The Hand in the Dark by Arthur J. Rees (amazing books to read txt) 📕

"Yes—a few hysterical females cowering and whimpering with fear as far away from the door as possible," retorted Merrington contemptuously. "The butler made that clear also."

"But the servants would also have heard the scream and the shot," pursued Captain Stanhill earnestly. "Is it not likely that some of them would have been clustered near the foot of the staircase, wondering what had happened?"

"No," replied Merrington. "Servants are even more cowardly than they are curious. They would be too frightened to congregate at the foot of the staircase, for fear the murderer might come leaping downstairs and discharge another shot in their midst. It is possible, however, that the murderer remained hidden upstairs for some time longer—perhaps until the butler left the house to go to the village for the police, and Musard took all the male guests downstairs to make another search of the house. He would then have an exceedingly favourable opportunity of slipping away unobserved. It is true that the upstairs portion of the wing was searched before that time arrived, but the search was conducted by amateurs who knew nothing about such a task, and would probably overlook such hiding-places as I have indicated."

It appeared to Captain Stanhill that Superintendent Merrington, instead of always adopting his theory of fitting the crime to the circumstances, was sometimes in danger of reversing the process.

"From what you say it seems to me that it is very difficult to tell how the murderer escaped," he remarked.

"It is even more difficult to say how the murderer, after entering the moat-house, found his way to Mrs. Heredith's bedroom in order to murder her. The house is a big rambling place, consisting of a main building and two wings. It would be impossible for you or me or any other stranger to find our way about it without previous knowledge of the place, unless we had a plan. How, then, did the murderer accomplish it? How did he know that Mrs. Heredith slept in the left wing? How did he know that he would find her alone in that wing while everybody else was downstairs at the dinner-table?"

Again, it seemed to Captain Stanhill that Merrington's detective methods had a tendency to multiply difficulties rather than clear them up.

"Perhaps he was provided with a plan of the house," he suggested.

"That answers only one of my points. In my consideration of this aspect of the case, two possible solutions occurred to me. It is impossible for any of the guests to have committed the crime, because they were all downstairs at the time, but it is just possible one of them may have instigated it."

"It is incredible to me that a guest staying in a gentleman's house could plot such a crime," said Captain Stanhill.

"Nothing is incredible in crime," replied Merrington. "I've no illusions about human nature. It is capable of much worse things than that. Strange things can happen in a big country-house like this, filled with a large party of young people of both sexes—flirtations, intrigues, and worse still."

"But not murder, as a general rule," commented Captain Stanhill, with a trace of sarcasm in his mild tones.

"You cannot lay down general rules about murder. An unbalanced human being, under the influence of hatred, jealousy, or revenge, is no more amenable to the rules of society than a tiger. But I do not think that this crime was instigated by one of the guests, because in that case it would probably have been arranged to be committed later in the evening, when the members of the house-party were at the house of the Weynes, and the moat-house was occupied only by the servants. Still, I do not intend to lose sight of the hypothesis. Another possibility is that one of the servants was in league with the murderer. A third possibility is that Mrs. Heredith may have brought in the murderer herself."

"What do you mean?"

"She may have had a lover, and the lover may have murdered her."

"Oh, impossible!" Captain Stanhill repelled the idea with an instinctive gesture of disgust. "It is too monstrous to suppose that a happily married young wife would be carrying on an intrigue three months after her marriage."

"More monstrous things happen every day—human nature being what it is," retorted Merrington coolly. "You must remember that we know practically nothing about her. The people who knew her in London left the house before they could be questioned; Miss Heredith and her brother have no knowledge of her past; and her husband is too ill to tell us anything. Her marriage was apparently a hasty love match—a love match so far as young Heredith was concerned. So far, we have only two slender facts to guide us in our estimate of her, which are contained in the two letters in which young Heredith announced his marriage to his people. According to those statements, she was an orphan who was earning her living as a war clerk in the Government department in which young Heredith held his appointment. That does not carry us very far. During her brief life at the moat-house she seems to have been reticent about her earlier life. Miss Heredith is not the type of woman to have questioned her, and, apparently, she vouchsafed no information. An examination of her boxes and her writing-table has brought to light nothing in the way of writing or correspondence to help us. Such a girl—a bachelor girl in London in war-time—may have had passages in her past life of which her husband knew nothing—passages which may have an important bearing on her murder. Not until we have a thorough knowledge of her antecedents and her past life can we hope to pierce the hidden motives which have led to this murder. It is there, in my opinion, that we must seek for the clue to this strange murder, and it is to that effort I shall devote my energies as soon as I return to London. Until those facts are brought to light we are merely groping in the dark."

In accordance with Merrington's instructions, Caldew devoted a considerable portion of the morning seeking information among the moat-house guests. But few of them showed any inclination to talk about the murder. Many of the women were too upset to be seen, and the men had plainly no desire to be mixed up in such a terrible affair by giving interviews to detectives. Everybody was anxious to get away as speedily as possible, and Caldew was compelled to pursue his inquiries amongst groups of hurrying people, flustered servants, and village conveyances laden with luggage. Most of the departing guests replied to his questions as briefly as possible, and gave their London addresses with obvious reluctance; the few who were willing to aid the cause of justice could throw very little light on the London life of the murdered girl. Even those who had been acquainted with her before her marriage seemed to know very little about her.

Caldew finished his inquiries by midday. By that time most of the guests had departed from the moat-house and were on their way to London. Superintendent Merrington and Captain Stanhill were in the library examining the servants. Sergeant Lumbe had gone by train to Tibblestone to sift the story of the suspicious stranger who had descended on that remote village during the previous night.

It wanted an hour to lunch-time, and Caldew decided to spend the time by making a few investigations on his own account before cycling over to Chidelham in the afternoon to see the Weynes.

Caldew had not been impressed with Merrington's handling of the case. Subordinates rarely are impressed with the qualities of those placed over them in authority. They generally imagine they could do better if they had the same opportunities. Caldew was no exception to that rule. It seemed to him that Merrington lacked finesse, and was out of touch with modern methods of criminal investigation. He had been spoilt by too much success, by too much newspaper flattery, by too many jaunts with Royalty. No man could act as sheep-dog for Royalty and retain skill as a detective. That kind of professional work was fatal for the intelligence. Merrington had a great reputation behind him, and his knowledge of European criminals was probably unequalled, but his methods of investigating the moat-house murder suggested that he was no longer one of the world's greatest detectives, if, indeed, he had ever deserved recognition in their ranks. Caldew recalled that his fame rested chiefly on his wide experience rather than on the more subtle deductive methods of modern criminology. It was said in Scotland Yard that when Merrington was at the height of his reputation, twenty years before, his knowledge of London criminals and their methods was so extensive that he could in most cases identify the criminal by merely looking at his handiwork.

As a modern criminologist, Caldew believed that the less a detective intruded his own personality into his investigations the better for his chances of success. He did not think that the loud officialism of Merrington was likely to solve such a deep, subtle crime as the murder of Violet Heredith, and, consequently, he had the chance for which he had waited so long. It now remained for him to prove that he could do better than Merrington. He had sufficient confidence in his own abilities to welcome the opportunity, but at the same time he believed that he was confronted with a crime which would tax all his resources as a detective to unravel.

Like Merrington, he had been struck by the strangeness of the murder. All the circumstances were unusual, and quite outside his previous experience of big crimes. He had also come to the conclusion that the ease with which the murderer had found his way into the moat-house, and afterwards escaped, pointed to an intimate knowledge of the place.

It would be too much to say that Caldew and Merrington reached different conclusions by the same road. Up to a certain point their independent deductions from the more obvious facts of the case were alike, as was inevitable. In every crime there are circumstances and events which are as finger-posts, pointing the one way to the experienced observer. But their subsequent deductions from the outstanding facts branched widely, perhaps because the younger detective did not read so much into circumstances as Merrington. From the same facts they had reached different theories about the murder. Merrington, by a process of minute and careful deductions which he had placed before the Chief Constable, had convinced himself that the key to the murder and the murderer was to be found in London; Caldew believed that the solution of the mystery lay near the scene of the events, and perhaps in the house where the murder was committed.

Caldew was aware that he could have given no satisfactory reason for holding that belief, apart from the point that the murder had been committed by somebody who knew the moat-house sufficiently well to get in and out of the place without being seen. But that point was open to the explanation that the criminal might have provided himself with a plan of the house. Nevertheless, the impression had entered his mind so strongly that he could not have shaken it off if he had tried. But he did not try. He had sufficient imagination to be aware that intuition, in crime detection, is sometimes worth more than the most elaborate deductions.

For the rest, all his speculations about the crime were affected by the trinket he had found in the bedroom on the night of the murder. But the discovery and subsequent disappearance of that clue, as he believed it to be, had not led him very far as yet. He felt himself in the position of a palæontologist who is called upon to reproduce the structure of an extinct prehistoric animal from a footprint in sandstone. The vanished trinket was a starting-point, and no more. It was a possible hypothesis that the person who had dropped the stone and entered the death-chamber in search of it was the murderer, but so far it was incapable of demonstration or proof. As an isolated fact, it was useless, and brought him no nearer the solution of the mystery. But, on the other hand, it was an undoubted fact, and, for that reason, was dependent upon other facts for its existence. It was his task to find out who had dropped the trinket in the bedroom and subsequently returned for it during his own brief absence downstairs. To establish those essential kindred facts was, he believed, to lay hands on the murderer of Violet Heredith.

Caldew walked thoughtfully from the moat-house down to the village, intent on commencing his own independent investigations into the crime. If the solution of the mystery lay near the scene, as he believed, it was possible that some clue might