THE MEDICAL OPINION
The recollection of that stick plunged Mallalieu into another of his
ague-like fits of shaking and trembling. There was little sleep for him
after that: he spent most of the night in thinking, anticipating, and
scheming. That stick would almost certainly be found, and it would be
found near Stoner's body. A casual passer-by would not recognize it, a
moorland shepherd would not recognize it. But the Highmarket police, to
whom it would be handed, would know it at once to be the Mayor's: it was
one which Mallalieu carried almost every day--a plain, very stout oak
staff. And the police would want to know how it came to be in that
quarry. Curse it!--was ever anything so unfortunate!--however could he
have so far lost his head as to forget it? He was half tempted to rise
in the middle of the night and set out for the moors, to find it. But
the night was dark, and solitary as the moors and the quarry where he
dared not risk the taking of a lantern. And so he racked his brains in
the effort to think of some means of explaining the presence of the
stick. He hit on a notion at last--remembering suddenly that Stoner had
carried neither stick nor umbrella. If the stick were found he would
say that he had left it at the office on the Saturday, and that the
clerk must have borrowed it. There was nothing unlikely in that: it was
a good reason, it would explain why it came to be found near the body.
Naturally, the police would believe the word of the Mayor: it would be a
queer thing if they didn't, in Mallalieu's opinion. And therewith he
tried to go to sleep, and made a miserable failure of it.
As he lay tossing and groaning in his comfortable bed that night,
Mallalieu thought over many things. How had Stoner acquired his
information? Did anybody else know what Stoner knew? After much
reflection he decided that nobody but Stoner did know. Further reckoning
up of matters gave him a theory as to how Stoner had got to know. He saw
it all--according to his own idea. Stoner had overheard the conversation
between old Kitely and Cotherstone in the private office, of course!
That was it--he wondered he had never thought of it before. Between the
partners' private room and the outer office in which Stoner sat, there
was a little window in the wall; it had been specially made so that
papers could be passed from one room to the other. And, of course, on
that afternoon it had probably been a little way open, as it often was,
and Stoner had heard what passed between Cotherstone and his tenant.
Being a deep chap, Stoner had kept the secret to himself until the
reward was offered. Of course, his idea was blackmail--Mallalieu had no
doubt about that. No--all things considered, he did not believe that
Stoner had shared his knowledge--Stoner would be too well convinced of
its value to share it with anybody. That conclusion comforted
Mallalieu--once more he tried to sleep.
But his sleep was a poor thing that night, and he felt tired and worn
when, as usual, he went early to the yard. He was there before
Cotherstone; when Cotherstone came, no more than a curt nod was
exchanged between them. They had never spoken to each other except on
business since the angry scene of a few days before, and now Mallalieu,
after a glance at some letters which had come in the previous evening,
went off down the yard. He stayed there an hour: when he re-entered the
office he looked with an affectation of surprise at the clerk's empty
desk.
"Stoner not come?" he demanded curtly.
Cotherstone, who was turning over the leaves of an account book, replied
just as curtly.
"Not yet!"
Mallalieu fidgeted about for a while, arranging some papers he had
brought in from the yard. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation of
impatience, and going to the door, called to a lad who was passing.
"Here, you!" he said. "You know where Mr. Stoner lodges?--Mrs.
Battley's. Run round there, and see why he hasn't come to his work. It's
an hour and a half past his time. Happen he's poorly--run now, sharp!"
He went off down the yard again when he had despatched this message; he
came back to the office ten minutes later, just as the messenger
returned.
"Well?" he demanded, with a side-glance to assure himself that
Cotherstone was at hand. "Where is he, like?"
"Please, sir, Mrs. Battley, she says as how Mr. Stoner went away on
Saturday afternoon, sir," answered the lad, "and he hasn't been home
since. She thinks he went to Darlington, sir, on a visit."
Mallalieu turned into the office, growling.
"Must ha' missed his train," he muttered as he put more papers on
Stoner's desk. "Here--happen you'll attend to these things--they want
booking up."
Cotherstone made no reply, and Mallalieu presently left him and went
home to get his breakfast. And as he walked up the road to his house he
wondered why Stoner had gone to Darlington. Was it possible that he had
communicated what he knew to any of his friends? If so----
"Confound the suspense and the uncertainty!" growled Mallalieu. "It 'ud
wear the life out of a man. I've a good mind to throw the whole thing up
and clear out! I could do it easy enough wi' my means. A clear
track--and no more o' this infernal anxiety."
He reflected, as he made a poor show of eating his breakfast, on the
ease with which he could get away from Highmarket and from England.
Being a particularly astute man of business, Mallalieu had taken good
care that all his eggs were not in one basket. He had many baskets--his
Highmarket basket was by no means the principal one. Indeed all that
Mallalieu possessed in Highmarket was his share of the business and his
private house. As he had made his money he had invested it in easily
convertible, gilt-edged securities, which would be realized at an hour's
notice in London or New York, Paris or Vienna. It would be the easiest
thing in the world for him, as Mayor of Highmarket, to leave the town on
Corporation business, and within a few hours to be where nobody could
find him; within a few more, to be out of the country. Lately, he had
often thought of going right away, to enjoy himself for the rest of his
life. He had made one complete disappearance already; why not make
another? Before he went townwards again that morning, he was beginning
to give serious attention to the idea.
Meanwhile, however, there was the business of the day to attend to, and
Stoner's absence threw additional work on the two partners. Then at
twelve o'clock, Mallalieu had to go over to the Town Hall to preside at
a meeting of the General Purposes Committee. That was just over, and he
was thinking of going home to his lunch when the superintendent of
police came into the committee-room and drew him aside.
"I've bad news for you, Mr. Mayor," he announced in a whisper. "Your
clerk--he hasn't been at work this morning, I suppose?"
"Well?" demanded Mallalieu, nerving himself for what he felt to be
coming. "What about it?"
"He's met with a bad accident," replied the superintendent. "In fact,
sir, he's dead! A couple of men found his body an hour or so ago in
Hobwick Quarry, up on the moor, and it's been brought down to the
mortuary. You'd better come round, Mr. Mayor--Mr. Cotherstone's there,
now."
Mallalieu followed without a word. But once outside the Town Hall he
turned to his companion.
"Have you made aught out of it?" he asked. "He's been away, so his
landlady says, since Saturday afternoon: I sent round to inquire for him
when he didn't turn up this morning. What do you know, like?"
"It looks as if it had been an accident," answered the superintendent.
"These men that found him noticed some broken railings at top of the
quarry. They looked down and saw a body. So they made their way down and
found--Stoner. It would seem as if he'd leaned or sat on the railings
and they'd given way beneath him, and of course he'd pitched headlong
into the quarry. It's fifty feet deep, Mr. Mayor! That's all one can
think of. But Dr. Rockcliffe's with him now."
Mallalieu made a mighty effort to appear calm, as, with a grave and
concerned face, he followed his guide into the place where the doctor,
an official or two, and Cotherstone were grouped about the dead man. He
gave one glance at his partner and Cotherstone gave one swift look at
him--and there was something in Cotherstone's look which communicated a
sudden sense of uneasy fear to Mallalieu: it was a look of curious
intelligence, almost a sort of signal. And Mallalieu experienced a vague
feeling of dread as he turned to the doctor.
"A bad job--a bad job!" he muttered, shaking his head and glancing
sideways at the body. "D'ye make aught out of it, doctor? Can you say
how it came about?"
Dr. Rockcliffe pursed up his lips and his face became inscrutable. He
kept silence for a moment--when he spoke his voice was unusually stern.
"The lad's neck is broken, and his spine's fractured," he said in a low
voice. "Either of those injuries was enough to cause death. But--look at
that!"
He pointed to a contusion which showed itself with unmistakable
plainness on the dead man's left temple, and again he screwed up his
lips as if in disgust at some deed present only to the imagination.
"That's a blow!" he said, more sternly than before. "A blow from some
blunt instrument! It was a savage blow, too, dealt with tremendous
force. It may--may, I say--have killed this poor fellow on the spot--he
may have been dead before ever he fell down that quarry."
It was only by an enormous effort of will that Mallalieu prevented
himself from yielding to one of his shaking fits.
"But--but mightn't he ha' got that with striking his head against them
rocks as he fell?" he suggested. "It's a rocky place, that, and the
rocks project, like, so----"
"No!" said the doctor, doggedly. "That's no injury from any rock or
stone or projection. It's the result of a particularly fierce blow dealt
with great force by some blunt instrument--a life preserver, a club, a
heavy stick. It's no use arguing it. That's a certainty!"
Cotherstone, who had kept quietly in the background, ventured a
suggestion.
"Any signs of his having been robbed?" he asked.
"No, sir," replied the superintendent promptly. "I've everything that
was on him. Not much, either. Watch and chain, half a sovereign, some
loose silver and copper, his pipe and tobacco, a pocket-book with a
letter or two and such-like in it--that's all. There'd been no robbery."
"I suppose you took a look round?" asked Cotherstone. "See anything that
suggested a struggle? Or footprints? Or aught of that sort?"
The superintendent shook his head.
"Naught!" he answered. "I looked carefully at the ground round those
broken railings. But it's the sort of ground that wouldn't show
footprints, you know--covered with that short, wiry mountain grass that
shows nothing."
"And nothing was found?" asked Mallalieu. "No weapons, eh?"
For the life of him he could not resist asking that--his anxiety about
the stick was overmastering him. And when the superintendent and the two
policemen who had been with him up to Hobwick Quarry had answered that
they had found nothing at all, he had hard work to repress a sigh of
relief. He presently went away hoping that the oak stick had fallen into
a crevice of the rocks or amongst the brambles which grew out of them;
there was a lot of tangle-wood about that spot, and it was quite
possible that the stick, kicked violently away, had fallen where it
would never be discovered. And--there was yet a chance for him to make
that possible discovery impossible. Now that the body had been found, he
himself could visit the spot with safety, on the pretext of curiosity.
He could look round; if he found the stick he could drop it into a safe
fissure of the rocks, or make away with it. It was a good notion--and
instead of going home to lunch Mallalieu turned into a private room of
the Highmarket Arms, ate a sandwich and drank a glass of ale, and
hurried off, alone, to the moors.
The news of this second mysterious death flew round Highmarket and the
neighbourhood like wild-fire. Brereton heard of it during the afternoon,
and having some business in the town in connexion with Harborough's
defence, he looked in at the police-station and found the superintendent
in an unusually grave and glum mood.
"This sort of thing's getting beyond me, Mr. Brereton," he said in a
whisper. "Whether it is that I'm not used to such things--thank God!
we've had little experience of violence in this place in my time!--or
what it is, but I've got it into my head that this poor young fellow's
death's connected in some way with Kitely's affair! I have indeed,
sir!--it's been bothering me all the afternoon. For all the
doctors--there's been several of 'em in during the last two hours--are
absolutely agreed that Stoner was felled, sir--felled by a savage blow,
and they say he may ha' been dead before ever he fell over that quarry
edge. Mr. Brereton--I misdoubt it's another murder!"
"Have you anything to go on?" asked Brereton. "Had anybody any motive?
Was there any love affair--jealousy, you know--anything of that sort?"
"No, I'm sure there wasn't," replied the superintendent. "The whole town
and county's ringing with the news, and I should ha' heard something by
now. And it wasn't robbery--not that he'd much on him, poor fellow!
There's all he had," he went on, opening a drawer. "You can look at 'em,
if you like."
He left the room just then, and Brereton, disregarding the cheap watch
and chain and the pigskin purse with its light load, opened Stoner's
pocket-book. There was not much in that, either--a letter or two, some
receipted bills, a couple of much creased copies of the reward bill,
some cuttings from newspapers. He turned from these to the pocket-book
itself, and on the last written page he found an entry which made him
start. For there again were the initials!
"--_M. & C._--_fraud_--_bldg. soc._--_Wilchester
Assizes_--_81_--_£2000_--money never recovered--2 yrs.--K. _pres._"
Not much--but Brereton hastily copied that entry. And he had just
written the last word when the superintendent came back into the room
with a man who was in railway uniform.
"Come in here," the superintendent was saying. "You can tell me what it
is before this gentleman. Some news from High Gill junction, Mr.
Brereton," he went on, "something about Stoner. Well, my lad, what is
it?"
"The station-master sent me over on his bicycle," replied the visitor.
"We heard over there this afternoon about Stoner's body being found, and
that you were thinking he must have fallen over into the quarry in the
darkness. And we know over yonder that that's not likely."
"Aye?" said the superintendent. "Well, as a matter of fact, my lad, we
weren't thinking that, but no doubt that rumour's got out. Now why do
you railway folks know it isn't likely?"
"That's what I've come to tell," answered the man, a sharp,
intelligent-looking fellow. "I'm ticket-collector over there, as you
know, sir. Now, young Stoner came to the junction on Saturday afternoon
and booked for Darlington, and of course went to Darlington. He came
back yesterday afternoon--Sunday--by the train that gets to our junction
at 3.3. I took his ticket. Instead of going out of the station by the
ordinary way, he got over the fence on the down line side, saying to me
that he'd take a straight cut across the moor to Highmarket. I saw him
going Highmarket way for some distance. And he'd be at Hobwick Quarry by
4.30 at the latest--long before darkness."
"Just about sunset, as a matter of fact," remarked the superintendent.
"The sun sets about 4.18."
"So he couldn't have fallen over in the darkness," continued the
ticket-collector. "If all had gone well with him, he'd have been down in
Highmarket here by dusk."
"I'm obliged to you," said the superintendent. "It's worth knowing, of
course. Came from Darlington, eh? Was he alone?"
"Quite alone, sir."
"You didn't see anybody else going that way across the moors, did you?
Didn't notice anybody following him?"
"No," replied the ticket-collector with decision. "Me and one of my
mates watched him a long way, and I'll swear there was no one near him
till he was out of sight. We didn't watch him on purpose, neither. When
the down-train had gone, me and my mate sat down to smoke our pipes, and
from where we were we could see right across the moors in this
direction. We saw Stoner--now and then, you understand--right away to
Chat Bank."
"You didn't notice any suspicious characters come to your station that
afternoon or evening?" asked the superintendent.
The ticket-collector replied that nothing of that sort had been seen,
and he presently went away. And Brereton, after an unimportant word or
two, went away too, certain by that time that the death of Stoner had
some sinister connexion with the murder of Kitely.