The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story Page 22

  CHAPTER XXII

  It was after dinner that night, as he sat in the little drawing-room ofthe cottage with Lady Ruth and Sir Arthur, that his hostess asked him toexplain to them how he had contrived to detect the way in which themurder had been committed.

  "You promised to tell me all about it," Lady Ruth reminded him, "if Iwould keep silent about your finding the papers in the statue."

  "Tell us the whole thing from the beginning," Sir Arthur urged him.

  "I will willingly tell you anything that may interest you," Gimbletconsented readily. "Every one enjoys talking about their work tosympathetic listeners such as yourselves. It is a bad thing to start on acase with a preconceived idea, and I can't deny that when I first camehere I was very near having an _idee fixe_ as to the origin of the crime.I tried to deceive myself into thinking that I kept an open mind on thesubject; but I don't think I ever really doubted for a minute that theNihilist society to which Lord Ashiel had formerly belonged wasresponsible for the murder. Even after my conversation with the new peer,which showed me that things looked blacker against Sir David Southernthan I had expected, I was far from convinced that he was guilty, thoughI was obliged to admit that there was some ground for the conclusion cometo by the police.

  "But what was the evidence against him? Sir David was known to havequarrelled with his uncle; he had even been heard to say he had a goodmind to shoot him. But that was more than twenty-four hours previous tothe crime, and the words were uttered in a moment of anger, when heprobably said the first thing that came into his head. Was he likely tohave hugged his rage in silence for the hours that followed, and then tohave walked out into the garden and shot his uncle in cold blood andwithout further warning? It did not appear to me probable, but then I didnot know the young man.

  "He was not to be found when the deed was discovered, and a huntinstituted for the murderer. Well, he had an answer to that which fittedin with my own theory. He said he saw some one hanging about the grounds,and went to look for him. But it was said that the night was so dark asto make it improbable that anyone should have been seen, even if therehad been anyone to see. That cut both ways, to my mind. For it wouldaccount for the intruder making his escape undiscovered.

  "Then there was the matter of the rifle, which he had told Miss Byrne hehad cleaned that evening, in which case it had certainly been fired sincethen. He owned that he had locked it up and that the key never left hispossession afterwards, but now denied that he had told the young ladythat he had cleaned it. I asked young Lord Ashiel if he could put anypossible interpretation on these facts except the one accepted by thepolice, and he replied that he could not. That, for the first time, mademe wonder if he were really anxious to believe his cousin innocent. For Icould put quite different interpretations on them myself.

  "In the first place, though it was possible that Sir David lied inmaking his second statement to the effect that he had not said he hadcleaned his rifle, it was equally possible that the first statement thathe _had_ cleaned it was not strictly accurate. For some reason, which hedid not care to divulge, he might have told Miss Byrne he had beencleaning his gun when he had been really doing something entirelydifferent. But had he told her he had cleaned it? His words, as repeatedby her to me, were, 'I went in there to clean my rifle,' but not, 'I havebeen cleaning my rifle,' which would be another thing altogether, heprobably had not yet begun cleaning it when he heard Miss Byrne comingand went out to speak to her; it is possible some feeling akin to shynessmight make him reluctant to confess this afterwards in public. Indeed Inow feel quite sure that this is the explanation of the matter. Later on,when I questioned her again, she did not appear certain which of the twoforms of words he had used; but there was, at all events, a considerabledoubt. There were other possibilities also. Some one might possess aduplicate key to the gun-cabinet. It seemed to me impossible that none ofthese considerations should have occurred to young Ashiel, if he werereally reluctant to believe in Sir David's guilt. But at the same time Iremembered the almost incredible lack of reasoning powers shown by mostmembers of the public where a deed of violence has been committed, andknowing that there is nothing so improbable that it will not find a hostof ready believers, I did not attach much importance to the circumstanceuntil later.

  "Still on the whole, after talking to young Lord Ashiel, I felt moredisposed to believe that there might be some truth in the accusationthat had been made than I had previously thought likely. But on thatpoint I reserved my opinion till I should have had an opportunity ofexamining the scene of the tragedy for myself. So I prevailed upon thenew owner of the castle to leave me alone--which he was the more ready todo since he had urgent need to be first in examining some papers of hisuncle's which were in another room--and proceeded to make a cast roundthe garden from which the shot had been fired, in the hope of lightingupon some trifle which had escaped the notice of Macross.

  "It was when I came upon the footprints in the rose-bed which had done somuch to prove the guilt of Sir David Southern in the eyes of hisaccusers, that I began to be certain of his innocence; and a very littleexamination convinced me absolutely that whoever had shot Lord Ashiel itwas not his youngest nephew. For the tracks on the flower-bed left noroom for doubt.

  "It is true they corresponded exactly with the shooting-boots Sir Davidhad been wearing on the day the crime was committed. I had providedmyself with a pair that I was assured was exactly like those particularboots which fitted the tracks and which the police had taken away withthem, and I found that there was indeed no difference, except for thematter of an extra nail or two on the soles. There was no doubt that SirDavid's boots had made those impressions, but to my mind there wasequally no doubt that Sir David had not been in them when they made them.For the track which was so plainly distinguishable on the soft mould ofthe flower-bed had certain peculiarities which I could hardly overlook.

  "There was first a row of footmarks leading from the lawn to the middleof the bed; then more marks as if the wearer of the boots had moved fromone position to another hard by; and finally, a track leading back againto the mossy lawn at the side. Now all this was well enough till it cameto the last row of footsteps, those which led off the bed, and which hadpresumably been taken after the fatal shot was fired. But was itconceivable that a man who had that moment committed a cold-bloodedmurder should leave the scene of his crime with the same slow, deliberatefootsteps with which he had approached it? Surely not.

  "And yet this is what the wearer of the boots had done. The imprints, asthey advanced towards the lawn, were deep and well defined from toe toheel. Not only that, but they were, if anything, closer together thanthose which preceded them. Now a man, running, leaves a deeper impressionof his toe than he does of his heel, and his steps are much farther apartin proportion to his increase in speed. I, myself, ran from the middle ofthe bed, to the lawn, alongside of the footmarks of the soi-disantmurderer, and though I am a short man, while Sir David's legs arereported long, I left only two footprints to his five. To me it was ascertain as if I had seen it happen that the wearer of the boots trampledhis way off the rose-bed as slowly as he had trampled on. Thosefootprints had been made by some one who was determined they should beseen, not by some one whose only thought was to get away from the place;not, in short, by a man who had that moment fired a murderous shotthrough the darkness. The tracks had undoubtedly been made as a blind andwith the intention of diverting suspicion to the wrong man probably afterthe deed itself was done.

  "I was satisfied, then, that the shot had not been fired from thisparticular part of the rose-bed, and I proceeded to search for otherfootprints farther down the bed. I did not feel much hope of beingsuccessful, since, if our man had had the forethought to leave so manytraces of some one else's presence, it was unlikely he would haveneglected to ensure that his own should be absent. And as I expected, Ifound none.

  "But at the end of the garden, where it is bounded by the holly hedge, Icame across something which puzzled me. There were two narrow de
pressionson the flower-bed, about an inch wide by less than a foot long. They wereparallel to each other, and at right angles to the hedge, and separatedby a distance of six or seven feet. Near one, which was almost in themiddle of the bed, was another mark which I could not understand. It wasonly a few inches long and, in shape, a narrow oval. I could not at firstimagine what any of them represented, and it was only quite suddenly, asI was giving it up and going away, that the truth flashed across my mind.I had been looking regretfully at the track I myself had left by the sideof the hedge on my way to and from the middle of the bed.

  "'What I want,' I said to myself, 'is one of those planks raised offthe ground by two little supports, one at each end, that gardeners useto avoid stepping on the beds when they are going through the processof bedding out,' And even as I said it, I realized that the same ideahad occurred to some one else, and that the marks I had been examiningmight have been made by just such a contrivance as the one I wasthinking of. A short search showed me the plank itself, kept in atool-house conveniently near the spot, and, with a rake taken from thesame place, I seized the opportunity of raking out my own footmarksfrom the rose-bed.

  "And now who could this be who had so carefully manufactured a falsescent, and so cleverly avoided being himself suspected? My previoustheory, that some envoy of the Nihilists had been lurking in theneighbourhood, seemed not to meet the new conditions. For how could amere stranger have gained possession of the misleading boots, or howreturned them to their proper place? And how, for that matter, could astranger have obtained the use of Sir David's rifle, if his rifle hadindeed been used?

  "That brought me to consider again whether after all there was any proofthat his rifle had been used by anyone. Supposing, as I saw no reason todoubt, he spoke the truth when he said that Miss Byrne had misunderstoodhim and that he had not cleaned the weapon since coming in from stalking,was I driven back on the theory that some one possessed a duplicate keyto the case where the guns were kept? Not in the least. The shot mighthave been fired from a rifle that had never, at any time, been within thewalls of the castle. Certainly, the bullet fitted Sir David's Mannlicherrifle, but that, as young Lord Ashiel said himself, was equally true ofhis own rifle, or probably of a dozen others in the neighbouring forests,since a sporting Mannlicher is a weapon in common use in the Highlands.

  "The shot, then, might well have been fired by my hypothetical Russian asfar as the rifle was concerned; but he would have found it difficult toborrow Sir David's boots, and it seemed unlikely that any stranger wouldnot only have dared to do so, but afterwards have had the audacity toreturn them. No, on the whole the footmarks seemed to clear thecharacter of the Russian nation from any reasonable suspicion of beingdirectly concerned in the crime.

  "And yet, in spite of reason, I could not help feeling that the Societyof the Friends of Man must be at the bottom of the whole thing in someway I had not yet fathomed. I made every inquiry as to whether anyforeigner had visited the castle or been seen in the neighbourhood, butthe only strangers among the visitors had been Miss Julia Romaninov andMiss Juliet Byrne's French maid, both of whose alibis appeared so farunimpeachable. I had it on Lady Ruth's authority that Miss Romaninov hadbeen in the drawing-room with the other ladies at the time of the murder,and all the servants were at supper in the servants' hall. Otherwise Ishould have been inclined to look on Julia Romaninov with a suspiciouseye, as being the only Russian I knew to be on the spot. The last wordthe dying man had been able to pronounce, too, was, according to MissByrne, 'steps' which might very well have been intended for steppes, andhave some connection with the enemies he dreaded.

  "With these considerations running in my mind, I made my way to thegun-room, not indeed with much expectation of its having anything totell me, but as part of the day's work of inspection, which must not beshirked. I took down young Ashiel's rifle to examine. He had told me itwas of the same description as his cousin's, and I was not veryfamiliar with the make. It was owing to my wish to see for myself withwhat kind of weapon the deed had been done that a very important cluefell into my hands.

  "As I put the rifle down on the bare deal table which forms theprincipal piece of furniture in the gun-room, I saw a grain of somethingdark, which looked like earth, fall off the butt end on to the boardsbeneath. I picked up the rifle, and looked closely at the butt; it wascriss-crossed with small cuts, as they sometimes are, with the idea ofpreventing them from slipping, and in the cuts some dust, or earth,seemed, as I expected, to be adhering. I knocked the rifle upon thetable, and a little shower fell from it. Except for the first grain, itmight have been nothing but the ordinary dust of disuse, but I could nothelp thinking it was of a darker hue than the accumulations of yearsgenerally take upon themselves, and, further, I knew that the rifle hadlately been used for stalking. It was, moreover, specklessly clean inevery other part. I felt certain it had been leant upon the ground at nodistant date; and I remembered the mark I had not been able to accountfor at the foot of the rose-bush, near the place where the plank had beenused and, as I was persuaded, the cowardly shot actually fired. If a gunhad been leant up against the large standard rose that grew there, itwould have left just such a mark upon the soft ground.

  "All this, of course, was a mere surmise, and rather wild at that, butthe deer forests of Scotland are not muddy, whatever else they may be,and I felt an unreasoning conviction that the rifle had not accumulateddust while engaged upon its legitimate business on the mountain tops. Thepeaty moorland soil on which the castle stood would hardly be the bestthing in the world for rose-trees, I imagined, and it seemed not too muchto hope that some other kind of earth might be artificially mingled withit. I carefully collected the dust in a pill-box, and promised myself tolose no time in obtaining the opinion of an expert analyst, as towhether or no some trace of patent fertilizer, or other chemical, couldnot be traced in it.

  "It was now for the first time that suspicion of young Lord Ashiel beganto oust my theory of the Nihilist society's responsibility for themurder. He had, as I remembered, struck me as taking his cousin's guiltfor granted with somewhat unnecessary alacrity. His rifle, I alreadybelieved, perhaps in my turn with needless alacrity, had fired the fatalbullet, and it seemed perfectly possible that it was his finger thatpressed upon the trigger. He was, I knew, in the billiard-room, andalone, both before and after the murder was committed. It would have beenquite easy for him to fetch his rifle, place the gardener's plank inposition, fire his shot and return to the house, provided Miss Byrne didnot rush immediately from the room. He knew her to be a brave girl andnot likely to fly without making some attempt at offering assistance.But, if she had rushed from the spot and met the murderer outside thelibrary door, it would be simple enough to convey the impression that hehad heard the shot, and that he was either dashing to their help, ormaking for the garden in the attempt to catch the villain red handed. Therifle was the only thing likely to provoke an awkward question, but hecould have dropped it in the dark and returned for it afterwards withoutmuch fear of detection. As it happened, he thought it safer to riskcarrying it indoors, and hid it under the billiard-room sofa till he hada chance to clean it and take it to the gun-room, as we now know.

  "You can imagine the scene: Lord Ashiel falling forward upon thewriting-table under the light of the lamp; the scoundrel leaping fromhis post upon the plank, but not so quickly that he did not see thegirl throw herself on her knees at the side of the fallen man. I canfancy the frenzied haste with which McConachan thrust the plank into thehedge and ran like a deer towards the door, which he had no doubt leftopen. I imagine him, then, tiptoeing to the door of the library andbending to listen, every nerve astretch. What he heard, no doubtreassured him; it may have been the voice of the girl calling upon herfather, or it may have been the thud of her body falling upon the floorwhen she fainted. Perhaps, even, he may have stayed outside long enoughto see her sink to the ground. Then he would steal back, shut the dooras gently as he had opened it, and not breathe again till he foundhimself in the e
mpty billiard-room, his tell-tale rifle still in hishand. No doubt he wished he had left it in the hedge at that moment, forhe must have opened the billiard-room door with most livelyapprehensions. Supposing the shot had been heard, and the household wasrushing to the scene of the disaster? Supposing he opened the door tofind the room full of people demanding an explanation of himself and hisweapon? What explanation had he ready, I wonder? It must have taken allhis nerve to turn the handle of the door....

  "But no one can deny the man his full share of courage and decision.

  "I felt more and more sure that in some such manner the crime had beengone about; and yet there were many complications, and more than once itseemed as if my convictions had been too hastily formed. Later that sameafternoon I found, upon the sand of a little bay below the castle, marksthat told me as plainly as they told one of the keepers who joined methere that a strange man had landed from a boat on the night of themurder, and even, if our calculations were right, not far off the veryhour in which the deed was done. From the tracks left by his boots, whichwere large and without nails and extraordinarily pointed for those of aman, I felt sure that here one had landed who was no native of theseparts, and the theory of the unknown Russian seemed to take on new lifeand vigour. The tracks, as we now know, were no doubt those of the memberof the Society of the Friends of Man who was living at Crianan, and whohoped to have word with Julia Romaninov. It was no doubt he whom SirDavid saw lurking in the grounds, and it is natural to suppose that whenhe perceived himself to be observed he retreated to his boat and madeoff, abandoning his proposed meeting for that night.

  "I was to be further bewildered before my first day of investigationcame to an end. Young Lord Ashiel had spent the day in searching for thewill; and, if my inward certainty that he himself would prove to be theguilty man should turn out to be right, I could very well understandthat he was anxious to find it. For, from what his uncle had said toMiss Byrne, it seemed possible that he had so worded his last will andtestament, that whoever succeeded to the great fortune he had tobequeath, it might not be Mark McConachan. But the will was not to befound, and there was no doubt to whose interest it was that it shouldnever be found; so that I felt pretty sure that, if the successor to thetitle were once able to lay his hands on it, no one else would ever doso. However, he hadn't found it yet, or the search would not becontinued with such unmistakable ardour.

  "Now I had a fancy myself to have a look for the will. I took the lastwords of the dead man to be an effort to indicate how I was to do so, andI had no idea of prosecuting my search under the eye of his nephew. YoungAshiel was to dine at the cottage here, with Lady Ruth; so I excusedmyself under pretence of a headache from appearing at dinner, and hurriedback to the castle as soon as I could do so unobserved. I got in by awindow which I had purposely left open, and made my way to the library.The words that Lord Ashiel, as he lay dying, had managed to stammer outto his daughter, were only five. 'Gimblet--the clock--eleven--steps.' Ihad decided to take the clock in the library as the starting-point ofinvestigation. He might, of course, have referred to any other clock, butonly one could be dealt with at a time, and a beginning must be madesomewhere. Moreover, I had noticed a curious feature about thatparticular timepiece. It was clamped to the wall, which struck me as verysuggestive; and I thought it quite likely I should be able to discoversome kind of secret drawer concealed within, or behind, the tall blacklacquered case, where the will and other papers of which Lord Ashiel hadtold me might be hidden. But in spite of my best efforts I came acrossnothing of the kind.

  "I then examined the floor of the room at spots on its surface which wereat a distance of about eleven steps from the clock, in the hope offinding some opening between the oak boards; but all to no purpose. Ibegan to think that by some specially contrived mechanism thehiding-place might only be discernible at eleven o'clock, and though theidea seemed farfetched, I don't like to leave any possibility untested,so I sat down to wait till the hour should strike.

  "While I was waiting, I suddenly heard footsteps which appeared to comefrom inside the wall of the room, or from below the floor. I concludedinstantly that there was a secret passage within the walls although I hadfailed to find the entrance, so I left the library quickly and quietly,and made my way to the garden, from which I was able to look back intothe room through the window. By the time I took up my post of observationthe person I had heard approaching had entered. To my surprise it was ayoung lady about whom I seemed to recognize something vaguely familiar,but whom I was not aware of ever having seen before. She was occupied inexamining the papers in Lord Ashiel's writing bureau, and after watchingher for some time, I concluded that she must be Julia Romaninov; partlyfrom certain foreign ways and gestures which she displayed, and partlyfrom her present employment, as I knew of no one else who was interestedin the papers of the dead man. I imagined that she knew of the possiblerelationship which Lord Ashiel supposed might exist between himself andher, and that she was searching for evidence of her birth. Whether shewas staying at the castle, which I was told all visitors had left, orwhether, like myself, she had made her way into it from outside, was aquestion I could not then determine, though the next day I discoveredthat she was stopping with Mrs. Clutsam at the fishing lodge, near by.

  "The fact of her being still in the neighbourhood, the business I foundher engaged upon--an unusual one, to put it mildly, for a young girl--andthe hour, at which she had chosen to go about it, all gave me much foodfor thought, and I felt sure she could tell me news of the stranger whohad landed in the bay and who wore such uncommonly pointed boots. When Irecognized in her, on the following day, a young person who had, a fewweeks previously, made me the victim of a barefaced and audaciousrobbery, I could no longer doubt that she and the unknown boatman were inleague together; and, since no Englishman would be likely to wear bootsso excessively pointed at the toes, I did not hesitate to conclude thatthey were both members of the Society of the Friends of Man, a conclusionwhich became a certainty when I subsequently saw them together. Thisdiscovery rather shook my belief in the guilt of young Ashiel, although Ihad an inward conviction that in spite of everything he would turn out tobe the murderer. Still, I was after the Nihilist brotherhood as well, andI determined if possible to put a spoke in the wheel of that associationwhen I had finished with the first and most important business.

  "In the meantime, as I stood in the dark garden, watching the girlransack the private papers of her dead host, I felt no fear of herfinding what she was looking for. Lord Ashiel had convinced me that hewould hide his secret affairs more carefully than that; and, as Iexpected, the time came when she gave up the search and departed the wayshe had come. And that way, to my astonishment, was through thegrandfather's clock I had spent so much time in examining. No sooner hadshe gone than I returned to the library, where I soon discovered that thehidden entrance lay through the one part of the clock I had notinvestigated. A trap in the floor could be opened by turning a smallknob, and I found beneath it the top of that flight of stairs which wenow know leads out to the door under the battlements. There were fifteensteps in the flight, and my first idea was to examine the eleventh one ofthem. I was rewarded by the discovery of a concealed drawer, which in itsturn disclosed a single sheet of paper.

  "On it were written some words that I could not at first understand, butof which finally, by good luck, and with your help, Lady Ruth, I was ableto decipher the meaning. They referred, in an obscure and veiled fashion,to the great statue erected by Lord Ashiel in that glen of which his wifehad been so fond; where the beginning of the track used by the cattledrivers and robbers of old, which is known as the Green Way, leads upover the hills to the south. Guided by Lady Ruth, I found on the pedestalof the statue a spring, which has only to be pressed when a door in oneend of the erection swings open, and discloses the hollow chamber in themiddle of the pedestal. At the far end of the cavity was the tin box, ofwhich the key lay temptingly on the top. I lost no time in springingtowards it, for here I felt sure was al
l I wanted to find, but as Iinserted the key in the lock the door slammed to behind me and I foundmyself shut in the dark interior of the pedestal. Luckily Lady Ruth waswith me, and quickly let me out. I found that the door was controlled byan elaborate piece of clockwork, which is set in motion by the pressureupon the floor of the feet of any intruder, causing the door to shutalmost immediately behind him. But for you, Lady Ruth, I should be therenow. But the incident gave me an idea.

  "I returned to the cottage with the papers, and found two telegrams. Onewas from the analyst in Edinburgh to whom I had sent the grains of dustcollected in the gun-room, saying that among other ingredients lime wasvery predominant. Now there is no lime in a peaty soil such as this, andthe gardener, to whom I talked of soils and manures, with an air ofwisdom which I hope deceived him, told me that the rose-bed outside thelibrary had received a strong dressing of it. There was also, said thereport, traces of steel and phosphates, of which there is a combinationknown as basic slag, which the gardener had mentioned as beingoccasionally used. I considered that it was tolerably certain, therefore,that young Ashiel's rifle had been the weapon the imprint of whose buttwas still discernible on the bed when I went over it.

  "The second telegram contained an answer from the colonel of hisregiment, to whom I had written asking if there was anything in therecord of Mark McConachan which would make it appear conceivable that hewas badly in need of money, and likely to go to extreme lengths to obtainit. I had told the colonel as much about the case as I then knew, andpointed out that the life or death of a man whom I had strong reason tothink innocent might depend upon his withholding nothing he might knowwhich could possibly bear upon the matter. The telegram I received inreply was short but emphatic. 'Record very bad,' it said, 'am writing,'This was enough for me. I went over to Crianan, saw the police, andimparted my conclusions to the local inspector. I then proposed that alittle trap should be laid, into which, if he were not guilty and had nointention of destroying his uncle's will, there was no reason to imagineyoung Lord Ashiel would step. The inspector consented, and I returned,with himself and two of his men, to Inverashiel. You know how successfulwas the ruse I indulged in. I simply went to the young man, and told himI had discovered the place where his uncle had put his will and othervaluable papers. I explained to him where it was and how the pedestalcould be opened, but I said nothing about its shutting again. Neither, Iam afraid, did I confess that I had already visited the statue and takenaway the documents. I said, on the contrary, that I preferred not totouch the contents except in the presence of a magistrate, and suggestedhe should send a note to General Tenby at Glenkliquart to ask him to comeover and be present when we removed the papers. This he did, and I thenleft him after he had promised to join us at the cottage in a couple ofhours. I knew very well where we should find him at the end of thosehours; and, as I expected, he was caught by the clockwork machinery ofthe pedestal door."