The Hand in the Dark
"In that case, he would have tried to escape the same way, but it is
quite certain that he did not do so. Mr. Musard says that the staircase
was the first place to be searched when the guests rushed upstairs. If
the murderer had gone that way he would have found the door at the
bottom locked, and the key removed, and he must have been caught before
he could get back upstairs."
"There's something in that," said Merrington. "But how do you account
for the door being unlocked in the first instance?"
"The servants know where the key is kept. One of the maids may have
taken it to steal out of the house that way to keep an appointment with
a sweetheart, and forgotten all about it when she returned. The back
staircase and entrance are never used by the members of the household,
and the key, which was inside the door, may have been there for days
without being noticed. Tufnell admits that it was only by chance he
tried the door yesterday. He had not tried it for weeks before."
"I'll have a look at this door later. And now, we had better get to
work. We have got to catch this murderer pretty quickly, or the press
and the public will be up in arms. He's had too long a start already.
You must make up your mind for considerable public indignation about
that, Caldew."
"I do not see how I can be held responsible for the murderer getting
away," said Caldew, in an aggrieved tone. "He had his start before I
arrived. I did everything that I could. I searched the house inside and
out, and Sergeant Lumbe has been scouring the country-side since
daybreak looking for suspicious characters."
"I am not blaming you, Caldew," responded Merrington, but his voice
suggested the reverse of his words. "I am merely pointing out to you the
way the British public will look at it. They will say, 'Here is a young
wife murdered in the bosom of her home and family, and the murderer gets
right away. What do we pay the detective force for? To let murderers
escape?' Mark my words, if we don't lay our hands on this chap quickly,
we'll have the whole of the London press howling at our heels like a
pack of wolves. Half a dozen special reporters travelled down in the
train with me and pestered me with questions all the way. They are
coming along here later for a statement for the evening editions. But
never mind the journalists--let us get to work without further loss of
time. Have you made a list of all the guests who have been stopping in
the house?"
"Not yet. Here is a sketch plan of the moat-house interior and the
grounds which you may find useful."
"Thanks. You had better prepare a list of the guests before they leave.
They are sure to get away as fast as possible, and we may want to
interview some of them later on. Now we had better have a look at the
body."
They went upstairs to the bedroom. There they found a young man, with a
freckled face and a snub nose, packing up a photographic apparatus. He
was the photographer, and he had been taking photographs of the dead
body.
"Finished?" inquired Merrington. "That's right. Then you and Freeling
had better return to London by the next train--you'll be wanted in that
Putney case."
The photographer and the finger-print expert left the room together, and
Merrington walked across to the bed. He drew away the sheet which
covered the dead girl, and bent over the body, examining it closely, but
without touching it.
"The corpse has not been moved, I suppose?" he remarked to Caldew, who
was standing beside him.
"Not since I arrived. But she may not have been shot in that position.
She lived some minutes afterwards, and may have moved slightly--not
much, I should say, for there are no marks of bloodstains on any other
part of the bed."
Merrington nodded. He was looking at the bullet wound, which was plainly
visible through a burnt orifice in the rest-gown which the dead girl was
wearing. The wound was a circular punctured hole in the left breast,
less than the size of a sixpenny piece.
"The wound has been washed," he observed. "Was that done by the police
surgeon?"
"The police surgeon has not been here. The corpse was examined by the
village medical man, Dr. Holmes."
"I should like to see him. Where is he to be found?"
"He will be here in the course of the morning. He is attending young
Heredith, who is suffering from the shock. The doctor fears brain
fever."
"When he comes I want to see him. It is idle speculating about the cause
of death in the absence of a doctor. Death in this case appears to have
been due to haemorrhage. Apparently the murderer aimed at the heart and
missed it, and the shot went through the lungs. The shot was fired at
very close range too--look how the wrapper is burnt! Any sign of the
bullet, Caldew?"
"I found none."
"Well, we shall have to wait for the doctor to clear up these points."
His trained eyes swept round the bedroom, taking stock of every article
in it. He next carefully examined the door, and the lock on it.
"The door was open when the others came upstairs, you said, Caldew?"
"Yes--about half open."
"That accounts for the scream and the shot being heard so plainly
downstairs. It also suggests that the murderer fled very hurriedly,
leaving the door open behind him."
"It seems to me more likely that he escaped by the window, even if he
did not enter that way. Miss Heredith, who was the last inmate of the
household to see Mrs. Heredith alive, thinks that the window was closed
when she was in the room before dinner."
Merrington walked over to the window and examined it, testing the lock
and looking at the sill.
"Does Miss Heredith say that the window was locked, or merely closed,
when she was in the room?" he asked.
"She cannot say definitely. She thinks it was closed because the air was
heavy, and she knew that Mrs. Heredith disliked having her bedroom
window open."
Merrington shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
"A woman's fancies are not much to build a theory upon," he said. "Have
you any other reason for thinking that the murderer may have escaped by
this window?"
"Yes. After the shot was fired the guests rushed upstairs immediately,
and the murderer would have run into them if he had attempted to escape
downstairs."
"Is there no other means of escape from the wing except by the
staircase?"
"There is the back staircase I told you of, at the end of the corridor.
That staircase is never used. The door is kept locked, and the key hangs
in a room downstairs. It was the door at the bottom of this staircase
which was found unlocked by the butler yesterday evening."
"I'll have a look at it, and then we'll go downstairs. I want to see
this bedroom window from outside."
They left the bedroom and proceeded to the end of the corridor, where
Caldew pointed out the door at the top of the staircase. Merrington
opened it, and went down the stairs. He reappeared after the lapse of a
few minutes with dusty hands and cobwebs on his clothes.
"The murderer didn't get in that way," he said. "On the face of it, it
seems a plausible theory to suggest that he entered by the locked door
and hid himself somewhere in this wing, and escaped after committing the
murder by jumping through the bedroom window. But it is impossible to
get over your point that if he had entered by the door he would have
tried to escape by the same means, not knowing that the door had been
locked in the meantime. To do that he must have traversed the corridor
twice and gone down and up these back stairs while the guests were
coming up the other stairs. He couldn't have done it in the time. He
would have been caught--cut off before he could get back. Look at this
steep flight of stairs and the length of the corridor! That disposes of
the incident of the door. Whoever unlocked it was not the murderer."
Merrington retraced his steps along the corridor. As he walked, his eyes
roved restlessly over the tapestry hangings and velvet curtains, and
took in the dark nooks and corners which abound in old English
country-houses.
"Plenty of places here where a man might hide," he muttered, in a
dissatisfied voice.
At the head of the front staircase he paused, and looked over the
balusters, as though calculating the distance to the hall beneath. Then
he descended the stairs.
It still wanted half an hour to breakfast time. There was no sign of
anybody stirring downstairs except a fresh-faced maidservant, who was
dusting the furniture in the great hall. She glanced nervously at the
groups of police officials, and then resumed her dusting. Merrington
strode across to her.
"What is your name, my dear?" he asked, in his great voice.
"Milly Saker, sir."
"Very well, Milly. I'll come and have a talk with you presently--just
our two selves."
The girl, far from looking delighted at this prospect, backed away with
a frightened face. Merrington strode on through the open front door, and
turned towards the left wing.
It was a crisp autumn morning. The early sunshine fell on the hectic
flush of decay in the foliage of the woods, but a thin wisp of vapour
still lingered across the moat-house garden and the quiet fields beyond.
Merrington kept on until he reached the large windows of the
dining-room, which opened on to the terraced garden.
"That's Mrs. Heredith's window," he said, pointing up to it. "Her
bedroom is directly over the dining-room. If the murderer escaped by the
window he must have dropped on to this gravel path."
"It is a pretty stiff drop," said Captain Stanhill, measuring the
distance with his eye.
"Oh, I don't know," replied Merrington. "He'd let himself down eight
feet with extended arms, and that would leave a drop of only ten feet or
thereabouts--not much for an athletic man. But if he dropped he must
have left footprints."
"There are none. I have looked," said Caldew.
The information did not deter Merrington from examining the path anew.
He got down on his hands and knees to scrutinize the gravel and the
grass plot more thoroughly.
"Nothing doing here either," he said as he scrambled to his feet. "There
are neither footprints nor marks such as one would expect to find if a
man had dropped out of the window. What are you looking at, Weyling?"
In reply Inspector Weyling made his first and only contribution towards
the elucidation of the crime.
"Could not the murderer have climbed up to the bedroom by that creeper?"
he asked, pointing to a thin trail of Virginia creeper which stretched
up the wall almost as high as the window.
Merrington tested the frail creeper with his great hand. His sharp tug
detached a mass of the plant from the brickwork.
"Not likely," he replied. "It might bear the weight of a boy or a
slender girl, but not of a man. What do you think, Caldew?"
Caldew nodded without speaking. Weyling's remark had started a train of
thought in his mind, but he had no intention of revealing it to a man
who plainly did not intend to confer with him on equal terms, or
disclose his own theory of the murder--if he had formed one.
"Let us get inside again," said Merrington, in his masterful way.
He turned back towards the house, and the others followed.
CHAPTER VIII
As they reached the library again a small silver clock on the
mantelpiece gave a single chime. Merrington looked at it, and then
glanced at his watch.
"Half-past eight!" he said. "That clock is five minutes slow--by me. The
people who have been staying here will go off after breakfast. Visitors
always leave a house of trouble as soon as possible--like rats deserting
a sinking ship. The thing is to question as many as we can get hold of
before they go. As some of them knew Mrs. Heredith before her marriage,
we may elicit something about her or her antecedents which will throw