THE CRYSTAL BEADS MURDER (Murder Mystery for Inspector Stoddart). Annie Haynes
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Название: THE CRYSTAL BEADS MURDER (Murder Mystery for Inspector Stoddart)
Автор: Annie Haynes
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788075831743
isbn:
The inspector nodded.
"Quite. Down here you say he was lying. Were his feet projecting beyond the doorway?"
The superintendent scratched his head. "Sticking out, like, you mean? No, they didn't. But I think as the murderer had searched through his pockets and maybe been disturbed. The body had got on a light overcoat and one of the pockets looked as if it had been pulled out and pushed in again carelessly. I mean as it wasn't right in like, a bit of it was left pulled out and just here by the side of the pocket there was a notebook lying on the ground and a paper or two, as if them that took them out had been in too much of a hurry to put them back."
The inspector pricked up his ears.
"Where are they?"
The superintendent tramped across the summer-house and, stooping down, drew a small leather attache-case from beneath the seat.
"I put 'em in this and locked 'em up." He felt in his pockets and produced the key. "I thought you'd be wanting to see them or I'd have taken them down to the police station," he said as he unlocked the case and handed a pocket-book and a couple of letters not enclosed in envelopes to Stoddart. "There's a lot of notes in the pocket-book, so it don't look as if robbery had much to do with it."
The inspector glanced at the letters first. One was merely a business communication from a wholesale leather firm saying that Mr. Saunderson's esteemed order should have their earliest attention. The other was a very different affair. The detective's eyes brightened as he looked at it. Written on good paper, it was neither stamped nor dated, but across it was scrawled in large, badly printed letters: "I accede because I have no choice."
That was all. There was no signature. Stoddart turned it over, looked at it from every angle, and even actually smelt it before he handed it back to the superintendent. Then he made no comment, but he turned to his case-book and jotted down an unusually lengthy entry. He opened the dead man's pocket-book and after a rapid glance through it laid it on the table.
"Put this back in your case, superintendent. We will take it back to the police station and go into it all carefully. Now, before we go across to the mortuary, do you know how the deceased got here? As he was not staying at the Hall, and presumably not in the immediate neighbourhood, I mean? Did he come to Holford by train?"
The superintendent shook his head.
"Not to Holford, he didn't. I have asked at the station and nobody answering to his description was seen there last night, and he must have been noticed if he had come, for there's precious few passengers at Holford except the folks from the Hall. There's other stations he might ha' come to, of course, but not hardly within walking distance--seven or eight miles maybe, and cross-country at that. His shoes don't look as if he had come far, either. And yet, if he was in a car, where is the car?"
"H'm--well!" The inspector looked thoughtful. "We will go down to the mortuary at once," he decided.
Chapter IV
As the Chief Constable had said, the temporary mortuary at Holford was just an ordinary barn. Some rough trestles had been set up in the middle under the direction of Superintendent Mayer, and Robert Saunderson lay on them. Some one had thrown a white sheet over the body. Superintendent Mayer tramped across and laid it back.
"Looks as if he'd been surprised somehow," he commented, gazing down on the face that, sensual and coarse-looking in life, had gained a certain dignity in death. "Stiff and cold he'd been for hours before we found him," the superintendent went on.
Standing beside him, Inspector Stoddart looked down at the dead man. He glanced quickly over the face and form, then passed to the light overcoat that hung over the bottom of the trestles.
"You have gone through the pockets, you said, superintendent?"
"I have--and there's nothing in 'em to help us," that worthy announced in a tone of assurance that made Stoddart raise his eyebrows. "There's a letter or two, none from anywhere about here, and the money that I showed you before. His wrist-watch too, I left that on."
One of the dead man's arms was lying by his side. Stoddart lifted it up; the watch had stopped at 9.30.
"We get the time of death approximately from that. Probably when he fell the arm hit the ground heavily and stopped the watch."
"It might ha' been a bit fast or a bit slow, though," the superintendent remarked wisely.
Stoddart's smile would have been a laugh but for the quiet presence lying there before him.
Harbord at the side was going through the pockets of the dead man's overcoat with quick, capable fingers. Suddenly he uttered a sharp exclamation. As Stoddart and the superintendent looked at him he held up something that gleamed for a moment in a ray of light that filtered through the shadows of the barn.
Stoddart beckoned him to the door, and while the superintendent replaced the sheet over the dead man the inspector glanced curiously at the object his assistant had in his hand. He saw three crystal beads linked together by a thin, gold chain.
Harbord looked at him.
"It must have dropped there when the pocket was searched."
The superintendent came up and elbowed them apart.
"No, beg pardon, it was not," he contradicted. "That wasn't in the pocket when I searched it this morning. It must ha' been put there since."
Harbord looked at him.
"It was the right-hand pocket beside which you found the book and the notes, wasn't it?"
The superintendent nodded. "Ay, it was the right-hand pocket sure enough, and it was pulled out, like, a bit, but the beads weren't in it then."
"The chain had caught in the lining. That must have been how you overlooked it," Harbord said shortly.
"It wasn't there at all," the superintendent said positively. "I turned that pocket inside out. There was nothing there, I will swear."
"Well, the thing is here now. What possibility is there of getting it into the pocket after you searched it?" Stoddart inquired sharply.
The superintendent scratched his head.
"I don't know. There was nobody but me and Constable Jones went into the hut, not until the ambulance men fetched the body away. I and the constable went across here to the barn to look round the place and give orders about the trestles. The gardeners were seeing to it and got a bit rattled, poor chaps. But we weren't gone more than a few minutes before the ambulance men arrived--but what would they go dropping glass beads about for?"
"Who were the ambulance men?"
"They weren't men as I know," the superintendent said thoughtfully. "Not as to say well, that is. They work at the Cottage Hospital on the hill, the two as brought the ambulance-stretcher, as they call it. It's on wheels. His lordship, he gave it to the hospital. They lifted him"--with a backward СКАЧАТЬ