The Black Abbot
“Where did this come from?” he asked.
It was a light ladder, and Dick recognized it as one of two that were
part of the library furniture, and was employed to reach books from
the top shelf of the lower tier.
“When I saw this last it was standing at the end of the room,” he
said.
He flashed his lamp up on to the shelves, looking for a gap in the
long line of books. So doing, his lamp swept across that space
intervening between the shelves which was covered by the portrait of
the late Lady Chelford. He could see the big gold frame, caught a
glimpse of one white hand hanging gracefully, and then something
brought his lamp back. He heard the churchwarden detective swear
softly. Himself, he was speechless. The light of his lamp focussed on
the place where the woman’s face had been, and where now was a black
emptiness.
The face and shoulders of the picture had been cut from the frame, and
the ragged strands of canvas told him that it had been cut by an
unskilful hand.
L
Neither man spoke until they were back in the little study, and then
Puttler looked gloomily at his companion.
“What do you make of that?”
“Heaven knows!” groaned Dick.
The study door was closed, and he had pulled across a dark curtain
which had been hung that day for the purpose.
“I suppose I’d better get out, though I don’t suppose I shall find
anything.”
“Wait until I’ve had the remainder of your coffee and I’ll come with
you,” said Puttler. “No, Mr. Alford, I never felt less like sleep. We
shall have daylight in a couple of hours. Wait.”
He turned out the oil lamp which had been requisitioned from the
kitchen, blew down the glass chimney, and the room was in darkness.
“Now you can pull open those curtains and go out,” he said, “if that
is your way.”
Dick moved the curtains slightly and looked out. The world lay
peaceful, silent, in the pallid light of the moon, and as he opened
the door, the sweet scent of the earth and the cold morn greeted him
fragrantly.
His foot was raised to step across the threshold when Puttler’s big
hand closed round his arm.
“Wait,” he whispered again.
Dick stood motionless.
“I see nothing,” he said in the same tone.
Still Puttler held him, his head bent, listening.
“All right,” he said, released his grip, and stepped out on to the
little terrace before the Second Son.
He gave a swift glance left and right.
“What was it?” asked Dick, in surprise.
“Somebody breathing,” was Puttler’s astonishing reply. “You won’t
believe that I could hear a man breathing a dozen yards away, but I
can. It’s one of my many animal qualities.”
He took a little run, cleared the gravel path in a bound, and went
noiselessly along the grass to the left. Presently Dick saw him
returning at a jog-trot. The detective went past and disappeared round
the wing of the block. In a few minutes he returned.
“Hearing and scent are my two qualities. Can you smell anything?”
Dick sniffed the morning air.
“No,” he confessed.
“Come along with me.”
This time he walked softly across the path, explaining that he was
afraid of waking the girls who slept almost immediately above them.
They went to the end of the wing, and then the sergeant halted.
“Now do you smell anything?” he asked.
Dick sniffed again. There was a sweet odour in the air, the scent of
some exotic flower that seemed familiar to him.
“Does anybody in this house smoke scented cigarettes?” asked the
detective, and Dick went suddenly cold.
“Harry!”
“Your brother, eh?” Puttler’s deep-set eyes surveyed him in the half
light. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that he is smoking them. Where
were they kept?”
“In the library as a rule.”
Puttler began searching the grounds with the aid of his lamp. He had
not gone far before he saw something and picked it up. It was a
half-smoked cigarette with a rose-leaf tip.
“Humph!” muttered Puttler, and continued his search--a search which
yielded no further evidence.
Retracing their steps, they passed the study door, and Puttler, who
was walking a little ahead, stumbled over something and put his light
to the ground.
“You keep rather a lot of ladders about here, Mr. Alford,” he said, in
a low voice. “A library ladder outside? What’s the great idea?”
The ladder was lying parallel with the gravel drive, and Puttler
examined it rung by rung.
“That wasn’t here last night, I’ll take my oath,” he said.
“No,” said Dick, puzzled; “it usually hangs on two pegs near the
garage.”
He lifted it up. It was a long, light, triangular ladder tapering to a
point at the top, and used by the staff for outside window cleaning.
“You had better have it chained up,” was all Puttler said after he had
finished his inspection. “The man who brought this here was the man
who cut off your light supply and, incidentally----”
Far away in the grounds came the faint sound of a man’s voice,
challenging in military fashion.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
“That’s Renwick, a local man,” said Puttler immediately.
They ran toward the sound of the voice, and presently saw the flicker
of his lantern; and it was a badly scared man who challenged them a
few minutes later. He had seen nothing, he said, but he had heard
voices.
“One of them was laughing. I thought at first it was you, Sergeant,
but when I heard it again it was so wild that I got a little nervous.”
“Did anybody answer your challenge?”
“No, but the voices stopped. I couldn’t hear the woman’s voice----”
“The woman’s voice?” said Dick quickly. “Was it a woman? Surely you’re
mistaken?”
“I could swear to it,” said the watcher. “It was the woman’s voice I
heard first, and the man who laughed. I think the voices must have
stopped as soon as I put my lamp on.”
“In what direction?”
The policeman pointed across Long Meadow, the shallow, valley-like
depression which ran parallel with the rising ground on which the
Abbey stood. To the left there were a number of cottages, occupied in
the main by people working on the estate, two gamekeepers, a carter
and a groom. It was from one of these cottages that the Black Abbot
had been seen and reported by a terrified gamekeeper.
“They sounded as if they were walking away from you over the Mound to
the river--or to the ruins?” suggested Puttler.
“Well,” confessed the man, “they might have been going that way: I
can’t be sure.”
“That certainly beats the band,” said the sergeant, as they were
moving in the direction the man had indicated.
“He must have been mistaken,” said Dick with emphasis. “They were
walking away from him----”
“They,” repeated Puttler significantly. “I don’t think he was wrong at
all.”
“There is another possible solution,” said Dick. “Sometimes the people
at Chelfordbury avail themselves of a short cut across the park to a
neighbouring village.”
“At three o’clock in the morning?”
“There may have been a dance,” suggested Dick lamely.
“A short cut through a park that’s known to be haunted and where a
murder was committed two nights ago?”
There was no answer to this.
They reached the bank and followed along the top till they were
parallel with the Abbey, but there was no sign of man or woman, and
they turned back. In spite of his protestations of wakefulness,
Sergeant Puttler did not resist the suggestion that he should take his
sleep. Dick was left alone to his vigil.
By the time daylight came he was a very weary man. Twice in the night
he had visited the two men posted in the corridors above, found them
awake, but in each case with nothing to report.
“Thank goodness, at any rate, somebody’s had some sleep!” he muttered,
as he passed under the girl’s window and glanced up.
The morning wind which stirred the trees and filled the world with the
pleasant music of rustling leaves moved also the casement window of
the room which he had assigned to Mary Wenner. The window swayed to
and fro slowly, and he inwardly condemned the girl for not carrying
out his instructions.
By six o’clock the first of the servants was stirring; smoke was
crawling lazily from one of the big twisted chimneys. He was sitting
in envious contemplation of Sergeant Puttler when the door of the
study burst violently open and Mary Wenner came in. She was in her
dressing gown; her untidy hair floated over her face.
“Mr. Alford,” she asked agitatedly, “have you seen Leslie?”
He was on his feet in an instant and the movement woke the sleeping
detective.
“No; she’s with you, isn’t she?”
“We went to bed together,” said the girl, in a tremulous tone, “but
when I woke up just now she was not in the room. I waited awhile,
thinking she was taking her bath, and then I went outside and asked
the man you put there. He said she hadn’t come out of the room!”
Puttler, listening, dragged himself erect.
“The ladder!” he said simply, and Dick reeled under the blow. The
Black Terror of Fossaway Manor had in his grip the woman for whom he
would have given his soul and counted it no heavy price.
Running out on to the lawn, Puttler searched beneath the window. Yes,
there were the marks of the ladder in the mould of a garden bed, and
on the ladder itself he found confirmatory proof. Lifting it against
the wall, he scrambled up, and came breast-high to the window-sill on
its top-most rung. Drawing himself up, he sprang into the room and
looked round for some clue. By this time Mary Wenner, followed by
Dick, had come through the door.
“Her dressing gown isn’t gone!” whimpered Mary, pointing to the hook
where it had hung. “But her shoes are. She must have dressed--and I
didn’t hear.”
The tired man at the door had heard no sound in the night. A thick
carpet covered the floor. Mary said that, when she woke, the door
which communicated between the two rooms was closed.
She had heard no sound at all, and claimed that she was a light
sleeper, which, in fact, she was not. When she had gone to sleep the
candle was burning. Examining this, Dick saw that it would not have
been alight for more than an hour. There were two burnt matches in the
tray, which meant that the candle had been extinguished once and lit
again.
“I wonder she didn’t wake me; I’m usually a light sleeper.…”
Dick left the girl explaining to the watcher who had been on guard
outside the door.
“It was her voice, of course, that the patrol man heard in the dark. I
blame myself that I didn’t jump at that idea.”
“I’d like to keep all the blame!” said Dick bitterly. “Oh, God! it
doesn’t bear thinking about!”
He went away on a solitary search; none saw him slip through the back
of the house, and he moved under cover of the river bank. When he
returned, after an absence of two hours, Puttler told him that there
was a message from the Home Office awaiting him. That institution had
rung up twice. Dick got through after a wait, and learned that he was
talking to an important under-secretary.
“Could you run up to London for an hour?”
“Is it necessary?” asked Dick, and he explained with all rapidity the
happenings of the night.
“I’m afraid you had better see us as soon as you possibly can. In view
of all the circumstances you cannot come too soon.”
With a curse Dick hung up the ’phone, and this time he took Harry’s
big two-seater, a car that his brother had only used a dozen times,
but the use of which he had steadfastly refused to anybody else.
Just as he was leaving he recalled a resolution he had made in the
night; he ran upstairs into his room, and, bolting the door, opened a
locked drawer of his dressing chest and took out something which he
put carefully in his bag. That must be removed from Fossaway Manor as
soon as possible, he thought. He put the bag in the boot of the car
and sent the machine flying down the drive.
Midway between Horsham and Dorking, a motorist, coming from the