In the Rough
The view from the third tee was one which even a golfer might pause to
admire. Let the Wordsworthian say what he will, railways ennoble our
landscape; they give to our unassuming valleys a hint of motive and
destination. More especially, a main line with four tracks pillowed on
a sweep of tall embankment, that cannot cross a meandering country
stream without a stilt-walk upon vast columns of enduring granite,
captivates, if not the eye, at least the imagination. Such was the
railway that stretched far into the distance, paralleling the course
of your drive on the right: such was the great viaduct, some hundred
feet ahead of you, that spanned laboriously, over four giant arches,
the little river Gudgeon, most insignificant of streams. Shallow and
narrow it ran, fringed by willow-herb and meadow-sweet, a
paddling-place for cows and for unoccupied caddies. Here and there it
threw out a patch of osiers—one in particular, that nestled at the
foot of the railway-arches, was especially dreaded by golfers. In
front, just visible above the railway where it receded northwards,
were the thatched and tiled roofs of Paston Whitchurch, the next
station down the line. To the right lay the old house, in its
melancholy grandeur, behind it the village and church of Paston
Oatvile. A superb avenue of elms connected the old house with the road
between the two villages. The sun had newly come out, showing grass
the greener and earth the browner for the late rain; elemental scents
of turf and furrow greeted its restoration.
It may be doubted whether Mordaunt Reeves was particularly sensitive
to such influences; if he was, it may have been this distraction which
made him slice his drive. The ball dwindled down the gradual slope
towards the river; cleared in a couple of bounds the tussocks of thick
grass that dotted the little valley, and buried itself at last in the
osier bed at the foot of the arches. Gordon and he—they were
partners—set out at once to retrieve it, distrusting the efforts of an
inefficient caddie, who was nearer the spot. It was only a closer view
that showed how well-chosen a lair was this for a golf-ball hard
pressed in the chase. The ground was all tussocks of rank grass, with
hidden runlets that made islands of them; stubborn little shoots of
willow arrested the searching club. They might have spent a full
half-hour in vain scrutiny, had not Reeves’s eye lighted suddenly on
something he never looked to find there, a darker patch among the
surrounding green, close to the foot of the first arch. It showed the
outlines of a man.
A dog sleeps on the alert, with the visible threat of waking at any
moment. A man’s sleep is like the sleep of the horse; it imitates
death. Reeves’s first idea was that this man who lay so still must be
a tramp who had strayed off the London high-road, and was taking his
siesta in the lee of the viaduct. Then a gleam of more than military
intelligence assured him that on such an afternoon of downpour a man
composing himself to sleep would have been under the arch, not by the
side of it. “Hello!” he shouted uneasily to Gordon, “looks as if there
was something wrong here.” Together they approached the prostrate
body; it lay face downwards, and there was no movement of life. The
thrill of distaste with which healthy nature shrinks from the sight of
dissolution seized both of them. Gordon had served three years in the
army, and had seen death; yet it was always death tricked out in the
sacrificial garb of khaki; there was something different about death
in a town-coat and striped grey trousers—it was a discord in the clear
weather. The sun seemed to lose a shade of its brightness. Together
they bent, and turned the body over, only to relinquish it again by a
common instinct. Not only did the lolling head tell them that here the
architecture of the human frame had been unknit; the face had
disappeared, battered unrecognizably by some terrible and prolonged
friction. They looked upwards, and knew at once that the sloping
buttress of the arch, all of rough granite, must have intercepted a
fatal fall, and added to its horror. Little about the head could be
distinguished except closely-cut grey hair.
“Poor devil,” said Gordon huskily. “Down from the line, I suppose.”
“I say,” said Reeves, “we mustn’t let the caddie see this. Send him
across to fetch the other two.” Marryatt and Carmichael were now close
behind them, and came up almost immediately.
“Is there somebody dead?” asked Marryatt. “I say, how awful.” He kept
on walking up and down as if thoroughly unnerved, repeating to
himself, “How awful.” Carmichael, for once, was dumb. It was a new
voice that summed up the situation, in the words, “’E’s got ’is
properly, ain’t ’e?” and they turned round to find the caddie
obviously enjoying a new sensation.
“Look here, we must move this somehow,” suggested Gordon. “What about
the tool-house under that arch?”
“I’m not quite sure I could lift it,” said Reeves.
“That’s all right, sir,” said the caddie, “I’ll whistle across to
Ginger; in the scouts ’e was; they teach ’em what to do with bodies
and that. ’Ere, Ginger!” and as his fellow-caddie approached, “Bloke
fell off of the railway-line and smashed hisself up something cruel.”
Ginger whistled: “Dead, is ’e?” “Not half ’e ain’t; shamming, that’s
what ’e is; go and ’ave a look at ’im.”
Ginger satisfied his curiosity on the point; and these two
cold-blooded young persons proceeded to hoist the body on to an
ingenious arrangement of sticks, and so carried it off, under Gordon’s
directions, to the tool-house.
As the spell of the uncanny presence was removed, Reeves’s horrified
embarrassment ebbed from him a little, and left him with the sense
that he ought to take command of the proceedings.
“Where’s Beazly likely to be?” he asked—Beazly was the doctor.
“He went out in the rain,” said Marryatt; “I should say he’d be about
the tenth or eleventh by now. Look here, I’ll nip across and get him,”
and in a moment he was running across the fairway.
“Seemed glad to get away,” said Reeves; “well, it’s too late for
visiting the sick, and too soon for burying the dead. Carmichael,
you’re looking a bit on edge, too; would you mind going across to
Paston Whitchurch station and ’phoning up the police? Binver, I
suppose, is the nearest place to get a bobby from. You will? Good.”
And as Carmichael too made off, “Look here, Gordon, what are we going
to do about it? I’ve got the feeling that there’s something wrong
here. What do you say to doing a bit of detective work on our own—or
are you feeling rotten?”
“Oh, I’m feeling all right,” said Gordon, “only what about the police?
Won’t they want to look through the man’s things first? It would be
awkward if we put ourselves on the wrong side of the law. Funny thing,
I’ve no idea whether there’s any law against searching a dead body;
yet, if there isn’t, how do the police ever get their clues?”
“Oh, rot, the police can’t be here for a good half-hour, and Beazly
won’t mind if he comes along. Let’s take a bit of a look round,
anyhow. He fell off the arch, and smashed up his face against the
buttress, that looks pretty clear. Now, did he fall off the line, or
off a train?”
“If you ask me, I should say he fell off the parapet. I’ve noticed,
sometimes, what a long way it really is from the door of one’s
carriage to the parapet—a man falling from a carriage would never
reach the edge.”
“Ah,” said Reeves, looking up, “but you’re imagining the train
stationary. He would be hurled forward some way by the impetus, if he
jumped off a moving train. And I should say he could have started
falling down that bank to the right, just before the parapet begins.
He’d roll forwards and sideways, if you see what I mean, till he got
to where the stonework begins, up there, and then, plop.”
“I dare say you’re right. Anyhow, we’d better be quick and look at the
body.”
As they went towards the tool-house, Reeves gave a sudden exclamation.
“By Jove, his hat! And it’s—let’s see—I should say fifteen yards to
the north of the body. Now why?”
“How do you mean?”
“There was no wind this afternoon. If his hat fell with him, it would
lie with him. If it lies a dozen yards away, that looks as if—as if it
was thrown after him. The considerate fellow-passenger hardly does
that, does he?”
“You mean there’s been dirty work?”
“I mean it looks as if there’d been dirty work. Now for the
tool-shed.”
To search a dead body is not an easy performance, unless you are in a
hurry and have got to do it. Gordon did most of the work, and Reeves
checked his results for him. The pockets contained a handkerchief,
marked with the name “Masterman,” a cigarette-case, of a common
pattern, containing a cigarette of a brand smoked by every second man
in the neighbourhood, a half-empty box of matches, a pipe and an empty
pouch, two florins, a letter and a business communication both
addressed to S. Brotherhood, Esq., and a watch and chain. They also
found, written on the back of the letter, a pencilled list of goods,
as if to remind a man of his shopping needs.
“It’s a queer thing,” said Reeves, “that watch; because he’s got one
on his wrist too. How many people, I wonder, carry a stomach-watch as
well as a wrist-watch? It’s stopped, I suppose?”
“Blessed if it isn’t going! An hour fast, apparently, but going. Good
advertisement for the makers, what?”
“But the wrist-watch?”
“That’s stopped.”
“When?”
“Six minutes to five.”
“What did I say about trains? The 4.50 from Paston Oatvile would be
just passing here at six minutes to five. How’s that for deduction?”
“Looks all right, anyhow. And, by Gad, here’s a third single from town
to Paston Whitchurch. Is to-day the sixteenth? Yes, then that’s quite
on the square. Now, stand by while I see if his clothes are marked.”
But neither coat nor shirt, neither collar nor trousers bore any mark
of ownership. The suit was from Messrs. Watkins in New Oxford Street,
the shirt and collar were of a brand which it would be mere
advertisement to mention. During all this time, Reeves was making a
transcript of the three documents, not without a certain sense of
intrusion upon a dead man’s confidence. As Gordon began to look into
one of the boots, Reeves gave a whisper of warning, and a policeman
(for they have motorcycles even in the police force) came into distant
view. Panic seized the forces of Baker Street, and (forgetting that
they had a perfect right to be in charge of the dead man’s body) they
resumed, very shamefacedly, their search for the lost ball. It seemed
incongruous somehow, to be worrying about a golf-ball—ought there to
be a local rule about what happened if you found a corpse on the
links? Certainly the game had been abandoned, and the caddies, to
their great regret, sent back with the clubs.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the policeman, eyeing them narrowly.
It was not that he suspected them or anybody of anything; he merely
sized them up by force of habit to see whether they were the kind of
people you touched your hat to or the kind of people you told to move
on. The scrutiny being favourable, he allowed them to slash about in
the undergrowth and watch, with ill-concealed curiosity, the official
proceedings of Scotland Yard.
Scotland Yard did very much what they had done, only with a splendidly
irrelevant thoroughness. Not only the destination, class, and date of
the ticket had to be registered in the notebook, but its price—there
even seemed to be a moment’s hesitation about the Company’s
regulations on the back. Nor did the names of the cigarette-importer
and the collar-maker go unrecorded; both watchmakers, the post-marks
on the correspondence, the date on the florins—nothing escaped this
man. Tired of waiting for the doctor and the inevitable ambulance,
Gordon and Reeves abandoned the truant ball, and made their way
thoughtfully to the dormy-house.
Wilson, the club gossip, met them at the entrance. “Heard about old
Brotherhood?” he asked, and went on, before they had time to gasp:
“He’s gone bankrupt; heard it to-day in the City.”
“Really?” said Reeves. “Come and have a drink.” But if he thought that
he too had the telling of a story, he was mistaken; the door opened on
a well-known voice:
“Yes, sliced his drive badly, did Reeves. A curious thing, that,—you
‘slice’ a ball in golf and you ‘cut’ a ball at cricket, and it’s the
same action in either case, and yet it’s nothing whatever to do with
the motion of cutting a cake. What was I saying? Oh yes. Right against
the viaduct—did you ever see the big viaduct they’ve got at Welwyn? A
finer one than ours, even—he found . . .”
Which made it evident that Mr. Carmichael was telling, in his own way,
the story of the day’s adventure.