The Starvel Hollow Tragedy · Chapter 4 (2/2)

The landlord also approved of Oxley. Oxley would have his joke, if he was to be hung for it the next minute, but he was a very sound man and a good lawyer. If you had Oxley on your side he would make a keen fight for you, and for all his jokes and his breezy manner he wouldn’t give nothing away. Oxley was well liked and he deserved it.

Of the medical profession in Thirsby the landlord was equally ready to impart information. Dr. Emerson was a good doctor and well respected, but he was growing old. He hardly did any work now, but he had made plenty and he could afford to retire. Not that he had been a moneygrubber⁠—the landlord had known many a case where he had treated poor patients free⁠—but until Dr. Philpot had come he had the whole of the practice, and he hadn’t done badly with it. The landlord wished that hotel keeping was half as profitable. Well off, Dr. Emerson was.

French next murmured Dr. Philpot’s name, but the landlord spoke with more reserve. He was a clever man, first rate at his job, the landlord believed, though he was thankful to say he hadn’t ever needed to call him in. But he had made some good cures and people that had had him once wouldn’t have anybody else. And he was pleasant spoken and likeable enough, and there was no reason why he shouldn’t have done extra well at Thirsby, for there was an opening for just such a man on account of Dr. Emerson’s age. But⁠—the landlord sank his voice and became more confidential than ever⁠—the truth was he had made a muck of things, and no one would be surprised to see him take down his plate any day. He was all right in every way, but the one⁠—he was a wild gambler. Fair ruining himself, he was. Horses mostly. It was a pity, because he was well liked otherwise. But there you were. The landlord had nothing to say about backing an occasional horse⁠—he did it himself⁠—but, systematic gambling! Well, you know, it could go too far.

French was interested to learn that Sergeant Kent was a fool. The landlord did not put it quite in those words, but he conveyed the idea extraordinarily well. Kent was bumptious and overbearing, and carried away by a sense of his own importance. French, the landlord was afraid, wouldn’t get much help there.

The landlord showed signs of a willingness to go on talking all night, but by the time eleven-thirty had struck on the old grandfather’s clock in the hall French thought he had all the information that was likely to be valuable. He therefore began insinuating the idea of bed, and this gradually penetrating to the other’s consciousness, his flow of conversation diminished and presently they separated.

The next day was Sunday, and after a late breakfast and a leisurely pipe, French asked for some sandwiches, saying he was going out for a long tramp over the moor. Having thus explained himself he strolled off and presently, by a circuitous route, reached the lip of Starvel Hollow.

In spite of the fact that his professional and critical interests were aroused, French could not help feeling impressed by the isolation of the ruins and the morbid, not to say sinister atmosphere which seemed to brood over the entire place. Around him were the wild rolling spaces of the moor, forbidding and desolate, rising here into rounded hills, dropping there into shallow valleys. The colouring was drab, in the foreground the dull greens of rushes and sedgy grass, the browns of heather and at intervals a darker smudge where stone outcropped, on the horizon the hazy blues of distance. Scarcely a tree or a shrub was to be seen in the bare country, and the two or three widely separated cottages, crouching low as if for protection from the winds, seemed only to intensify the loneliness of the outlook.

At French’s feet lay the Hollow, a curious, saucer-like depression in the moor, some quarter of a mile or more across. Its rim looked continuous, the valley through which it was drained being winding and not apparent at first sight. In the centre was the group of pines which had surrounded the old house, stunted, leaning one way from the prevailing wind, melancholy and depressing. Of the walls of the house from this point of view there was no sign.

French walked down toward the ruins, marvelling at the choice which would bring a man of means to such a locality. He could understand now why on that night some five weeks earlier a building of the size of this old house could be burned down without attracting more attention. The Hollow accounted for it. Even flames soaring up from such a conflagration would not surmount the lip of the saucer. Truly a place also, as Tarkington had pointed out, where burglars could work their will unseen and undisturbed.

French had seen the remains of many a fire, but as he gazed on the wreckage of Starvel he felt he had never seen anything quite so catastrophic and complete. He felt a growing awe as he began to examine the place in detail.

The walls were built of stone, and except these walls and the small outhouse at the opposite side of the yard, nothing remained standing. The house was two storied and “L” shaped, with the remains of a single story porch in the angle of the two wings. French compared the ruins with the sketch plan given him by Kent and identified the places where the bodies had been found. Then after a general survey he stepped through the gaping hole that had evidently been the front door and ploughed his way across the debris to the safe.

It was red with fire and rust, but the makers’ name and number, in raised letters on a cast iron plate, were still legible. The safe had been lifted upright and fixed on a roughly built pile of stones, as the town officer of Thirsby had deposed at the inquest. The doors were now shut, but with some difficulty owing to the rusty hinges French was able to swing them open. Inside, as he had been told, was a mass of paper ash.

Fortunately it was a calm day or the heap might have whirled away in dust. As it was, French sat down on a stone, and putting his head into the safe, began to examine the ash in detail.

The greater part had been ground to dust, doubtless by the fall of the safe from the second story, and the churning of the sovereigns, though there still remained a number of small flakes of burnt paper. These French began to turn over with a pair of forceps, examining them at the same time with a lens.

He was delighted to find that on nearly all he could distinguish marks of printing. But, as he turned over piece after piece he became conscious of growing astonishment. For this printing was not the printing of bank notes. Rather it seemed to him like newspaper type. Wrapping paper, he supposed. But why should the contents of the safe have been wrapped up in newspapers? More important still, why should portions of the newspapers rather than of the notes have been preserved?

His interest keenly aroused, he set to work in his careful, methodical way to check over all the fragments he could find. As he did so something very like excitement took possession of him. There were no fragments of notes! Every single piece that bore any marking was newspaper!

What, he asked, himself, could this portend? What other than robbery? And if robbery, then murder! Murder and arson! Could Tarkington and the Chief Constable be right, after all? Certainly, after this discovery he couldn’t drop the investigation until he had made sure.

He had brought with him a small case of apparatus, and from this he now took a bottle of gum and some thin cards. Painting over the cards with the gum, he laid on them such flakes of ash as bore legible words. From one piece in particular he thought he might be able to identify the newspaper of which it had been a part. It was a roundish scrap about the size of half a crown, along the top of which were the words: “⁠—ing as we⁠—” in small type, with below it in capitals, as if the headline of a small paragraph: “Rat-Catcher’s F⁠⸺⁠”

French secured the cards in a case specially designed to preserve specimens, and re-closed the safe. It certainly looked as if Tarkington’s suggestions might be true, and as he put the case away in his pocket, he wondered if there was any further investigation he could make while he was on the ground.

Stepping outside the building, he considered how a hypothetical burglar might have forced an entrance. The window frames and doors were all gone; moreover, any marks which might have been made approaching them must long since have been defaced by time and the footprints of sightseers and workmen. French, nevertheless, walked all round the house and about the grounds, looking everywhere in the hope of coming on some clue, though he was scarcely disappointed when his search ended in failure.

He was anxious, if possible, to find out what newspaper had been burned. He did not think the point of vital importance, but on general principles the information should be obtained. There was no knowing what clue it might not furnish. On his way back to Thirsby, therefore, he turned aside to Mr. Oxley’s house and sent in his card.

In the privacy of the solicitor’s study French introduced himself and in confidence declared his mission to the town. He apologised for troubling the other on Sunday, but said that at the moment he wished only to ask one question: Could Mr. Oxley tell him, or could he find out for him from Miss Averill, what daily paper the late Mr. Averill had taken?

Mr. Oxley did not know, and excused himself to interrogate Ruth. Presently he returned to say it was the Leeds Mercury.

Next morning French took the first train to Leeds, and going to the Mercury office, asked to see the files of the paper for the month of September. Commencing at the 15th, the day of the fire, he began working back through the papers, scrutinising each sheet for a paragraph headed “Rat-Catcher’s F⁠⸺⁠”

He found it sooner than he had expected. Tucked in among a number of small news items in the paper of Tuesday, 14th September, he read: “Rat-Catcher’s Fatal Fall.” And when he saw that the type was similar to that on the burnt scrap and the last line of the preceding paragraph was “Mr. Thomas is doing as well as can be expected,” with the “⁠—ng as we⁠—” in the correct position relative to the “Rat-Catcher’s F⁠⸺⁠” he knew he had really got what he wanted.

French was extraordinarily thorough. Long experience had taught him that everything in the nature of a clue should be followed up to the very end. He did not therefore desist when he had made his find. Instead he worked on to see if he could identify any of the other scraps he had found. And before he left he had found eight out of the eleven he had mounted, and proved that the burnt papers were those of the 13th, 14th, and 15th; the three days before the fire.

So far, then, the indications were at least for continuing the investigation. Leaving the Mercury office, French walked up the Briggate to Messrs. Carter & Stephenson’s, the makers of the safe. He asked for one of the principals, and was presently shown into Mr. Stephenson’s room. Introducing himself in the strictest confidence in his true guise, he propounded his question: Was the safe absolutely fireproof?

Mr. Stephenson rose and went to a drawer from which he took a number of photographs.

“Look at those,” he invited, “and tell me was the fire at Starvel any worse than those fires?”

The views were all of burnt-out buildings, most of them completely gutted and resembling the wreckage of Starvel. French assured him that the cases seemed on all fours.

“Very well, there were safes in all those fires⁠—safes just the same as that at Starvel, and all those safes had papers in them, and there wasn’t a single paper in any one of them so much as browned.”

French took out his burnt fragments.

“Look at those, Mr. Stephenson,” he invited in his turn. “Suppose there were newspapers in that safe before the fire, could they have come out like that after it?”

“Not under any conceivable circumstances,” Mr. Stephenson declared emphatically, “that is, of course, unless the door had been left open. With the door shut it’s absolutely impossible. And I’ll be prepared to stand by that in any court of law if you should want me to.”

The man’s manner was convincing, and French saw no reason to doubt his statement. But he saw also that its truth involved extremely serious consequences. If Mr. Stephenson was right the newspapers had not been burnt during the Starvel fire. They could only have been burned while the safe door was open. But the door was locked during the fire; Kent had had to get an expert to open it. They must therefore have been burned before it was locked. A sinister fact truly, and terribly suggestive!

On his way back to Thirsby French sat smoking in the corner of a carriage, weighing in his mind the significance of his discoveries. He considered the points in order.

First. Old Averill was a miser who had filled up his safe with notes and gold. The notes had been seen on more than one occasion by Mr. Tarkington’s clerk, Bloxham, the last time being only a few days before the tragedy. Mr. Tarkington estimated there must have been some £30,000 to £40,000 worth of notes in the safe, though this was probably only a guess. But it was at least certain that before the fire it contained a very large sum in notes.

Second. After the fire the gold was intact, or at least part of it was there, but there was no trace of the notes. It was perfectly true that a number of notes might have been burned and been crushed to powder by the falling sovereigns. But it was straining the probabilities too far to believe that no single fragment of any one note should remain. On the other hand fragments did remain⁠—but these were all of newspapers.

Third. The newspapers, according to Mr. Stephenson’s evidence, were burned before the door of the safe had been closed.

Gradually French came to definite conclusions. As far as his information went the following facts seemed to be established:⁠—

First. That the safe was unlocked, and the notes were taken out before the fire.

Second. That three or four newspapers were put in to replace them.

Third. That the newspapers were set on fire and allowed to burn to ashes while the safe door was open.

Fourth. That after they were burned the safe was locked.

If these conclusions could be sustained it unquestionably meant that French was on to one of the most dastardly and terrible crimes of the century. He felt the sudden thrill of the hunter who comes across the fresh spoor of some dangerous wild beast. But he did not disclose his feelings. Instead he kept his own counsel, simply reporting to headquarters that the case seemed suspicious and that he was remaining on to make further inquiries.