Silent Nights (14 page)

“Perhaps I'll find the money for you,” said Crook.

Blake whistled. “P'r'aps 'e's got it already,” he said with a wink, “and 'll pop it down our chimney into our stockin's, fer a Christmas surprise!”

“Yer never know!” chorused the others. Crook passed on, with a smile, and wended his way to the post office. Here he made a request to the postmaster, and a few minutes later an elderly, keen-eyed man was standing before him. Jerry Lupton had delivered letters in the district for over eighteen years.

“More dust than mud these days, isn't there?” began the detective.

The postman agreed, a little wonderingly.

“Ay, it's been dry, sir, that it has,” he nodded.

“All the same,” continued Crook, “I see you've got a little red mud on your left foot. Where did you pick that up?”

“Eh?” queried the postman, and gazed down at his boot. “Can't say.”

“Don't give up at the start!” reproved Crook. “Have a think.”

The postman thought. He thought for three minutes. Again he shook his head.

“Can't say,” he repeated.

“Come, come,” insisted Crook. “I think better of you than that! No one knows this district better than you! Isn't there a spot somewhere where the ground is slightly reddish? Get pictures into your mind!

“Here's a long, white road—here's a bit of yellow, sandy soil—here's brown earth—this is almost black—and now, here, is some reddish earth. And it must be near water—a spring, or a river, or a brook, for the weather's been dry lately—”

“Got it!” cried the postman, all at once. “Shooter's Wood! That'd be the place now!”

“Well done!” exclaimed Crook, and his eye lightened. “Where is Shooter's Wood? And when were you last there?”

Jerry Lupton told him. It was a small wood at the far end of the town. He only went through it once a day, to deliver letters, when there were any, at a small cottage on the farther edge.

It was just in his district, and many a time he'd wished it weren't. A path ran through the wood to the cottage, and midway the path was traversed by a stream running at right angles to it. Yes, the earth was certainly reddish about there, and he must have trod on a bit of moist bank. That would explain his boot satisfactorily.

Detective Crook thanked him, received directions, and after giving the postman strict instructions to tell no one of their conversation, set out for Shooter's Wood. He walked at a fair pace, yet he gave no appearance of hurry, and his eyes missed nothing on the way.

In less than ten minutes he was in the wood. In another five he had reached the little brook. It ran lazily across the track, disappearing in the thick trees on either side.

Crook stood still for a few seconds, taking in the picture. Then he began to move slowly toward the left, keeping near the bank of the stream. A low branch of one of the trees attracted his attention. It had been snapped off.

The stream led him into a spot where the trees thickened considerably. Crook noticed that the undergrowth was downtrodden. He pursued his way with slow steps, but with a quickening sensation in his heart. Coming round a bush, he stopped.

IV

Lying on the ground, on its face, was a body.

Crook's lips tightened, but he gave no other outward sign of emotion. Stooping swiftly, he felt the body. It was cold. It had been dead several hours.

The cause of death was apparent. That was, the immediate cause. Beneath the man's head, which the detective gently raised, was the spiked stump of a tree. The man had fallen, or been struck or thrown, and the spike had finished the job.

Carefully and tenderly, Crook lifted the body slightly, turning it a little on its side, and as he did so an exclamation escaped him. Tightly grasped in one hand was a stout brown envelope.

Even before he took the envelope from the dead man's hand, and opened it, the detective knew what it contained. It contained ninety-three pounds in notes, eight shillings in silver, and two coppers.

But there were other things on the envelope which, to the detective's experienced eye, were even more important. There were fingerprints. Some were small. The fingers of the dead man were small. Other of the fingerprints were big.

The detective rose from his examination of the recumbent figure, and gazed around. The wood was ghostly and silent, save for the faint trickling of the water of the stream as it ran along its red bed, to emerge for a moment at a public track that its secret might be revealed, and then lose itself again in the woods beyond.

With the envelope in his pocket, Detective Crook retraced his way back to the track, and returned slowly to the village. Mr Hardcastle raised his head quickly as he saw him coming toward his shop, and exclaimed:

“Ah! I wonder if he's found anything?”

“I wunner,” murmured Mr Jenks, who had called to discuss the one and only topic.

A moment later the detective entered.

“Well?” cried Mr Hardcastle and Mr Jenks together.

“I've got your money,” replied Crook quietly.

Two mouths opened wide.

“What's that?” exclaimed the grocer. “You've—you've
found
it?”

“Yes. And I've found something else not quite so pleasant, I'm afraid.”

“What?”

“I've found Jim Parkins, Mr Hardcastle. He's lying on his face, dead, in Shooter's Wood.”

There was a silence. Mr Jenks suddenly choked a little, and Mr Hardcastle stared glassily in front of him.

“What's that you're saying?” he muttered at last. “Jim—dead?”

“Yes. He was holding this envelope.” The detective laid the envelope on the table, and they fixed their eyes on it, in fearful fascination.

“The Lord's hand descended on 'im,” piped Mr Jenks unsteadily.

“No—not the Lord's,” came the detective's gentle voice. “The hand of somebody rather less than the Lord.” He turned to the grocer. “You were right in your estimation of your assistant. Mr Hardcastle. He was a white man, like yourself—and it may give you pleasure to remember that it was your kindliness helped to turn him white.”

“I—I don't understand this,” muttered Mr Hardcastle.

“It's quite simple,” answered Crook. “That money was stolen from Jim Parkins last night, shortly after Mr Jenks left him, and Parkins followed the thief and regained the money. But it cost him his life.”

“You mean—the thief killed him?” whispered Mr Hardcastle.

“Not intentionally, I imagine. In the struggle—as I picture it—Parkins got the envelope back, and was knocked down, or fell, immediately afterward. He fell on a sharp tree-stump, and, I should say, was killed instantly.”

“But, if that be so,” exclaimed Mr Jenks. “why didn't the thief take the money back again?”

“Because, at the moment, fear was greater than greed,” responded Crook. “When he found out what he had done, he fled. It involves less courage to take a chance on being caught as a thief than as a murderer.”

The truth of this sank in.

“How did you come to find poor Jim?” asked Mr Hardcastle quietly.

“Ay, and 'oo done it?” cried Mr Jenks.

There were tears in the old man's indignant voice; and also, Crook noticed, in his eyes.

“Let me tell you my theory,” said the detective, “and correct me where you think I am wrong. You remember, Mr Jenks, you whistled up to Jim Parkins' window after you left him last night, and tried to get him to come out with you?” Mr Jenks nodded. “Will you repeat what you called up to him—the words you repeated to me?”

“‘Lock it away,' I said, ‘and come round for a drink.'''

“And he replied, ‘I'm not leavin' it.' Now, suppose somebody overheard that conversation—”

“They wouldn't know it was money,” interposed Mr Hardcastle.

“They might think it was something valuable, all the same,” replied Crook, “and they might—if they knew that he was treasurer of the Slate Club—even guess that it was money.”

“That's true,” admitted Mr Hardcastle. “Well?”

“Suppose the person who overheard whistled up at the window after Mr Jenks had left, and, concealing himself, went on whistling till Jim Parkins came down? It would be easy—Jim Parkins being a small man—to knock him on the head, slip up to his room, and run off with the money. And if Jim came to just as the thief was getting away, he would probably chase him.”

“He would,” agreed his listeners.

“Then my theory is that Jim chased the thief to Shooter's Wood, the thief trying unsuccessfully to shake him off. When they came to the stream, they turned up along the banks, and at last Jim caught his man, and managed in the struggle to get the money back. But he was killed the next minute, as I've told you.”

“Yes, but you ain't told us 'oo killed 'im!” exclaimed Mr Jenks.

“I am coming to that,” answered Crook slowly. “It was a man on whose boots I saw traces of the red mud that led me to Shooter's Wood. It was a man who, while I was speaking to him, whistled at one of my remarks, and put an idea into my head—an idea which, in itself, might not have been worth considering, but which
was
worth considering coupled with the red mud.

“The man lives opposite the window of Jim's bedroom, so might easily have overheard the conversation. And he left his finger-marks both on the envelope you are now looking at, and also, I imagine, on the locked drawer he was so anxious to prize open this morning—knowing that he would find nothing in it.”

“You mean Ted Blake?” ejaculated Mr Hardcastle.

“Ted Blake killed Jim Parkins,” responded Crook. “His enthusiasm when searching Jim's room this morning was merely an obvious and clumsy attempt to divert possible suspicion from himself as far as he could.”

“Ted Blake!” repeated Mr Hardcastle, while Mr Jenks murmured, “I never did like that feller, not since 'e broke my toy windmill an' refoosed to pay for the mendin'. ”

“Can you arrest a man on that?” demanded Mr Hardcastle suddenly. “It's all what you call circumstantial.”

“The evidence is circumstantial, but it's strong,” replied the detective. “However, Blake himself will supply the final proof. I called at the police station on my way back, and a couple of men are concealed near the dead man's body at this moment. An empty envelope has been substituted for this one. The murderer of Jim Parkins will return for that envelope, when he thinks it is safe enough.”

“Lord above us!” muttered Mr Jenks. “Ain't detectives wun'erful?”

Crook laughed.

“And now, I think, my work here is done,” he said, “excepting for your check, Mr Hardcastle. Mr Jenks has got his money back, and the sharing can take place tomorrow, as arranged. So—”

Crook took the check from his pocket, but Mr Hardcastle waved it away.

“I don't want it, I don't it!” he exclaimed. “Jim saved our money for us, didn't he? Well, then—I reckon he's earned that for his sister.”

***

Ted Blake went alone into Shooter's Wood that night; but he did not come out alone.

The Necklace of Pearls

Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893–1957) was one of the outstanding exponents of Golden Age detective fiction, and remains celebrated for the creation of Lord Peter Wimsey, the aristocratic sleuth who began life almost as a caricature, but was portrayed in greater depth as Sayers' literary ambition grew. The last novel in which he appeared was
Busman's Honeymoon
, published in 1937, but since 1998, Jill Paton Walsh (a distinguished writer once shortlisted for the Booker Prize) has produced four well-received Wimsey novels with the blessing of the Sayers estate; there could be no better demonstration of the continued popularity of Lord Peter.

Sayers was a gifted writer, who in later life devoted herself to translating Dante and writing theological work, such as the radio play cycle
The Man Born to Be King
, rather than detective fiction. Her short stories are less well known than her novels, but “The Necklace of Pearls”, which appeared in the collection
Hangman's Holiday
, is an enjoyable spin on the seasonal mystery.

***

Sir Septimus Shale was accustomed to assert his authority once in the year and once only. He allowed his young and fashionable wife to fill his house with diagrammatic furniture made of steel; to collect advanced artists and anti-grammatical poets; to believe in cocktails and relativity and to dress as extravagantly as she pleased; but he did insist on an old-fashioned Christmas. He was a simple-hearted man, who really liked plum-pudding and cracker mottoes, and he could not get it out of his head that other people, “at bottom”, enjoyed these things also. At Christmas, therefore, he firmly retired to his country house in Essex, called in the servants to hang holly and mistletoe upon the cubist electric fittings; loaded the steel sideboard with delicacies from Fortnum & Mason; hung up stockings at the heads of the polished walnut bedsteads; and even, on this occasion only, had the electric radiators removed from the modernist grates and installed wood fires and a Yule log. He then gathered his family and friends about him, filled them with as much Dickensian good fare as he could persuade them to swallow, and, after their Christmas dinner, set them down to play “Charades” and “Clumps” and “Animal, Vegetable and Mineral” in the drawing-room, concluding these diversions by “Hide-and-Seek” in the dark all over the house. Because Sir Septimus was a very rich man, his guests fell in with this invariable programme, and if they were bored, they did not tell him so.

Another charming and traditional custom which he followed was that of presenting to his daughter Margharita a pearl on each successive birthday—this anniversary happening to coincide with Christmas Eve. The pearls now numbered twenty, and the collection was beginning to enjoy a certain celebrity, and had been photographed in the Society papers. Though not sensationally large—each one being about the size of a marrowfat pea—the pearls were of very great value. They were of exquisite colour and perfect shape and matched to a hair's-weight. On this particular Christmas Eve, the presentation of the twenty-first pearl had been the occasion of a very special ceremony. There was a dance and there were speeches. On the Christmas night following, the more restricted family party took place, with the turkey and the Victorian games. There were eleven guests, in addition to Sir Septimus and Lady Shale and their daughter, nearly all related or connected to them in some way: John Shale, a brother, with his wife and their son and daughter Henry and Betty; Betty's fiancé, Oswald Truegood, a young man with parliamentary ambitions; George Comphrey, a cousin of Lady Shale's, aged about thirty and known as a man about town; Lavinia Prescott, asked on George's account; Joyce Trivett, asked on Henry Shale's account; Richard and Beryl Dennison, distant relations of Lady Shale, who lived a gay and expensive life in town on nobody precisely knew what resources; and Lord Peter Wimsey, asked, in a touching spirit of unreasonable hope, on Margharita's account. There were also, of course, William Norgate, secretary to Sir Septimus, and Miss Tomkins, secretary to Lady Shale, who had to be there because, without their calm efficiency, the Christmas arrangements could not have been carried through.

Dinner was over—a seemingly endless succession of soup, fish, turkey, roast beef, plum-pudding, mince-pies, crystallized fruit, nuts and five kinds of wine, presided over by Sir Septimus, all smiles, by Lady Shale, all mocking deprecation, and by Margharita, pretty and bored, with the necklace of twenty-one pearls gleaming softly on her slender throat. Gorged and dyspeptic and longing only for the horizontal position, the company had been shepherded into the drawing-room and set to play “Musical Chairs” (Miss Tomkins at the piano), “Hunt the Slipper” (slipper provided by Miss Tomkins), and “Dumb Crambo” (costumes by Miss Tomkins and Mr William Norgate). The back drawing-room (for Sir Septimus clung to these old-fashioned names) provided an admirable dressing-room, being screened by folding doors from the large drawing-room in which the audience sat on aluminium chairs, scrabbling uneasy toes on a floor of black glass under the tremendous illumination of electricity reflected from a brass ceiling.

It was William Norgate who, after taking the temperature of the meeting, suggested to Lady Shale that they should play at something less athletic. Lady Shale agreed and, as usual, suggested bridge. Sir Septimus, as usual, blew the suggestion aside.

“Bridge? Nonsense! Nonsense! Play bridge every day of your lives. This is Christmas time. Something we can all play together. How about ‘Animal, Vegetable and Mineral'?”

This intellectual pastime was a favourite with Sir Septimus; he was rather good at putting pregnant questions. After a brief discussion, it became evident that this game was an inevitable part of the programme. The party settled down to it, Sir Septimus undertaking to “go out” first and set the thing going.

Presently they had guessed among other things Miss Tomkins' mother's photograph, a gramophone record of “I want to be happy” (much scientific research into the exact composition of records, settled by William Norgate out of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
), the smallest stickleback in the stream at the bottom of the garden, the new planet Pluto, the scarf worn by Mrs Dennison (very confusing, because it was not silk, which would be animal, or artificial silk, which would be vegetable, but made of spun glass—mineral, a very clever choice of subject), and had failed to guess the Prime Minister's wireless speech—which was voted not fair, since nobody could decide whether it was animal by nature or a kind of gas. It was decided that they should do one more word and then go on to “Hide-and-Seek”. Oswald Truegood had retired into the back room and shut the door behind him while the party discussed the next subject of examination, when suddenly Sir Septimus broke in on the argument by calling to his daughter:

“Hullo, Margy! What have you done with your necklace?”

“I took it off, Dad, because I thought it might get broken in ‘Dumb Crambo'. It's over here on this table. No, it isn't. Did you take it, mother?”

“No, I didn't. If I'd seen it, I should have. You are a careless child.”

“I believe you've got it yourself, Dad. You're teasing.”

Sir Septimus denied the accusation with some energy. Everybody got up and began to hunt about. There were not many places in that bare and polished room where a necklace could be hidden. After ten minutes' fruitless investigation, Richard Dennison, who had been seated next to the table where the pearls had been placed, began to look rather uncomfortable.

“Awkward, you know,” he remarked to Wimsey.

At this moment, Oswald Truegood put his head through the folding-doors and asked whether they hadn't settled on something by now, because he was getting the fidgets.

This directed the attention of the searchers to the inner room. Margharita must have been mistaken. She had taken it in there, and it had got mixed up with the dressing-up clothes somehow. The room was ransacked. Everything was lifted up and shaken. The thing began to look serious. After half an hour of desperate energy it became apparent that the pearls were nowhere to be found.

“They must be somewhere in these two rooms, you know,” said Wimsey. “The back drawing-room has no door and nobody could have gone out of the front drawing-room without being seen. Unless the windows—”

No. The windows were all guarded on the outside by heavy shutters which it needed two footmen to take down and replace. The pearls had not gone out that way. In fact, the mere suggestion that they had left the drawing-room at all was disagreeable. Because—because—

It was William Norgate, efficient as ever, who coldly and boldly faced the issue.

“I think, Sir Septimus, it would be a relief to the minds of everybody present if we could all be searched.”

Sir Septimus was horrified, but the guests, having found a leader, backed up Norgate. The door was locked, and the search was conducted—the ladies in the inner room and the men in the outer.

Nothing resulted from it except some very interesting information about the belongings habitually carried about by the average man and woman. It was natural that Lord Peter Wimsey should possess a pair of forceps, a pocket lens and a small folding foot-rule—was he not a Sherlock Holmes in high life? But that Oswald Truegood should have two liver-pills in a screw of paper and Henry Shale a pocket edition of
The Odes of Horace
was unexpected. Why did John Shale distend the pockets of his dress-suit with a stump of red sealing-wax, an ugly little mascot and a five-shilling piece? George Comphrey had a pair of folding scissors, and three wrapped lumps of sugar, of the sort served in restaurants and dining-cars—evidence of a not uncommon form of kleptomania; but that the tidy and exact Norgate should burden himself with a reel of white cotton, three separate lengths of string and twelve safety-pins on a card seemed really remarkable till one remembered that he had superintended all the Christmas decorations. Richard Dennison, amid some confusion and laughter, was found to cherish a lady's garter, a powder-compact and half a potato; the last-named, he said, was a prophylactic against rheumatism (to which he was subject), while the other objects belonged to his wife. On the ladies' side, the more striking exhibits were a little book on palmistry, three invisible hair-pins and a baby's photograph (Miss Tomkins); a Chinese trick cigarette-case with a secret compartment (Beryl Dennison); a
very
private letter and an outfit for mending stocking-ladders (Lavinia Prescott); and a pair of eyebrow tweezers and a small packet of white powder, said to be for headaches (Betty Shale). An agitating moment followed the production from Joyce Trivett's handbag of a small string of pearls—but it was promptly remembered that these had come out of one of the crackers at dinner-time, and they were, in fact, synthetic. In short, the search was unproductive of anything beyond a general shamefacedness and the discomfort always produced by undressing and re-dressing in a hurry at the wrong time of the day.

It was then that somebody, very grudgingly and haltingly, mentioned the horrid word “Police”. Sir Septimus, naturally, was appalled by the idea. It was disgusting. He would not allow it. The pearls must be somewhere. They must search the rooms again. Could not Lord Peter Wimsey, with his experience of—er—mysterious happenings, do something to assist them?

“Eh?” said his lordship. “Oh, by Jove, yes—by all means, certainly. That is to say, provided nobody supposes—eh, what? I mean to say, you don't know that I'm not a suspicious character, do you, what?”

Lady Shale interposed with authority.

“We don't think
anybody
ought to be suspected,” she said, “but, if we did, we'd know it couldn't be you. You know
far
too much about crimes to want to commit one.”

“All right,” said Wimsey. “But after the way the place has been gone over—” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Yes, I'm afraid you won't be able to find any footprints,” said Margharita. “But we may have overlooked something.”

Wimsey nodded.

“I'll try. Do you all mind sitting down on your chairs in the outer room and staying there. All except one of you—I'd better have a witness to anything I do or find. Sir Septimus—you'd be the best person, I think.”

He shepherded them to their places and began a slow circuit of the two rooms, exploring every surface, gazing up to the polished brazen ceiling and crawling on hands and knees in the approved fashion across the black and shining desert of the floors. Sir Septimus followed, staring when Wimsey stared, bending with his hands upon his knees when Wimsey crawled, and puffing at intervals with astonishment and chagrin. Their progress rather resembled that of a man taking out a very inquisitive puppy for a very leisurely constitutional. Fortunately, Lady Shale's taste in furnishing made investigation easier; there were scarcely any nooks or corners where anything could be concealed.

They reached the inner drawing-room, and here the dressing-up clothes were again minutely examined, but without result. Finally, Wimsey lay down flat on his stomach to squint under a steel cabinet which was one of the very few pieces of furniture which possessed short legs. Something about it seemed to catch his attention. He rolled up his sleeve and plunged his arm into the cavity, kicked convulsively in the effort to reach farther than was humanly possible, pulled out from his pocket and extended his folding foot-rule, fished with it under the cabinet and eventually succeeded in extracting what he sought.

It was a very minute object—in fact, a pin. Not an ordinary pin, but one resembling those used by entomologists to impale extremely small moths on the setting-board. It was about three-quarters of an inch in length, as fine as a very fine needle, with a sharp point and a particularly small head.

“Bless my soul!” said Sir Septimus. “What's that?”