Dead Man's Quarry (21 page)

“Nay, nay, master,” said the little man reprovingly, divesting himself of the raincoat and hanging it over his arm. “A shilling'll be plenty.” And having thus put matters on a business footing he led the way back along the footpath which wound down into the valley and up again oil the opposite ridge towards a small, lonely, slate-built hut standing high among the bracken and great boulders of the hillside.

“Here's where th' ole bitch sniffed 'un out,” said the shepherd, pointing to a patch of bracken a few yards distant from the hut. “And here's where I found'un. But there bain't nothing else thereabouts, young master, for I looked.”

There was a patch where the stout, springy bracken stems were bent and scattered as though something heavy had pressed upon them. It was obvious that the coat had been lying there some time.

“Was it rolled up tight and pushed down among the stems?” asked John, looking at the patch, realizing the hopelessness of attempting to search this sea of bracken for further clues. “Or did it look as if it had been carelessly thrown down?”

“Folded up neat, he were, and laid down among the stalks. The gentleman meant to lose he, master. There weren't no forgetting.”

John nodded and looked inside the hut, which contained nothing but a roughly made bench, a billy-can and enamel cup and a close, fusty smell.

“Nothing unusual in here?”

“Naught, master. 'Twere just as I left'un, though I leaves the door unfastened, owing to my son from over Black Hill way using the hut sometimes. But there's not many comes this way, and I'm not one to complain if a chap should shelter here from the rain now and then, so long as they doesn't make too free with my gear.”

He picked up his enamel cup and lovingly wiped it over with a flap of his weather-hued coat. But Rampson, who had been examining the floor of the hut, asked suddenly:

“Do you smoke?”

“I doesn't, master,” responded their host in tones of courteous reproof. “For smoke be the first step to drink, and drink be the first step to ruin. And my son, he doesn't smoke nor drink, having seen the light at Rodd Fair two summers back.”

“I'm afraid some child of darkness has been using your hut,” observed Rampson gently, and he held out to John a half-inch stub of cigarette which he had picked from the earthen floor.

John examined it carefully, looked rather grave and put it away in his pocket-book.

“Hatton's Ripe Virginia,” pursued Rampson. “Know the brand?”

“Yes,” said John. “I've smoked several of them myself during the past week. Very good tobacco, but too strong for my taste. And now let's go back to the car and drive into Penlow.”

Walking back along the valley, Nora remembered her little passage-at-arms with Rampson, and asked their friend the shepherd:

“Might I look at that book you're carrying?”

“Oh, aye, miss, though he bain't mine. He were in the pocket of the coat, and a silly, sinful book he be, full of folly and vanity, and the covers has run a bit on to the pages, owing to the damp. You're welcome to keep he, if the police doesn't want him.” And mildly frowning over the pomps and follies of this wicked world he handed her a small book with a damp-swollen, scarlet cover, entitled “The Etiquette of English Social Life.”

Nora glanced at it, half laughed and was silent. Glancing at her, John was surprised to see her eyes full of tears. She brushed them away, laughed uncertainly and quickly passed the book on to him.

“It's so pathetic,” she mumbled, searching for a handkerchief. “Charles—none of us liked him, really. His manners were so awful—kind of showy, you know— and we were so beastly critical. And all the time he must have been trying to—to be what he thought he ought to be. It's so pathetic! Oh, I am an ass! Thanks awfully, John. I shall make it beastly damp.”

They walked on in silence to the farm-track where they had left the car. John fingered the pages of the little red book. It and Nora's broken words seemed to place the dead Charles for the moment in a more appealing light. As once before, John found himself pitying the Colonial who had had to take up the stiff traditional mantle of the English squire. Evidently, he had tried.

A tiny pain in his finger made him withdraw his hand sharply from the leaves of the book. There was a large darning-needle sticking in the skin and as he pulled it away a little bead of blood appeared. Looking inside the book he found two more huge needles stuck in the mild and admonitory pages; one of them was threaded with a short strand of brown wool.

“Oh, yes,” said Nora, handing back his handkerchief. “Poor Charles could darn his own socks and said he always carried a needle and wool with him in Canada. He was rather proud of it, poor dear.” She dropped her voice; Rampson and the shepherd were walking on ahead, discussing the influence of beer and tobacco on man's prospect of eternal felicity. “John,” she asked earnestly, “Felix smokes that brand, doesn't he?”

“Hatton's Ripe Virginia? Yes. So does Morris Price, and so does Blodwen. And it's an uncommon and rather expensive brand. I don't like the look of it, Nora. All the evidence we've collected so far is evidence against Morris Price. And yet—why should Morris Price have brought Charles's coat away with him? Surely he would have left it with the body?”

“Why should anybody bring Charles's coat away and hide it on the Forest?”

“Yes. The question applies to anybody, of course. Find me the answer, Nora, and I'll find you the murderer.”

“Dear me!” said Mr. Clino, raising his head with a sudden jerk and opening his eyes as John's long shadow fell across him and his deck-chair. “Was I asleep? Dear me! I suppose I must have been.”

He took off his glasses, polished them and replaced them, and picked up the book which had fallen from his knees to the ground. Observing John's eye fixed upon it in some surprise, he asked:

“Do you read detective stories, Mr. Christmas?”

“Occasionally.”

“They're quite a vice with me,” said the old man, ruefully marking his place in “The Purple Ray Murders” and putting the volume in his pocket. “In fact, as time goes on I read more and more of them and less and less of anything else. It's rather regrettable, really, for they're mostly bad, and when they touch on legal matters they're nearly always absurd, which irritates me. I try to cure myself of the habit, sometimes, by reading Scott and Thackeray, who used to be my favourites. But I find that my taste is so vitiated that I can no longer read good authors with enjoyment.” He sighed. “Of course,” he added, brightening up a little, “there is always Wilkie Collins. But one can't go on reading ‘The Woman in White' for ever.”

“Is there a library of detective fiction here?”

“No,” replied Mr. Clino, looking a little guilty. “My old friend Evan had no taste at all for light literature. I don't know what he would have said if he had seen me reading a book like this! In fact, I think it was the necessity of secret indulgence that gave the vice such a strong hold over me. Of course, there is a circulating library at Penlow.” He hesitated. “But I hardly like to go there, where I am so well known.”

“Oh, come!” said John, half-amused and half-irritated by the old man's scruples. “It's not surely such a desperate matter as that! Why shouldn't you read what you like?”

“But a librarian!” protested Cousin Jim, looking genuinely shocked. “With a reputation for scholarship! How could I? Besides, if it had come to poor Evan's ears!”

“We've been up on the Forest,” said John, a little tired of the subject, but Mr. Clino was not to be diverted. He rose slowly and stiffly and methodically folded up the plaid rug which had been lying across his knees.

“One would imagine, Mr. Christmas, that this dreadful affair of poor Charles's death would have put me off my—ah—hobby. But it hasn't. On the contrary, I find myself turning more eagerly towards these foolish novels. They seem to take the mind off reality. But I must admit I feel especially ashamed of my taste for them at the present time. I shouldn't care for Blodwen to know how I spend my leisure.” He looked half furtively, half humorously at John, as if appealing to him to keep the matter secret. “So you've been spending the day on the Forest. Did you lose Mr. Rampson there?”

“He's gone back to tea with the Brownings to look at a microscope and be worshipped. I left him and Nora there and went on to the police station.” And as they walked across the sunny lawn where the shadows of the cedars grew every moment longer, John told the old man of the discovery of the raincoat among the bracken by the shepherd's hut.

“Of course,” he finished, “I had to advise the shepherd to take it to the police. I didn't want to get him into trouble with the law.”

There was a silence. Glancing at his companion, John saw that the colour of the old man's cheeks had faded slightly, and his usual dreamy, urbane expression had left him.

“Surely,” he said at length, with a sort of stiff good-humour, “there wasn't any need for Miss Nora to recognize the coat so promptly and so—er—publicly? Surely it's rather quixotic to present the other side with evidence?”

There was a pause.

“Somebody must have left the coat there,” said John slowly at last.

“Of course.”

“Then the discovery of the coat ought to lead to the discovery of the murderer, and to the acquittal of Morris Price.”

“But, my dear sir, Morris admitted that he spent the night roaming about Radnor Forest! Surely you can see the use that will be made of this discovery of yours? He spent the night,” repeated Mr. Clino, with indescribable despair in his tone, “roaming about Radnor Forest! Isn't that bad enough, without the discovery of the dead man's coat there? Do you think a jury will find it easy to believe that a sane, innocent man would choose to spend an entire night wandering about the Forest when he might have been comfortably in bed? Isn't that bad enough in itself, without the further evidence of poor Charles's coat?” The colour had come back to Mr. Clino's face. He threw out his hands with a quaint, stiff little gesture of despair. “Whatever induced him to do such a thing as spend the night on the Forest I can't imagine! He must have taken temporary leave of his senses!”

“Oh, surely not! It's really a very sensible thing to do on a lovely night, and not so often done as it ought to be.”

“But in the circumstances!”

“But Morris didn't know the circumstances until afterwards,” John reminded him swiftly.

There was a short, tense pause.

“Of course,” said Mr. Clino with a sigh, “I'm perfectly convinced of Morris's innocence.”

“Of course,” murmured John. And they walked side by side across the lawn towards a bed of brilliant fuchsias, turned and walked back.

John changed the subject.

“Did you ever meet Sir Morris's wife, Mr. Clino— his second wife?”

Cousin Jim gave him a surprised, interrogatory glance, but answered readily:

“Several times. Why?”

“Do you remember whether she was ever called by a nickname?”

“A nickname? Clytie, her name was,” replied the old man, frowning slightly, as if she were a subject only second in unpleasantness to the murder. “Morris always called her Clytie. But yes, I remember meeting a young brother of hers, a quite dreadful young man, who used to call her by some foolish, undignified name. Now what was it? Something very absurd and unsuitable.”

“Puffy?”

Mr. Clino stopped abruptly his gentle pacing.

“That was it!” he exclaimed in mild surprise. “Puffy. Now how did you know?”

“I didn't know,” said John gently. “I only hoped. Have you met Mrs. Price at all since her departure?”

“Since she left Morris? Certainly not. I haven't the slightest idea what became of her.”

“Will you have a cigarette? You don't know, I suppose, whether she ever expressed any desire to come back?”

“Not so far as I know. No, thank you. I haven't smoked the one Blodwen gave me after lunch yet.”

“You are not a heavy smoker, then?”

“Hardly! I very rarely smoke, except for a cigar after dinner, and an occasional cigarette when I feel the need to compose my nerves. May I offer you a pinch of snuff?”

“Thank you. You take your tobacco in the more old-fashioned form.”

Mr. Clino looked doubtfully at his tiny gold snuff-box.

“As a matter of fact,” he confided, “I don't take it much. It makes me sneeze like anything. But there's a sort of elegance about snuff that's lacking from cigarettes—especially if one doesn't take it. And the little snuff-boxes,” he added pensively, looking at the charming specimen in his frail, white hand, “are so pretty, aren't they?”

The Tram Inn, when, half an hour later, John pulled up in front of its timbered gables, seemed to have forgotten its brief excitement of two days before and wore its usual look of sleepy peace. The bar was closed and a large sandy cat slept on the convivial benches inside the little wooden porch. As John tried the handle of the door it roused itself, yawned luxuriously and rubbed an ear against his leg. John opened the door on to the dim, narrow passage that smelt pleasantly of sawdust and stale cider, and walked in. He could hear the tea-time sound of tinkling crockery from somewhere in the back rooms, and walked towards it. An old mirror in a dark frame at the end of the passage reflected the sunny doorway and made his own face appear pale and unhealthy in its greenish glass. The pale and worried Miss Watt, in tea-time négligé of carpet slippers and curling-pins, appeared suddenly in the doorway and remarked that the place, by rights, was closed.

“I know,” said John ingratiatingly. “I came on purpose to see you, if you can spare me a few moments. I've got one or two questions I must ask you.”