THE ANONYMOUS LETTERS
THE first thing I had to settle was as regards the entrance to White
Towers of which Kitty Clevedon had spoken. We had to pick up Billy
Clevedon’s tracks after he left Midlington, and if he really had gone to
White Towers, it would probably be by that route. At all events there
was absolutely no evidence he had been seen at any of the usual
entrances. Kitty agreed to guide us, and told us to meet her the
following morning at the main gates to White Towers; and she advised us
also to put on some old clothes as we should have to creep part of the
way on hands and knees.
We were prompt to time and Kitty took us through the park to some very
rough ground at the rear of the house, though not far away from it, and
there she showed us a narrow cleft in a mass of rock and told us that was
the entrance. It was partly choked by a jumble of fallen boulders
overgrown with the rough vegetation of the moor, probably rank enough at
some periods of the year, but lying now for the most part dry and dead.
I looked for any sign of recent entrance, especially for footmarks; but
the ground was too hard and revealed nothing, though the rubbish at the
entrance seemed to have some appearance of being trampled. I took out my
flash lamp and pushed my way into the opening, followed by the others,
though it was a very tight fit for Thoyne.
A wall of rock confronted us at about four feet, but Kitty bade us turn
to the left and there I saw an opening low down which seemed to lead to a
passage that descended somewhere into a mass of pitch darkness. We had
to get on hands and knees and crawl along so for quite a long distance
through a low, narrow tunnel that appeared to be for the most part
natural, though here and there, it had evidently been widened at least,
if not entirely pierced by human agency.
Presently, after going steadily downwards for many yards, it went forward
on the level, and was there a little higher and wider; but at no point
did it enable us to stand erect. It was a case of creeping all the way.
I understood now why Kitty had advised the oldest possible clothing. It
meant ruin to the knees of one’s trousers. And then the tunnel ended
abruptly against a wall of solid rock; but Kitty cried out that there was
an iron ring close to my right hand, and that I must take hold of it and
pull hard.
I obeyed; there was a grinding and groaning as of rusty machinery and
then the rock in front swung back and we found ourselves in an open
chamber with walls and floor of natural rock, but a roof of worked stone
formed of square flags, all save one supported by pillars of rusty iron.
There were nine stone flags, each six feet by four, and eight pillars,
and the dimensions of the cellar or cave were thus eighteen feet by
twelve. The height would probably be about eight feet. We could at
least stand upright. I took my flash lamp and carefully examined every
corner, not, as it turned out, quite unremuneratively. I dropped my hat
and then stooped to pick it up again—and with it something I had noticed
lying there.
My find was a hairpin still fresh and bright and with no sign of rust
about it.
If Kitty Clevedon had passed that way I should have supposed that she had
dropped it. Ladies shed things of that sort as they go. But she had
assured us that she had not been near the spot; in which case a knowledge
of the existence of the passage, supposed to be confined to Kitty and her
brother, was shared by someone else, and that a woman.
“Which is the way out?” I asked, saying nothing of the hairpin which, at
a favourable opportunity, I thrust into my waistcoat pocket.
Kitty pointed to the one unsupported flagstone and told us that it worked
on a swivel and could be pushed up if one could reach it, whereupon
Thoyne swarmed up the nearest pillar and tried to move the stone but
failed, though whether because the axle was rusty or because there was
some fastening on the other side we could not say. Thoyne selected
another pillar and once more gave the stone a push, but with no more
success than before. From his position, clinging monkey-like to the
pillar, he could exert very little leverage. He slid down again and
suggested that I should mount his shoulders so as to be right under the
stone, a manœuvre which was promptly attempted with satisfactory results.
The stone moved, though slowly and stubbornly and with much creaking and,
swinging myself up through the opening thus disclosed, I found myself in
a cellar full of a miscellaneous collection of rubbish, baskets, boxes,
barrels, chairs, broken furniture of all sorts, books and papers and so
on. I fixed the stone in position, because left to itself it would
simply have swung back again into its place, and then I passed down to
the others a short ladder which I found lying against one of the walls of
the cellar.
When the others had joined me, Kitty explained that we were under the
older portion of White Towers, the East Wing, which was partly in ruins
and uninhabited.
I was easily able to explain the tunnel—I had seen something of the sort
in other old houses. It was simply a way of escape for those inside if
enemies became too pressing. Peakshire had played a strenuous part in
the Civil War, most of the big men being on the side of the King and
White Towers, the older part of which dated back beyond Elizabeth, had
probably been a Royalist stronghold and meeting place. If enemies, in
the shape of Cromwell’s men, came along, the Cavaliers would only have to
creep through the tunnel in order to escape the Roundheads. Or it may
have been constructed in even earlier days for the benefit of Roman
Catholic refugees.
That, however, was mere speculation, though not without interest. For
many years evidently it had been unused and forgotten until it was
rediscovered by the two children who had kept it a delightful secret to
themselves and had, no doubt, brought it into many exciting games. The
question for us, however, was—had Clevedon used it recently, and if so,
for what purpose? It was certainly interesting and possibly significant
that somebody evidently had been that way not so very long before. But
Clevedon at all events did not use hairpins.
“There seems to be no evidence that your brother ever came this way,” I
said, as we stood looking round us. “True, the vegetation at the
entrance to that passage bore some appearance of having been trampled
down, though that may have been the weather or—”
“I did that,” Thoyne broke in quickly. “Kitty told me about this before
I saw you and I went to look for myself.”
I glanced at him casually. It was quite likely he spoke the truth.
“Did you get as far as this?” I asked.
“Oh, no, I didn’t get beyond the entrance.”
“And you think you trampled that brushwood?”
“I—it is possible I may have done.”
“You did not notice its condition before—?”
“No, I didn’t, I wasn’t looking for that. I see you still distrust me,”
he added quickly, “but I am perfectly honest about it. I am sorry I
came.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” I returned carelessly. “If you hadn’t been
there, the signs might have proved that Clevedon hadn’t either, whereas
now it is an open question. But the fact that somebody may have been
there is of minor importance unless there is accompanying evidence that
the somebody was Clevedon himself. Of course, there is the fact that he
alone knew of the entrance—he and one other. I suppose you haven’t been
here lately?”
I turned suddenly on Kitty Clevedon and rapped out the question with the
abruptness of a pistol shot. She started a little, then shook her head.
“Not since I was a child,” she replied.
“Can we get out of this without returning by that passage?” I asked.
“Yes, through that door is a flight of stone steps leading to what used
to be the kitchen of the old White Abbey.”
“We’ll go that way,” I decided.
When I had parted from my two companions, with a promise to see them
again later in the day, or, possibly on the following morning, I went
into the post office and from my waistcoat pocket produced a hairpin.
“Have you any of that sort in stock?” I asked, then, noting her look of
surprise, I added, “I hope you won’t give me away if I tell you that I
use them to clean my pipe. They are the best things I know for that.”
“Well, I didn’t suppose you wanted them for your hair,” she said pertly.
“Yes, we have plenty of that sort in stock. Indeed, I don’t think we
have any others.”
“Then I suppose every lady in the Dale uses them,” I remarked jestingly.
“Most of them,” she agreed. “I do—see, here is one”—and she extracted a
specimen from her own abundant head-covering. “A few may get some others
when they go into Midlington, but most come here for them. Lady Clevedon
had three boxes only a week ago.”
“Lady Clevedon,” I echoed, “then they must be an aristocratic brand.
Does her ladyship do her own shopping?”
“Oh, they are good enough. No, Lady Clevedon didn’t come for them—Miss
Kitty fetched them. She said they were for Lady Clevedon, but she took
some for herself too, so I suppose she wears them.”
Evidently the hairpin was not going to be of much use to me, at all
events as a means of identification. There would be too many of them
about the Dale for that.
When I reached Stone Hollow again I found Detective Pepster awaiting me,
looking, for him, a little disconsolate.
“Well,” was my greeting, “how has Fate treated you?”
“No luck, none at all,” Pepster said gloomily. “I am just back from
Dublin with no news. Clevedon went to Dublin on February 20th, but there
all trace of him ended. I could learn nothing.”
“I have been more fortunate than you,” I returned smilingly. “I can
carry him a bit farther than that. He was in Midlington on February 22nd
and left there on the morning of the 23rd.”
“Do you _know_ that?”
“Yes, for certain.”
“Did he go to Cartordale—to White Towers?”
“I can’t say for that.”
“And where is he now?”
“Nobody knows.”
“And his sister—?”
“Is as ignorant as you or I.”
“She is bluffing?”
“No.”
“She really doesn’t know where he is?”
“She really doesn’t.”
“But—anyway we must find him.”
“I am busy at it now.”
“Any traces?”
“None.”
“It is a weird development. Did he do it? Is he keeping out of the way
because—?”
“It is impossible to say. We know that he came to Midlington, but that
he came to Cartordale or ever had any prussic acid in his possession—”
“Yes, you’re right. We must bring him a little nearer than Midlington.
But if he didn’t do it, or, for the matter of that, if he did, he is a
fool for keeping out of the way.”
Which at least was a self-evident proposition.
“And now that we have disposed of Billy Clevedon for the time being,”
Pepster went on, “tell me what you think of this.”
With great deliberation he took a letter-case from his pocket and from it
extracted a sheet of paper which he handed over to me. It was lined
paper, torn evidently from a notebook, and on it was printed in capitals:
YOU ARE ON THE WRONG
TRAIL ALTOGETHER. IF
YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO
KILLED CLEVEDON KEEP
YOUR EYE ON THOYNE.
“That is No. 1,” Pepster said. “Here is No. 2.”
He handed me a second document, but this time it was a plain white paper
on which the ink had run rather badly, though the letters were quite
legible. It was, too, much shorter, simply reading:
THOYNE MURDERED CLEVEDON.
“Anonymous letters by some crank, who thinks he has made a discovery,” I
remarked.
“Yes,” Pepster agreed, “but here is No. 3.”
The third communication was written in red ink on a buff-coloured slip of
paper, such as Government offices use, and read:
YOU ARE MISSING YOUR
LIFE’S CHANCE. ARREST
THOYNE AND I WILL PRODUCE
THE EVIDENCE.
TRUST ME.
“Were they addressed to you personally?”
“Yes, and to my private address.”
“Apparently somebody who knows you.”
“Looks like it.”
“Come by post?”
“Yes.”
“Postmark?”
“Two Cartordale, the third Midlington. Now, is the writer merely a
crank, or has he something up his sleeve?”
“If you do nothing he’ll probably write again and may be more explicit.”
“Well, of course, Thoyne is very deep in this thing, but there is nothing
definite connecting him with the murder—is there?”
But I merely shook my head vaguely at that. In this curious case one
never knew what a day might bring forth. The changes and developments
were as rapid as a cinema show.