Chapter XXXI

Wilson’s next moves were totally incomprehensible to Michael. Indeed, at first he thought his friend had gone mad. Dropping the Inspector, with only the barest of leave-takings, at the police-station, he ordered the chauffeur to drive to the bridge over the Toll, and stopped the car on the farther side. There he got out, and hurried down the slope leading down to the tow-path, just as Michael, nearly a week ago, had hurried to bring first aid to Mr. Meston’s corpse. There he stopped and surveyed the land.

“Look, Michael,” he said, pointing at a small building which stood a little way back from the tow-path, and perhaps two hundred yards up-stream, “that’s Joe Billings’s cottage. If you were coming to it from Kershaw’s house, which way would you go?”

“Why, along here, I suppose, would be the quickest. Unless there’s a path through those sheds,” said Michael. Immediately to their left, and covering most of the ground between Billings’s cottage and the bridge[2] was a patch of waste ground half filled with some derelict warehouses.

“No, there isn’t. You have to go quite a long way round by the road, and then down a cart-track. Yes, this is the way he must have come. And, mark you, it’s just here, or rather, just on the bridge, that your friend Warden met him, at 1.30, _coming back_ from the tow-path. But at that time, we know, he hadn’t been to Billings’s. What is more, he didn’t arrive there till nearly half an hour later. Where had he been? And, more important, what was he doing in that half-hour?”

“I don’t know,” said Michael. “I thought he’d been along the river, helping to murder Meston. If he hadn’t, I don’t know where he’d been. And what he was doing afterwards I haven’t an idea. Perhaps he really did go to fetch his appliances.”

“Perhaps. But on the whole I don’t think so. Let’s consider now what there is on the other side.” Michael looked across and saw nothing but the calm stuccoed side of the Old Malting House, with the reflections of the water chasing themselves about its base.

“Those two are the windows of Meston’s room, aren’t they?” Wilson said. “The one next them is passage, I fancy. Below, there appears to be only a tiny one. The wall hasn’t any windows that end. What is there below?”

“Billiard-room,” said Michael. “The tiny one is a boot-cupboard, or something, I think.”

“Just so. Quite so. See any traces of those piers?” Wilson asked, bending to look down into the water.

“No. But you wouldn’t, anyway, from this side. The reflection’s too strong, and there’s a little loose weed at the bottom. Besides, Bille said they were covered with mud.”

“That’s true. I think we’ll go and find Wason, and see if he can locate them for us. All right, driver, we shan’t need you any more.” And Wilson paid off the chauffeur, and led the way at a smart trot to the Old Malting House.

They found Wason without much difficulty, and with even less, drew him into conversation on the subject of the piers. “Thar’s only foundations left now and they mud-covered,” he said. “Ye’d never seen them without ye knew they were thar.”

Wilson asked exactly where they were, and received the information that one was directly below the first window of Meston’s room, and the other three or four yards up-stream. He made no comment, though Michael could tell that the answer had satisfied him, but began to put questions about the exact point in the river at which the body had turned up. Neither Michael nor the landlord, however, could recollect with sufficient accuracy to please him.

“Why don’t you ask Bill Sayers?” Wason said at last. “I reckon he’ll know, if any one does, seeing it was he fished carpse up.”

“Where can I find him, do you know?”

“As it happens, he’s in my bar this very moment. But he ain’t talkative. You’ll maybe have to have one with him.”

Two minutes later, having followed the landlord’s advice, Wilson was plying the uncommunicative mariner with questions. With considerable difficulty, he at last elicited that neither Bill nor Jarge, though they had been keeping a good look-out, had seen anything of the body until they actually felt it foul the tug. Then, as Jarge had said, the convoy had nearly stopped altogether, and Jarge, seeing the corpse’s face “way down in water,” had called to Bill to pull it out.

“What do you mean by ‘way down’?” Wilson asked. “Wasn’t the body floating?”

“Naw, she warn’t. She were three or four feet down, an’ I couldn’t ’ardly reach her. Caart under barge, likely,” said Bill.

“And then you pulled the body in with the boat-hook? Did you notice anything particular about it?” Wilson asked. “Did it seem heavy, for instance?”

Bill had found it heavy, and said so with sudden and uncharacteristic loquacity. It appeared that at the first attempts the corpse had declined to move at all, had, indeed, nearly pulled him overboard. “Thought I’d a-hooked barge,” he said. “She held on and she held on like mainland o’ Scotland. I sez to Jarge, me arms is a-going, I sez; then all of a sudden she comes away like, and I hauls her in.”

“As if it had suddenly come loose from something, eh?”

“That’s right, mister,” Jarge agreed. “Like a daisy, she come when she did.”

“Thank you. That’s what I wanted to know. Now can you tell me the exact spot where the body was floating?”

“That I can’t, mister, seeing ’twas under barge, and we was about mid-stream. But when I sees her, she was a-poking-up near side of barges, just along of Wason’s place, abouts. If ye’ll come through and look through th’ window, I’ll show ye the ’xact spot.”

Wilson came, and followed closely the indications given by Sayers’ grimy thumb. As far as he could see, the body had been found almost exactly above the first of the sunken piers.

“Thanks,” he said, dismissing Bill with suitable gratuities. “The next step,” he said to his other two hearers, “demands Colonel Lockwood’s presence. I think I’ll go up and find him. You stay about a bit, Wason. We may want you.”

“What do you want Lockwood to do?” Michael asked, as they went off.

“Drag the river,” was the answer.

“Why, there aren’t any more bodies there, are there?”

“I don’t anticipate finding any,” was all Wilson would say.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See endpaper map.