The Groote Park Murder. Freeman Wills Crofts

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СКАЧАТЬ a slightly different colour when looked at parallel to the surface. He crossed the wall.

      ‘Stay where you are a minute,’ he called to Clarke, as he stooped to examine the ground.

      Immediately along the base of the wall, between it and the top edge of the slope, was a flat strip about three feet wide. On it, just opposite the deep footmarks on the park side, the grass was beaten down as if a weight had lain on it, and from this the marks of descent to the rails were unmistakable.

      Vandam moved slowly down the slope, noting every indication that he could find. The object appeared to have been something under two feet in width, and at one point it seemed to him that a halt had been made, though of this he was not certain. At the bottom of the bank there were further traces. Vaguely-marked footsteps showed at the edge of the offset, and two faint tracks or scrapes were visible coming on to the offset and turning in the direction of the tunnel. These scrapes were each about an inch wide and ran parallel, a foot apart. They were lost to view almost at once when they passed from the soft ground at the edge of the offset on to the beaten track at its centre.

      Calling to Clarke to follow him down and to keep clear of the traces, Vandam scrutinised the ground to the tunnel, but without finding further marks. Then, having reached the scene of the tragedy, he listened to the other’s detailed description of what had been found.

      ‘Not much blood about,’ he commented, as he stood looking down at the traces which still remained.

      ‘That’s so,’ Clark admitted. ‘I noticed that. It would all be the way he was struck.’

      Vandam did not reply. A terrible possibility had suddenly flashed into his mind, and he stood silently considering how far the various points he had learned would fit in with it. At last he turned once more to his companion.

      ‘I take it that body is still at the station?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes, sir. I have done nothing yet about getting it shifted.’

      ‘I’d like to have a look at it.’

      Twenty minutes later the two men stood gazing down on all that was mortal of the late Albert Smith. But the Inspector did not delay there long.

      ‘Where are the clothes?’ he demanded.

      Clarke took him to the next room. Instantly the Inspector picked up the shoes, and turning them over, glanced at the backs of the heels. For a moment he stood staring, then laid them down again very deliberately.

      ‘Clarke,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s well that gardener found the notebook. This is neither accident nor suicide. Albert Smith has been murdered by a carefully thought out scheme. How did you come to miss that? You should have spotted it.’

      For once the sergeant’s face became expressive. Blank amazement amounting almost to awe was stamped on its every feature. He gasped, speechless.

      ‘Let it be a warning to you about taking things for granted,’ went on Vandam gravely. ‘Here, look at this.’

      Once more he picked up the shoes, pointing to the backs of the heels. They were marked with a number of slight scratches, running up at right angles to the tread.

      ‘You see, he’s been dragged down the bank with his legs trailing on the ground. The track of the body is quite clear on the slope, and I found where the two heels dropped on the offset and were dragged along towards the tunnel. He was carried over that leaf-mould and dropped on the bank over the wall. And do you know the reason there was so little blood on the railway?’

      Clarke recovered himself with an effort.

      ‘He was dead, sir?’ he suggested in somewhat shaky tones.

      ‘Of course, because he was dead. You might have thought of that, even if you saw nothing else. And there was another thing that you might have thought of, too, if you hadn’t been so darned sleepy; the way the body was torn up. How do you think that happened?’

      ‘I don’t quite follow, sir,’ the unhappy man stammered.

      ‘No, because you won’t use your brains. Think a minute. If the man had been struck when he was standing or walking he would have been thrown clear by the cowcatcher. But if the body was lying on the ground—laid across the rails in all probability—why, it could hardly have escaped the kind of damage it got. See what I mean?’

      Clarke murmured incoherently.

      ‘I don’t say it would always happen that way,’ the Inspector went on after a pause, ‘but the thing might have let you smell a rat. Yes, there’s no doubt the man was murdered. Murdered, I should think, in that shed, but of that I’m not yet sure.’

      ‘I never thought to doubt—’ Clarke was beginning when the other interrupted him.

      ‘Well, you’ll know better next time. That’ll be all about it, only you’ve lost your scoop. Now, let us get ahead. We’ll go down and examine that ground again while the traces are fresh.’

      They retraced their steps down the railway, halting opposite the potting shed.

      ‘Let’s see,’ Vandam thought aloud. ‘We may assume the murderer carried the body down from the shed and left it on the line there, so as to make the thing look like an accident. Then he cleared off. Now, how? Where did he leave the railway?’

      He stood for a moment humming a tune, then went on:

      ‘It’s unlikely that he would go through the Ballat Road bridge, because the station yard starts at its far end and he would fear being seen by a shunter or signalman. And it’s even less likely that he would go in the opposite direction, out of the far end of the tunnel, for about a hundred yards farther on is the Edward Street level crossing, well lighted and with a gatekeeper in charge. Where, then, would he go?’

      Sergeant Clarke had recovered from his confusion.

      ‘Over there, sir, I should think. There’s a passage for getting to the yards of those houses runs along back of the wall. A man could dodge over there without being seen, and slip out at the end into Craven Street when the coast was clear.’

      ‘Exactly what I think,’ Vandam agreed. ‘Let us walk along and see if we can’t find tracks going up the slope.’

      A moment later, Clarke gave a hail.

      ‘Here you are, sir,’ he called. ‘Plain as you’d wish.’

      Stretching up the bank were similar though fainter traces to these leading to the park on the opposite side. Vandam spent several minutes examining them, and at last was satisfied that someone had passed in each direction, up and down.

      He worked gradually up the bank and was about to climb the wall to look for traces on the other side when, glancing down, he stopped suddenly. At the foot of the wall, embedded in the grass, lay a few scattered stones. His sharp eye had seen that one of these had been recently moved. Though it was still in its bed, it was not fitting properly, and instead of the grass growing up to it there was a trace of fresh brown earth round its edges. Vandam stooped and with an effort lifted it. As he looked into the hole which it uncovered he whistled.

      Beneath the stone lay two objects, either of which would have filled him with interest. One was an ordinary two-pound joiner’s СКАЧАТЬ