Interesting Discovery of a Shoe
It was past noon when Roger made his appearance at the little grassy
ledge. To his surprise he found it occupied by only one tenant, who
was lying on his back and staring up into the blue sky, puffing
contentedly at his pipe. Roger scrambled down the little slope and
dropped on to the turf beside his cousin.
“How now, fair coz? What have you done with the lady? I wanted a word
with her.”
Anthony turned his head. “You can hardly expect her to be at your beck
and call _all_ the time,” he observed with some severity. “You know
she’s keeping house for the doctor.”
“Yes, Anthony,” Roger replied meekly. “Is she keeping house now?”
“She’s gone into the village to do some shopping. She’ll be coming
back here when she’s through.”
“A proper little gent,” remarked Roger, pulling out his own pipe and
filling it lazily, “a proper little gent, such as I could wish any
cousin of mine to be, would have gone with her and carried her parcels
for her.”
Anthony flushed slightly. “She wouldn’t let me, damn you. She said
that— She wouldn’t let me.”
“Yes, she’s quite right,” Roger admitted handsomely. “Villages _are_
appalling places for gossip, aren’t they?” He concealed his grin in
the operation of applying a match to his pipe.
“Did you have any luck?” Anthony asked hastily.
“Well, yes and no.” His cousin’s leg successfully stretched, Roger was
ready enough to revert to the main theme. “First of all I was waylaid
by that wretched little parson, whose curiosity strikes me as being
really indecent. He tried his best to pump me as to what I thought
about it all, what the inspector thought about it all, whether any
arrest was imminent, whether any other clues had been discovered, and
all the rest of it, and though I’m afraid I was outrageously rude to
him in my frantic efforts to get away, he managed to waste a perfectly
good quarter-of-an-hour of my valuable time; finally I told him that a
Bible and prayer-book marked with the initials ‘S. M.’ had been found
on the ledge close to where the tragedy had taken place, and the
police were looking for the owner. While he was still gasping, I
effected my get-away.”
“You are an ass, Roger,” grinned Anthony.
“So it may seem to you,” Roger replied blandly. “In reality I am a
person of remarkable astuteness and cunning. Well, then I went back to
the inn, borrowed mine host’s bicycle and headed for Clouston Hall. I
don’t mind walking it in the cool of the evening, but I was hanged if
I was going to do so in the middle of a day like this. All fell out as
arranged.”
“You mean, Woodthorpe’s cleared?”
“Yes. Luckily he was at home, and I pretended I wanted to clear up a
minor point arising out of our conversation last night. If I must be
forced to admit it, I’m afraid I took the inspector’s name in vain.
Then, by subtle and extremely cunning degrees, I led the conversation
round till I could quote the best illustrated joke in that issue of
_London Opinion_, having been at some pains previously to buy a copy
and study it. I quoted the first half of the joke only, and if friend
Colin had seen the paper he couldn’t possibly have failed to remember
it—but he couldn’t supply the point. _Ergo_, Colin had not seen that
issue of _London Opinion;_ _ergo_, Colin could not have been the
person to have left it in the cave.”
“You don’t think he saw through you?”
“I’m quite sure he didn’t. Colin is not a young man who impressed me
as teeming with intelligence, and of course I was on the alert for any
signs of bluff. He was perfectly natural. No, I’m sure Colin isn’t our
man. Now it’s your turn to report. Could Margaret give you any useful
information? You had time to tell her our conclusions to date, I
suppose?”
“Yes, I told her, but she couldn’t remember anything about a strange
visitor to Mrs. Vane. She said she’d rack her brains on the way to the
village and back, but she couldn’t think of one off-hand.”
“I see. And when do you expect her back?”
Anthony consulted his wrist-watch. “Any time now.”
“Good. Then let us recline on our backs, close our eyes and indulge in
blessed silence till she comes, because certainly we shan’t get any
when she does.” He proceeded to suit his action to his words.
Anthony regarded his horizontal cousin with a large grin. “‘_Blessed_
silence!’” he scoffed “Oh, very good, Roger; very good indeed. I must
try you with the butter test at lunch. If half-a-pound of butter,
placed in the patient’s mouth—how does it go on, eh?”
But Roger, serenely recumbent, took refuge in his blessed silence.
During the next ten minutes not a single word was spoken. Then
Margaret appeared, and Roger’s Trappist-like vow was a thing of the
past.
“Now then, Margaret,” he said briskly, when greetings were over and
they were all seated once more. “Now then, it’s up to you. Anthony
tells me he’s given you an account of my activities. Have you got any
information for me yet?”
“You mean, about the mysterious visitor?” said the girl, wrinkling her
white forehead. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t. Elsie never had a
mysterious visitor at all, to my knowledge.”
“And yet you said before that you thought there was someone or
something she was afraid of,” Roger mused. “That doesn’t help you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Margaret confessed. “I couldn’t say anything
definite about that when you asked me before, you remember.”
“Look here,” said Anthony suddenly, “are you sure she was _afraid?_
Not just worried? If she was just worried, you see, that chap
Woodthorpe would account for it.”
“Yes, that’s a good point,” Roger approved. “Whether she had any deep
game on with him or not, she’d naturally be put out by his wanting to
break with her. Is that more like it, Margaret?”
“It might have been that of course,” said the girl doubtfully,
“but—oh, I don’t know, but my impression certainly is that it was
something stronger than just worry.”
“All the better,” Roger said cheerfully. “That confirms my theory. If
it _was_ somebody out of her past, trying in all probability to
blackmail her, she certainly would show signs of fear.”
“I know!” Margaret exclaimed. “I could go through her things, couldn’t
I? Letters and papers, I mean. I could easily do that, and I should
think if there is anything to be found out that’s the most likely way
of discovering it.”
“I should say the inspector is almost certain to have done that
already,” Roger meditated. “Still, there’s no harm in your doing it
too.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Margaret, her face falling. “Then
it won’t be much use?”
“I doubt it. Still, we mustn’t disregard the possibility. Of course if
you could find some place that the inspector may have overlooked—!
Documentary evidence of that sort, you see, would be hidden very
carefully away by a person of Mrs. Vane’s criminal—shall we
say?—training. And after all, the inspector wouldn’t have been looking
for anything like that. Probably he’ll only have glanced through the
obvious, merely as a matter of routine.”
“Well, let’s hope for the best,” Margaret smiled. “Anyhow, if I don’t
find something I promise you it won’t be for want of looking.”
“By the way,” said Roger, dismissing this topic, “how’s Dr. Vane?”
“George? Oh, he’s all right. Why?”
“I only wondered. No interesting developments yet?”
Margaret laughed. “You mean Miss Williamson? Oh, give her time. I
don’t think any woman could be expected to propose to a man in less
than a week from his wife’s death, really.”
“Roger judges everybody by himself,” interposed Anthony maliciously.
“I wasn’t going so far as to suggest that she’d actually proposed to
him yet, Margaret,” Roger explained mildly. “I was just asking whether
there’d been any developments, of any sort.”
“If there have been, then, I don’t know them. I hardly ever see either
of them in these days. They seem to be spending more time in the
laboratory than ever.”
“Well, I don’t know that I personally should care to conduct my
courtship in an atmosphere of test-tubes, litmus-paper, and dead
rabbits, but there’s no accounting for tastes. A dead rabbit, I feel
convinced, would put me off my stroke altogether.”
“Roger, you’re disgusting. Well, is there anything else you want to
ask me?”
“Not at the moment. I’ll wait for one of your more helpful days. Does
that mean, by the way, that ‘Good-morning, Mr. Sheringham. It’s been
so nice to see you. You must come again some day’? Because if so, I
warn you that Anthony comes with me.”
“Roger, I think you’re being perfectly horrid this morning,” exclaimed
Miss Cross, blushing warmly.
“Shall I chuck _him_ over the cliff for you, Margaret?” suggested
Anthony, no less moist.
“It doesn’t mean anything of the sort,” Margaret went on, disregarding
this admirable offer. “I was simply going to say that if you don’t
want to discuss things with me any more, I wish you’d show me the
little cave where Elsie and Colin used to meet. It sounds most
thrilling.”
“What I deplore most of all in the young women of to-day,” remarked
Roger sadly, as he rose with reluctance to his feet, “is the
unpleasing morbidity of their tastes.”
As they walked abreast along the top of the cliff, Roger’s thoughts
were busy round a certain point. Margaret’s reference to her dead
cousin as Dr. Vane’s wife tended to show that Anthony had not told her
that the two were probably not legally married. Roger was glad of
this; he had meant to warn Anthony that morning to say nothing to the
girl on this delicate matter, but it had slipped his memory. Until the
matter was settled one way or the other, either by the discovery of
the living Herbert Peters or by the establishment of his death prior
to Mrs. Vane’s marriage to the doctor, it was much better to leave the
girl in ignorance of the issues involved. For (and this was the point
which was really worrying Roger) if Mrs. Vane’s second marriage turned
out to be a bigamous one, would that not mean that the settlement was
invalidated and Margaret’s legacy vanished into thin air? Without
knowing the exact terms of the document it was impossible to say, but
Roger meant to go into the matter with a solicitor on Margaret’s
behalf at the earliest possible moment.
His attention was recalled to the present moment with a jerk. “I can’t
tell you how thankful I was to hear of this new theory of yours,
Roger,” Margaret was saying with an effort of lightness. “It’s such a
change from—well, from the way things seem to have been heading. And
you really think you’ll be able to substantiate it?”
“I’m quite sure I shall, my dear,” Roger replied, perhaps with more
confidence than he actually felt at the moment. “I’ve what is termed,
I understand, a hunch about it. Don’t you worry any more; Uncle Roger
is going to see you through this and get to the bottom of it for you.”
“I shall never be able to thank you enough if you do,” the girl said
in a low tone. “Perhaps you can imagine something of the nightmare the
last day or two has been, since I realised that I—that they—” Her
voice broke.
Roger drew her arm through his and patted her hand paternally. “That’s
all over now, my dear. No need to worry about that again. Uncle
Roger’s on the job now. Besides,” he went on, instinctively shying
away from any such display of feeling, “to touch on lesser matters, I
believe I can promise you that even the inspector is giving up that
theory now too.”
“He is?” Margaret did not attempt to conceal her joy. She looked at
Roger with shining eyes. “He is really? Did he tell you so?”
“Well, not in so many words,” hedged Roger, who had not the least
solid ground for this assertion. “But he meant me to infer it, I
think. He’s a very cautious bird, though, and would never say anything
outright.”
“Oh, thank Heaven!” Margaret murmured. “At last I can begin to breathe
again!”
Anthony glared at the horizon and muttered beneath his breath. The
words “damfool,” “anointed ass” and “tommyrot” were indistinctly
audible.
The rest of the way Margaret seemed to dance on air, and Roger
rejoiced openly with her. Even Anthony was so far infected by the
general feeling as to forget his dark broodings regarding the
inspector’s state of anointed asininity and possess himself of
Margaret’s other arm. It was a singularly hot day, but Margaret did
not appear to mind the extra burden in the least. Perhaps she liked
having her arms carried for her.
They reached the nearer flight of steps and descended to the ledge.
“I’ve only been down here once since Elsie’s death,” Margaret
remarked, as they made their way along it in single file with Roger in
the van. “I’m not even sure whereabouts she—where it happened.”
“Just along there, it was,” Roger said, pointing ahead of them. “You
see where the ledge broadens out for twenty or thirty yards. Just in
the middle of that. The little cave’s there too.”
As they arrived at the spot where the ledge began to widen Margaret
stopped and peered over the edge. Down below the waves were thrashing
and beating, with a sullen roar and a seething of white foam, among
the huge boulders. She shuddered.
“How—how _horrible!_” she said in a low voice.
Roger had waited for her and she walked slowly on, but still gazing
down into the turmoil as if fascinated. Anthony watched her with a
nameless anxiety: there _were_ people (weren’t there?) who got a bit
rocky on heights and as often as not threw themselves over from sheer
fascinated funk. “Better not walk so near the edge, Margaret,” he
called out to her above the roar of the waves.
Suddenly she stopped short and stared down among the rocks, leaning
perilously over; it seemed as if something had riveted her attention.
“What’s that?” she asked Roger, pointing a slim forefinger. “Isn’t
there something on that big greeny rock, just out of the water? It
looks like a—yes, it’s a shoe, surely.”
Roger followed the direction she indicated. “Yes,” he agreed. “It’s an
old shoe, I think. There must be a good man— Hullo, wait a minute!” He
stood for an instant staring down, frowning. “Shin down and get it,
Anthony, will you?” he said abruptly the next moment. “You’re younger
than I am. I’ve got an idea.”
“You have?” Margaret asked eagerly, as Anthony hastened to obey.
“What?”
“Half a minute, till I’ve had a look at it.”
Five minutes later Roger was turning the shoe over in his hands. It
was a lady’s, size six, soaked with sea-water and in a dilapidated
condition; the buckle had been torn off, and the leather was slit on
either side of the toe down to the sole.
Roger’s eyes gleamed. “Eureka!” he exclaimed softly. “Good for your
sharp eyes, lady. You understand what this is, both of you, don’t
you?”
“Roger!” Margaret cried. “Do explain! I don’t know what it is, except
an old shoe. What is it?”
“It’s one of the shoes worn by the murderer to disguise his
foot-prints, precisely as I said,” Roger explained, with a not
unjustified triumph. “Don’t you see why the leather’s cut like this?
To enable the shoe to be crammed on to a foot several sizes too large
for it. He had the pair all ready with him, made use of them, and then
threw them down into the sea.”
“Jolly good, Roger!” Anthony exclaimed, smiting his cousin on the back
in his exuberance. “Then you were right when you said the murderer was
a man.”
“I was, Anthony; and this clinches it once and for all. No woman would
want to make a shoe this size still larger to fit her foot. I shall
have to hare off and see the inspector about this. In the meantime,
you shin down again and hunt among those rocks for the second one;
it’s bound to be somewhere about. Children, this is the biggest thing
that’s happened since I took up the case!”