CHAPTER XX
Colwyn was astir with the first glimmering of a grey dawn. He wanted totest the police theory that the murder was committed by climbing fromone bedroom to the other, but he did not desire to be discovered in theexperiment by any of the inmates of the inn.
The window of his bedroom was so small that it was difficult to getthrough, and there was a drop of more than eight feet from the ledge tothe hillside. After one or two attempts Colwyn got out feet foremost,and when half way through wriggled his body round until he was able tograsp the window-ledge and drop to the ground. The fall caused his heelsto sink deeply into the clay of the hillside, which was moist and stickyafter the rain.
Colwyn closely examined the impression his heels had made, and thenwalked along until he stood underneath the window of the next room. Itwas an easy matter to climb through this window, which was larger, andcloser to the ground--five feet from the hillside, at the most. Colwynsprang on to the ledge, and tried the window with his hand. It wasunlocked. He pushed up the lower pane, and entered the room.
From the window he walked straight to the bedside, noting, as he walked,that his footsteps left on the carpet crumbs of the red earth fromoutside, similar to those which had been found in the room the morningafter the murder. He next examined the broken incandescent burner in thechandelier in the middle of the room, and took careful measurements ofthe distances between the gas jet, the bedside and the door, observing,as he did so, that the gaslight was almost in a line with the foot ofthe bed. That was a point he had marked previously when SuperintendentGalloway had suggested that the incandescent burner was broken by themurderer striking it with the corpse he was carrying. Colwyn had foundit difficult to accept that point of view at the time, but now, in thelight of recent discoveries, and the new theory of the crime which wasgradually taking shape in his mind, it seemed almost incredible that themurderer, staggering under the weight of his ghastly burden, should havetaken anything but the shortest track to the door.
After examining the bed with an attentive eye, Colwyn next looked forthe small door in the wall. It was not apparent: the wall-paper appearedto cover the whole of the wall on that side of the room in unbrokencontinuity. But a closer inspection revealed a slight fissure or crack,barely noticeable in the dark green wall-paper, extending an inch or sobeyond a small picture suspended near the door of the room. When thepicture was taken down the crack was more apparent, for it ran nearlythe whole length of the space. The door had been papered over when theroom was last papered, which was a long time ago, judging by the dingycondition of the wall-paper, and the crack had been caused by theshrinking of the woodwork of the door, as Colwyn had noticed theprevious night.
Colwyn let himself out of the room with the key Peggy had given him,locked the door behind him, and took the key down to the kitchen. It wasstill very early, and nobody was stirring. Having hung the key on thehook of the dresser, he returned to his room.
At breakfast time that morning Charles informed him, in his huskywhisper, that he had to go over to Heathfield that day, to ascertain whythe brewer had not sent a consignment of beer, which was several daysoverdue. Charles' chief regret was that for some hours his guest wouldbe left to the tender mercies of Ann, and he let it be understood thathe had the poorest opinion of women as waitresses. But he promised toreturn in time to minister to Colwyn's comforts at dinner. Somewhatamused, Colwyn told the fat man not to hurry back on his account, as Anncould look after him very well.
As Colwyn was smoking a cigar in front of the inn after breakfast, hesaw Charles setting out on his journey, and watched his short fat formtoil up the rise and disappear on the other side. Immediatelyafterwards, the gaunt figure of the innkeeper emerged from the inn,prepared for a fishing excursion. He hesitated a moment on seeingColwyn, then walked towards him and informed him that he was going tohave a morning's fishing in a river stream a couple of miles away,having heard good accounts in the bar overnight of the fish there sincethe recent rain.
"Who will look after the inn, with both you and Charles away?" askedColwyn, with a smile.
The innkeeper, carefully bestowing a fishing-line in the capacious sidepocket of his faded tweed coat, replied that as the inn was out of beer,and not likely to have any that day, there was not much lost by leavingit. That seemed to exhaust the possibilities of the conversation, butthe innkeeper lingered, looking at his guest as though he had somethingon his mind.
"I do not know if you care for fishing, sir," he remarked, after arather lengthy pause. "If you do, I should be happy at any time to showyou a little sport. The fishing is very good about this district--asgood as anywhere in Norfolk."
Colwyn was quick to divine what was passing in the innkeeper's mind. Hehad been brooding over the incident in the bar parlour of the previousnight, and hoped by this awkward courtesy to remove the impression ofhis overnight rudeness from his visitor's mind. As Colwyn was equallydesirous of allaying his fears, he thanked him for his offer, and stoodchatting with him for some moments. His pleasant and natural manner hadthe effect of putting the innkeeper at his ease, and there was anobvious air of relief in his bearing as he wished the detective goodmorning and departed on his fishing expedition.
Colwyn spent the morning in a solitary walk along the marshes, thinkingover the events of the night and morning. He returned to the inn for anearly lunch, which was served by Ann, who gossiped to him freely of thesmall events which had constituted the daily life of the village sincehis previous visit. The principal of these, it seemed, had been thereappearance, after a long period of inaction, of the White Lady of theShrieking Pit--an apparition which haunted the hut circles on the rise.Colwyn, recalling that Duney and Backlos imagined they had encountered aspectre the night they saw Penreath on the edge of the wood, asked Annwho the "White Lady" was supposed to be. Ann was reticent at first. Sheadmitted that she was a firm believer in the local tradition, which shehad imbibed with her mother's milk, but it was held to be unlucky totalk about the White Lady. However, her feminine desire to impartinformation soon overcame her fears, and she launched forth into fullparticulars of the legend. It appeared that for generations past thedeep pit on the rise in which Mr. Glenthorpe's body had been thrown hadbeen the haunt of a spirit known as the White Lady, who, from time totime, issued from the depths of the pit, clad in a white trailinggarment, to wander along the hut circles on the rise, shrieking andsobbing piteously. Whose ghost she was, and why she shrieked, Ann wasunable to say. Her appearances were infrequent, with sometimes as longas a year between them, and the timely warning she gave of her coming byshrieking from the depths of the pit before making her appearance,enabled folk to keep indoors and avoid her when she was walking. As longas she wasn't seen by anybody, not much harm was done, but the sight ofher was fatal to the beholder, who was sure to come to a swift andviolent end.
Ann related divers accredited instances of calamity which had followedswiftly upon an encounter with the White Lady, including that of her ownsister's husband, who had seen her one night going home, and the verynext day had been kicked by a horse and killed on the spot. Ann'sgrandmother, when a young girl, had heard her shrieking one night whenshe was going home, but had had the presence of mind to fall flat on herface until the shrieking had ceased, by which means she avoided seeingher, and had died comfortably in her bed at eighty-one in consequence.
Colwyn gathered from the countrywoman's story that the prevailingimpression in the village was that Mr. Glenthorpe's murder was due tothe interposition of the White Lady of the Shrieking Pit. The WhiteLady, after a long silence, had been heard to shriek once two nightsbefore the murder, but the warning had not deterred Mr. Glenthorpe fromtaking his nightly walk on the rise, although Ann, out of her liking andrespect for the old gentleman, had even ventured to forget her placeand beg and implore him not to go. But he had laughed at her, and saidif he met the White Lady he would stop and have a chat with her abouther ancestors. Those were his very words, and they made her blood runcold at the time, though sh
e little thought how soon he would berepenting of his foolhardiness in his coffin. If he had only listened toher he might have been alive that blessed day, for she hadn't theslightest doubt he met the White Lady that night in his walk, and hisdoom was brought about in consequence.
Ann concluded by solemnly urging Colwyn, as long as he remained at theinn, to keep indoors at night as he valued his life, for ever since themurder the White Lady had been particularly active, shrieking nearlyevery night, as though seeking another victim, and the whole village wasfrightened to stir out in consequence. Ann had reluctantly to admit thatshe had never actually heard her shrieking herself--she was a heavysleeper at any time--but there were those who had, plenty of them.Besides, hadn't he heard that Charles, while shutting up the inn thevery night poor Mr. Glenthorpe's body had been taken away, had seensomething white on the rise? On Colwyn replying that he had not heardthis, Ann assured him the whole village believed that Charles had seenthe White Lady, and regarded him as good as dead, and many were thespeculations as to the manner in which his inevitable fate would fall.
The relation of the legend of the White Lady lasted to the conclusion oflunch, and then Colwyn sauntered outside with a cigar, in order to makeanother examination of the ground the murderer had covered in going tothe pit. The body had been carried out the back way, across the greenwhich separated the inn from the village, and up the rise to the pit.The green was now partly under water, and the track of the footprintsleading to the rise had been obliterated by the heavy rains which hadfallen since, but the soft surface retained the impression of Colwyn'sfootsteps with the same distinctness with which it had held, andafterwards revealed, the track of the man who had carried the corpse tothe pit.
Colwyn examined the pit closely. The edges were wet and slippery, and inplaces the earth had been washed away. The sides, for some distancedown, were lined with a thick growth of shrubs and birch. Colwyn kneltdown on the edge and peered into the interior of the pit. He tested thestrength of the climbing and creeping plants which twisted in snakelikegrowth in the interior. It seemed to him that it would be acomparatively easy matter to descend into the pit by their support, sofar as they went. But how far did they go?
While he was thus occupied he heard the sound of footsteps crashingthrough the undergrowth of the little wood on the other side of the pit.A moment later a man, carrying a rabbit, and followed by a mongrel dog,came into view. It was Duney. He stared hard at Colwyn and then advancedtowards him with a grin of recognition.
"Yow be lookin' to see how t'owd ma'aster was hulled dune th' pit?" heasked.
"I was wondering how far the pit ran straight down," replied Colwyn. "Itseems to take a slight slope a little way down. Does it?"
"I doan't know narthin' about th' pit, and I doan't want to," repliedMr. Duney, backing away with a slightly pale face. "Doan't yow meddlewi' un, ma'aster. It's a quare place, thissun."
"Why, what's the matter with it?"
"Did you never hear that th' pit's haunted? Like enough nobody'd tellyow. Folk hereabowts aren't owerfond of talkin' of th' White Lady of th'Shrieking Pit, for fear it should bring un bad luck."
"I've been hearing a little about her to-day. Is she any relation ofBlack Shuck, the ghost dog you were telling me about?"
"It's no larfin' matter, ma'aster. You moind the day me and BillyBacklog come and towld yow about us seein' that chap on th' edge of yonwood that night? Well, just befower we seed un we heerd th' rummiestkind of noise--summat atween a moan and a shriek, comin' from this 'erepit. I reckon, from what's happened to that chap Ronald since, that itwor the White Lady of th' Pit we heered. It's lucky for us we didn't seeun."
"I remember at the time you mentioned something about it."
"Ay, she be a terr'ble bad sperrit," said Mr. Duney, wagging his headunctuously. "She comes out of this yare pit wheer t'owd man was chucked,and wanders about the wood and th' rise, a-yellin' somefin awful. It'snowt to hear her--we've all heerd her for that matter--but to see her isto meet a bloody and violent end within the month. That's why they callthis 'ere pit 'the Shrieking Pit.' I'm thinkin' that owd Mr. Glenthorpe,who was allus fond of walkin' up this way at nights, met her one night,and that'll account for his own bloody end. And it's my belief that sheappeared to the young chap who was hidin' in th' woods the night we sawun. And look what's happened to un! He's got to be hanged, which is aviolent end, thow p'r'aps not bloody."
"If that's the local belief, I wonder anybody went down into the pit torecover Mr. Glenthorpe's body."
"Nobody wouldn't 'a' gone down but Herward. I wouldn't 'a' gone down foruntowd gowd, but Herward comes from th' Broads, and don't know nartin'about this part of the ma'shes. Besides, he ain't no Christian, down'tcare for no ghosts nor sperrits. I've often heerd un say so."
"Is it true that the White Lady has been seen since Mr. Glenthorpe wasmurdered?"
"She's been heered, shure enough. Billy Backlog, who lives closest tothe rise, was a-tellin' us in the _Anchor_ bar that she woke him up twonights arter th' murder, a-yowlin' like an old tomcat, but Billy knewit worn't a cat--it weer far more fearsome, wi gasps at th' end. Thedeaf fat chap at Benson's arst him what time this might be. Billy saidhe disremembered th' time--mebbe it wor ten or a bit past. Then the fatchap said it wor just about that time the same night, as he wor shuttin'up, he saw somefin white float up to th' top of th' pit. He thowt at th'time it might be mist, thow there weren't much mist on th' ma'shes thatnight, but now he says 'es sure that it wor the White Lady from theShrieking Pit that he saw. 'Then Gawdamighty help yow, poor fat chap,'says Billy, looking at him solemn-like. 'The hearin' of her is narthin',it's th' seein' o' her that's the trouble.' The poor fat chap a' beennigh skeered out o' his wits ever since, and nobody in th' village wudgo near th' pit a' nighttimes--no, not for a fortin. I ain't sure asit's safe to be here even in daytimes, thow I never heered of her comin'out in the light." Mr. Duney turned resolutely away from the pit, andcalled to his dog, who was sitting near the edge, regarding his masterwith blinking eyes and lolling tongue. "I'll be goin', in case thatQueensmead sees me from th' village. I cot this coney fair and square inth' open, but it be hard to make Queensmead believe it. Well, I'll begoin'. Good mornin', ma'aster."
He trudged away across the rise, with his dog following at his heels.Colwyn was about to turn away also, when his eye was caught by a scrapof stained and discoloured paper lying near the edge of the pit, wherethe rain had washed away some of the earth. He stooped, and picked itup. It was a slip of white paper, about five inches long, and perhapsthree inches in width, quite blank, but with a very apparent watermark,consisting of a number of parallel waving lines, close together, runningacross the surface. Although the watermark was an unusual one, it seemedstrangely familiar to Colwyn, who tried to recall where he had seen itbefore. But memory is a tricky thing. Although Colwyn's memory instantlyrecognised the watermark on the paper, he could not, for the moment,recollect where he had seen it, though it seemed as familiar to him asthe face of some old acquaintance whose name he had temporarilyforgotten. Colwyn ultimately gave up the effort for the time being, andplaced the piece of paper in his pocket-book, knowing that his memorywould, sooner or later, perform unconsciously the task it refused toundertake when asked.
Colwyn spent the afternoon in another solitary walk, and darkness hadset in before he returned to the village. As he reached the inn heglanced towards the hut circles, and was startled to see something whitemove slowly along by the edge of the Shrieking Pit and vanish in thewood. There was something so weird and ghostly in the spectacle thatColwyn was momentarily astounded by it. Then his eye fell on the seamist which covered the marshes in a white shroud, and he smiledslightly. It was not the White Lady of the Shrieking Pit he had seen,but a spiral of mist, floating across the rise.
The sight brought back to his mind the stories he had heard that day,and when he was seated at dinner a little later he casually askedCharles if he believed in ghosts. The fat man, with a sudden upliftingof his black eyes, as though to
ascertain whether Colwyn was speakingseriously, replied that he did not.
"I'm surprised to hear of your scepticism, Charles, for I'm told thatthe apparition from the pit--the White Lady, as she is called--hasfavoured you with a special appearance," said Colwyn, in a banteringtone.
"I see what you mean now, sir. I didn't understand you at first. It waslike this: some of the villagers were talking about this ghost in thebar a few nights back, and one or two of the villagers, who all firmlybelieved in it, declared that they had heard her wandering about theprevious night, moaning and shrieking, as is supposed to be her custom.I, more by way of a joke than anything else, told them I had seensomething white on the rise the previous night, when I was shutting upthe inn. But the whole village has got it into their heads that I sawthe White Lady, and they think because I've seen her I'm a doomed man.The country folk round about here are an ignorant and superstitious lot,sir."
"And did you actually see anything, Charles, the night you speak of?"
"I saw something, sir--something long and white--like a moving whitepillar, if I may so express myself. While I looked it vanished into thewoods."
"It was probably mist. I saw something similar this evening!"
"Very likely, sir. I do not think it was a ghost."
Colwyn did not pursue the subject further, though he was struck by thewide difference between Charles' account of the incident and that givento him by Duney at the pit that afternoon.
When Charles had cleared the table Colwyn sat smoking and thinking untillate. After he was sure that the rest of the inmates of the inn hadretired, he went to the kitchen and took the key of Mr. Glenthorpe'sroom from the hook of the dresser. When he reached his own bedroom, hisfirst act was to push back the wardrobe and open the trap door he haddiscovered the previous night. He looked at his watch, and found thatthe hour was a little after eleven. He decided to wait for half an hourbefore carrying out the experiment he contemplated. By midnight he wouldbe fairly safe from the fear of discovery. He lay down on his bed topass the intervening time, but he was so tired that he fell asleepalmost immediately.
He awakened with a start, and sat up, staring into the black darkness.For a moment or two he did not realise his surroundings, then the soundof stealthy footsteps passing his door brought him back to instantwakefulness. The footsteps halted--outside his door, it seemed toColwyn. There followed the sound of a hand fumbling with a lock,followed by the shooting of a bolt and the creaking of a door. The truthflashed upon the detective; somebody was entering the next room. As helistened, there was the scrape of a match, and a moment later a narrowshaft of light streamed through the open wall-door into his room.
Colwyn got noiselessly off his bed and looked through the crack in theinner small door into the other room. The picture on the other side ofthe wall narrowed his range of vision, but through the inch or so ofcrack extending beyond the picture he was able to see clearly thatportion of the adjoining bedroom in which the bed stood. Near the bed,examining with the light of a candle the contents of the writing tablewhich stood alongside of it, was Benson, the innkeeper.
He was searching for something--rummaging through the drawers of thetable, taking out papers and envelopes, and tearing them open with afurious desperate energy, pausing every now and again to look hurriedlyover his shoulder, as though he expected to see some apparition start upfrom the shadowy corners. The search was apparently fruitless, forpresently he crammed the papers back into the drawers with the samefeverish haste, and, walking rapidly across the room, passed out of theview of the watcher on the other side, for the picture which hung on theinside wall prevented Colwyn seeing beyond the foot of the bed. Althoughthe innkeeper could not now be seen, the sound of his stealthy quickmovements, and the flickering lights cast by the candle he carried,suggested plainly enough that he was continuing his search in thatportion of the room which was not visible through the crack.
In a few minutes he came back into Colwyn's range of vision, lookingdusty and dishevelled, with drops of perspiration starting from hisface. With a savage gesture, which was akin to despair, he wiped theperspiration from his face, and tossed back his long hair from hisforehead. It was the first time Colwyn had seen his forehead uncovered,and a thrill ran through him as he noticed a deep bruise high upon theleft temple. The next moment the innkeeper walked swiftly out of theroom, and Colwyn heard him close the door softly behind him.
Colwyn waited awhile. When everything seemed quiet, he cautiously openedhis door in the dark, and tried the door of the adjoining room. It waslocked.
The innkeeper, then, had another key which fitted the murdered man'sdoor. And what was he searching for? Money? The treasury notes which Mr.Glenthorpe had drawn out of the bank the day he was murdered, which hadnever been found? Money--notes!
By one of those hidden and unaccountable processes of the human brain,the association of ideas recalled to Colwyn's mind where he hadpreviously seen the peculiar watermark of waving lines visible on thepiece of paper he had picked up at the brink of the pit that afternoon:it was the Government watermark of the first issue of War Treasurynotes.
Colwyn lit his bedroom candle, and examined the piece of paper in hispocket-book with a new and keen interest. There was no doubt about it,the mark on the dirty blank paper was undoubtedly the Treasurywatermark. But how came such a mark, designed exclusively for theprotection of the Treasury against bank-note forgeries, to appear on adirty scrap of paper?
As he stood there, turning the bit of paper over and over, in his hand,puzzling over the problem, the solution flashed into his mind--asolution so simple, yet, withal, so remarkable, that he hesitated tobelieve it possible. But a further examination of the paper removed hisdoubts. Chance had placed in his hands another clue, and the mostimportant he had yet discovered, to help him in the elucidation of themystery of the murder of Roger Glenthorpe. But to verify that clue itwould be necessary for him to descend the pit.