The Sussex Downs Murder (10 page)

“That the letters were—”

“You've got it!” cut in Meredith. “Written by two entirely different people. Which tells us something at once. Something vitally connected with William Rother's death. In short, one of these letters is faked!”

Aldous Barnet, now caught up in the same excitement, broke in emphatically.

“But which, man? Which? Don't you see the crucial fact which must accrue from this answer?”

“Of course I do,” snapped Meredith. “That's what I've been leading up to. If William's note to you is genuine then it's pretty well certain that he didn't commit suicide. He couldn't have written that confession.”

“And if the confession is genuine?”

“Then what, in the name of thunder, was that letter sent to you for, eh? It's pointless. Ridiculous.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Barnet, obviously delighted at being able to follow the workings of an official mind at first hand. “How are you going to find out which is the real letter?”

“Easy,” smiled Meredith. “Get a sample of William Rother's typewriting from the same machine and compare it. Have you got a car here?”

“A car!” Barnet laughed. “I've got something better than that. A super-charged Alvis sports with a cruising speed of eighty. Any good?”

“I'll risk it,” grinned Meredith.

Five minutes later the long, lean automobile was roaring toward the parish of Washington, impatient of 30 limits, pedestrians, and subordinate policemen. Barnet glanced at Meredith's mufti.

“I wish the devil you were in uniform. I'll have a whole string of summonses served on me for this.”

“All you need worry about, sir, if you
don't
mind, is keeping both eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel. I've got a wife and child to think of
and
a murder case!”

In an incredibly short time, it seemed to Meredith, the car swung off the main road and shot up the rutted incline to Chalklands.

“We'll park the car in the lane and sneak in the back way, if you don't mind, Mr. Barnet. I don't want to upset Mrs. Rother any more. Kate Abingworth will be able to give us what we want.”

As the two men entered the kitchen the housekeeper looked up from her solitary supper.

“Oh Lor', sir, you did give me a turn. Don't you be telling me that more trouble's come to pass. My old 'eart couldn't stand another shock an' that's a fact!”

Meredith reassured her and explained the reason for his visit.

“Well, that should be aisy enough, sir. There's enough letters on poor Mr. Willum's desk there to paper a 'ouse with. Dare say you'll find what you want among 'em. Would I call Mrs. Rother?”

“Better not disturb her,” said Meredith. “In fact I should keep quiet about this visit of ours altogether. Understand, Mrs. Abingworth?”

“Ay, sir.”

Striding over to the large table which served as the farmhouse office, Meredith went carefully through one or two files until he found what he was looking for. Curiously enough it was a signed letter, dated the day before, written by William Rother accepting an invitation to attend a special meeting of the Flower Show Committee in place of his brother. The meeting was arranged for the following Tuesday.

“Another point,” whispered Meredith to Barnet, who was reading the letter over his shoulder, “which suggests that William was not contemplating suicide.” Aloud he added: “Well, Mrs. Abingworth, I've found what I was after, thanks. I should just like to borrow this typewriter at the same time if I may. Return it in a few days.”

Once seated in the car, stirred by a growing interest and excitement, the three letters were compared.

“Well?” demanded Barnet with impatience, waiting on the expert's verdict. “Which is the faked document?”

“Which do you think?”

“The letter to me,” said Barnet promptly.

“You're wrong,” growled Meredith. “We're all wrong. The whole case is wrong. I've got to start all over again.
The confession's false!
Though how the devil all those corroborative details were collected and served up like that beats me. Who wrote that confession? Some of the details are proved facts in the case. How did the writer know that? What's his big idea?”

“Sure you're right?”

“Dead sure. Look at William's capitals and full-stops. Look at his
l's
and
o's
. See how this letter to the Flower Show Committee matches up with that note to you. Point now is, did that confession come off the same machine? It came off a Remington all right, but was it the same Remington?”

“Can you find that out?”

“Yes—under a microscope.”

“In the meantime,” suggested Barnet, “what about coming along to my place for a drink before I drive you back?”

Seated in the long, beamed sitting-room at Lychpole over a couple of whiskies, Barnet inquired: “What exactly can you deduce from these new facts, Mr. Meredith?”

The Superintendent hesitated a moment before answering. The implications were so unexpected and inexplicable that he wondered if it would be politic to discuss them with a mere layman in crime. He had seen in a flash what that faked confession indicated. Other facts hinted. It only needed further facts to prove up to the hilt. But should he tell Barnet? Then, with the realization that in a few days the whole affair would be public knowledge, he asked: “Are you prepared for a shock, Mr. Barnet?”

“Why?”

“Because I can only deduce one terrible thing from these new clues.”

“And that?”

“
Your friend, William Rother, was murdered!
”

“Murdered? Impossible!”

“Not a bit of it, sir. I wish it were impossible. But just listen here for a moment. We have two good reasons to suppose that William did not do away with himself. First that letter to you, and secondly that letter we found just now up at the farm. A man contemplating suicide would hardly trouble to accept an invitation to a meeting which he knew he wouldn't attend. Your own letter we discussed before. Apart from that faked confession there seems to be no proved reason why William should
want
to commit suicide. As we were driving down here in the car I was hard at it approaching his death from a new angle. I remembered, for instance, that the gash in the man's temple had no chalk-scratches around it, although, according to Dr. Hendley, it was this wound which had caused his death. Now the impact of his head against a chalk boulder, softened as it would be by weather, seemed in my mind incompatible with this fact. Other parts of his person were thick with chalk-dust and scratches. Moreover, the body had not been moved. Why, therefore, should the wounded temple be uppermost? As the body struck the boulder with such terrific force Rother must have been rendered unconscious instantly. How had he managed to turn over? That's another point in my non-suicide theory. Accident then? But I knew I could rule that theory out at once. The strands of wire were cut, not broken, and we found the pliers with which the job was done.

“Secondly, the body in the case of accident would have half-slid down the cliff and come to rest at the foot of it. Actually the body lay some six feet away from the base of the cliff. So you see, Mr. Barnet, that I'm bound to suspect the other alternative—murder. The confession was faked, the wires were cut, and the pliers left on the ground to
suggest
that it was suicide. That's my opinion for what it's worth. What d'you think of it?”

Aldous Barnet did not quite know what to think. The very suggestion that William had been murdered had shocked him beyond measure. He could follow the Superintendent's reasoning quite clearly, but somehow, at the back of his mind, he entertained a hope that this reasoning was wrong. Who could have murdered William? And why had he been murdered? He put these questions to Meredith, but the official was not going to air any more of his theories in front of the amateur. After a full discussion of the Rother family, during which Meredith learnt many interesting facts concerning both past and present Rothers, he tactfully suggested that it was time he got back to Lewes. The ins and outs of William's death were analysed no further. Meredith had dropped the iron shutter of officialdom.

Driving the Superintendent back to Lewes through the moonlit countryside, Barnet asked: “As a police official and a reader of detective fiction, what exactly is your idea about that type of story? You know, I should value your opinion.”

“Well,” said Meredith, flattered to be asked, “I think every yarn should be based on a sense of reality. I mean, let the characters, situations, and the detection have a lifelike ring about 'em. Intuition is all very well, but the average detective relies more on common sense and the routine of police organizations for results. Take this case, for example. The clues have led me all over the place, and quite honestly I'm very little further after a month's intensive investigation than I was a couple of days after the crime was discovered. That's normal. Half the work of a detective is not to find out what is but what isn't! You might remember that fact in your next yarn, sir. As for the crime itself, choose something neat but not gaudy. The gaudy type of murder is more easily found out. The neat, premeditated crime is by far the most difficult to solve and will provide your readers with a load of neat detection. This crime, for instance. There's a story to be written round the death of John Rother if you only approach it from the right angle. At least that's my humble opinion.

“I reckon, Mr. Barnet, that you should let your readers know just as much as the police know. That's only fair. And one up to the reader who can outstrip the police and make an early arrest. Not guess-work, mark you, but a certainty based on proven facts. That's only fair to us because we can't arrest a chap just because we
think
he's guilty. Of course a thriller's a different type of story. But when it comes to a proper detective yarn give me something that's possible, plausible, and not crammed with a lot of nice little coincidences and ‘flashes of intuition'. Things don't work that way in real life. We don't work that way. At least, sir, that's how it seems to me anyway.”

Chapter Ten

Inquest

On Sunday Meredith took a well-earned rest. He did not feel easy in his mind about putting his feet up with the new problem of William Rother's death confronting him, but he realized that detection is like sport—play the game too hard and you get stale. So Mrs. Meredith packed up a sandwich lunch and the family took a bus into Brighton, where Tony insisted on taking out a boat. That lazy day in the sun (for Meredith let Tony do all the rowing) was stimulating to both mind and body. He returned to his office on Monday morning, humming a little tune, full of new energy, in a mood not far removed from optimism. He went at once to the Chief Constable.

“Ah, Meredith! Just the man. What about this suicide? Any further details? What?”

Meredith grinned. He liked exploding bomb-shells in the Chief's office.

“A whole lot, sir. An unexpected twist. I'm inclined now to think that it isn't suicide but murder.”

“Have you got a touch of the sun? You look red round the neck, Meredith. All right, eh?”

“Perfectly, sir. Just listen here for a moment.”

And for five minutes the Superintendent's voice droned on in the close atmosphere of Major Forest's office. As the new facts were set out the Chief became more and more fidgety. It was obvious that he was having the greatest difficulty in controlling his desire to interrupt. At length he could stand it no longer.

“But damn it, man, who the devil wanted to kill William? How was he killed? Where was he killed? Who killed him?”

“Which question do you want me to answer first, sir?” asked Meredith with overdone politeness.

The Chief guffawed.

“All right. You win. Unjustifiable excitement. Inexcusable, Meredith. But confound it, you can't expect me to sit here like a monument. How was he killed? Let's tackle that problem first. Any idea?”

“None, sir.”

“Very well. Why was he killed?”

“I
have
got an idea about that, sir,” said Meredith tentatively. “Just a suggestion. We know that the letter to Aldous Barnet was genuine. William knew something incriminating about his wife. Don't you think it was possible he was murdered to prevent that incriminating fact coming to our notice?”

“Good heavens! By Janet Rother? That's a bit thick.”

“Not necessarily, sir. She may not have actually committed the crime, but William was murdered to save her from suspicion with regard to John Rother's death.”

“The brown-paper parcel evidence, eh?”

“That's about it, sir. Do you think we can fix the murder on the Cloaked Man?”

“Oh, rather!” replied the Chief sarcastically. “Or Kate Abingworth, or Judy, the maid, or that old blunderbuss Dr. Hendley. As much cause to suspect one as the other. Where do you think he was killed?”

“On the path above the pit, I reckon. I thought of going out this morning and having another look round.”

“Far the best. Can't come myself. Busy. But you know the case better than I do. By the way,” added the Chief, “those chaps I sent out to comb through Heath Wood yesterday—they've drawn a blank. No sign of the cabin-trunk.”

“That's just about what we should suspect,” concluded Meredith as he rose from the chair in front of the Chief's desk. “Since that confession appears to be a faked job I expect some of the evidence in it is faked too.”

“Quite. Well, see me later today, Meredith, if you're any further.”

Before leaving for Chalklands Meredith went through to another office in a remote corner of the building where a studious-looking young fellow was examining some printed sheets under a microscope.

“Hullo, Bill. Have I looked in too early?”

“Can you waste a couple of minutes, sir?”

“Right,” said Meredith as he hitched himself up on to the edge of a table and watched the young man at work. He had three sheets. One was a page taken from the faked confession. The second was the letter to Barnet. The third a copy of an old statement which had been specially typed by a constable on the Remington from the farmhouse.

“I'm concentrating on the
t's
and
h's
and
g's
,” explained the young man. “They showed the strongest characteristics in the special copy. The
t
is weak in the cross-bar and strong in the upright. The
h
has a very defined upright but the looped bit is very faint. I've followed this up in the Barnet letter, sir. There's no doubt that it was written on this machine.” As he was talking he was at the same time sliding a line of type here and there under the lens of the microscope. “I'm just checking up on the third sheet now.”

“Well?”

“The
h's
correspond, sir. So do the
t's
. But I'd just like to make sure by having a final squint at the
g's
.” A minute later he looked up and added: “It's O.K., sir. The three sheets have come from the same machine. Care to have a look?”

“Not at the moment, Bill. I'm rushed this morning. Thanks for finding out so promptly. Cheerio.”

Outside the police-station Hawkins was waiting with the car. Meredith hopped in, warned his chauffeur to hold his tongue during the journey to Chalklands, and settled himself down to a nice bit of comfortable thinking.

The foremost point in his mind was the fact that Janet Rother was in some way incriminated in the crimes. For all her glib answers to his questions about that parcel, for all the clever suggestions in that faked confession, Meredith now had no doubt that the parcel contained, not a diary and a pile of old correspondence, but a sawn-off portion of John Rother's body. William must have realized this horrible and gruesome fact, hence his letter to Barnet. And Janet must have known that her husband knew, hence his murder on the cliff-top. So far so good. But surely Janet had not murdered her husband? As an accessory she might be useful, but, however prejudiced her feelings, Meredith could not and would not envisage her as a murderer. Women don't usually murder a man by hitting him on the head with a blunt instrument. They, as the weaker sex, rely on methods less crude. Their instruments are the automatic and arsenic. They kill, as it were, from a safe distance for fear that their efforts may be foiled by the man's superior strength. And William had been neither poisoned nor shot. His head had been staved in because it was necessary for the murderer to suggest that he had been killed by a fall from the top of the pit. The question was—

Meredith's mental processes stopped with a jerk and shot off in another direction at breakneck speed. The confession. Who wrote it? The author of that confession
was the man who murdered John Rother
. Must have been. There were too many proved facts incorporated in that false document for it to be otherwise. What the police
did
know about the time factor this fellow must have known equally well. He knew that the dashboard clock had stopped at 9.55. He knew all about that telegram and William's journey to Littlehampton. He knew about the inspection-pit in the Chalklands garage. He knew the whole locality inside out. Of course some of this knowledge, the details about Chalklands for example, he could have learnt from Janet Rother. More and more Meredith was inclined to think that she was inseparable from the two crimes. A dreadful indictment, but unavoidable in the light of actual evidence. And surely it was pretty safe to assume that both John and William Rother had been murdered by the same man?

“Here, not so fast,” Meredith suddenly cautioned himself. “I'm running beyond the known and proven facts. It's not certain yet that William Rother
was
murdered. I've no direct and indisputable evidence.”

Out on the sun-baked cliff-top, however, he set about his new investigation with this assumption in mind. Accompanied by Hawkins, he was determined to make a series of new tests which might prove profitable.

On their way up to the chalk-pit Meredith had borrowed a large sack and a spade from the men working down under the kilns. From the farmhouse kitchen he had obtained one of those weighing-machines fitted with a hook, which one hangs up so that the object to be weighed is clear of the ground. This particular machine was capable of weighing objects up to 14 stone. Fastening the instrument over the stout limb of a beech-tree, Meredith began to fill the sack, which Hawkins held open, with earth and chalk rubble from the top of the cliff. Every now and then he hooked it on to the machine and weighed it. When the pointer indicated 10 1/2 stone he instructed Hawkins to drag the sack along the cliff-path to the point where the wire-fence had been severed. Meredith then made a détour down to the foot of the pit and took up his position a few feet away from where the blackened blood-stains marked the spot where the body had been found. He looked up at Hawkins, who was peering nervously over the edge of the forty-foot drop.

“Ready, m'lad?”

“O.K., sir.”

“Then one, two, three, and swing her out!” called Meredith. “Only for God's sake don't forget to leave go!”

The uniformed figure vanished for a moment, there was a brief pause, and suddenly the loaded sack came hurtling over the rim of the cliff to hit the ground with a sickening crunch a few feet from where the Superintendent was standing.

Meredith moved forward.

“O.K.,” he called up. “Just as I expected. Did you have any difficulty?”

“Once I'd got the swing it was all right, sir. She cleared the lip easily, didn't she?”

“Yeah. There's an overhang just there. Stay there; I'm coming up.”

Once more on the higher level the Superintendent went down on his hands and knees and began to examine every inch of the ground in the vicinity of the severed wire fence. Hawkins helped him. For ten minutes they worked in silence, cursing inwardly as the sun struck like fire on the back of their necks, wishing there were a bit of shade to shield them from its fierceness.

Suddenly Hawkins called out:

“Come here, sir. Quick! I've hit on something, I think.”

Meredith got to his feet in an instant and joined his subordinate.

“Well?”

“There.”

The Superintendent let out a low whistle.

“Blood, eh? Dried blood.”

“Looks like it, sir. Of course it's soaked in a bit, but it's got that sort of sticky look that dried blood's got.”

“Don't be foul, Hawkins. Sticky. Pah! Here, empty that sack and fetch me the spade, will you? We've got to dig out about a foot square of that earth and have it analysed. No good suspecting it's dried blood. We want the certainty of a laboratory test. Careful does it. Hold that sack open.”

Although Meredith was adverse to displaying his excitement in front of a subordinate, underneath he was thrilled and immensely satisfied. In a flash he had seen the import of that discovery. Blood at the base of the chalk-pit was one thing. Blood on the top of the pit was another. Blood below—accident or suicide. Blood above—murder! No other interpretation. William Rother had received that fatal gash in the left temple before his body had gone over the drop. His dead body had been hurled over by the murderer after he had killed his man with some blunt instrument. The 10 1/2-stone sack, roughly equivalent to the weight of the dead man, had fallen plumb on the spot where William had lain. Once
prove
that the specimen earth contained human blood and the verdict of the Coroner's jury was a foregone conclusion.

The blunt instrument? What had the murderer fancied? A spanner? No, something which would render a more jagged wound than that. Almost instinctively Meredith glanced around. Flints. Why not? The ground was strewn with great jagged flints peculiar to that locality. Surely a flint would answer the murderer's purpose better than anything? No wonder the wound was innocent of chalk-dust!

Sending Hawkins to the car with the earth-filled sack, Meredith returned to the farmhouse with the weighing-machine. He had other inquiries to make there.

Kate Abingworth, a less lively matron than on the day when Meredith had first met her, was turning the handle of the milk-separator. She seemed lifeless and doddery and little inclined to chatter.

“Can I have a word?” asked Meredith politely.

“Oh dear! Oh dear, surr. I'm all behind' and as 'tis. But if you must you must I suppose. There's no gainsaying the pleece. What would you be wanting to know?”

“You remember that typewriter I borrowed? Who used it?”

“Mister John and Mister Willum. Business and so forth they used it for, surr. Mostly Mister Willum.”

“You've never seen anybody else use it?”

“Never!”

“Mrs. Rother, for example?”

“Never, surr.”

“And as far as you know the typewriter has never been taken off that table during the last few months?”

“It has not,” averred Kate Abingworth with conviction. “Seeing as I make a point to flick my duster over it every morning, I ought to know.”

“Did you notice if Mr. William had used it at all during the last few days?”

Mrs. Abingworth heaved a sigh, somewhat constrained by her corsets.

“Day afore he met his death, surr. He was a-sitting there as large as life tapping away as if 'ee 'adn't a care in the world. Poor man. Little did 'ee know, eh? Little did 'ee know.” And Kate Abingworth shook her greying hairs as if censuring all the pain and wickedness which walks the world. “A letter all about the Flower Show it was. ‘Kate,' he ses, ‘I'm going a-Tuesday to sit on that there Flower Show Committee in place of poor Mister John. Now, what's your 'umble opinion,' he ses, ‘about the cockernut-shy? Shall we or shall we not?' You see, surr, 'ee knew as there was a lot of strong feeling down in the village about the shy. The young folk reckoned as we should move with the times an' have a shooting-alley instead. They reckoned a cockernut-shy was only fit for childers an' such. O' course I don't go for to say myself—”