The Chestermarke Instinct/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
ACCIDENT OR MURDER?
Betty checked the cry of horror which instinctively started to her lips, and turned to Neale with a look which he was quick to interpret. He moved nearer to the tinker, who was unwinding the rope from his waist.
"You couldn't tell—what man?" he asked, in low tones.
Creasy shook his head with a look of dislike for what he had seen by the light of his lantern.
"No!" he answered. "'Twasn't possible, mister. But a man there is! And dead, naturally. And—a long way it is, too, down to the bottom of that place!"
"What's to be done?" asked Neale.
The tinker slowly coiled up his ropes, and laid them in order by the crowbar.
"There's only one thing to be done," he answered, after a reflective pause. "We shall have to get him up. That'll be a job! Do you and the young lady go back to Scarnham, and tell Polke what we've found, and let him come out here with a man or two. I'll go into Ellersdeane yonder and get some help—and a windlass—can't do without that. There's a man that sinks wells in Ellersdeane—I'll get him and his men to come back with me. Then we can set to work."
Creasy moved away as he finished speaking, untethered his pony, threw an old saddle across its back, and without further remark rode off in the direction of the village, while Neale and Betty turned back to Scarnham. For a while neither broke the silence which had followed the tinker's practical suggestions; when Betty at last spoke it was in a hushed voice.
"Wallie!" she said, "do you think that can possibly be—Uncle John?"
"No!" answered Neale sharply, "I don't! I don't believe it possible that he would be so foolish as to lean over a rotten bit of walling like that—he'd know the danger of it."
"Then it must be—the other man—Hollis!" said Betty.
"Maybe," agreed Neale. "If it is———"
He paused, and Betty looked at his set face as if she were wondering what he was thinking of.
"What?" she asked timidly. "You're uneasy about something."
"It's a marvel to me—if it is Hollis—however he comes to be there," answered Neale at last. "According to all we know, he certainly went to meet somebody on Saturday night. I can't think how anybody who knew the district would have let a stranger do such a risky thing as to lean over one of those shafts. Besides, if anybody was with him, and there was an accident, why hasn't the accident been reported? Betty!—it's more like murder!"
"You think he may have been thrown down there?" she asked fearfully.
"Thrown down or forced down—it's all the same," said Neale. "There may have been a struggle—a fight. But there, what's the use of speculating? We don't even know whose body it is yet. Let's get on and tell those police chaps."
Turning off the open moor on to the highway at the corner of Scarnham Bridge, they suddenly came face to face with Gabriel Chestermarke, who, for once in a way, was walking instead of driving into the town. The two young people, emerging from the shelter of a high hedgerow which bordered the moorland at that point, started at sight of the banker's colourless face, cold and set as usual. But Gabriel betrayed no surprise, and was in no way taken aback. He lifted his hat in silence, and was marching on when Neale impulsively hailed him.
"Mr. Chestermarke!" he exclaimed.
Gabriel halted and turned, looking at his late clerk with absolute impassiveness. He made no remark, and stood like a statue, waiting for Neale to speak.
"You may like to know," said Neale, coming up to him, "we have just found the body of a man on the moor—Ellersdeane Hollow."
Gabriel showed no surprise. No light came into his eyes, no colour to his cheek. It seemed a long time before his firmly set lips relaxed.
"A man?" he said quietly. "What man?"
"We don't know," answered Neale. "All we know is, there's a man's body lying at the bottom of one of the old shafts up there—near Ellersdeane Tower. The tinker who camps out there has just seen it—he's been partly down the shaft."
"And—did not recognize it?" asked Gabriel.
"No—it was too far beneath him," replied Neale. "He's gone into the village to get help."
Gabriel lingered a moment, and then, lifting his hat again, began to move forward towards the town.
"I should advise you to acquaint the police, Mr. Neale," he said. "Good-morning!"
He marched away, stiffly upright, across the bridge and up the Cornmarket, and Neale and Betty followed.
"Why did you tell—him?" asked Betty.
Neale threw a glance of something very like scorn after the retreating figure.
"Wanted to see how he'd take it!" he answered. "Bah!—Gabriel Chestermarke's no better than a wax figure! You might as well tell a marble image any news of this sort as tell him! You'd have thought he'd have had sufficient human feeling in him to say that he hoped it wasn't your uncle, anyhow!"
"No, I shouldn't," said Betty. "I sized Gabriel up—and Joseph, too—when I walked into their parlour the other afternoon. They haven't any feelings—you might as well expect to get feeling out of a fish."
They met Starmidge in the Market-Place—talking to Parkinson. Neale told the news to both. The journalist dashed into his office for his hat, and made off to Ellersdeane Hollow: Starmidge turned to the police-station with his information.
"No one else knows, I suppose?" he remarked, as they went along.
"Gabriel Chestermarke knows," answered Neale. "We met him as we were coming off the moor and I told him."
"Show any surprise?" asked the detective.
"Neither surprise nor anything else," said Neale. "Absolutely unaffected!"
Polke, hearing the news, immediately bustled into activity, sending for a cab in which to drive along the road to a point near Ellersdeane Tower, from which they could reach the lead mine. But he shook his head when he saw that Betty meant to return.
"Don't, miss!" he urged. "Stay here in town—you'd far better. It's not a nice job for ladies, aught of that sort. Wait at the hotel—do, now!"
"Doing nothing!" exclaimed Betty. "That would be far worse. Let me go—I'm not afraid of anything. And to hang about, waiting and wondering—"
Neale, who had been about to enter the cab with the police, drew back.
"You go on," he said to Polke. "Get things through—Miss Fosdyke and I will walk slowly back there. We won't come close up till you can tell us something definite. Don't you see she's anxious about her uncle?—we can't keep her waiting."
He rejoined Betty as Polke and his men drove off: together they turned again in the direction of the bridge. Once across it and on the moor, Neale made the girl sit down on a ledge of rock at some distance from the lead mine, but within sight of it: he himself, while he talked to her, stood watching the figures grouped about the shaft. Creasy had evidently succeeded in getting help at once: Neale saw men fixing a windlass over the mouth of the old mine; saw a man at last disappear into its depths. And after a long pause he saw from the movements of the other men that the body had been drawn to the surface and that they were bending over it. A moment later, Starmidge separated himself from the rest, and came in Neale's direction. He nodded his head energetically at Betty as he drew within speaking distance.
"All right, Miss Fosdyke!" he said. "It's not your uncle. But—it's the other man, Mr. Neale!—no doubt of it!"
"Hollis!" exclaimed Neale.
"It's the man described by Mrs. Pratt and Simmons—that's certain," answered the detective. "So there's one mystery settled—though it makes all the rest stranger than ever. Now, Miss Fosdyke, that'll be some relief to you—so don't come any nearer. But just spare Mr. Neale a few minutes—I want to speak to him."
Betty obediently turned back to the ledge of rock, and Neale walked with Starmidge towards the group around the shaft.
"Can you tell anything?" he asked. "Are there any signs of violence?—I mean, does it look as if he'd been———"
"Thrown in there?" said the detective calmly. "Ah!—it's a bit early to decide that. The only thing I'm thinking of now is the fact that this is Hollis! That's certain, Mr. Neale. Now what could he be doing on this lonely bit of ground? Where does this track lead?"
"It's a short cut from Scarnham Bridge corner to the middle of Ellersdeane village," answered Neale, pointing one way and then the other.
"And Gabriel Chestermarke lives in Ellersdeane, doesn't he?" asked Starmidge. "Or close by?"
Neale indicated certain chimneys rising amongst the trees on the far side of the Hollow. "He lives there—The Warren," he replied.
"Um!" mused Starmidge. "I wonder if this poor fellow was making his way there—to see him?"
"How should he—a stranger—know of this short cut?" demurred Neale. "I don't think that's very likely."
"That's true—unless he'd had it pointed out to him," rejoined Starmidge. "It's odd, anyway, that his body should be found half-way, as it were, between Gabriel Chestermarke's place and Joseph Chestermarke's house—isn't it now? But, Lord bless you!—we're only on the fringe of this business as yet. Well—just take a look at him."
Neale walked within the group of bystanders, feeling an intense dislike and loathing of the whole thing. In obedience to Starmidge's wish, he looked steadily at the dead man and turned away.
"You don't know him?—never saw him during the five years you were at the bank?" whispered the detective. "Think!—make certain, now."
"Never saw him in my life!" declared Neale, stepping back. "I neither know him nor anything about him."
"I wanted you to make sure," said Starmidge. "I thought you might—possibly—recollect him as somebody who'd called at the bank during your time."
"No!" said Neale. "Certainly not! I've never set eyes on him until now. Of course, he's Hollis, I suppose?"
"Oh, without doubt!" answered Polke, who caught Neale's question as he came up. "He's Hollis, right enough. Mr. Neale—here's a difficulty. It's a queer thing, but there isn't one of us here who knows if this spot is in Scarnham or in Ellersdeane. Do you? Is it within our borough boundary, or is it in Ellersdeane parish? The Ellersdeane policeman there doesn't know, and I'm sure I don't! It's a point of importance, because the inquest'll have to be held in the parish in which the body was found."
The Ellersdeane constable who had followed Polke suddenly raised a finger and pointed across the heather.
"Here's a gentleman coming as might know, Mr. Polke," he said. "Mr. Chestermarke!"
Neale and Starmidge turned sharply—to see the banker advancing quickly from the adjacent road. A cab, drawn up a little distance off, showed that he had driven out to hear the latest news.
Polke stepped forward to meet the new-comer: Gabriel greeted him in his usual impassive fashion.
"This body been recovered?" he asked quietly.
"A few minutes ago, Mr. Chestermarke," answered Polke. "Will you look at it?"
Gabriel moved aside the group of men without further word, and the others followed him. He looked steadily at the dead man's face and withdrew.
"Not known to me," he said, in answer to an inquiring glance from Polke. "Hollis, I suppose, of course."
He went off again as suddenly as he had come—and Starmidge drew Neale aside.
"Mr. Neale!" he whispered, with a nearer approach to excitement than Neale had yet seen in him. "Did you see Gabriel Chestermarke's eyes? He's a liar! As sure as my name's Starmidge, he's a liar! Mr. Neale!—he knows that dead man!"