The Female Detective (23 page)

The constable knew nothing about the rain, and I believe it was at this point, in spite of the shillings, that the officer began to show rustic signs of impatience.

I may add here that I found the rain had only ceased at three o'clock on the Tuesday morning. It was therefore clear that the body had been deposited between three and half-past five—
two hours and a-half
.

This discovery I made that same evening of my landlady, a most useful person.

Now, does it not strike the reader that three o'clock on a May morning, and when the morning had almost come, was an extraordinarily late hour at which to be poaching?

This indisputable fact, taken into consideration with the needlessness of the mask (for poachers do not wear masks), and the state of the clothes, to say nothing of the kind of clothes found on the deceased, led me to throw over Mr. Martoun's theory that the young squire had met his death in a poaching affray, or rather while out on a poaching expedition.

I took a little of the fluff from the clothes and carefully put it away in my pocket-book.

The last thing I examined was the barb which had caused the death.

And here I admit I was utterly foiled—completely, positively foiled. I had never seen anything of the kind before—never.

It was a very coarse iron barb, shaped something like a queen's broad arrow, only that the flanges widened from their point, so that each appeared in shape like the blade of a much-worn penknife. The shaft was irregular and perhaps even coarser than the rest of the work. The weapon was made of very poor iron, for I turned its point by driving it, not by any means heavily, against the frame of the window—to the intense disgust of the constable, whose exclamation, I remember thoroughly well, was “Woa.”

Now what did I gain by my visit to the constable? This series of suppositions:—

That the deceased was placed where he was found between three and half-past five a.m. on the Tuesday; that he was not killed from any result of a poaching expedition; and that he had visited a youngish woman named Frederica a few hours before death, and of whom he had received a handkerchief and possibly a mask.

The only troublesome point was the key, which, by the way, had been found in a small fob-pocket in the waist of the coat.

While taking my tea at the inn at which I had set down, I need not say I asked plenty of questions, and hearing a Mrs. Green frequently referred to, I surmised she was a busybody, and getting her address, as that of a pleasant body who let lodgings, I may at once add that that night I slept in the best room of the pleasant body's house.

She was the most incorrigible talker ever I encountered. Nor was she devoid of sharpness; indeed, with more circumspection than she possessed, or let me say, with ordinary circumspection, she would have made a good ordinary police-officer, and had she possessed that qualification I might have done something for her. As it was the idea could not be entertained for any part of a moment.

She was wonderful, this Mrs. Green.

You only had to put a question on any point, and she abandoned the subject in which she had been indulging, and sped away on a totally new tack.

She was ravenous to talk of the murder; for it was her foregone conclusion that murder had been committed.

In a few words, all the information afforded to this point, which has not arisen out of my own seeking, or came by copy from the county newspaper (and much of that information which is to follow) all proceeded from the same gushing source—Mrs. Green.

All I had to do was to put another question when I thought we had exhausted the previous one, and away she went again at score, and so we continued from seven to eleven. It was half-past eight for nine before she cleared away the long-since cold and sloppy tea things.

“And what has become of Mrs. Quinion?” I asked, in the course of this to me valuable entertainment on the part of Mrs. Green, throughout the whole of which she never asked me my business in these parts (though I felt quite sure so perfect a busybody was dying to know my affairs), because any inquiry would have called for a reply, and this was what she could not endure while I was willing to listen to her. Hence she chose the less of two evils.

“And what became of the girl?”

“What gal?”

“Dinah.”

“Dinah Yarton?”

“Yes. I believe that
was
her name.”

“Lor' bless 'ee! it's as good and as long as a blessed big book to tell 'ee all about Dinah Yarton. She left two days after, and they not having a bed for she at the Lamb and Flag, and I having a bed, her came here—the Lamb and Flag people always sending me their over beds, bless 'em, bless 'ee! and that's how I comes to know arl about it, bless 'ee, and the big box!”

[The box—now this was certainly what I did want Mrs. Green to come to. The reader will remember that I laid some stress upon the girl's frequent reference to the trunk.]

“Bless 'ee! the big box caused arl the row, because Mrs. Quinion said she were a fool to have been frightened by a big box; but so Dinah would be, and so her did, being probable in the nex' county at this time, at Little Pocklington, where her mother lives making lace, and her father a farmer, and where her was born—Dinah, and not her mother—on the 1st o'April, 1835, being now twenty years old. What art thee doing? bless 'ee!”

[I was making a note of Little Pocklington.]

Nor will I here make any further verbatim notes of Mrs. Green's remarks, but use them as they are required in my own way, and as in actuality really I did turn them to account.

I determined to see the girl at once; that is, after I had had a night's rest. And therefore next morning, after carefully seeing my box and bag were locked, I made a quick breakfast, and sallied out. Reaching the station, there was Mrs. Green. She had obviously got the start of me by crossing Goose Green fields, as in fact she told me.

She said she thought I must have dropped that, and had come to see.

“That” was a purse so old that it was a curiosity.

“Bless 'ee!” she says, “isn't yourn? Odd, beant it? But, bless 'ee! ye'll have to wait an hour for a train. There beant a train to anywhere for arl an hour.”

“Then I'll take a walk,” said I.

“Shall I come, and tark pleasant to 'ee?” asked Mrs. Green.

“No,” I replied; “I've some business to transact.”

I had an hour to spare, and remembering that I had seen the things at Higgins's by a failing evening light, I thought I would again visit that worthy, and make a second inspection.

It was perhaps well I did so.

Not that I discovered anything of further importance, but the atom of novelty of which I made myself master, helped to confirm me in my belief that the deceased had visited a young woman, probably a lady, a very short time before his death.

Higgins, a saddler by trade, was not at all delighted at my re-appearance, and really I was afraid I should have to state what I was in order to get my way, and then civilly bully him into secrecy. But happily his belief in me as a mild mad woman overcame his surliness, and so with the help of a few more shillings I examined once more the clothes found on the unfortunate young squire.

And now, in the full blazing spring morning sunlight, I saw what had missed my view on the previous evening. This was nothing less than a bright crimson scrap of silk braid, such as ladies use in prosecuting their embroidery studies.

This bit of braid had been wound round and round a breast button, and then tied in a natty bow at the top.

“She is a lady,” I thought; “and she was resting her head against his breast when she tied that bit of braid there. She is innocent, I should think, or she never would have done such a childish action as that.”

Higgins put away the dead youth's clothes with a discontented air.

“Look ye yere—do'ee think ye'l want 'em wuncet more?”

“No.”

“Wull, if ee do, 'ee wunt have 'un.”

“Oh, very well,” I said, and went back to the station.

Of course there was Mrs. Green on the watch, though in the morning I had seen about the house symptoms of the day being devoted to what I have heard comic Londoners describe as “a water party”—in other words, a grand wash.

That wash Mrs. Green had deserted.

“Bless 'ee, I'm waitin' for a dear fren!”

“Oh, indeed, Mrs. Green.”

“Shall I take ticket for 'ee, dear?”

“Yes, if you like. Take it for Stokeley,” said I.

“Four mile away,” says Mrs. Green. “
I've
got a fren' at Stokeley. I wounds if your fren' be
my
fren'! Who
be
your fren', bless 'ee?”

“Mrs. Blotchley.”

“What, her as lives near th' peump?” (pump)

“Yes.”

“Oh, I don't know
she
.”

It seemed to me Mrs. Green was awed—I never learnt by what, because as I never knew Mrs. Blotchley, and dropped upon her name by chance, and indeed never visited Stokeley, why Green had all the benefit of the discovery.

“And, Mrs. Green, if I am not home by nine, do not sit up for me.”

“
Oh!
—goin' maybe to sleep at
her
hoose?”

“Very likely.”

“
Oh!
”

And as Mrs. Green here dropped me a curtsey I have remained under the impression that Mrs. B. was a lady of consequence whose grandeur Mrs. Green saw reflected upon me.

I have no doubt the information she put at once in circulation helped to screen the actual purpose for which I had arrived at Tram from leaking out.

When the train reached Stokeley I procured another ticket on to Little Pocklington, and reached that town about two in the afternoon. It was not more than sixty miles from Tram.

The father of this Dinah Yarton was one of those small few-acre farmers who throughout the country are gradually but as certainly vanishing.

I may perhaps at once say that the poor girl Dinah had no less than three fits over the cross-examination to which I submitted her, and here (to the honour of rustic human nature) let it be recorded that actually I had to use my last resource, and show myself to be a police-officer, by the production of my warrant in the presence of the Little Pocklington constable, who was brought into the affair, before I could overcome the objections of the girl's father. He with much justifiable reason urged that the “darned” business had already half-killed his wench, and he would be “darned” if I should altogether send her out of the “warld.”

As I have said, the unhappy girl had three fits, and I have no doubt the family were heartily glad when I had turned my back upon the premises.

The unhappy young woman had to make twenty struggles before she could find one reply.

Here I need not repeat her evidence to that point past which it was not carried when she stood before the coroner and jury, but I will commence from that point.

“Dinah,” I inquired in a quiet tone, and I believe the fussiness betrayed by the girl's mother tended as much to the fits as the girl's own nervousness—“Dinah, what was all that about the big box?”

“Darn the box,” said the mother.

And here it was that the unfortunate girl took her second fit.

“There, she's killed my Dinah now,” said the old woman, and it must be confessed Dinah was horribly convulsed, and indeed looked frightful in the extreme. The poor creature was quite an hour fighting with the fit, and when she came to and opened her eyes, the first object they met made her shut them again, for that object was myself.

However, I had my duty to perform, and therein lies the excuse for my torture.

“What—oh—o-o-oh wha-at did thee say?”

“What about the big box?”

“Doa noa.” [This was the mode in those parts of saying “I do not know.”]

“Where was it?”

“In th' hall.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Doa noa.”

“How long had it been there?”

“Sin' the day afore.”

“Who brought it?”

“Doa noa.”

“Was it a man?”

“Noa.”

“What then?”

“Two men.”

“How did they come?”

“They coomed in a great big waggoon.”

“And did they bring the box in the waggon!”

“Yoa.” [This already I knew meant “Yes.”]

“And they left the box at the hall?”

“Yoa.”

“What then?”

“Whoa?” [This I guessed meant “What.”]

“What did they say?”

“Zed box wur for squoire.”

“Did they both carry it?”

“Yoa.”

“How?”

“Carefool loike.” [Here there were symptoms of another convulsion.]

“What became of the big box?”

“Doa noa.”

“Did they come for it again?”

“Doa noa.”

“Is it there now?”

“Noa.”

“Then it went away again?”

“Yoa.”

“You did not see it taken away?”

“Noa.”

“Then how do you know it is not there now?”

“Doa noa.

“But you say it is not at the hall—how do you know that?”

“Mrs. Quanyan (Quinion) told I men had been for it.”

“When was that?”

“After I'd been garne to bed.”

“Was it there the next morning?”

“Whoa?”

“Was it there the morning when they found the young squire dead outside the door?”

And now “Diney,” as her mother called her, plunged into the third fit, and in the early throes of that convulsion I was forced to leave her, for her father, an honest fellow, told me to leave his house, “arficer or no arficer,” and that if I did not do so he would give me what he called a “sta-a-art.”

Under the circumstances I thought that perhaps it was wise to go, and did depart accordingly.