There was a car coming from the direction of Beaconsfield. The
horseman, sitting motionless in the centre of the snowy road, watched
the lights grow brighter and brighter. Presently, in the glare of the
headlamps, the driver of the car saw a mounted policeman in the centre
of the road, saw the lift of his gloved hand, and stopped the machine.
It was not difficult to stop, for the wheels were racing on the
surface of the road, which had frozen into the worst qualities of
glass. And snow was falling on top of this.
“Anything wrong----”
The driver began to shout the question, and then he saw the huddled
figure on the ground. It lay limply like a fallen sack; seemed at
first glimpse to have nothing of human shape or substance.
The driver jumped out and went ploughing through the frozen snow.
“I just spotted him when I saw you,” said the policeman. “Do you mind
turning your car just a little to the right--I want the lamps full on
him.”
He swung himself to the ground and went, heavy-footed, to where the
man lay.
The second inmate of the car got to the wheel and turned the machine
with some difficulty so that the light blazed on the dreadful thing.
The policeman’s horse strayed to the side of the car and thrust in his
nodding head--he alone was unconcerned.
Taking his bridle with a shaking hand, the second man stepped out of
the car and joined the other two.
“It is old Wentford,” said the policeman.
“Wentford… good God!”
The first of the two motorists fell on his knees by the side of the
body and peered down into the grinning face.
Old Benny Wentford!
“Good God!” he said again.
He was a middle-aged lawyer, unused to such a horror. Nothing more
terrible had disturbed the smooth flow of his life than an occasional
quarrel with the secretary of his golf club. Now here was death,
violent and hideous--a dead man on a snowy road… a man who had
telephoned to him two hours before, begging him to leave a party and
come to him, though the snow had begun to fall all over again.
“You know Mr. Wentford--he has told me about you.”
“Yes, I know him. I’ve often called at his house--in fact, I called
there to-night but it was shut up. He made arrangements with the Chief
Constable that I should call… h’m!”
The policeman stood over the body, his hands on his hips.
“You stay here--I’ll go and ’phone the station,” he said.
He hoisted himself into the saddle.
“Er… don’t you think we’d better go?” Mr. Enward, the lawyer, asked
nervously. He had no desire to be left alone in the night with a
battered corpse and a clerk whose trembling was almost audible.
“You couldn’t turn your car,” said the policeman--which was true, for
the lane was very narrow.
They heard the jingle and thud of his horse’s canter and presently
they heard it no more.
“Is he dead, Mr. Enward?” The young man’s voice was hollow.
“Yes… I think so… the policeman said so.”
“Oughtn’t we to make sure? He may only be… injured?”
Mr. Enward had seen the face now in the shadow of an uplifted
shoulder. He did not wish to see it again.
“Better leave him alone till a doctor comes… it is no use interfering
in these things. Wentford… good God!”
“He’s always been a little bit eccentric, hasn’t he?” The clerk was
young, and, curiosity being the tonic of youth, he had recovered some
of his courage. “Living alone in that tiny cottage with all his money.
I was bicycling past it on Sunday--a concrete box: that is what my
young lady called it. With all his money----”
“He is dead, Henry,” said Mr. Enward severely, “and a dead person has
no property. I don’t think it quite--um--seemly to talk of him
in--um--his presence.”
He felt the occasion called for an emotional display of some kind. He
had never grown emotional over clients; least of all could this tetchy
old man inspire such. A few words of prayer perhaps would not be out
of place. But Mr. Enward was a churchwarden of a highly respectable
church and for forty years had had his praying done for him. If he had
been a dissenter… but he was not. He wished he had a prayer-book.
“He’s a long time gone.”
The policeman could not have been more than two hundred yards away,
but it seemed a very long time since he had left.
“Has he any heirs?” asked the clerk professionally.
Mr. Enward did not answer. Instead, he suggested that the lights of
the car should be dimmed. They revealed this Thing too plainly. Henry
went back and dimmed the lights. It became terribly dark when the
lights were lowered, and eyesight played curious tricks: it seemed
that the bundle moved. Mr. Enward had a feeling that the grinning face
was lifting to leer slyly at him over the humped shoulder.
“Put on the lights again, Henry,” the lawyer’s voice quavered. “I
can’t see what I am doing.”
He was doing nothing; on the other hand, he had a creepy feeling that
the Thing was behaving oddly. Yet it lay very still, just as it had
lain all the time.
“He must have been murdered. I wonder where they went to?” asked Henry
hollowly, and a cold shiver vibrated down Mr. Enward’s spine.
Murdered! Of course he was murdered. There was blood on the snow, and
the murderers were.…
He glanced backward nervously and almost screamed. A man stood in the
shadowy space behind the car: the light of the lamps reflected by the
snow just revealed him.
“Who… who are you, please?” croaked the lawyer.
He added “please” because there was no sense in being rough with a man
who might be a murderer.
The figure moved into the light. He was slightly bent and even more
middle-aged than Mr. Enward. He wore a flat-topped felt hat, a long
ulster and large, shapeless gloves. About his neck was an enormous
yellow scarf, and Mr. Enward noticed, in a numb, mechanical way, that
his shoes were large and square-toed and that he carried a tightly
furled umbrella on his arm though the snow was falling heavily.
“I’m afraid my car has broken down a mile up the road.”
His voice was gentle and apologetic; obviously he had not seen the
bundle. In his agitation Mr. Enward had stepped into the light of the
lamps and his black shadow sprawled across the deeper shadow.
“Am I wrong in thinking that you are in the same predicament?” asked
the newcomer. “I was unprepared for the--er--condition of the road. It
is lamentable that one should have overlooked this possibility.”
“Did you pass the policeman?” asked Mr. Enward.
Whoever this stranger was, whatever might be his character and
disposition, it was right and fair that he should know there _was_ a
policeman in the vicinity.
“Policeman?” The square-hatted man was surprised. “No, I passed no
policeman. At my rate of progress it was very difficult to pass
anything----”
“Going towards you… on horseback… a mounted policeman,” said Mr.
Enward rapidly. “He said that he would be back soon. My name is
Enward--solicitor--Enward, Caterham and Enward.”
He felt it was a moment for confidence.
“Delighted!” murmured the other. “We’ve met before. My name--er--is
Reeder--R, double E, D, E, R.”
Mr. Enward took a step forward.
“Not the detective? I thought I’d seen you… look!”
He stepped out of the light and the heap on the ground emerged from
shadow. The lawyer made a dramatic gesture. Mr. Reeder came forward
slowly.
He stooped over the dead man, took an electric torch from his pocket
and shone it steadily on the face. For a long time he looked and
studied. His melancholy face showed no evidence that he was sickened
or pained.
“H’m!” he said, and got up, dusting the snow from his knee. He fumbled
in the recesses of his overcoat, produced a pair of eyeglasses, set
them crudely on his nose and surveyed the lawyer over their top.
“Very--um--extraordinary. I was on my way to see him.”
Enward stared.
“_You_ were on your way? So was I! Did you know him?”
Mr. Reeder considered this question.
“I--er--didn’t--er--know him. No, I had never met him.”
The lawyer felt that his own presence needed some explanation.
“This is my clerk, Mr. Henry Green.”
Mr. Reeder bowed slightly.
“What happened was this.…”
He gave a very detailed and graphic description, which began with the
recounting of what he had said when the telephone call came through to
him at Beaconsfield, and how he was dressed, and what his wife had
said when she went to find his boots (her first husband had died
through an ill-judged excursion into the night air on as foolish a
journey), and how much trouble he had had in starting the car, and how
long he had had to wait for Henry.
Mr. Reeder gave the impression that he was not listening. Once he
walked out of the blinding light and peered back the way the policeman
had gone; once he went over to the body and looked at it again; but
most of the time he was wandering down the lane, searching the ground
with his hand-lamp, with Mr. Enward following at his heels lest any of
the narrative be lost.
“Is he dead… I suppose so?” suggested the lawyer.
“I--er--have never seen anybody--er--deader,” said Mr. Reeder gently.
“I should say, with all reverence and respect, that he
was--er--extraordinarily dead.”
He looked at his watch.
“At nine-fifteen you met the policeman? He had just discovered the
body? It is now nine thirty-five. How did you know that it was
nine-fifteen?”
“I heard the church clock at Woburn Green strike the quarter.”
Mr. Enward conveyed the impression that the clock struck exclusively
for him. Henry halved the glory: he also had heard the clock.
“At Woburn Green--you heard the clock? H’m… nine-fifteen!”
The snow was falling thickly now. It fell on the heap, and lay in the
little folds and creases of his clothes.
“He must have lived somewhere about here?”
Mr. Reeder asked the question with great deference.
“My directions were that his house lay off the main road… you would
hardly call this a main road… fifty yards beyond a notice-board
advertising land for sale--desirable building land.”
Mr. Enward pointed to the darkness.
“Just there--the notice-board. Curiously enough, I am
the--er--solicitor for the vendor.”
His natural inclination was to emphasize the desirability of the land,
but he thought it was hardly the moment. He returned to the question
of Mr. Wentford’s house.
“I’ve only been inside the place once--two years ago, wasn’t it,
Henry?”
“A year and nine months,” said Henry exactly.
His feet were cold, his spine chilled. He felt sick.
“You cannot see it from the lane,” Mr. Enward continued. “Rather a
small, one-storey cottage. He had it specially built for him
apparently. It is not exactly… a palace.”
“Dear me!” said Mr. Reeder, as though this were the most striking news
he had heard that evening. “In a house he built himself! I suppose he
has, or had, a telephone?”
“He telephoned to _me_,” said Mr. Enward; “therefore he must have a
telephone.”
Mr. Reeder frowned as though he were trying to pick holes in the logic
of this statement.
“I will go along and see if it is possible to get through to the
police,” he suggested.
“The police have already been notified,” said the lawyer hastily. “I
think we all ought to stay here together till somebody arrives.”
The man in the square hat, now absurdly covered with snow, shook his
head. He pointed.
“Woburn Green is there. Why not go and arouse the--um--local
constabulary?”
That idea had not occurred to the lawyer. His instinct urged him to
return the way he had come and regain touch with realities in his own
prosaic parlour.
“But do you think…” he blinked down at the body. “I mean, it’s hardly
an act of humanity to leave him----”
“He feels nothing. He is probably in heaven,” said Mr. Reeder, and
added: “Probably. Anyway, the police will know exactly where they can
find him.”
There was a sudden screech from Henry. He was holding out his hand in
the light of the lamp.
“Look--blood!” he screamed.
There was blood on his hand certainly.
“Blood--I didn’t touch him! You know that, Mr. Enward--I ain’t been
anear him!”
Alas for our excellent system of secondary education! Henry was
reverting to the illiterate stock whence he sprang.
“Not near him I ain’t been--blood!”
“Don’t squeak, please.” Mr. Reeder was firm. “What _have_ you
touched?”
“Nothing--I only touched myself.”
“Then you have touched nothing,” said Mr. Reeder with unusual acidity.
“Let me look.”
The rays of his lamp travelled over the shivering clerk.
“It is on your sleeve--h’m!”
Mr. Enward stared. There was a red, moist patch of something on
Henry’s sleeve.
“You had better go on to the police station,” said Mr. Reeder. “I will
come and see you in the morning.”