The Shrieking Pit by Arthur J. Rees (chrysanthemum read aloud TXT) 📕

was no lack of strength in his frame as he advanced briskly towards his visitors. His face was not the least remarkable part of him. It was ridiculously small and narrow for so big a frame, with a great curved beak of a nose, and small bright eyes set close together. Those eyes were at the present moment glancing with bird-like swiftness from one to the other of his visitors.

"You are the innkeeper—the landlord of this place?" asked Mr. Cromering.

"At your service, sir. Won't you go inside?" His[Pg 52] voice was the best part of him; soft and gentle, with a cultivated accent which suggested that the speaker had known a different environment at some time or other.

"Show us into a private room," said Mr. Cromering.

The innkeeper escorted the party along the passage, and took them into a room with a low ceiling and sanded floor, smelling of tobacco, explaining, as he placed chairs, that it was the bar parlour, but they would be quiet and free from interruption in it, because he had closed the inn that day in anticipation of the police visit.

"Quite right—very proper," said the chief constable.

"Will you and the other gentlemen take any refreshment, after your journey?" suggested the innkeeper. "I'm afraid the resources of the inn are small, but there is some excellent old brandy."

He stretched out an arm towards the bell rope behind him. Colwyn noticed that his hand was long and thin and yellow—a skeleton claw covered with parchment.

"Never mind the brandy just now," said Mr. Cromering, taking on himself to refuse on behalf of his companions the proffered refreshment. "We have much to do and it will be time enough for refreshments afterwards. We will view the body first, and make inquiries after. Where is the body, Benson?"

"Upstairs, sir."

"Take us to the room."

The innkeeper led the way upstairs along a dark and narrow passage. When he reached a door near the end, he opened it and stood aside for them to enter.

"This is the room," he said, in a low voice. It was Colwyn's keen eye that noted the key in the door. "What is that key doing in the door, on the outside?" he asked. "How long has it been there?"

"The maid found it there this morning, sir, when she[Pg 53] went up with Mr. Glenthorpe's hot water. That made her suspect something must be wrong, because Mr. Glenthorpe was in the habit of locking his door of a night and placing the key under his pillow. So, after knocking and getting no answer, she opened the door, and found the room empty."

"The door was not locked, though the key was in the door?"

"No, sir, and everything in the room was just as usual. Nothing had been disturbed."

"And was that bedroom window open when you found the room empty?" asked Superintendent Galloway, pointing to it through the open doorway.

"Yes, sir—just as you see it now. I gave orders that nothing was to be touched."

"Ronald slept in this room," said Queensmead, indicating the door of the adjoining bedroom.

"We will look at that later," said Galloway.

The interior of the room they entered was surprisingly light and cheerful and spacious, having nothing in common with those low gloomy vaults, crammed with clumsy furniture and moth-eaten stuffed animals, which generally pass muster as bedrooms in English country inns. Instead of the small circular windows of the south side, there was a large modern two-paned window in a line with the door, opening on to the other side of the house. The bottom pane was up, and the window opened as wide as possible. A very modern touch, unusual in a remote country inn, was a rose coloured gas globe suspended from the ceiling, in the middle of the room. The furniture belonged to a past period, but it was handsome and well-kept—a Spanish mahogany wardrobe, chest of drawers and washstand with chairs to match. Modern articles, such as a small writing-desk near the window,[Pg 54] some library books, a fountain pen, a reading-lamp by the bedside, and an attaché case, suggested the personal possessions and modern tastes of the last occupant. A comfortable carpet covered the floor, and some faded oil-paintings adorned the walls.

The bed—a large wooden one, but not a fourposter—stood on the left-hand side of the room from the entrance, with the head against the wall nearest the outside passage, and the foot partly in line with the open window, which was about eight feet away from it. The door when pushed back swung just clear of a small bedroom table beside the bed, on which the reading lamp stood, with a book beside it. The other side of the bed was close to the wall which divided the room from the next bedroom, so that there was a large clear space on the outside, between the bed and the door. The gas fitting, which was suspended from the ceiling in this open space, hung rather low, the bottom of the globe being not more than six feet from the floor. The globe was cracked, and the incandescent burner was broken.

The murdered man had been laid in the middle of the bed, and covered with a sheet. Superintendent Galloway quietly drew the sheet away, revealing the massive white head and clear-cut death mask of a man of sixty or sixty-five; a fine powerful face, benign in expression, with a chin and mouth of marked character and individuality. But the distorted contour of the half-open mouth, and the almost piteous expression of the unclosed sightless eyes, seemed to beseech the assistance of those who now bent over him, revealing only too clearly that death had come suddenly and unexpectedly.

"He was a great archaeologist—one of the greatest in England," said Mr. Cromering gently, with something of a tremor in his voice, as he gazed down at the dead[Pg 55] man's face. "To think that such a man should have been struck down by an assassin's blow. What a loss!"

"Let us see how he was murdered," said the more practical Galloway, who was standing beside his superior officer. He drew off the covering sheet as he spoke, and dropped it lightly on the floor.

The body thus revealed was that of a slightly built man of medium height. It was clad in a flannel sleeping suit, spattered with mud and clay, and oozing with water. The arms were inclining outwards from the body, and the legs were doubled up. There were a few spots of blood on the left breast, and immediately beneath, almost on the left side, just visible in the stripe of the pyjama jacket, was the blow which had caused death—a small orifice like a knife cut, just over the heart.

"It is a very small wound to have killed so strong a man," said Mr. Cromering. "There is hardly any blood."

Sir Henry examined the wound closely. "The blow was struck with great force, and penetrated the heart. The weapon used—a small, thin, steel instrument—and internal bleeding, account for the small external flow."

"What do you mean by a thin, steel instrument?" asked Superintendent Galloway. "Would an ordinary table-knife answer that description?"

"Certainly. In fact, the nature of the wound strongly suggests that it was made by a round-headed, flat-bladed weapon, such as an ordinary table or dinner knife. The thrust was made horizontally,—that is, across the ribs and between them, instead of perpendicularly, which is the usual method of stabbing. Apparently the murderer realised that his knife was too broad for the purpose, and turned it the other way, so as to make sure of penetrating the ribs and reaching the heart."

"Does not that suggest a rather unusual knowledge of[Pg 56] human anatomy on the murderer's part?" asked Mr. Cromering.

"I do not think so. Anybody can tell how far apart the human ribs are by feeling them."

"It is easy to see, Sir Henry, that the wound was made by a thin-bladed knife, but why do you think it was also round-headed?" asked Superintendent Galloway. "Might it not have been a sharp-pointed one?"

"Or even a dagger?" suggested Mr. Cromering.

"Certainly not a dagger. The ordinary dagger would have made a wider perforation with a corresponding increase in the blood-flow. My theory of a round-headed knife is based on the circumstance of a portion of the deceased's pyjama jacket having been carried into the wound. A sharp-pointed knife would have made a clean cut through the jacket."

"I see," said Superintendent Galloway, with a sharp nod.

"Therefore, we may assume, in the case before us,"—Sir Henry Durwood waved a fat white hand in the direction of the corpse as though he were delivering an anatomical lecture before a class of medical students—"that the victim was killed with a flat, round knife with a round edge, held sideways. Furthermore, the position of the wound reveals that the blow was too much on the left side to pierce the centre of the heart directly, but was a slanting blow, delivered with such force that it has probably pierced the heart on the right side, causing instant death."

"The weapon, then, entered the body in a lateral direction, that is, from left to right?" asked Colwyn, who had been closely following the specialist's remarks.

"That is what I meant to convey," responded Sir Henry, in his most professional