Chapter XIII

Wilson pondered on that last piece of information as he made his way to the river. So that was Nicholas Hanborough, senior partner of Warden, Hanborough & Meston; and he was with the party from the Grange, and he was sitting next Sylvia Meston, having ousted from that place the blue-eyed explorer, who would obviously have given much to fill it. This, Wilson thought, required reflection. Suppose Hanborough were in love with Sylvia, and suppose he, the senior partner, had been the real defaulter in that financial business. For, in spite of his caution to Michael, Wilson was not at all disposed to believe that young Warden was the villain of that piece--though, of course, appearances might be deceptive. But Hanborough, who was, it seemed, an habitué of the Grange, might well find himself pressed for money, and if Meston were not only on his track, but also were the husband of the woman he loved--well, there was motive enough for a considerable crime. But, in that case, why put a private detective on his own track? “Ropes of sand!” said Wilson reprovingly to himself. “I don’t even know that Meston was on the track of anything. No use conjecturing without more evidence.”

At the bridge he found the discreet Collins with a boat and a fishing-rod which several officious urchins were instructing him how to manage, and climbed quickly in. Collins, who had been enlisted by Colonel Lockwood specially from another village, was not very well up in either the physical or the social topography of the place; and though Wilson, in the intervals of peering over the bows to look for any patch of weed which might have caught his corpse, made various attempts to elicit information about his possible suspects, he met with little success.

As to Nicholas Hanborough, he could find out no more than that he was a frequent visitor at the Grange, free with his money, and pretty well liked in the neighbourhood, though his antecedents were a matter of doubt. He had been partner of old Warden ten or a dozen years, having come originally from London; and he was accepted by the Grange rather than the county. But the county and the Grange, Wilson surmised, were apt to differ in their judgment of people.

Their progress was slow, for as soon as they had got a reasonable distance above the Old Malting House, Wilson insisted on examining the left bank as well as the bed of the stream. “I’ll do the other bank myself on foot,” he said, “from the tow-path. But it doesn’t look as though it would be very easy to get along here.”

“No, sir,” Collins agreed. The left bank was sedgy and sodden and full of holes, and the trees, which seemed to hold a good deal of water in their roots, grew thick and close to the edge. There was no sign of a track near the waterside. “But it wouldn’t be very easy for any one to have a struggle, or get a dead body down to the water, either, without leaving pretty clear marks. The ground’s very spongy still, you see. It doesn’t look to me as though it ever dried.”

“That’s true,” Wilson agreed, prodding a patch of sedge with his boat-hook. “The body could have caught in half a dozen places just under the bank, but I haven’t seen anywhere it could have got in. Well, we must just carry on.”

They carried on for a long while, patiently searching the bank, until a bend of the river brought them in sight of the old bridge which Colonel Lockwood had mentioned.

“This is the first possible place on the left-hand bank,” Wilson said. “I think I’ll just get out and have a look at it. Is it much used, do you know?”

“Not very much, sir, I think,” Collins replied. “It’s not safe for heavy traffic, and it isn’t really much more than a cut between the Grange and Sir Felix Lewis’s place.”

Wilson climbed out and surveyed the bank. It did not contain many indications of any kind, and certainly no signs of a struggle or of the dragging down of a corpse to the waterside. As he crossed the roadway, with a view to examining the farther side, his eye was caught by the tracks of a small car coming and going. “Of course,” he reflected, “if the murder took place at some distance from the river, a small car would be very handy to run the body down to the waterside. Still, there’s no particular reason why they should take him across the bridge, and this car certainly crossed it.” In the midst of these reflections he happened to raise his eyes and glance across the bridge to the farther bank, and his whole figure immediately stiffened with interest.

“I think,” he said, “we’ll just have a look at the tracks of that car. Of course, the odds are that it may have nothing to do with us; but it seems to have passed at about the right time--not long after the last rain fell.”

“Yes, sir.” Collins followed in stolid surprise, which would have been mitigated had he been aware of the object of Wilson’s attention. This was a tree, which, when he had looked up, he had noticed growing on the farther bank. This tree grew straight up for about four or five feet, and then shot out at right angles to the trunk an abrupt limb which continued for five or six feet horizontally without branching in any way. Had a natural gallows been desired, a better one could scarcely have been found, and just overhanging the water too, which would swallow up the corpse immediately it was cut down and bear it along to the Old Malting House. Decidedly, Wilson thought, this tree, standing at the first firm crossing of the river, had got to be investigated; and on the way he might as well keep track of the car.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to a building on the opposite bank, just by the tree. “A boathouse?”

“Boat and summerhouse mixed, sir,” Collins replied. “’Tis on Sir Felix Lewis’s property. Do you want to look at it, sir?”

“May as well,” said Wilson. “But I’ll just see what happened to the car first.” By this time Collins had tied up the boat, and joined him on the bridge. “You see it turned off the road here, just by the summerhouse, and stopped. It stopped some time, too--you can see that the wheels sank in pretty deeply. They must have had quite a job getting it out again.”

“They, sir?” Collins inquired. “Was there more than one?”

“It looks so,” said Wilson, “by the tracks. See here”--he pointed--“these marks were almost certainly made by people getting out of the car. And there are two of them, at least. That’s a man’s foot, size ten. And there’s the mark of a woman’s high-heeled shoe--I can’t see any print of the whole foot.”

“They don’t look much like a struggle, sir,” Collins, who had been following with enormous interest his first experience of tracking, observed. “If they were connected with this affair.”

“They don’t,” Wilson admitted. “Not in the least. Nor was one of them carrying a heavy weight. I dare say they’ve really nothing to do with us. However, we may as well finish them off. They went into the boathouse, it appears.” He followed suit. “Confound it! too many people have been in this boathouse. I shouldn’t have called it a particularly nice place to sit, would you? Dark and damp and probably earwiggy. Yet somebody’s been smoking cigarettes all over the place.”

“Any particular kind, sir?” Collins asked.

“Gold Flake, naturally! This habit of smoking cheap cigarettes is most deplorable. One cannot arrive at any conclusions nowadays from a man’s cigarette-ends--not even that they are a man’s. This, however, is a little more distinctive.” Wilson picked up a bright purple cigarette-tip. “Silk-tipped, scented Turkish. A nasty kind of cigarette, but, fortunately, not quite as common as the other. Are there any more of them?”

“Several, sir,” said Collins, who had been scavenging. “And here’s one that looks different, just outside the door.”

“It _is_ different,” said Wilson. “That’s a Woodbine. That does tell us something about the smoker’s class, at all events. What is called the gentry doesn’t smoke Woodbines. Let’s look round the outside. There may be some more. Hullo! What’s that?”

In the wood behind the boathouse a sudden rustling had sounded. Both men sprang towards the back, but only reached it in time to see a ragged figure leap apparently out of the undergrowth and make a dash for the road leading away from the river.

“Hi, you there! Come back!” shouted Collins, and plunged heavily after him. But the figure only ran the faster; and in a few seconds Collins came back, hot and cursing.

“He’s too quick for me, sir,” he explained apologetically. “Like his darned sauce, hiding there and listening.”

“Do you know him, then?” Wilson asked.

“All our people do,” was the reply. “He’s Jerry Machin, regular tramp, beggar, and sneak-thief, always up for poaching or vagrancy. Perfect nuisance he is hereabouts; but he’s got a sharp tongue in his head, and his sauce often gets him half a crown or so. I suppose he’s been camping on Sir Felix’s property, free of charge; and that’s why he made off. Yes, here’s his bed, you see, all complete.” He indicated an elaborate nest of straw and dried leaves which had been piled up against the back of the boathouse. “Here’s his supper--pinched, I’ll bet. He left in a mighty hurry.”

“And here’s his after-lunch smoke,” said Wilson, picking it up. “He’s our consumer of Woodbines, I’m afraid. But he doesn’t appear to have gone inside the boathouse. That was reserved for the use of the Gold Flakes and the scented Turks--at least, I don’t see any trace of any other cigarettes. I’ll just have one more look round.”

He went back into the boathouse, and noted that the two smokers appeared to have sat side by side in one corner for some time, judging by the number of cigarettes they had consumed. From the rather faint marks of their feet on the floor he concluded that they were probably, though not quite certainly, the same pair who had arrived from the car; and he found adhering to a splinter a small piece of green silk, presumably from a woman’s dress.

Going round again to the outside of the boathouse, his attention was caught by what appeared to be the signs of some one having stood a fair time in the long grass close by it. No footmarks were visible; but the grass and earth had been heavily pressed down. And the conjecture was confirmed by the discovery of a shred of grey tweed caught on a projecting nail in the boathouse wall. There was nothing very remarkable in that, of course; the only curious thing was that just by the spot where the man (if it were a man) had stood, there was a large knot-hole in the boathouse wall, a little more than five feet above the ground. And, on approaching his face to the knot-hole, Wilson found that it was immediately behind the place where he had conjectured that his two smokers were sitting. Had there been a conversation in the boathouse to which some one had listened outside, and had that some one, perhaps, waited for the man in the boathouse to come out, and then struck him down? In that case, was it Meston who was in the boathouse? and, if so, who was with him? His wife? But having regard to the conditions of the Meston ménage, it seemed an odd rendezvous, and an oddly long discussion. Besides, the two in the boathouse had probably, though not certainly, arrived in a car; and Meston did not seem to have had access to any car. Meston’s foot would, as far as Wilson had observed it, have fitted the male prints. But then, probably, so would a good many other people’s.

Was it possible, then, that it was not Meston who was inside the boathouse, but Meston who stood outside watching? And did the watched man then spring out suddenly and deal execution on the spy? There was no particular sign of a struggle in the grass; but, of course, Meston might have been taken by surprise. In that case, who was the man in the shed?--and was it Sylvia Meston with him? The green silk which his pocket-book contained might provide an answer to the last question; but Wilson realised that he was building an altogether extravagantly large hypothesis on the presence of the gallows-tree. Ten to one the footmarks had nothing whatever to do with the case; though, after examining them closely, he was inclined to believe that they must have been made almost immediately after the last rain--which had fallen, as he had ascertained, on the afternoon preceding Meston’s disappearance. Last of all he examined the tree, to see if there was any tell-tale trace left on it. But he could find nothing definite. About half-way along the straight limb there was a slight dip, resembling a saddle, where anything hanging from the limb would naturally have rested. At this point the bark was rather worn and rubbed, but there were no fibres of rope or any definite indications visible. However, the bough was certainly marked.

“Collins,” he asked his assistant, after standing a few minutes lost in thought--“Collins, can you get your people to catch this Machin for me? I want to talk to him.”

“I should think so, sir,” Collins replied. “His regular haunts are pretty well known. Do you think he had anything to do with it?”

“I’ve no idea. But _if_ there was anything out of the way happening here, he may have seen something of it. I should judge he’d been using this as his hotel for some time. Anyway, it’ll do no harm to ask him. A woman has been using this place as a rendezvous not so long ago, at least.”

“All right, sir,” Collins promised. “There’s some one in the wood, just by the tow-path, sir,” he added.

Wilson looked, and bit off an exclamation of annoyance. Not ten yards away, just in the shelter of the wood, and concealed by a peculiarly thick chestnut tree, sat Mr. Brandreth on a stump, with his hands on his knees, presumably admiring the view of the river. As Wilson approached, he came towards him, smiling.

“Good hunting, I trust, Superintendent,” he said. “It’s a nice day for sleuths, I should think.”

What a Jack-in-the-box the man was, Wilson reflected. How long had he been there, and how much had he seen or heard? Not that there was anything particularly private about the afternoon’s proceedings, but he did not wish to conduct all his investigations under the nose of so leaky a vessel as the little solicitor. “Do you often come this way?” he asked aloud.

“Oh, now and then,” Mr. Brandreth assured him. “It’s a pleasant enough walk. And I thought I might meet you.”

“Oh! Why, in particular?”

“Oh, I saw you going up-stream, and supposed you were after the place where Meston’s body--er--confided itself to the waters. And this is the first likely spot, of course. Had any luck?”

“Nothing to speak of,” said Wilson. If this were to go on, he reflected, he would soon get as irritable as Michael Prendergast.