ON THE SITE
Leonard shut the book and threw it aside. He sat thinking over it for a
little. Then he thought it was time to go to bed. There was not much of
the night left; in fact, it was already broad daylight. But if it had
been a night of mid-winter for darkness he could not have been visited
by a more terrifying nightmare.
In his sleep the Family History continued. It now took the form of a
Mystery--a Mystery in a Shape. It sat upon his afflicted chest and
groaned. He was unable to guess or understand what kind of Mystery it
was, or, in his sleep, to connect it with anything on the earth or in
the world outside this earth. He woke up and shook it off; he went to
sleep again, and it returned, unrelenting. It was vague and vast and
terrible; a Thing with which the sufferer wrestled in vain, which he
could not shake off and could not comprehend.
There are many kinds of nightmares; that of the unintelligible mystery,
which will not go away and cannot be driven away, is one of the worst.
When he rose, late in the morning, unrefreshed and tired, he did connect
the nightmare with something intelligible. It arose from the book and
its story; which, like Chaucer’s, was left half told. That, in itself,
would have mattered little. A strange thing happened: it began with this
morning: there fell upon him quite suddenly an irresistible sense that
here was a duty laid upon him: a duty not to be neglected: a thing that
had to be done to the exclusion of everything else. He had to follow up
this story, and to recover, after seventy years and more, the true
history of the crime which cast a shadow so long and so terrible upon
all those years and the children of those years. He looked at the papers
on his table: they were the half-finished article he had undertaken: his
mind bidden to think upon the subject rebelled: it refused to work: it
would not be turned in that direction: it went off to Campaigne Park and
to seventy years before.
Without words Leonard was mysteriously commanded to follow up the story
to its proper conclusion. Without any words he was plainly and
unmistakably commanded to follow it up. By whom? He did not ask. He
obeyed.
After seventy years the discovery of the guilty man would seem
difficult. We find historians grappling with the cases of accused
persons, and forming conclusions absolutely opposite, even when the
evidence seems quite full and circumstantial in every point. Take the
case of Anne Boleyn, for instance; or that of Mary Queen of Scots: two
of the most illustrious and most unfortunate princesses. What agreement
is there among historians concerning these ladies? Yet there are
monumental masses of documents--contemporary, voluminous, official,
private, epistolary, confidential, partisan--that exist to help them.
In this case there were no other documents except those in the Book of
Cuttings. All that a private investigation could do was to read the
evidence that had already been submitted to two Courts, and to arrive,
if possible, at some conclusion.
This Leonard proceeded to do. He laid aside altogether the work on which
he had been engaged, he placed the book before him, and he read the
whole contents again, word for word, albeit with the same strange
shrinking.
Then he made notes. The first referred to the man Dunning.
I. _John Dunning._--The prisoner was rightly acquitted; he was most
certainly innocent. The boy showed that he had not been in the wood more
than two or three minutes. The deceased was a man six inches taller than
Dunning, and strong in proportion. The latter could only have delivered
the fatal blow if he had come upon his victim from behind, and while he
was sitting. But the medical evidence proves that the blow must have
been delivered from the front; and it was also proved that the grass was
too wet from recent showers for the deceased to have been sitting down
on it.
II. _The Time of Death._--If the medical evidence is worth anything,
the man when found had been lying dead for about two hours, as was
proved by the rigor mortis. This absolutely convinces one of Dunning’s
innocence, and it introduces the certainty of another hand. Whose?
There he paused and began to consider.
There must have been another person in the wood; this person must have
rushed upon his victim suddenly and unexpectedly. To rush out of the
wood armed with a heavy club torn from a tree was the act of a gorilla.
If there had been an escaped gorilla anywhere about, the crime could
have been fixed upon him. But gorillas in the year 1826 were not yet
discovered.
Perhaps the assailant ran upon him from behind, noiselessly; perhaps
Langley Holme heard him at the last moment, and turned so that the blow
intended for the back of the head fell upon the fore part.
This was all very well in theory. But why? Who wanted to kill this young
gentleman, and why? There was no robbery. The body lay for two hours and
more in this unfrequented place; there was plenty of time for the
murderer to take everything; the murderer had taken nothing.
Then, why? How to explain it? Here was a young country gentleman, highly
popular; if he had enemies, they would not be outside his own part of
the country. Most country gentlemen, in those days, had many enemies.
These enemies, who were rustics for the most part, satisfied their
revenge and their hatred by poaching on the preserves. They also set
fire to the hayricks. Langley Holme was staying a welcome guest with his
friend and brother-in-law; he was walking along on a summer morning in a
wood not a mile away from the House and Park, and there he was
discovered lying dead--murdered!
It may be objected that this attempt to solve the insoluble after
seventy years was a waste of time; that dead and gone crimes may as well
be left alone. Other people’s crimes may no doubt be left alone. But
this was his own crime, so to speak--a crime inflicted in and upon his
own family. Besides, he was dragged by ropes to the consideration of the
thing; his mind was wholly charged with it; he could think of nothing
else.
Presently he shaped a theory, which at first seemed to fit in with
everything. It was really a very good theory, which promised, when he
framed it, to account for all the facts brought out in the inquest and
at the trial.
The theory supposed an escaped lunatic--a homicidal maniac, of course;
that would account for everything. A maniac--a murderous maniac. He must
have been lying concealed in the wood; he must have rushed out armed
with his club, like that gorilla. This theory seemed to meet every point
in the case. He shut up the book; he had found out the truth; he could
now go about his own work again, forgetting the mysterious murder which
drove his great-grandfather off his balance.
He sighed with satisfaction. He placed the book in a drawer out of the
way; he need not worry any more about the thing. So with another sigh of
relief he reached out for his books and returned once more to the study
of his “subject.”
Presently he became aware that his eyes were resting on the page without
reading it; that his mind was back again to the Book of Extracts, and
that in his brain there was forming, without any volition of his own,
one or two difficult questions about that maniac. As, for instance, if
there had been such a creature wandering in the fields someone would
have seen him; he would probably have murdered more than one person
while he was in the mood for murder. There was a little boy, for
instance, scaring birds; he would have killed that little boy. Then, the
fact of a roving maniac would have been known. He must have escaped from
somewhere: his madness must have been known. There would have been some
sort of hue and cry after him: either at the inquest or at the trial
there would have been some mention of this dangerous person going about
at large; some suggestion that he might have been the guilty person.
Dangerous maniacs do not escape without any notice taken, or any warning
that they are loose.
No. It would not do. Another and a more workable theory must be
invented.
He got another. Poachers! Everybody knows the deadly hostility, far
worse seventy years ago than at present, that existed between a country
gentleman and a poacher. The latter was accustomed, in those days, to
get caught in a mantrap; to put his foot into a gin; to be fired upon by
gamekeepers; to be treated like a weasel or a stoat. In return the
poacher manifested a lamentably revengeful spirit, which sometimes went
as far as murder. In this case, no doubt, the crime was committed by a
poacher.
The theory satisfied him at first, just as much as its predecessor.
Presently, however, he reflected that there is not much for a poacher to
do in early June, and that poachers do not prowl about the woods and
coverts in broad daylight and at noon; and that poachers do not, as a
rule, murder gentlemen belonging to other parts of the country. Besides,
poachers on one estate would not bear malice against the squire of
another estate fifteen miles distant. Leonard pushed his papers away in
despair.
Any other kind of work was impossible; he could think of nothing else.
At this point, however, some kind of relief came to him. For he felt
that he must make himself personally acquainted with the place itself.
He wanted to see the wood of which so much mention was made--the place
where the blow was struck, the place where the murderer lay hidden. He
wanted the evidence of the wood itself, which was probably the same now
as it had been seventy years before, unless it had been felled or built
over. In that part of the country they do not destroy woods, and they do
not build upon their site; it is a conservative country. As the fields
were a hundred years ago, so they are now.
Visitors to the house most conveniently approach it from the
Metropolitan Extension Line, which goes to Rickmansworth, Amersham, and
Verney. Leonard resolved upon going there that very morning. He took a
note-book and started, setting down the points on which he wished to
inquire.
He arrived at the station a little before noon; a walk of ten minutes
brought him to the house. On the terrace at the back the old man, tall,
broad-shouldered, erect, walked as usual up and down, with his hard,
resolute air. Leonard did not speak to him; he passed into the garden,
and looking at his watch walked along the grass-grown walks, and at the
end, turning to the right, entered the park.
It was but a small park: there was only one walk in the direction which
the two would have followed; this was now, like the garden walks,
overgrown with grass. At the end there was a lodge; but it had stood
empty for nearly seventy years; the gates were rusting on their hinges,
the windows were broken and the tiles had fallen off the roof.
Beyond the park was an open road--the highroad; beyond the road a narrow
path led across a broad field into a small wood; on the right hand was a
low rising ground. This, then, was the wood where the thing was done;
this was the hillside on which the boy was scaring the birds when he
saw the two go in and the one come out.
Leonard crossed the field and entered the wood. He looked at his watch
again. It had taken him twenty minutes to walk from the house to the
road; he made a note of that fact. He walked through the wood; it was a
pretty wood, more like a plantation than a wood--a wood with a few large
trees, many saplings, two or three trees lying on the ground and waiting
to be cut up. The spring foliage was out, dancing in the sunlight; the
varying light and shade were pleasing and restful, the air was soft, the
birds were singing. A peaceful, lovely place.
This, then, was the spot where Langley Holme was suddenly done to death.
By whom?
Now, as Leonard stood looking into the tangled mass of undergrowth, a
curious thing happened. It was the same thing which had happened to the
housekeeper, and was mentioned in her notes. By some freak of light and
shade, there was fashioned in a part of the wood where the shade was
darkest the simulacrum or spectre of a man--only the shoulders and upper
part of a man, but still a man.
Leonard was no more superstitious than his neighbours; but at this
ghostly presentment he was startled, and for a moment his heart beat
quickly with that strange kind of terror, unlike any other, which is
called supernatural.
There are men who boast that they know it not, and have never felt it.
These are men who would take their work into a deserted house, and
would carry it on serenely, alone, through the watches of the livelong
night. For my own part, I envy them not. Give me the indications of the
unseen world; the whisper of the unseen spirit; the cold breath of the
unseen guest; even though they are received with terror and
superstitious shrinkings.
It was with such terror that Leonard saw this apparition. A moment after
and it was gone; then he perceived that it was nothing but the shadows
lying among the undergrowth, so that they assumed a solid form. Yet, as
to the housekeeper, to whom that same apparition had appeared, it seemed
to him the actual phantom of the murdered man.
He retraced his steps. It took no more than five minutes, he found, to
walk through the wood from one end to the other. It was so small, and
the undergrowth of so light a character, with no heavy foliage, that any
person standing in any part of it would be easily visible; it would be
impossible for any man to conceal himself. He made a note, also, of
these facts.
He then remembered the boy on the hillside scaring the birds. There was
no boy at the moment, but Leonard walked up the low hill in order to
learn what the boy had been able to see.
The hill, although low, was a good deal higher than the trees in the
wood; it commanded a view of the land beyond the wood--another field
with young corn upon it. Leonard observed that one could not see
through the wood, but that he could see over it, and beyond it, and on
either side of it.
If, for instance, anyone approached the wood from any direction, or ran
away from it, it would be quite possible for a boy standing on the
hillside to see that person.
Then, in his imagination, he heard the boy’s evidence. “I see the Squire
and a gentleman with him. They came as far as the wood together.
Presently the Squire went away by himself. Then John Dunning came along,
and presently he came out, running over to the farm. Then they brought a
shutter and carried out something on it covered up. That’s all I see.”
The words were so clear and plain that when they ceased he looked round,
and was astonished to find there was no boy. He sat down on a gate and
looked at his notes.
1. The walk from the house to the wood took twenty minutes.
2. The time taken in walking through the wood was five minutes.
3. The wood was nowhere thick enough to conceal a man.
4. The wood could not be seen through from the hillside.
5. But it was overlooked on all sides from the hill.
He considered these things, being now more than ever seized and
possessed with the weight and burden of the mystery. Consider. It was
no ordinary crime, such as one might read about, when in the annals of a
family one member of a long time ago was brutally and wickedly cut off.
It was a crime whose effects were felt by every member of his family in
the strange seclusion of the head. Whatever advantages might be
possessed by any member of this ancient and honourable house were lost;
for the head of it, and the owner of all the property, took no notice of
anyone; knew nothing of his existence, even; and lived entirely to
himself and by himself.
It was, again, the first of all the numerous misfortunes which had
fallen upon the family. Lastly, it was a mystery which seemed
continually on the point of being cleared up by some theory which would
explain and account for everything.
He looked round. The place seemed too peaceful for any deed of violence,
the sunshine was warm, the singing of birds filled his ear. The contrast
with his own thoughts bewitched him. He would have preferred a
thunderous atmosphere charged with electricity.
He argued with himself that the thing took place seventy years ago; that
it might be very well left to be cleared up when the secrets of all
hearts will be known; that after all these years he could not hope to
clear it up; that he was only wasting his time; and so forth. He charged
the mystery, so to speak, to leave him. No demon of possession, no
incubus, ever refused more resolutely to be driven out. It remained
with him, more burdensome, more intolerable, than ever.
He left the hillside and walked back to the road. There, instead of
walking through the park again, he turned to the left and entered the
village. One must eat; he ordered a chop at the village inn, and while
it was getting ready he went to the church. The monuments of his own
family were scattered about the church, and on the wall he read again
the tablet to the memory of the unfortunate man.
Outside, in the churchyard, was the same old man who had accosted him
when he brought Constance here. He was sitting on a tombstone, basking
and blinking in the sun. He stood up slowly, and pulled off his hat.
“Hope you’re well, sir,” he said.
“Oh!” Leonard remembered. “You were the boy who was scaring birds on the
day--seventy years ago--when Mr. Holme was murdered.”
“Surely, sir--surely. I haven’t forgotten. I remember it all--just as
yesterday. Better than yesterday. I’m old, master, and I remember what
happened when I was a boy better than what happened yesterday. To many
old people the same hath happened.”
“Very likely; I have heard so. Now sit down and tell me all about it.
I’ve just come down from London to look at the place, and I remembered
your evidence.”
“I will tell you everything, sir. Will you ask me, or shall I tell my
own story?”
“You may tell your own story first, and I will ask you questions
afterwards.”
So the old man repeated, in a parrot-like way:
“It was on a fine morning in June, getting on to dinner-time. I’d been
scaring since five, and I was hungry. I was all alone on the hill, in
the field where there’s a little wood, and the path runs through the
wood. Then I saw two gentlemen--one was the Squire, the other I’d seen
at church with the Squire Sunday before, but I didn’t know his name. He
was tall, but nothing like so tall as the Squire. They were talking high
and loud and fast. I remember hearing them, but I couldn’t hear the
words. They went as far as the wood together. Directly after, the Squire
turned back; he looked up and down as if he was expecting somebody, then
he turned and walked home fast. The other gentleman didn’t go out with
the Squire, nor yet at the other end of the wood.
“A long time after, John Dunning came along. He had on his smock-frock;
he hadn’t been in the wood two minutes before he came running out of it,
and he made for the farm. I saw that his smock-frock was red; and the
farmin’ men brought a shutter and carried out of the wood something
covered up. That is all I remember.”
“Yes, that is all. That is what you said at the inquest and the trial,
is it not?”
“That was it, sir.”
“Yes. Was the wood then such as it is now?”
“Just the same.”
“Not a close dark wood, but light and open--just as at present?”
“A light and open coppice with plenty of bushes.”
“Could you, then, see through the wood?”
“No; I could see over it and beyond it, but not through the road, where
I was standing.”
“On that day what time was it when you arrived?”
“My time was half-past five. Mother gave me my breakfast and sent me
out. I suppose it must ha’ been about that time.”
“Very well. You went straight to the hillside and began your work, I
suppose?”
“No; I went through the wood first.”
“What for?”
“To see the birds’ nests there.”
“Oh! You were in the wood? Did you find anybody there, or any signs of
anybody being concealed there?”
“Lord love you! how could a body hide in that little place?”
“There might have been poachers, for instance.”
“Not in June. If there was anyone at all, I should have seen him.”
“Well, then you went up the hill and began your scaring. Did you see
anyone pass into the wood before the Squire and Mr. Holme arrived?”
“No; if there had been anyone, I must have seen him--for certain sure I
must. There was no one all the morning--no one that way at all. There
very seldom was anyone.”
“Where does the path lead?”
“It leads across the fields to the village of Highbeech and the church.”
“It is not a frequented way, then?”
“No. Most days there will be only a single person on that way.”
“Humph!” Leonard was disconcerted with the old man’s positiveness.
Nobody in the wood on his arrival, no one passed into it all the
morning. Where was the poacher? Where was the murderous maniac? “You
were only a little boy at the time,” he said. “Don’t you think your
memory may be at fault? It was seventy years ago, you know.”
The old man shook his head.
“Why, for months and months and for years and years I was asked over and
over again what happened and what I saw. Sometimes it was the Vicar and
his friends who talked about the matter and sent for me. Sometimes it
was the men at the Crown and Jug who talked about the murder and sent
for me. Sometimes it was the gossips. Don’t you think my memory fails,
master, because it can’t fail. Why,” he chuckled, “the very last thing I
shall see before I go up to the Throne will be the sight of them two
gentlemen going along to the wood.”
“Very well, come back to that point. When they arrived at the wood, the
Squire turned back.”
“Yes: first went in with the other gentleman.”
“Oh! It doesn’t matter. But he went a little way into the wood, did he?”
“I don’t know if it was a little way. It was a bit of a time--I don’t
know how long, five minutes, perhaps--two minutes, perhaps--I don’t
know--before he came out.”
“Oh! Was this in your evidence?”
“I answered what I was asked. Nobody ever asked me how long the Squire
was in the wood.”
“Well, they entered the wood, and they were talking in an animated
manner. That is not in your evidence, either.”
“Because I wasn’t asked. As for animated, they were talking high and
loud as if they were quarrelling.”
“They could not be quarrelling.”
“I didn’t hear what they said.”
“Well: it doesn’t matter. The Squire turned back just at the entrance.”
Again the sexton shook his head.
“I know what I said,” he replied; “and I know what I saw.”
“Is there anybody in the village,” Leonard asked, “besides yourself, who
remembers the--the event?”
“It was seventy years ago,” he said. “I’m the oldest man in the village,
except the Squire. He remembers it very well, for all his mad ways. He’s
bound to remember it. There’s nobody else.”
“Then they suspected one man.”
“John Dunning it was. Why, I was only seven years of age, but I knew
well enough that it couldn’t be John. First, he wasn’t big enough--and
then, he wasn’t man enough--and then, he wasn’t devil enough. But they
tried him, and he got off and came back to the village. However, he had
to go, because, you see, the people don’t like the company of a man
who’s been tried for murder, even though he’s been let off; and they
wouldn’t work with John, so the Squire gave him money, and he went away,
out to Australia--him and all his family--and never been heard of
since.”
“Was no one else ever suspected?”
“There might be some who had suspicions, but they kept their suspicions
to themselves.”
“Did you yourself have suspicions?”
“It’s a long time ago, sir. The Squire and me are the only two people
that remember the thing. What’s the use, after all these years, of
having suspicions? I don’t say I have, and I don’t say I haven’t. If I
have, they will be buried with me in my grave.”
Leonard returned to London. He now understood exactly the condition of
the ground, and he had examined the old man whose evidence was so
important. Nothing additional was to be got out of him; but the verbal
statement of a contemporary after seventy years concerning the event in
which Leonard was so much interested was remarkable.
He returned to his own rooms. Hither presently came Constance.
“My friend and cousin,” she said, in her frank manner, as if there had
never been any disturbing question between them, “you are looking
worried. What is the matter?”
“Am I looking worried?”
“The more important point is--are you feeling worried? Leonard, it has
nothing to do with that little conversation we had the other day?”
“No,” he replied. “Nothing.” It was not a complimentary reply, but,
then, Constance was not a girl to expect or to care for compliments.
“Well--is it the discovery of the poor relations?”
“You will think me a very ridiculous person. I don’t worry in the least
about the poor relations. But I am worried about that crime--that murder
of seventy years ago.”
“Oh! But why?”
“It concerns you as well as me.”
“Do you mean that I ought to worry about it? I cannot, really. It is too
long ago. I feel, really, no interest in it at all--except for a little
pity about my grandmother, whose childhood was saddened by the dreadful
thing. And that, too, was such a long time ago. But why should it worry
you?”
“I can hardly tell you why. But it does. Constance, it is the most
wonderful thing. You do not suspect me of nerves or idle fancies?”
“Not at all. You are quite a strong person as regards nerves.”
“Then you will perhaps explain what has happened. Last night I came
home about eleven. I remembered that my newly discovered Great-Aunt had
sent me as a present--a cheerful present--a book containing a full
account, with cuttings from the papers of the time and notes by a woman
who was housekeeper at Campaigne Park, of the crime----”
“Well?”
“I took it out of its brown-paper covering. Again, Constance, am I a man
of superstitions?”
“Certainly not!”
“Well----” He considered the point for a few moments, as one perhaps
better concealed. Then he resolved upon communicating it. “When I opened
it I was seized with a most curious repulsion--a kind of loathing--which
it was difficult to shake off. This morning on looking at the book again
I had the same feeling.”
“Yes, it is strange. But you got over it.”
“In spite of it I persisted and resolutely went through the whole book.
I am repelled and I am attracted by the subject. I sat up half the night
reading it--I have never been so held by any book before.”
“Strange!” Constance repeated. “And for a thing so long ago!”
“I threw it aside at last and went to bed--and to dream. And the end--or
the beginning--of it is that I am compelled--I use the word
advisedly--compelled, Constance, to investigate the whole affair.”
“Oh! but you are not in earnest? Investigate? But it happened seventy
years ago! What can be learned after seventy years?”
“I don’t know. I must investigate and find out what I can.”
Constance looked at him with astonishment. He sat at his desk--but with
his chair turned towards her. His face was lined and somewhat haggard:
he looked like one who is driven: but he looked resolved.
“Leonard, this is idle fancy.”
“I cannot help it; I must investigate the case. There is no help for me,
Constance--I must. This was the first of the family misfortunes. They
have been so heavy and so many that--well, it is weakness to connect
them with something unknown.”
“I am sorry--I am very sorry--that you have learned the truth--even
though it makes me your cousin.”
“I am very sorry, too. But Fate has found me--as it found my grandfather
and my father and that old, old man. Perhaps my own career is also to be
cut short.”
“Nonsense, Leonard! You will investigate the case: you will find out
nothing: you will throw it aside: you will forget it.”
“No; it is not to be forgotten or thrown aside.”
“Well, make your inquiry as soon as you can and get it over. Oh, I
should have thought you the last person in the world to be moved by
fancies of compulsion or any other fancies.”
“I should have thought so, too, except for this experience. When I got
up, Constance, I resolutely shut the book, and I made up my mind to
forget the whole business.”
“And you could not, I suppose?”
“I could not. I found it impossible to fix my attention, so I pulled out
the book again and went all over it from the beginning once more.
Constance, it is the most remarkable story I ever read. You shall read
it yourself.”
“If I do, not even my duty to our ancestor will make me take it so
seriously as you are doing.”
“To-day I have been down to the place. I have visited the wood where the
thing happened: I found again that old man of the churchyard, who paid
you an undeserved compliment.” Constance blushed, but not much. “I made
him tell me all he remembered: it was not much, but it sounded like the
unexpected confirmation of some old document.”
“And have you come to any conclusion yet? Have you formed any theory?”
“None that will hold water. I don’t know what is going to happen over
that business, but I must go on--I must go on.”
She laid a hand upon his arm.
“If you must go on, let me go with you. It is my murder as well as
yours. Lend me the book.”
She carried it off to her own rooms, and that night another incubus sat
upon another sleeping person and murdered rest.