Chapter II

Well-lined with eggs and bacon and marmalade, Michael Prendergast walked out of the inn into the market-place, and prepared to take a constitutional. He strolled in a leisurely way, basking in the lovely morning, along the High Street, which sloped slightly up to the bridge over the river, to the cross-roads, where diverged the road to Loring Grange, the home of the chief of the local gentry. He ambled gently in and out of the chestnut trees; stopped to pat a nondescript dog which was too contented already to make more than the most meagre of responses; lounged into the barber’s and bought some shaving-soap for no particular reason; and was regaled in return with selections of the morning’s gossip. There had been a railway accident somewhere in America--“terrible, how many them foreign railways kill.” The wireless last night had given some advice to farmers, which the farmers of Tollesbury neighbourhood very much resented:

“His wife and he’s got fourteen kids,
But a can’t keep flies off tarmits,”

the barber quoted scornfully. Mr. Wallace Burden had run over a pig at South Meadon, and the owner was going up to the Grange to demand compensation--“His girl wants to get on films, so she does,” etc., etc. Michael stayed in the shop until he felt well-soaked, and then wandered on up one of the side-streets, where the pleasantest old houses stood, until he came to that belonging to a Mr. Brandreth, an old retired solicitor, whose habit of dropping in to the Old Malting House for a pipe and a gossip had thrown him once or twice in Michael’s way. Michael had half intended to stop and chat; he found old Brandreth an amusing character in his way, and he had some thoughts of making judicious inquiries about Mark Warden’s firm. But when he got to the lawyer’s gate he saw the latter in conversation with so unprepossessing a man that he changed his mind, and walked on into the country, idly wondering what Brandreth could have in common with a man who looked like the more disreputable type of city tout. Even his bowler, Michael thought, apart from his loud check tweeds and his roving eye, would have induced any one to give him a wide berth. But Brandreth appeared to be having quite a chat with him. “Still,” Michael thought, “I suppose solicitors, even ex-solicitors, must come into contact with a good many shady customers”; and he remembered vaguely having heard his landlord mention that Brandreth was something of a thorn in the side of the local bench, as he had an incurable propensity for taking up the causes of those accused of crimes, which the said bench held most unpardonable. “I wouldn’t take up that chap’s case, though, not if you gave me a thousand pounds,” said Michael to himself. “However, the old boy’s tastes aren’t any business of mine.”

His walk led him in a half-circle round the outskirts of the little town, and eventually back to the far end of the bridge near by his own inn. It was not yet quite time for lunch, and as, in accordance with principle, he had duly sampled the bitters provided by the two pubs which he had passed, he saw no reason to waste the sunshine by going indoors. Instead, he sat down on a ledge of one of the stone embrasures, lit a pipe, and gave himself up to meditation; and what with the pipe, the sun, and the bitters, he became so nearly unconscious of his surroundings that, when a shout of “Hi, mister!” rent the air, he started up so abruptly that he almost lost his balance and fell in the river.

But the shout was not meant for him. It appeared to be meant for a rubicund man with a clay pipe in his mouth, who was standing almost at his elbow, staring down at a little steam-tug which was just about to pass under the bridge. With rather a sense of having made a fool of himself, Michael realised that he must have been fairly sound asleep to let the rubicund gentleman get so close to him without noticing, for when he sat down, neither he nor the tug had been in sight. As his senses slowly returned, he perceived that the shout had come from a man standing on the deck of the tug, which was pulling a couple of coal-barges down-stream.

“Eh?” said the man on the bridge, without removing his pipe from his mouth.

“Where be doctor?” shouted the man in the tug.

“Doctor’s up along Mrs. Clellan’s,” was the reply. “What’s the matter, Jarge? Been swallerin’ weeds?”

“Ain’t been swallerin’ nothin’,” Jarge replied, with a guffaw. “Bill’s gone an’ fished up a carpse for doctor.”

“Carpse! Holy Moses!” said the man on the bridge, and began to move in a lumbering fashion towards the scene of action. Michael followed him, his professional instincts fully awakened at the word.

“Eh? What’s that you say?” said a new voice, as the landlord of the Old Malting House strolled up to the bridge and leaned over.

“Carpse ’e’s fished up, ’e ’as,” said Jarge, obviously proud of his own importance. “You like to have a look at her, Mr. Wason? She came from along your place.”

“I’ll come down,” said the landlord. “Pull into the tow-path, will you? And you, Tommy”--catching hold of an urchin in the roadway--“get up along Mrs. Clellan’s and tell Doctor Kershaw he’s wanted here, will you? Some one’s fallen in the river. Look sharp, my lad.” The urchin was off at top speed almost before the words were out of his mouth, and Wason, with Michael and the man with the pipe, made his way rapidly down to the tow-path on the far side of the bridge, and stood there expectant, while with much puffing and blowing the tug put about and drew its train in to the bank.

“I’d better have a look at the body,” Michael said to Wason, “just in case Dr. Kershaw can’t be found. The poor fellow may not be dead. I’m a doctor,” he added for the benefit of the company. Jarge gave another loud guffaw.

“You can look at ’un and welcome,” he said. “Ain’t our private exhibition. But he’s dead enough, you’ll find. Been a-soaking for days, looks like. He’s in the tail-barge, thar. Bill!” A man who was squatting in the tail-barge looked up inquiringly. “Gent wants to see carpse. Says he’s a doctor,” he added.

“Let ’un,” said Bill, who seemed to be of a taciturn and incurious disposition; for he said nothing else, but sat and sucked at his pipe while Michael and Wason with some difficulty scrambled into the hindermost barge. The body lay on its face, covered with mud and slime.

“Well, _he’s_ dead enough,” said the landlord. “Not much for you there, sir.”

There was certainly no doubt that the man was dead, and had been in the water for some time. The clothes were sodden and besmirched, and the legs covered with mire and waterweed, though the upper part of the body was comparatively free.

“Give me a hand with him, will you?” said Michael, going down on his knees and beginning to turn the body over. Wason, looking as if he did not particularly relish the job, bent down and took hold; but as the body slowly turned over, and the swollen, discoloured face came into view, he gave an exclamation and all but let it fall back again.

“Good God! Why, it’s Mr. Meston!”

“What’s that, Sam?” With a bound of surprising agility, considering his bulk, the stout onlooker sprang into the barge, and gazed down at the corpse’s face.

“Holy Moses!” he said again.

Michael looked down at the body. Whether or no he would, unprompted, have recognised in that horrid misshapen thing his morose fellow-visitor, there was no doubt that the landlord was right. This was William Meston--dead. And how had he come by his death?

“Some one’ll have to tell his wife,” Wason was saying.

“Aye, that’s right,” said the rubicund gentleman. “_Somebody_ will.” For some reason this observation appeared to strike him as extremely humorous, for he gurgled and slapped his thigh several times. “_Somebody’ll_ have to tell her, eh? Lard, think o’ that there Meston a-going and getting hisself drarned! Insured for a tidy bit, too, I’ll be bound. Eh, Sam?”

“He’s been dead some time. Three or four days at least,” said Michael, looking up from his examination.

“Strikes me,” the landlord said reflectively, “as though he must just ’a’ walked off the tow-path into the river the minute he left the inn, and got drowned. Hasn’t paid his bill, neither, I don’t mind telling you.”

“Couldn’t ’a’ done that neither,” said the rubicund one, looking along the flat line of the tow-path, “not unless he’d had _a drop taken_. And _you’ve_ reason to know he never had, Sam.”

“That’s true. He wasn’t no good for trade, poor gentleman,” the landlord said. “Nevertheless there he is, fallen in.”

“Fallen in!” said the other scornfully. “Where’s your knowledge of yooman nature, Sam? Sooicide, that’s what it is. ’E done ’isself in, along of ’is wife’s goings-on at the Grange. It’s God’s judgment on the Scarlet Woman, that’s what it is.”

“Now, you shut up, Walter,” said the landlord. “It’s not decent, going on that way, and his body hardly fished up yet. There’s plenty of ways a man can fall into a river without being drunk. Lard, if you was to live along this river same as I do, you wouldn’t need to wonder the fool things folks can do, and they as sober as charches. What do you say, sir? Did he fall in? Though I suppose it isn’t hardly a medical point, so to speak?”

“It was sooicide,” Walter repeated obstinately. “Now, in the first place, ’e was drarned. You grant me that, eh?” He waved his pipe at the landlord to emphasise his argument.

“Oh, aye, I grant you that,” the latter replied.

“But that’s exactly what I don’t grant either of you,” Michael interrupted. With one ear on the dialogue, he had been making a hasty examination of the body. “He wasn’t drowned.”

Both his hearers gaped.

“Garn!” said Walter, indicating the corpse with his foot. “Tell me _that_ ain’t drarned?”

Wason approached nearer the corpse and scratched his head. “I don’t belong to London,” he said, “but I’ve seen drowned men, and I ain’t often seen a drowneder.”

“Oh, he’s been in the water all right,” Michael said, “if that’s what you mean. But----”

“What’s all this?” an educated voice interrupted in a sharp, impatient tone; and a man on a bicycle shot down the tow-path, and sprang on the barge, flinging the bicycle into the thistles. “What’s all this? And what are you all doing here?”

“It’s Mr. Meston, doctor,” Wason volunteered. “He’s drowned--at least----”

“Oh, is it?” Dr. Kershaw, if it was he, responded abruptly. “Well, that’s as may be. But it doesn’t tell me who all these other people are.”

“My name’s Prendergast,” said Michael. “I happened to be here when the body was found, and I came on board to see if there was anything to be done for him.” He produced his professional card, at which the other barely glanced before thrusting it away into a pocket.

“Well, my name’s Kershaw,” he said, without reciprocating the courtesy; “and this appears to be my business. I’m the police-surgeon hereabouts; and the man’s obviously dead. So I don’t think I need trouble you any longer, Dr. Prendergast.” He knelt down beside the body, but immediately gave an irritated twitch of his shoulders, like a man pestered with flies. “How the hell can I do my job, with half a hundred of you crowding round? Keep back, will you?”

Michael stepped back obediently, but only a little way, for he was very much interested in the result of Dr. Kershaw’s examination. The latter felt the man over rapidly, with long, nervous fingers.

“Where’d you find him?” he asked Bill, who had never moved from his seat.

“Up along thar,” Bill replied, taking his pipe from his mouth and pointing vaguely up-stream. “Long of Malting House Wharf. Something fouled t’ barges, an’ Jarge ’e said ’e seen a face looking up in water, and I hooked ’un up wi’ boat-hook. Darn near broke my arm, too,” said Bill in an injured tone.

“See, sir,” Jarge put in, “I was up forward, an’ first we hit summat, and then I seen ’er in the water; and there wasn’t ’ardly any way on, so we stopped a’most dead. And Bill could reach ’un, so I calls to him to haul ’un in.”

“Near broke my arm, too,” Bill repeated sourly.

“Whew-w!” the landlord of the Old Malting House whistled. “Right thar by my inn, did you? Why, it looks a’most as though he must have fallen in clean out of his own windows. The water’s deep thar, sir,” he said to the doctor, “and there’s nothing to climb out by.”

“It was sooicide,” said Walter firmly. “Threw ’isself out of window. That’s my view, doctor.”

Dr. Kershaw looked round with increased irritation. “Nobody asked your views, Hicks,” he said. “Here he is drowned. It’s the coroner’s job to say how or why. You go and tell Linton to hurry up with that stretcher.”

“Excuse me,” Michael, still rather sore at his summary dismissal, interrupted, “but are you sure he was drowned?”

Kershaw swung round fiercely at him. “What! _another_ of you!” he said. “This isn’t a public demonstration.”

“It looks to me,” Michael said, as mildly as he could manage, “as if the cause of death was not drowning but a broken neck. You can see his neck’s broken.”

The police doctor snorted. “Are you suggesting I don’t know my business? Of course I can see his neck’s broken.”

“Broke it when he fell, likely,” said the landlord.

“Just so,” said the doctor.

“Do you mean he hit his head?” Michael asked. “Is there a blow? I didn’t see----”

“I don’t know what there is or there isn’t, till I’ve had a proper look at him,” Kershaw snapped. “And, in any case, I don’t conduct examinations on the decks of barges. I do my work in the mortuary. Oh, there you are at last, Linton,” he said to a police-sergeant who had just appeared with two constables and a stretcher. “Get this body to the mortuary at once, will you? They say it’s Mr. Meston’s. These two men found it. I suppose you’ll make a note of where it was, and how they found it, won’t you? And somebody ought to take a message to Mrs. Meston up at the Grange. And you might clear this lot away. We don’t want people hanging about. If you’ll get the body to the mortuary quickly, I’ll have a look at it there. Oh, confound you, get out of the road!” He had leaped ashore and picked up his bicycle as he spoke, and the exclamation was directed to a crowd of sightseers, who were endeavouring to push their way along the tow-path. Foremost among them, Michael recognised the tout-like person whom he had last seen at Mr. Brandreth’s gate.

“For God’s sake,” said Kershaw to one of the constables, “clear this lot of gapers out!”

“Nah, then, get a move on, boys,” said the constable.

The tout-like person plucked at Kershaw’s sleeve. “Beg pardon, doctor,” he said in a voice that admirably fitted his clothes, “but did I understand you to say that was Mr. Meston’s body?”

“Why, do you know him?” Kershaw asked impatiently.

“No, but I’m very interested in his whereabouts,” the man replied, “--for reasons.”

“Well, if you don’t know him you’re no use here,” Kershaw said. “It’s none of my business to say who he was. I’m not the coroner. If you want to know who he was you’d better attend the inquest. I expect they’ll know his identity by then. Now, then, out of the way, all of you. I’m in a hurry.” And with a final curse he succeeded in pushing his bicycle through the crowd, and a moment later the bell was heard furiously ringing as he crossed the bridge.

“It _is_ Mr. Meston, though, all right,” said Wason to the discomfited inquirer. “You needn’t worry about that. It’s him.”

“Oh, indeed,” the man said, licking his lips. “And he’s dead, is he? How did he come to die, might I ask?”

“Well, now, that’s a bit of a puzzler, seemingly,” Wason said, beginning to assume a pontifical air. “You and me, seeing him come out of the water like that, we’d say he was drowned and no mistaking. But this gentleman,” indicating Michael, “he’s a doctor, and _he_ says he broke his neck. You’re quite sure he wasn’t drowned, aren’t you, sir?” he added.

“Quite’s a big word,” said Michael; “and I didn’t get much of a look at him. But I’m pretty sure it was the broken neck that killed him, and I shall be surprised if Dr. Kershaw doesn’t say the same when he’s finished his examination. But you needn’t spread this about, you know,” he said rather sharply to the man in the bowler, who was goggling at the information, “or you, Wason. I don’t want to find myself involved in a row with Dr. Kershaw, and, judging from his amiable manners, I should say he wouldn’t be slow in starting one.”

The landlord chuckled. “He’s a rough-tongued one, and no mistake. There’s plenty about’ll say the same. I should think he’d a touch of his liver this morning, though. I’ve not often seen him so sharp.”

“Sharp with me,” Michael muttered; “but not very sharp with the corpse.”

“Oh, he’s no fool, Dr. Kershaw,” Wason assured him.