THE HOLE IN THE THATCH
Bent, taking his guest home to dinner after the police-court
proceedings, showed a strong and encouraging curiosity. He, in common
with all the rest of the townsfolk who had contrived to squeeze into the
old court-house, had been immensely interested in Brereton's examination
of Miss Pett. Now he wanted to know what it meant, what it signified,
what was its true relation to the case?
"You don't mean to say that you suspect that queer old atomy of a
woman!" he exclaimed incredulously as they sat down to Bent's bachelor
table. "And yet--you really looked as if you did--and contrived to throw
something very like it into your voice, too! Man, alive!--half the
Highmarket wiseacres'll be sitting down to their roast mutton at this
minute in the full belief that Miss Pett strangled her master!"
"Well, and why not?" asked Brereton, coolly. "Surely, if you face facts,
there's just as much reason to suspect Miss Pett as there is to suspect
Harborough. They're both as innocent as you are, in all probability.
Granted there's some nasty evidence against Harborough, there's also the
presumption--founded on words from her own lips--that Miss Pett expects
to benefit by this old man's death. She's a strong and wiry woman, and
you tell me Kitely was getting somewhat enfeebled--she might have killed
him, you know. Murders, my dear fellow, are committed by the most
unlikely people, and for curious reasons: they have been committed by
quite respectable females--like Miss Pett--for nothing but a mere whim."
"Do you really suspect her?" demanded Bent. "That's what I want to
know."
"That's what I shan't tell you," replied Brereton, with a good-humoured
laugh. "All I shall tell you is that I believe this murder to be either
an exceedingly simple affair, or a very intricate affair. Wait a
little--wait, for instance, until Mr. Christopher Pett arrives with that
will. Then we shall advance a considerable stage."
"I'm sorry for Avice Harborough, anyway," remarked Bent, "and it's
utterly beyond me to imagine why her father can't say where he was last
night. I suppose there'd be an end of the case if he'd prove where he
was, eh?"
"He'd have to account for every minute between nine and ten o'clock,"
answered Brereton. "It would be no good, for instance, if we proved to a
jury that from say ten o'clock until five o'clock next morning,
Harborough was at--shall we say your county town, Norcaster. You may say
it would take Harborough an hour to get from here to Norcaster, and an
hour to return, and that would account for his whereabouts between nine
and ten last night, and between five and six this morning. That wouldn't
do--because, according to the evidence, Kitely left his house just
before nine o'clock, and he may have been killed immediately. Supposing
Harborough killed him at nine o'clock precisely, Harborough would even
then be able to arrive in Norcaster by ten. What we want to know, in
order to fully establish Harborough's innocence is--where was he, what
was he doing, from the moment he left his cottage last night until say a
quarter past nine, the latest moment at which, according to what the
doctor said, the murder could have been committed?"
"Off on one of his poaching expeditions, I suppose," said Bent.
"No--that's not at all likely," answered Brereton. "There's some very
strange mystery about that man, and I'll have to get at the truth of
it--in spite of his determined reticence! Bent!--I'm going to see this
thing right through! The Norcaster Assizes will be on next month, and of
course Harborough will be brought up then. I shall stop in this
neighbourhood and work out the case--it'll do me a lot of good in all
sorts of ways--experience--work--the interest in it--and the _kudos_ I
shall win if I get my man off--as I will! So I shall unashamedly ask you
to give me house-room for that time."
"Of course," replied Bent. "The house is yours--only too glad, old chap.
But what a queer case it is! I'd give something, you know, to know what
you really think about it."
"I've not yet settled in my own mind what I do think about it," said
Brereton. "But I'll suggest a few things to you which you can think over
at your leisure. What motive could Harborough have had for killing
Kitely? There's abundant testimony in the town--from his daughter, from
neighbours, from tradesmen--that Harborough was never short of
money--he's always had more money than most men in his position are
supposed to have. Do you think it likely that he'd have killed Kitely
for thirty pounds? Again--does anybody of sense believe that a man of
Harborough's evident ability would have murdered his victim so clumsily
as to leave a direct clue behind him? Now turn to another side. Is it
not evident that if Miss Pett wanted to murder Kitely she'd excellent
chances of not only doing so, but of directing suspicion to another
person? She knew her master's habits--she knew the surroundings--she
knew where Harborough kept that cord--she is the sort of person who
could steal about as quietly as a cat. If--as may be established by the
will which her nephew has, and of which, in spite of all she affirmed,
or, rather, swore, she may have accurate knowledge--she benefits by
Kitely's death, is there not motive there? Clearly, Miss Pett is to be
suspected!"
"Do you mean to tell me that she'd kill old Kitely just to get
possession of the bit he had to leave?" asked Bent incredulously. "Come,
now,--that's a stiff proposition."
"Not to me," replied Brereton. "I've known of a case in which a young
wife carefully murdered an old husband because she was so eager to get
out of the dull life she led with him that she couldn't wait a year or
two for his natural decease; I've heard of a case in which an elderly
woman poisoned her twin-sister, so that she could inherit her share of
an estate and go to live in style at Brighton. I don't want to do Miss
Pett any injustice, but I say that there are grounds for suspecting
her--and they may be widened."
"Then it comes to this," said Bent. "There are two people under
suspicion: Harborough's suspected by the police--Miss Pett's suspected
by you. And it may be, and probably is, the truth that both are entirely
innocent. In that case, who's the guilty person?"
"Ah, who indeed?" assented Brereton, half carelessly. "That is a
question. But my duty is to prove that my client is not guilty. And as
you're going to attend to your business this afternoon, I'll do a little
attending to mine by thinking things over."
When Bent had gone away to the town, Brereton lighted a cigar, stretched
himself in an easy chair in front of a warm fire in his host's
smoking-room, and tried to think clearly. He had said to Bent all that
was in his mind about Harborough and about Miss Pett--but he had said
nothing, had been determined to say nothing, about a curious thought, an
unformed, vague suspicion which was there. It was that as yet formless
suspicion which occupied all his mental powers now--he put Harborough
and Miss Pett clean away from him.
And as he sat there, he asked himself first of all--why had this curious
doubt about two apparently highly-respectable men of this little,
out-of-the-world town come into his mind? He traced it back to its first
source--Cotherstone. Brereton was a close observer of men; it was his
natural instinct to observe, and he was always giving it a further
training and development. He had felt certain as he sat at supper with
him, the night before, that Cotherstone had something in his thoughts
which was not of his guests, his daughter, or himself. His whole
behaviour suggested pre-occupation, occasional absent-mindedness: once
or twice he obviously did not hear the remarks which were addressed to
him. He had certainly betrayed some curious sort of confusion when
Kitely's name was mentioned. And he had manifested great astonishment,
been much upset, when Garthwaite came in with the news of Kitely's
death.
Now here came in what Brereton felt to be the all-important, the
critical point of this, his first attempt to think things out. He was
not at all sure that Cotherstone's astonishment on hearing Garthwaite's
announcement was not feigned, was not a piece of pure acting. Why? He
smiled cynically as he answered his own question. The answer
was--_Because when Cotherstone, Garthwaite, Bent, and Brereton set out
from Cotherstone's house to look at the dead man's body, Cotherstone led
the way straight to it_.
How did Cotherstone know exactly where, in that half-mile of wooded
hill-side, the murder had been committed of which he had only heard five
minutes before? Yet, he led them all to within a few yards of the dead
man, until he suddenly checked himself, thrust the lantern into
Garthwaite's hands and said that of course he didn't know where the body
was! Now might not that really mean, when fully analyzed, that even if
Cotherstone did not kill Kitely himself during the full hour in which
he was absent from his house he knew that Kitely had been killed, and
where--and possibly by whom?
Anyway, here were certain facts--and they had to be reckoned with.
Kitely was murdered about a quarter-past nine o'clock. Cotherstone was
out of his house from ten minutes to nine o'clock until five minutes to
ten. He was clearly excited when he returned: he was more excited when
he went with the rest of them up the wood. Was it not probable that
under the stress of that excitement he forgot his presence of mind, and
mechanically went straight to the all-important spot?
So much for that. But there was something more. Mallalieu was
Cotherstone's partner. Mallalieu went to Northrop's house to play cards
at ten o'clock. It might be well to find out, quietly, what Mallalieu
was doing with himself up to ten o'clock. But the main thing was--what
was Cotherstone doing during that hour of absence? And--had Cotherstone
any reason--of his own, or shared with his partner--for wishing to get
rid of Kitely?
Brereton sat thinking all these things over until he had finished his
cigar; he then left Bent's house and strolled up into the woods of the
Shawl. He wanted to have a quiet look round the scene of the murder. He
had not been up there since the previous evening; it now occurred to him
that it would be well to see how the place looked by daylight. There was
no difficulty about finding the exact spot, even in those close coverts
of fir and pine; a thin line of inquisitive sightseers was threading its
way up the Shawl in front of him, each of its units agog to see the
place where a fellow-being had been done to death.
But no one could get at the precise scene of the murder. The police had
roped a portion of the coppice off from the rest, and two or three
constables in uniform were acting as guards over this enclosed space,
while a couple of men in plain clothes, whom Brereton by that time knew
to be detectives from Norcaster, were inside it, evidently searching the
ground with great care. Round and about the fenced-in portion stood
townsfolk, young and old, talking, speculating, keenly alive to the
goings-on, hoping that the searchers would find something just then, so
that they themselves could carry some sensational news back to the town
and their own comfortable tea-tables. Most of them had been in or
outside the Court House that morning and recognized Brereton and made
way for him as he advanced to the ropes. One of the detectives
recognized him, too, and invited him to step inside.
"Found anything?" asked Brereton, who was secretly wondering why the
police should be so foolish as to waste time in a search which was
almost certain to be non-productive.
"No, sir--we've been chiefly making out for certain where the actual
murder took place before the dead man was dragged behind that rock,"
answered the detective. "As far as we can reckon from the disturbance of
these pine needles, the murderer must have sprung on Kitely from behind
that clump of gorse--there where it's grown to such a height--and then
dragged him here, away from that bit of a path. No--we've found
nothing. But I suppose you've heard of the find at Harborough's
cottage?"
"No!" exclaimed Brereton, startled out of his habitual composure. "What
find?"
"Some of our people made a search there as soon as the police-court
proceedings were over," replied the detective. "It was the first chance
they'd had of doing anything systematically. They found the bank-notes
which Kitely got at the Bank yesterday evening, and a quantity of
letters and papers that we presume had been in that empty pocket-book.
They were all hidden in a hole in the thatch of Harborough's shed."
"Where are they?" asked Brereton.
"Down at the police-station--the superintendent has them," answered the
detective. "He'd show you them, sir, if you care to go down."
Brereton went off to the police-station at once and was shown into the
superintendent's office without delay. That official immediately drew
open a drawer of his desk and produced a packet folded in brown paper.
"I suppose this is what you want to see, Mr. Brereton," he said. "I
guess you've heard about the discovery? Shoved away in a rat-hole in the
thatch of Harborough's shed these were, sir--upon my honour, I don't
know what to make of it! You'd have thought that a man of Harborough's
sense and cleverness would never have put these things there, where they
were certain to be found."
"I don't believe Harborough did put them there," said Brereton. "But
what are they?"
The superintendent motioned his visitor to sit by him and then opened
the papers out on his desk.
"Not so much," he answered. "Three five-pound notes--I've proved that
they're those which poor Kitely got at the bank yesterday. A number of
letters--chiefly about old books, antiquarian matters, and so
forth--some scraps of newspaper cuttings, of the same nature. And this
bit of a memorandum book, that fits that empty pocket-book we found,
with pencil entries in it--naught of any importance. Look 'em over, if
you like, Mr. Brereton. I make nothing out of 'em."
Brereton made nothing out either, at first glance. The papers were just
what the superintendent described them to be, and he went rapidly
through them without finding anything particularly worthy of notice. But
to the little memorandum book he gave more attention, especially to the
recent entries. And one of these, made within the last three months,
struck him as soon as he looked at it, insignificant as it seemed to be.
It was only of one line, and the one line was only of a few initials, an
abbreviation or two, and a date: _M. & C. v. S. B. cir. 81_. And why
this apparently innocent entry struck Brereton was because he was still
thinking as an under-current to all this, of Mallalieu and
Cotherstone--and M. and C. were certainly the initials of those not too
common names.