The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ very sun came out to watch, and turned him to gold. The rod quivered under the strain. Pointer stood, or ran, or leaped, calm-eyed, watchful, alert, trying to think with the fish below. Then came the last round. Pointer was keeping him in rough water to tire him out. The fish realised this, and came upstream at such a rate that he all but shot past. The rod was bent down, and down, and down still more in a mighty pull. But the strain told on the salmon. Shorter and shorter grew his rushes. Less and less wonderful his leaps and whirls. At last he rose on his side. Spent. Done.

      Pointer towed him to the side. The gillie drove the gaff home, and lifted him ashore.

      "Well done, sir!" came a voice—not unexpected by Pointer. He had played for it more than for the fish. "A fine, fresh run, twenty-pounder."

      Pointer looked at the fish on the bank. The sight was not pretty. Sunken and glassy those bright eyes, open that close-clipped jaw. Gone was the wonderful iridescence of the scales. The wild and savage creature, an Apollo's bow of energy, was straight and still now. He was, to what he had been, as a two-days' cut flower it to its growing sister.

      Pointer was no sportsman in the sense of slayer. He had to hunt men. He did so with the certainty that he was doing the best work possible for the world, and even, in reality, for them. But to lift this beautiful thing out of its element, to kill it, gave him no pleasure. He had landed what he was after, however, and that was Father William's attention.

      "Twenty pounds, you think? He looked the size of a motor-bus to me awhile back, and pulled like one."

      "You've made a wonderful beginning," the man on the bank went on approvingly, "and if that ain't one of my flies—I'm William Morgan, Father William, they call me—why, I'm prepared to eat it."

      Pointer assured him that there was no necessity for such an extreme measure. He added that he would not dream of beginning his first fishing in Wales with any other cast. Father William, plump as a ball of butter, smiled, well-pleased.

      "It was a fine fight. Newcomer to these waters, you say, sir? But done a good bit of salmon fishing, I can see." Pointer mentioned his name, only his name.

      "A woman taught me to cast my first fly. Came from near here, I believe."

      "Came from around here? What name, might I ask, sir! I know all the rods O Gaergybi i Gaerdydd, as we say. These years and old years back. Sixty years back."

      "She was a Miss Headly when I knew her. I believe she married afterwards. I don't know what the name of her husband was."

      "Miss Headly? Not a name I've ever heard. No." Father William shook his head.

      "But she used to buy her flies off you, when she could afford it. Big, tall, handsome woman. Carried herself well. Used to fish hereabouts fifteen years ago, or a little less. Left-handed."

      "Left-handed! Oh, you mean, Mrs. Hart! Only left-handed person I've ever known. She was a wonder, she was. And tall, and handsome, as you say. Dark, too. Dark as one of us. Yes, Mrs. Hart is who you mean, sir."

      "Very likely. I knew her before her marriage. Does she still live here?"

      "Drowned, sir. Drowned with her husband off Newport. Caught in a tempest. Boat upset. Neither of them ever heard of again. Silent sort of lady, but her rod could talk. Being left-handed was no bar to her. Let me see, she must have been drowned going for ten years ago. Or more still. More like thirteen it would be. Yes, the years go past like the water in the river, and mean no more. They always were, they always are. Well, I've had plenty for my share. Seems one of the few things you can have your fill of, without doing other people out of their share. Years, I mean. Yes." And Father William led his companion to the Angler's Rest, for the day was over. Here the fish was weighed, and the tale of his killing told to the little knot of the fraternity sitting around the fire, their clothes steaming like the mist in the valley when the sun shines, their long glasses steaming too.

      It was a wonderful old kitchen. Six feet up, around this mighty hearth with its ingle-nook seats, and well away from the blazing logs, ran a large brass half-hoop on which a red curtain hung. The curtain in many divisions was only pulled shut when all the "club" had assembled. Then it was not only pulled close, but tucked under the cushioned seats of the semi-circle of chairs, shutting out all the world except fishermen and their tales.

      Father William was the presiding chairman. From him a little pathway led by the side of the billowing curtain to the rest of the tiled kitchen. Through this passage came the maid with the drinks. Toddy, as brewed by Father William, was the usual call, and Pointer echoed it. Talk became general. Pointer was accepted.

      He let the flood of misses, and catches, and weights and measures flow on for an hour by the great clock above his head. Then he introduced the object of his presence. Some solicitors in town wanted to trace Miss Headly, he said. Question of a bit of money left her on her sister's death.

      "As I was coming here for some fishing, I said I would ask around. Miss Headly of hereabouts taught me to fish years ago, before she married. This is a portrait of her sister. Is this at all like the lady you call Mrs. Hart? The two sisters as girls were said to resemble each other closely."

      Only two men besides Father William had known Mrs. Hart. They all three thought that the portrait of Mrs. Tangye—taken only a few months ago—might well have passed as a picture of Mrs. Hart, supposing that poor woman to have lived on.

      "She was a younger woman then, you see," one of the men said handing back the portrait, "twenty, and a bit. No more. Too young to've come to such an end. But it's the young ones as are the rash ones."

      None of the three had known her intimately.

      "Mrs. Hart was a hard woman," one of them said.

      "Hardly treated, I thought," another corrected; "her husband drank, I heard. She had to sell her catches to keep her body and soul together."

      "What was her husband?" Pointer asked.

      "Used to swank about an estate of his, but after he was drowned, it came out that he was a little peddling grocer's manager down in Newport."

      Pointer could collect no facts from the talk. Even the tragedy was but a vague memory. The broken boat had been found one morning after a sudden storm, on Peterstone Flats, just outside Newport, at the mouth of the Usk.

      No trace of either body had ever been found, but the tide, and the rocks, and the storm would account for that.

      Pointer let the talk swing round to fishing again. He did not want to arouse curiosity. He had better means of learning the truth now than from idle gossip.

      He sent off a telegram to the Yard to look up the marriage records of all H's with even greater care than had been done. Then Pointer caught the train into noisy Newport.

      CHAPTER 14

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      NEXT morning Pointer awoke from a dream in which he had been playing a weird game of golf. He had not been able to hit a ball, let alone drive one! Worn out, he had just clambered over a hazard to find Wilmot on the eighteenth green holing a magnificent putt, and saying affably, "Try my pet club Intuition; it's more flexible than that old-fashioned iron Proof which I see you still use."

      The dream haunted Pointer, but СКАЧАТЬ