Dead Man's Quarry (32 page)

“No, I think we'd better get back,” answered John. He added, still not quite at ease: “Had Nora anybody with her?”

Eveline looked a trifle surprised.

“Yes. A cousin of mine who's staying here went with her. Why?”

“Oh, that's all right,” said John, with immense relief. “Then I think we'll start for Penlow, Felix. We can get a bite of food on the way, if there's time. I should like to get back in time to see the people at Upper Ring Farm before they go to bed. If we start now we ought just to do it.”

“Have some tea before you go, anyhow.”

“No, thank you, we've had some. We'll be off.”

“Why,” asked Felix, as they sped out of London, “did you make me drink my tea raw at Mrs. Field's? It was beastly. And I still can't see what the object was. I'm afraid I'm quite as dense as the real Watson. What did the doctor say?”

John laughed.

“The doctor? Oh, he said: ‘When in Rome, drink what the Romans drink.'”

It was after ten o'clock when John drew up at the foot of Rodland Hill. Dusk had fallen and a large warm moon hung low in the sky. He left the car upon the grass by the road where he had left it once before, and passed with Felix through the gate. A lamp still burned through the red blinds of Sheepshanks Cottage, and the asters showed wan and colourless in the moonlight. They trudged along in silence over the field where spectral cattle lifted great horns and watched them, up the cart track and through the coppice to Upper Ring Farm. The watchful collie, tied to his kennel for the night, broke into wild barking long before they were in sight of the square, small house and its long, low buildings.

“Oh, shut up!” cried Felix irritably, which had the effect of spurring the creature to louder, fiercer efforts to alarm the household.

Both John and Felix were tired, depressed and hungry. Standing on the narrow brick path that ran around the farmhouse, looking over the low fields from which the trees rose swathed in damp whitish mist, John had a sudden revulsion of feeling. Almost he could believe that Rampson was right, and that Morris Price had murdered his nephew. Almost he was inclined to abandon the whole affair. What were the Prices to him that he should lose sleep and go without food chasing wild geese for them all over the country? Why couldn't that arrogant, obstinate idiot, Morris Price, speak out for himself and tell his lawyer about his meeting with his wife and what happened at it? It was as Rampson had said; all the clues that did not lead to Morris Price led up a blind alley. Lord! Couldn't these confounded people open the door and tell their dog to stop barking? Standing stiff and weary, with that insane barking in his ears, John felt heartily sick of the Prices and their affairs.

“Poor old John, you look fagged out,” said Felix. He added in a low voice:“What should we have done without you this last week? Gone mad, I think.”

And so nicely adjusted are human emotions, and especially the emotions of tired and hungry humans, that on the instant at Felix's words and his serious humble look, John's conviction of Price's innocence came back to him. It became the major object of his life to set Morris free. He heartily resumed his attack on the door of Upper Ring Farm.

“I am feeling a bit depressed,” he admitted cheerfully. “It's the way all my best clues seem to lead nowhere that exasperates me. And I bet this one'll prove no better than the others. Hufton stole those notes from poor Charles's wallet when he found him dead, you can bet your boots. In fact, at the moment, there's only one-thing sustaining me in hope.”

“What's that?”

“The milk we didn't drink at tea-time. Lord! I should have liked to have taken samples from those three lots of milk and had them analysed!”

Felix's face in the moonlight was a study in horror.

“John! You don't mean—I've been wondering what you meant by that remark about the Romans. You don't—you can't—”

“Can't I? You must admit the ladies were strangely particular about the milk destined for our tea—not for their own, mind you. I wouldn't mind betting there was more than milk in the second lot. I'm not sure about the third. I'm inclined to think that was a return to the
status quo
. Oh! Good evening. Is Mr. Hufton in?” The dark, thin-featured mistress of the farm stood in the doorway with a candle in her hand and looked at them suspiciously.

“Quiet, Rover!” she cried shrilly, with magical effect. Silence settled upon the landscape like a benediction. “Hufton, he's in bed. What is it you wants?”

“I want to speak to you and Mr. Hufton,” replied John. “May we come in?”

She hesitated, then grudgingly opened the door and led them through into a comfortable kitchen dimly lit by a large but ill-burning table lamp. A heavily built man of middle age who had been warming his feet by the fire turned as they came in and bade them a gruff good evening. The woman made an attempt to turn up the lamp which immediately emitted thin streamers of black smoke.

“Drat!” she remarked perfunctorily and turned it down again and relit the candle she had blown out. She did not ask her visitors to be seated, but stood at the table looking at them from under black brows with an ill-humoured expression, as though she found them a nuisance: as, no doubt, she did.

“The matter is this,” said John, addressing the woman, who appeared on the whole a more lively and intelligent person than the man. “Last Wednesday a Mrs. Field, who was staying at Sheepshanks Cottage, came to you and asked you to change a cheque for her.”

The woman's black eyes sought her husband's. She seemed about to deny John's statement but thought better of it and nodded.

“She gave you a cheque for ten pounds, and you gave her two five-pound notes. Now, Mrs.—”

“Dolphin, our name is. But I don't—”

“Mrs. Dolphin, I want you to tell me where those two five-pound notes came from.”

“We didn't steal them, if that's what you means,” said the woman shrilly, flushing dark red. “And if you're going to say as we did, I'll ask you to step outside, master. We're honest people here, besides having no need to steal, and can have five-pound notes in our purses as well as anybody else, I suppose!”

John waited a moment and then said calmly, noting that in spite of her indignation the woman looked confused and nervous:

“Hufton gave them you, didn't he?”

“I'm sure I don't remember,” replied Mrs. Dolphin, with the air of one to whom a five-pound note is a bagatelle. “Where did you get them notes from, Henry?”

She looked meaningly across the table at her peaceful husband. But he failed her.

“What you be talking about,” he remarked, scratching the stubble on his cheek. “I doesn't know no more'n this chair.”

“Oh, Henry! You've forgot!”

“No, I hasn't. I knows as you said tother day you'd give a lady change for a cheque, because didn't I say more fool you without making sure it were a good'un? But I thoughts as you'd took the money from the box in the wardrobe. I never heard naught of a fi'-pun note.”

“Oh, Henry! You forgets everything!”

“No, I doesn't,” said Mr. Dolphin with placid obstinacy. “I ha'n't never seed a fi'-pun note but twice, and one o' them were a bad'un.”

John cut into the conversation before the farmer's disappointed wife could tell him what she thought of him.

“Perhaps you don't know, Mrs. Dolphin, that all five-pound notes are numbered and can be easily traced?” She had not known, that was obvious.

“I've seen the two notes you gave Mrs. Field,” went on John, “and I know where they came from. They came from the pocket-book of Sir Charles Price who was found dead in Rodland Quarry a week ago.”

The woman's thin lips fell apart and she gazed at him in silence. She went pale, then flushed.

“What?” she asked stupidly, and then, as the import of his words came home to her, broke out: “I never knew that, I swear I never knew! Hufton, he told me he found them in a field, and I thought no harm for him to keep them, not knowing the owner, for why should the police have them more than the chap as found them? Oh, you're not going to say, sir, as Jim Hufton stole them! He's a good lad, if he is a bit sly in some ways, and he pays his lodgings regular and doesn't drink!”

“I'm not going to say anything till I've heard where he got these notes,” said John patiently, and taking the hint the woman went to the foot of the little enclosed staircase and called shrilly:

“Jim! Jim! Come down! You're wanted!”

The lodger was heard to reply that he was asleep, but a bellowed summons from the master of the house brought him down in a few moments. He stood at the foot of the stairs, blinking and scratching his head, a pair of trousers hastily slipped on over his night-shirt. He was a heavy-faced, sunburned youth of twenty or so, with rather prominent teeth and a pair of sleepy, good-natured little eyes.

“What?” he said simply with the curtness of one aroused from a comfortable bed.

“Them notes, Jim—them five-pound notes you asked me to change—where did you get them?”

“Found 'em,” replied Jim laconically and gave a cavernous yawn.

“Oh, Jim! You ha'n't been doing anything as you shouldn't?” asked his landlady with sorrowful solicitude.

“Findin's keepin's.” If Jim Hufton had indeed stolen the notes his conscience did not appear to be unduly disturbed thereby. He yawned again, sighed deeply, supported himself against the door-post and with his big toe manoeuvred the door-mat under his bare feet.

“Make a clean breast of it, Jim,” urged Mrs. Dolphin, who seemed suddenly to have decided that guilt would be more interesting than innocence. She watched the possible criminal with an entranced eye, evidently hoping for the worst.

Mr. Dolphin, finding the strain of simultaneously keeping his feet on the fender and his eye on the lodger too much for him, reluctantly moved his feet to an adjacent chair and turned a solemn, disinterested gaze on the little scene. Mr. Hufton slowly woke to a sense of something wrong. He turned a filmy eye from John to Felix.

“I found 'em in the field,” he repeated in a slightly aggrieved tone. “What of it? Whoever left 'em there didn't want 'em or he wouldn't 'a' left 'em there.” He contemplated his big toe-nail in silence for a moment. “That's sense,” he added more cheerfully, struck by the rare wisdom of his own words.

“What field did you find them in?” asked John, convinced that this lethargic person was speaking the truth. Only an innocent man or an experienced actor could have shown such indifferent obtuseness.

“Eh? In the field near the common just afore the railway.”

“What, just lying about in the field?”

“Ah. Pushed under a gorse-bush, they was. I happened to stoop to tie me boot-lace and I seed a bit o' white paper poking out from under the furze. And that's what it were, sir. Two bank-notes. Well, it stands to reason the chap as put 'em there didn't want'em, and—”

“When was this?”

“Eh? Oh, it were the day I found the chap in the quarry, same morning. I'd come back for me breakfus' and I were going to work again. And it stands to reason, findin's keepin's and the chap as put—”

“Thank you,” said John, a bit weary of this piece of deduction, sense though it might be. He took up his hat. “That's all I wanted to know.”

“Well, the chap as put 'em there,” said the man of sense again, “can't have 'em back. 'Cos they're spended on a sideboard and a wedding-ring and a clock. And it stands to reason—”

John got himself and Felix hastily outside the front door. The farmer's wife seemed as loath to let them go as she had been to let them in.

“Will he be arrested?” she asked with bated breath and enraptured eyes.

“Lord, no. I don't see any reason to doubt what he says.”

She looked disappointed.

“He oughtn't never to have kept them notes, did he? He ought to have took them to the police,” she pronounced severely, determined not to be baulked of her lodger's guilt.

John foresaw endless trouble for the luckless Hufton and determined to avert it.

“You're just as bad, aren't you?” he pointed out gently. “You actually changed the notes.”

And having thus silenced Mrs. Dolphin's tongue and put a premium on her lodger's perfect innocence, John took his leave.

They arrived at Rhyllan after eleven. Blodwen had retired to bed, but Rampson and Mr. Clino conducted them to the small parlour and watched them ravenously devouring cold meat and salads. Both Rampson and Cousin Jim seemed exceedingly pleased to see the wanderers return. There was about both these gentlemen a slight air of tedium, as if they had spent a long while in one another's company without much entertainment.

“Dear me!” observed Mr. Clino, as Felix once more attacked the ham. “The detection of crime seems to induce hunger. I hope you
did
detect something, after all your journeyings?”

“Yes, oh, yes!” said John cheerfully, though he was a little surprised at a certain note of unfriendly irony in Mr. Clino's tone. “We detected a lady and her charming niece having tea in a drawing-room.”

“You found Mrs. Field, then?” said Rampson.

“Oh, yes, we found her all right and she gave us a very nice tea.”

“That all?”

“And lots of explanations,” added John.

“Reasonable ones?”

“Oh, quite reasonable, if you accept the fact that she's a valetudinarian, which she certainly doesn't look.”

“She does not,” agreed Rampson emphatically. “She appeared to me exceptionally spry and lively. What's the disease?”

“Bad heart, sore throat and weak nerves.”