, he could not, nor did he attempt, to shut his eyes tothe strong case against Ronald, for he fully realised that there wasmuch to be explained in the young man's actions before any alternativetheory to that held by the police could be sustained. But so far he didnot see his way to an alternative theory. He sought vainly for afoundation on which to build his clues and discoveries; for someoverlooked trifle which would help him to read aright the true order andsignificance of the jumbled assortment of events in this strange case.
In the first place, was Ronald's explanation, about losing his way andwandering to the inn by chance, the true one? The police accepted itwithout question, but was it likely that a man who was in the habit oftaking long walks about the coast would lose his way easily? As againstthat doubt, there were the statements of the innkeeper and the deafwaiter that they had never seen Ronald before. If Ronald were notguilty, why had he departed so hurriedly from the inn that morning? Andif he were not the murderer what was the explanation of the damningevidence of the footprints leading to the pit in which the body of themurdered man had been flung? If the discovery of the two kinds ofcandle-grease in Mr. Glenthorpe's bedroom indicated that two personswere in the room on the night of the murder, who were those two persons,and what did they both go there for?
He reflected that his only tangible reason, so far, for not acceptingthe police theory was based on the belief that two people had been inthe murdered man's room, and that belief rested on the discovery of aspot of candle-grease which in itself was merely presumptive, but notconclusive evidence. It was necessary to establish beyond doubt thesupposition that two people had been in the room before he could presumeto draw inferences from it. And, if he succeeded in establishing thatsupposition, might not Ronald have been one of the two persons, and theactual murderer? What was the significance of the broken incandescentburner, the turned-on gas, and the faint mark under the window?
These questions revolved in Colwyn's head in a circle, always bringinghim back to his starting point that the solution of the case did not lieon the surface, and that the police theory could not be made to fit inwith his own discoveries. The latter were in themselves internalevidence that the whole truth had not yet been brought to light.
Gradually the line of the circle grew nebulous, and Colwyn was fastfalling asleep through sheer weariness, when a slight sharp sound, likethat made by turning a key in a lock, brought him back to wide-eyedwakefulness. He sat up in bed, listening with strained ears, feeling forthe box of matches at his bedside. He found them, and endeavoured tostrike a light. But the matches were war matches, and one after anotherbroke off in his hand against the side of the box. He tried holding thenext close to the head, but the head flew off. With a mutteredmalediction on British manufacturers, Colwyn struck several more inrapid succession before he succeeded in lighting the candle at hisbedside. He got quietly out of bed, and, leaving the candle on thetable, opened his door noiselessly and looked out into the passage.
He had been put to sleep in a small bedroom in the deserted upstairswing where the murder had been committed. His room was opposite thelumber room, which was three doors away from the room in which the bodyof the dead man lay. When the question of accommodation forSuperintendent Galloway and himself had been discussed, the former hadchosen to have a bed made up in the bar parlour downstairs as morecomfortable and snug than any of the bedrooms upstairs, but Colwyn hadconsented to sleep in the deserted wing. The innkeeper, who had lightedhim upstairs, had apologised for the humble room and scanty furniture,but Colwyn had laughingly accepted the shortcomings of the room as apoint of no importance, and had stood at his door for some momentswatching a queer effect in shadows caused by the innkeeper's candlethrowing gigantic wavering outlines of his gaunt retreating figure onthe bare stone wall as he went down the side passage to his own bedroom.
Colwyn, looking out into the passage, could hear or see nothing toaccount for the sound that had startled him into wakefulness. The candleby his bedside gave a feeble glimmer which did not reach to the door,and the passage was as dark and silent as the interior of a vault. Thestillness and blackness seemed to float into the bedroom like a cloud.But he was certain he had not been mistaken. A door had been unlockedsomewhere in the darkness, and it had been unlocked by human hands. Whohad come to that deserted wing of the inn in the small hours, and onwhat business? He decided to explore the passage and find out.
He left the door of his room partly open while he donned a few articlesof clothing, and pulled a pair of slippers on his feet. He glanced athis watch, and noted with surprise that it wanted but a few minutes tothree o'clock. He extinguished his candle and, taking his electrictorch, crept silently into the passage.
He recalled the arrangements of the rooms as he had observed them theprevious afternoon. There were three more bedrooms adjoining his, allempty. On the other side of the passage was the lumber room opposite,next came the room in which Ronald slept, then the dead man's room, andfinally the sitting-room he had occupied. The door of the sitting-roomopened not very far from the head of the stairs.
Colwyn first examined the bedrooms on his side of the passage, steppingas noiselessly as a cat, opening and shutting each door without a sound,and scrutinising the interiors by the light of his torch. They wereempty and deserted, as he had seen them the previous afternoon. Onreaching the end of the passage he glanced over the head of thestaircase, but there was no light glimmering in the square well ofdarkness and no sound in the lower part of the house to suggest thatanybody was stirring downstairs. He turned away, and made his way backalong the passage, trying the doors on the other side with equalprecaution as he went. The first three doors--the sitting-room, themurdered man's bedroom, and Ronald's bedroom--were locked, as he hadseen them locked the previous afternoon by Superintendent Galloway, whohad carried the keys away with him until after the inquest on the body.
The lumber room at the other end of the passage had not been locked, andthe door stood ajar. Colwyn entered it, and by the glancing light of thetorch looked over the heavy furniture, mouldering linen, and stifflyupended bedpoles and curtain rods which nearly filled the room. Theclock of a bygone generation stood on the mantel-piece, and the blackwinding hole in its white face seemed to leer at him like an evil eye asthe light of the torch fell on it. But nobody had been in the room. Thedust which encrusted the furniture and the floor had not been disturbedfor months.
Colwyn returned, puzzled, to his own room. Could he have been mistaken?Was it possible that the sound he had heard had been caused by the doorof the lumber room swinging to? No! the sound had been too clear anddistinct to admit the possibility of mistake, and it had been made bythe grating of a key in a lock, not by a swinging door. He stood in thedarkness by his open door, listening intently. Several minutes passed inprofound silence, and then there came a scraping, spluttering sound.Somebody not far away had struck a match. Looking cautiously out intothe passage, he saw, to his utter amazement, a gleam of light appearbeneath the door in which the dead man lay. The next moment the gleammoved up the line of the door sideways, cutting into the darknessoutside like a knife. The gleam became broader until the whole door wasrevealed. Somebody inside was opening it. Even as he looked a hand stoleforth from the aperture through which the light streamed, and rested onthe jamb outside.
Colwyn was a man of strong nerves, but that sudden manifestation oflight and a human hand from a sealed death chamber momentarilyunbalanced his common sense, and caused it to swing like a pendulumtowards the supernatural. He would not have been surprised if the lightand the
hand had been followed by the apparition of the murdered man onthe threshold, demanding vengeance on his murderer. The feeling passedimmediately, and with the return of reason the detective stepped backinto his room, closed his door quietly, and watched through a knife'sedge slit for the visitor to the death chamber to appear.
The door of the dead man's room opened gently, and the face of theinnkeeper's daughter peered forth into the darkness, her impassive face,behind which everything was hid, showing like a beautiful waxen maskagainst the light of the candle she held in her hand. Her clear gazerested on Colwyn's door, and it seemed to him for a moment as thoughtheir glances met through the slit, then her eyes swept along thepassage from one end to the other. As if satisfied by the scrutiny thatshe had nothing to fear, she stepped forth from the death chamber,closed and locked the door behind her, withdrew the key, walked swiftlyalong the passage to the head of the stairs, and descended them.
Colwyn opened his door and followed her. He paused outside to pick upthe boots which he had placed there to be cleaned, and carrying them inhis hand, ran quickly to the head of the stairs. Looking over thelanding, he saw the girl reach the bottom of the stairs and turn downthe passage towards the back door, still carrying the lighted candle inher hand.
When Colwyn reached the bottom, the girl and the light had disappeared.But a swift gust of wind in the passage revealed to him that she hadgone out by the back door, and closed it after her. He followed alongthe passage till he felt the latch of the back door in his hand. Thedoor yielded to the lifting of the latch, and he found himself in theopen air.
It was a grey northern night, with a bitter wind driving the sea mist inbillows over the marshes, and a waning half moon shining fitfullythrough the dingy clouds which scudded across a lead-coloured sky. Bythe light of the moon he saw the figure of the girl, already somedistance from the house, swiftly making her way along the reedy canalpath which threaded the oozing marshes.
Colwyn was not a stranger to marshlands. He had waded knee-deep from dawnto dusk through Irish bogs after wild geese; he had followed themigratory seafowl of Finland, Russia and Serbia into their Scottishbreeding haunts, and he had once tried to keep pace with the sweep ofthe Bore over the Solway Marshes, but he had never undertaken a task sodifficult as following this girl across a Norfolk marshland. The pathshe trod so unhesitatingly was narrow, and slippery, with the canal onone side and the marshes on the other. In keeping clear of the canalColwyn frequently found himself slipping into the marshes. His feet andlegs speedily became wet and caked with ooze, and once he nearly lostone of his boots, which he had pulled on hurriedly outside the inn, andleft unlaced.
But the girl walked straight on with a swift and even gait, treading thenarrow path across the morass as securely as though she had been on thehigh road. Colwyn soon realised that the path they were following wastaking them straight across the marshes to the sea. The surging of thewaves against the breakwater sounded increasingly loud on his ears, andafter a while he saw the breakwater itself rise momentarily out of thedarkness like a yellow wall, only to disappear again. But presently itwas visible once more, looming out in increasing clearness, with aghostly glimmering of the grey waters of the North Sea heavingturbulently outside.
As they neared the breakwater the path became drier and firmer, and thelight of the moon, falling through a ragged rift in the scurryingclouds, showed a line of sand banks and strips of tussock-land emergingfrom the marshes as the marshes approached the sea.
The girl kept on with the same resolute pace, until she reached a spotwhere the canal found its outlet to the sea. There she turned aside andskirted the breakwater wall for a little distance, as if searching forsomething. The next moment she was scaling the breakwater wall. Colwynwas too far away to intercept her, or reach her if she slipped. Hestopped and watched her climb to the top of the wall, and stand there,like a creature of the sea, with the spray leaping hungrily at herslight figure. He saw her take something from the bosom of her dress andcast it into the wild waste of seething waters in front of her. Havingdone this she turned to descend the breakwater. Colwyn had barely timeto leave the path, and take refuge in the shadow of the wall, before shereached the path again and set out to retrace her steps across thelonely marshes.
The Shrieking Pit Page 10
