DEATH BY THE GAFF

John Haslette Vahey

1932

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Chapter 21 | Chapter 22

Chapter 23 | Chapter 24

Chapter 25 | Chapter 26

Chapter 27 | Chapter 28

Chapter 29 | Chapter 30

Chapter 31

____________________

Chapter 1

Notes from the Scene

A Letter Received by Mr. Henry Wint

“The Horn Hotel,

“Pengellert.

“Friday.

“DEAR OLD MAN,

“Thanks for your note. I thought my description of the sewin fishing would fetch you, but I didn’t know you would rise so smartly, and propose to put yourself on the bank here next Monday. You should have a good time, for the water is just right after the floods, and the sewin are running. I saw two salmon yesterday in a pool, and the ‘Teal and Silver’ is the fly to fetch ’em!

“Unfortunately, we have a snag here. It isn’t in the water, as you might imagine, but in this hotel. Its name is Solly Hayes, and it is very rich, very high-and-mighty, and a perfect pig. Let me expound!

“This is an Association water, as you know. Inhabitants and visitors take tickets, and most of the anglers (bless ’em!) are decent sorts, with an idea of give-and-take, which is absolutely necessary in this kind of water. Solly isn’t imbued with the common ideals!

“From the first day, he got ‘upsides’ with half a dozen people; for he suffers from an obsession about his rights, and appears to want a clear bank for half a mile above and below him when he condescends to woo the fish. In other words, he is the sort of chap who ought to take a private preserve, or give up fishing.

“Then he came down here with the idea that all the inhabitants are rank poachers, and he an honorary keeper; he ‘high-hats’ the natives, as our American friends call it, and has already threatened one of them with some fishing protection association which only exists in his own mind!

“This last chappie is a tough lot, a jolly good angler, but a local artisan who is not the type to stand bullying. I hear he was with difficulty dissuaded from throwing Solly into the river; a feat which the rest of the guests here would have applauded, had it come off. One or two of them have already told the proprietor that they go, or Solly does, for he’s a crabbed beast even among his fellows in the hotel.

“However, as I think I must leave on Tuesday, I shall soon be rid of the wasp. I thought you might like a warning, for Solly has booked his room for another three weeks, and the landlord doesn’t like to turn him out.

“Well, I’ll see you on Monday. Take my tip and get in a stock of ‘Teal and Silver,’ medium size, and small hooks; and fine, tapered casts. You can’t catch sewin here with heavy casts.

“Till then, old dear,

“Yours,

“BOB.”

A Letter Received by Mrs. Solomon Hayes

“The Horn Hotel,

“Pengellert.

“N. Wales.

“DEAR CAROLINE,

“Sport continues to be good, in spite of the rascally ways of some of the so-called sportsmen here. I have had to warn one or two already that this type of thing has got to stop. I am afraid that, had the fishing not been so good, I should not have remained here another day, for the men in this place are a common lot, and I do not, and have never cared for vulgar society, as you know.

“I am, of course, not referring to two of the guests when I speak of vulgarity, or lack of breeding, as distinct from lack of manners. One of these exceptions is a man called Robert Chance, whom I met some years ago. I have reasons for disliking him, and do not converse with him or recognise him. He is decently brought up, and of respectable family, though his ideas of sporting etiquette are far from those I was inculcated with in my youth.

“The other man is called Edward Bow. He went to one of the best public schools, but I know more about him than he imagines. However, that is not a subject which can interest you. I like to write of those things in which we take a common interest.

“Yesterday I hooked and lost a salmon, owing to most unwarrantable crowding by one of the ruffians here— an artisan, my dear, who does not know his place. I was, however, fortunate enough to get half a dozen sewin, ranging from one pound to two and a quarter.

“Your husband,

“SOLOMON.”

A Letter Received by Mr. James McTaggart

“The Pub,

“Pengellert.

“DEAR MAC,

“All nice here; landlord one of the best, fish running in their liveliest style; every prospect pleasing, and but one ‘gentleman’ who is vile.

“I knew him years ago. I must not say how many, but not many, as Edgar Allan Poe observes. He knows me, and I him. But what I know about Mr. Solomon Hayes is neither here nor there. Cryptic? So be it! There are laws of libel, my son, and various obscure torts (a lawyer’s touch after your own heart) I have no intention of committing.

“I wish you could throw over your conveyancing for a week or two, come down here, and, in your inimitable Scots’ way— for wha’s like ye!— convey a few sewin to bank. Incidentally, you might remember the boxing at which you were such a dab in the old shop, and uppercut Solly into the middle of next week; at any rate, out of here— into the everywhere, if you like.

“But sure to bring a supply of the ‘Professor,’ on medium hooks. That’s the fly for the beasties in this water, though an awfully decent bloke here has the lunatic idea that ‘Teal and Silver’ is the right thing. He means well, but you stick to the ‘Professor,’ if you come. And bring down a Jock Scott or two in a small size. The saumon are aboot, man!

“Cheerio,

“NED.”

A Letter Received by Miss Arna Payson

“The Hotel,

“Pengellert.

“MY DEAR ARNA,

“Here I am, among the sportsmen, and anglers at that! They seem almost human, in spite of your idea that only denizens of another world would waste their time trying to make fish rise by throwing a worm at them. By the way, it appears that they don’t. Such a nice young fellow here spent yesterday evening explaining it to me. It seems that only common people throw worms, the others cast flies. As I tried to tell him, as they are both insects it is the same thing. But he would not agree. He says the fly is an insect, but the worm is a bactrachian, or mammal, or something.

“At any rate, it was all very interesting and exciting, and I am to have a lesson to-morrow. His flies are charming, red and blue and all colours, with silver and gold bodies, and the absurdest names. One is called ‘Major Bather,’ but the young man could not tell me if that meant a fat man in the water or a senior officer.

“When I say the anglers are almost human I mean that they quarrel just like the rest of us over the smallest thing. And one dear old gentleman, with a bottle-nose which even his enemies admit is due to indigestion, was frightfully cheery all evening because he had caught a sewin— or sea-trout— an ounce bigger than the man with no chin. An ounce! The man with no chin does not require comment. He is an obvious dud. But I haven’t come to the exciting part.

“There is a man here called Solomon Hayes, and he looks just as wise as his first name. He says I am the only intelligent creature in the hotel, just because I agreed with him that as he is the oldest guest it is not fair for the younger men to get up earlier, and so be on the best pools before him.

“I admit that I like him, but no one else does. He almost had a fight with a local fisher— Mr. Hayes says he is nothing but a poacher— and he has had several rows with two men here. One is called Edward Bow. He is about thirty, and I am sure he is engaged, or a misogynist. At any rate, he only cares about fishing. He is rather good-looking, but I see very little of him, so it is wasted. The other enemy of Mr. Hayes is a Mr. Robert Chance. He is six feet high, blond and smiling, but Mr. Hayes says he is supercilious. He is always fishing, too, or else sitting smoking outside, and plotting against Solomon with the Bow man.

“It is a pity two presentable men waste themselves on the ungrateful fish, but they will not look my way, and Mr. Solomon Hayes generally gives me his company after dinner, and tells me what he did, and what the other people ought to have done. I may say he is forty or more, so don’t be alarmed! He is very rich, I hear, and looks distinguished, but has the makings of a terrible snob.

“By the way, what justifies you in being one? I often wonder, for it generally turns out that such people are nobodies. Perhaps to be a nobody properly you have to treat other people as minus that. Still, Solomon is rather a dear, and it may only be his way.

“Lastly, darling, the anglers’ wives. I admit that they are not so hardly done by as golfers’ wives, but how patient they are! One always carries her husband’s gaff— a big steel hook on a stick— to land a salmon if he gets one. But they say he has come for ten years and his wife is still posing that gaff, and hoping to stick it into something before they die. It sounds cruel, but she is quite jolly, and removes worms from the path before she walks on them.

“I like them all and admire them immensely. Between ourselves the Major Bather young man has a look in his eye at times which suggests that he wonders how many years I would carry a gaff before I broke down! He has now joined the conspiracy against Solomon, and the other day I heard him murmuring something about vieux marcheurs. What can he mean?

“He says there is a— a sinister feeling in the air, and makes cryptic jokes about someone having to make a good effort to swim out of one of the nasty deep pools here. When I asked him if he was being personal, he said years ago some poachers had thrown in an interfering old ass, and as they couldn’t get him out in time, he conked out. I though his way of telling the story callous. He might have said expired!

“Now I must cut off short. The young man, whose name is Peter Hoad, wants to show me a fly he has made.

“Ever yours,

Chapter 2

The Double Crusade

WHEN Harry Wint turned into Hedon’s, the fishing tackle makers, that Saturday morning, he found himself on heels that he thought he recognised; or, to be more correct on ankles, and a straight back, and the glimpse of a shingled dark head, which appeared to him properly to belong to Joan Powis.

He was not surprised to see her there, for she was an ardent angler too, and he followed softly and smilingly behind her, until she went to the counter, and asked the assistant for two dozen “Teal and Silver” sea-trout flies.

“Size six,” he said, over her unconscious shoulder to the assistant, who looked at him with bewilderment. “Morning, Joan!” he added, as the girl swung indignantly round.

She was pretty, but not alarmingly so. For beauty can be alarming, and the average man with sense likes a face which satisfies his æsthetic sense without alarming his advance-proprietary one, if such a phrase may be coined.

She smiled suddenly. “You’ve been shadowing me!”

He grinned. “Pure coincidence; but I can tell you of a better one. I turned in here to get some ‘Teal and Silver.’ What do you think of that?”

The assistant turned to his cases to get the required flies. Joan shook her head. “Coincidences are rare, Harry, and this isn’t one of them. I heard you talking of Pengellert last time you came round, and Dad said you had the straight top about some sewin fishing there. He knows the place, and said ‘Teal and Silver.’”

“I’m going there on Monday,” said Wint, raising his eyebrows.

“I’m going on Tuesday,” she said. She shook her head. “The place will be full of the fishermen’s wives. These places always are. But how ripping! Still, I had better go down alone. I hate broadmindedness, don’t you?”

“Loathe it!” said he. “Generally a sign that you’re trying to pretend you know your world. But here we are.”

The assistant showed them the flies, took their orders, packed them up separately in neat cardboard boxes, and sold them some casts. Then they left the shop together.

“We’ll go to my club for lunch,” said Joan; “I want to hear more about this place.”

They turned that way. “I can tell you all about it,” he replied. “I had a letter from Bob Chance this morning. He’s down there, and it seems decidedly exciting.”

“What, big fish?”

“Yes, but a sort of uncivil war as well. You must hear that before you decide.”

He told her all about it on the way to the club, but she did not seem dismayed.

“Your mountain is a horrid little molehill,” she protested, as they entered her club. “When Dad and I went to that unpronounceable Scottish place, the hotel there was full of ravening wolves, ready to cut throats for preference. You know what a lamb Dad is? Well, even he had to get on his hind legs once, and make a stand. Bob Chance is rather pugnacious, I always think.”

“Well, now you know, and the consequences will be on your own head, Joan. I’m delighted, of course. And, of course, you’re right. I expect Solomon is just the usual pompous mug one runs across everywhere.”

They lunched then he saw her home, and went back to his own rooms. He had rods to pack, and tackle to get ready, lines to attend to, reels to oil, and the thousand and one labours of love that an angler has on his hands before he goes on a foray. When he reached home he found awaiting him a steel telescopic gaff, which he had sent previously to Hedon’s to have the spring-protector mended. If the salmon were running at Pengellert, he might need it.

He was tremendously pleased to hear that Joan was going there too. There was only one hotel in the place, so they would be able to enjoy each other’s society in the evenings. The trouble in Town was that Joan’s home was infested with people. Her father was a very gregarious individual, and very popular; her mother was on all the committees that commit in London, and friends, helpers, and secretaries buzzed like bees about her.

Always, when he called, he would find meetings installed in the library; secretaries, and subscribers, and social workers, burbling in the morning-room. Her father would be hastening from one room to another, in search of friends, or quiet, sitting in the drawing-room where “no winds came,” as Joan put it (referring to the breezes which seem to play so freely over committees), or venturing into the billiards-room, to find the new “Benevolent Flat Building Association” examining plans spread on the green cloth.

But at Pengellert there would be no benevolence; only a bit of Joan to himself, and an opportunity to improve their friendship.

He was never sure whether it was Joan or he who was difficult; or, perhaps, diffident would be the better word. A few years back he had been famous for the way he tackled fierce forwards in the hottest Rugger match, but he was notably timid, or “sticky,” as some of Joan’s slangy friends put it, when it came to dealing with women.

He was not the fashionable caveman, and he was, while not overpowered by Joan, decidedly awed at the prospect of asking her to belong to him. A girl like Joan, who could face social workers without a tremor, and cast fly like a magician, was not rudely to be snatched at. There was, as he always reflected, the chance that she might turn him down. Girls weren’t outwardly sentimental nowadays; though he guessed that they were much the same within. Man had an easier job when he was chiefly regarded as a potential husband, and father was turned on to you promptly if you happened to suit.

The Sunday seemed long, as all days before fishing do. But he got through it, and on Monday was on his way, already debating, as the train hurried through the summer countryside, if he should stick to the old wet style, or try this upstream salmon fishing some chap in the North had started.

And by the evening, he came to Cwyll, and got into the bus for Pengellert.

It was at Cwyll, on a blue bay, that the river of the same name entered the sea, by way of a winding estuary that extended four or five miles inland. It ran through flat, lush meadows, and was fringed with reeds and bulrushes there. Just above the tidal water, the flanks of two mountains descended from right and left, and closed the view above, the bus passed through a narrow defile at the edge of the river, and presented a wonderful vista of a green vale, transected by tumbling waters, with a huddle of mountains making a purple background.

The Horn Hotel stood on the banks of the Cwyll, and its garden was bounded on the south-west by the stream. It was an unpretentious but comfortable inn, and when the bus stopped to unload Wint and his traps, there were half a dozen anglers and their womenkind sitting in the porch, talking earnestly.

It seemed to Wint that they were not as much interested in his appearance as hotel visitors usually are on the advent of a new rod. They glanced at him as he went in, followed by the Boots, carrying his rods and bag, and then the buzz of conversation started again.

He did not see Bob Chance, which made him wonder why. He had assumed that his friend would be there to welcome him. Neither did he see any man who corresponded to the description of the high-and-mighty Hayes. Perhaps both were out on the river.

The Boots appeared to be conversationally inclined. He seemed to be suffering from some sort of repressed excitement, and when Wint reached his bedroom, and asked if Mr. Chance was out, the reason for it became plain.

The fact was that the place had been the scene of a row, or, more correctly, two rows, though the last and worst had begun in the hotel and finished “off” as murders do in stage plays. Mr. Hayes had been a central figure in both.

The first trouble had taken place in the morning, when Mr. Hoad an impulsive young man, had accidentally taken Hayes’s landing-net as his own, and had been practically stigmatised as a thief by the excitable and tactless owner. But that affair, after a nasty beginning, had not come to fisticuffs, Mr. Hoad declaring that Mr. Hayes’s age saved him from a thrashing, and Mr. Hayes grabbing his net and marching off, murmuring something about Hoad’s youth saving him from gaol.

The second business was more serious. Chance and Hayes were on opposite banks, when Hayes objected to Chance fishing the same pool. Chance had got out his copy of the rules, and pointed out that he was entitled to fish his own bank on any pool. Mr. Hayes told him he was no sportsman, and no gentleman, or he would not speak of rules, and Mr. Chance retorted that his opponent was a damned old fool, who was looking for trouble.

Mr. Hayes, triumphant over Hoad in the morning, chanced his age, and waded across to argue the point; putting down a fish which had just risen to Chance’s fly. Chance, irritated by this, and thoroughly fed up with the tiresome fellow, told him to get back to his own bank. Hayes refused, Chance took him by the arm, and that, strictly illegal, assault so infuriated the other that he struck out at Chance, and was promptly laid flat on his back by a not too heavy uppercut.

Wint laughed when he heard that part of the account.

“I’m sure that ended it,” he told the Boots. “Mr. Chance is a friend of mine, and not a bully.”

“He’s a very nice gentleman, sir,” was the reply. “He picked t’other up, I hear, and said he was sorry he hit him, but Mr. Hayes he went off, and down to the police, and made a charge of assault, and the constable here hardly knew what to do with it. Anyway, Mr. Hayes went off to Cwyll this afternoon to see a lawyer, and Mr. Chance he went off there, to get some flies, he said. He took his rod with him anyway. So I suppose he meant to fish coming back.”

Wint smiled. “Very likely. Do they fish late here?”

“Mostly they do, sir, these bright days. The sewin won’t rise well till dark. Some of them stays right till midnight.”

“Then I’ll have a shot at it for an hour or two this evening,” Wint told him, “it keeps light pretty late, I know.”

Neither Chance nor Hayes was at dinner that evening, when Wint went down. His place had been laid at the table for two, one seat being usually occupied by his friend; so that he had no nearer neighbours than a pretty girl, and a young man, at a table about six feet away. The former was Miss Celia something; her companion was apparently the hero— or villain— of the morning scene, Mr. Hoad.

Several genial people at other tables greeted him with smiles or bows, then the soup was served, and he began his dinner, and a general, quiet inspection of his fellow guests. When he had finished, and drunk a hasty cup of coffee, he ran upstairs to get out his rod and tackle, and when he went down once more, only three women were in the porch. The men were in the smoking-room, with the exception of Hoad and another, who had gone off with their rods.

Wint began to fish at a point just above a bend in the river. There was no one in sight, and at first no fish rose, so he had leisure to survey the scene about him, and reflect on what was to him the strange nature of the fishing. This was the first time he had set out within half an hour of dusk, proposing to stay on the river till eleven or so. If it were true that some of the anglers stayed till midnight, and after, it was amusing to think that, invisible in the dark of night, a later hour might find a dozen to eighteen fishermen all busy on the various pools, unseen by the others.

Wint was not quite sure that he cared for the idea, but, being assured that the sewin did not take well till night in such low water, he went on, hoping to come across Bob Chance, and forgetting that the latter might leave the river, turn on to the road, which ran alongside it in places, and return to the hotel.

The scenery, as he admitted, was glorious. The stream ran in a rift, with alternating runs, pools, torrents and miniature waterfalls. On one side, the road separated it from the flanks of the mountains to the south, on the other side rose cliffs, with pines growing in the crevices, and a precipitous and stony path hanging on its lower rim. Above him he heard the mewing of a pair of buzzards and watched with keen interest the high circling of these great hawks above the crags.

As he made down a little, another sight struck him. It was a little bay in the cliff face, and the black mouth of a tiny tunnel. Puzzled for a moment, he remembered the mountain railway that ran under the flank of Cwyll Fawr, and emerging here and there for a few yards into the light, gave its passengers a brief and glorious glimpse of quick vistas of green, and silver and gold, and black; the slopes of the mountain opposite, the gleam of the tumbling river, the bright glare of the sunlight, the dark rocks that lay tumbled in the river-bed, as if giants on the summit of the crags had been playing pitch and toss with boulders.

Thrice the little railway emerged into the light in the two miles below the village, until it finally left the womb of the mountain, and had a new birth above ground.

Looking down river again, Wint wondered that he saw no other fishermen. He had understood that the locals fished, but he did not realise yet that many of them only went out when the floods freshened the appetites of the sewin already in the pools, and brought up fresh shoals from the sea. There had been no rain for a fortnight, and the water was clear as crystal, beautiful in its glassy clarity, but irritating to a man out for fish.

Wint was using a Teal and Silver fly of a large size, and, hoping he might chance on a salmon, had brought the gaff with him. But he saw no salmon, and not a single sewin vouchsafed a glance at his fly as he went on.

But now the dusk had come, and the mountains lost their hard shapes, and became soft and amorphous; their purple tops darkening towards night, and the shadows lying deep over the pools. Then the night came at last. Wint reflected. Should he go home? To make up his mind for him he felt a sudden pull, and tightening his line, found himself fast in a gleaming fish. He landed it, a pound bar of silver, chuckled happily, and stayed!

Chapter 3

Wint Loses a Gaff

WINT HAD ALREADY seen that the river could be dangerous to a stranger after dark. The shallows might be only eighteen inches deep here and there, but the water ran suddenly into dark pools ten to fifteen feet deep, where a mis-step might be an angler’s undoing. Once in the white whirling rush of a rapid, or down in the slow oily whirlpools in mid-stream a man, encumbered with waders, and blinded by night, would have little chance to save himself.

So, coming to a long pool as the last light faded, he settled down to fish it carefully, and having got nothing in the first essay, returned to the head of the pool, lit a pipe, and rested, preparatory to a second bout of casting.

Half an hour later, something rose, and he raised the rod top, and knew that he was into a big one. He never saw it, and was unable to say if it was a large sewin, or small salmon. But it ploughed up and down near the bottom for five minutes, then took to leaping and splashing, and finally went down, to jag viciously at the line.

When the jagging stopped, it lay at the bottom and sulked.

Gratified, but anxious, on account of the fine cast he was using, Wint played it carefully until it took that sulking fit. Then he threw in a stone or two to shift it, but without success. At last he decided to wait and see if it would move on again, with the line slightly slackened.

Suddenly it did move! It ran downstream, like a racehorse turned amphibian; down to the tail of the pool, into the rapid below, making for a welter of whirling waters in a maze of rocks. Wint followed it as best he could, stumbling over stones, barging into boulders, to the detriment of his shins and temper, until at last he had to stop in face of a nine-foot rock on the bank.

He tried to check his fish there, but failed. He let it run. The reel clacked furiously, nearly all his line was out now. He gave the brute the butt once more, in sheer desperation, and the rod doubled up.

Then the gut parted, the rod-top flew back, a rejoicing fish slid down into the deep pool below, and Wint swore and panted behind his rock.

Sufficient for one night was the evil thereof, he reflected, as he wound up his line, took down his rod, and began to climb cautiously up the bank in the direction of the invisible road. As he got up ten feet, there was the humming of the engine of a motor; a car, with headlights stabbing the gloom above, shot by. He made for that line, and found himself in a few moments astride a low wall that skirted the ravine, and was the protective boundary to the narrow road.

Pleased to have proved that the Cwyll fish were catchable at least— even if one beastie had eluded him, he began to walk back to the hotel. He met only one man all the way, and that was to him only a dark figure that went by him walking fast, without vouchsafing any reply to his speculative “Good night.”

It was a quarter-past eleven when he got in, and left his fish with the Boots, who told him that neither Mr. Chance nor Mr. Hayes had come back.

Wint nodded. “Well, I’m tired and will go to bed,” he said. “Let Mr. Chance know. I’ll see him in the morning.”

“He’s leaving to-morrow at eleven, sir.”

“Right. But I’ll be down at half-past eight— I expect these little troubles will fizzle out when the men cool down.”

He went to his room. Meanwhile, in the smoking-room, there was a mixed council of war going on, of which he was quite unaware.

There were three men and two women. There was the old man with the noticeable nose, called Harmony, Jane Harmony, his wife; a man with an unnoticeable chin called Gayte, another man called Bone, and, lastly, the pretty girl Wint had noticed on his arrival, Miss Celia Mason.

Mr. Harmony had a deep voice and a portentous manner. He had listened quietly for a while to the speculations of the others, and now made a pronouncement in a tone so funereal that Celia involuntarily smiled.

“And Mr. Hayes has not returned yet!”

There are some people who can remark that it is a hot day in such a manner as to produce an illusion that the flames of hell are leaping about their hearers. Mr. Harmony had that art. No one really cared if Mr. Hayes never came back, but Harmony’s dire way of turning a phrase, for a moment, almost cast the shadow of a tragedy over the informal council.

Mr. Gayte recovered himself first, raised what chin he had, tilted his head back till that inconspicuous feature looked Mr. Harmony right in the eyes, and then observed mildly that Hayes— might be fishing.

“Without a rod?” said Mr. Harmony. “Without a rod?”

“And in such a temper,” murmured his wife.

Celia laughed. “But the fish wouldn’t know he was in a temper, and if he did treat ’em rough when hooked, all the better,” she said.

Bone, who was normal in every way, including his voice, struck in: “By the way, where is his rod?”

Everyone sat up. Mr. Hayes had two rods, but he kept them locked in a case when he was not using them; being one of those people who treat their fellows as potential criminals, and their rods as celestial tools no one else could procure honestly.

“That’s true,” said Mr. Harmony, and glanced at his wife. “I know he sent off one to the makers yesterday, and the case is open. I saw it myself.”

“But he didn’t take the other to Cwyll,” said Gayte.

“He didn’t bring it back this morning,” said Celia.

Mrs. Harmony looked surprised. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I am quite sure. I was in the porch and saw the procession arrive. Mr. Hayes came in first, holding a grotty handkerchief to his nose; and Mr. Chance was behind him, trying to look solemn and sorry. Mr. Chance had his rod, but I am sure, now I think of it, that Mr. Hayes hadn’t. I remember he tried to raise his hat to me with one hand, while staunching the vital fluid with the other.”

“Then he left it at the keeper’s cottage,” said Bone.

“I bet he left it on the bank,” interrupted Gayte. “He had that scrap with Chance, and, never having run against a fellow tartar before, forgot his precious property.”

“Someone would have found it and brought it in,” remarked Harmony.

“I am not sure,” Celia said, “I don’t think anyone else was fishing that pool to-day, and the local people were not out. At any rate, they are as honest as the day down here, and it won’t hurt.”

Mr. Gayte nodded. “My impression is this: I expect the lawyer chap down at Cwyll told him not to make a mountain out of a molehill, and that he had no witnesses to make a case. Then he came back, stopped by that pool, and won’t be in ’til morning. You know he creeps out at dark to fish some special place no one else thinks of, the spot where he says he saw, or hooked, a twenty-pounder.”

They fell in with that view after a little. Night was the festive and successful portion of the twenty-four hours at Pengellert, and the Horn Hotel was popular because it served out latchkeys, and catered for people who might take a fancy to try for a trout in the small hours.

“I expect he is all right,” Mr. Harmony observed, more cheerfully. “But we are far from right. Speaking for myself and wife, I say that I have thoroughly enjoyed myself here, and the company as much as the fishing.”

“Here, here!” Celia murmured.

“Absolutely,” said Mr. Bone.

“With an exception as to the latter,” boomed Harmony, while Caroline nodded vigorous assent. “I have never quarrelled with anybody before, and I hope not to again, but I cannot and will not stand that man Hayes! If he does not leave, I shall— at the end of the week!”

There was a chorus of agreement. Mr. Gayte tilted his portion of chin again, and murmured “A Round-robin!”

This proposal received such support that the gratified Gayte at once got out paper and pen, and proceeded to frame the petition. It was regretfully admitted that it would not be a very agreeable job for the proprietor of the hotel to receive it, or put it into commission, but that could not be helped.

“I think,” said Mr. Harmony, when he and his wife had signed their names, “we should omit Mr. Chance and Mr. Bow from the thing— also Mr. Hoad. Their personal friction with Haynes might spoil it, and we have enough here to carry the day. This is my tenth year at this hotel, and without boasting I may say that I am as good a client at Mr. Hayes— doubly as good, if one counts my wife.”

“Who would dare not to count her?” said Bone, smiling, for Jane Harmony was popular.

“I certainly should not, especially as we are about to retire to bed,” said Harmony, rising and beaming at his wife. “Well, that is done. To-morrow, I’ll hand the Round-robin over, and hear what is said. I have your permission to put it strongly if there is any objection, eh?”

“Hot and strong,” said three voices promptly. “Let Solomon in all his glory depart!” added Bone.

The meeting broke up forthwith, the members of it crept to their room with the quietness of sewin fishers who are allowed privileges too precious to abuse, and in twenty minutes the hotel was quiet.

Half an hour after that, a tiny but important fraction of it awoke to life. A bell rang, after premonitory noises had half-aroused the sleepy porter. The noises were those of the engine of a car, which he trusted would pass on into the night. But the noises died out, and were succeeded by the bell.

The porter huddled on some clothes. He spoke Welsh and English fluently, but it was in his native tongue that he murmured the equivalent of: “One of those blinking fishers forgot his key again!”

Still, as he pondered on his way to open the front door, few if any of their guests took their cars out at night. The hotel water was not more than two miles distant even at its furthest bounds. During the day people used the bus, and by night they walked.

If this was a late arrival who had booked by wire or telephone, the proprietor would have warned him. It must be a belated traveller, tired of driving in the dark on those hilly and narrow mountain roads, who decided to stop at the “Horn.”

When he opened the door, the porter saw that a woman stood there. She did not seem very old, or very young; very plain, or at all pretty. She was of middle height rather buxom, and spoke in what the man instantly thought of as a high-toned accent. Her voice betrayed some excitement, and nervousness, which seemed, to the porter, to be accounted for by her explanation that she had had a slight accident on her way.

She had, it seemed, mistaken a road opening, and tried to turn back a fraction too late, with the result that her car had bumped into a wall, and only been saved by a quick use of the brakes from an almighty smash.

“That’ll be all right ma’am,” said the porter. “There’s a garage here has a mechanic will soon put that to rights. I’ll come out again and bring your car into the yard.”

She put a half-crown into his palm, with a hand which was notably unsteady, thanked him, and stepped into the hall.

“I am Mrs. Hayes. My husband is staying here,” she said, to the surprise of the porter. “If you will take my bag, and show me up to his room—”

“He’s out ma’am.”

“Out? At this time of night?”

Her voice was severe. The porter chuckled inwardly. “You see, ma’am, the gentlemen that fishes all go out late. The sewins take best after dark when the water’s low.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, though her voice did not sound mollified. “At any rate I shall go up. Show me the way, please.”

He turned on an electric light on the stairs, and showed the way. As he opened the door of Hayes’s room, he had a look at the visitor. She had been pretty in her youth, but she looked hard and imperious now. She was about fifty, well-dressed, commanding, very pale. In the morning, when he saw her again, the porter wondered at that; for he knew then that she was normally a woman with a fresh complexion.

But he saw more than that, and spoke of it at once.

“I never thought to ask were you hurt ma’am,” he said, staring at some spots of blood on her skirt, “if it’s anything serious, I could get the manageress up.”

“Don’t bother,” she replied hastily. “When I had the accident, I bumped myself on something, and my nose bled. Thank you. That will do.”

“I could find you something cold in the pantry, ma’am,” said this willing man. “I expect you have come a long way.”

She may have been impressed by his offer but did not show it.

“Thank you; no. I am tired, and will go to bed immediately. Put my bag in the corner.”

He left at once, and strolled out to get the car into the garage. It was a tiresome job at that time of night, with an early rise ahead of him, but Mrs. Hayes had shown early signs of generosity, and that was hopeful.

As he glanced at the car, prior to handling her, he saw that one of the wings was slightly crumpled in front. Otherwise there seemed no damage.

Driven by curiosity, and at the last moment, he glanced inside the car, and lit a match. It struck him that the lady’s nose had not bled very extensively. Putting the vehicle into the open garage, he yawned, and turned into the hotel once more.

Chapter 4

Head Down

SOME WAG, speaking of the anglers at the Horn Hotel, had once said that the day hands there never knew what the night hands were doing. If he had added: “Until next morning at breakfast” he would have spoken the whole truth.

They generally balloted for pools, and each stuck to his own, fished as long as he chose, and came back when he wished. Every man, encaged in his silent sport, fished in the dark compartment furnished by the night, and the records of his catch, and the excitements of it, were only canvassed over the eggs-and-bacon which the Briton expects to see greeting him in the morning.

When Harry Wint, unaccustomed to fishing late, came down at half-past nine, the dining-room was buzzing with speculation. And this speculation had two foci; the wife of Mr. Hayes, who sat at Hayes’s proprietary table, looking very cold and angry, and Mr. Hayes, who was not at breakfast, not in the hotel at all, but somewhere unknown not only to the guests, but also to the angry woman at her lone table.

Since she was Mr. Hayes’s wife, the buzzing had to be low buzzing. The other guests could not canvass her arrival, or her husband’s absence, in voices which might reach her ears. Not so the waiter who came suddenly into the room, stopped by Mrs. Hayes’s table, and announced that he had rung up the solicitor at Cwyll.

“And what did he say?” she inquired impatiently, as if bidding him not to make a song about it.

“He said, ma’am, Mr. Hayes had been in yesterday to see him on business, but he was out first, and Mr. Hayes came again about five, and talked to him, and Mr. Hayes left at half-past for here, so he said.”

Mrs. Hayes nodded. “I see.”

But obviously she did not see, for she bit her lip, and stared round at the other guests. It was difficult for any wife to understand how her husband could go a few miles to see a lawyer, leave him at half-past five to go home, and be still absent at half-past nine next day.

Wint went at once to his table, where he now saw his friend Robert Chance. The latter greeted him warmly, but was, to Wint’s mind, somewhat preoccupied. At another table were Bow and Hoad. They were eating their breakfast in silence, and their voices had not contributed to the buzz which Wint had heard on his entry into the room.

“I went out for an hour or two last night, Bob,” he told his friend. “I hoped I might run across you, but the bally dark came on, and I didn’t want to risk it among the rocks.”

“Quite right,” said Chance. “They’re damn slippery in places, and you want to know your ground. Did you have any luck?”

“I lost a salmon, or a very big sewin,” Wint replied. “And as I found out this morning, I must have lost my gaff. I’m afraid the sling was loose.”

Chance smiled faintly. “You’ll get it again. Someone is sure to find it.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction of Mrs. Hayes’s table, lowered his voice, and added: “We’ve lost a guest; which is worse!”

Wint stared. “The Mr. Hayes you wrote about? Hasn’t he come in?”

“Not a sign of him. His wife arrived suddenly in her car about two. No one knew she was coming.”

“Is that she?”

“Yes. I told you my feelings about the fellow, but if a couple of us can slip out just now, without alarming her, we are going to have a search.”

Wint rubbed his chin. “I say, that sounds rotten! What can have happened to him?”

Chance shrugged his shoulders. “Ask me another! He may have gone in. One of his favourite places was The Dog’s Leg Pool. There’s a kink in the corner, and an undercut bank which makes a whirlpool.”

“But surely the river isn’t big enough—”

“Not broad, but deep and fast enough, in spots. Then there are holes underwater, worn in the rocks, where the water enters a kind of funnel. Get into one of those, wedged, feet up, head down, and you’re for it. You might make a shot at saving yourself by day.”

Wint looked grave, as his breakfast was set before him. Chance finished his, and got up.

“Drop down the bank later, when you’re done,” he whispered. “I’ll be down near the Pass. Anyone will tell you where that is.”

He went out. A moment later, Hoad and Bow got up and followed. The eyes of most of the guests followed them significantly.

Mrs. Hayes only favoured them with a quick glance. She looked aloof. No one could tell whether she was anxious or angry, or both. Only the porter, who had seen her in the hall, as she passed in to breakfast, had noticed that there were no red spots on her skirt. Certainly there were spots of a kind, but not red. They were much fainter, and of an indeterminate colour. There was nothing in that. Even well-to-do women try to remove stains from their clothes, especially if they have hurried down to the country, without a change.

The porter did not ask himself why she had hurried down to the country without announcing her coming. Wives did these things. He was married himself, and knew.

Harry Wint sat not more than a minute after he had finished his meal. He lit a cigarette, and reflected that Joan Powis would come that evening. Perhaps the rumpus would be over by then, Hayes found, and his wife appeased.

Wint knew better than the porter about wives of Mrs. Hayes’s class. He inferred that she had come without warning, and she looked as if that meant something. Then what he had heard about her husband proclaimed him a particular, fidgety man; the type that does not marry temperamental wives, and bear with them patiently. If no one knew she was coming, then there was something up.

He thought all that before he rose and slipped out. In the hall he found Mr. Harmony talking to the porter, with two men, and Celia Mason listening. They broke off to glance at him, and did not begin again till he had taken his hat and gone out. But Harmony bowed, and the others gave him a half recognition.

He did not ask his way to the Pass. He had come through it on the bus from Cwyll. If the other men were down there at the neck, he might as well strike in at the pool where he had dropped his gaff. He thought he could recognise it. It was at the first sharp bend in the road as you went downstream.

He saw it presently, and went down a narrow path between the alders, before he came to the wall bounding the road. When he approached the head of the pool he told himself that the fish he had hooked had run down, and he with it. It was stony going, lumps of rock and small boulders cluttered the bank. He had had to course over and between them the previous night, and it was a wonder, as he saw now, that he had not come a nasty purler on his nose. The angel who looks after drunk men and night fishermen had saved him evidently.

But this was just the sort of place where his loosely fastened gaff might bounce out of its sling as he crashed over the debris. He might as well keep an eye open for that, as well as signs of the missing Hayes.

He did not know where the Dog’s Leg Pool (Hayes’s favourite) was, and he did not hear the voices of the men who had gone before him, so, possibly it was some way downstream. But there was no sign of his gaff on the bank, and that proved that it had fallen into the stream, or been picked up, for it was a steel gaff, and would show up in the morning sunshine.

Between that pool and the next there was a short rapid, foaming and treacherous. It led directly into the run at the head of the next pool below. This had a streamy top, narrow and deepsh for five yards, then broadened out, and was between rocks, about ten feet deep in the middle, shallowing at the tail, and then suddenly breaking in a white lather and gleaming spray over the lip of a rock ledge, to form a five-foot fall.

Chance or instinct often seems to prompt one to look where another human being has appeared. Wint had heard no sound, but he looked up suddenly at the wall behind him and saw a man leaning there. He could see that he had a stiffish rod in his hand; it looked like a spinning-rod. The man himself was short and thick-built, a peasant by his clothes; not ill-looking, but phlegmatic of expression.

“Haven’t seen a gaff of mine about?” he called up to the man, “I lost one last night.”

The man shook his head, and called back: “No sir. But I haven’t started yet.”

Wint called back thanks, and went on. The man moved away from the wall and went upstream.

Wint did not go far. He drew up suddenly and stiffly, as a pointer who scents game. His face was rather paler now, and his eyes, widened in surprise and horror, were fixed on an undercut rock that jutted out from the further bank, just above the lip of the waterfall.

In the river, floods had forced uncovenanted channels in strange places, and wayward ribbons of the main stream here and there turned aside, vanished into what looked like cracks in the rocks, and plunged into deep, whirling pot-holes.

What had attracted his attention, and caused that sudden frozen concentration, was the sight of what looked like two booted feet, and the lower portions of two legs sticking out, immersed in the water, from under that jutting rock. In a moment he knew that here was Mr. Hayes.

In that quiet air, and reverberating from the rocks and cliffs, a shout carries far. He had only shouted twice, and the echoes of the second cry were still being thrown back from rock to rock, before shouts from below came to him in answer. He moved up the bank, climbed to the wall, straddled it, and was on the road in a minute.

Farther down, he saw three men running towards him. Bow was leading, Chance and Hoad were abreast. Chance waved to him, and they all came on faster.

He remembered suddenly that the stream was unfordable there, there was no bridge, and the body was caught under the rock at the farther side. He dashed down towards them, and halted them.

“The man’s under a rock,” he said violently as he came up. “On the other side in the pool below here.”

“You’re sure?” said Bow, very pale.

“Someone’s legs, anyway,” cried Wint.

“We can ford it four pools up— the bridge is farther away,” said Chance. “Come on!”

They ran, following his lead, gained the bank of the stream, and tore up to where the river shallowed, and there were rough rocks for stepping-stones, with barely a foot of water covering them.

As Wint crossed last, he saw the peasant he had seen by the wall come lumbering down the far bank. Evidently he had crossed before them. He had on waders that were wet six inches above the knee. Wint noticed that mechanically. It was to give him food for thought later, but he was too anxious now.

“That you, Davis?” cried Bow. “The very man we want. It looks as if one of our people’s gone in lower down.”

Davis joined them with alacrity. He had a long gaff slung across his back. No doubt Bow welcomed his aid as a local expert, who knew the river by night and day, and would be an invaluable assistant in an attempt to recover the body, if body there was.

“Where is it now, sir?” he asked. “Seen him?”

Wint explained as they went down, and Davis nodded darkly. “Top of Griffiths— a nasty spot that. Indeed, and it is a very nasty place. But did you only see the legs of the gentleman, sir?”

“He seemed to be wedged under the rock.”

They had fallen a few paces behind the others, and now, when they were about ten yards above the waterfall, Chance called out: “Here’s his rod!”

He bent and picked up an eleven-foot grilse rod. The line was on it, and, attached to that, a tapered cast with a medium-sized salmon fly knotted on. Chance carried it as they went to the jutting rock, and Davis peered into the water, going down on his hands and knees to look better.

Harry Wint had no desire to look at those legs again just now. He stared down into the stream, and there something twinkling caught his eye. In the moment before Davis spoke he had time to see that it was his missing gaff, lying at the bottom in about four feet of water.

“He’s not alive down there,” said Davis suddenly, dropping his legs over the rock, where it was shallower, and promptly sliding down into the water so that it came up to his waist. “Who was it, sir?”

“Mr. Hayes,” said Bow briefly, staring in a fascinated way at the protruding limbs.

Davis mode a remark in Welsh, and began to unsling his gaff. “I don’t see indeed how we are to get him up unless with this.”

“No, no!” Chance cried with distaste, and promptly plunged into the water beside him. “He’s not deep. We’ll get hold of his legs— Hoad, I say, Hoad!”

“What?” cried the young man, as if waking from a horrid reverie.

“Run like blazes, and get the policeman and the doctor! Don’t go to the hotel— and see if you can find some sort of stretcher. A hurdle will do, and a bit of tarpaulin.”

Hoad ran. Davis took off his gaff, and threw it on to the bank. He and Chance moved cautiously forward, an inch at a time, into the deeper water. Davis got a firm footing, asked Wint to hold the handle of his long gaff, and let the other end down to him, took a grip above the hook, and then bent downwards under the water.

He looked like a swan, stretching down to gather under-water weeds, his groping, free hand the neck. Bent from the waist, his head and back remained under water for twenty seconds, then he rose slowly and laboriously and Wint could see that he had the body by one knee, and was drawing it up easily enough from under the recess in the rock.

Chance helped now, and Wint let go the gaff, and went down on his knees to give a hand. A minute later, and they had the limp, soaking body of Mr. Solomon Hayes on the bank.

“Drowned dead enough,” said Davis. “This was to be his last fishing, indeed yes.”

Chance had his teeth tight shut. He said nothing. Only he pointed to the dead man’s throat, and all three saw what he saw there.

“You would say he had been stabbed.” Davis was the first to speak. “Yes, indeed, sir, but it’s not like a knife, look you.”

Wint dropped on his knees by the body. There were certainly no marks to suggest the mark of a knife with an edge, just a round, raw wound, not very large, but obviously deep in the left side of the throat, below, but a little bit forward of, the ear.

They found their tongues suddenly. Davis, said with conviction that it might have been caused by a gaff. They debated it, and were not agreed. Davis turned the head gently, and there they saw a smaller wound. It seemed surer now that he had found the solution. If the point of the steel gaff-hook had been driven into the throat, the smaller wound was where its point had just emerged.

“But there’s no blood about here,” said Wint.

“And no gaff,” said Bow.

“He hadn’t a gaff with him yesterday morning,” Chance put in. “He was after sewin.”

Harry Wint suddenly remembered the bright thing he had seen on the bottom. “Wait a moment, Bob,” he begged. “I lost mine last night. I told you— I believe I saw it here.”

He showed it them, and Davis, after a quick, strange look at him, took up his own gaff with the long handle, and fished up the telescopic one Wint had missed.

“Is this yours, sir?”

“Yes, it is,” said Wint. “But how could he have had it?”

“Did you drop it here, Harry?”

“No, at the pool above, and on the bank!”

Davis was full of suggestions and resource. “It may be that the gentleman found yours, sir, and took it along with him.”

“That’s it,” said Bow. “But, look here, isn’t it just possible that Hayes had his rod in one hand and the gaff loose in the other as he came down to this pool in the dark? Could he have slipped, and got the hook stuck in his neck, pulled it out as he stumbled on the edge, and gone into the pool before he could save himself?”

“It may be so, though I don’t see how it could happen,” said Wint, examining the gaff. “There’s no blood on it.”

“It’s been in the water.”

“It must have struck the jugular, and if Hayes fell in, there would be no signs by this time,” suggested Bow.

“Well, we can do nothing till the ‘Bobby’ comes,” Chance remarked. “At least, nothing here. I tell you what. There is an A.A. telephone across the road. I’ll go over and telephone the chap at the ‘Horn,’ and it might do no harm to get the police station at Cwyll. Constable Jones won’t be allowed to do any investigation.”

He ran upstream and crossed. Bow sat down and lit a cigarette. Davis stared at Wint.

“Did you know the gentleman, sir?” he asked.

“I never saw him in my life before,” said Wint. “I only came here yesterday evening.”

Chapter 5

Mrs. Hayes is Calm

SOME instinct, unexplained by anything he could read in Davis’s voice or manner, told Wint that here was the man to whom Bob Chance had referred in his letter. He looked the kind of man who would stand no nonsense, and there was in his eye a smouldering hint of the quick, Celtic temper. There was nothing to prove that this was the fellow who had quarrelled with Hayes, and threatened to throw him into the river, but the conviction was strong in Wint that it was so.

Now his mind reverted to the slight circumstance he had observed that morning. Davis had spoken of just starting to fish, he had gone across the stepping-stones which would not wet his waders above the knee, and yet they were wet above the knee.

Either he had been out at night— and late at that, for the wet waders still glistened a little in the sun— or he had been in the river that morning.

Davis said nothing, but chewed on the stem of an old pipe which he took from his pocket, but did not light. It struck Wint that he looked rather anxious now.

The latter went over to Bow, who had laid the rod down, and was lighting a fresh cigarette at the butt of the old.

“So he was out fishing last night?” he said.

Bow pointed to the rod. “He must have come back here, looked for his rod, and started to fish— that’s after he got back from Cwyll. What do you think, Davis?”

Davis started a little. He had heard in the village about the rumpus the previous morning. All the details had been canvassed in the local pub, and it had provided a meaty bone for the gossips to worry.

“Looks as if he had, sir, if this is his rod.”

Bow picked it up, and looked at it. “It’s his all right. But what do you make of that big ‘Jock Scott’? Water’s low for that sort of thing, even after dark.”

Davis leaned forward and took the gut cast in his hand. “Fine gut, too, sir— and look at this!”

He held up the salmon-fly, and they both moved closer and stared at it. Wint raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“D’ye mean the knot?”

Davis nodded. “A queer knot.”

Bow now studded the fly and its attachment. “You’re right,” he said, with a puzzled air. “I never saw a fly tied on to gut that way before. Why, it’s just the common knot you would tie in string. It would cut if you gave it a heavy pull.”

Davis seemed suddenly full of a queer satisfaction. “That knot wasn’t tied by Mr. Hayes, sir. He was no friend of mine, but he could fish, indeed, very well.”

“You had a row with him once, hadn’t you?” Wint asked bluntly.

“I’m not the only one had, sir.”

“Were you out fishing last night?”

Davis gave him a black look. “I was sir, but not here. I was a mile down, on another pool.”

“You didn’t see him pass you?”

“I saw nothing of him.”

There was no time to ask any more questions, for the constable, with Hoad, the local medical man, Dr. Grey, and Chance, who had joined them on the road, came hot-foot across the river.

Griffiths, the constable, was a tall, good-looking fellow, certainly not cut out temperamentally or mentally for detective work, but an excellent officer as far as his ordinary duties went. He looked rather excited as he greeted the three men, and got out his note-book.

Dr. Grey did not waste time. He knelt by the body, glanced at the throat, then looked up. “I don’t suppose it matters if we move him, if you took him out of the river.”

“No, sir,” said Griffiths. “But I hope these gentlemen know how he was lying.”

“Not much help at that,” said Bow sardonically. “But I can tell you what I saw, while Dr. Grey gets on with his job.”

So, while the constable took down the statements of Wint, Chance, Bow, and Davis in turn, the doctor examined the primary wound, and then turned the body over on its side, and examined the point where the point of the steel gaff had made its exit. Then he got up, directed Hoad and the constable while they put the body on the stretcher they had brought with them, and made a short pronouncement.

“I don’t know if the Chief Constable will want a post-mortem, but you had better take the body up this side to the bridge, and put it in Jones’s empty garage. I don’t think it would be wise to take it to the hotel with so many women there.”

“And Mr. Hayes’s wife,” said Wint.

Grey looked at him. “Didn’t know he had one! Well, you’d better get along with it. Will you give them a hand, Davis?”

He looked hard at Davis as he spoke, but the man nodded, and seemed willing enough, so Hoad left it, and Griffiths and Davis took it up, and went off along the bank towards the bridge. The other men accompanied the doctor back across the stepping-stones, and so to the road.

“What do you think happened?” Wint asked, as they got over the wall. “We think he got a jab with a gaff.”

Grey acquiesced. “It looks like that. But not exactly a jab. That suggests a straight blow, and a gaff-hook is pulled towards you.”

Bow cut in. “That was my idea, too. If the wound was made by a gaff, then the man who did it must have stood behind Hayes, reached forward, so that the gaff-point was in front of the throat, and then snatched back.”

“It cut the jugular, anyway,” said Grey. “That’s a messy business. In view of that, I think Griffiths ought to have examined the ground.”

“We did,” said Wint. “No signs. You’re overlooking one fact which occurred to me at once.”

“What’s that?”

“Simply that Hayes was wading near the bank, and fell into the water the moment he was attacked. How long do you think he was dead?”

“Difficult to be exact since he was lying in the stream. I should say roughly six to nine hours.”

He glanced at his companions, and added grimly: “You people will have a disagreeable time with the police, I’m afraid.”

Bow laughed harshly. “There appears to be nothing very secret in what takes place here.”

“There isn’t! After all, you people at the hotel are our chief show. And if three or four of you have rows with one, and gladiatorial combats on the river-bank, who are we not to be entertained?”

Hoad looked nervous. “I say, Doctor, we’re not the only ones. Davis—”

“Oh, you can be sure they will put Davis through it too,” said the doctor dryly. “Fortunately, they have an intelligent man at Cwyll. Inspector Ivor Parfitt isn’t a bad specimen. They’re sure to have him over. The Superintendent is on the point of retiring.

“That will be the man I spoke to over the telephone,” said Bob Chance. “I was going away to-day, but, of course, I told him I would stop till the business was settled.”

They were now near the hotel, and a word from Wint halted them in hesitation.

“Good heavens! Here’s Mrs. Hayes, and alone!”

Hoad and Bow turned aside. Chance and the doctor went on, with Wint at their heels. Mrs. Hayes came quickly forward and spoke.

“There is something wrong. I am sure of it! Is it my husband?”

Dr. Grey was used to death, and the breaking of it to relatives. He believed that nothing was ever gained by stupid quibblings. People of intelligence saw through that at once, and if they did not, the blow, when it came, was more severe from being suspended.

He raised his hat gravely. “I am sorry to say that it is,” he told her, watching her face with a professional eye. “I am sorry.”

She drew herself up. “Was he drowned?”

“He was found in the river. That is as much as I can say at the moment.”

Hoad and Bow and Chance slipped on, and went to the hotel. Wint hesitated for a moment, and then followed them. He was thinking that Joan Powis would be here that evening. She must have already started from London, and there was no way to warn her.

Grey concluded that the bereaved wife was cool rather than frozen or stunned by grief.

“It’s dreadful!” she said, almost mechanically. “Will there be an inquest? I suppose not.”

“Undoubtedly there will be,” he told her, and relaxed a little, seeing that she was not going to faint, or give him trouble. “I see Mrs. Harmony, one of your fellow guests, coming out, Mrs. Hayes. If you take my advice, you will go in and lie down for a little.”

She did not ask if she might see the body, or where it had been put. She bowed, turned stonily away, and walked to where Mrs. Harmony was watching her anxiously. Grey stood where he was until she had entered the hotel porch with the older woman, then went home quickly.

“Not much love lost there!” he reflected, as he ignored some attempts to stop him, to hear what had happened. “Either she had been gradually frozen to death, or she’s cut out of a bit of flint.”

The former alternative, judging what he had heard about Hayes, was the most likely. Even some model husbands have the properties of the Gorgon’s head.

Bow and Chance had gone to their rooms when Wint went in. Hoad and Celia Mason were talking in the smoking-room, and when the newest guest looked in there, the girl greeted him as if she had known him for weeks.

“Isn’t this a terrible thing? Mr. Hoad says someone killed him. I can’t believe it. Everyone disliked him, but you don’t kill people you dislike. It may have been an accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident, and I don’t think you disliked him,” said Hoad obstinately. “He was always talking to you, wasn’t he?”

Evidently he was still jealous of a memory. Celia coloured and looked momentarily uncomfortable.

“I didn’t dislike him at first. I signed the Round-robin last night. I wish I hadn’t now. But I am sure Mr. Harmony tore it up.”

Wint sat down, and lit up. He watched Hoad’s face which was worried again.

“No, he didn’t! He handed it over before he heard. But when did you get fed-up with the man?”

She was on the defensive at once. “I never liked to be rude to him. And he wasn’t young. I’m old-fashioned enough not to be rude to older people.”

Wint gathered from this that Mr. Hayes had been at least mildly friendly with one person in the hotel, and that Hoad had pretensions, and did not like it. He intervened lightly.

“It doesn’t seem to matter much who liked or disliked him, does it? He’s dead now, though he seems to be likely to give more trouble than when he was alive.”

Celia nodded. “Did you hear about his wife coming in the night? Mr. Hayes never mentioned her coming, and the manageress says she did not book. The Boots says she came about two in her car, and had had an accident somewhere.”

Hoad stared. “Did he? But I saw the poor thing just now, and she looked all right. What happened? It can’t have been very much.”

Celia agreed. “It wasn’t. She ran into something, and only bled her nose, bumping her head.”

“Did she tell the Boots that in the middle of the night?” asked Wint, who rather imagined that the young woman was romancing.

“Doesn’t sound likely that she would have made a confidant of Evans,” added Hoad.

“But she did. He said there were a few spots of blood on her skirt, and he thought she might be hurt, and asked her. She told him what it was. It might happen to anyone.”

The men agreed. A collision with something in the dark is quite likely to dash a driver forward against the wheel.

“I wonder shall we all be questioned by the police?” said Hoad, after a pause. “If I’m asked, I’ll tell them I did have a row with Hayes.”

“And you said he was a vieux marcheur,” said Celia. “Whatever that is— ‘old soldier,’ I suppose.”

Wint fought down a grin which would have been unsuitable at that time. “It will serve as a free translation,” he murmured, conscious that Hoad was red in the face, and sorry that anger had moved him to utter an expression he now felt to be dubious; for these sportsmen at angling resorts were not of the Bohemian kidney. “Well, I have nothing to confess, except that I lost my gaff last night, and it was found in the same pool as that unfortunate man.”

Celia uttered a startled exclamation. “Then it may have been the one Mr. Hayes was killed with— if he was murdered!”

Wint had already thought of that. It was a gruesome idea, but not improbable. The murderer might have picked it up on the bank, and used it for the ghastly deed.

“I can’t be responsible for the actions of my mechanical agents,” he observed. “But I must say that I can’t see any way in which a man could have killed himself with a gaff by accident. We’d better wait till we hear what the police say.”

“I think so too,” said Celia, who excused herself and went out.

Wint looked at Hoad. “Anything behind your unfortunate remark about the man?” he inquired.

Hoad pursed his lips. “I spoke rather hastily, but I think there was. Hayes was as stiff as the devil with men, awfully high-and-mighty, and so on, but he gave me a nasty impression when he looked at— at women. It may be rotten to say so now, but his expression was a sort of refined leer, if you know what I mean.”

“Like an Irish Bull, it does convey something,” said Wint. “I wonder if his wife ever surprised that kind of look on his face?”

Chapter 6

Anonymous!

INSPECTOR IVOR PARFITT, who descended on the hotel a few minutes later, accompanied by a sergeant, was tall and keen. He had a kindly look, too, though his eyes were a frosty grey, and his rather large mouth had a habit of setting sharp like a trap between sentences when he spoke.

He had been to see the body, dispatched an officer with a camera to take some shots of the place where the body had been found, and Constable Griffiths with him, to see that sightseers were not allowed within fifty yards of the spot. Reaching the hotel, he had an interview with the proprietor, another with the secretary, who supplied him with a list of the guests, and a short talk with Evans, the Boots.

Everyone in the village knew that a lady had arrived early in the morning by car, and the proprietor had admitted that Evans let her in.

Evans knew Parfitt by sight, but was distinctly nervous when the Inspector faced him alone in the hotel billiards-room. He told him that Mrs. Hayes had arrived very late, and admitted that they were not expecting her.

Parfitt raised his eyebrows. “But her husband was here, of course. Did she explain why she arrived at that hour?”

Evans nodded. He repeated what she had told him about the accident, which might have been much more serious than it was. Parfitt did not comment on that. He wondered how such a thing could have kept her so late, however, and when Evans told him of the spots of blood on her skirt, he stared at the man.

“If your nose bleeds violently, it is difficult to escape with a drop or two,” he commented now. “Was there any sign of blood on the floor of the car?”

“No, sir. I looked this morning.”

Parfitt dismissed him, and went back to the secretary’s office. “I wonder if you could do something for me Miss Pole?” he said. “I am anxious to see Mrs. Hayes for a few minutes—”

“I’ll ask her if she feels fit to see you, Inspector.”

“Thank you. But that isn’t it. I want you to visit her room while she is with me. Did she bring much luggage?”

Miss Pole looked startled. “No; only a bag.”

“Then her husband had intended to leave here soon?”

“No, he was staying some weeks.”

“And he did not appear to know that his wife was coming?”

“He never told me so. And we had no wires or telephone messages.”

“I see. Well, be good enough to look through her bag. If it is locked, of course, I must ask her for the key.”

Miss Pole seemed uncomfortable. “But what am I to look for?”

“I only want you to look at her handkerchiefs. If there is anything—”

“But what would be on her handkerchiefs?” she interrupted.

“If you see anything out of the ordinary, let me know,” he replied. “Now, if you would ask the lady to come to me in the billiards-room.”

Parfitt’s elderly superintendent was down at the police station interrogating Davis. Afterwards, he was to go down to the pool where Hayes’s body had been found. The Inspector was glad he had the affair to himself.

As he seated himself again in the empty billiards-room, he was considering the question of Miss Pole finding something. For himself, he was only at the beginning of his investigation, and had no suspicions with regard to Mrs. Hayes. But he did know that nose-bleeding as the result of a blow requires staunching. Either it is a flow that is stopped and intercepted by a handkerchief, or leaves obvious signs. The fact that there were only a few drops on Mrs. Hayes’s skirt suggested that she had used a handkerchief with uncommon promptitude. He would know later when Miss Pole had had a look round.

A few minutes with Constable Griffiths, on his first arrival had put him au courant with the rather disturbing minor occurrences at the hotel prior to Hayes’s death. He had not seen the latter when he went to Cwyll to complain about an assault, but he had heard of the complaint, knew that several men at the “Horn” had quarrelled with the dead man, and was aware that Davis had had a violent scene with him.

But he did not allow these episodes to prejudice him yet. There are millions of quarrels, and violent ones at that, to every murder in this country. If there can be a good motive for any murder, a display of temper over angling precedence does not provide one. The motive and the murderer might both be alien to Pengellert, and, if so he would get the best information from the dead man’s wife.

Mrs. Hayes apparently felt composed enough to see him. When he got a chair for her, he took a little time arranging his note-book, and glancing at her with a deceptive mildness, concluded that she was a very capable and intelligent woman.

After he had murmured sympathy, and pleaded the dictates of duty for troubling her, she gave him immediate proof of that.

“I understand. I am quite willing to tell you anything I know,” she said. “It is very little, of course.”

“You arrived very late last night, I understand?” he said, taking her at her word. “You had not booked a room in advance.”

“No. My husband was here.”

“And knew you were coming?”

“No. I came down hurriedly.”

“I only asked you that, madam, because he might have a single room, and then these hotels at this time of year are often full.”

“I might have telephoned, of course.”

He looked apologetic. “Do you mind telling me what brought you down here so hurriedly? Had your husband written to say that he was in any trouble?”

She shook her head. “He said there were some— disagreeable men here, that was all.”

“But not that he feared violence from any of them?”

“Of course not. He gave me the impression that they were merely ill-mannered. But I am afraid he was rather easily upset.”

He repressed a start. Was that, or was it not, the sort of remark an affectionate wife would make about her dead husband? It was difficult to say. There was something intense about this woman and her face wore a curious expression, as if some irrepressible indignation still seethed in her mind, in spite of the sobering tragedy.

“Quarrelled readily?” he suggested.

“Perhaps not exactly that. He was too Olympian with men, and they found it annoying.”

The classical allusion passed over Parfitt’s head, but he could see clearly enough now that Mrs. Hayes’s intention was ironical. Irony about a dead husband did not suggest a happy past.

“May I ask did you come here suddenly for any reason?” he ventured. “You need not answer that if you do not wish to.”

“You mean that I should have announced my arrival if there was no reason to conceal the reason?” she said calmly. “You are quite wrong. I should have told my husband, of course.”

Parfitt nodded vaguely. “I see.”

Mrs. Hayes drew a deep breath. “l suppose you are looking for motives, Inspector? That’s your duty, isn’t it? Would you call jealousy a motive?”

Parfitt repressed some excitement. Was she going to confess something?

“It’s led to a good many murders, madam,” he replied, after a moment’s reflection. “May I ask you what you are suggesting?”

She unclosed one hand, which she had kept clenched till then, and disclosed a folded and crumpled sheet of notepaper. “I received this the day before yesterday,” she remarked, handing it to him, and watching him unfold and spread it out on the billiards-table. “It’s sufficiently unpleasant.”

Parfitt read the loathly thing with care, read it again, and looked at Mrs. Hayes sympathetically.

The matter on the paper was printed with a pen in Roman capitals, and read:

YOU OUGHTER COME ERE YOUR OLD BUFFER OF AN USBAND AS BEEN CARRYING ON SHOCKING. THE LADY IN THE HOTEL ISNT THE ONLY ONE HE MEETS A GIRL OUT HERE TOO NIGHTS. A NASTY DOG HE IS.

“I am inclined to think this sort of thing is better ignored madam,” he murmured. “It’s generally silly spite that’s behind it.”

He could not be mistaken in thinking that Mrs. Hayes had now begun to think little of his intelligence.

“Does it not strike you as rather odd that I should come down here in a hurry just because some spiteful person wrote me an anonymous letter?” she demanded. “I am nearly fifty, Inspector. One ought to know something at that age.”

Parfitt acknowledged the rebuke. She was making her meaning plain now. She was not a green girl, roused to foolish suspicions by a hint that her husband was flirting, but a woman who already knew so much that conviction used its own legs without needing to be carried.

“You think the murder may have been committed by someone who was jealous of your husband— the writer of this note, perhaps?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea. I merely suggest that the note hints at a woman here.”

“And the woman’s lover, perhaps?”

“If you can trace the writer, no doubt you may learn something.”

He bowed. “I shall have the matter looked into at once. But I had better hear a little more first. You live at Lomington?”

“Cedar Court, Lomington.”

“How far is that from here by road?”

“One hundred and eighty miles. I set out at eleven, lunched at Hereford, and stopped for dinner at Llangollen. I left Llangollen at a quarter to nine. Do you wonder why I left so late?”

“You had a considerable distance to cover, madam, part of it over mountain roads.”

She smiled coldly. “I have no interest in fishing, Inspector, but my husband had. He insisted on my hearing all about it. I am quite aware that most of the fishing was done here after dark.”

Inspector Parfitt was not used to such directness from witnesses, or to wives who preserved few illusions about their husbands. “You could hardly claim to have proof that your husband was not fishing, madam.”

“I have had proof time and again,” said this surprising creature. “I had a reputation for placidity in my youth. It’s a fatal reputation to have! People play on it. The camel driver only put the last straw on his beast because he expected it to put up with it.”

Parfitt let that pass without comment. It was strange to learn that the middle-aged, over-dignified Mr. Hayes was a whited sepulchre to his wife, a mausoleum of ugly little pasts.

“Since a lady in the hotel here is mentioned—” he began.

“A pretty girl, and I only saw one answering to that description when I arrived— Miss Mason,” she interrupted.

Parfitt knew that there had been no reference to prettiness in the anonymous letter, and took it that she referred to something her husband had written her. “Seems unlikely,” he said in a businesslike tone. “I understand that some of the other guests signed a Round-robin— in fact, it was shown to me— and among the names was that of Miss Celia Mason. There was a suggestion that Mr. Hayes should be asked to leave.”

Mrs. Hayes made a tiny grimace. “I put up with him for twenty-five years,” she said. “They were evidently not so patient!”

“Still, madam, that rather disposes of the suggestion that Mr. Hayes was— paying attentions to Miss Mason.”

“Do you think so? I don’t! These things are sometimes one-sided, Inspector. From what I have seen of Miss Mason, I should think this one was. I have been told that my husband’s paternal manner was apt to wear off, having served its turn. Perhaps Miss Mason will tell you.”

The Inspector hardly knew what to make of her. Most of the people he knew were so imbued with the idea that dead men’s memories are always white that they would even practise deception to keep them so. The measure of Mrs. Hayes’s revelations was the measure of her hatred for the dead man. She was not of those who think that a little hypocrisy forms a fitting label for funeral wreaths.

Somehow he did not like it. He liked generosity and forgiveness when people were gone. “If your suspicions are correct, it is possible that Miss Mason resented his attentions,” he agreed. “But to go a little further, madam. Did Mr. Hayes mention any men here he particularly disliked, and give you any reason for that dislike?”

She nodded. “He mentioned a Mr. Bow and a Mr. Chance. He appears to have met Mr. Chance years ago, and spoke of Mr. Bow, too, as a former acquaintance. Parfitt pricked up his ears. Chance at least had had a fracas with the dead man. “Do you think the dislike was formed before Mr. Hayes met the two men here?”

“I cannot say. With Mr. Bow it may have been. My husband said he knew something of him. Of course, I am not suggesting that either of them had anything to do with this affair.”

He nodded. “May I ask if you stopped your car last night on the road between the bridge and the hotel?”

“No. My only stop was an involuntary one, some distance from here. I could not describe it, as it was dark when I had the slight accident.”

“Did you see anyone on the road near here as you approached?”

“No one at all. I thought I heard a voice down by the river, but I am not sure. The water makes a great noise.”

Parfitt wrote that down, passed his notes to Mrs. Hayes, asked her to read them, and sign, and initial, each sheet if she found them sufficiently correct. She read carefully, nodded agreement, and put down her name.

Parfitt thanked her, and added that he might not find it necessary to trouble her again. When she had gone, he rang the bell, and asked the waiter who answered it if he might see Miss Celia Mason. Celia came in almost immediately, and took the chair he put ready for her.

“In a case of this kind, Miss Mason,” he began gravely, “I am sure you will not mind answering one or two questions. In the first place, did you see much of the late Mr. Hayes since you came here?”

She coloured a little. “He was more friendly with me than the others,” she admitted. “At first, at any rate.”

“Did he adopt a sort of paternal attitude?” asked Parfitt, making use of his last witness’s revelations.

She started, and stared at him, obviously surprised. “How did you know that?”

“He gave that impression to some people, Miss Mason. Could you tell me exactly what you mean by a paternal attitude?”

She looked uncomfortable. “He patted my hand, if you must know, and well, that sort of thing.”

“You disliked that manner, or I take it that you wouldn’t have signed the Round-robin I saw?”

Her embarrassment grew. “No, I didn’t resent it. I don’t suppose he was really old, but he seemed old to me, and I thought it was genuine.”

“But not at the last?”

“No— Inspector, he’s dead now. I don’t like to say any more.”

Parfitt was sorry, but firm. “I can’t force you, Miss Mason. But this was a murder, you know, and we don’t want an innocent person suspected of it.”

She saw that, and blurted out a little. “He was hateful! I told him he was a beastly hypocrite! That’s all I can say.”

Parfitt took down that, asked her to read and sign his notes, as he had asked Mrs. Hayes, and dismissed her with thanks.

He sat and thought a little after that. Here was proof now that the late Mr. Hayes was an elderly Don Juan of an offensive sort. Mrs. Hayes had come down hastily to take action. But what kind of action had she taken, or intended to take?

He wanted a word with Mr. Bow now. Bow had known Hayes before, and it was prior knowledge of Mr. Hayes that might be the most important. He was about to ring for the waiter to have Bow sent in, when an afterthought led him to call for Miss Pole, the secretary.

“What did you find?” he asked her, when she entered and closed the door, “anything?”

“I hope I shan’t be asked to search any of the other guests’ rooms,” she replied, with a faint air of resentment. “It made me terribly nervous.”

“I am much obliged to you,” he told her. “I can promise you that any further searches will be made by myself.”

She pursed her lips. “At any rate, she has half a dozen handkerchiefs with her. They were all clean.”

“That is all I wanted to know, thank you,” he said. “Sorry I had to trouble you.”

Chapter 7

The Wrong Knot

FIVE PEOPLE LEFT the hotel by three o’clock; Mr. and Mrs. Harmony, and Mr. Bone, were among them. It was obvious that they had no possible connection with the murder, and they had been dismissed, and fled. Notoriety alarms some people much more than danger. The Harmonys were plucky and kind people, but the idea of being mentioned In the papers in a murder case drove them away.

Inspector Ivor Parfitt was glad to get rid of them. He had quite enough people to handle as it was. After interrogating Celia Mason, and learning the truth about Mrs. Hayes’s handkerchiefs, he had been called to a conference with his Chief Constable, Mr. Donald Rigby. Rigby heard what he had to say, and determined that they must know more about Chance and Bow. Both were Londoners. He drove off to Cwyll in his car to despatch a sergeant to town to make inquiries.

“The fact is that Chance assaulted the man, and both of them, according to Mrs. Hayes, met the dead man years ago. We don’t know what passed then, Parfitt, but we do know that they made a dead set at him when they came here,” he said, as the Inspector saw him off. “Inquiries can do no harm.”

Parfitt wished that the same could be said of Chief Constables. Mr. Rigby was very agreeable, but incurably officious. He liked, he said, always to tackle things logically. When you get two men working together whose ideas of logic are fundamentally opposed, there is trouble.

As the car drove off the Inspector noticed the man Davis at the other side of the road, looking at him. He came over at once when he saw the officer’s eye on him.

“Could I speak to you a bit?” he asked, as Parfitt acknowledged his greeting.

“Come in,” said Parfitt, turning on his heel, and re-entering the station. “Didn’t you see the Superintendent this morning?”

“He doesn’t fish!” said Davis.

The Inspector made him sit down. “Well, what is it?”

“The fly the gentleman was using, and the knot,” said Davis briefly; “I showed it to the other two gents.”

Parfitt got up. “Wait a moment. We’ve got the rod here, with the other exhibits.”

He came back with the rod, still up, disjointed it carefully, and placed it on the table. Drawing into a loop the last yard of line, to which the cast and fly were attached, he laid it on the table, too, and took the body of the salmon-fly between his fingers.

“Now then, Davis, is it your idea that someone knotted a fly on to the cast, and put up the rod, to suggest that Mr. Hayes had been fishing?”

“That’s it, Inspector, You know how a fisherman knots an eyed fly on, and it isn’t this way.”

Parfitt nodded. “No, it isn’t. Whoever did it just put the gut through the eye, and made a double slip-knot; wrong side of the eye, too.”

“Then it’s a ‘Jock Scott,’” said Davis. “I had a talk with Mr. Hayes when he first come, before he got so nasty, and he as good as told me he never used that fly whatever.”

“That’s important,” said Parfitt, looking up. “But take a look at this other knot, Davis. The one that connects the line with the cast. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

Davis looked, and agreed that it was. “Beats me, sir,” he added, “unless Mr. Hayes tied that on himself.”

“Some fisherman did,” Parfitt murmured. “Well, that gives us the line and the cast mounted, when Mr. Hayes came back along the river and found his rod.”

“It would be so, sir. Mr. Chance he met Mr. Hayes fishing, and they had a scrap. Mr. Hayes bolted off and forgot his rod. He’d been fishing for sewins when they ran up against each other, and he’d have a sewin-fly on. Yes, indeed.”

Parfitt saw that the man was capable of stringing ideas together. “I see. But what’s the point? So far we have someone coming along, either before or after Mr. Hayes’s death, taking off a sewin-fly and putting on a salmon-fly. What was the good of that?”

But Davis seemed incapable of helping him there. He shook his head. “It doesn’t seem sense.”

Parfitt lit a pipe, and cogitated for a little. “There’s just a chance that it does mean something; though it’s a long shot, Davis. If we had found a sewin-fly on the cast we would have taken it for granted that Mr. Hayes wouldn’t carry a gaff.”

“Not for sewins, sir.”

“But if we believed he went out to try for a salmon, that would account for a gaff. No one could land a salmon in the pool where he was without a gaff. You couldn’t tail a fish there or strand it.”

“But ’twas the other gentleman’s gaff we found, sir.”

“That confuses matters, but there may be some explanation. Say the other man came along the bank, found the gaff dropped by— Mr. Wint isn’t it?— and did the murder with that. If he was a stranger, he might think Hayes had dropped it.”

“I’ll bring Mr. Hayes’s tackle-book and boxes we found on the body.”

He went away again, and Davis looked at the “Jock Scott” with an air of uneasiness. It was gone when Parfitt came back.

A search through Hayes’s tackle did not reveal a single “Jock Scott.” And the few salmon-flies he had were on much smaller sized hooks.

Parfitt said he must go, and Davis rose. The Inspector called the man back when he was already at the door.

“Did you ever hear that Mr. Hayes was after any women about here?” he demanded.

“Mr. Hayes after women, sir?”

“Yes, paying any attentions to anyone locally?”

“No, indeed, sir. He was always fishing during the day, and when would he meet her?”

Parfitt did not give the obvious reply. “All right, Davis. Good day to you.”

“Good-bye now,” said Davis, and went out.

“That’s a pattern of yours, Mr. Davis, or I’ll eat my hat!” mused the Inspector, when the door closed. “A variant on the usual ‘Jock Scott.’ I remember Mr. Rigby showed me one.”

While Cwyll is not informed of all that goes on in Pengellert, the places are sufficiently near, and sufficiently small, to enjoy a mutual information service. News is news in the country, and small events have to pass for greater. Most of the sportsmen of Cwyll went up to Pengellert for a day’s fishing when the sewin were running, and Davis’s fame as an accomplished angler was known for miles.

He had invented a few flies on his own account, and altered others to suit local requirements, but he lacked the deftness and skill to tie them himself.

Those he used were tied by a young woman, who lived alone in a little hill-farm on the slopes of the mountain above the village. Her mother had been dead ten years, her father died the previous year, and she had inherited from him the farm, with a sheep-run, a grey-stone home, a three-year-old Ford car, and three hundred and fifty pounds. Two men helped her with the farm and the sheep, but they lived in the village.

Just as there are, no doubt, makers of golf-clubs who do not frequent the links, even play the game at all, so Blodwen Tysin did not fish, but was something of an expert at fly-tying. She had learned that from her dead father, who had been a mighty angler, and earned quite a little in the season by tying flies for visitors. Within the last year she had also got a small connection, through one of the angling papers, with sportsmen at a distance, who sent her orders to despatch by post.

Parfitt had had flies from her once, and remembered her well. She was tall and well-made, on generous lines. Her hair was dark as a raven’s wing, her eyes big and soft. In fact, for her type, she was a handsome young woman, and would have been pestered by local admirers if she had not had the reputation, reinforced by fact, of being decidedly high-and-mighty— “swanky,” they called it locally. She had been educated at a small private school, and it was this education which was blamed by the Pengellert quidnuncs for Blodwen’s cool attitude to her neighbours.

Parfitt put that thought away for future reference, and went back to the hotel to complete his interrogations. Bob Chance was his first care. Chance was frank about his relations with the late Mr. Hayes, and admitted that he had committed at least a technical assault on him.

“He was really intolerable,” he added. “I only regret it because he was an older man than myself. I lost my temper, and he got in an almighty fright and bolted.”

“Even leaving his rod behind. Did you see what fly he was using? But I suppose you couldn’t.”

“Not the fly. But I saw him casting, before we had the row, and I am quite sure it was a small one. You know the flop a salmon-fly makes— oh, wait a moment. He trod on his line when we had the row, and may have snapped the fly off.”

“If you’ll tell me the exact spot, we’ll have a close search made for it,” said Parfitt. “Do you remember?”

“I’ll show it to you when you’ve finished your questions,” Chance replied, “or have you finished?”

“No, sir. I understand that you met Mr. Hayes before you came here. Can you tell me where that was, and when?”

Chance looked surprised at this. “How did you know? Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway. Let me see— I think it was four years ago. He and I were staying at a fishing inn in Devon, though I was not fishing that year. I had broken my wrist playing hockey. That was at Totte Combe.”

Parfitt made a note of that. “You wouldn’t come in conflict with him over fishing, sir, in that case. I suppose you actually did not have much to do with him?”

“Very little. I didn’t care for the type.”

“May I ask what type you mean, sir?”

Chance reflected. “A rather greasy fondness for the young of the other sex,” he said at last, smiling faintly. “He was one of your patters. I hate people who pat girls’ hands on every possible occasion.”

“That was all then, sir?”

“That was all. You know, Inspector, that we all have our particular hates. It’s something we can’t help or easily account for.”

“You thought him an unpleasant type?”

“So did the girls he patted! There were four, about eighteen there, and they were frank enough to show him that paternal manner ought to be kept for daughters of one’s own. Don’t make a mountain out of my mole-hill, please. I know one quite decent old chap who has the habit. It’s sheer benevolence and kindness on his part— for he is absolutely straight— but I wasn’t so sure of Hayes.”

Parfitt finished writing down his answers, and asked Chance to read and sign them. “I don’t quite like that,” said the other. “Mrs. Hayes is to be considered. I shouldn’t like to make her unhappy.”

The Inspector assured him that the notes would not be read at the inquest. “They’re not evidence anyway in this case,” he added.

Wint came in when Chance had left the room. His interview was short. Parfitt accepted his explanation about the lost gaff, after telling him to explain exactly where he had dropped it, and then asked him if he had heard any out-of-the-way sounds that night on the river.

Wint shook his head. “No. I heard the water, and a car passing. That is not an unusual sound.”

Parfitt smiled faintly. “Can you tell one car from another by the sound, sir? I can tell a Morris at night, and one or two others.”

Wint smiled too. “I never made a habit of it. The only thing I think I could swear to is the sound of an old Ford.”

“So you wouldn’t know what kind of car passed late yesterday night, sir? The lady— Mrs. Hayes came here in an Austin.”

“When I was in bed, too, Inspector. But it was a Ford passed on the road I’ll swear, and not a new one.”

“What time would that be, sir?”

Wint guessed it as nearly as he could. Parfitt nodded.

“Going which way?”

Wint told him, and was asked if he would be good enough to send Mr. Bow along.

Bow came in, smiling sardonically. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and stared at the Inspector.

“Rounding up the goats?” he asked, ironically. “I know Chance and I are supposed to have horns since we had rows with Hayes.”

“There are horned sheep, too, sir,” said Parfitt diplomatically. “I just wanted to ask you one or two questions. About your former acquaintance with Mr. Hayes, for instance.”

Bow eyed him steadily.

“I came across him years ago, but I shouldn’t call it an acquaintance.”

“May I ask where it was?”

“In the Pyrenees, near the Gave d’ Oloron. There’s a bit of salmon fishing there, and he was at the hotel.”

“And you, sir?”

“I was putting up with a French farmer, Inspector. I’ve fished a good deal in France, but mostly in Brittany. I always put up with a farmer there.”

“Then how did you run across Mr. Hayes?”

“I dined with a friend at the hotel twice, and I met him on the river.”

“Had any disagreement with him then?”

“Of a sort, yes. He was making up to the farmer’s daughter, and she was meeting him clandestinely.”

Parfitt raised his eyebrows. “I hope you won’t be offended, sir, if I ask you what business it was of yours? Unless, of course, the French lady was—” he paused momentarily, and Bow interrupted with a laugh.

“Don’t put me down as a cradle-snatcher, Inspector! The kid was a nice kid, but only sixteen or so. Hayes wouldn’t play cricket.”

“So you umpired for him, sir,” said Parfitt dryly.

“I told him to keep off the grass, and he made some offensive remark, which I resented. As he refused to play the game, I informed the farmer, and he sent his daughter off to an aunt.”

“What was the approximate year and date of your visit to the Pyrenees, sir?”

Bow gave him both, and they were noted down. Parfitt ended by producing a rough sketch of the course of the river, and asking what pool he had been fishing on the previous night.

“I have marked the various pools, as you will see, sir,” he added.

Bow studied the sketch. “I can tell you pretty well where we all started,” he said. “May I put the names down, and then you can check them?”

Parfitt agreed. “If you will, sir.”

Bow put them down as follows:—

POOL 1. Miss Celia Mason, until ten p.m., when she returned to hotel.

POOL 2. Mr. Bone. He left with Miss Mason.

POOL 3. Mr. Wint. He seems to have stopped between Pool 3 and the head of Pool 4.

POOL 4. Mr. Hayes.

POOL 5. Mr. Hoad.

POOL 6. Mr. Chance.

POOL 7. Myself (Bow).

Parfitt thanked him. “I shall have a better idea now, sir. Of course, we cannot say that any of you fishermen did not leave his pool, climb back on to the road, and drop down alongside a pool higher up, or lower down.”

“Some of us couldn’t,” said Bow dryly. “I, for one, was fishing from the far bank. The road, as you know, is on this side.”

“You were on the side where Mr. Hayes was found. Anyone else?”

“Chance, I think.”

“Did you hear a car go past earlier that evening?”

“I did. An old Ford, sounded like Miss Tysin’s— that’s got a sort of special wheeze— but I couldn’t swear.”

“Going towards the hotel?”

“I heard it go both ways, if it was the same car. But, I say, Inspector, I wonder if you were right about one of us leaving his place, and making a detour. Just about eleven, or after, I was resting, and filling a pipe, when I heard someone walking on the loose ballast of the open track.”

“The railway?”

“Yes. At least I am sure I heard the stones clatter a little.”

Parfitt noted that. “I’ll ask the others, sir. I think that will do for the present,” he said.

Chapter 8

A Woman in the Case

THE REMAINING PARTY at the hotel had discussed the affair ad nauseam, and Harry Wint fervently hoped that they had now done with it for the present. Joan Powis would be down that evening, and after her high hopes of fishing, it would be a nasty jar not only to be robbed of her sport, but plunged into a nasty, sordid affair like this.

After a little cogitation, he looked up the time for her train, and then studied the local bus table. He found that a bus would take him to Cwyll with half an hour to spare before she arrived. He told Chance, who knew Joan slightly, and added that he would like to see Inspector Parfitt before he left.

“I don’t want him to imagine I am making a bolt, Bob,” he said.

Chance smiled. “I’ll tell him, if I see him, old man, but I believe he’s gone up to Miss Tysin’s farm. He didn’t say so, but I overheard his sergeant telling Griffiths.”

Wint stared. “What does he want with her?”

“Bow thinks she must have gone by last night in her car.”

“But how could she be in this?”

“I don’t know that she was.”

“Did she know Hayes?”

Chance raised his eyebrows. “Hayes ran up sometimes to get a few sewin-flies tied.”

“Didn’t most of you give her orders?”

“We left ’em at the post office. Hayes went up to get!”

Harry Wint whistled.

“Great Scott, old chap! You’re not suggesting that old Hayes—”

Chance pursed his lips. “I do know I heard the old Ford go past quite a few nights, Harry.”

“But Hayes was found t’other side of the river.”

“Absolutely. But there’s the lower bridge. Anyone could drive down, cross there, leave the car in that lane, and go along to the first open cut in the tunnel. Bow thought he heard someone walking there last night. He told the Inspector so.”

Wint whistled again. “Hayes seems to have been like Satan, seeking whom he could devour.”

“Yes, if it was she, and she went there to meet him. I wouldn’t swear it isn’t possible. Hayes was a good fisherman, but he had had a few perfectly blank nights lately.”

“My hat! But it isn’t like a woman to do a man in with a gaff. I always heard they abhorred messy murders.”

“Unless she was defending herself. Worse weapons than a gaff,” said Chance. “I expect it’s all nonsense, though. None of us heard any sounds suggesting a struggle.”

Wint nodded. “What do you think of Mrs. Hayes, Bob? I hate to say it, but she doesn’t seem to be worrying much.”

Chance shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps she understood Hayes!”

As Wint drove to Cwyll in the bus, he found himself wondering again why Mrs. Hayes had come down to the hotel. Naturally, he did not know of the anonymous letter she had showed Parfitt, but he felt pretty certain that she had not warned her husband of her coming for very good reasons. Hayes’s disagreeable character, and his wife’s present attitude, convinced Wint that husband and wife had not agreed too well in the past.

Yet, had he seen that other letter, in which the man now dead had told his wife of Bow and Chance, he would have been hard put to it to believe in his own theory. It was the letter of a decent, if not very gushing husband, and he would have had to know something more of Hayes’s curious temperament to understand it.

There are some men who are determined to keep up a pretence of being in the right, even when they are in the wrong, and are aware that their nearest and dearest know it. Hayes was one of them. In spite of his naturally vicious propensities, he persisted in an attitude which suggested that his peccadilloes were hardly real. When his wife found him out, he would have thought it unendurable to admit what he had done. To find himself placed in a lower scale, mentally or morally, than a mere woman was a blow to his amour propre which he could not face, but evaded, in the very discovery, by a refusal to discuss the facts. To remain his wife’s superior, he had to be her devoted husband, and he remained that, at least, on paper: a hypocrisy of which he seemed hardly conscious.

“Saving face” to yourself alone is an unsatisfactory business to most people, but it appeared to content Hayes. It was part of his pose, and a necessity called for by his egotistical temperament. He did not care so much what his wife thought of him, so long as he could hug a flattering image of himself to his bosom, and believe it the man his wife had every right to respect. After all, there are no limits to self-deception. It is the easiest cheating.

If what Chance had hinted at was true, that Miss Tysin had got entangled with that blatant humbug Hayes, and Mrs. Hayes had come to hear of it, there was an explanation of the latter’s sudden arrival in the village. Hayes could have left his orders for flies at the post office as the other anglers did. Knowing his ways, it was suggestive that he alone had gone up to the farm.

Wint had heard something about the girl. She was better educated than many of her neighbours, and held herself a little aloof. A man like Hayes, rich, imposing, and pretentious, might make an impression on her. People who hold themselves apart from their fellows are generally ambitious. To be taken up by a wealthy guest at the hotel might impress the lonely girl at the hill-farm.

Wint could not believe that Bow or Chance, or young Hoad, could have had anything to do with the murder. Mrs. Hayes looked an unlikely criminal, it is true, but she had had time to get off her car on the way to the hotel. But, to implicate her, there must be some motive discovered, of which there was as yet no more than a hint— the speculation that Mr. Hayes had recently and sharply provoked his wife’s jealousy.

Wint knew, of course, that fatal injuries are sometimes inflicted in a quarrel without premeditation. That would be manslaughter, he assumed, not murder. A heated argument might have resulted in the wife taking up the gaff— Wint’s own, perhaps; which Hayes had picked up— and striking at her husband with it. Hayes might then have fallen down, and the weight of his body having driven the steel hook further into his flesh. The same thing might apply if Miss Tysin had been the wielder of the gaff, though what her motive could be in using it was difficult to see.

When later Wint saw Joan Powis step off the train, excited and happy, a couple of rods in her hand, he forced a smile.

“How’s the fishing, Harry?” she asked, when he had got a porter for her luggage, and escorted her out to the waiting bus. “I was wondering if I could have an hour before it got dark.”

Wint looked about him. There were ten minutes before the bus was due to leave, and it was empty at the moment.

Hastily explaining that he would have wired her, had he known in time, he told her briefly of the tragedy, and added that if she wished, he would take a room for her at another hotel. She could then return to London next day.

But Joan, though horrified at the news, shook her head. “It’s pretty ghastly, but I don’t want to go home at once,” she said. “I suppose you must stay till it’s cleared up?”

“I think I ought to,” he replied. “Of course, there is no reason why we shouldn’t fish— say the day after to-morrow, and naturally I’ll be delighted to have your company. Still, it’s a rotten thing to be mixed up in.”

“What is happening to-morrow?” she asked.

“The inquest. He won’t be buried here, I understand.”

Joan nodded.  “I see. You say his wife is here?”

He explained some of the theories which were floating about in the air, and she shrugged with distaste.

“It seems to me that Mr. Hayes won’t be a national loss, Harry! What a loathsome type! But surely this local girl wouldn’t be fascinated by an elderly man like that?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. He wasn’t exactly elderly— middle-aged I should say; as ages go nowadays, and he looked rather distinguished. There may be a good deal of beauty even in a whited sepulchre, Joan. The dry bones aren’t apparent from outside.”

“But if this girl was ambitious, and fascinated, why kill him? I am taking the theory for what it is worth.”

“There, of course, I am at a loose end. It may be that the inspector has only gone up to the farm to ask the girl what she knew about Hayes. Then there is the poacher who had a row with the man. In fact, there are quite a lot of people who disliked Hayes.”

Three people now got into the bus, and the driver climbed up into his seat, after taking the fares. Joan and Wint did not talk again till they were able to discuss the matter under cover of the noise of the engine.

“It seems to me,” she began, “the night-fishing business here made anything possible. Here you had half a dozen people within about half a mile, and not one seems to have seen the others, or known what they were doing.”

He nodded. “That is so. I went out for a little, and it was quite an eerie business. A lot of fallen rocks cut off one pool from another, and the rapids and waterfalls make a dickens of a noise. You have a sort of dark compartment to yourself.”

“I suppose this local man Davis knew the girl who tied flies?” she said.

Wint started. “Most of them are his patterns, I believe. By Jove! I never thought of that.”

Joan turned to look at him. “I was merely wondering if she tied the fly found on Mr. Hayes’s cast. You said it was not tied on by an expert.”

He had thought she was hinting that the crime might be the result of jealousy on the part of Davis, and received this new theory with relief.

“I see. But Davis pointed out the funny knot on the fly, Joan. And neither he nor Miss Tysin would make a silly slip-knot when tying on a ‘Jock Scott.’”

The bus was now running along the road near the river, and Joan pointed. “Oh, there’s a railway. Is this the one that goes through the tunnels?”

He nodded. “Yes. It goes about two miles under the mountain, and runs out here in the open for about two hundred yards, then there is a fifty yard tunnel under a spur of the cliff, and then another open cut. It leaves the tunnels altogether about a quarter of a mile above the village.”

“Do many trains run?”

“Only two a day each way— none at night.”

“I suppose it would be possible for someone to walk through from one end to the other. I mean to say, would they be stopped?”

“No. I don’t think so. You see, there are few stations. I know lots of the people fishing walk through the tunnels at the upper end here— the short ones.”

“But why?”

“Well, if they are in a hurry to get to the lower pools on the far bank. It isn’t ideal walking on the ballast between the rails, but it’s a jolly sight quicker and easier than keeping to the river bank. That’s covered with stones and boulders of all sizes, and you have to watch your step.”

Joan saw that. “Suppose Mr. Hayes wasn’t killed by anyone here, but by someone who came up from Cwyll by the tunnel after dark?”

“It’s possible. But we don’t know that he had a row with anyone at Cwyll.”

“You don’t really know whom he knew, or who were his enemies,” she argued. “That’s what annoys me about detective stories. They always take it for granted that the people on the spot killed the victim.”

“That’s for fair play to the reader,” he said, smiling.

“It may be, but it isn’t like life,” she retorted. “There’s no need to assume that someone here killed Hayes, just to keep the silly old novelists’ rules, is there?”

“Not the least,” he agreed, adding as the bus slowed: “Well, here we are, at the hotel. I’m sorry you’ve run into such a gloomy haunt. What a pity we didn’t both come down last week instead of this.”

“Still, it will be exciting,” said Joan. “Don’t think me horrid for saying that, will you?”

“Most of us seem to have an atavistic taste for the gruesome,” he observed. “We’d better blame Nature ‘Red in tooth and claw’, you know!”

There was no one in the hall when, the Boots having taken charge of Joan’s luggage, they went to the office, and spoke to Miss Pole. Then Joan went to her room to change, and Harry Wint sat in the lounge and lit a cigarette.

He had hardly been sitting there five minutes when Celia Mason came in excitedly, and crossed to his side.

“Have you heard the news?” she cried at once. “Everyone’s talking about it. The whole village is buzzing like a hive.”

Wint jumped up.

“Since when? The Boots didn’t tell us. But what is up?”

She sank into a chair, with the eager face of one who can talk of something new. “About that girl who tied flies for you men. She’s gone! At least that’s what they say. Inspector Parfitt wouldn’t tell anyone, but rushed through into the police station, and—”

“Wait a moment, please,” he begged, “do you mean she’s dead too— murdered? Surely not.”

Celia shook her head. “No, of course not. Gone! Bolted, they say. The Inspector went up to talk to her and she wasn’t to be found. I wonder why?”

Wint was astonished, but did not explain his views as to the possible reason for the girl absconding, if indeed it was true that she had left.

“You know as much as I do,” he said evasively.

“Did Parfitt rush back to Cwyll? We didn’t meet him on the way, I’m sure.”

“Oh, I forgot. You went to meet a friend there— no. The Inspector was in a sidecar with his sergeant. They drove up the side road towards Llynithen.”

While they were still discussing the event, Joan came down, and was introduced to Miss Mason. Harry Wint told her the latest news, and she stared at him significantly. Celia rushed to the office to tell Miss Pole, and Wint made Joan sit down.

“There’s three-quarters of an hour before dinner, and I expect it will be late this evening, anyway,” he said. “What about a stroll?”

Joan agreed. They did not go to the village, but cut across a field belonging to the hotel, and found themselves on the river bank. Farther down on this side there was a small farm-house. One of the four sons was a local postman, and he came along the bank on his way home, as Wint and Joan reached the path that ran along the river side.

As he wished them good evening, Wint stopped him to ask him if there was anything further about Miss Tysin.

The man replied good-humouredly that everyone was asking him that. All he had heard was that the girl was gone, but when she left he could not tell. He had taken two letters up to the farm that morning and handed them to her. There had been no occasion to go to the farm again, and he knew no more than anyone else what had happened to her.

“I don’t suppose her going has any connection with this other affair, anyway,” Wint observed, offering his cigarette-case. “What do you think?”

The postman thanked him, took a cigarette, and reflected for a few moments. “Don’t see how it can, sir,” he said at last. “Time I saw her, no one knew what had happened, so she couldn’t either, look you!”

Chapter 9

Another Missing

THERE WAS A FAINT significance, Wint thought, in the way the man stressed the time of his meeting with Blodwen Tysin. What difference did it make if the girl had known of the finding of Mr. Hayes’s body when the postman delivered the letters?

Joan seemed to have the same thought, for she glanced in a puzzled way at the speaker. “Do you mean that she looked worried?” she asked quickly.

The postman lit his cigarette before he replied very carefully: “Well, indeed, I wouldn’t say she was worried, then. I went to the hotel, and heard there Mrs. Hayes had come late, and I said so when I gave her her letters. Yes, yes.”

Harry Wint felt sure there was more behind this. “That wouldn’t worry her at all, of course,” he said speculatively.

Obviously the postman thought otherwise. “Well, indeed, sir, she was worried when I told her. Yes, she was very worried; though I couldn’t tell why it was; and who would know?”

Joan felt that he did know, but did not intend to speak. It was unlikely that the girl opened and read her letters while the man was gossiping to her, so it was not their contents that had caused her emotion.

“But Mrs. Hayes has never been here before, has she?” she asked.

“The lady was never here before, no,” he replied. “Well, good-bye now, sir,” he added, hurriedly, as if anxious not to be questioned further, and saluting them, went off in the direction of his home.

Wint waited till he was out of earshot, then: “Parfitt will want to have a heart-to-heart talk with that chap,” he said. “I don’t think that the girl was very emotional, so she must have gone rather off the deep end if he noticed it. But why?”

Joan shook her head. “It’s hard to say. He spoke so indirectly about it. But he gave me the impression that he gave the girl a shock when he told her that Mrs. Hayes had come.”

Wint frowned. “I don’t suppose he told her out of malice. A new-comer here, especially one who arrives in the middle of the night, is something to talk about. He may just have mentioned it casually.”

“Perhaps she didn’t know there was a Mrs. Hayes,” Joan suggested.

He raised his eyebrows. “By Jove! If there is anything in it, that’s it. A girl living by herself on a hill-farm would create any amount of scandal if she gave the least cause for it, but Miss Tysin seemed to be generally respected: even if no one had any affection for her.”

“You mean that she may have fallen in love with Mr. Hayes?”

“I mean that, if she was mixed up with him, she may have taken it for granted that he was a single man.”

“But wouldn’t it be known that he wrote letters to Mrs. Hayes?”

Wint nodded. “That may be, but ‘Mrs. Hayes’ isn’t necessarily the wife of Mr. Hayes. She might be his mother, and, for all we know, he may have let the girl think she was.”

“I do see that. But it will make things awkward for her if it is known that she was infatuated with Hayes— I mean her bolting.”

“Yes. I am afraid so. One of the possible motives for the murder was jealousy. But she didn’t hear about Hayes’s wife till this morning. That was what the postman was trying to suggest to us, without actually saying so. He mightn’t want to hint at the other thing before you.”

“A nice natural delicacy, not very common nowadays,” said Joan. “But he wouldn’t want to hint at that unless he knew that there was some link between the two, would he?”

“No. I think you are right. There may have been gossip about it in the village, which didn’t get so far as the hotel. We most of us know what we think of other people, but we don’t know what they think of us. I say, it makes it worse for her if they can prove that she was down the river last night in her old car.”

Joan pursed her lips. “I can’t see a girl doing a murder of this sort, Harry. Wouldn’t someone have heard them talking, if she had met Hayes on the river?”

“That’s doubtful,” he observed. “The water makes a noise in some places to drown an ordinary voice. Of course they might have met in one of the short tunnels.”

“I somehow feel sure she is innocent,” Joan remarked earnestly. “You see, she was only worried when she heard Mrs. Hayes had come. Do you think she would give herself away to the postman, by showing herself to be shocked, if she had committed a callous murder the night before? Take it that she had. The postman saw her, and did not observe anything out of the common in her looks. In other words, she could kill a man, and be quite calm after it; but get upset the moment someone mentioned that he had a wife.”

They turned and began to walk back across the field to the hotel. Wint thought there was a good deal of common sense in Joan’s remarks. There was no proof that the infatuation had been a guilty one on Blodwen’s part, whereas it was quite likely that an experienced and conscienceless Don Juan— even an elderly one like Hayes— had pretended to be a bachelor when paying attentions to the girl.

“I quite agree,” he said, after a little. “Still, her bolting is suspicious.”

“If it was bolting,” she assented. “But we can’t tell yet. Suppose I happened to be in love with a man who was found dead. I might be upset, and go away for a little to get over it, but you wouldn’t talk of my ‘bolting,’ would you?”

“No. That’s true. But surely that would be apparent to the Inspector. He seems a decently educated chap, and decidedly intelligent. But he hurried off immediately after his visit to the farm. I wonder if she had a gaff up there?”

“She didn’t fish, did she?”

“No. But her father was a great old sportsman, they say. Unless his was sold, she may have kept it up at the house.”

When they returned to the hotel they found Chance and Hoad, with Celia Mason, in the lounge. They were talking earnestly of the new development, and Hoad had evidently imparted some fresh information just before their arrival.

“Oh, Mr. Wint, Mr. Hoad says she left a letter,” Celia cried. “I don’t know if it’s true, but most of the people in the village believe it.”

Wint glanced at Celia. “Surely, Miss Mason, if the girl went off for a little holiday, she would leave a note to let people know? I think the grocer used to call, and the butcher. She didn’t always come down to shop.”

“There’s your nice little bubble pricked, Mr. Hoad,” cried Celia.

The young man nodded. “It wasn’t really mine, was it? I only told you what I heard.”

Chance struck in. “It’s all speculation so far. Because Hayes went up once or twice to get flies, we’re having a mysterious romance tacked on.”

“Don’t talk of romance and Mr. Hayes!” cried Celia. “But Mr. Wint is quite right. She hadn’t anyone to consult, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t take a little holiday. It must have been beastly dull up there.

Hoad shook his head. “Llynithen isn’t a holiday resort, if it comes to that. That is the way Parfitt charged off just now.”

Chance smiled. “My dear chap, the two things may have no connection. Isn’t it just possible that, being unable to have a chat with the girl, he went off on some other business connected with the case?”

He stopped, rather embarrassed, for Mrs. Hayes had suddenly come into the lounge, and was listening to them.

“Has anything new turned up?” she asked coldly, as she approached. “If so it is naturally of interest to me.” Chance may have thought that an odd way of putting things, but he turned politely, and said that there was nothing really new.”

“I certainly don’t want to distress you by discussing the affair,” he added, rather resentfully.

“We were only talking about the Inspector going up to Llynithen,” said Celia.

Mrs. Hayes turned to her. “That’s where the lake is, isn’t it?”

“There is a small lake,” remarked Chance, glad to get off the dangerous ground. “But I don’t think anyone goes there to fish. It’s a tarn more than anything else.”

Mrs. Hayes nodded.

“Is it true that the young woman who used to tie flies for the hotel is missing?” she asked.

So she knew after all! Joan stole a glance at Wint, who, the others appearing disinclined to reply, observed that she had left home, but, of course, that might mean nothing.

“There are so many things in this business that appear to mean nothing,” said Mrs. Hayes evenly. “But why should the Inspector go up to inspect a lonely tarn?”

Celia Mason was surprised into an indiscretion. “You don’t mean that she—” she began, checked herself, and turned red.

“She— what?” invited Mrs. Hayes. “Have you a theory, Miss Mason?”

“No, of course not. I don’t know what I meant,” blundered Celia.

But her idea was plain to them all. She was wondering if Miss Tysin had drowned herself up at Llynithen, and left a letter which set the Inspector on the track. Chance muttered an excuse, and left. Hoad touched Celia’s arm, and drew her away. Harry Wint remarked that it was no use speculating, and Joan quite agreed with him.

Mrs. Hayes made them all uncomfortable. It was difficult to say if she was cold and unsympathetic, or hiding strong emotions under a veneer of composure. She startled them both now by saying that everyone was dreadfully tactful.

“You made me feel like a strange child at a party, where all the others are playing some game she doesn’t understand, and won’t take the trouble to explain,” she added, “though I believe you would be all most delightfully helpful and sympathetic if I went into hysterics.”

“Perhaps you will understand it better if I say that some of us here may be suspected by the police,” said Wint.

She shook her head. “But I don’t believe it at all. People who knock other people down in broad daylight don’t sneak out at night and murder them, I’m sure. And if you want to kill someone you don’t quarrel with them openly in advance. As for Miss Mason, you can see it isn’t in her.”

“But why Miss Mason?” asked Joan, having seen Hoad and Celia sneak out of the room a moment before.

“I am sure I play the part of the sorrowing wife very badly,” said Mrs. Hayes. “As it seems most probable that it will be shown in court later you may as well know that it was an anonymous letter brought me here.”

Joan started, but Wint looked rather scornful. “I don’t think much of anonymous letters, Mrs. Hayes. If one is going to trouble about that sort of thing—”

She cut him short. “I am not purely selfish, Mr. Wint. I didn’t rush down here to please myself altogether. If that had been my temperament I should have spent many years dashing hither and thither on similar errands.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Wint bluntly.

“Well, we shall have a public exhibition of all the dirty linen soon,” she returned, “so I may make myself clear. One does like occasionally to save other people from their folly, especially when they are merely foolish. My amiable adviser suggested that my husband was paying attentions to a girl in the hotel. Miss Mason was apparently the only one who filled the bill.”

Joan bit her lip. “We didn’t ask you to tell us this, Mrs. Hayes.”

“Of course not. But are you conversant with the proceedings at courts and inquests, Miss Powis? Don’t you know that people have to go into the witness-box, and be asked the most intimate questions?”

“I did, of course.”

“Then you must see that what I have told you only touches the fringe of it. I am not blind. I came down here very late, and I came along the road by the river. No one knew I was coming. Naturally the police will ask why. Do I know why? What were my relations with my husband? Were we happy? Did we quarrel, and why? What am I to say?”

Wint felt the bitterness behind her seeming composure. “I don’t suppose you will be allowed to slur it over?”

“Why should I? Naturally, under other circumstances, I should have kept it to myself, but this involves others. If I fail to tell the truth, Mr. Wint, wrong motives may be ascribed, and some innocent person may be held guilty of a crime he never committed. If I suspect the motive, should I do right to keep it dark?”

“No.”

“Very well. There can be only one motive here. My husband harmed a few people while he was alive, but I shall not allow him to do so now he is dead!”

Her frankness amazed them. The history of her marriage was written in it, and the indictment of the dead man. Wint bowed.

“You must do what you think right, of course,” he said. “There’s the dinner-bell, Joan,” he added, with some relief. “Shall we go in?”

“Odd woman!” he said in a low voice, when they were seated at table. “What do you think of her?”

“She is either a wonderful actress; or I am sorry for her,” Joan replied. “It’s so difficult to decide what it all means. I always think it so odd in murder cases when counsel points out how calm and collected the prisoner is. As if an intelligent prisoner would go about showing excitement and fear all over his face! But I am inclined to believe Mrs. Hayes.”

“I don’t know that I am,” he murmured. “She is so ready to take it that she will be suspected. And she knew there was a lake at Llynithen. How did she know that?”

Joan reflected. “I didn’t think of that.”

“I did. She has never been here before. But wait a moment! She may have got that out of a guidebook, though I am not at all sure that the tiny llyn there is mentioned in any of them. It isn’t beautiful, or notable in any way.”

“I say,” began Joan, “you will come with me, and have a look at those tunnels this evening? Have you got a torch?”

“I brought one, to help me tie on flies at night.”

“Then we’ll go,” she said. “Suppose we found something that would help to—”

“Hang someone?” he suggested rather grimly.

“Oh, don’t be a dud!” she said. “If it’s the right one!”

He smiled. “I see what you mean. Funny thing how we dislike hunting people down, and forget that it sometimes means letting the wrong man in for it. I’ll go, and take the torch. We can walk down to the lower bridge after dinner.”

As they discussed their plans, Mrs. Hayes came in and sat down at Celia Mason’s table. She began to talk to the girl in an animated fashion, and it was presently obvious that Celia rather welcomed her company. Hoad did not. He sat gloomily eating, and staring from time to time at the other tables. The whole affair seemed to have got on his nerves rather badly.

Chapter 10

The Corpse in the Llyn

AT A QUARTER to nine Joan and Harry Wint set out on their expedition. None of the others went down the river. They waited, like most of the village, for news of Inspector Parfitt’s return from Llynithen.

But Parfitt did not return that evening, and one busybody who ran up to the tarn later, on a motorcycle, came back to say that no one was visible near the lake.

Yet Parfitt had been there, had made an important and rather gruesome discovery, and telephoned for an ambulance from Cwyll. His sergeant had travelled down in it, and the Inspector himself had taken a detour back to the town.

Rumour had lied when it said that Blodwen Tysin had left a letter addressed to the Inspector. A visit to the farm told him that her car was gone, and a boy herding sheep had mentioned seeing the girl taking the car over a rough path, little better than a track, which ultimately debouched into the Pengellert-Llynithen road.

Her use of this track suggested a desire to get away secretly, and although she had had a long start, the Inspector had taken the more direct way to the mountain tarn. Only two roads could be reached by car from there, and on one of them there was an A.A. scout. The other led back to Cwyll, and it was unlikely that the girl would have driven there if she wished to keep her whereabouts secret.

But the scout, posted about two miles from the lake in the valley had not seen a girl, answering to her description, and driving an old Ford, that day.

So Parfitt and his sergeant raced back to the lake, and getting down from their motor-cycle combination, began a thorough search of the road and the rough grass verges.

On the verge to the side of the llyn, they found what they were looking for, the tracks of the car where it had been driven on to the grass. About a hundred yards to their left there was a little steeple of rock, covered with bushes, and between it and the water another clump of bushes. Between these and the rock the car stood empty, invisible from the road.

A hasty search of it revealed nothing to hint at what had happened. They hurried to the lake-side. Here they found a muddy plash, with the track of feet to either side. Beyond there was a rock outcrop, and deep water beyond that, amber brown in colour, ten feet deep by the bank, but sufficiently transparent to show them some amorphous object near the bottom.

The sergeant was an excellent swimmer. He took off his clothes, dived in, and came up again in half a minute to report that a woman’s body was lying on the bottom, apparently attached to some heavy object.

“I think it’s tied by a rope,” he added. “I’ll get my knife and try to cut her loose.”

“That’s right,” said Parfitt. “We can fish the weight up later. When we have her on the bank, dress quickly and get back to the A.A. telephone-box. We want an ambulance from Cwyll. I don’t like the idea of taking the body back to the village, ’til I ask a few more questions. Didn’t they say Davis and the postman have been courting her?”

“Trying to, they said,” the sergeant responded, as he opened the big blade of his knife, and prepared to dive again. “She wasn’t easy money, sir.”

They were fortunate in that there was no farm nearer than a mile away, and they salvaged the body without being disturbed, and examined the rope, and the knot with which it was tied round the neck, before the sergeant dressed, and went off to the telephone.

Left alone the inspector made a close study of the ground in the vicinity. He saw that the car had been brought to a standstill by the brakes, that the ignition was switched off, and the gear in neutral. For a distracted suicide this seemed rather strange. He decided to have finger-print impressions taken from the wheel, door-handles, and gear-lever, before the car was moved away. The ambulance, by his directions, would bring up a doctor, a driver, and a constable. The officer could be put in charge of the car until someone was sent up to take the prints, and have photographs taken of the scene.

Parfitt had made several sketch-plans, and done all he could do before the ambulance came. He had made sure that there was no message or note of any kind attached to or hidden in her clothing. When the doctor came up, his verdict was brief. The girl had been drowned. Her death had taken place more than six hours before the arrival of the police.

“There is a mark caused by the rope on her neck, and some abrasions on her hands,” he added. “There is one deep scratch on her palm which has bled.”

“That wouldn’t take place after death, doctor?”

“No. It may have been caused by stones at the bottom, if you found her there. She wasn’t floating?”

“No. There’s a weight to which the rope was attached. It’s still down there.”

The ambulance had brought a rope and grapnel. After some fishing, they drew up the weight. It was a stone about seven pounds in weight, of oblong shape with a curious nick in the middle which had prevented the rope from slipping off.

The body was removed to the ambulance, the stone put in, and the sergeant, the driver, and the doctor went off. Parfitt put the constable in charge of the car, and mounted the motor-cycle. To avoid running through Pengellert, he took the road by which the car had come, and returned to the farm.

He searched it room by room this time, and at the end of an hour had made a negative discovery. The gaff which had belonged to old Tysin was not there.

During his inquiries in the village earlier in the day he had been positively informed that the girl’s father had used a gaff made by binding a steel hook on a five-foot shaft of ash. A certain number of people had seen it at the farm since the old man’s death. The tarn at Llynithen would have to be searched afresh for it, and if that failed, the pools of Cwyll.

Even a detective-inspector cannot be expected to know the private lives and intimate characters of people who live ten miles from his station. When Parfitt left the farm he went down to a small villa on the upper valley, where a local minister lived. He found him in his little back garden reading a book and smoking his pipe.

Parfitt felt in a way that his news did not astonish, though it horrified the man. He asked that it should be kept a secret for the present, sat down, and accepted a fill of baccy. When he had lit up, he leaned forward confidentially.

“You aren’t very much surprised, sir?” he said.

The minister shook his head. “It is a most dreadful thing, but you are right, Mr. Parfitt. She was a fine girl, though inclined to be prouder than her neighbours liked.”

“That’s why I came to you first, sir. I want to know something about her character— that sort of thing.”

He noticed absently that his companion had been reading “Downes on Ethics.” Ethics had something to do with conduct, he thought. The worst of it, in his experience, was that people full of theories hadn’t any common-sense.

“It’s a thing one rarely gets within touch of,” said the other, as he closed the volume. “What’s your character, and what’s mine, Mr. Parfitt?”

The Inspector grumbled to himself. There it was, just as he had said. Reading all round things, instead of understanding them.

“Officially, mine’s fairly good, so far,” he said with a smile.

“Just what I mean,” said the minister. “Officially. That’s generally as near as we can get to it. But you don’t want that, I think. Tell me exactly what you do want.”

Parfitt puffed smoke for a few moments. “There’s this murder, and there’s gossip.”

“Plenty of gossip.”

“You’ve heard it?”

“Yes, without wanting to; I’ve heard it. It’s a rotten thing, when you come to think of it, Parfitt, that a girl is so much at the mercy of other people’s tongues. I understand that the dead man went up to the farm two or three times for some flies.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“Yes, and I spoke to him once. He was curt, and rather rude.”

“Are you any judge of faces, sir?”

“No. I used to think I was, but I found the idea dangerous, and gave it up.”

“Did Mr. Hayes seem to you the kind of man who would chase after women?”

“I admit that I haven’t had much experience of that type, Parfitt.”

The Inspector saw that he was not getting anywhere.

“Well sir, let me be blunt. There is a suggestion that the girl Tysin was meeting Mr. Hayes— sometimes after dark. Would you believe that?”

His companion knocked out his pipe. “It is quite possible.”

“But you consider that she was a girl of good character?”

“I do. I think she was a girl of decent temperament; inclined to be religious, though she didn’t make a show of it.”

“I see what you mean, sir. She might have fallen in love with Mr. Hayes.”

“I am sure she did, if she met him after dark. There are few young women here, I am sorry to say, to whom I could not give a similar testimonial. I take it, of course, that she was unaware Mr. Hayes was a married man.”

Parfitt reflected for a moment. “From what I hear, it is unlikely that he told her that. His wife came down here late the night of the murder, on account of an anonymous letter she had received, casting aspersions on her husband’s conduct, She was ready enough to believe it.”

“Poor woman! You can be sure that it was not merely jealousy?”

“I should say so, sir. She struck me as having endured a lot somehow. But now we come to the murder. We have an idea that Miss Tysin went down in her car to the pass last night. Mr. Hayes was found dead, since, and now she goes and does herself in.”

“You’re putting it in rather an ugly way, Parfitt. If you mean that she may have killed him, and committed suicide, I should say it was more likely she would have done it there and then. As a rule, if people kill from revenge or jealousy, the remorse comes quick on the deed.”

“That’s a good point, sir,” remarked Parfitt, who saw that his man was not all futile theorizing. “Why go home, cool off, go to bed and sleep— and then start out next day to drown herself?”

The other man looked at him. “How can you tell that she went to bed and slept? Surely you’re trenching now on Sherlock Holmes’s domain?”

“Her bed had been slept in, and her pillow had the mark of her head, sir. She hadn’t tossed about in it, you could see that easy.”

“Oh, you’ve been up to the farm. Did you expect to find anything there?”

“I was looking for her father’s gaff. It wasn’t to be seen.”

“It wouldn’t be,” observed the minister. “She gave it three months ago to the postman. He was always coming up to borrow it— an excuse to see her I suppose— and she wanted to get rid of him.”

“She disliked him?”

“No. But she was bit proud, as I told you. I lent her books, sometimes, Parfitt, and she always wanted the same kind. That was romance. Not the noveletty kind. I am afraid I could not have helped her there. There is a certain type of girl, often one who comes of fairly humble origin, who has dreams of a rich, and handsome, and distinguished suitor, who will ride up some day, and marry her. It was a common enough plot in the Victorian days, to which most of my novels belong. You may think it silly of her, but I took it that Blodwen wasn’t really proud because she despised the people here, but because she was waiting in her mind for some imaginary hero.”

“And the postman wouldn’t fit, sir?”

“That is my impression. I don’t want you to take all I say for gospel, Parfitt. But I try to observe people, and it isn’t what they tell me of themselves that I always believe. But I can say that I believe Blodwen was a good girl, using the word in the old sense, and if she met Hayes out, it was because she thought she had met the right man at last.”

“If he’s the man they say, he would know enough to butter her up, sir, and play on that. But he could hardly offer her marriage.”

“In a way, Parfitt, I am sorry I don’t know much about the methods of seducers. If all parsons took a course in the subject, they might be able to help more than they do now.”

The Inspector stared at him for a moment until he realised that the other was speaking of theoretical knowledge.

“I am afraid I put that badly,” the minister added, before he could speak. “I mean that you can’t warn people adequately until you know what to warn them against. It I knew more about it, I might controvert your argument that Mr. Hayes could not have offered the girl marriage.”

“Well, he could of course.”

Parfitt rose as he spoke. He felt that he had not wasted his time there. Unless his companion was merely speaking at random, he had thrown a light on the dead girl’s character which might prove most valuable at the inquest. If she was the dreamy romantic, and Hayes the experienced man of the world, it was easy to see how she had been befooled.

“Simple love is a most dangerous thing,” said the minister. “Pity! It’s the decent fools who suffer most, Inspector.”

Parfitt had had a long day but when he left the little manse he drove fast to Cwyll, and called on the Chief Constable, Mr. Rigby.

The coroner was with the Chief Constable when Parfitt arrived. He had just learned of the finding of Miss Tysin’s body, and had come in to discuss it.

“There’ll be one post-mortem at least,” said Rigby. “We have decided, Parfitt, that there is no need for one in the case of Mr. Hayes. The doctor is quite convinced that he met his death through that wound in the throat.”

“I think he is right, sir. But there must be one on the girl. There are several medical points involved.”

The coroner raised his eyebrows. “Is it right that she was meeting Mr. Hayes clandestinely?”

“I have heard so, sir,” replied Parfitt, and went on to repeat the conversation he had had at the manse.

Rigby approved. “Good! If Mr. Jones had said that she was a regular attendant, and outwardly devout, it might merely be that he was going by face values. But he said she made no show of it, didn’t he?”

“That was the impression he gave me. Then this business about reading romances of an old-fashioned kind struck me as sound, sir.”

“Quite. Well, we’ll wait and see. Did you get any light on that anonymous letter?”

“I am having inquiries made, sir, but I haven’t had time to go into it myself.”

“And therefore no theories about it?”

Parfitt did not assent to that. “I have a suspicion, sir, that it wasn’t written by an illiterate person, such as the wording suggests. The paper was good, too.”

“The terminology, eh?”

“Yes, sir. I shall look into it to-morrow.”

The coroner put in a word. “Is it possible that the murderer of Mr. Hayes can have killed the girl?”

“She drove alone to the lake, sir.”

“When she started, yes. But isn’t it possible she was joined by someone on the way?”

“I hardly think so, Mr. Bass,” said the Chief Constable. “A man who intended to kill her, would hardly take a place in the car by her side. You may go over the mountain fifty times without being seen, but you can’t count on it— especially at this season, with so many walking parties about. Oh, by the way, Parfitt,” he added, turning to the Inspector, “I had a telephone message from the man I sent to London. He wanted to know if he was to extend his inquiry about Mr. Chance and Mr. Bow further than the last year or so. I told him to get as much as he could.”

The coroner rose. “Well, I must go. But I have my own opinion, though you mayn’t agree, Rigby. Good night— good night, Inspector.”

Chapter 11

Hoad Seems Disturbed

“WHAT’S THE MATTER with that young man Hoad?” Joan asked, as she and Harry Wint started off after sunset towards the lower bridge.

“Matter? I’ve not noticed anything, but I didn’t look at him much,” he replied. He’s not exactly an interesting study— very young and callow.”

“I know. But he’s frightfully nervous, far more so than when I saw him first this evening. He hardly ate any dinner, and he fidgeted with his plate, and knife and fork, and looked as if he were sitting on hot bricks. If he had been any of the others, I should have said he had something on his mind.”

Wint reflected. “Well, he had a pool next Hayes, but I would no more suspect him of murder than I should you. To put it vulgarly, he hasn’t the guts to commit one. He reminds me of a boy at school with me, who was always threatening to write home to his father, but never did. He would bluster about Hayes, no doubt, when Hayes tried the paternal with Mason, but that’s about all.”

“Then do you think he’s worrying about the possibility of being suspected?”

“Frankly, I don’t. He was on this side of the river, he doesn’t wear waders, or carry a gaff. And the Inspector practically takes no notice of him.”

Joan nodded. “Well, he isn’t behaving like a jack-in-the-box for nothing. You watch him and you’ll see that he is excited about something, and worried, too. Can he know anything and be hiding it?”

“If he’s as bad as you say, there may be something in that. But look here, Joan, he’s only wrapped up in two people, from what I hear— Miss Mason and himself. She went back to the hotel early, and we don’t suspect him. Who could he be trying to shield?”

Joan did not reply. She thought she heard feet behind them, as if someone was coming up fast. Wint heard the footsteps too, and turned.

“Dashed if it isn’t Hoad!” he grumbled. “He’s trying to catch us up. We don’t want him following us. He’s waving now.”

Joan shrugged. “Leave him to me. I’ll get rid of him after a little. If he’s full up with something, he may want a safety-valve. That sort of boy would. Wint stood still, offering his cigarette-case to Joan, who refused a cigarette. He had just lit up when Hoad came to them.”

The young man was flushed, and certainly looked unhappy. He forced a smile, said he was going down the road for a short stroll, and asked if he might join them.

“I can’t stick all this discussion about that rotten business,” he added naively.

Joan smiled encouragingly. “Of course not. Rather morbid, isn’t it?”

The three set off again. Young Hoad lit a cigarette, puffed at it, threw it away, and returned to the subject from which he professed to have fled.

“I say, it’s beastly about that girl bolting, isn’t it? I wonder what made her run away?”

“Don’t you think she was friendly with Mr. Hayes?” asked Harry Wint, staring hard at Hoad.

“Yes, I know she was. I mean to say I thought I saw them down the river once. You think— you really think she went off because she had heard he was killed? I mean to say, she was in love with him.”

“How could Mr. Wint tell?” Joan asked calmly. “No one can answer a question like that. But it is quite certain that if she had been in love with him grief might drive her away. She wouldn’t want to stop and hear the murder discussed day and night, would she?”

“Oh, you think it was that?” said Hoad, looking much relieved. “I wondered.”

“You think it was likely that she could have murdered him?” Joan asked bluntly.

“No, of course not. You don’t murder people you’re fond of.”

“I am afraid our pathological novelists wouldn’t agree with you,” Wint remarked dryly. “They seem to take it for granted that love is an excellently natural motive for murder.”

“Oh, novelists!” cried Hoad with scorn.

Joan had been observing him closely. “How interestingly you put it, Mr. Hoad. It’s what they call a process of elimination, isn’t it? But is there any other reason for her going away like this except the two you spoke of.”

“There may—” he began eagerly, then stopped.

“Do tell us what it is?”

He looked nervous and hesitant again. “Oh, I don’t know. It may be rot. I meant his wife coming down and so on.”

Joan opened wide eyes. “No one seems to have known that he was married.”

“Someone did,” said Wint. “What about that anonymous letter?”

“I suppose he put letters to post on the table at the hotel,” Joan suggested.

Hoad nodded. “Yes, he did. I saw one myself when I put mine there once. I couldn’t help seeing the address.”

Harry Wint smiled. “My dear fellow, are you married?”

Hoad started and coloured ingenuously. “Rather not— not yet, I mean. Why do you ask?”

“I suppose your mother is alive?”

“Oh, yes, rather. My guv’nor died some years ago, dear old chap; but the mater’s going strong, I’m glad to say.”

“And someone seeing your letter home might take it that Mrs. Hoad was your wife,” said Wint.

“Oh, I see. Jolly good! Of course, Mrs. Hayes might have been Hayes’s mother. She’d be pretty old, though, wouldn’t she?”

Joan smiled faintly. “Is that why you took it that he must be writing to his wife?”

“At his age, I thought it would be a wife, of course,” said Hoad.

Wint was looking thoughtful now. Joan went on again serenely.

“You know, Mr. Hoad,” she said, after a short pause, “isn’t it possible that something else was getting on that girl’s nerves? But I suppose it couldn’t be. We heard about the anonymous letter, but she didn’t.”

Wint shook his head. “My dear girl, that’s a wild idea. Even if she had known, who worries about beastly things like that.”

Hoad stared. “I often wonder what the idea is in the— er— people’s mind, who send them. I suppose one or two— here and there, you know— mean well?”

“And often do all the damage the mean-wells can do,” said Wint. “Your idea is that some are sent as a sort of warning; to save other people from fretting into a mess?”

Hoad gulped. “Yes, something like that. I mean to say, if you saw someone going to push someone else over a cliff, you might have to do something. And if they were likely to resent it, you might have to. There! I’ve got muddled. But perhaps you know what I mean.”

Joan said nothing. Wint replied quietly. “There may be cases of the kind, Hoad. But the trouble, when anonymous letters crop up in a murder case, is that the writer may be suspected of the crime.”

“Well, of course, Inspector Parfitt has the letter, and will soon find out,” said Joan. “You see, Harry, I suppose he will have the note-paper traced, and get a handwriting expert to examine the contents. I’m jolly glad we both came too late to have written it.”

Hoad gulped again. “But suppose the writer hadn’t killed anyone? I don’t know what you people think, but it seems to me that Hayes was a bad hat, and someone may have thought he was doing harm, getting someone into trouble, and that sort of thing.”

“I am quite sure it was that,” said Joan promptly. “I feel that it was written by someone who knew Mr. Hayes was making a fool of this girl Tysin, and wanted to stop it before it was too late. Or, of course, the writer may have been jealous.”

Hoad turned red. “But who would be jealous?”

Wint laughed. “My dear fellow, we are newcomers. But didn’t the Inspector say that the letter referred to a girl in the hotel as well?”

Hoad glared. “Miss Mason?”

“Oh, was it Miss Mason Hayes took an interest in?” asked Joan.

“She told him off about it,” said Hoad resentfully.

“There you are,” said Wint. “Miss Mason may have discovered the kind of fellow Hayes was, and wanted to save the other girl before it was too late. If she did that, she ought to tell Parfitt.”

“Or burn her note-paper, if she still has any of it,” said Joan.

Hoad stopped and turned. “That reminds me, I had a letter to write, and forgot it,” he said hastily. “I’d better cut back and make a start.”

He raised his hat, turned, and walked quickly back along the road. Joan turned her face to the high cliffs on the other side of the river where the buzzards still mewed, circling against the darkling sky.

“There’s your boy at school, Harry,” she said after a moment. “We always take it that it’s a very caddish thing, but this throws a new light on some cases.”

Harry Wint thought it over. “So that’s what he was fidgeting about? Well, I’m hanged! Yes, I think I can see some excuses for him too. He’s young, and not very plucky, and he was head over ears in love with the Mason girl, and did not know what to do about it. That sort of egotistical young fellow only sees his own side of the case. He wanted to scare off the rotter, but it didn’t seem to occur to him that the rotter’s wife would get it in the neck at the same time. Luckily, Mrs. Hayes knew all about her husband. It would have been more tragic for her if the letter had come as news.”

Joan agreed. “What will he do now?”

“I think he’ll do the right thing now. Apart from the hint you gave him, that his beloved might be suspected, he’ll think it over, and tell Parfitt. You can see he’s not a bad sort; only confoundedly timid and muddle-headed. I never saw what you were getting at till you worked in Miss Mason.”

Joan smiled. “Well, Harry, the letter was meant to be that of some illiterate, wasn’t it? It might have led the Inspector to suspect one of the locals, and stick the murder on him— that postman for example. They say he was courting Miss Tysin, and he would know where letters from the hotel were directed.”

“Oh, I’m glad you found it out,” he returned. “I only hope we’ll come on something in the tunnels that will be a help too. By the way, there isn’t a soul fishing this evening.”

“And the constable who was on guard at that pool has been taken off,” said Joan, looking back at the river. “I wonder why the police never thought of the tunnels?”

“Haven’t had time. Besides, Hayes was found in the river. If he had been killed in the tunnel, there would have been stains on the stones when he was carried to the pool.”

“He couldn’t have been killed at the other end of the tunnel, nearer Cwyll, and brought up by someone on one of those what-d’ye-call-thems?”

“You mean trolleys worked by a hand lever?”

“Yes.”

Wint shook his head. “They don’t seem to know where Hayes went when he left Cwyll early that evening. Of course, they will find out. Did he get a bus back, or what?”

“No. I asked the Boots. He said the driver had been in for a moment, and said he had not brought Hayes back. He may have got a lift, of course. Plenty of cars passing along this road.”

“If Parfitt hadn’t had to rush off to Llynithen, he would have got all that by now, Joan. But here we are at the bridge. I never saw this spot so deserted.”

“They’re all waiting at Pengellert for the latest news,” she returned, as they crossed the bridge over the rushing river. “Isn’t it somewhere near here that Miss Tysin might have parked her old car?”

“We’ll have a look at that before the light goes completely,” he replied. “It’s just up this road a little, a sort of laneway into an old quarry.”

They found the narrow cul de sac, which ended in a broken face of cliff, where splintered shale showed below the clay top, and stared at the ground. Tracks of a good many tyres showed there, mostly making patterned impressions, but one set were those of an ancient pair of treads from which most of the pattern had worn off.

“That’s like an old Ford, backed in and out. High-pressure tyres, and not new,” he told Joan. “But I’m hanged if you could tell when they were made, even if Miss Tysin’s car made them.”

A search where that car had stopped merely revealed a flat cigarette end.

“Expensive Egyptian,” Joan remarked. “‘Bulbul’ in gold letters. But anyone who parked here might have thrown that down.”

“I don’t suppose Miss Tysin smoked them?”

“Well, that’s all to be seen, and I expect it’s all we shall see.”

He laughed. “You had the idea of this expedition, so don’t get cold feet and back out.”

“Oh, I’ll go on. Only before you start detective work, it sounds so easy, doesn’t it? And then you see a lot of things that don’t mean anything. My own opinion is that the police don’t work as we think, but ask millions of questions, and inquire at pubs, and do it that way. I never heard of anyone really solving murders by deduction.”

“I am rather sceptical myself,” he agreed. “But mind your feet from this on. We have to creep down a sort of rock slide to the river bank this side of the bridge, I believe, before we strike the path up. And the path isn’t so much a path as a series of geological accidents.”

There was still enough faint light to enable them to negotiate the descent to the river level, and they set off slowly up the boulder-strewn track among the pines and bracken, that wound at the base of the cliff between rock and water.

“What an eerie sound the water makes,” said Joan, when at last light faded. “When it isn’t crashing and splashing, it seems to be whistling and moaning. I shan’t fish here at night, however long I stay.”

He agreed, as he switched on his torch to disclose a clear ten yards of path ahead.

It was certainly eerie there in the dark, creeping like ants along the tortuous and narrow path below the cliff. It made Joan wonder how any fisherman had the nerve to come out there night after night to fish the black pools between the slippery rocks. And how did they land their fish in that welter of water?

She began to wonder, too, if Mr. Hayes had really been murdered. Suppose he had not been alone, as was thought. Suppose one of the other men had joined him, seen him slip and fall in, and making a wild shot at him with a gaff, have missed his clothing and pierced his neck. She paused in her climb, and communicated this idea to Wint in a panting whisper.

“It might be young Hoad,” she added.

“But I told you he didn’t carry a gaff.”

“I know. Only you lost yours, and it was found in that pool. We know Hoad better than we did. It was easy to see just now that he has no nerve. He hated old Hayes, but could only think of writing an anonymous letter to his wife. If he’d killed Hayes by accident, he is the sort of ass to get the wind up, scoot back, and say nothing about it.”

“But why? He could have told the truth?”

“Yes, but, you see he had had a row with Hayes. At least it was known they were on bad terms over Miss Mason. He’s the sort to get badly scared and lose his head.”

“Well, Parfitt must look to his own job,” said Wint. “Come on! We are near the first open cut in the railway now. It’s about ten yards above us here. Mind the slippery shale!”

They climbed on again cautiously, and gained the railway line where it first emerged from the tunnel under the shoulder of the mountain.

They went into that tunnel a little way, searching it with the aid of Wint’s torch. But there was nothing to be seen. Coming into the open again, they kept to the ballast between the rails till they reached the mouth of the second tunnel.

This was a short section, not more than fifty yards long. They went right through it without seeing anything of importance until they were within five yards of the farther end. Making sure that no one was on the line beyond, they turned back that fifteen feet, and stood staring rather excitedly at a stain on one of the wooden sleepers.

“May be creosote or something,” said Joan.

“No, it’s blood; not the colour of creosote at all, I’m pretty sure of that,” remarked Wint gravely.

She shivered a little. “Do you think Mr. Hayes was killed here?”

He shook his head.  “I can’t tell. Let’s go on to the other tunnel. It’s only about sixty feet long, and more or less above the pool where Hayes was fishing. When we’ve seen that, we’ll get home. Parfitt ought to have a look at this stain.”

Chapter 12

Traces on the Sleepers

WHEN INSPECTOR PARFITT turned in for a few hours’ sleep, a party of police were up at the mountain tarn, dragging the little lake for further evidence.

Already photographs had been taken of the position of the car, and finger-prints recorded from the door handles, wheel and gear lever. After that the car was driven down to Cwyll, and the sergeant in charge of the operations had an excited conference with an attendant constable.

“I suppose we couldn’t say exactly where it was lying?” he remarked. “I never noticed where you were dragging.”

“Wonder it came up at all, yes, indeed,” said the policeman. “But it wouldn’t be where the body was whatever.”

“That’s the funny part of it,” the sergeant observed. “When it should be on her finger, look you.”

“Perhaps it was her mother’s,” said the constable.

“Look you here now,” said the sergeant with scorn. “Her mother had no new ring. The Inspector will get a start when he sees it.”

“It shows she wasn’t robbed.”

“Well, who said she was robbed? But who took it off her finger? If you are going to kill yourself would you take off your ring?”

“Often they take off their clothes, or their hat, when they do it, sergeant.”

“And put them on the bank. Yes, yes. But they don’t take off their hats and throw them in the water.”

The constable had nothing to say about that. He changed the subject.

“There’s that stone that was round her neck. I’ve looked all round and no stone has been lifted near here, and it is not likely she would bring a stone from the farm.”

“Likely? Is it likely she would come here, to throw herself in the water when she could have gone into the Cwyll in the lower field at home?”

The constable lived near Pengellert, and had been up to the hill-farm more than once.

“And I have been mistaken, after all,” he said suddenly, “for the Inspector said that stone was rubbed and scraped one side, and there was a stone at the farm, rubbed and scraped, outside the door.”

The sergeant expressed scornful surprise that his subordinate should have spent his time looking at stones at the farm. In defence, the constable explained that he had once been there on a wet and muddy day, and saw Miss Tysin’s herd scrape his boots on this stone.

“Had it a kind of nick in it?” asked the sergeant, more impressed now.

The constable described it as well as he could. He had not been present when the stone was taken from the tarn, but what he said of the improvised boot-scraper at the farm convinced his companion that it was the same one which had weighted down Blodwen Tysin’s body.

They spent another hour in a final search of the surroundings, and then dispersed for the night, some on cycles to their homes, and the sergeant and another to their homes, and the sergeant and another to Cwyll in the old Ford car.

The former did not disturb Inspector Parfitt, who was at home in bed. He wanted a few hours’ sleep himself, and after garaging the car in the yard of the police station, he too went home, and set his alarum clock for six.

Three hours later the alarum went, and he dressed hurriedly and went to the station. Parfitt had just turned up, and was smoking a pipe, and turning over some reports and notes he had made. He received the sergeant’s two pieces of news with some surprise.

“You are sure the stone came from the farm?” he asked.

“Williams says it did, sir. It sounds like it what he said.”

“Well, that was an odd thing for her to do. A determined suicide, if it was suicide at all. But the ring is stranger still. Have you got it?”

The sergeant produced it, a gold ring set in a cluster shape with what looked like medium-sized diamonds. “You were in bed when I came back, sir. I didn’t like to wake you up.”

“That’s all right. I have a long enough day before me.”

Parfitt examined the ring carefully. “I don’t think this was got locally,” he added. “It’s nicely set, and came out of some good shop. Well, I’ve a job for you. You’d better go to the girl’s farm, see if that stone has gone from the door, and then search the house inch by inch for a case for this ring. It looks good enough to have had a case.”

“I’ll go at once, sir.”

“On your way, you might ask leave to have the girl’s finger-prints taken. We must compare them with those on the car.”

When the sergeant had gone, Parfitt put the ring in soft paper, found a small box that fitted it, and looked at the clock. It was too early to knock up the jeweller in the town, so he found a constable, gave him the ring in its box, and some instructions for dealing with it.

“Cut round to Mr. Evan Jenkins, the jeweller, before nine, with this,” he said. “Tell him I want him to have a good look at it, let me know what it is worth, and ask him if he knows who might have manufactured it. A great deal of this sort of stuff is made in Birmingham, though it may be sold in London, or elsewhere. Bring it back, and see that it is put in the safe when you have done with it. You might ask him, too, if he sold it. I don’t think it came from him, but you never know.”

“Are you going over to Pengellert then, sir?”

“I’m going at once. The sergeant is gone to the farm. I shall be at the Horn Hotel, if the Chief Constable or anyone asks for me.”

“Shall I tell them about the ring, sir?”

“Yes; you might do that, too. Explain that, as far as you know, the ring was not found where the body was, but at least some yards away in the llyn.”

The man went to the next room. Parfitt packed some papers, put them in his pocket, and went out to get his sidecar combination.

By leaving so early, he failed to receive a letter which arrived by the first post. It came from Hoad, and would have interested Parfitt very much. It had been written late the night before, and was collected at a quarter to seven that morning by the mail-van on its way to Cwyll.

He was driving up the road along the river bank, reflecting on the case, when a man hailed him. It was Edward Bow, and he had a rod in his hand, though he did not wear waders.

“Just been trying a cast before brekker to keep the boredom away,” he said. “May I come along in your jigger. I want to ask you if I am to stay in this damn place for ever.”

He clambered into the sidecar, adjusted his rod, and grinned at Parfitt, who started the machine again before he spoke.

“I don’t think I can manage it just yet, sir. But I’ll see the Chief Constable and put it to him.”

“All right. Do your best for me. By the way, there’s a rumour that Miss Tysin’s hoofed it. Is that right?”

“She was found drowned yesterday in the lake at Llynithen,” said Parfitt, staring round at him.

Bow seemed horrified, and said he was, with some sincerity. “That’s pretty rotten. Poor little devil! I should stick Hayes down as responsible for that.”

Parfitt began to drive very slowly. “You think she was in love with him?”

Bow nodded. “I’m not a psychologist, and I only saw her once. But you could tell she hadn’t an atom of vice in her. Pretty, but no vamp. Not an inch of her.”

“Then you think it was suicide as a result of his death?”

“D’ye mean I think she killed the rotter, and then repented? Jove she may have done. The decent, innocent kind take it hard. What do you think?”

“I don’t think so, sir, but my thoughts aren’t worth a penny yet. I don’t suppose you would notice, but did Mr. Hayes get any small parcel while you were here? It might be within the last few days.”

“He did get a small minnow or something, in a box,” said Bow. “I know because the postman saw me, and asked would I sign for it. Oh, hello!”

“Hello, indeed!” Parfitt exclaimed, stopping the bicycle this time. “Precious sort of minnow, Mr. Bow!”

“Funny, I never thought of it till now,” said Bow. “Registered letter! No; fishermen don’t register half-a-crown’s worth yet.”

“Box about this size?” asked Parfitt, shaping space with his hands.

“Round about; perhaps a mite bigger. Why, are you on to something?”

Parfitt made the engine suddenly roar, and started jerkily.

“I am not sure,” he said. “Keep it dark for the present, sir.”

“Oh, curse!” said Bow, after a hundred yards. “Here’s Mr. Hoad. He’s going to weep! Let me out and away. The place is depressing enough without him. He wants about an ounce of bromide; kill or cure.”

Parfitt stopped the machine. Bow got out quickly, and clambered over a wall into a field, waving his rod. The Inspector lit a cigarette, and waited for the melancholy Hoad to come up.

The young man’s face was a study in dejection, shame, and imperfectly concealed fear.

“I thought you would be over early to see me,” he said anxiously.

Parfitt frowned. “Why is that, sir?”

“Didn’t you get my letter?”

“No, sir. What was it about?”

Hoad did look almost ready to cry now. He had been frightened into a confession, worked himself up to write it, and now had to explain over again in cold blood.

His head was hot and his feet clammy. His mouth was dry, and his tongue stuck to it. But he began with a rush, and kept going until in three minutes, he had explained the anonymous letter; gulped, stopped, and looked fearfully at the Inspector. Parfitt took it more calmly than the boy had expected. He was not unused to investigating cases where anonymous letters cropped up, and he had found their authors almost uniformly ridiculous. Even more weak people than blackguards seemed to be afraid of their names. And more than half of them were inspired by the most respectable emotions. It needed no complicated psychology to tell him that the boy beside him was a timorous soul, full of pride, and desperate resolutions he would never have the courage to justify— or put into effect.

“I see,” he said, with an almost sympathetic dryness. “I am glad you told me, for it might have complicated matters for someone else. Did you hear that Miss Tysin was found drowned yesterday?”

Hoad turned white, and shook visibly. He stuttered something about being dreadfully sorry, and hadn’t heard, and was sure if she had killed Hayes it was Hayes’s fault.

Parfitt looked at him with affected severity. “Don’t say that sort of thing, sir! I should imagine you would have learned a lesson over being too free with your conclusions already.”

“You mean she didn’t kill him, and then drown herself?” said Hoad. “But I know she met Hayes by the river, as her car went by that night.”

“Look here, sir,” observed Parfitt, starting his engine again. “I advise you to keep quiet about that. Get your rod, and fish a bit. You will find that will do you more good than meddling in this case.”

He was off with a buzz before the dejected youth could reply.

As he approached the hotel, he decided to let the business of the anonymous letter remain in abeyance for the moment. Hoad had acted on a jealous, youthful impulse, and it was unlikely that the letter had acted as a spur to the murderer. It could be kept as a rod in pickle if it became likely that more was to be had out of it later on.

He parked the combination outside the hotel, and entered the lounge. It seemed to him that morning that people lay in wait for him at every turn. It was still early, but Wint jumped up from where he had sat smoking in a corner of the lounge, and made signs suggesting silence.

“Can you come out with me for a few minutes, Inspector?” he whispered, “I have something to tell you.”

Parfitt nodded, and went out hastily. Wint joined him a moment later, and the two walked through an open gate into a field, and so for fifty yards till Wint spoke.

“Miss Powis and I went fossicking ourselves last night,” he began. “You haven’t had time to look at tunnels yet, have you?”

Parfitt explained what had kept him busy the previous evening. Wint was shocked. He forgot his own discovery for the moment, until the Inspector reminded him that he had volunteered some information.

“Yes,” said Wint. “I was going to tell you we found something. It looked to me dashed like a bloodstain on one of the sleepers.”

“Where was this?”

“One of the short tunnels.”

“Can you take me there now?”

“Of course. Run me down on your bike, and we can cross the bridge and work up from there. By the way, I found since that Hayes smoked ‘Bulbul’ cigarettes. But I’ll tell you as we go down.”

They hurried back to the hotel, and got off with a rush, as Mrs. Hayes appeared in the doorway to stare at them. Wint shouted explanations against the roar of the engine as they went.

“If he and the girl met in the tunnel, we may trace it by that,” he shouted, as they whirled across the bridge. “He was a great smoker.”

They left the combination in the road, and followed the path Joan and Wint had taken the night before. Neither of them had a torch, but when they came to the spot in the tunnel where the stain showed on the sleeper, Parfitt expended half a box of matches, and rose convinced.

“That’s blood,” he said. “Come out of this into the light. We’ll go back for torches and lamps.”

Wint followed him out of the intense dark into the glaring sunlight that was now flooding the gorge, and gilding the pools of the river.

“Then we know that he wasn’t killed on the bank,” he said, offering his cigarette-case to the detective. “The job was done up here, and he was taken down. That ought to help you a bit.”

“It would if it were true, sir. Unfortunately it isn’t, or I miss my guess. What it does mean is another matter.”

Wint stared. “Now how can you tell that?” he asked rather impatiently. “I believe there are scientific ways of distinguishing one person’s blood from another, but no one could do it at a glance.”

“Common-sense can tell me all I want to know, sir. Trouble with some of you amateurs, if you don’t mind me saying so, is that you see clues and make conclusions at the same time. We look at them three ways— time, place and quantity. You know how Mr. Hayes was killed, don’t you?”

“Gaff cut the jugular, wasn’t it?”

“It was. Now, if you cut yours by accident, if that is all that happened, you wouldn’t lose your life, would you?”

“I’m an ass!” Wint said with decision. “It’s a big vein, of course. It would be a beastly business.”

“Yes; anywhere but in the water.”

“Could he have been killed nearer Cwyll, and the body brought up on one of those rail trolleys?”

“No. They are kept in the station at Cwyll, and they make the deuce of a rumble. If one had been taken out, the railwaymen who have cottages beside the line would have heard. Look here, Mr. Wint, if I go back with you we’ll have the whole village on top of us. Could you sneak back, eat your breakfast in the ordinary way, say you met me, and I said I had gone to Cwyll again?”

“I could. Why?”

“You could telephone to Cwyll from the box here, if you have your A.A. key, and ask them to send three men with lamps and torches. And try, when you get back, to prevent anyone from fishing this way. Tell our men to come right through the long tunnel, so as not to be seen on the road. Will you?”

Wint agreed, and set off. He would be out of the hunt, but that would not matter. He thought of the drowned girl as he hurried home. Poor thing! It was to hoped that others of Hayes’s victims had not taken it so hardly. Unlike Hoad, he did not suspect her of the murder.

Curiously enough neither Bow nor Hoad appeared to have mentioned their meeting with the detective. Mrs. Hayes, who had seen him ride away, said nothing either, though she eyed Wint with studious attention as he took his seat for breakfast.

Since he had been down to the tunnel with Parfitt, someone had passed on a trade motor-van from Cwyll who knew of the tragedy at the lake. The tables were buzzing with the news, and Celia Mason in high excitement was talking of it to a white-faced, sickly Hoad, who listened with his head on his hand.

Joan was as shocked as the rest. At the bottom of her heart she felt that there was something ineradicably romantic about a girl who could kill herself for love.

“I wonder what Mrs. Hayes thinks of it?” she said, after a little. “She keeps wonderfully calm.”

“Why shouldn’t she?” he murmured. “That sort of thing is an old experience with her, I expect. I mean to say, Hayes’s peccadilloes are not new.”

After breakfast Joan asked him to come out and smoke in the garden. They sat down in a rose-arbour, lit up, and said nothing for a little. Then Joan leaned forward.

“Harry, I don’t know if I’ve simply made a bloomer, or come on something very important. I feel pretty certain I’m right, but it was such a small thing, that I may be wrong.”

“Let’s hear it anyway,” he said eagerly. “You mean something to do with the murder?”

She did not reply for a few moments. Celia Mason and Hoad appeared on a neighbouring path, and they heard Celia’s voice.

“Yes, the stone came from the farm, they say. The Boots went out to see what was up. She tied it round her neck.”

Wint glanced at Joan. When the two had passed on, she began: “I got up early. I think that boy Hoad wakened me. He has the room next to mine, and made a noise getting up. When I was ready to get a bath, I peeped out of my door. You see, I wanted to look if Hoad had a towel. I’d have had to wait then. But he had slipped out somehow, and the door farther down on the other side opened.”

“Who was it?” he asked.

“Mrs. Hayes. She had a bath-towel over her arm. I was just going to shut my door, when I saw Mr. Bow open his. He didn’t see me, but he looked for a second at Mrs. Hayes, and then closed his door. She made some sort of quick gesture. I am sure of that, and his face made me sure he knew her.”

“Before of course. Your face is different when you know people. I mean if I saw you in the passage you would know by my look that— well, I mean that anyone else would.”

“And Bow never seemed to take any notice of her when she came.”

“I wasn’t here when he first saw her. In any case, apart from the look on his face, why should she make a gesture? I don’t have to wave to men who see that I am making for the bathroom.”

“No,” said Wint. “That is certainly odd. It does suggest that they knew each other before they came here. Hayes would probably mention the other guests in his letters to his wife.”

“But she may have known Bow, and her husband not.”

“Yes, and it isn’t very straight for them to pretend not to know each other. I don’t see why there is any need for it.”

Joan nodded. “I think we should tell the Inspector. You can see that most of the people here think that poor girl killed Hayes, and it isn’t fair to let her memory lie under that.”

“No,” said Wint, “it wouldn’t be.”

Chapter 13

Whose Gaff?

PARFITT’S MEN were busy for a long time in the tunnel without coming on anything more significant than the stain on the sleeper. Parfitt himself, before they started, explained the position to his sergeant, and told him what to look for.

“In the first place,” he said, “it’s obvious that if Hayes had been killed just here, there would have been a great many more signs of it than we see. That doesn’t say that he could not have been killed further back and carried here. We want to know if, for some unexplained reason, he walked back from Cwyll through the tunnel. Every sleeper must be looked at, if it takes you a day.”

“But if this stain is blood, sir, how does it come here if it wasn’t from Mr. Hayes?”

“My dear fellow, it may be venous, or arterial, blood. I am going to shave off the top of the sleeper, and have it submitted to the analyst.”

“Venous blood, sir?”

“From the veins. Mr. Hayes was wounded in the jugular. It makes all the difference. By the way, has no one found out yet how Mr. Hayes left Cwyll?”

“Yes, sir, on foot. He was seen going though Glynthomas. Unless he got a lift after that we don’t know what he did.”

“Perhaps some strange motorist. I’ll phone for them to advertise at once,” said Parfitt. “But wait a moment. You know that road that runs across the second bridge below here to Pendreath. It’s a beastly track, but cars do go up it occasionally.”

The sergeant nodded. “I know, sir. Why”— he stared at the Inspector— “it loops round again within half a mile of Miss Tysin’s farm.”

“And was, at one time, the only road near it,” said Parfitt. “It is just on the cards that Miss Tysin was coming towards Cwyll earlier that evening, saw Hayes, and took him up that road to the farm. He may have come down to the river over the hill after dark again, and looked for his rod.”

“You mean, sir, that she may have been out in the car then and made an appointment to meet him again by the river later on?”

“That’s it. Evidently no one saw them, but that does not prove it wrong. I must make inquiries to find out if she knew Hayes had had that row with Chance, and gone to Cwyll about it.”

“If she heard, she may have gone along to hear what happened.”

“The postman might have told her,” said the sergeant, “and he may have made it sound worse than it was. Yes, yes, indeed.”

While they were talking a constable came up from Cwyll and approached them.

“We asked about that ring, sir,” he said, saluting. “Mr. Jenkins didn’t sell it.”

“What did he say about the diamonds. Valuable?”

“No, sir; indeed, he says they are not diamonds at all. Sapphires, he said. White sapphires that look like diamonds, sir. People give them, he says, that want to make a show, that won’t cost so much.”

Parfitt whistled. “Anything else?”

“Well, sir,” he said, “Camfoll’s of Birmingham make that kind of ring, and have it in their catalogue. He looked it up, and there was one like it.”

Parfitt nodded. “Get back as quick as you can, and see that the ring is sent registered post to Camfoll’s. They may have some private mark on it that will tell them to what retailer it went.”

When the constable had gone, and the sergeant had returned at the double to his men searching, Parfitt left the first tunnel, and went up with his torch to the short tunnel above the pool where Hayes’s body had been found.

It was apparently known that Blodwen Tysin had been in the habit of meeting Hayes after dark. But there was no particular proof to show that anglers from the hotel had met them on the bank. It was far more likely that Hayes had laid down his rod when Blodwen had arranged to meet him, and had a rendezvous with the girl in the tunnel above.

Parfitt had a talk with the police-sergeant at Cwyll. There was no question now in either of their minds that the girl was other than an innocent romantic, who had fallen in love with the man Hayes, whose motives were a thousand times more dubious than the girl’s morals. That she was in danger while Hayes made love to her was evident, but that was all.

Parfitt felt pretty sure that Hayes had just recently bought the sapphire ring. From its design it was an engagement ring, and the inference behind the gift was that Hayes had offered the girl marriage. That might have been a usual part of his campaign. He had at least cut expenses by buying stones which looked a great deal more valuable than they were.

“He’d have made a fool of her if he’d lived long enough, Parfitt,” the doctor said. “Perhaps she chose the best way out. She must have been madly in love with him.”

Parfitt thought of that saying now. It fitted in with his theories about the girl, combined with what the local minister had said about her. It was the romantic making a final tragic gesture. He could imagine the girl, stunned by Hayes’s death, perhaps in her innocence, even more stunned by the revelation that he was a married man, dashing off to that lonely tarn, flinging her ring away, and then drowning herself. But why not in the river at home. He wondered.

Then he remembered her reading; the old novels one finds in every country village; rather stilted, full of dying heroes, swoons, acts of folly romanticised until they looked like natural actions, and, above all, lonely lakes and dismal tarns. No heroine of those novels would have thought of jumping into a reservoir, or a placid river. Dark tarns were the fashion then. It was all of a piece.

As he entered the shortest tunnel, that above the pool, Parfitt found that it was not quite dark, but filled with a twilight gloom. Still, he had to switch on his torch to see distinctly, and walked on, carefully, switching the beam from side to side.

He had almost reached the further end when he came on a flat butt of a cigarette. It was one of those smoked by Mr. Hayes.

It was, of course, possible that it had been there by day, when the man used it as a short cut to the bridge.

Just beyond this solitary find, however, Parfitt came on six or seven cigarette ends, and, what was more significant, an old cushion from a car, placed at the rock side of the tunnel, and resting on two stones, so that it was raised about fifteen inches from the ground.

He marked the spot, picked up the cushion, and carried it into the daylight beyond the tunnel to examine it.

It was from the back seat of a car, covered with imitation leather, and stuffed with horsehair. There was no indication on it, of course, of the owner, but Parfitt felt sure that Miss Tysin had brought it down from the farm to sit on. It came, most probably, from the Ford which had preceded the car she had left up at Llynithen.

This assumption, confirmed by the cigarette ends left by Hayes near the seat, told him plainly enough that Hayes and the girl had made this tunnel their rendezvous. There were no night trains on the little railway, and there they could sit in quiet, undisturbed by the sportsmen on the river below.

Hayes had literally got it in the neck this time, Parfitt mused, as he carried the cushion back to the other tunnel, and handed it over to his men to be taken to Cwyll. But he was still unconvinced that Blodwen had handled the gaff that killed the man.

He left that part of the river ten minutes later, and went up to see Davis. The man did not seem surprised to see him, but was anxious to hear about the girl’s suicide, of which he had heard several conflicting accounts.

Parfitt could see that he was deeply affected by the tragedy. The girl had discouraged his advances from the first, but his feeling for her had gained strength by being damned up. He was one of those quiet, undemonstrative men, who deceive people into believing that they are emotionally insensitive.

“Pity the — wasn’t killed sooner, Inspector!” he told Parfitt, when he had heard all. “Vermin he was, indeed! She was a good girl that.”

“No question of it,” said Parfitt. “There’s no black mark against her so far. But there is something I want to know, and you can tell me perhaps better than anyone. Old Tysin left a gaff behind him. It isn’t up at the farm now. Do you know who has it?”

“I have it,” said Davis, and he turned and took a long-handled gaff from a corner.

Parfitt started. “Good! I suppose you picked it up that morning, when you met the gentlemen from the hotel, and looked for Hayes’s body?”

“No, sir. I have had it a month. I bought it off the postman.”

Parfitt examined the gaff carefully. “You hadn’t it with you when you were out last with your rod?”

“No, no. I hadn’t it then. It would be a silly tool, anyway, to kill a man with, look you. A bit of rock would be easier.”

“I expect it would. Now, Davis, did you suspect that Hayes was meeting the girl and trying to make a fool of her?”

“Aye, I saw them twice.”

“Did you speak to her about it? I hear you were fond of her.”

Davis grunted. “She wouldn’t let me speak.”

“But you had a shot at it?”

“I did. I said the man was a rascal— I stopped her in the car to say it. She looked like a knife at me, and drove on.”

“That was a little while ago, eh? You didn’t know he was a married man?”

“I’d have broken his neck before if I’d known before any harm came to Blodwen.”

“No harm came to her, Davis, until she threw herself in the llyn.”

Davis shrugged his shoulders. “That was enough, indeed. She was a lovely girl, Inspector, a lovely girl.”

“Did the postman know, do you think?” Parfitt asked.

“I can’t tell you, sir. He keeps his thoughts to himself. He never said it to me.”

“Not even to make you jealous? He was after her himself, they say.”

“We were all clay to her,” said Davis mournfully. “She’d have had more feeling for sods of turf, sir. When she got that education, she never lived here though she was up at the farm. She had ideas about knights, and the like. Yes, yes.”

Parfitt took possession of the gaff, and went on up to the hotel. He wanted to have a talk with Wint, and was presently closeted with him in the hotel smoking-room.

“Now, sir,” he began, “I’ve practically settled it that Miss Tysin used to meet Hayes in one of the tunnels. As for that stain you found in the other tunnel, I have had the wood shaved off for analysis. But I am pretty sure that it did not come from the dead man.”

“You don’t think it was recent, then?”

“Yes, I do.”

Wint stared. “I hope you don’t mean there was another murder?”

“No, I don’t think so. What I wanted to ask you was that you and the lady should keep quiet about it. We don’t want all our finds broadcasted.”

“We won’t tell anyone,” Wint hastened to assure him. “We didn’t want to interfere with your investigations, but I don’t think we did any harm.”

“No, sir, it was a useful find. We don’t mind taking a tip now and then, so long as you pass it on to us before you make it public. In fact, if you hear anything in the hotel here that may be of use, I shall be glad to know it. It’s everyone’s duty to help in a murder case, and I wish more people recognised it.”

Wint nodded. “There is something I can tell you. It was not my observation, but Miss Powis’s.”

“That’s your friend, sir, who came after the murder?”

“Yes,” Wint replied. “It may be a mistake, it may of no significance, but I’ll tell you what she saw, and you must puzzle it out for yourself.”

“Go ahead, sir,” said Parfitt eagerly.

Wint explained what Joan had seen when she was about to leave her room for a bath early in the morning. The Inspector listened interestedly, and did not appear sceptical.

“It appeared to Miss Powis that those two people knew each other before they met here, sir? Of course, it’s chancy work saying what a person’s expression means when they look at someone else.”

“She thought so, too. But the gesture is different, we both agreed? Unless you interpret that in an ugly way, which I do not think is warranted by anything we know, it does suggest previous acquaintance.”

Parfitt agreed. “Funnier coincidences have happened, if it was a coincidence,” he remarked. “Mr. Bow may have communicated with Mrs. Hayes. In any case, her husband appeared to have written to her mentioning other guests.”

“Still, there must be lots of other men called Bow.”

“Quite so, sir. Still, this is a good point, and I am much obliged to you and the lady for letting me know. You might keep it dark, too. If people know they are under suspicion they will take measures to meet it. The inquest is to-morrow, by the way. I am afraid you, though not Miss Powis, will have to come down to it.”

“At Cwyll? Right! Is that all you want me for?”

“That is all at the present, sir. I have to go to the telephone now.”

When Wint had gone, Parfitt visited the office where Miss Pole was making up accounts, and asked her if he could have the private use of the telephone. She got up, showed him the receiver, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Getting on to the police station at Cwyll, Parfitt asked if any messages had come in from the officer who had been sent to London.

The station-sergeant told him that the Chief Constable had had a message. He was in the Superintendent’s office at that moment.

“Then ask him to speak to me, please,” said Parfitt.

“Hello. The Chief Constable speaking— is that you, Inspector?” a voice asked a minute later. “Anything new at your end?”

Parfitt explained briefly what he had done and seen that day, and added: “I believe you had a message from London, sir?”

“Yes— just a few minutes ago, Inspector. We haven’t heard yet where Mr. Chance came from, but Mr. Bow, I hear, is a Wiltshire man. He came originally from Morewilton.”

“That’s near Devizes, isn’t it, sir?”

“I believe so. Well, I must ring off. The coroner has just come in. You might warn the witnesses we shall require for to-morrow.”

As he rang off, Miss Pole knocked at the door, and peeped in. “Excuse me, Inspector, but I left a letter here that ought to be posted at once.”

“Is this it?” he asked, picking up a letter from the desk, and handing it to her. “Yes, I see it is stamped. But just a moment, is Mrs. Hayes in the hotel?”

“Just gone up to her room.”

“Would you be good enough to ask her to come here?”

Miss Pole went out with her letter, and Mrs. Hayes came down a minute later.

“You wished to see me, Inspector?”

“Yes, madam, if you please. Sit down. The inquest was fixed for to-morrow, and I am afraid I shall have to ask you to attend. Perhaps you could supply me with a few details about your husband, his place of birth, and so on.”

She nodded. “He was born in Alnmouth, I think.”

“Brought up there?”

“I believe his parents took him to London when he was ten.”

“Was he living in London when you met him, may I ask?”

She looked surprised. “No, I met him in the country. He was staying with some friends near Devizes. But what does it matter? Surely that is far too long ago to have any significance now?”

He bowed. “In a case of murder, Mrs. Hayes, it is sometimes useful to know something about the past. There have been occasions when revenge has been planned years in advance, and only carried out when an opportunity occurred.”

She smiled faintly. “I don’t think we have to look far for the culprit, if we can call her that.”

He stiffened. “You refer to the dead girl? I think it is hardly kind.”

“Kind?” she laughed now. “Do you think I would blame her? No more than I should blame Charlotte Corday for ridding the world of a wretch! I have been thinking things over, Inspector, and I am afraid I was not quite frank with you.”

“May I ask you exactly what you mean?” he asked severely.

She drew a letter from the bosom of her dress, and handed it to him.

“I should never have shown you this if the poor thing hadn’t been found,” she said coolly. “I agree with you that anonymous letters are better ignored, especially if they tell us nothing new. But I had this before I came down.”

Chapter 14

Mrs. Hayes Explains a Little

PARFITT unfolded the letter eagerly. It was written in a good hand, and signed “Blodwen Tysin.” He read it with growing surprise.

“Dear Madam,

“I am afraid your son would be angry with me if he knew I was writing to you, but I felt I had to. I love him, as I know he loves me, but I know he is rich, and a gentleman, and I don’t want to do anything behind backs.

“My people were farming people, though he says that does not matter, and that you will not care what they were. He talked so nicely of you that it made me ashamed to meet him in the tunnel, and take his ring, though you were not aware that we were engaged.

“My idea in writing you was to feel that I need not worry at all, as I do now, for if you are both in love and going to get married, there should be no reason to hide it.

“Please tell me that you are not angry. I would be a good wife to him, and do all I could to please you.

“If you could let me know this privately, without telling him that I wrote to you, I should feel happier.

“I apologize for troubling you, madam,

“Yours sincerely,

“BLODWEN TYSIN.”

When he had read the letter twice, Parfitt folded it up, and looked thoughtfully at the cold, self-composed woman in the chair.

“You came down to put a stop to this?” he asked.

She nodded. “I don’t know how often I have been made to play the part of my husband’s mother, Inspector, but I admit that it seemed to me the limit! Naturally, too, I saw that young woman was in more danger than she deserved.”

“Did you intend to see her?”

“Of course. Refreshing innocence like hers is rare, Inspector. However I felt about the matter, it was my obvious duty to enlighten her.”

“I agree,” he said, putting the letter in his pocket. “I may have to put this in as evidence later on. Meanwhile, I must carry on with my inquiries for a minute or two. For the purposes of the inquest I shall want your maiden name, and birthplace.”

She gave him both, but did not know the quick sense of triumph he had at that moment.

“I shall go down to Cwyll by the first bus in the morning,” she added. “Some of the other guests are going by that.”

“Very good, madam,” he replied. “The inquest will be held in the court-house off the square. I think that is all for the present, thank you.”

After a minute’s reflection, Parfitt sent for the Boots. He came in, obviously wondering why he had been sent for, and was reminded that he had admitted Mrs. Hayes to the hotel on the night of the murder.

“I want you to tell me again exactly what the lady told you about her accident,” said the Inspector. “And let me hear if you suggested that she had met with some injury, or if it was her own suggestion?”

“I asked her, sir, if she was hurt,” said the Boots, and went on to repeat what he had said before about the arrival of the dead man’s wife after midnight. Parfitt listened gravely until he had finished, and then put another question.

“You saw spots on her skirt which suggested that she had been scratched, or something had produced slight bleeding?”

“Yes, sir. It looked like blood to me, but I couldn’t swear. Only she said she got bumped, and her nose bled.”

“Those spots were not visible next day?”

“No, sir, not as they were anyway. I expect the lady cleaned them off a bit.”

“All right. That will do,” said Parfitt.

He left the hotel, and hurried back to the tunnel.

When he reached the spot where the bloodstain had been found on the sleeper, he made a very thorough search of the walls of the tunnel, which at this point were roughly blasted out of rock. Nothing was visible there, so he switched off his torch, and began to walk down the tunnel, keeping to the space between the near rail and the wall, in the dark.

He was not tremendously surprised when, at a slight bend, he walked into the wall, and moved back a pace, rubbing his forehead ruefully.

His men had worked more than a mile down the tunnel towards Cwyll, and he did not attempt to rejoin them, but walked back into the daylight, and drove back to Cwyll.

As he drove, he was pondering on the new complication with regard to Mrs. Hayes and Edward Bow.

Though he was not a trained psychologist, the Inspector had an eye for faces, and was a fairly sound judge of character. Bow had not struck him as a man who worried much about moral issues. He looked a man of the world; no worse and no better than others of his type.

In his interview with Bow, when the latter had talked of his visit to the place near Pau, and described his first meeting with the late Mr. Hayes, the Inspector had been surprised by Bow’s moral indignation. It would have been premature and absurd to conclude that Bow was not on that occasion disgusted with Hayes’s pursuit of a young girl. What struck Parfitt was that Bow declared he had gone out of his way to interfere actively. There are a dozen passive, if disgusted, spectators of an ugly scene to one who actively intervenes. Parfitt did not deny that Bow might have disliked Hayes’s morals, but he had wondered why Bow had taken officious, though salutary, action.

Whatever his private code may be, there is nothing your man of the world dislikes so much as posing as a reformer, and coming in for the sneers that that rôle unfortunately carries with it. Three possibilities at once occurred to Parfitt. Bow might have invented the French incident, to justify or explain his dislike of Hayes; he might have been philandering with the daughter of his landlord, and acted through jealousy; or he might have spoken the truth.

The third possibility, taking his estimate of Bow’s character to be correct, was now supported by the assumption that Mrs. Hayes and Bow were former acquaintances. In fact, it was likely that Bow, at an earlier age, had fallen in love with the girl who later became Mrs. Hayes. There might be a dozen reasons why this affair had come to nothing, even if Bow still cherished a feeling of affection for the woman he had lost.

Bow might also have assumed that Mrs. Hayes retained her love for the man she had married, and resented Hayes’s conduct on that account. This vicarious resentment would explain why he had intervened and cut short what, to Hayes, must have seemed a promising beginning to an amorous campaign.

When he reached the station, Parfitt got a trunk-call through to the police at Devizes, and asked to speak to the Superintendent. The latter was away, but he spoke finally to a sergeant, now on the verge of retirement, who had been stationed in the district, in various villages, for many years.

Mentioning Mrs. Hayes’s maiden name, he discovered that the Wiltshire officer knew the family very well. He had begun as a constable in the hamlet which was a part of her family’s estate, and married one of the housemaids from the house.

Parfitt was delighted to hear it. He made the closest inquiries about the neighbouring families with whom Mrs. Hayes’s people had been friendly, and asked if the sergeant remembered Mrs. Hayes’s marriage.

“I had moved on then, but my wife went to see the presents, sir,” was the reply. “She married a Mr. Hayes— a good-looking gentleman, my wife said.”

“Her family had friends near Devizes, you said?”

“Yes, sir, she was specially friendly with some folk who lived at The Manor, Towton.”

“You were never stationed there?”

“No, sir, but we have a constable here now that was, before the lady got married.”

Parfitt smiled to himself. “Might I have a word with him, if he’s in?”

“He’ll be off duty in half an hour, sir. He’s out on his beat now. I’ll get him to ring you up when he turns in.”

Half an hour later, there was a ring, and Parfitt found himself in communication with the Wiltshire constable who had lived at Towton.

“I expect your sergeant told you I wanted some information about the people who used to live at The Manor, Towton?” he began.

“Yes, sir. They’re still there, sir.”

“Good. I wonder if you remember the lady who married Mr. Hayes later staying at The Manor?”

The constable assented. Like most people in tiny hamlets he knew a great deal about what went on in the “big house.” They had been great people for country-house cricket, too, and as the constable had once been a cunning bowler of off-breaks, he had generally played two or three times a year against the team of guests and visitors.

“I saw her often enough,” he said. “And a very nice lady, too. She was Miss Enid’s greatest friend.”

Parfitt was in luck’s way. “I see. I wonder if you remember any of the other guests who stayed there; any of the men for instance?”

The constable had done a bit of detecting in his time, even if it was nothing more involved than investigating poaching affrays, and the Inspector’s inquiries for the name of male guests who had stayed at The Manor, coupled with his anxiety to hear something about Mrs. Hayes, gave the shrewd man a hint what was wanted.

“You wouldn’t be speaking of Mr. Bow, sir, would you?” he asked.

He would have been pleased if he could have seen the start Parfitt gave.

“Bow? Why do you ask?”

“Well, sir, seeing as you were asking about the lady, and wanted to know the gentleman—”

“One up to you, constable!” said Parfitt, laughing. “I can see that you are the man for me. Was Mr. Bow friendly with the lady— specially, I mean?”

The gratified voice of the constable agreed again. “Yes, sir, he was. Some of us thought they were to make a match of it, but it fell through somehow. They do say Mr. Bow lost his money, and was too proud to come back. Anyway, we never saw no more of him.”

“Though, before that, he came often?”

“Yes, sir. He was a treat to watch, was Mr. Bow. He was a terror to hit, sir, and I only bowled him once that I remember.”

“How many years would that be before the other wedding?”

“Lemme see, sir. Ah, about two years it was.”

When Parfitt finally rang off, he had a pretty good idea of the relations between Mrs. Hayes and Bow.

They had certainly once been on the verge of an engagement. Whether they had met or corresponded since, he was, naturally, unable to say.

The fact that they had not mentioned their previous acquaintance when he had interviewed them, or given any hint to the other guests at the Pengellert hotel, might be significant of guilt, though it might not. If they had conspired together to kill Hayes, they would naturally think it necessary to conceal their former intimacy. On the other hand, Bow had been on the river on the night of the murder, and when he discovered that Mrs. Hayes had arrived late at the hotel, and that her husband had been found dead, he might think it necessary to make no mention of their earlier association for fear it should seem to provide a hint of a murderous conspiracy between them.

The latter possibility was obvious. Bow had been in love with the young woman who had married Hayes, he had quarrelled with Hayes on two occasions, and, if he were still in love with Mrs. Hayes, there was a motive for the husband’s removal.

The sergeant who had superintended the operations on the tunnel now came in. He and his men had found nothing to suggest that Hayes had been killed there, or brought through on a trolley. But he had gained a little information elsewhere which interested Parfitt.

On his way back, he had met the village postman, and had a talk with him. The man had not been difficult to question. In fact, he had spoken frankly and freely about Blodwen Tysin and Mr. Hayes. On the afternoon of the day when Chance and Hayes had come into open conflict, and Hayes had gone to Cwyll to consult a solicitor with regard to bringing a charge of assault against his fellow-guest, Blodwen had been in one of her fields beside the road, looking at a Friesian cow she had lately bought.

The postman had just heard of the fracas by the river, and was inclined to gloat over the injury sustained by Hayes. He had greeted the girl, and managed to find an opening to retail the story of the rather one-sided fight, and Hayes’s pusillanimous retreat to Cwyll in search of legal aid.

Blodwen had looked rather white and sick about it, he averred; and acidly told him he ought to be ashamed of himself, when he remarked that Hayes had been “asking for it” for some time. She had then turned away without another word, and hurried back to the farm. The postman, having gone on, was unable to say if she had taken her car out then, but she had heard from him that the injured Hayes was on his way to Cwyll, and it was quite on the cards that she had driven after him to see the extent of his injuries. No doubt the vengeful and jealous gossiper had painted them in lurid colours.

“Then there’s a job you must do at once,” said Parfitt decidedly, when the sergeant had finished. “Get out along that Pendreath Road; and if that doesn’t help, the road to Pengellert, and inquire at every house you see. If the girl went towards Cwyll that day, she drove; she didn’t fly! Someone must have seen her.”

Chapter 15

The Ring

THE INQUEST ON Mr. Hayes was held next day. The police did not ask for an adjournment, seeming content that the jury should return an open verdict. This was not a tactical move on their part, but due to a feeling that the investigation would be a very protracted one, and that there was nothing to be gained by successive postponements.

There was indeed at this point no definite proof of the time when Hayes met his death, or the place of it. There was merely the doctor’s guess as to the number of hours the body had been lying in the water, and a supposition that Hayes had been killed while on the bank. Since the police had decided that Blodwen Tysin had had no hand in the affair, her name was not mentioned during the proceedings, though it probably occupied the minds of most of those in the little court. Examination of some of the witnesses merely repeated what was already known: that some of the guests at the hotel had had differences with the dead man, and that in one case, fisticuffs had followed an exchange of heated words.

Inspector Parfitt did not mention the discoveries in the tunnel. It was obvious to him that the injuries to Hayes’s throat were of such a nature that extensive hæmorrhage must have taken place, and there was no link between the body found in the water and the bloodstain on the railway sleeper. Parfitt took it that the latter had made by Mrs. Hayes. He felt sure that she had gone down the tunnel that night, and collided at one point with the rock wall. She admitted that her nose had bled as the result of a collision with something. Substitute the rock for the steering-wheel as the cause of that trouble, and you explained the stain which aroused so much excitement in Joan Powis and Harry Wint when they first came upon it.

But Parfitt made no attempt to connect Bow or Mrs. Hayes with the affair. The evidence against them was too frail as yet, and he might come upon some other evidence which would exonerate them altogether.

The evidence of the doctor was clear enough. He felt certain that the nature of the dead man’s injuries suggested that a gaff was the weapon. He agreed that extensive bleeding must have taken place, and assumed that if Hayes had been struck while on the bank, he had fallen forward immediately, and dived, or been drawn by the force of the water, into the curious, almost vertical, rock funnel in which he had been found wedged.

At this point in the inquiry, sketches were put in, and photographs, showing the nature of this shaft in the river bed. It had originally been a narrow rift between two immense boulders wedged in the stream, just at the foot of a rapid. Below the boulders was a deep pool, and the action of winter floods over many centuries, and the constant friction of stones and pebbles dashed into the rift, had ended by sinking a species of shaft in the rock, down which the water rushed, to emerge some feet below the surface of the pool below.

One of the water-bailiffs, when examined, said he had made experiments when instructed to do so by the police, and proceeded to detail their nature. He had taken two sacks, sewn them together, and filled them with stuffing and weights, roughly to represent the body of the dead man. He had attached a rope to each end of this dummy, and, standing on the bank where it was presumed Hayes had fallen, or been thrown in, had tumbled it into the stream. A few moments later he had seen it sucked into the funnel in the rapid, and had had to pull vigorously on his rope to remove it from the narrow shaft.

“It is quite possible then, that the man was still alive when he was drawn into the funnel under the rock?” asked the coroner. “He was not necessarily thrust there after death?”

“No, sir,” said the bailiff. “If he’d been alive in the water there during the day, sir, he might have seen the hole, and splashed about to avoid it, but when it was dark he wouldn’t see it, and he might have gone down it before he could save himself.”

“You mean that he might have avoided the danger, had he seen it?”

“Well, sir, it isn’t a very big hole, and if he saw it, and was swimming, a kick would take him into the side of the rapid and past it.”

“Down the main rapid into the pool below, you mean?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t see how anyone could have killed him and then pushed him down the funnel. His head went down first, and how could a man on the bank hold him up above the funnel?”

“No. But a man might have killed him, and pushed him into the rapid, knowing he would go down that funnel. I take it that, if he was helpless when he went into the water, he would go down it.”

“Yes, sir. Anyone or anything going in near the bank, and not able to strike out further into the rapid, would go down.”

The bailiff then left the witness-box and the question of the gaff found in the pool there was brought up. Wint identified it as his, explained how and where he had lost it, and was allowed to go.

“We come now to a rather curious circumstance,” said the Coroner next,” looking at Inspector Parfitt, who nodded slightly. “It is a circumstance which rather troubled the police at first, and raised a point which would not have appeared significant to anyone but an angler. As we have heard, Mr. Hayes had a slight fracas with another guest at the hotel. He conceived himself to have been wantonly assaulted, and, leaving his rod on the bank, hurried here to see a solicitor. He was advised by the solicitor to let the matter drop, and left Cwyll again early in the evening. It is fairly obvious that he returned after dark to the river to retrieve his rod. This rod was found the morning after his death on the bank beside the pool where he fell, or was thrown in.

“Davis, in his evidence, has told you that he was struck by a curious fact. He examined the cast on the line, and discovered that a ‘Jock Scott’ salmon-fly had been attached to it. The ‘Jock Scott’ is not unknown here, and this particular fly was a variant on the original which Davis had invented. A number of these flies had been tied for him by a local tyer. But that was not the point. It was that the knot by which the gut had been attached to the eye of the hook was not the type used by anglers, but that used by anyone who knots a string. A string is soft, and will not cut on knotting, but gut is liable to cut in a knot unless that knot is of a special type.

“It is generally agreed that the late Mr. Hayes was an angler of skill and experience. He was not in the habit of using this fly. He would not have used that amateurish knot. The police naturally concluded that the murderer had found the rod fitted up with line and cast, though there was no fly attached to it, and that he had tied on a fly, to make it appear that Mr. Hayes was fishing at the moment of his death, and slipped into the water accidentally. Until late last night that appeared to be the only solution of the circumstance. I now propose to call a witness, who has come forward voluntarily in the interests of justice to explain this matter. It will then be seen that the thing had no real bearing on the case.”

There was a little sensation in court when a loutish youth, wearing the shirt and shorts of a hiker, went into the witness-box.

He gave his name and address, agreed that he came from Liverpool, was at present on holiday from his office, and camping in a small tent on the side of the hill beyond Pengellert. Between seven and half-past on the evening of the day when Mr. Hayes met his death, he was down on the bank of the river looking at the sewin, which were lying in shoals at the bottom of some of the clear pools. Lying down flat on the top of a rock, to get a better view of the fish below, he had noticed the root of a bush projecting under the water, and, stuck in it, what looked like a large fly. He retrieved it, and was ready to swear that it was the fly exhibited in court.

He had never fished, but the spectacle of the sewin lying within sight of him, and the fact that no one was within sight, made him wish to have a try. He had watched the anglers casting flies, and only the fact that he had neither a rod nor a line prevented him from having a shot at it. As it was, he stuck the fly in the pocket of his shirt, and went down towards the next pool. Here he came on a rod and line and cast, no doubt that left by Mr. Hayes when he had had the fracas with his fellow-guest.

“That would be about the time all the hotel anglers were at dinner?” said the Coroner.

“I suppose so, sir. Anyway, no one was there, and I thought I would have a try. I knotted the fly to the gut, or whatever it is.”

Smiles rippled over the faces of the many anglers in court as the youth explained that he could not cast the fly, because it was too heavy. He gave up the attempt, put the rod down, and went back to his tent for supper.

“You did not realise that it is difficult for an expert, let alone a novice, to cast a big salmon-fly with a light rod?” said the Coroner.

“No, sir, I didn’t till I tried. I got it tangled up twice, and had to disentangle it. I was down in the village last night, and heard someone say there was a fly on the rod that showed someone had tried to pretend the dead man had been fishing. I thought it would be better for me to explain to the police that it was me.”

The Coroner thanked him, and dismissed him from the box. Then he summed up, stressing the lack of definite evidence which would connect anyone who had come before them with the case, and indicating that a verdict of murder against some person or persons unknown would fit the circumstances. “We are here to find the cause of death merely,” he added. “I am sure you are aware that your verdict, whatever it may be, will not affect the continuance of the investigation by the police. I am advised that they do not ask for an adjournment.”

He looked at the Superintendent, who bowed, and replied that this was the fact. The jury then retired, to return within twenty minutes. They returned an open verdict, as directed, the inquest closed, and that on the body of Blodwen Tysin almost immediately begun.

Inspector Parfitt went into the box, when evidence of identification had been given, and stated what had taken place at the tarn at Llynithen. He described the recovery of the body, the finding of the deserted car beside the little lake, and the steps he had taken to discover who had been in the car on its arrival at the lakeside.

“There were certain finger-prints definitely marked on various parts of the car,” he said. “I have been unable to discover any that do not correspond to prints taken from the dead woman’s fingers. I have also identified the stone attached to the body as one which used to act as a boot-scraper outside the door of her farmhouse, and the rope as a portion of a clothes-line from the same place.”

“Then you take it for granted that Miss Tysin drove the car alone to this lake, having it in mind to commit suicide?”

“That is the conclusion in my mind, sir.”

The doctor was then called to give evidence. He stated that there was not an atom of evidence to prove that the dead girl had been engaged in a struggle with anyone, and no bruises or wounds to suggest it. She had met her death by drowning, and the only abrasion found had probably been caused by a jagged rock at the bottom of the lake.

He added, with some acerbity, that he understood there had been some foolish and uncharitable gossip with regard to the character of the dead girl.

“Since you have mentioned the fact,” said the Coroner, “may I take it that these aspersions were unwarranted?”

“You can, sir,” said the doctor. “Utterly unwarranted!”

“She was a young woman of excellent moral character?”

“I understand so. From my point of view, I am certain of it.”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” replied the Coroner. “I hope we shall hear no more of this matter.”

The doctor stood down, and the constable who found the ring was next called. He told what he knew, and the ring was passed over for the inspection of the jurymen.

“The police are investigating the matter,” said the Coroner, while the jury handed the ring from one to another. “But that does not concern us here. We may take it, from its kind and design, that it is what is commonly known as an engagement-ring. But rings of this kind do not always mean valid engagements, any more than the wearing of a wedding-ring proves that a woman is legally married. You may take it that this ring was given to Blodwen Tysin by a lover. Who that lover was may never be known to us, or it may become known when the police have completed their inquiries with regard to it.”

“We may hear within a day or two, sir,” said the Superintendent.

“Quite so. Well, I do not propose to go into that now. The point I would stress is this: Blodwen Tysin was found drowned, with no signs to suggest that her death was due to anyone but herself. Prior to her death, we may assume that she removed her ring, which was not found on her finger when the body was recovered, and threw it into the lake. She was an inexperienced girl, and, as men of the world we may take it that the delicate balance of her mind was upset by a disappointment in her love affair. She was a girl of excellent character, but high-strung and romantic. This is just the type of young woman to take such things hardly, and I have no hesitation in suggesting to you that a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind is a very proper one in the circumstances. You will consider the evidence before you, and not allow yourselves to be influenced by any evidence outside the scope of this inquiry, which is to determine how Blodwen Tysin came by her death.”

Both Joan Powis and Harry Wint admired the way in which the Coroner evaded the more controversial questions in the case, and when a verdict of suicide was duly brought in, they left the court agreed that Inspector Parfitt’s hand was obvious behind the suppressions.

Edward Bow came up to them when they were on their way to the bus, and greeted them cheerfully.

“Well, that’s that,” he said. “I don’t suppose they will ever catch the murderer of Hayes, so it was just as well to leave the thing open.”

Joan looked at Wint, who glanced gravely back at her. In both their minds was the thought that they had wisely, or unwisely, but at least without personal malice, given the Inspector information which might seriously prejudice Bow’s position. It struck Wint now that, having done so, it would be only fair to see what Bow had to say about it.

“The police have a suspicion that you and Mrs. Hayes were formerly acquainted,” he remarked. Bow stopped and stared at him. “How do you know that?”

Joan was rather red now, but Wint replied quite calmly.

“Do you think people who believe they have information bearing on a murder have the right to conceal it?”

Bow walked on. “No, I don’t think so. If we suspect someone of murder, and fail to mention it for any reason, we are obstructing the ends of justice, aren’t we? I remember, during the War, people who liked the Germans could not see that they were in the wrong, and some liked the Austrians, and some the Hungarians. But if you are never going to fight anyone who is in the wrong just because you like ’em, what’s going to happen? If everyone in this country was prepared to perjure himself to save his friends, or suppress evidence against them where does justice come in? Without fear or favour is my idea of justice.”

Wint nodded. “Good. Well, I told Parfitt that it was quite likely you and Mrs. Hayes had been friends before her marriage.”

Joan hardly knew what to expect. Certainly she did not expect the sardonic laugh with which Bow greeted Wint’s confession.

“My dear fellow, you ought to use cocaine, and play the violin,” said the latter. “I should be interested to hear the steps in the deduction.”

Joan put in hastily: “Mr. Wint didn’t find it out. I did.”

Bow bowed and smiled, more ironically than ever.

“That’s frank at least,” he said. “Any evidence against the prisoners?”

Chapter 16

Bow Hesitates

JOAN WAS MOMENTARILY taken aback by Bow’s cool question. Then she recovered herself, and told him plainly what she had seen.

Bow reflected for a moment, nodded seriously, and spoke. “Yes, I must plead guilty to what is, after all, not a criminal act! And having convicted me out of my own mouth of a passion for justice unalloyed, I don’t see that I can blame you.”

“Then you knew Mrs. Hayes before she came here?” said Wint.

Bow looked about him before he replied. “Certainly. Twenty-eight years ago— perhaps a little more. But you can take my word for it that I was not aware she was coming to Pengellert. In fact, until I saw her the other morning, I had not seen her, or had a letter from her, since her marriage.”

Joan looked ruefully at Wint. “We do believe you, Mr. Bow. I hope we haven’t done you any harm by speaking to the Inspector?”

He smiled faintly. “‘Yours not to reason why.’ I admit that. What am I to say? Perhaps my best answer is that I do not expect to be tried for the murder of Mr. Solomon Hayes; partly because I did not see him that evening, but mostly because I hadn’t the pleasure of slaying the monster. I think we heard almost enough to justify that extreme course this morning.”

Joan hardly knew what to make of this strange man. But she went on bravely. “I didn’t quite mean you, when I spoke of doing harm— I meant you and Mrs. Hayes.”

They were within fifty yards of the bus-stop now, and Bow halted them with a gesture.

“Going by bus, weren’t you? I came in my car. What about coming back with me? You may like to hear a somewhat prejudiced counsel for the defence.”

As they were both anxious to hear what he had to say, they went to the parking-place with him to get his car, and he drove off slowly, with Joan and Wint beside him in the wide front seat.

“I am sorry you are both as law-abiding as myself,” he remarked, when they were clear of the town. “I admit that it does not exactly help Caroline Hayes. You both thought, I presume, that it was only our former intimacy which complicated matters.”

“You mean,” said Wint bluntly, “that if the police had heard that you and Mrs. Hayes had been great friends before her marriage, they might have imagined a conspiracy to get rid of the husband?”

“Exactly. But only in the present circumstances, remember. I had the misfortune to quarrel with Hayes here; Mrs. Hayes, quite unknown to me, rushed down here the night her husband was killed. It seemed a pity to give the police food for thought.”

“But we have given it to them now,” said Joan, who was much more easily impressed by an exparte statement than Wint. “I am sure she will hate us!”

Bow shook his head. “I don’t think so. Caroline is a singularly fair-minded woman. She wouldn’t expect you to outrage your civic conscience for her sake. Besides, like myself, she has the consolation of knowing that she did not kill her husband. Mind you,” he added, with a look that was half-serious, half-jesting, “most of us have it in us to kill in a good cause. But I think she thought her husband hardly worth it. It was not jealousy that brought her here. From what I know of her, I can assure you that it was her anxiety to save that poor girl Tysin from a filthy ruffian.”

They nodded, but made no comment. He went on. “I see that I shall have to tell the Inspector about myself and Caroline. It’s an old story, and rather a painful one for us both. Shall I practise the recital on you?”

His ironical manner did not make a good impression on Harry Wint, but Joan took him seriously.

“Please not, if it is a painful subject!” she cried.

Bow raised his eyebrows. “Let’s get it out of our system then,” he said, almost gaily. “Most stories have a sequel, sooner or later, and ours certainly will, when this has blown over.”

As he drove on, he told them a little more fully of his early acquaintance with Caroline Hayes, and the misfortune which had separated them on the verge of an engagement.

“I was rather like Blodwen Tysin then,” he added. “High-strung and romantic, didn’t the Coroner say? I had no fancy for dark tarns, but, most decidedly, my favourite heroes were those who mounted and rode away, full of high and unselfish thoughts for the happiness of the beloved. At least, that is what the romances told us they were. They rarely told us that you may do a woman more harm by leaving than loving her, or that wealthy women often made the best wives for poor men. You see what a muddled wiseacre I was then? To secure Caroline’s happiness, I left her to the tender mercies of the wicked.”

“But what an unhappy story,” cried Joan.

“Yes, it was, Miss Powis. But a happy chance, if you’ll excuse the term in this connection, has put a new face on things. Someone having kindly removed the Gorgon’s Head, which was rapidly freezing my poor Caroline into stone, we have hopes of a pleasanter future, you know.”

“I do hope you have,” said Joan earnestly, and even Wint was now more impressed by Bow’s explanation.

“Well, Miss Powis, you seem to have some detective gifts,” the latter said smiling. “Why don’t you and Wint here turn them to the help of the defence?”

“I am afraid you are laughing at me,” said Joan. “I can’t really blame you now.”

“Oh, no,” he said hastily. “I am afraid the troubles I brought on myself years ago made me put on a protective skin of mockery. I am really anxious to clear up the position, and apart from my joke about deduction, any fresh mind may see a point the police overlooked. What do you think, Wint?”

Wint agreed. “I see you are not too certain that Mrs. Hayes may not be involved, Bow.”

“If you mean involved by accident, my dear fellow, I’m with you. If Miss Powis will excuse the phrase, I think she is in the hell of a hole.”

“Really?” cried Joan.

“I am afraid so. You see, there is no doubt that Hayes was a blackguard, and that Caroline knew it long ago. Apparently Parfitt knows now, or will soon learn, that she and I were only nearly engaged. He asked her where she was born, and her maiden name, recently; which struck us both as odd. To some minds, she and I had a good motive for killing Hayes, and we were both here at the time of his death.”

“How can you say that Mrs. Hayes was here?” Wint asked shrewdly. “We don’t know at what hour he was killed.”

“True, my dear chap, but she has no alibi for certain hours of dark, and it may have been during those hours that Hayes was killed. If you could find her an alibi, everything in the garden would be lovely.”

“But she was driving here from a distance.”

“Quite. She can tell the police what she likes, but it is a question if the police will necessarily believe her. That’s the crux of the matter.”

“I suppose she could tell roughly how far she travelled, and how fast, and where she had the accident that made her nose bleed?”

“At the present stage, I am afraid she could hardly answer that last question, Wint.”

“I know it may be difficult to identify a strange place you only saw by night, but if she could place it within a few miles, the police would make a thorough search, and find some traces perhaps of the side-slip, or collision, or whatever it was that happened.”

“Yes, she could surely do that?” cried Joan.

Bow seemed doubtful, and already the car was approaching the hotel.

“I tell you what,” he exclaimed, as he began to slow down, “I shall have a talk with Caroline, and get her views. Will you go for a stroll up the river, past the village after tea, and we’ll follow you? By that time I shall know what she and I decide.”

“Of course we will,” said Joan eagerly. “And we’ll do what we can to help.”

Chapter 17

A Prior Attachment

“NOW, PARFITT,” said the Chief Constable, as he sat in the Superintendent’s office after lunch that day, “we have cleared off those formalities, and can get to work. I am glad no officious juryman got up to make mischief. There was one who had a roving eye, and I wasn’t sure of him to the last.”

“No, sir. I think it went off very well,” replied Parfitt, drawing a bundle of police reports to him, and glancing at that on the top. “I have got in a good many answers to my inquiries already.”

“Then let’s hear how we stand. What about this Mr. Chance?”

“Apparently, sir, he did not know either of the Hayes before, or, more correctly, he met Hayes once, at an inn in Devon, and disliked him. But there was no real motive, such as we might see in Bow.”

“You mean over the wife?”

“Yes, sir. I shall have to go into the matter with him, but I am sure now that he was in love with Mrs. Hayes— before her marriage, I mean. There is no doubt of that; though it would not be fair to say that he killed Hayes. So far as we know, he made no attempt to philander with the lady once she was married.”

“I see. Well, it is open to us even now to assume that the crime could have been committed by a man or a woman. The evidence of the water-bailiff made it clear that, if Hayes was struck with the gaff, and pushed into the water in the dark, he might have been drawn into the funnel before he could save himself. A man wounded in the jugular would be in no condition to strike out.”

“No, sir. It is possible that both are innocent, or that Bow did the murder, or Mrs. Hayes alone.”

“That depends on our being sure that she was in the tunnel that night.”

“I am sure she was, sir. Look at it this way: she comes into the hotel much later than one would have expected. She explains it partly by talk of an accident, which made her nose bleed. There are some tiny spots, which may be blood, on her dress, but none of her handkerchiefs are stained, as one would expect if she staunched the flow.”

“Women haven’t so many pockets as they used to have, Parfitt.”

“No, sir. They carry their handkerchiefs in their bags. There is no pocket in the dress she was wearing that night, and if she went to look in the tunnel, she would hardly carry her bag.”

“That’s true. But why did she go into the tunnel without a torch?”

“She may have had one and thrown it away, sir. Or she may have thought the light would make it impossible for her to surprise Hayes.”

Mr. Rigby began to fill his pipe slowly. “I forgot she had had that rather pathetic letter from Blodwen Tysin. She knew about the tunnels.”

“Yes, sir, and there is a guide-book in the pocket of her car which describes the mountain railway. I take it that she decided to visit the tunnel to surprise her husband, or see where he had this rendezvous. She may have made up her mind before she left home, or only when she found herself near the pass here.”

“That would be rather an important point with regard to premeditation, Parfitt,” Rigby observed; “especially as the weapon used is not one she would bring with her.”

“Yes, it might fine the thing down to manslaughter, if a charge was brought, sir. At any rate, I believe she had studied the ground by means of the map— an ordnance map in this case— and took her car over the bridge, and parked it in that cul-de-sac, where Tysin put her car apparently when she drove down after dark to meet Hayes.”

“It’s very likely.”

“Then, sir, I assume that she walked into the first tunnel, and presently collided with the rock wall, as I did myself when I tried the experiment in the dark. I believe that that is where she made her nose bleed. Probably she recoiled from the wall when her face struck it, and the result was that bloodstain on the sleeper.”

“You will have to examine her on that point,” said Rigby decidedly. “It seemed to me a perfectly logical argument, especially as she seems so very hazy about the exact spot where she had an accident with her car. I am afraid you will have to bring that to an issue; unpleasant as it may be to force the poor woman into a corner. I have a good deal of sympathy with her. Hayes was obviously a brute, and she was naturally resentful. That is your next job. I don’t think we could take any official action against her yet.”

Parfitt shook his head, turned to another report, and began: “We have just heard from those Birmingham manufacturers, sir. They sold that particular ring to a firm in Oxford Street. I found the letter when I came back from the inquest, and at once rang up the London people. They supplied the ring to a Mr. Hayes at the Horn Hotel. It was sent by post. They had supplied him with a similar ring on another occasion.”

Rigby pursed his lips. “Filthy brute!”

Parfitt glanced again at a report. “Now, sir, we had difficulty in discovering exactly where Mr. Hayes was, from the time he left Cwyll that evening preceding his death, up to the time when he got to the river bank. My inquiries come to this: Very few people were on the road at that time, except motorists going through to other places, and none of them would be likely to notice an old Ford car.”

“They are more noticeable than they used to be,” said Rigby. “At one time every second car seemed to be that!”

“Well, I took it that it was possible Blodwen Tysin had heard of the trouble, and that Hayes had gone to Cwyll, I confirmed that. But she did not take the usual road through Pengellert. She went by the old and longer road, Pendreath way, the other side of the hill, and presumably met Hayes, and picked him up.”

“Did anyone see that?”

“No. But, first thing to-day, Constable Griffiths came in to say that old Mr. Prosser, father of the present farmer at Gwyglas, saw her pass his house alone in the car that evening early. She was heading towards Pendreath. He did not mention it before, because he did not see what her going that way could have had to do either with the murder or the subsequent suicide.”

“Very naturally he wouldn’t.”

“No one saw the girl, or noticed her, at any rate, on the Cwyll road below the second bridge; but old Prosser saw her again coming back about an hour later.”

“Then why the devil didn’t he let us know?” asked Rigby, “especially if Hayes was with her.”

“But he didn’t know it was Hayes, sir. The car went by pretty fast, and he says, even at the time, though he thought he saw someone in the back seat, under the hood, which was up, he was not sure if it was not a parcel she had brought from Cwyll or Pendreath. His eyes are not very good, though wonderful for a man of eighty.”

“It may have been Hayes, sitting hunched up, and with his face hidden to avoid attracting attention. But did not the man working at the hill-farm see Hayes come in with the girl?”

“The man leaves at six, sir, or did that evening. There is a gap in time, sir, that I can’t exactly fill, but I take it that Hayes had a meal there, and was perhaps driven down to the river by the girl after dark.”

“Surely at that late hour he would hardly go back to fish?”

Parfitt considered. He had thought of that already. “We knew Mr. Hayes had expensive rods, and took great care of them. He left his rod earlier in the day, because Chance assaulted him, and he was a cowardly fellow. But when he cooled off, I expect he decided to go back for his rod. He knew where he had left it, and as he generally fished the same pool at night, he knew his way about.”

“You may be right. Then we come to this— Tysin took him down in her car. But if that was the car Mr. Wint heard going back along the road, the time would be between eleven and a quarter past.”

“Yes.”

“Was Hayes dead by that time, or had she merely left him and gone home?”

“The latter, I think, sir. The jealous fellow who had told her about the fight with Chance evidently gave her the impression that Hayes had been badly knocked about. But when she saw Hayes, and realised that there was much cry and little wool, she wouldn’t worry so much. I take it that she left him, when he found the rod, and went home.”

“I see. Well, what about Wint’s gaff? That was found just a little above the pool where Hayes was found, though Wint did not get down so far. How do you account for that?”

Parfitt did not look very confident. “The whole thing is a supposition on my part, sir, and I can only think of one explanation. Though Mr. Hayes knew his way about well enough, his rod was not where he dropped it when Chance had the altercation with him. The boy out hiking had tried to use it. I expect Hayes looked up and down the bank, and so came on the telescopic gaff Mr. Wint had dropped out of its sling. He was at daggers drawn with the other people at the hotel, and he may have picked it up in a fit of temper, and afterwards gone on, and found his rod a few yards further down.”

Rigby mused. “Yes, that would be like the man from what we have heard of him. ‘Here’s one of those damned fellows’ gaffs!’ he would say to himself. ‘Let him look for it in the river!’”

Parfitt nodded. “That is as far as I have got, sir. One of the anglers heard someone walking up on the ballast of the line above the river. We may take it that that was Mrs. Hayes.”

Rigby assented. “I agree. I fear that she was there, and afterwards went down to the bank where her husband was. But we cannot get away from two things, Parfitt. If Hayes stayed to fish after Miss Tysin had left him, why was the salmon-fly still tied to the cast? It was a fly he didn’t use, he must have known by the size that it was too big for sewin. If he assumed that it was the fly he had had on earlier in the day, he would know when he cast that it wasn’t. Even in the dark, a salmon-fly cast with a trout-rod takes a lot of driving out.”

“Yes, that is a point, sir.”

“And another hangs on it. If he did not intend to fish, why did he not go back with Blodwen Tysin to the bridge when he found the rod?”

“I suppose he did intend to fish.”

“Very well. If he intended to fish, he would take up the rod, find that the fly was wrong, and at once change it for another. That would not take two minutes. Since he did not do so, the suggestion can only be that the murderer, Mrs. Hayes, or another, approached him before he touched his tackle. But the girl Tysin would then have met Mrs. Hayes— if it was she, since both would have to take the same path— the one going towards the bridge, and the other coming from it.”

“True, sir,” replied Parfitt, rather discomfited. “But the girl is dead, and told no one what she saw that night.”

“I know that. Still, if she met Mrs. Hayes—”

“Yes, sir, if you’ll excuse me interrupting. But Miss Tysin would take the ordinary path, while Mrs. Hayes would be in the tunnel.”

Rigby made a gesture of irritation, and applied a match to the unlit pipe he had held in his hand till now.

“The fact is that we are not used to investigating murders, Parfitt, and I don’t suppose Scotland Yard would appreciate our leavings at this stage. I admit that you have a reasonable sort of case, though whether it would go down with a jury is another thing. There is one possibility that may be worth while looking into, though. I am rather diffident about it, but we can’t afford to leave a stone unturned. I was reading a book about salmon-fishing yesterday. There was a statement in it that the author once lost his gaff in a salmon, and never saw it again. He struck the fish, it gave a wallop, and he had a loose grip on the handle.”

“It wasn’t in this river by any chance, was it, sir?” Parfitt asked, with faint irony.

Rigby bit his lip. “No, somewhere in Scotland. You might Inquire about a missing gaff though. Meantime, see Mrs. Hayes, and question her again. You had better warn her, and ask her to make a statement. There are still a few people who dislike telling lies on oath!”

Chapter 18

Was it the Truth?

“I SAY,” Wint remarked suddenly, in a self-reproachful voice, as he and Joan Powis made their way through the village after tea. “We forgot we had promised Parfitt not to give his show away! That’s pretty rotten. I never thought of it when we were talking to Bow.”

Joan had a woman’s less logical, but very practical, feeling that when the end justified the means, there was something to be said for any means.

“So we did,” she admitted. “But I don’t think we were wrong, Harry. You see, it’s pretty certain now that Mr. Bow had nothing to do with the murder, or Mrs. Hayes.”

“It’s no more or less certain than it was before,” he replied, with an embarrassed laugh. “Every convicted murderer makes an impression— I mean a favourable impression, on someone. You have only to talk with people after a trial to discover that. But it doesn’t prove anything.”

“You men are always so anxious to prove something,” said Joan. “At any rate, if we messed up the Inspector’s case in one way, we helped him in another. I feel quite sure Mr. Bow intends to tell him the whole truth this time, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he persuades Mrs. Hayes to say exactly where she was that night.”

Wint agreed with that. It made him feel better, which is a common reason for agreeing with any argument to salve the conscience. “Yes, I admit that is something. Everyone who is cleared leaves fewer people for the police to deal with, and makes their job easier. But I don’t see that Mrs. Hayes can prove her innocence easily.”

“Not even if she admits that she was down by the river then?”

“Less than ever. If she was actually near the scene of the murder, and has no one to cite as witness, where is she? It won’t help much to say: ‘I was there, but I didn’t do it!’”

They had left the village now, and walked more slowly along the deserted road that followed the green valley, down which the Cwyll came from the distant mountains. Half a mile further on, they lit cigarettes, and sat on a dry stone-wall to wait for Bow and Mrs. Hayes.

“Well, you couldn’t have done it,” said Joan, as she settled herself on her perch, and stared at a curlew that was wheeling over a field, and whistling mournfully. “So, if Mrs. Hayes and Mr. Bow didn’t, that leaves only a few suspects. Hoad, the man Davis, Mr. Chance, Mr. the postman— who else?”

“We mustn’t exclude the chance that someone Hayes had come up against in the past followed him here.”

“I suppose not. Now, Mr. Chance looks less and less a murderer to me every time I see him. But I suppose you’ll laugh at that as women’s intuition?”

He grinned a little. “I don’t despise intuition, my dear girl. Now I’ll give you a silly little idea of my own to laugh at. I am more and more interested in Hoad’s looks. He’s cleared his mind of the business about the rotten anonymous letter, but he still looks as dismal as a wet night. I wonder if he has anything more on his mind.”

“Perhaps he realises that, if he hadn’t written it, Mrs. Hayes wouldn’t have come down, and that poor girl would not have committed suicide.”

“Perhaps he does. But I have been thinking it over. We agreed at first that that timid, rather cowardly type of young fellow might be capable of writing an anonymous letter, but not of murder. I doubt if our psychology was quite sound there. Now and again in schools we get the case of a timid boy being regularly bullied until he got into a frenzy and repaid the bullying with something quite out of proportion to the offence. He was on the pool next to Hayes, remember.”

Joan did not forget it. “Yes; I do think a sheep goes rather mad, if it goes mad at all,” she answered slowly. “And quiet men blow up rather wonderfully once you get the right match for them. But I thought Hoad was hipped because Celia Mason hardly ever speaks to him now. She and Mrs. Hayes are so often together.”

“Well, you may be right. It was only a guess,” said Wint. “But here comes Bow and Mrs. Hayes.”

When they got down from the wall, and greeted the newcomers, Mrs. Hayes suggested that they should walk on. She looked as composed as ever, and of the two Bow was the more agitated, though there were slight traces of it on his face.

“Mr. Bow has told me your theories,” said the older woman to Joan, as they set out again. “I thought them quite clever.”

Joan thought “clever” was an odd word to use in this connection, but she replied quietly enough. “It seems one at least was true.”

“Yes. I quite admit it. I was rather idiotic to act as I did, but when you come down suddenly one night to rescue a rural Andromeda, Miss Powis, and find another Perseus has anticipated you, you do not always hit on the right tactics.”

“I suppose it is always wiser to tell the exact truth, Mrs. Hayes.”

Mrs. Hayes laughed, not unpleasantly. “I am sure it is. I used to think so once, certainly. At any rate, Mr. Bow suggests that I should try it for a change.”

Bow smiled. “Caroline, you are irrepressible.”

“But not irresponsible, as these two must think me,” she replied. “Shall we all turn up this lane, Miss Powis? I see a nice sunny bank above where we could sit while you hear my confession.”

Seated on the grassy bank above, Mrs. Hayes began again. “Now you want to be thrilled. I’ll do my best for you. I was down near the river that night my husband was killed. Shall I tell you why?”

Wint muttered that she must decide for herself. “We don’t want to ask for the details as long as you give them to Parfitt,” he added.

She did not appear to hear him, but began to tell them about the letter she had received from Blodwen Tysin, and her journey down to Wales to stop the affair before it went any further.

“I really meant to go right on to the hotel, stay the night, and tackle that most unpleasant business in the morning.” she added. But I had studied a large-scale map of this place, and when I reached the bridge below here, I thought I would discover something in the tunnels. So I drove my car over the bridge, and parked it in a sort of little approach to a quarry on the other side.”

Wint looked at her sharply. “Did you see any other car parked there?”

“You mean that poor girl’s? No, there was no car at the time near mine, but didn’t you say that you heard a car go back between eleven and a quarter past? I was later than that.”

“I see. I merely wondered if you had met her.”

“No. Though if I had, I am afraid the poor thing would not have been able to figure as a witness,” Mrs. Hayes replied. “I saw no one, from the time I left the car till I returned to it. That may convince you that it was not mere panic or guilt that led me to suppress some of the truth. Mr. Bow, of course, believes in me.” She paused there, and gave him a smile of singular sweetness; a revelation of the real nature of this usually composed and assured woman. “But I admit that I could excuse the Inspector if he did not. The fact is that I was obviously near where my husband was murdered that night, though I do not know when it took place. And I admit that we were not on good terms.”

“What exactly did you do when you left the car?” Wint asked.

“I found a path about sixty feet above the river; at least where it strikes in at the bridge. I followed it with some difficulty. The noise of the water told me roughly where the river ran below, but I could not be sure of its exact position. Half-way to the mouth of the first tunnel, I saw a torch flash for a few moments—”

“But not who held it?” Wint interrupted.

“No. But I saw the light gleam on what looked like a rod, and I took it that one of the anglers was changing a fly. That was certainly further down the river than the place where my husband was found. It was just above the spot where the path forked, if you know the spot?”

“Had you a torch?” said Joan.

“You mean how did I see the fork? No. I had a box of vestas, and lit one for a moment. As one fork seemed to turn down, I imagined that to be the way to the bank, and as the other led to the sloping cliffs to my right, I supposed it led to the first opening of the railway track.”

“It does. Miss Powis and I saw it when we went to look in the tunnels.”

“I took it, at least, and reached the tunnel. I walked in. I don’t know what I expected to find. But my husband”— her lips curled scornfully— “my husband was a man who loved comfort. The place seemed hardly suited for a rendezvous after his own heart. I wanted to be very sure that the Blodwen Tysin of the letter was not one of the same kidney as the writer of the anonymous letter.”

“Did you find anything, and remove it?” asked Wint.

“I found one of the butts of his favourite cigarettes, but I did not soil my fingers with it. Incidentally, I struck my face against the wall of the tunnel in the dark, and made my nose bleed.”

“So that’s what made the stain on the railway sleeper!” cried Joan.

Mrs. Hayes nodded. “Ah, you saw that. I am afraid so. I had come out without a handkerchief, and the moment I began to bleed, I bent forward, so that it should not splash my dress. Then I remembered that the best thing to do is to throw one’s head back. I did that, and the bleeding stopped. I rested for a little, then looked into the other tunnels. After that I knew that my husband had been there. There was a seat improvised with an old cushion from a car.”

Wint and Joan exchanged glances. Bow stared at them for a moment, and then spoke.

“Now you see what the devil of a muddle it all is for us,” he remarked. “We’ve got to tell the truth. I see that as clearly as you do. Parfitt will follow up what you told him and ferret it out for himself. But, frankly, how does it look to you, if you put yourself in the skin of the Inspector for a few minutes?”

“Not too good,” said Wint promptly. “Motive and opportunity are what the police look for, they say.”

“Wait a moment,” said Joan. “How could Mrs. Hayes know the exact pool where her husband was fishing? She may have stumbled along the path to the tunnel, because there was a path. But she would not know what was his pool, or on which bank he fished.”

Mrs. Hayes smiled faintly. “Do I compound with the truth here, or do I not? Just as my husband assumed that I did not officially know many things I knew very well, he also assumed that I was particularly interested in the minutiæ of his doings. He religiously described the scenery, his favourite pool, where it was, the flies he used, and a dozen other things in which I had no interest whatsoever.”

“But you destroyed those letters, I suppose?” Wint asked.

“I destroyed all his letters.”

“Then I don’t see that you need mention what you have told us.”

“So you are inclined to believe me innocent, Mr. Wint?”

Wint nodded. “All the second-hand description of scenery in the world wouldn’t enable you to get to that pool in the dark without a torch. The path degenerates into a switchback, over and round stones and boulders, once it leaves that fork.”

Joan nodded vigorously. “There’s another thing, too. I am sure the path, even a little distance below where Mr. Hoad was fishing, is only about two feet wide, and cut on the side of a rock over the water.

Bow agreed. “You mean where there is a little cliff directly above the rock? The path had to be blasted there. On a windy day, with gusts coming up the gorge, you have to sidle against the wall, or chance being blown over.”

“That must be the place,” said Joan. “Now where do you stand to fish that pool? I should say you could only fish it properly from just above the rock where the rapid runs in.”

“That’s right,” said Bow. “The sewin, and an occasional salmon, lie in behind the stones at the tail but you can’t cast from below. There’s a stunted pine, and some bushes that get your fly every time.”

“I thought that,” observed Joan. “I don’t really see how Mrs. Hayes could have passed there without being seen and heard by the man who was fishing that pool.”

Mrs. Hayes smiled at her. “It is nice to have such resourceful champions; but what are we to make of these speculations?”

“We’ll tell the Inspector, and he can interview the man who fished that pool,” said Wint. “It seems to me an odd thing that no one heard Mr. Hayes cry out.”

“I don’t agree,” said Bow. “The nature of the wound—”

He stopped there, and glanced in some embarrassment at Mrs. Hayes. But she was not looking at him just then. She had turned her head towards the road, and their glances quickly followed hers.

Inspector Parfitt had left his cycle-combination in the village, dropping his sergeant there, made inquiries for Mrs. Hayes, and come on to look for her.

“I think you had better go down and see him at once, Caroline,” said Bow. “The secret has been kept overlong as it is. What do you think?”

The sound of the voices, carried on the still, warm air, made the Inspector look up, in an effort to locate them. Mrs. Hayes got up, and murmuring something to Bow, left the little party, and went down to the road.

“Won’t you go with her, Mr. Bow?” Joan asked anxiously.

“I think not,” he replied. “I’ll have a talk with Parfitt later.”

Parfitt himself watched Mrs. Hayes approach, with somewhat mingled feelings. Seeing her single herself out from the others, he wondered if she had made some discovery she thought it wiser to communicate to him, or was actually on the point of clearing up some matter which she had wilfully left obscure. He was now aware, of course, that her previous statements to him had not been entirely disingenuous.

“I came out to have a talk with you, Mrs. Hayes,” he said, saluting gravely as she came up.

“But how odd!” she said, still faintly smiling. “I wanted to speak to you. I am afraid you will think me a dreadful coward for doing what I did, or leaving undone what I ought to have done, but I mean to be very frank now.”

He was astonished, and showed it. “Really, madam, you wish to make a statement?”

“And to correct the last,” she said. “You know we civilians are all dreadfully afraid of you— not personally, of course— I mean the police. I’m afraid we don’t give you the credit for fair play which is your due.”

She did not speak like a guilty woman, but then, in his experience, few educated people in trouble gave open evidence of their anxiety. Their minds were sufficiently trained to realise that poise and calm carry one over many doubtful places.

“Very well, madam,” he said, in his most official tones. “I suggest that you should accompany me to the police-station at Pengellert. You had better make a statement, which I will then ask you to sign. You have no objection to that, I hope?”

“None whatever, Inspector. In fact, I should prefer it. And the sooner the better.”

Chapter 19

A New Theory

THE SERGEANT FROM Cwyll descended upon Constable Griffiths, who was looking at his potatoes in the garden, a quarter of an hour before Parfitt led Mrs. Hayes back to the village to make a statement.

“Got another small hive going at Cwyll,” said the former in a grumbling tone, “so I want your help, Griffiths.”

“Hive of what, sergeant?” inquired the constable.

“Bees! Chief Constable’s bonnet this time, and a silly bee, look you. I’ve questioned forty-nine people so far, and there’s a gaff wanted now.”

“There was one indeed found in the river,” said Griffiths.

“Yes, but we want one now lost in the river.”

“And what do we want it for, sergeant?”

“I don’t know whatever, or when it was lost; but we’ve got to ask everyone.”

“It might be lost last year.”

“Or ten years ago. Yes, yes! It has to be found.”

The constable thought it unlikely that a gaff lost ten years ago would be found now. He asked what he was supposed to do.

“It was this way,” said the sergeant patiently. “The Chief Constable and the Inspector were talking about it a long time. The Chief Constable tell him a gaff was stuck in a fish in Scotland, and the fish got off—”

“A salmon in Scotland?”

“Yes, in Scotland. There is no one can tell if salmons come here from Scotland,” he added, with irony, “and with that gaff wagging in him, look you; but you will go round here, and ask everyone if they ever lost a gaff in a salmons, it doesn’t matter how long ago it was.”

“But how do we know it was long ago?” asked Griffiths.

“The Chief Constable read it in a book, and so it can’t have been this week,” replied the irritated sergeant, “but you will start now and ask everyone, and I will go over to Pendreath and ask there.”

Griffiths began to button himself up. Though it wearied the sergeant, he himself found the process of questioning people stimulating to his pride. It was one of the things which raised him above the mass, this right to ask annoying questions, and note down their answers.

Five minutes later, and he set off in search of victims for interrogation, while the sergeant, swearing at the heat, and the task which begins to bore after reaching his rank, pounded off towards Pendreath.

When dinner-time came in the hotel, three or four of the objects of the constable’s quest had already drifted into the hotel-yard with the news. Had anyone lost a gaff? This year, next year, sometime— it didn’t matter, but had anyone lost a gaff?

The general view was that Cwyll sea-air had gone to the heads of officialdom there. Surely the police had been looking for the gaff that killed Hayes since the moment the murder was discovered? What was this new hue-and-cry?

Naturally, as it passed from mouth to mouth, the scope of the inquiry was enlarged. When it reached the smoking-room, where some of the hotel guests sat, it sounded very strange, indeed.

“In fact, it’s damned nonsense!” remarked Hoad, as his companions stared at each other. “The theory is that someone in Scotland— the Chief Constable himself, the Boots says— hooked a salmon, and lost his gaff in it. He can’t account for his gaff being lost except by that silly story. But why do they suspect him of the crime?”

“They don’t, you ass! You’ve got it all wrong!” said Chance. “No one suspects the Chief Constable. He tells Parfitt that there is a possibility someone lost a gaff in the way some fellow in Scotland did. It has happened before, with one of those gaffs you screw on, and may not screw on tightly enough; but if it had happened here there would be a legend about it.”

“What do you mean by a legend?” Hoad asked.

“Everyone would know about it. In these places anything odd is news, and remains news for donkeys’ years. Haven’t we all heard how Miss Tysin’s father once caught a twenty-pound salmon with a section of stale eel for bait, and how a lady of fifteen hooked a grilse on 4X gut in the Pengwyr rapid, and landed it half a mile down? If anyone here had seen a salmon cut away with his gaff sticking out of it, they’d have put up a memorial— a salmon argent, with a gaff proper, couchant.”

Harry Wint smiled. “Yes, but Bob, there must be something behind this inquiry. The police don’t ask questions for fun.”

“I grant it. I expect they are sick, sore, and tired of asking. But what can it mean? Let’s have your version. I can’t think of one.”

“Well, I expect they feel pretty sure that my gaff didn’t do the deed. I suppose they take it that there would be some traces of blood down the handle, where it telescopes, and they wonder if the murderer found a lost gaff, and used that. If they get it, and find the owner—”

“But that won’t work, either,” said Chance. “If there was another gaff, it’s unlikely that the owner would just find it when he had made up his mind to kill Hayes. No. If the murder was done with one lost some time ago, the odds are that it will be no clue to the man who used it. Unless, of course, there are finger-prints on the handle.”

“Do finger-prints stick on a gaff-handle if it has been in the water?” asked Hoad.

Wint stared at him. “Heaven alone knows. I don’t. I have no experience of such things.”

Chance got up and went out; the other men, with the exception of Wint and Hoad, followed. There was a short silence while the young fellow fidgeted with his cigarette-case, and finally lit a cigarette.

“I say, Mr. Wint,” he said gloomily, “what’s the matter with everybody? I had quite a good time before this rotten thing happened.”

“Perhaps you only imagine there’s a change,” said Wint. “What do you complain of?”

“I don’t know, but things seem different. You didn’t tell anyone about that dam’ silly letter I wrote, did you?”

Wint shook his head. “Not any of the men.

“And Miss Powis wouldn’t say anything to— to Miss Mason?”

“Certainly not.”

Hoad threw his cigarette into the fireplace. “I say,” he began again, “you don’t think that poor girl’s suicide came of it, do you?”

“I don’t,” said Wint, not unkindly. “Mrs. Hayes had had a letter from the girl herself, and she was coming down anyway. But, look here, young fellow, you’re making people look askance at you because you’re going about looking like the second murderer in a play. Nothing on your mind you’d like to get off is there?”

“No. But it looks beastly ugly for me, Mr. Wint. I was on the pool below. I know you were above, but then you cleared off early. And you hadn’t any grudge against Hayes.”

“What was yours?” said Wint bluntly.

Hoad turned red. He was a very ingenuous youth. “You must have heard the old brute was making up to Miss Mason.”

Wint filled a pipe. “Yes, I heard that. But what saved Hayes from a scrap with you— his grey hairs, or what?

“You’re laughing at me!” Hoad complained. “You all do! I know I look strong, and so on, but I’m not. I’ve got a rocky heart.”

“Don’t you think you might have chanced that, rather than write an anonymous letter? It didn’t occur to you, probably, that a man’s absent wife might have a heart— a sensitive one, if not rocky?”

Hoad bit his lip. “I admit it was a filthy thing to do. But I was in such a paddy, and I’m an awful funk, Mr. Wint. You know what I mean. I knew, if he went on, I would have to go for him, or bust, and I never fought anyone in my life. Sometimes, one way or another, I felt as if I could stick the brute.”

Wint looked at him steadily over the flame of the match he had lit. “I know the feeling; I had it once when I went to my first prep. school, and a little boy— who looked to me two yards high— punched me on the nose. But I got over it.”

As he spoke, he was thinking that Hoad was indeed of that timid, but hot-tempered, tribe which makes innocent murderers. Unable to revenge themselves by healthy, open violence, they lose their heads when provoked, and catch up the nearest weapon to hand.

“I wish I had got over it,” said Hoad dismally.

Wint nodded. “Safer so. But I want to hear something you may be able to tell me, Hoad. The pool you fished is where the rock sticks out over the water, and there is a sort of narrow path cut over the spur.”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Chance says it’s best fished from the head— above that rock.”

“Yes. You can do it with a Spey cast from below, but the fly comes out the wrong side of the pool, where the fish don’t lie.”

“Then you were at the head, fishing down-stream?”

“That’s right.”

“Noisy stand, is it?”

Hoad looked perplexed.

“I didn’t hear Hayes yell out, or anything of that kind. But there isn’t as much noise from the water as there is at some of the other pools.”

“Why did you go there? Did you draw lots for pools, or what?”

“No; we don’t here, Mr. Wint. Hayes always bagged his pool, and he made such a fuss about it that no one tried to get it.”

“I see. You knew he would be there, then?”

“I expected he would. I went out with Mr. Chance.”

Wint pursed his lips. “You must know that the police rather suspect Mrs. Hayes,” he said. “But I take it that anyone trying to reach Hayes’s pool from the bridge below would have to scramble over the rock spur.”

“I have managed to get over it after dark, but I don’t like it.”

“No, it’s awkward. But what I want to know is this: did you hear anyone near you? I don’t expect you could see anyone that night.”

“I didn’t see Mrs. Hayes.”

“But did you hear her? Did you hear a foot on the rock? Then, once you are past that spur, there’s a little shale and débris to get down. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, rather. You can hardly get over it without shifting a stone or two.”

“And in the dark it would be worse?”

“Absolutely. You can’t see where you put your foot. You have to feel about.”

Wint puffed at his pipe in silence for a few minutes. “I suppose you would be ready to swear that no one passed you?”

Hoad looked at him nervously. He was thinking that such a statement would prove that none of those fishing below Hayes’s pool could be guilty, save for himself. But he replied, after some reflection:

“I could swear that as far as I knew, no one did pass. That is to say, I didn’t hear anyone. They might get by if I was busy casting, and had the luck to go quietly.”

“No one asks anyone to bear witness to something that he does not know,” observed Wint, thinking the youth was hedging. “Even the police only ask you to swear to what you actually saw or heard.”

“Then I didn’t hear anything.”

“Will you stick to that, if the police ask you?”

“Oh, yes; I will, Mr. Wint. I don’t see how anyone could have got over that rock in the dark, if they did not know it well. But what would Mrs. Hayes be doing there?”

“We don’t know that she was there,” said Wint evasively, and rose.

“Have you heard that Miss Mason goes to-morrow morning?” he added. “The police have nothing against her, and they told her she could clear out.”

Hoad looked rather dismayed, whether because of Miss Mason’s departure next day, or a fear which he translated into words, no one could say.

“Then, if he did not suspect— us, we could go too?” he asked.

“He certainly does not suspect me— if you mean Parfitt,” said Wint. “But that ought not to worry you.”

It did worry Hoad, however, and he went off to look for Celia Mason, wearing an expression of utter despondency, while Wint found Joan, and told her the result of his interview with Hoad.

“He’s very nervy,” he added. “But he’s that type, and it may mean nothing. I wonder how Mrs. Hayes got on with the Inspector.”

The object of his solicitude had not got on very well with Parfitt. The Inspector took a grave view of her suppressions, and naturally felt that they made a case against her for the first time. It might be true that her purpose in going to the tunnel was what she represented it to be. On the other hand, she knew that her husband was engaged in an intrigue, she had no respect or affection for him, and she had been near, or at, the scene of the crime about the time when Hayes was killed.

She had had the motive and the opportunity; she was a strong-minded woman of great composure, and though the evidence was circumstantial, it was stronger than that on which a good many people have been committed for trial.

She remembered the rock of which Joan had spoken, and mentioned it as a corroboration of the evidence she had given, but Parfitt was not impressed.

“It is perfectly true,” he said, “that the path by the actual river runs over projecting rock, which it wouldn’t be easy to get by at night. But that is assuming that you left the second tunnel, and went upstream along the bank. There was nothing to prevent you from passing through the third— that is, counting the long tunnel towards Cwyll as the first— and reaching the pool, where your husband was found dead, from a point above and beyond the rock.”

When she had made and signed her statement, Parfitt had a short interview with Hoad. He must give the woman fair play; even if he did not accept the theory about her movements on the night of the tragedy. Hoad stuck to the story, as he had promised Wint, and Parfitt made him read and sign a statement before he went back to Cwyll.

The Inspector was a cautious man, and was not sure that he himself would ask for a warrant against Mrs. Hayes. But the Chief Constable and the Superintendent must decide that between them. If they decided to go ahead, there was little doubt that a bench of magistrates would commit her to the assizes. There, the efforts of counsel, the acumen of the judge, and the possible sentimentality of a jury, hearing a woman arraigned for the murder of a good-for-nothing husband, might lead to an acquittal.

Parfitt had nothing to do with that. If a warrant was issued, he would have to concentrate on finding the weapon. The intensive search for a lost gaff, which had just been set on foot, might help. He felt little doubt that the murderer had used a gaff, and the angry wife might have struck out at her husband with that weapon, not meaning perhaps to kill, or forgetting that there was a steel hook on the end of the shaft.

At this point Parfitt thought of Davis. He reproached himself for not thinking of him before.

Davis was not the kind of man to buy or keep two gaffs, but, on his own showing, he had bought a gaff from the postman, who had got it from Blodwen Tysin. Parfitt stopped and reflected. Then he turned about and set off for Davis’s cottage.

Davis had readily admitted that he had the gaff which had belonged to old Tysin, but he had not explained what had happened to the one he had formerly used. He had been a regular salmon-fisher there for fifteen years or more, and no one could land a salmon in the rocky pools above the bridge without the aid of a gaff.

Davis happened to be at home. He looked gloomy; thoroughly miserable, Parfitt said to himself; but that was to be expected. There was no doubt that the girl’s suicide had been a dreadful blow to him. But his face became expressionless when the Inspector informed him that he had come to make further inquiries.

“Your constable was here already, sir,” said the man. “Asked me about a hundred questions, he did.”

“Well, I’ll just ask you one more. What happened to your old gaff?”

Davis stared at him. “What old gaff?”

“The one you had before you bought the other. Don’t tell me you used to land salmon with your hands here. You couldn’t tail a fish in most of the pools.”

“Oh, that!” Davis seemed relieved. “I lost it.”

Parfitt looked annoyed. “Then why the devil didn’t you tell us before? You knew we were looking for a lost gaff, you lost yours, and you let us go on hunting when all the time you knew yours was missing. What do you mean by it?”

“Mean by it, sir? Why should I tell you? I lost it months ago, and it can’t be evidence now. I told you how long ago I bought the other from the postman. I couldn’t tell then that Mr. Hayes would come here, or that he’d try to make a fool of poor Blodwen, could I?”

“No. I see that. But if you lost it even months ago, someone might have found it the other night, and used it. Many a thing is passed over, and passed by, for months before someone finds it.”

“They wouldn’t find it where I lost it,” said Davis grimly. “I lost it in the river.”

Parfitt looked sceptical. “Didn’t get it into a fish, and see him go off with the thing, I suppose?”

“No, sir. When I get my gaff in a salmons, I don’t lose it.”

“Well, what happened then? Tell me exactly.”

Davis nodded. “I was fishing the Churn pool with a worm just about seven o’clock this spring. I got what I thought was a big bite, and gave it the butt, for you have to hold them there, and not let them take you into the run below. But there wasn’t any life in the thing, so I pulled slowly to save my cast.”

“Were you in a rock at the bottom?”

“No, Sir, though I thought I was. But when I pulled slowly, it bit, and I got it to the edge of the whirl, and it was a bit of log about three feet long that had got swept down by the flood. But I couldn’t lift it on the gut, being so weighty, and I couldn’t reach down to get it out by hand.”

“So you took your gaff?”

“That’s it, sir. Yes, indeed, I stuck the gaff-hook in it, and was going to lift it up when I slipped. Do you know the Churn, sir?”

“Not by name. Which pool is it?”

“About a hundred yards above where Mr. Hayes was found, sir. It’s a great pool, a lovely pool, for the salmons, but ugly to fish the right place. They lie below the boil, and you have to sit on a ledge of the rock above. It’s just about four feet over the water, in a flood, and you have to set your feet on a knob of rock that sticks out below.”

“I think I know the place now.”

“Well, I had my rod in one hand, and the gaff in the other hooked in that log, sir. My foot slipped on the knob when I bent down, and I had either to drop the rod or the gaff to save myself. So I let the old gaff go, and hung on with a clutch till I got my foot right on the knob again. If you’ll come with me, sir, I’ll show you how it happened.”

His picture of the incident was graphic enough, but Parfitt thought it might be better to have the scene reconstructed, so that he could decide if there were any flaws in the story. Davis got his rod, and a long stick to take the place of the gaff, and they set out for the Churn pool on the river.

There he demonstrated to the Inspector’s satisfaction what had taken place, and returning to the road, asked if Parfitt wanted any further information.

Parfitt did not. He was convinced that a gaff could be lost in the way described.

“But we might have got on a bit faster if you had told us before,” he added.

“I don’t see it, sir. I don’t think yet it has anything to do with it.”

“Why, the wood would float.”

“Not that wood, sir. No, indeed! It was soaked proper, and it was at the bottom when I hooked it.”

“All right. We’ll look into it,” said Parfitt. “But I’m inclined to think that, sink or swim, it was your old gaff that killed Hayes.”

“I’d like to think it,” said Davis, his face saturnine now. “I wouldn’t be sorry if something of mine had a hand in it. No, indeed!”

Parfitt shook his head. “The man’s dead, Davis.”

“Yes, damn him— he’s dead,” said Davis. “There would have been some happier people if he’d been dead earlier.”

Chapter 20

Parfitt Makes an Arrest

“I THINK there is sufficient evidence to send Mrs. Hayes before the magistrates, Parfitt,”  said Mr. Rigby, at the end of an hour’s discussion, in which he and the Superintendent and the Inspector had taken part. “Mr. Chance was at loggerheads with the man, but he worked it off on the assault, and we have nothing to prove that he was near the place where Hayes was fishing. I think we may count him out.”

Parfitt agreed. The Superintendent leaned forward. “Mr. Hoad does not seem to have created a favourable impression, sir,” he said. “Do you think we can disregard him?”

Mr. Rigby pursed his lips. “I don’t think we can quite dismiss him from our minds, and yet Parfitt here thinks his whole conduct is due to a silly compound of cowardice and jealousy. He sent that anonymous letter, but he did not attempt to contend that he was not on the pool below Hayes that night.”

“That is the strongest part of the case against Mrs. Hayes, no doubt,” chimed in Parfitt. “That and her former acquaintance with Bow, which she tried to conceal, even to the extent of pretending not to know him when she saw him at the hotel. Hoad admitted where he was, but she tried to make out that she had been delayed by an accident on the road.”

“Quite,” said Rigby. “On the other hand, though, it isn’t strictly speaking evidence, only a deduction drawn from one’s observation of human nature. We must agree that, if she was a guilty woman, her action was a profoundly foolish one.”

“Why, sir?” asked the Superintendent, who was not a great believer in deductions. “It was to cover herself up.”

“Yes. But what I mean is this: if she was not guilty she would not have the same fear of us. She would be inclined to think it would be easy to persuade us that she had no hand in it. If she were guilty, she would assume that we might suspect her guilt, and in that case we would make the closest inquiries into her past life. Then we would be bound to find out about Mr. Bow, and their former friendship. She tried to keep— may have tried to keep it dark about that, because she thought she would be dismissed from the list of suspects, and there would be no occasion to mention Bow.”

“Who might be jeopardised if it was known that he had once been a suitor,” said Parfitt. “What about Mr. Bow, sir? He had quarrelled with Hayes— really quarrelled over Mrs. Hayes, though Hayes did not know that. And he was on the river that night. But we haven’t a shred of evidence to connect him with the murder.”

Rigby reflected. “No, I agree. He may have done it, of course, to get Hayes out of the way, but then four or five of those out on the river that night might have killed Hayes. I went along the bank last night myself, and it struck me that an angler at any of the pools up or down, if he was cautious, and knew his way, could have crept past the other fishermen, and attacked Hayes.”

“But there’s the rocks and stones, sir,” said the Superintendent. “And most of the witnesses say they did not hear anyone moving behind them.”

“I know. But two at least did not appear to have noticed the girl Tysin, passing along the road in her car. The fact is that we fail to notice lots of things if we are not on the watch for them, and there is the rushing water to help drown sounds. Further than that, no one need tell me that keen anglers, casting all the time, and on the look-out for a run in the dark, would bother about sounds near at hand. Now the last of our lot is Davis. What is your impression about him, Parfitt? He was in love with that girl, you know.”

“He makes no bones about it, sir. I should say he has had a tremendous blow. And he was quite frank in telling me that he had the gaff which used to belong to old Tysin.”

“Well, I’ve seen the man, and I admit he strikes me in the same way. But I agree with what you said to him about his old gaff. He ought to have mentioned its loss.”

“In a way, sir, he should, but I have been thinking it over, and there was sense in his contention. He lost it so long ago that he did not realise it could have any bearing on this case.”

“But he can’t prove he lost it long ago. There is only his word,” the Superintendent grumbled. “Who knows he did?”

Mr. Rigby smiled. He felt that the man was getting past his work.

“You evidently failed to hear what Parfitt said about that. Davis is a poor man. He wouldn’t keep two gaffs. No! As I said, We may not be right, but on the balance of the evidence, Mrs. Hayes is the only one who can be more or less linked up with the crime. Now what are we going to do about it?”

“It’s for you to say, sir,” remarked Parfitt. “Unless we find the gaff, we may have difficulty in persuading a jury, but it might be as wise to leave it to the magistrates’ discretion. By the way, it struck me as another point in Davis’s favour that he did not believe the lost gaff could have been used. It was something, too, that he could not have foreseen the trouble Hayes was to make with that girl at the time he lost the thing.”

Mr. Rigby nodded. “Very well. If the case falls through against Mrs. Hayes, we had better go closely into a possible case against young Hoad. He looks the sort of chap who will blurt a lot out if he once gets the wind up.”

“Yes, sir. I don’t think it would be fair or wise to press him now, since we have the stronger case against Mrs. Hayes. But if the magistrates let her off, I’ll have a heart-to-heart talk with Hoad. Our present assumption is that he is so worked up about the death of Tysin, his cowardly letter, that his nerves have given way. But, if it’s not that, then he has the other thing on his mind, and pressure may bring it out.”

The Superintendent turned to Rigby. “Shall we apply for a warrant, sir?”

“Against Mrs. Hayes— yes. Put that in hand at once. Parfitt here will execute it, and charge her.”

Parfitt philosophically accepted the duty, and was about to go when a police-sergeant opened the door, and announced that the postman from Pengellert was anxious to speak to the Inspector.

“I hope this is something new, and true, and good!” said Rigby. “Show the man in, sergeant.

But the postman’s information was nothing new, only by way of corroborating what they had heard from Davis. He had received the gaff from Blodwen Tysin, and had sold it later to Davis. He gave the approximate date of the sale.

The Chief Constable looked at him grimly. “You’re another fellow who ought to have let us hear about this before,” he said. “You knew we wanted to find a gaff.”

“But it was so long ago,” said the postman, with an aggrieved air. “And the gentleman was only killed the other day.”

“We know very well when he was killed,” said Rigby. “Now then, when you sold the gaff to Davis, I suppose you asked him what had happened to the other?”

“No, I didn’t, sir.”

“What the dickens did you think he wanted two for?”

“The one I had had a longer handle, sir.”

“More useful for the ugly pools, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have seen the other?”

“Many a time, sir.”

“Lately?”

“No sir.”

“Have you seen Davis out fishing lately?”

“Several times, sir. Yes, indeed, I have seen him with the one I sold him.”

“Very well. You may be wanted to swear to the date of the sale. You’ll get into trouble if your memory’s bad.”

The postman looked more aggrieved than ever, but he said nothing, and was presently dismissed.

“Well, that settles the question of the gaff,” remarked Rigby, when the door closed behind the man. I take it that he is speaking the truth.

“The more so that he and Davis were rivals,” agreed Parfitt. “Both were after that poor girl.”

“Good. Well, Davis lost a gaff, and that has to be found, if it is humanly possible to do it. We must have another search on the banks, and up the cliff among the rocks; in fact, everywhere within two miles. We’ll send up every man we can spare, and any we can get from the other stations. If it was the gaff used, then the murderer must have taken the point of the hook out of the log, and hidden the instrument. If it was Mrs. Hayes, she wouldn’t get very far in strange country, and we have a narrower area to search.”

“She might have thrown it from her car on the way to the hotel. The hedges ought to be searched,” said the Superintendent.

“Anywhere and everywhere. You see to that.”

“What about the river?” asked Parfitt.

“Quite impossible. A woman of intelligence, or a man for that matter, would know that the river was a silly place to throw it. It was too near the scene of the crime, and he or she would be afraid to make a splash. Besides, the water is always clear here, and the thing would be found.”

“Yes, sir, that seems true. I am inclined to think that it may lie among the débris a few yards up the slope below the cliffs. Or it might have been flung among the trees and bushes below the bridge.”

“And there’s a mass of bush and brambles at the back of that old quarry, where Mrs. Hayes said he parked her car, sir,” added the Superintendent.

They separated after that; a warrant was applied for and made out, and Inspector Parfitt journeyed next morning to the hotel, and asked to see Mrs. Hayes.

“If she doesn’t mind coming in my sidecar, I can drive her to Cwyll,” he told Miss Pole, the hotel secretary. “Mr. Rigby wants to see her.”

Mrs. Hayes came to him presently in the office. She saw something grim and grave in his face that told her the nature of his errand, but she looked as composed as usual, and merely shrugged when he gave her the usual warning, and showed his warrant, before charging her formally with the murder of her husband.

“It’s quite absurd, of course, Inspector,” she said, when he had finished. “But, of course, I will come with you. Do I hold out my hands for the handcuffs?” she added, with a wintry smile.

“That will not be necessary, madam,” he replied. “If you care to get some things to take with you, I will wait for you here.”

“I suppose they could be sent after me?”

“If you leave a note for Miss Pole, madam, she will see to lt. We can get away without any fuss If you do that.”

Mrs. Hayes assented, sat down at Miss Pole’s desk, took up a pen, and wrote a few lines, which she put in an envelope, and laid on the desk.

“I suppose you haven’t found the gaff yet, Inspector?” she said, as she got up.

“No, madam, not yet.”

She had come down with her hat on, and they went out at once to the sidecar, unobserved by anyone but the Boots, who was at the gate of the hotel-yard, and Miss Pole, who was anxiously surveying the scene from the window of a passage on the first-floor.

“I am sure you realise that this is not a very pleasant duty for me, madam,” said Parfitt, when they had started. He was strangely impressed by her calm.

“I am quite sure it is not, Inspector,” she replied, with a smile. “But I hope you won’t distress yourself about it. I feel confident that no one can prove me guilty of a crime I didn’t commit.”

“I hope so, indeed, madam,” he said. “I’d sooner be wrong than right in a case like this.”

* * *

If Miss Pole was discreet, the Boots was too full of what he considered sensational news to keep the departure of Mrs. Hayes in company with the Detective-Inspector a secret.

Hoad came in for his car a minute after Parfitt had gone and the Boots told him excitedly that Mrs. Hayes had been taken off by the police. Hoad abandoned the little ride he had in mind, and hastened to impart the news to Bow, whom he met coming down the stairs in the hotel. Bow dashed to the garage for his car, and left hurriedly for Cwyll.

Harry Wint and Joan Powis returned from a walk a few minutes later, and Hoad held them up to tell them what had happened.

Wint listened with amazement; Joan, after the first few sentences, hurried in to ask Miss Pole what had happened.

“I wonder if she did do it?” said Hoad earnestly. “I don’t blame her if she did kill the brute.”

“Oh, shut up!” cried Wint, turning away. “Don’t be a fool! It’s just about as likely that you killed Hayes, if it comes to that.”

Hoad stared at him, and his mouth dropped open. But he did not reply. Instead, he turned back into the hotel, leaving Wint staring after him.

Chapter 21

The Water Hunt

“IT’S QUITE TRUE, Harry!” Joan cried, as she hurried out from the hotel, a horrified expression on her face. Miss Pole says the Inspector only said he wanted her to ask some questions, but she left a note asking for some clothes to be sent on to Cwyll.”

“How did she go?” asked Wint. “In the sidecar with Parfitt?”

“Yes. Parfitt looked very serious, Miss Pole says. And I am sure it must be an arrest.”

“We ought to find Bow, and tell him.”

“Mr. Bow heard, and rushed off in his car a few minutes ago. I expect he has gone to Cwyll after her, though I don’t see what good he can do.”

“Oh he may want to get a solicitor to represent her. As the inquest’s over, they will bring her before the magistrates, I expect.”

“How ghastly!” Joan cried. “I am quite sure she never did it. How I wish we could help her.”

“Help her!” said Wint ruefully. “I am afraid we have done for her, telling Parfitt what she— I mean about her knowing Bow before, and so on.”

Joan bit her lip. She felt sorry now that she had spoken, though at the time she had believed herself to be right in helping the police. But the case was altered now, from her point of view. She had suspected Mrs. Hayes at first; since then she had become convinced that Hayes’s wife had had nothing to do with his death.

“I wonder if Parfitt got some fresh evidence?” she asked.

“He must have done. I hear he saw Davis last. We’ll go to see Davis after lunch, shall we? He may tell us something that will give us a hint.”

She agreed. “We must. But could Davis have seen her that night, and kept it dark till now?”

“I don’t think so. That would make him an accessory of a kind, and they would arrest him too.”

Lunch was a pandemonium. All the people at the hotel ate little and talked much. Tables exchanged views with tables. Six new people had turned up that day, attracted by the notoriety, or unaware of the crime until they reached Pengellert. They wanted to know all about it, and Joan and Wint were glad to cut a course, and start for Davis’s cottage, to get away from the medley.

As they passed a point of the road where the river was visible across fifty yards of pasture, they saw Davis. He was fishing a pool, and his rather listless casting suggested to Wint that the man was fishing rather to forget his cares than for any pleasure in the game.

“We’ll cut across and see him,” he said, and he and Joan walked quickly across the field, and greeted Davis.

He reeled in his line slowly, put his rod on the bank, and looked at them gloomily. The death of Blodwen Tysin had evidently affected him deeply. His face looked lined and old, his eyes were dull and lacked lustre.

“The police have arrested Mrs. Hayes,” said Joan, while Wint still hesitated to open the bail. “Had you heard?”

“No, Miss,” said Davis. “I hadn’t, indeed. What did they arrest her for?”

“Killing her husband.”

Davis laughed sardonically. “Well, well. They’re going to make fools of themselves, Miss. I don’t believe that lady had any hand in it. What would she know about gaffs, and where would she find one at night, not knowing the river? You’d think gaffs hung on every bush, the way the police talk.”

Wint nodded. “We were coming over to see you when we caught sight of you here. It struck us that Parfitt must have got some new evidence, and I believe he saw you last.”

“I saw two of them yesterday; him and the constable,” said Davis. “They wanted to know how I lost my old gaff, and I told them.”

“Did you lose one, and when?” asked Wint, staring at the man with new interest.

Davis explained. “Though how that muddles up the lady in it, I don’t know,” he added. “But I suppose the police must look busy, even if they aren’t. I shouldn’t worry about the lady, if I were you, miss. How can they prove anything?”

“I don’t suppose they can,” said Joan, with some relief in her voice. “But how strange that you should have lost a gaff. Do the police think Mrs. Hayes must have found it, and killed her husband with it?”

“Looks as if they did, the fools! But that gaff was sunk in the water. Mrs. Hayes must have gone in for it, in the dark, and fished it up out of the Churn whirlpool!” Davis added ironically. “Nice place to swim.”

Wint reflected. “Wait a moment, Davis. I suppose a lot of people have fished with bait in the Churn since you lost your gaff?”

“Someone every night, I should say, and perhaps two.”

“Well, with a leaded line and a hook wandering about in the whirlpool, surely some of them would have got stuck into your gaff, or in the log, as you did?”

“That’s true,” said Davis, thoughtfully. “Gaff-hook, three-foot wood handle, and a log, all together, ought to catch someone up. But I never heard that they did.”

“Then it may have been recovered by someone who did not tell you about it.”

“Maybe,” said Davis. “More likely, if it isn’t in the churn, under some rock now, it went down with a flood. But there are a rare lot of rocks at the bottom of the churn, and if the current took the log out from under the fall, and wedged it in a crack, no one would touch it. We only fish where the white water is, under the fall. With worm that is.”

“And fishing fly, in other parts of the pool, you would not hook the log.”

“No, sir, indeed we would not, the fly being on top.”

Joan had an idea, and explained it eagerly. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to make sure if your gaff is still there, Mr. Davis?”

“We can’t!” said Wint. “You heard what kind of pool it was.”

“Oh, I don’t know that, sir,” remarked Davis. “I have a twenty-foot old salmon-rod at home I never use. It’s grandfather’s, and as heavy as lead. We could rig up a few big hooks on top of it, and poke round the churn.”

“Please do, then,” said Joan. “I hate to think of Mrs. Hayes being in gaol, even for a few days. She has suffered enough as it is, poor woman.”

Davis agreed to try. He asked Wint to take Joan down to the Churn pool, while he returned to his cottage, to put on his waders, and get the gargantuan salmon-rod which had belonged to his grandfather.

“That was a brain-wave of yours, Joan,” Wint said admiringly, as they walked downstream. “Jove! If it happens that the lost gaff got wedged under a rock, out of the way of the worm-fishers’ hooks, and is still there, they can’t say Mrs. Hayes found and used it. It’s obvious that the police only moved when they heard Davis had lost his. There was no talk of arresting her before that.”

Arrived at the Churn pool, they found it to be a pool about ten feet deep under the ledge from which a miniature cataract descended five feet from the river level above. It was of a round shape, but tapered at the lower end, like the bulb of an electric lamp, and ended in a narrow and fierce rapid.

Wint pointed to the seething and boiling white water under the lip of the fall.

“That’s where they fish the worm, Joan. You’ll notice there is a bit of calm oily water in the lee of that sunken rock in the middle. That is the sort of place where the log might settle when it had spun round in the current. There are plenty of fissures in the bottom here. You can see the sewin come swimming out of them towards dusk, if it has been a sunny day.”

“Can Davis wade any of it?” she asked.

He pointed below them. “There he can. You see, there is a ledge about two feet under water on this side. It’s true it isn’t wide, but Davis knows this river by night and day. He’ll make no bones about it.”

It was obvious to Joan that Davis could reach any part of the pool under the fall, if he was able to wade out on the ledge Wint showed her. Beyond the ledge, the water was deep, but the locals thought nothing of standing on foot-wide ledges, which would have frightened a stranger.

Wint smoked a cigarette and talked to Joan, until Davis came up, with the huge old rod over his shoulder. To the tip of the powerful green-heart he had rigged a sort of grapnel, composed of a bunch of two-inch salmon hooks, taken from old flies, and a lead sinker just above the bunch completed his equipment.

“If I get this into it, I’ll have him out,” he told them, surveying the upper end of the pool. “I’ll make a start.”

As Wint had thought, he waded in from the lower end of the pool, just above the rapid, and came carefully stepping along the slippery under-water ledge.

When the water was almost lapping the tops of his waders, and he could not go any further with safety, he began to poke about carefully under the white boil of the fall, working the long rod in a manner that showed him as familiar with the bottom of the pool as with the surface features of the river itself.

“I bet he’s done a bit of poaching with a gaff before now,” Wint said to himself, as he watched. “He knows his job.”

Joan, too, watched eagerly, following every movement of the man, her eyes occasionally switching to his keen, absorbed face, hoping every moment to see the slow sweep of the rod arrested, and hear a cry from Davis that he had struck what he was searching for.

But five minutes passed, then ten, and nothing happened. Going over the ground inch by inch, Davis had completely covered the area in a quarter of an hour, and thoughtfully raised the rod top above the water.

“It is not here whatever,” he said, staring back at the two on the bank. “No, it is no use looking any more.”

“And we can’t rake the whole pass over in that way, even if there was a chance of finding it,” said Wint. “It would take weeks.”

Davis began to take the rod down. “It isn’t here anyway. It was as well to try, sir, but that finishes it.”

They agreed, though without enthusiasm. “Thank you very much for trying,” said Joan to the man. “I am sure we gave you a lot of trouble for nothing.”

“Yes, it was very decent of you,” said Wint. “Well, Joan, I think that ends that for the moment. Shall we get back?”

Joan nodded. “Good-bye, Mr. Davis,” she said. “I expect you will want to get back to your fishing?”

“I haven’t the heart for it really, Miss,” said Davis.

“Well, good-bye, now.”

“Another dud show,” commented Wint as they went back to the road. “I did hope we might come on the thing stuck in the rocks there.”

Before they reached the hotel, they met Hoad. He was pelting along the road at a great pace, his head bent down, so absorbed in his own gloomy thoughts that he did not notice them till he was past. He turned his head then for a moment, and Joan, looking back, saw that he looked more haggard and nervous than ever.

“What is the matter with him?” she asked her companion. “He seems to me in blacker despair now than he was this morning.”

Wint could not tell. He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“It’s odd. Surely it can’t merely be that girl’s death that’s worrying him now? He was much brighter a little while ago.”

“Perhaps it’s Mrs. Hayes’s arrest.”

“If so, then why should it affect him so much, unless he did the job himself? No, old girl, I am afraid I was rather tactless a little while ago. I was irritated by a silly remark of his, and told him he was just as likely to have killed Hayes as Mrs. Hayes was. I meant that neither of them were, of course, but in his state of mind, he probably took it up wrongly.”

They dropped the subject, as they approached the hotel, and agreed that it might be wise to telephone to Inspector Parfitt at Cwyll, telling them of the experiment, and the failure to find the gaff in the Churn pool.

Wint went in to ring up the police, and Joan was at the door of her bedroom, when she saw Miss Pole beckoning to her from a door further on. She joined the girl, and asked her what had happened.

“I’m worried about Mr. Hoad,” said the girl, and indeed she looked harassed and unhappy. “He is in an awful way, and says he would be better dead, and so on. You don’t think he would commit suicide, do you? He’s gone off towards the river, muttering to himself.”

“Frankly, I don’t think he has the pluck,” said Joan. “I am sure he was cut up because Miss Mason left. He was rather running after her, wasn’t he?”

“Followed her about like a spaniel,” said Miss Pole, looking a little relieved. “I don’t think she treated him very well, Miss Powis, I don’t indeed.”

Joan frowned. “I can hardly blame her. He has been so stupid and silly lately.”

“But why did she blame him for Miss Tysin’s death?” asked Miss Pole.

Joan started. “Did she? How do you know?”

She had not told Miss Mason about the anonymous letter. Had anyone done so? Had it leaked out through some policeman’s incautious gossip? But it didn’t matter very much, if it had been told Hoad, who had tattled.

Miss Pole nodded. “It was this way. Mr. Hoad came into my office about twenty minutes ago on some excuse, and I could see he was bursting to say something. True enough he did. He began about Blodwen Tysin, and said wasn’t it dreadful her drowning herself. And I said it was, but no one could be blamed except Mr. Hayes, who ought to have known better. But he said everyone didn’t talk like that, and looked ready to cry.”

“Who did?”

“Mr. Hoad. He said he was miserable, and he understood people being so much in love they drowned themselves. And I said he was not to talk so silly.”

“Quite right. But I am sure he wouldn’t kill himself.”

“I hope you’re right, Miss Powis. I asked him what made Miss Mason talk like that, seeing that he didn’t know the girl, and he said it was some letter he had written, and someone had told her about it. It was a letter he said about Mr. Hayes’s carrying on, and it brought down Mrs. Hayes, and then the girl drowned herself. Was that the anonymous letter the police had?”

Joan assented. “It was. But don’t let it go any further. Mrs. Hayes would have come down in any case; for she had other information. I expect Mr. Hoad is nervous, and then Miss Mason turning upon him like that made things worse.”

“He’s an extraordinary young man,” said Miss Pole. “Doesn’t seem to have any backbone, or anything. But I’m glad to hear you don’t think he will do anything to himself— we’ve had enough of that lately.”

Her face cleared as she spoke. Evidently Hoad’s confessions had worried and frightened her. She left Joan, as she saw Wint come up the stairs, and look along the passage in their direction.

“What’s up now, Joan?” Wint asked, coming up. “More trouble?”

She explained briefly, and he nodded assent. “What a man! Well, I got through to Parfitt all right. Mrs. Hayes is in gaol. Bow is at Cwyll, and is trying to get bail for her. He has seen a solicitor, and asked him to appear for Mrs. Hayes before the magistrates, and Parfitt says Bow is also going up to town to see his own solicitor about counsel.”

“What a beastly business for him,” said Joan, sympathetically. “He will be distracted. I am sure they were very much in love with each other.”

“There is just a chance that he may be cited as an accessory,” said Wint. “Parfitt did not say so definitely, but I got a hint that it was so.”

Chapter 22

A House Divided

“WHAT a horrible complication.” said Joan, when Wint had told her all Parfitt had said to him. “Our failing to find the gaff, too, seems to be a point against Mrs. Hayes. Does he think she came on it somehow and used it?”

“The theory is that she may have done. That would equally apply to Bow. We believe that he and she were both decent people, but I suppose the police may say he was the wife’s lover, and go on the assumption that they conspired together to make away with him.”

“Are the police doing anything more?”

“Yes, there’s a small army of them coming down, to go over the river banks with a fine-tooth comb. Parfitt’s fair enough. He didn’t sound too confident when he spoke about Mrs. Hayes. I can’t help feeling that she impressed him with her frankness.”

So far as they both knew, their search with Davis for the lost gaff had not helped Parfitt in his investigations. In reality, Parfitt had begun again to consider the question of the gaff after Wint had spoken to him over the telephone.

Up to this point, it had been assumed that the gaff which killed Hayes was one owned by an angler, who had killed Hayes, or dropped by a local fisherman, and picked up by the murderer, either Mrs. Hayes, or Edward Bow.

It now occurred to the Inspector that the fact that Hayes had not brought a gaff to Pengellert did not prove that he had none. There were salmon in the Cwyll, but it was really a sea-trout river, and this was Hayes’s first visit to it.

There was a chance that a visit to Mrs. Hayes’s English home might give him information on that point. Still, he could question her without leaving Cwyll, or wire to the servants in charge putting the question.

But a visit to her house would not only decide if Hayes had a gaff, and if that gaff was still in the house. It would enable him to hear something that bore on the mystery.

Hayes apparently went on fishing excursions alone. Was it the fact that Bow had not seen Mrs. Hayes after her marriage until he came upon her by chance at the Horn Hotel? Was it possible that Bow had gone down at any time to see her in her husband’s absence?

The answers to those questions would confirm or deny the credibility of an important witness. A man who had kept away from the woman, with whom he was still in love, after she had married another man, was not the type to conspire to murder the husband. The fact suggested a certain moral scrupulousness.

On the other hand, if Bow had been meeting Mrs. Hayes secretly, he was a liar, and something of a hypocrite.

Hayes had not been the type of man to win the love or respect of anyone. His servants, Parfitt thought, would be more likely to take Mrs. Hayes’s side. Rudeness to those he thought his inferiors was as marked a trait in the character of the late Mr. Hayes as was a cold superciliousness with his equals. If there was an intrigue, Parfitt could hardly imagine the servants rushing to Mr. Hayes with the information that he had a rival.

Parfitt made up his mind to go, visited the Chief Constable at his home, and talked the matter over with him. Mr. Rigby was impressed. If, later on, it was decided to cite Bow as an accessory, it would be necessary to know the exact relations between him and Mrs. Hayes.

“I hope the magistrates will sit the day after tomorrow,” he told the Inspector. “I am going to oppose bail. I think the case is too serious for that. Could you manage this job to-morrow?”

“Leaving by the early train I can manage it, sir.”

“Right. Then carry on. Go home and have a rest now. I’ll inform the Superintendent. If Hayes had a gaff at home, and it is not there, we shall know that she must have brought it here in her car. If she did, we’ll find it.”

Parfitt went home, and to bed. He left very early next morning, and travelled to a little town near which the Hayes had lived. It was only three-quarters of a mile from the station, a largish country-house, in five acres of grounds, and Parfitt went there afoot.

It was obvious that the parlour-maid who opened to him was unaware that her mistress was in prison, equally obvious that the death of Mr. Hayes had not caused any deep sorrow in his household. So far, the Inspector had guessed rightly.

“I am an inspector, engaged in the investigations with regard to the late Mr. Hayes,” he told her. “I want to ask you a few questions.”

The girl had never seen a live detective-inspector before, but she looked interested rather than alarmed, as she asked him to come into a sitting-room and gave him a chair.

“What’s your name, may I ask?” he began, taking out his note-book and pencil.

“Jane Hope,” she replied promptly. “Unmarried, and twenty!” she added, with a twinkle. “Anything else?”

He smiled. It was well to keep on good terms with the servants if he was to get any useful information.

“That won’t be for long, Miss Hope, I’m sure,” he said. “I expect you are particular, as you have a right to be.”

She thought him a very nice policeman, and smiled back. “I’m the parlour-maid here, if that helps, Inspector.”

“Been here long?”

“Four years. My sister is cook. Then there is two housemaids, Doris and Ellen.”

“You’ll do for the present, Miss Hope. I understand that the late Mr. Hayes was frequently away fishing.”

“Often he was.”

“By himself?”

Jane grinned. “Yes, he was. He never took her. And good for her, too!”

“Oh, you did not like Mrs. Hayes?”

“Me? Of course I do! All of us does. I meant it was nice for her not having to go always with that—” she stopped. I suppose I oughtn’t to say that, though.”

“You are suggesting that there was no love lost between Mr. and Mrs. Hayes?”

“There wasn’t! None of us could understand how she put up so long with the old pig. Why, there I am again!”

“But she had friends, of course— company. I presume that your mistress saw people when he was away.”

“Well, she did, of course. Her friends wouldn’t come when he was here— only old Miss Gee. She stood up to him proper.”

Parfitt felt that he was getting on. “I see. Very natural. Now I want to hear all about the relations of Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, so perhaps you will give me the names of the friends who visited the house when Mr. Hayes was away.”

He watched her face closely as he put the question, but the girl did not show any signs of embarrassment.

“What for?”

“I may have to interview them.”

“Ow. I see. Well, get your little book ready. There’s about twenty.”

She reeled off a long list of names, without a pause, and when she had finished, Parfitt thanked her.

“Only three men among them?” he added.

“Two men, and Mr. Bailey Himp; who’s a bit of an old woman!” she said, beginning to enjoy herself when she saw that her sallies were not checked by the Inspector.

He laughed. “What about Mr. Bow? Have you forgotten him?”

Her stare was genuine enough. “Mr. Bow? Don’t know him.”

“Mr. Edward Bow. Didn’t he come here when Mr. Hayes was away?”

“Not unless I was asleep all the time. Never saw him or heard of him.”

“Sure?”

“Honest.”

“Have you been here, not on holiday, on every occasion when Mr. Hayes went away fishing?”

“Since I’ve been here, I was, yes.”

“Did Mrs. Hayes ever go away when he was away?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Now look here, Miss Hope,” said Parfitt, becoming suddenly grave and grim. “You may have to give evidence on oath to what you have said. You are quite sure that that is the simple truth?”

She looked indignant. “Call me a liar?”

“Very well. You understand the position now, and you are ready to swear if necessary that Mr. Bow never came here?”

She tossed her head. He was not such a nice policeman after all.

“No, nor Mr. Arrow neither!” she retorted. “Nor Mr. Bowstring!”

“That’ll do!” said Parfitt sternly. “Send your sister to me at once. The cook!”

“I will, but don’t you call her a liar! She’s got more temper than me!” said the girl hotly, and flounced out.

But the cook told him no more than Jane had done, and stoutly denied having seen a Mr. Bow. Then Doris came in, to tell the same story; and, finally, the under-housemaid, Ellen, arrived to be interrogated.

Ellen was small and nervous, and only too ready to give any information he required. Parfitt did not attempt to put her at her ease. There are some witnesses who cannot tell the truth unless they are alarmed, some who wilfully tell lies if harried.

“What about this Mr. Bow who was a friend of Mrs. Hayes?” he began. “When was he here last?”

Ellen stared. “No Mr. Bow comes here, sir,” she said. “Not here he can’t; it being an odd name.”

“In other words, you would remember it if you had heard it before,” said the Inspector, who saw that she was a truthful young woman. “Well, that must be a mistake. You know your master was murdered, don’t you?”

“I heard so, sir.”

“Do you remember when he went away this last time to fish? Do you know who packed for him?”

“Yes, sir. Doris did.”

“All his things?”

“Not his fishing things, sir. He never allowed anyone to touch those. And we wasn’t to dust the room where he kept them.”

“Do you know what he took with him, rods, in a case, and a gaff?”

“I don’t know what a gaff is, sir.”

“Well, it’s a kind of large hook, fastened to a stick or shaft.”

“I’ve seen the large hook, sir, but not the stick. But he kept those in what he called his snuggery. It’s upstairs, sir. Shall I show it to you?”

“Yes, please,” said Parfitt, and was taken upstairs to a small room, which contained rod-cases and cabinets, tackle-boxes, and a couple of chairs.

The Inspector examined the cabinets, and the rods in them. There were two empty spaces, obviously those for the rods he had taken with him on his last trip, but there was no sign of a gaff.

“Did Mrs. Hayes come up here before she left, Ellen?” Parfitt asked.

“Yes, she did, sir. She come up here and came down again, and she said that the room would have to be cleared and tidied soon, and I said Master would never allow it, and she said she would give orders about it when she came back.”

“Did she usually override Mr. Hayes’s orders?”

“No, sir; never that I knew. Mistress is an angel, I say.”

This was fierce for the timid Ellen, who left it to be inferred that devil was the perfect synonym for Mr. Hayes.

“But she proposed to have this room of his tidied— H’m!”

In a corner of the room, there stood an implement which attracted Parfitt’s attention. It was a shaped shaft, with a sort of spring loop on top, and a cord attached.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Don’t know, sir, one of Master’s fishing things.”

“Go down and ask any of the others if they know what it is.”

“Yes, sir.”

But Parfitt, left to himself, could make nothing of the thing. Then Ellen came back with:

“Please, sir, Jane says Master called it a ‘tailer.’”

Light broke in upon his mind. A salmon is one of few fish that can be landed by being gripped by the root of the tail without slipping from the hands of its captor. He saw now that the loop on the end of the shaft was slipped over a salmon’s tail, and tightened by means of the cord.

“Has he had this long?”

“Since I come three years ago, sir.”

“Where did he keep the gaff you saw?”

Ellen might not be allowed to dust, but she had undoubtedly looked into various boxes. She went to one now, and lifted the lid.

“In here, sir.”

“But that’s only a foot long?”

“There’s three of them here still,” said Ellen helpfully.

He looked, recovered his sense of humour, and laughed. Conger-hooks, for sea fishing! “What I mean is a hook six times as big as that. But never mind. Did Mr. Hayes ever go to Scotland?”

“Last autumn, sir, and sent the mistress back a salmon.”

“Did he take this tailer with him?”

“Yes, sir. I saw him with it.”

“Quite sure?”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t know what it was for. I thought it might be some kind of rod.”

Parfitt had drawn blank. It was evident that Hayes did not use a gaff. The only result of his visit to the house had been partially to confirm Mrs. Hayes’s and Edward Bow’s statements that they had not met since her marriage.

But what Ellen had said about the forbidden tidying of the room stuck in his mind. According to the servants, Mrs. Hayes had shown admirable patience in dealing with her disagreeable husband. Why, then, had she suddenly taken it into her head to decide that her husband’s cherished sanctum should be invaded and cleaned?

This seemed a small and indefinite thing on which to build a theory, but in detective work the imponderables count for very much more than is commonly imagined, and especially in a case where the evidence is circumstantial. There guilt or innocence turns upon character, habits, changes of conduct, slight in themselves, but necessary bricks in the erection of the pyramid of proof.

As Parfitt journeyed back to Wales in the train, he was trying to collate and classify his thoughts, and like so many others, he found this easier to do when he put his ideas on paper.

Sitting in a corner of an empty third-class smoker, he opened his note-book, and began to write rapidly.

“MRS. HAYES. Until recently exhibited amazing patience where her husband was concerned. For years, apparently, to take a small example, he would not allow the servants to tidy or dust his snuggery.

“Shortly prior to her sudden dash to Wales, she instructed the under-housemaid that the room would shortly be seen to; ‘cleaned up’ is the impression she gave the maid.

“Mr. Hayes’s infidelity had given her far more frequent and just cause for anger, but she bore with that. Why worry about such a small detail as the untidiness of his room? Was this resolution of hers a sign that she intended to make a stand against her husband’s petty tyranny?”

or:

“Was the remark made to the under-housemaid because she was aware (Mrs. Hayes) that her life with Hayes was shortly coming to an end?”

Parfitt read what he had written, and wrinkled his brows. He refilled his pipe, smoked reflectively for a minute, and began again:

“Q. Taking it as an hypothesis that Mrs. Hayes intended to rid herself of her husband, would she have made what appears to be an incautious remark to a maid?

“A. It is quite possible; for the following reasons: She hoped that the murder would not be discovered as her work. She could not know that I would interrogate her maids, who could not be supposed to have any evidence bearing on the crime. She might not think that the statement would be interpreted as I have interpreted it, tentatively. She may have made the remark in irritation; as we all make unwise remarks on occasion.”

Parfitt thought that was logical enough, but flawed logic is too easily admitted unless the amateur logician submits his arguments to a close analysis. The detective officer has too much experience of defending counsel to pass an unbaked theory. He read his notes over three times, and then frowned.

“It’s just possible that counsel would see that point,” he mused. “It ought to be put before the prosecutor, anyway.”

So he began to write once more.

“(1) As Mr. Hayes was killed with a gaff, and there is no proof that any other weapon was brought down by Mrs. Hayes (unless she took a gaff with her when she set out) it cannot be said that she premeditated murder. In that event, her remark to the maid has no significance.

“(2) If she secured a gaff before she left home, or if it can be proved that she did bring a weapon with her, both unlikely contingencies, as I see now, the case is different. She intended to murder her husband, and spoke to Ellen thoughtlessly of the time when she would have the house to herself.

“Against that is to be put the absence of the other weapon, and the unlikelihood of Mrs. Hayes buying or borrowing a gaff knowing that her husband would be killed with it, when the lender or seller might come forward to mention the transaction.

“Memo: Inquire if Bow could have given her a gaff.”

Parfitt read the last notes, did not see how he could improve on them, put away his book, and began to read his paper.

Chapter 23

The Magistrates

THE COUNTRY MAGISTRATE is a very necessary person, and useful within limits, but as a rule he is not the man best adapted to unriddle murder problems of any complexity.

The Cwyll magistrates, before whom Mrs. Hayes was brought next day, were, to a man, excellent citizens, and capable of administering the petty justice that deals with poachers, road-hogs, school-defaulters, and rowdy revellers.

Their chairman was a M.F.H., an ardent angler, and a good shot, but he rarely read a book, and conducted private arguments with a clumsiness that would have disgraced a schoolboy. His colleagues, with one exception, were landowners, shots, fishermen, game-preservers, and patriots; the kind of men who would be shot to pieces in battle rather than yield a foot, but could be routed by any lawyer in a wordy combat. And they were all modest men in this connection, and recognised their limitations. Not one of them wanted to try Mrs. Hayes, and one and all were resolved in their own minds either to grant an acquittal, or to pass the prisoner on to men more legally and mentally equipped to deal with the case.

As jurymen, they could act excellently, when directed and shepherded by a judge. There they would not be lacking; but as magistrates— judge and jury in one— they shied at the responsibility.

The one magistrate who was not a landowner and sporting man was even worse. He was a small builder, who was better at measuring masonry than minds, obstinate as a mule, and the fond possessor of a secondhand law book, which had given him more dangerous and inaccurate knowledge than he knew what to do with. Armed with this, he was prepared to deal summary injustice to anyone.

The man instructed to prosecute for the Crown was a small man with a thin voice. He was fair, slow, reasonable; and disappointing to those who expected legal pyrotechnics.

The solicitor who represented Mrs. Hayes was bluff and burly, too fond of sensational appeals to the emotions, and the last man in the world to carry conviction to sporting squires, who regarded any emotion as “Slop” or “Mush.”

The case as outlined against Mrs. Hayes was not superficially a weak one. It suffered from the lack of a weapon, though not from that of a motive. Police inquiries are close and voluminous. While Parfitt had been doing his own specialist work, dozens of others had been at work on outlying ramifications of the case.

The guests at the Horn Hotel were not prepared to hear the details brought forward by the police with regard to Mr. Hayes and his many intrigues. They learned for the first time that most of his strayings into angling country, and the pays du tendre, had been investigated by the law, and now presented in court.

If there had been any doubt as to Mr. Hayes’s complete vileness as a man and a husband, there was none when the prosecution had had its say. Examined later, Mrs. Hayes admitted that she had heard something of some of these incidents. She admitted that she had gradually come to hate the man to whom she was tied; or, rather, proclaimed the fact without being asked.

Evidence was given as to the finding of the body, the nature of the wound, and the cause of death. Davis was stolid, Hoad half-hysterical, Bow cold but angry, Chance quiet and composed. Every now and again the builder asked questions, which were not admissible, and showed a complete ignorance of the point at issue. All the other magistrates were sorry for Mrs. Hayes, but secretly convinced that she had killed her husband. A few of them, with Continental experience, wished that they were in France. There they could have regarded it as a crime passionel, and gallantly acquitted the lady.

Mrs. Hayes elected to give evidence. She told her story with a calm, firm voice, repeating exactly the statement she had last made to Inspector Parfitt. Examined by her own lawyer, she declared that she had not killed her husband.

Joan and Harry Wint wondered that this question was so frequently asked in court. Did anyone expect the prisoner to say she had committed the murder?

Questioned again by the prosecutor as to her relations with Edward Bow, she stuck to her story, denied that she had seen him, or had any relations with him, since her marriage, and explained anew that her only motive for pretending not to know Mr. Bow when she met him in the hotel was to keep his name out of the case.

“Because he had formerly been in love with you?”

Mrs. Hayes bowed slightly when the prosecutor put this question.

“And because he had quarrelled with my husband, and was on the river that night,” she said. “I knew he had not killed my husband, but I did not wish him to be dragged into the case.”

Inspector Parfitt’s evidence was awaited with interest. He went into the box, and began in the dry way superior policemen adopt when they present their evidence in court. He explained what he had done to investigate the case, and the conclusions to which he had come. He admitted that while an intensive search was still being made for the gaff with which the murder was probably committed, it had not yet been found, and was then asked by the builder if there was any legal warrant for proceeding with the case, since none of them knew that Mr. Hayes had been killed with a gaff, and no one had found a gaff.

“I think you’re ultra vires, Inspector,” he added, with a learned look. “So far as I can see, there is no prima facie case here. Wouldn’t it be better to enter a nolle prosequi?”

The Chairman hid a smile at this torrent of misapplied Latin, and the Clerk to the Magistrates rose to whisper to the builder, who turned rather red, and then smiled, as if he had received a laurel wreath rather than a mild rebuke.

“I see,” he said. “I was thinking of another statute probably.”

Inspector Parfitt proceeded imperturbably. He finished his account of his doings on and near the scene of the crime, and told the magistrates of his journey to the Hayes’s house, and the inquiries he had made there. The Chairman interrupted him once.

“You found no gaff in the house, Inspector, only a ‘tailer.’ There is no proof that Hayes ever possessed a gaff?”

“No, sir.”

The Chief Constable had hurriedly wired the previous evening, on Parfitt’s return, to secure the presence of Mrs. Hayes’s servants at the inquiry. When Parfitt stepped down, they appeared in turn, and testified reluctantly to the relations between their mistress and her husband. Jane caused some amusement by her scornful comments on the late Mr. Hayes, and Ellen repeated nervously what she had told Parfitt about the projected cleaning of the snuggery.

“In other words,” said the Prosecutor, leaning forward, “Mrs. Hayes proposed soon to have something done which she knew would be resented by her husband. “How do you account for that? For years she did not attempt—”

“Excuse me,” said the Chairman, “but I fail to see the relevance of that question.”

“Your Worship may take it from me that it has a bearing on the case— at least in my opinion.”

“Proceed then, please.”

The prosecutor proceeded. “Now Miss Tuke, did it not seem to you that Mrs. Hayes, in proposing to do something that her husband would object to, may have had it in her mind that, very soon, he would not be there to resent it?”

Mrs. Hayes’s solicitor rose. “I object, your Worships. It is bad enough that my innocent client should have so many painful details of her married life brought up to harrow her, but when Prosecutor for the Crown tries to lead witnesses, with a view to getting their quite worthless views on a hypothetical point, I say it is a dastardly perversion of his duties!”

“The objection is upheld,” said the Chairman, after a short consultation with his colleagues. “It is impossible for witness to say what she thought was in her mistress’s mind, and not evidence of fact, in any case. But I am sure that myself and my fellow magistrates will consider the case without being influenced by this suggestion.”

Having made his point, prosecutor sat down well pleased. He had anticipated an objection, but got his shot in first.

The solicitor for the defence rose. He had consulted with his client, and wore an air of derisive scorn.

“With the permission of the Court, I will endeavour to clear up a point which should never have been mentioned, your Worships,” he said. “My client is prepared to give evidence on oath that she had at last decided to take proceedings for divorce against her husband. That was after she had received the anonymous letter, and the pathetic epistle written to her by the late Miss Tysin, one of the victims of Hayes’s foul intrigues.”

“Have you any evidence of this, other than the lady’s word?” asked the Chairman.

“I have none, and I wish none better than the word of this brave and persecuted lady!” the solicitor exclaimed dramatically. “You may search the records of history, the files of many past trials, but—”

“But you have no factual evidence here?” said the Chairman.

“No, sir. My client, however, wishes to make this statement on oath.”

“I am not sure if it is irregular,” said the Chairman, “but I think that may be done.”

So Mrs. Hayes went into the box again, and affirmed that she had decided to procure evidence for a divorce, following on the letter from Miss Tysin. But she had started soon after on her journey to Wales, and had not had time to communicate with her solicitor.

“You will forgive me,” said the prosecutor mildly, “but I think you elected to make this further statement with a view to explaining your meaning when you made that remark to your under-housemaid, Miss Ellen Tuke. How would a divorce from your husband, if you were able to secure one, enable you to set your husband’s wishes at defiance? I assume that, to prevent any suspicion of collusion, you would have left his house at once.”

Mrs. Hayes smiled faintly for the first time during the trial.

“Certainly not, sir. The house was mine. I bought it some time after our marriage. I should have remained at home, and forbidden my husband to enter it.”

Her lawyer beamed, and there was some slight applause in court. Inspector Parfitt bit his lip. There seemed to have been a small flaw in his logic after all.

“That disposes, I think, of the interpretation mistakenly put on Mrs. Hayes’s remark to her maid,” said the Chairman.

“It certainly seemed to me a bit of special pleading,” said the learned colleague at his side.

The case went on, until the time came for the prosecutor to state the views against the prisoner, and it became clear that the defence could only rely on the truthfulness of Mrs. Hayes, who was, of course, unlikely to incriminate herself. She had no alibi for certain hours of the night of the murder; she had undoubtedly been near the actual scene of the crime, she had had motive and opportunity to commit it, and, finally, she had at first suppressed wilfully certain facts which suggested an intention later to renew her acquaintance, to put it mildly, with Mr. Edward Bow.

The magistrates retired to their room to consider. To them all it seemed that there was no case against any of the other people who had come into contact with Hayes, or even into conflict with him. But there was a case against Mrs. Hayes— ultimately not murder, maybe, but perhaps manslaughter. They came to the conclusion that the poor lady, driven to despair, had furiously resented her husband’s conduct, had gone down to the pool where he was fishing, and dealt him a blow which ended his life.

“I think we have no other course open to us but to commit her for trial at the Assizes,” the Chairman remarked at last. “That blackguard of a husband of hers deserved no mercy, but that is not our pidgin. I suppose we are all agreed.”

They were all agreed; unwillingly and reluctantly, perhaps, but undoubtedly of one opinion that Mrs. Hayes had killed the ruffian whose name she bore.

Mrs. Hayes received their decision calmly. She bowed to them, and made no comment.

“She’s a well-plucked un!” said the Chairman, as he got into his car fifteen minutes later to go home. “Pity we aren’t in France. Our jolly old laws won’t run to it. Cramp your style a lot!”

“I’d have let her off,” said his wife, who had been in court.

“You women have no conscience!” said the Chairman jovially.

Chapter 24

Joan’s Idea

INSPECTOR PARFITT got on to Scotland Yard a few minutes after the court rose. Bow had gone to London by train, slipping out a short time before the magistrates had given their decision. Parfitt asked that he should be shadowed on arrival, and his movements noted. He did not actually believe that Bow had had a hand in the murder, but it would be as well not to lose sight of him until more was known about his doings on the night of the tragedy.

Back at the station again, he discovered that his subordinates engaged on the inquiries with regard to the gaff had made no further progress. It seemed probable that the gaff lost by Davis might have been that used in the murder. If so, it would now be necessary to trace it. He called off his men who had been interrogating the locals, and told them to begin a further search in the country surrounding and bounding the river.

Mrs. Hayes’s safety might now depend on the finding of the weapon. If it could be discovered, and traced to hands other than hers, her acquittal was sure enough. If it was merely found, even at some distance from Pengellert, it would be another matter. Since she was in possession of a powerful car, and had several hours to account for that night of her husband’s death, she would have been able to hide the weapon many miles from the river-bank.

Some hours later a telephone message from Scotland Yard told Parfitt that Bow had gone straight from the train to the offices of an eminent firm of lawyers, who specialised in criminal cases. A watch would be kept on him, and any suspicious movements reported to the police at Cwyll.

While a reinforced body of police, amounting now to three dozen, were scouring the district round Pengellert, Harry Wint and Joan Powis were feverishly concerting plans for assisting Mrs. Hayes. Both felt convinced now that she was innocent, and their own well-meant efforts to assist the cause of justice appeared to have been in part responsible for her plight.

The Boots at the hotel, always a collector and dispenser of news when discreetly tapped, had a piece of information which appeared to them to be distinctly valuable. Davis had been approached by several villagers after his last interrogation by Parfitt, and had said quite frankly that the Inspector was anxious to know something about an old gaff he had lost in the spring. He had recounted for the first time the manner of its loss, and was perhaps surprised to hear that his questioners considered that that settled the responsibility for the affair on the lady who had come so unexpectedly to Pengellert.

Her guilt, they thought, was unproven as long as no weapon could be traced to her. But Davis had lost a gaff, obviously the lady had found it, and used it to kill her husband. They had once hastily made up their minds that Hayes had been killed by Blodwen Tysin, they were now as quickly agreed that Mrs. Hayes was the culprit. Her husband had made a fool of her, she was carrying on with the gentleman at the hotel, she had blood on her skirt when she arrived late at the hotel, so that there was no getting away from the fact that she had murdered her unfaithful spouse.

Davis’s observation that it would be hard to find his old gaff in the river in the dark, when he had looked into every pool for days after its loss, was lost upon them. If she hadn’t killed Hayes with that gaff, whose gaff had she used?

Davis went up to the hotel to see Wint and Joan when they all returned from Cwyll. He refused a drink, and said he was anxious to hear what they thought of Mrs. Hayes’s chances.

“I can’t help wondering, sir,” he said to Wint, “what Mr. Rigby meant by telling that tale of a gaff lost in a salmon. The constable couldn’t explain proper, and the Inspector couldn’t, or wouldn’t. But we’d never have heard of it if it hadn’t meant something.”

Wint had given some hard thinking to that matter himself. “I take it that it did mean something,” he replied, “but it doesn’t mean so much now that it is known you lost a gaff in the spring, and did not find it again.”

Davis appeared puzzled. “How does that make any difference, sir?”

“Well, that’s obvious enough. The police had to find a weapon; a gaff, as the most likely weapon, for preference. And they had to find one actually owned by someone who might have killed— that is, had the motive and opportunity to kill, Hayes. Failing that, they had to pre-suppose a lost gaff, which might have been picked up and used by the murderer.”

“I see that, sir, but—”

“Wait a moment, my dear fellow. My gaff was found, but for one reason or another they did not believe it to have been used. Now, if a gaff had been left on the bank, the hundreds of anglers who fish here in a month or two would have seen it, and picked it up. If it was not on the bank, it was in the water.”

“Ah, there you are!” said Davis, nodding.

“But how did it get into the water? It might have slipped, though as a rule one doesn’t drop a gaff into the river. If one did, one would search for it, and try to get it dragged up, if it fell in a place where it couldn’t be seen on the bottom. If you dropped your gaff into a pool, say, wouldn’t you get it out?”

“I didn’t mine, but it was stuck in a log of wood.”

“Quite so, and the Chief Constable, casting about for an explanation of a gaff getting into the river, and not being recovered, remembered what he had heard of a Scotch salmon running off with a gaff. In other words, a salmon might run some considerable distance up or down stream, carrying a gaff fixed in it. In heavy water, such as a flood, the course the salmon took would not be traced, and the gaff when finally shaken out by the fish’s movements, or a rock striking the handle, might be deposited where the owner did not look for it.”

“If it was a strong salmons, and went down, it might be in the mud of the estuary, that gaff; indeed, yes,” said Davis.

“I am sure that is all Mr. Rigby meant by his speculation, anyway,” Wint replied. “Being top-dog, the police would have to look into his theory whether they believed it or not. Though I should think it would not appeal much to Parfitt.”

“It was not a bad theory, though, look you,” replied Davis, “for my gaff went off in the water.”

Joan intervened thoughtfully. “Mr. Davis, if your gaff is still in some pool far down, or in the estuary, as you said, then Mrs. Hayes could not have used it, could she?”

“No, Miss, that was what I was thinking.”

“So that, unless someone had picked it up, the gaff is in the river still?”

“Yes, indeed, it will be.”

“So that if we could find it, we might help to get her off?”

Wint shrugged. “I say, old girl, how could we search the river for three or four miles? I suppose it would sink in the mud of the estuary, Davis?”

“Yes, sir, it would. The mud’s deep in parts.”

“But has there been enough water since you lost the gaff to take it as far down as that?” asked Joan.

“In the end of May there was, Miss, and there was a run of water three— no, four weeks ago.”

“That’s our trouble,” Wint observed gloomily.

But Joan was not beaten yet. “Look here,” she exclaimed, the gaff would hardly be carried down so far without the log, would it?”

Davis scratched his head. “Why now?” he remarked. “It got stuck cross-wise in that log, and might be hung up somewhere.”

“By jove, yes!” Wint cried excitedly. “I never thought of that. If it got jammed in one of the narrow passages among the rocks, under the white water, you couldn’t see it.” He paused for a moment, then added: “But I forgot that one of you fellows, who fish in the boil under the falls with worm, would hook it.”

“But suppose it wasn’t actually as far as the boil under a fall?” Joan asked. “You don’t fish the rapids with worm, but with fly. And then there are places above the falls between the rocks where you don’t fish at all, because the salmon and sewin don’t stay there, only run up through to places where they can rest.”

“I don’t see myself diving into those spots to look for a gaff!” said Wint.

But Davis appeared to have caught some of Joan’s enthusiasm.

“Wait now! The lady’s right. The police won’t mind any trouble if they can find what they want, and if they can be got to see my gaff may be in one of those sort of places, why they’ll look.”

They discussed the matter a little further, and then Davis left. Joan and Wint assured him that they would do their best to get the matter taken up by the police, even if they had to go to Cwyll next day to see the Chief Constable personally.

“And that really will be our best plan, I think,” said Wint, when they re-entered the hotel. “We’ll go to Cwyll by the morning bus, and have a chat with Rigby. The police take endless trouble in other murder cases, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t in this. If they refuse, I am inclined to get one of the papers to take it up.”

“Oh, I expect they will see reason,” she replied. “Parfitt told us he welcomed any hints. The only thing he didn’t like was premature disclosure.”

“Then we had better keep this theory to ourselves, Joan. How splendid it would be if we could prove the gaff was still in the river, and in a place where Mrs. Hayes could not have reached it.”

When they reached Cwyll next morning, they found that Mr. Rigby was absent on business connected with the case, and would not be back until half-past one. Neither of them had seen the little town and its harbour properly, so they decided to lunch there, and return to see the Chief Constable later in the day.

Cwyll is situated on a tiny indentation in the bay of the same name. The long and winding estuary of the river, passing at last under a railway bridge, and deepening below, serves in its junction with the sea as a tiny harbour. There is also, on one side, a stone breakwater, which serves as a quay at which small colliers tie up.

They soon exhausted the resources of the little town, and after lunch in a café strolled down to see the steamers unloading.

“About as much fun as watching shunting,” Wint observed, when they had spent ten minutes looking at grimy buckets bringing up coal from the depths of dusty holds. “Cwyll isn’t much of a seaside resort, is it?”

Joan laughed. “What’s the old scow doing out there?” she asked. “Not a dredger, is she?”

“No,” said Wint, turning his gaze to a barge-like craft in the estuary farther out. “What’s that boat doing out there?” he asked a longshoreman who was sitting near them on a bollard.

The man removed his pipe, and explained volubly, as if he had been accumulating conversation all the morning, in readiness for a question like this.

It seemed that a sewage pipe was carried along the bed of the estuary at this point, and a vessel had fouled it with its anchor, in spite of warning notices, and caused a leak. The local authorities had procured a diver from a nearby port, and he was now busy discovering the extent of the damage, with a view to its repair. The longshoreman was beginning an account of the diver’s heritage, paternity, history, and exploits under water, when Wint shut him up with the price of a drink, and moved off with Joan in search of further amusement elsewhere.

But there was little further to be seen there, and they decided to go to Mr. Rigby’s office, and wait for him, if he had not yet returned. Fortunately he had arrived a few moments before, and at once granted them an interview.

He remembered, of course, seeing Wint at the court investigation the previous day, and smiled faintly when the latter explained that they had come to see him, to give him some information which might help the police in connection with the Pengellert murder case.

“Information, Mr. Wint, or theories?” he asked dryly.

“Well, it is a theory,” said Wint.

“People have been worrying me on the telephone, by letter, and by calling since yesterday,” said Rigby. “If theory could solve our difficulties, they are already solved.”

“We do not intend to worry you,” said Wint, rather impatiently. “If you can spare us five minutes—”

“Five it is,” said the other, glancing at his watch in a business-like way. “Now then, Mr. Wint!”

Wint explained as clearly as he could. As he went on, Mr. Rigby’s expression became more interested, and when he had finished, he nodded qualified assent.

“I admit that my ideas ran on somewhat similar tones,” he said, when Joan turned her most charming smile on him. “While finding of the gaff lost by Davis in the river would not necessarily exonerate Mrs. Hayes— since she had a car and time to remove the weapon to some distance— if it is found in an unapproachable spot, it would certainly tend to show that she did not use it. To find it at night she would have had practically to walk on it, or trip over it.”

“That’s what I think,” cried Joan.

Mr. Rigby smiled at her. “Mr. Wint, of course, is quite right in suggesting that the difficulties of dragging the river, while great, will not prevent us from attempting it, if we see good cause. Our police have some defects, but lack of thoroughness is not one of them. Let me see. While a salmon, making off with a gaff, might go upstream, a log certainly would not! Where was the gaff lost? The Churn Pool, wasn’t it?”

As Wint assured him that it was, he rose and took from a drawer a large-scale map of the district, which he spread out on the table before him.

“Here we are. This is the Churn. It lies above the pool where Mr. Hayes was found dead— some hundreds of yards higher up, in fact. So if we decide to make an intensive search of the river bed, we must start there, and take as our province all the water below, as far as the estuary. That will be a considerable operation, Mr. Wint.”

“But you’ll have a shot at it?”

“I think so. On the other hand, I don’t think you have properly estimated the difficulty of the task. Dragging in such rapid water, infested with rocks and stones, is impossible; and as for exploring some of the nooks and crannies under the rapids, or between the deep pools, why that’s a beast of a job!”

Wint’s face grew gloomy again. He had had a very fair idea of the magnitude of the task, but in his anxiety to make Rigby move in the matter he had spoken more optimistically than he felt.

“You could use the sort of jointed rods a sweep uses for a chimney,” he said after a moment’s thought. “With a grapnel attached to one end, it might be done.”

“One theorist demanded that we should use a magnet drawn along the bed of the river,” said Rigby. “But there is something in what you say. Sweep and drag the open reaches, and try your dodge where there are crevices between the rocks. We’ll do it!”

He rang a bell, and while Harry Wint and Joan were exchanging congratulatory glances, the door opened and Parfitt came in.

The matter was explained to him, and he assented at once.

“An excellent idea, sir,” he said. “I shall borrow a couple of sets of canes from the sewer department, and get men on to the job at once. Perhaps, sir, you would telephone to Pengellert, and see that Griffiths takes six men off the search, and has them by the river for me when I arrive.”

Chapter 25

The First Attempt

BY DASHING OFF at once, Joan and Wint were able to catch the early bus back to Pengellert. Rigby and Parfitt were to follow in the police car, when they had obtained the necessary tackle from the sanitary department at Cwyll.

Joan was tremendously enthusiastic about Wint’s idea, since the jointed canes, used to carry a sweep’s brush, or clear drains, are very flexible, and can be used in twisting passages. If the gaff lost by Davis was stuck among the rocks, she was sure that they would soon find it, and so immensely reinforce Mrs. Hayes’s defence.

Parfitt had heard from London that Bow was in residence at his club; he gave the address to Wint, at the latter’s request, and the two wired to the club the moment they reached Pengellert, asking Bow to return at once as the case had taken a new turn.

“I only hope we’re right, and it has!” said Wint when they left the post-office. “Bow is up there to arrange for her defence, and he won’t thank us if we’ve dragged him back for nothing.”

Joan shook her head. “I’m sure we haven’t. I bet they find the thing.”

Constable Griffiths had taken some little time to collect six members of the police engaged on the search inland. Joan and her companion joined him and his band of helpers as they passed the hotel on their way to the Churn Pool.

Griffiths halted the men, and looked at them in a rather embarrassed fashion.

“I don’t know if the Inspector would like anyone with us, sir,” he said. “Not official-like, sir, anyway.”

Wint laughed. “Why, we got this new show going, constable. We saw Mr. Rigby this morning, and you will find he doesn’t mind.”

“Very well, sir,” said Griffiths, and roughly told some other prospective followers to go back, and mind their own business. “If he says you can come, all right.”

They reached the banks of the Churn Pool presently, and Wint explained what the Chief Constable had promised them should be done, much to the edification of Griffiths, who had merely been told to collect some men, and take them down to the river.

“I suppose we’d better wait then, sir. But if the log floated down from here, then it must have got further down. Only we was to meet Mr. Rigby here; so here we stay.”

A quarter of an hour later Mr. Rigby, with Parfitt, and a couple of policemen, carrying the tackle, arrived on the bank. Four of the constables were given drags, and told to sweep the pools, the others rigged up the jointed canes, and Parfitt attached a grapnel of small size firmly to the end of each.

“We’d better start groping the deep, narrow channel at the head of the next pool, Sir,” he said. “The rocks are undercut on the left bank. The gaff might have stuck up under there.”

When the men set to work, Parfitt consulted with the Chief Constable, and a constable was sent to fetch Davis.

“He knows more about the river than anyone else,” he told his superior. “He’s fished it night and day for years.”

Davis turned up very soon, and threw himself with energy into the business of directing the searchers. But the lower end of the Churn Pool, and the rapid below, proved blank, and they moved down to the next obstruction, a heap of boulders of various shapes and sizes that lay in the bed of the stream, and at one point constricted the actual water channel to a bare three feet of width.

Here the force of the current was tremendous, and added to the difficulty of working the canes, which bent under the push of the stream. But that was not the worst of the place. The under-water grottoes, formed by the boiling stream, and cut by the stones and pebbles whirled round in time of flood, caught and held the grapnels at the end of the rods, making it almost impossible to move them about. After five minutes they lost a grapnel, which had become irretrievably jammed in a crack, and fastening on another more securely, began again.

“I’m not so proud of my notion as I was,” Wint remarked to Joan, as presently they saw the men with the canes begin to pull and twist again. “It’s going to be the dickens of a job!”

“I believe they’ve got it stuck again,” said Joan. “I don’t see how Davis’s gaff could have got further than this.”

He shook his head. “They’re poking to one side of the channel. The log with the gaff in it might carry on with the current down the middle.”

“I’m afraid that’s done it, sir,” said Davis, as the men pulled and twisted without result.

“Looks like it, certainly,” Mr. Rigby replied ruefully. “Hi, you fellows! Wait a moment. You’ll snap that off too, and we haven’t any more here. You any idea, Parfitt?”

Parfitt stared down. “Let Davis have a go at it,” he suggested. “I think he can do better than they.”

Davis took off his coat, inspected the situation from every angle, then took over the rods, and began cunningly to work them gently this way and that. After two minutes he extricated the grapnel-head, and the work went on again, this time under his direction.

But the gaff was not there, and they worked down another pool, and started anew at a gulley full of potholes, obstructed further by an old tree-trunk, which had come down in a flood, and become wedged with its butt and roots in a fissure between two boulders.

This was just the sort of thing which might entangle a gaff, and presently it was decided to send for a saw, fix a rope to the portion of the trunk which showed above water and try to float the log down to the calmer water below. Where it was fixed it made impossible the use of the grapnel.

“They’re setting about the job thoroughly enough, Harry,” Joan murmured, as a constable came back with a saw, and was lowered down on to a rock ledge, where he could saw the trunk fairly low down. “But ought he not to have a  rope round his waist?”

That, after all, was what was intended. The policeman was secured with the bight of a rope under his arms, and got down still further, until he stood on a lower ledge, up to the knees in water. Meanwhile, Davis had climbed to another rock, and lassoed the top of the tree with a rope loop. The free end was then taken down stream a few yards, and made fast to a boulder. It was hoped that this side pull would slew the tree trunk into a backwater, when it was freed from the roots that anchored it in the fissure.

Sawing was a long and laborious job, and Joan and Wint sat down on the rocks and smoked, while the constable laboured till he was weary and sweating, and another policeman took his place. But presently the log was cut through, and swung round into the rush of water, heading down-stream. The pull of the boulder anchor brought it round further down, but there was no sign of the gaff having become fixed in it, and the cane grapnel was once more brought into use.

Mr. Rigby had sent up to the hotel for more food, and at half-past one they knocked off for lunch.

“This will be done by the Greek Kalends, Parfitt,” he said, as he munched a sandwich. “And can we swear even now that we miss nothing in those holes under the water? But I suppose we must carry on, and do our best. A dam’ nuisance your losing that gaff, Davis!”

Davis shrugged. “What with all these traps sir, I don’t see it can have gone down very far,” he replied. “If it was on the log, the two would hang up easy; and if it was clear of the log, the hook would catch on something.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Wint. “I hope, too, that you won’t give up trying as long as there is a chance of getting evidence to save Mrs. Hayes.”

Parfitt looked round. “We’ll do the job, sir.”

Lunch over, and a hasty smoke, and they resumed their labours, working down gradually to the pool, at the tail of which Mr. Hayes’s body had been found. While the men worked the canes, other men dragged the deep pools and quiet runs between one rock obstruction and another.

“Now we are at the very place,” said Rigby presently. “Go easy with that grapnel now! This looks a tricky bit.”

He had hardly warned the men when the grapnel caught once more. But it was extricated at last, and one of the prongs brought up a transfixed piece of sodden wood.

Wint gave an involuntary cheer, and all crowded close to look at the fragment precariously poised on the sharp tine.

“Bit of pine,” said Rigby. “Anything like the snag that carried your gaff away?”

Davis examined it carefully. “I didn’t see it close enough, or worry about the kind of wood, sir; but I do believe it was a bit of pine. Yes, yes, it looks like it.”

He spoke in tones of suppressed excitement, and Joan’s eyes began to sparkle. Suppose the gaff was down there, and they were going to bring it up! The grapnel was lowered once more, and worked cautiously sideways, to try to get a grip on the log from which the splinter had come. Presently it seemed to take a hold, and Davis was deputed to tackle the job.

He twisted and screwed the jointed canes this way and that, then began to draw them up as if something heavy was at the end. Then suddenly, whatever it was that he had hooked became detached, and half an hour’s fishing produced no results.

“Do you think it was that bit of wood you hooked?”

Davis looked round and mopped his brow. “I do, sir. I am sure I had it hooked, but it slipped off and went down.”

Parfitt made a suggestion. “This is the very hole we found Mr. Hayes stuck in, sir. If that bit of wood is free, we should drag the pool below at once, for it will be caught by the current.”

“Yes, indeed, it’s true,” said Davis. “Come down, and I’ll show you where everything casts up below. There’s an eddy brings all in under the lee of the bank.”

They went down, and dragged and searched, but without coming on any sign of the missing bit of timber. Then they tried the grapnel again in the under-water shaft, and this time it fixed for good, and was broken off, and lost, in an attempt to get it free.

Mr. Rigby exclaimed profanely: “That is the only other grapnel, and I’m not sure anyway that it is the most satisfactory thing to use. The trouble is that none of us knows what that shaft ends in. It may meet another fissure at right angles. We can’t see down from above, and I’m hanged if we can look from below. The water is all boiling white there, and I don’t think a dive would be safe.”

“You couldn’t do it, sir,” said Davis, upon whom he had turned his eyes hopefully. “There’s ten to fifteen feet of water in parts, and even if you could keep down long enough, and didn’t get your head broken on a rock, you wouldn’t know if you were facing up or downstream.”

“Resources of civilisation exhausted, eh? Looks like it, but I’m disinclined to give it up, if that was the log that fouled your gaff you hooked just now.”

They sat down for a discussion, and considered ways and means. Parfitt spoke last.

“That last grapnel got it before, and may have broken off in it now. I think we ought to send back to Cwyll for some more, half a dozen if necessary.”

“Why not get a diver?” asked Joan.

They looked at her with surprise.

“Davis says that’s impossible,” replied Rigby. “You have a look at the place again, Miss Powis.”

“I meant a real diver,” said Joan, while Wint smiled approval. “We saw one working in the estuary at Cwyll.”

Parfitt jumped to his feet enthusiastically. “That’s an idea, Miss! He might do it. After all, he goes down in pretty strong tides, and he’s got weights on his feet, and so on. That would save all this poking and hauling, that may miss the very thing we want in the end.”

“It does sound good,” agreed Rigby, looking approvingly at Joan. “By Jove! we may have a shot at it. But what about visibility? He wouldn’t see much at the head of the pool here.”

“A diver does a lot of work by feeling, sir,” said one of the constables, “and, as he stands on his feet, he could crawl about the rocks under the water, and poke into all the cracks.”

It was ill-put, but his meaning was clear enough, and turned the scales in favour of the suggestion. A diver in working-dress might even be able to explore the lower end of the shaft in the rocks, and would be able to remain down long enough to exhaust every possibility.

“That was a brain-wave, Miss Powis,” said the Chief Constable, and turned to a constable. “Here, run like blazes to the hotel, telephone to the port people, and get the diver sent up at once, with all his kit. If they make any bones about it, refer them to me.”

I’m glad you’re going to try it, sir,” said Davis quietly, when the policeman had dashed off. “I believe I had it on the grapnel, look you. If it’s here, the diver’ll get it.”

They waited excitedly for the return of the constable. He came back presently, shaking his head.

“They say, sir, that something’s gone wrong with the air-pump, and they’ve stopped work, and the diver gone home. It may be mended by to-morrow.”

Rigby swore again. “Rotten luck! Here. We’ll go back, and I’ll have a talk with them. If they hustled, they might make the repair in an hour or two.”

Work was suspended, and the party trooped back to Pengellert; the constables to the police-station, the others to the hotel, where Rigby rang up on the telephone, and had his worst fears confirmed. He returned to Joan, Parfitt, and Wint, who had now been joined in the smoking room by young Hoad, and told them.

“Nothing doing to-day. By the time they have it ready it would be too late. But they have promised to have the diver up here with his equipment by six tomorrow morning. I’m going to wire to Gwynwth to ask if they have a spare air-pump there, in case ours goes wonky again.”

He went out, and did not return. Hoad looked anxiously at Wint.

“Why does he want a diver, Mr. Wint?”

“To relieve your mind, Hoad,” said Wint slowly. “Joking apart, I may say that we are not looking for more bodies, only for the missing gaff. Do try to look a bit more cheerful! You made an ass of yourself, but it isn’t a crime. Don’t flatter yourself that what you did killed that poor girl. It was a bigger power than either of us did that.”

Hoad stared. “What do you mean by a bigger power, Mr. Wint?”

“Love— if we must be sentimental,” said Wint. “Now, if you don’t mind, I want to have a talk with Miss Powis.”

Hoad went out, looking both resentful and relieved.

“I had to insult him,” said Wint, when he had gone. “A slap on the amour propre is as good for the morbid as a slap on the face to the hysterical. It’ll do him all the good in the world.”

Edward Bow turned up at eleven that night. He had driven furiously all the way from London, and was both surprised and grateful when he heard what Joan and her friend had achieved.

“It does sound hopeful,” he admitted, when he had heard their account of that day’s doings. “There was evidently a log sunk and stuck in that shaft, and it may be the right one. Even if the gaff was prised loose from it, it wouldn’t matter. The gaff could be found on the bottom by the diver. But I think it would be wiser if the police concentrated particularly on that pool more than the others.”

“Why particularly?” she asked.

“Well, as you say it was suggested, a shaft in the rock where that shaft is most likely meets another at right angles. An underwater tunnel of that kind is more likely to stop drifting stuff than the rocks at the bottom of an open channel.”

“And there may be a dead end in it, out of the pull of the water,” Wint agreed. “Look at the regular cups that are cut by pebbles here. I came on one the other day eighteen inches deep. By the way, Bow, what did you do in town? I assume you went to see a lawyer.”

Bow nodded. “We’ve got Tregaskin in case the affair gets as far as the Assizes, as I presume it will now. Fortunately, and most unusually, I was able to see him. He is very hopeful.”

“On what grounds?”

“The old ones, as far as he is concerned. You may know that he is the greatest destroyer of circumstantial evidence we have. I don’t mean he actually destroys it, but he generally manages to make the jury believe that it is a terrible thing to convict on, which is the main point. Then he plays cunningly on the sentimental chord. He told me there was only one woman client he had failed to pull off, and she would insist on going into the box, where she made hay of all his defence.”

“Don’t you believe in circumstantial evidence being valuable?” Joan asked.

“When it’s logical, I do; most thoroughly, Miss Powis. Only in this case, I know Caroline. Mrs. Hayes didn’t do it. Anyway, I am most awfully grateful to you. I hope the diver justifies you tomorrow.”

Chapter 26

A Gaff is Found

JOAN POWIS hardly slept that night. By five o’clock she was up, pulling aside the curtains, and watching the golden sheen of the sun creeping up the sky behind the mountains.

Someone was moving about in the room next to hers. She dressed hurriedly, and by the half-hour was standing in the hall below, with the Boots, and Miss Pole, both too excited to stay abed.

Then Wint joined her, shortly followed by Bow, and they opened the front door, and stood watching the road.

Bow, this morning, looked more anxious and haggard than before. He was trembling a little, too, a rare thing for a man of his physique and temperament. Both saw that the reaction had told on him. He lit, and threw away, several cigarettes, and presently, with a muttered apology, left them and walked fast up the road.

“The poor beggar’s in for a nasty time if our theory is a dud,” said Wint. “I am rather sorry we laid so much stress on it.”

“He’ll feel better when he sees the police come up with the diver,” she said wisely. “It’s the waiting about that has got on his nerves.”

As Bow did not return in a quarter of an hour, Wint followed him down the road, and presently ran back to explain that the police had arrived, left the lorry which had brought the diver and his equipment opposite the meadow beside the Churn Pool, and did not intend to call at the hotel at all.

“I expect Bow followed them down,” he added, as Joan accompanied him towards the river. “The poor chap’s too excited to worry about us.”

The police had begun work early to avoid a crowd from the village. Only Bow and Davis were with them when Joan and her companion reached the party, and a solitary labourer had paused curiously on the road above, on his way to work.

They greeted the Chief Constable and Parfitt who, with Bow a little behind them, were watching men fitting up the air-pump and the pipes connected with it. The diver, a grizzled man of indeterminate age, was scanning the pool below where Hayes’s body had been found, and making his plans for a descent into it.

“Likely there’s more run and bubble on the top, sir,” he said to Rigby, when he came back. “It’s worse in a tide-rip among rocks than this at any time. Happen I won’t see much, but my hands’ll see for me. They’re used to it.”

“Good!” said Rigby. “Don’t think you’ll need any more weight to keep you down, do you?”

The grizzled man shook his head. “No, I don’t. All that bobble and fuss looks worse than it is, sir. Might be dangerous in a flood, likely enough, but it’s nothing to speak of now.”

He was quite right. A swimmer has not much chance in a rushing river, but the experienced and heavily weighted diver thought nothing of a couple of fathoms of river-water.

When the other men had nearly finished fitting up the pump and connecting the pipes and lines, he sat down on a rock, and was fitted into his diving-suit, from which his long head and thin neck at last only appeared; giving him the air of a superannuated tortoise thrusting its head from its carapace to look around.

Then the metal headpiece was taken up and screwed on, and the cumbersome, goggled man took a few heavy steps down to the river bank, where a short ladder had been let down into the water in an oily backwater of the pool.

“All set, eh?” asked Mr. Rigby to the men who nodded, and began to turn away at the handle of the pump. “Right!”

Bow and Wint and Joan stood close to the bank, watching the rising air-bubbles that at first followed the line of the diver’s underwater progress, until they were swallowed up and invisible in the rush of foam at the head of the pool.

“I suppose he’ll be all right,” said Joan anxiously. “It looks a beastly place to me.”

“He won’t find any octopuses at any rate,” said Mr. Rigby with a smile. “I think you needn’t worry, Miss Powis.”

But, if Joan was reassured and worried no longer, Edward Bow remained in a state of pitiable anxiety and suspense, staring at the rushing water long after the progress of the diver could no longer be traced, as if by straining his eyes he could see what was going on below.

Joan eyed him sympathetically. A man who had remained faithful to one woman for more than twenty-five years could not help exciting the sympathy of another woman, the more so that he had apparently kept away from Mrs. Hayes since her marriage. That he was deeply in love with the latter still could not be doubted, and her fate had put this normally self-contained and rather cynical man in a state of nervous anxiety and fear, which was visible to anyone who watched him.

Joan could not help thinking of the dreadful shock he would get if the gaff was not found in the pool. While its finding would not be a certain proof that Mrs. Hayes was innocent, failure to find it would tell against her.

After a long time, the diver came to the bank again for a rest. He did not remain up very long, but it seemed ages to those who stood on the bank. So far he had not reached as far as the bottom of the rock shaft through which the water rushed from the pool above. He had had instructions to search every inch of the bottom, and, unable to see for the foam, that was a tedious job.

“But could you make out where the water came in through that tunnel?” Rigby asked, before the helmet was screwed on again. “That is the spot we want to get at.”

The man nodded. “Aye, there was a right push of water I could feel. I’ll have a rod with me this time. I can stand to the side of it, but couldn’t go up the shaft. I’d be like a cork in a bottle, sir.”

“You’d be shot out like a cork,” said Rigby, smiling, “but take your time and make sure of everything. This job has to be done very thoroughly.”

The diver descended again and the trail of bubbles rose to the surface, and broke, until he was once more in the boil.

Bow had not said a word all this time. But now he went down to the tail of the pool, and stared at the slow eddy with eyes that suddenly lit up.

“I suppose this isn’t the log, Inspector?” he shouted to Parfitt. “There’s a bit of timber swimming round and round here.”

Rigby and Parfitt made a rush to join him, so unguardedly that the Chief Constable tripped on a rock, and just missed going headlong into the pool. When he recovered himself, he was passed by Parfitt, going up to get something to hook the floating wood from the water.

“I believe that’s it,” said Davis, who was now staring, too, at the eddy. “Just looks like the shape and size of it, indeed.”

“You mean the log that fouled your gaff?” asked Joan eagerly.

“Yes, Miss. It was a bit like that.”

Spare grapnels had been brought up this time, and very soon the bit of timber was caught and dragged to the bank to be examined.

While the Chief Constable, Bow, Parfitt and Wint, with Joan looking over their shoulders, knelt down to study the catch, even the stolid men still turning the handles of the air-pump watched with interest.

“What do you say, Davis?” asked Parfitt, making room for the man beside him. “Here’s a hole that looks as if it had been made by the hook of a gaff, and a bit of a splinter torn off too. And there are one or two deep scratches.”

Davis nodded. “Yes, sir, I am sure this is it. I could swear now it is the log I stuck my gaff in.”

“And that splinter is the one you tore out when the grapnel got into something yesterday.”

“Yes, sir. Seems to me the gaff and this bit must have been wedged in the tunnel, and the grapnel parted them. Then the log would carry down with the current.”

“The gaff wouldn’t, or not so far,” said Wint. “The heavy steel hook would tend to make it sink. Well, this is more hopeful. I wonder if the diver will bring it up this time.”

“He’d have signalled with his rope,” said Parfitt. “But very likely he is searching at the foot of the shaft, while the gaff is gone from it. Though the hook would keep it from following the log, the wooden handle would float up a little, and the water would carry it clear of the mouth, where the push is strongest.”

“We’ll have him up and give him fresh instructions,” said Rigby, leaving them and going over to the men at the pump.

When the diver came up again, they discovered that he had been closely examining the shaft with his rod, and was of opinion that it did not descend in a direct line from the pool above. There was a kink or elbow in it, nearer the top than the bottom, and the rock-sides were cracked and creviced in many places.

Joan was astonished to find that the man could give such a clear account of the formation of the underwater obstructions without the use of his eyes.

“It’s wonderful, but I’m sure you are right,” she commented. “We know the bit of wood has come down, so it must have been pushed out of the shaft when the grapnel caught it yesterday.”

“Very like, Miss,” said the diver stolidly.

Bow’s anxiety and eagerness had been increased rather than diminished by the nature of his find. He grudged every moment that the diver was on the bank. He gave an audible sigh of satisfaction again when he vanished by means of the ladder, and crept slowly towards the head of the pool.

But the suspense was not yet over. The man came up again, empty-handed, for a breather.

“No luck yet?” asked Rigby.

“No, sir, but another go ought to do it. “I’ve narrered it down to a small bit, only rather a chancy one, count of the bottom being rough. Lies over there to the left of that boil,” he added, pointing with his hand to a miniature whirlpool beyond the white water, and just under the lee of the undercut rock-bank.

“Why the devil didn’t he stay down, then, if the bit was so small?” Bow asked Wint in a ferocious whisper. “That’s what I want to know.”

“He knows his job. We don’t!” replied Wint. “We’ll hear pretty soon now if there is anything doing.”

Bow cast a look at the pool, shrugged impatiently and strode up the rocks, and away across the meadow, as if he could not bear to look at the spot. But he was back again, staring in a fascinated way at the pipe being paid out by the men at the pump when the diver entered the water once more.

All of them now realised that this was the last search in that pool, and even Rigby and Parfitt showed signs of excitement, while Joan could hardly keep still.

“How long shall we have to wait?” she asked presently.

“Don’t know,” said Wint, and then started as a man at the air-pipe gave a cry.

“He’s signalled he wants to come up, sir,” he called. “Gave two tugs just now.”

They crowded on the bank above the ladder, and soon the line of bubbles began moving inwards, and then the diver’s helmet appeared in the water below them. His shoulders were hardly above the water, when Bow saw that something gleamed in his hand, and sat down suddenly on a rock with his head in his hands.

No one spoke as the diver came out of the water, and tossed a gaff on the bank. Parfitt picked it up, glanced at it, and passed it to Davis.

“Yours?” he asked laconically.

“That’s mine, sir,” replied Davis, and Joan gave a cracked cheer, that ended abruptly in something like a sob.

“Good work! Dam’ good work!” said Rigby examining the gaff in his turn.

Bow got up from his rock, and stuffed some notes into the diver’s hand. Then he came over too.

“No blood on it?” he asked.

“Not a sign,” replied Parfitt. “Look at this cord too; binding the hook on. That would hold a stain if the wooden handle didn’t. It’s obvious that this didn’t kill Mr. Hayes. It’s been stuck in the shaft up there, and only got free yesterday.”

Rigby nodded, told the diver and his men to pack up and get back to Cwyll, and turned again to Davis.

“You’ll swear to this, of course?”

“I’ll swear that it is my old gaff, sir.”

“Right. Then I don’t think we need keep you. Parfitt, we’ll have lunch at the hotel. The men can go to their duties as usual.”

“I suppose Mrs. Hayes will be released now?” said Bow.

“Not yet, sir, I’m afraid. We shall have to consult the Home Office and the Crown Prosecutor. It may be that it will have to go to the Assizes, if it is only formally to enter a nolle prosequi.”

“I’ll go bail for her, naturally, in the meantime.”

“I shall put it before the authorities, but it is not really in my power to decide, Mr. Bow.”

“Oh, blast your red tape!” said Bow viciously, and left them to walk hastily away.

Rigby smiled faintly and raised his eyebrows. Then he and the others returned to the hotel.

After lunch, the Chief Constable rose and said he must get back to Cwyll, and he nodded approvingly to Joan.

“We’re open-minded enough to appreciate useful help, Miss Powis,” he said. “You both touched the spot this time.”

“It was hearing your story that a salmon once ran away with a gaff that did it,” she laughed. “Especially when I heard that Mr. Davis had let a log get away with him.”

“I was thinking more of your brain-wave about the diver. I don’t think our poking about would have found the gaff in a month of Sundays otherwise.”

Bow came in, in a better temper, an hour later. He looked much relieved since he had reflected that the Chief Constable’s mention of a possible nolle prosequi suggested a changed outlook about the woman’s guilt. Obviously the evidence against Caroline Hayes had not been very strong, if the negative evidence provided by that day’s search had made so much difference.

“The odds are in her favour now, anyway,” Wint remarked, when Bow said this. “Her husband hadn’t a gaff, and we have found the only one in the neighbourhood that was missing.”

Chapter 27

Or Was it Murder?

“IT’S MY OPINION that Hayes wasn’t killed with a gaff at all,” said Wint, that evening after dinner, when he and Joan and Edward Bow were sitting in the billiards-room, to avoid Hoad’s intense curiosity, and had daringly locked the door.

“Why not?” asked Joan.

“Chiefly because, as we agreed before, there wasn’t a spare gaff available. Why, it might have been made— the wound, I mean— by a sharpened bit of strong bull-wire. It was only because it went in at one place and came out at another, that we took it to be a gaff.”

“I don’t think so,” said Bow. “Wire’s rough, and the wound the doctor said was not jagged or ragged, but made by something pointed and polished.”

Joan agreed. “We can’t get away from that. And any weapon like a knife, or a poignard, if they kept such things here, would not make a curved wound such as a gaff could.”

“Well, it’s dashed mysterious, this business,” said Wint, slowly filling his pipe. “Someone killed Hayes. Who was it? From our point of view the affair’s done with— or will be when Mrs. Hayes is released. But I should have an inquiry about young Hoad if I were the police. He may be merely upset about that girl’s suicide, and his rotten letter. But he may be the man who did in Hayes.”

But Joan had not been listening. She was off hotfoot on a theory of her own.

“Wait a moment,” she cried excitedly. “If the gaff went into that poor man’s neck, and stayed there, it would have been brought up with the body, wouldn’t it?”

“Naturally.”

“And if the man who did it pushed Mr. Hayes into the water, he must have taken the gaff out first.”

“Assume it!”

“Well, he must have then thrown the gaff in after Mr. Hayes.”

“He couldn’t, my dear girl,” said Wint. “The body filled up the entrance to the shaft.”

“Quite. That is what I am getting at. If he did not throw it in after him, which is proved by the fact that the gaff must have been in the shaft below the body, not above, what did he do with the gaff after he had killed Hayes?”

Bow stared at her. “That’s good sense. Could he have killed Hayes, pulled out the gaff, and thrown it down the shaft first?”

“How long would that take?”

“Not more than half a minute, if he hustled.”

“Leaving the body on the bank?”

“I suppose so.”

“How can you suppose it? The police agreed that there would be nasty traces on the bank, blood marks, but there were none.”

“True. But suppose the body was in the water all the time.”

“Wasn’t it said that the force of the current would have drawn it into the shaft? Of course. Then, if the body was there, the gaff couldn’t get down.”

The two men exchanged puzzled glances.

“Where is that taking you?” asked Wint. “I see the force of your argument, Joan, but it is only proof that there was no murder at all— which is absurd.”

“Ah, that’s just the point,” she observed. “Was there a murder?”

“Yes, or a suicide. Must have been.”

“Now that is where I am not quite sure,” she replied. “Isn’t there an alternative? The gaff didn’t go down after Hayes, but before.”

“But Parfitt proved that that gaff couldn’t have been used.”

“No, he merely said it couldn’t. But how could he be sure that immersion in the water for days and days did not remove all traces, even from the whipping on the gaff.”

“Have it your own way. What then?”

“Then there is just the chance that the gaff was stuck in that shaft after the flood brought it down, a long time ago.”

“We’ll concede that. But you’re beating the air, old girl.”

“Don’t be so horribly impatient! Is it possible to deny that Mr. Hayes may have had a faint, or slipped and gone in? Of course not.”

Bow looked at her interestedly. What was mere speculation to them was a matter of supreme importance to him.

“I suppose we must not ignore the chance that it was so,” he said. “It’s worth looking into, anyway. He wasn’t a young man, and, of course, the doctor who examined the body only looked at the actual injuries. Do go on!”

His earnestness made Joan hope that she had not hit upon a wild theory. “Well, if we imagine that he fell in, or had a seizure of some kind, he wouldn’t be dead when the water drew him into the shaft, and as the gaff was obviously below him there, can we swear that he didn’t get his injuries that way.”

“Great Scott! I never thought of that,” Wint cried. “I say, Bow, what about it? Miss Powis is quite right. If the gaff was stuck there when Hayes fell in—”

Bow interrupted. “Sorry to stop you, but let’s get this right. I assume that Miss Powis thinks the gaff was jammed point upwards in the hole through which the water rushes down, and Hayes was drawn in by the force of the current and impaled, in a way, on the gaff point. But surely there are two things to be said about that; first, would the gaff, jammed and fixed in one position, do it— two openings I mean? Then what about the log in which the point was supposed to be stuck?”

“Suppose it wasn’t still stuck?” Joan argued. “I mean to say, the water would have been pulling and pushing at the wood, and got it free from the gaff.”

“I know. But we found the bit of wood floating in that backwater in the pool below, Miss Powis. While it might stay some time in the eddy, half a day or so, it wouldn’t go round and round for months. It must have been stuck in the gaff, or jammed in a crevice until yesterday, when the poking about of the diver, or the jointed canes yesterday removed it.”

Joan nodded. “I see what you mean. I suppose it is so. But you admit that, if the gaff was not stuck in it, it was jammed somewhere. Let’s take that alternative. Then the gaff-point was free, and may have penetrated Mr. Hayes’s throat when he was drawn down by the rush of water.”

Wint had been eager to say something. He cut in now: “A top-hole idea, Joan, which I hope is true. But, if that is so, why didn’t the gaff come up with the body when Hayes was found and pulled up?”

“I don’t know that that is an objection, Wint,” said Bow, before Joan could reply. “If a body going downwards was impaled on the hook of a gaff it stands to reason that the hook was curving upwards. Davis had a bit of a job, with help, to get the body out, and no doubt the gaff— the shaft of which must have been jammed in the rocks, or it would have fallen down into the pool before, came out under the strain. That is what I make of it.”

Joan beamed. She was proud of her idea now, and hoped that it might finally convince the police of Mrs. Hayes’s innocence. It would at least be positive evidence; not negative, like the mere failure to find a weapon with which the murder had been committed.

“I vote we tell Inspector Parfitt about it. He can make some kind of practical experiments, on the lines of those made by the water-bailiff. If he gets a dummy, and sees with his own eyes that the thing could have happened in the way I suggest, then we score a point.”

Bow grasped her hand, and shook it warmly. “You’re worth any three of us! I expect we can get on the telephone to Cwyll. There is a chance that Parfitt hasn’t gone to roost yet. Shall I go, or will you?”

“Please do,” said Joan, who felt that he was dying to discover the Inspector’s reactions to the new theory. “Now you know what I mean, I expect you will put it to him much more clearly than I.”

When Bow had unlocked the door and gone to the telephone, Wint made sure that Hoad had retired for the night, and would not disturb them, and came back to smile at Joan.

“Bow beats me,” he said in a low voice. “He was in love with Mrs. Hayes more than twenty-five years ago; he’s devoted to her still; and he managed to say nothing about it to her for all that time. Most unusual self-repression, I think.”

Joan’s eyes twinkled. “I suppose people may be in love for some time without blurting it out, Harry? I don’t know that many would wait so long, of course, though I do know one or two people who would require an earthquake to make them reveal their feelings.”

“Do I know any of these weird people?” he demanded, laughing.

“You know one very well, indeed,” she rejoined. “Better than I do, probably.”

“I do? You’re joking! What’s his name?

“It begins with a ‘W,’ and his initial is ‘H,’ and I’m hanged if I am going to propose!” said Joan. “Harry, you utter old donkey! It’s quite two years since you began to haunt our house, and a man who can stand committee meetings in every room for two years must have some ulterior motive for coming. But perhaps you came to see Dad?”

“I didn’t, but I will the moment I get back,” he said, and got up. “But this is all wrong. What you say you have unsaid. Let me make a start this time, late as it is. Darling—”

Then Bow came in hastily, and the two jumped apart, self-consciously.

“I got Parfitt, and he comes first thing to-morrow!” Bow cried. “He seemed impressed by your theory, Miss Powis, and will try it out practically. I’m tremendously relieved.”

“So am I,” said Joan. “I think I have made a most important discovery. Mr. Wint agrees with me.”

Bow shook his head. “Don’t scoff at it, Miss Powis!” he replied, his mind on the matter that concerned him more nearly. “I am sure it will be the greatest help.”

“What did Parfitt say?” she demanded, dropping the little joke she and Wint had between them. “Doesn’t he, or does he, see that, if my theory is practicable, it exonerates Mrs. Hayes completely? I know they can’t release even an innocent person without formalities, but once they are sure of her innocence, they could admit her to bail. And that would mean actual freedom.”

“Parfitt more or less agrees to that. He does not think that we could carry out the experiments in the actual shaft, since the rush of water and the confined space would make it impossible to observe things. But he thinks a sort of rough model could be made with plaster, and a gaff fixed there, for trial with a dummy figure. I must say the police are willing to go to any amount of trouble to get a light on the tragedy.”

“You ought to write to Mrs. Hayes,” said Joan. “For all we know, Mr. Hayes may have suffered from heart-attacks or something. You can’t get too much evidence in these cases, can you?”

“No,” he agreed. “If he was a full-blooded man, or had a weak heart, it makes your theory look better. I don’t think he slipped in merely. His position when found suggested that he was unconscious. At any rate, I shall write to Caroline and put it to her.”

Chapter 28

Proof Enough?

PARFITT RANG UP the hotel in the morning. He said it was decided that the experiments should be made at Cwyll, and that the models for the trial were being put in hand at once. If Bow, Miss Powis, and Mr. Wint would care to come down by the afternoon bus, they could attend the experiments, which would be carried out in a corner of a quarry just above the town.

There was nothing for it but to wait. Even plaster or concrete models would take a little time to complete.

They left by the bus and found their way easily enough to the disused quarry, which was railed off, and had a gate, at which a local constable stood.

Mr. Rigby was there, consulting with the Town Surveyor, also a foreman under the council, the Superintendent of Police, Mr. Bass, the Coroner, and Inspector Parfitt.

As the three saw at once, the slanting side of the quarry had been utilized in one place to form part of the rough model of the hole in the rocks of the river in which Hayes’s body had been found fixed. Plaster sides had been built up, with laths embedded, to represent the other sides of the shaft, leaving a strip about six inches wide open on the near side, through which observation could be kept.

A dummy wax figure of a man had been borrowed from one of the tailors in the town, and stood grotesquely upright against a projecting knob of rock in the side of the quarry face.

The disposition of the hypothetical gaff had been a difficult matter, but it had been assumed for the purposes of the first experiment that it was jammed with the point of the steel hook upwards. It could be reset in the reverse position later for the second experiment.

“Since you’re all here,” said Mr. Rigby, when he had spoken for a few moments with the new-comers, “I think Williams can get his camera ready to take any shots needed. It’s pretty clear that we could do nothing at the actual site of the tragedy. We couldn’t see what happened in the tunnel full of water, and there was no means by which we could have fixed the gaff in there, in what we assume to have been its position before it was dislodged by our grapnel the other day.”

“This isn’t exactly to scale, for the same reason,” said the Surveyor, “but it’s near enough, and I take it that the object is to demonstrate whether the dead man could, or could not, have been impaled on the gaff stuck in the rocks.”

“That’s it,” said Rigby. “Well. Someone bring the dummy over here, and get that ladder up. The dummy will have to be thrust downwards by hand, instead of being more realistically drawn in by a strong current of water.”

Had the occasion been a less serious one, or its possible results less important, Joan could have laughed at the sight of a policeman who gravely climbed up the ladder, the dummy figure in one arm, and thrust it head downwards into the model shaft, until the neck came in contact with the gaff hook fixed below.

“Shall I push it further down, sir?” the policeman asked expectantly. “Don’t know if it’ll be soft enough to—”

“No. Wait a moment!” Rigby interrupted. “We never thought of that. Haul it out again, and we’ll have a neck made of something more penetrable. We can compensate Mr. Richards if we damage his wax figure.” Finally, the head was removed, connected again to the dummy by a neck made of straw sewn up in strong butter-muslin, and by delicate manipulation, was hoisted and pushed once more into position.

The gaff penetrated the neck, and, by means of a little twisting, the point emerged at another point.

“Now, you must pull the dummy up,” was the next instruction. “Actually Mr. Hayes’s body was brought up leaving the gaff behind.”

Joan was disappointed to see that, on the attempt being made, the hook threatened to tear the material rather than slip out of it.

“That’s a snag,” commented the Chief Constable, frowning. “There was no sign on Hayes’s body of a ragged or torn wound. What do you think, Parfitt?”

Parfitt stepped close up. “It certainly hasn’t come off quite according to plan, sir. But, perhaps, Mr. Wint here, and Mr. Bow, will say if they recollect exactly how the body was disengaged by Davis from the river?”

Bow did not remember that the body had been extricated in a way at all differing from that at present being adopted in the experiment, but Wint did.

“I think Davis pushed a bit down when it did not come up at the first go,” he said. “You know the way one does, when anything sticks? You pull, then shove away from you.”

Parfitt nodded. “That is my own recollection of the account, sir.”

“And I think we must remember that, though the handle of the gaff— which is straight— was jammed in the shaft, it may have been easily turned— on its axis, if you know what I mean,” Rigby added. “That is to say, the actual hook may not have remained in the one fixed position when the body was pulled out.”

It took a little time to fix the gaff in the model in such a position that it remained in Its place while allowing the shaft to be turned round. Then the experiment was repeated, and, by a little manipulation, the dummy was pulled up free of the hook.

“There may be something in it,” said Rigby. “Got your shots, Williams? Very well. Now we’ll try the hook with its point fixed down the shaft. Now that we can turn the gaff round, that adjustment will be easy.”

Joan’s spirits rose again. Evidently Rigby was impressed now, and her theory had not been destroyed by the first contretempts.

“In any case, everything isn’t an exact representation,” she told Wint, as the helpers prepared for the second trial. “If Mr. Hayes had a faint, he may have recovered for a moment when he felt the wound and struggled a little.”

“That is also possible,” remarked Rigby, who had overheard her. “Your theory envisages the idea of the man being alive at the moment when he fell in. A wound, of the nature received, together with the rush of water into the throat passages, would revive any man from a faint.”

The second trial had as much success as the first. That is to say, it proved that, in certain conditions, it was possible for Hayes to have met his death without the intervention of a human hand. Whether the conditions of the experiments sufficiently represented the conditions present at the time of the actual tragedy, it was impossible to judge. The dummy was artificially manipulated in the model shaft, while it was presumed that the push of the current in the Cwyll had driven Hayes into contact with the point of the gaff jammed there.

But, however partial, or incomplete, the experiments from an ideal point of view, they struck the Chief Constable as being good enough to destroy the body of slender circumstantial evidence against Mrs. Hayes. The prosecution would have to deal with a jury not versed in the niceties of scientific deduction and probably influenced in the prisoner’s favour by the evil character of the dead man. He did not believe they would get a verdict, and intended to make representations to the Crown Prosecutor’s office to that effect.

“I must thank you for your assistance which was very public-spirited,” he told Joan and as the men began to dismantle the rough apparatus. “I cannot tell you yet how the authorities will regard this, but I can congratulate you on having done something to strengthen the case for the defence. And that is not the kind of congratulation I usually have to offer,” he added with a smile.

Joan felt sure from his manner, and the tone in which he said this, that he had begun to believe in Mrs. Hayes’s innocence. Bow had the same idea. His face lit up, and he shook hands with the Chief Constable and the Inspector with the greatest goodwill, before hurrying after Joan and Harry Wint, who had set off for the place where the bus would start for Pengellert.

“You ought to get a reward for this,” he said to them when he caught them up. “If either of you needed it, I would go a long way to see that you got it.”

Joan smiled. “We felt that, too, but, as neither of us cared to go to the authorities for a reward, we decided to reward each other— and that was really your work too.”

He smiled, but looked puzzled. “Mine? What do you mean?”

Joan grinned. “I had to propose to Mr. Wint yesterday before I could get him to see that we were wasting our young lives in single cursedness, Mr. Bow.”

“Oh, come!” Wint cried. “I made you take it back, didn’t I, and completed the job properly myself.”

“I congratulate you both very heartily,” said Bow, holding out his hand, “but still I fail to see what I did.”

“You were at once a good and bad example, Mr. Bow. Your devotion turned our young minds to thoughts of love, and your delay in securing your own happiness told us that we were losing time, too. Now, I have spoken like a book, haven’t I?”

“A copy-book,” said Wint. “I like your rounded phrases, and feel that you have been at Jane Austin again.”

“Abandoning sensibility for good sense,” said Joan. “Well, that’s the last chapter of our criminal history, I hope. We are going back to town to-morrow, to alarm our parents— at least, mine— with news of the move.”

“I am sure they will be very pleased,” said Bow, laughing.

“Dad won’t remember for fifteen minutes, and my mother is on so many committees that I should have to pose as a charity to get any attention,” said Joan.

“Do you go back to town, too?”

He nodded. “I think I shall. I had better see my lawyers again, and have the news of these experiments passed on to Tregaskin. He’ll be better able to assess the value of these experiments than I am.”

Hoad was waiting anxiously outside the hotel when the party returned. Wint’s snubs had not inclined him to encourage others by a show of curiosity, but his eagerness was too great now to allow him to keep silent.

“What happened, Mr. Wint?” he asked, as they got down from the country bus.

Wint took pity on him at last. “We’ll tell you when we come down in a few minutes, Hoad,” he said. “If you can wait till then.”

Hoad shrugged resentfully at the last dig. “Are they really going to try Mrs. Hayes before a judge?” he demanded. “I feel responsible for bringing her here. I do indeed! I wish you would tell me.”

Joan touched him gently on the shoulder. “I shouldn’t worry any more, if I were you. We can’t tell for certain, of course, but we think the police will drop the case very soon.”

“And not charge anyone else with the murder?”

She nodded. “If they drop it, it is because there was no murder, Mr. Hoad,” she said, and ran indoors after Bow and Wint, who had slipped away.

Hoad’s expression changed as he stood there, staring at the doorway through which Joan had vanished. His face cleared, the wrinkles of perplexity on his brows smoothed away, and the harassed look which had been in his eyes for many days gave place to a look of relief mingled with wonder.

“No murder?” he said to himself. “I wonder what she meant?”

But there was no answer to that till the three came down again, so he entered the hotel once more, and turning into the billiards-room, began to knock the balls about in a desultory way.

It seemed to him that he had done no harm to anyone, after all. It was even a question if he could hold himself responsible for Blodwen Tysin’s suicide. For that had been the thing that worried Hoad all along. Just as a morbid character may commit a crime for the sake of notoriety, so young Hoad had suffered the most enjoyable agonies by his egotistical determination to believe himself at the bottom of half the trouble.

He wondered now if he would get half the “kick” out of finding his character rehabiliated in the eyes of his fellow-guests.

Chapter 29

Happy Release

THERE WAS some relief in the office of the Public Prosecutor when it was eventually decided that the case against Mrs. Hayes, on a charge of murdering her husband, was to be withdrawn, and she was released on bail, with the knowledge that it was only a matter of waiting for a few days before the prosecution formally freed her.

The department had agreed that the case against her was sufficient to go to a jury in the first instance, but they had not been at all sure of obtaining a verdict, and the result of the experiments at Cwyll, submitted to them with a covering letter from the Chief Constable, destroyed any hopes there had been in that direction.

A memory of one or two convictions, which had lately been quashed by higher courts and created some public uneasiness, added to their relief at abandoning the charge.

Then Mrs. Hayes, appealed to by Bow, had stated that she was not aware that her husband had any tendency to faint or had noticed in him any suggestion of ill-health. He never had a day in bed, and appeared to be always extremely healthy and robust.

“An unlikely thing for her to say, if she were guilty,” said a young lawyer in the department. “The value of this new evidence— the experiments, and so on— lies in the point that the man took ill and fell in. It was to her interest as the murderess to say that he was subject to fits or faintness.”

“It would have been, if she had no family doctor,” said the man to whom he spoke. “You forget that the local medico would have been asked by us for his opinion.”

“As he never had a day’s illness, I assume that he never called in the doctor,” said the lawyer acidly. “In any case, many a man has a faint now and then without consulting his doctor about it.”

“They might alarm him.”

“Some men are least likely to go to the doctor when a symptom alarms them, my dear fellow. Ask any doctor you know. He’ll tell you that the fear of having something serious keeps lots of men from him until it is too late. No. Mrs. Hayes is either uncommonly subtle, or as innocent as you and I.”

“I don’t believe for a moment that she did it.”

Edward Bow, unhappily, was not so sure. When he met Mrs. Hayes on her release, he spoke of his doubts, with as much daring as trepidation.

“You were lucky, Caroline,” he said to her, when they had driven to a little country town and ordered lunch in the empty coffee-room of a small hotel. “I don’t blame you, of course, but I trembled all the time for fear you would make some mistake.”

Caroline Hayes stared at him. “You never thought I did it, Ned?”

He surveyed her steadily. “What other conclusion could I come to?”

She met his eyes as steadily. “But you told me all along that you were sure I never killed him.”

He nodded. “My dear, what was I to say? Your safety depended all along on your not getting rattled. I knew very well that, if I seemed to doubt your innocence, you could hardly have kept it up. The mere recollection that you would have to play a part before me, knowing that I knew, would have broken you down. That’s elementary psychology, I think.”

She bit her lip. “Ned, don’t make me lose faith in you, will you? And don’t lose faith in me. What would my love be if I let you marry me, when I murdered my husband? And what kind of man should I think you if you were willing to marry me, believing that I murdered him?”

He stared now. “Murder him? I never suggested that, my dear.”

“Then it’s a joke, Ned,” she replied. “I don’t know that I like that, either. And it’s not like you.”

“Joke? Why, Caroline, I thought you had killed him, not murdered him. There’s all the difference in the world.”

Her expression changed again. “I knew you couldn’t say, or mean, such a cruel thing, Ned,” she returned earnestly. “But did you really think I killed him?”

Her sincerity convinced him at last that she was speaking the truth.

“Did I? Of course. That was what gave me the greatest fear. If I could have felt convinced that you had not gone down to that pool when he was there, I shouldn’t have worried to the same extent. Naturally, I thought you had come on him with that girl, and followed him down to the bank when she went home.”

“And struck him with the gaff?”

“Yes. I could not explain exactly what had happened, and I dare not ask you, for the reasons I have already given. But I took it that you had either found a gaff, or that Hayes had picked up one on the bank— Wint’s, very likely, in spite of what the police said. I took it that your blow must have been in self-defence, and forgetting the hook at the end of the handle. A man of Hayes’s type, caught as I assumed he was, would be furious at the exposure, and lose his temper and his head at once.”

Caroline smiled at last. “My dear Ned, I forgive you for saying what you did. But it’s too absurd that you should have even thought it. In my last statement to the Inspector I told him the exact truth about my movements that night. But surely you must have realised that when you heard Miss Powis’s theory, and saw the experiments?”

“No, I am afraid they did not convince me; partly, no doubt, because I felt sure you had accidentally killed Hayes. I took it that human flesh is a great deal tougher than straw wrapped up in muslin. And I saw that the policeman turned the dummy figures about several times before the gaff came unstuck. Now that I know the truth, of course, there is no longer any doubt in my mind. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know that Hayes actually died by accident.”

“If it hadn’t been for Miss Powis, you would have gone on believing it.”

“Don’t be too hard on me, Carrie,” he said. “I believed nothing ill against you. If I killed a man with a blow I did not intend should kill him, I would not think of myself as a murderer. And I was determined that nothing I did or said should hamper you, and lead to our being charged with murder.”

She held out her hand. “Don’t think any more of it, Ned. Life’s too short to spare some of it for unnecessary arguments. You believed in me, and now there is no one between us any longer— except Father Time, old boy.”

“He’s with us both, so that squares out, Carrie,” he returned. “Can you make it three months hence instead of six?”

Chapter 30

Parfitt Moves

INSPECTOR IVOR PARFITT was a methodical and conscientious man. He had joined, to the best of his ability, in making the experiments in the quarry at Cwyll; he had given his official, if unasked, approval to the release of Mrs. Hayes; and convinced himself that the lady was innocent of the crime.

But for several weeks he had been making some experiments on his own account— experiments which required time for their completion, and were utterly useless if rushed.

Once a day he repaired to an attic in his house, and inspected the contents of a large zinc bath, into which he had been careful to pour some gallons of water from the river Cwyll, and each successive visit filled his mind with triumph, though it appeared to make him melancholy as well.

The policeman has to do many things that conflict with his innate, if unofficial, sense of justice, and this was one of them. He had always felt since the tragedy that Hayes’s death was one of those events which should slip into oblivion; unwept, unsung, and unpunished. The dead man had been a terrible blackguard, and his death was richly deserved. It should have been allowed to rest there, but Parfitt’s official conscience had the best of it, and he was doing his utmost at the moment to outrage his private feelings in the cause of abstract justice.

At the end of three weeks he had a conference with the Chief Constable, Mr. Rigby, which lasted for many hours, but ended in a warrant being issued.

“Now it’s up to you, Parfitt,” said his superior, when the conferences had ended. “I think I must get you this warrant, but I warn you that your name is mud if you don’t pull it off. You’re a clever fellow and a good officer, but I doubt if you will convince the Public Prosecutor that you can prove your case.”

Parfitt was stubborn. “I’ll do it, sir! It’s no fun to me, but it’s my job to clear the murder up, and I am obliged to you for permission to go on.”

Davis was sitting in his cottage, gloomily fitting a new ring to his salmon-rod, when the shadow of Inspector Parfitt fell across his threshold. He rose, forced a smile, and spoke.

“When are you going to let me have my new gaff back, Inspector?” he asked. “Haven’t got it with you, I see.”

Parfitt came in and shut the door behind him. “Got your winter fuel in yet, Davis?” he asked.

Davis looked at him. “I’m glad you’ve come, Inspector,” he said slowly and surprisingly. “I had almost made up my mind to come to you, one of these days.”

“Ah, you had?” said Parfitt, sitting down and taking the warrant from his pocket. “Then I’m going to warn you, Davis, before you get any further. It’s not a nice job, but, if there is anything takes the sting out of it, it is that you let that lady be taken for it. Now I warn you that anything you say may be used against you in evidence hereafter, and I propose to read this warrant, charging you with the murder of Mr. Hayes—”

And he went on to read the warrant, while Davis looked at him with weary but steady eyes.

“I’m glad you came,” he repeated when the officer had made an end. “I thought I could stick it, but I couldn’t. Indeed, I thought I could live on without her, but I can’t. Not that she ever gave me anything. But it was something to know she was up there, though she never gave much of a thought to me down here.”

“They mayn’t hang you,” said Parfitt. “There’s manslaughter as well as murder, Davis. And you’d better see a lawyer. He’ll probably advise you to plead not guilty— that’s between you and me.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Davis. “But I would rather be hanged. The days are too long here. They’d be hell in gaol. I—”

“Don’t incriminate yourself Davis,” said Parfitt. “Any statement will and must be purely voluntary, and of course I may take it if you insist. But I am bound to tell you what are your rights in this case.”

Davis nodded, and appeared to reflect for a few minutes.

“You’re a fair man, Inspector. I will say that. Do you mind if I just say what I felt about the lady? Look you, sir, I would not like her to think I would have stood by and seen anything happen to her. I knew she was innocent, and I never believed they would do anything to her. But I was wrong whatever I did, and if I’d known the hell it was to be, I’d have stood up before and said the truth. Only it did seem hard that I should be hanged for killing a vermin like that. There’s keepers with doors nailed all over with less vermin than Hayes, and no one to blame them.”

Parfitt in his heart subscribed to every word of that, but he was an officer carrying out a law that admits of no private vengeance, and he said nothing.

Davis got up and took his hat from a peg. “How did you come on it, may I ask?” he demanded.

“That beats me— unless it was the bit of pine.”

Parfitt nodded. “You couldn’t think of everything in a hurry, Davis, and that was it, mostly. You remember that you spoke of the log that you got fouled in your old gaff? Well, you said it sank. It was sodden and heavy. It wouldn’t dry much in the tunnel under the water.”

“I looked at you when the gentleman found it,” said Davis, “but I thought you never saw. Yes, indeed, that was my thought.”

Parfitt looked down at his feet. “Then there was the gaff hook itself, Davis. There was very little rust on it when it was found.”

“It wasn’t that gaff I had when I killed him.”

“I know. It was the long-handled one you got from the postman. But the other would have had more rust on it if it had been in the water since the spring, Davis. I tested that in Cwyll water.”

Davis smiled a melancholy smile. “I hadn’t time for it, sir, as you know. You can’t hasten rust. When I heard that Mr. Rigby over there was telling a story of a salmons that ran off with a gaff, I thought of a bit of pit-prop I had here for firing. That would be as good as a salmons to run off with my gaff.”

Parfitt nodded. “I thought it was mad, putting that about. It sounded as if it might give someone an idea for covering up. But you’re making a statement, Davis. Better sit down and I’ll take it down, if you insist.”

“No. I’ll give it all at Cwyll. I’m just telling you now what a man might have done,” Davis replied with a wintry smile, leaning against the doorpost. “He might have an old gaff, not the one he did it with— for he would clean that, and see that there were no traces on it— but an old one he had put away and no one looked for.”

“That was a mistake of ours,” said Parfitt, watching him.

“May be it was. But this man would go down one night to the river, when the police were taken off. He would know the river as well as his hand, look you. He would go down and fix that log with the gaff stuck in it in the hole where they’d found Hayes. That water would have pushed it down in spite of him, perhaps.”

“Into the pool below, sir? Perhaps that was what he wanted done, for no one could say that it hadn’t come out of the hole lately.”

“Yes, yes. That was his thought. No doubt he would be an uneducated man, and never think how the death could be an accident. Most likely he thought of the lady, who was in gaol because they thought she had used a gaff on Hayes.”

Parfitt had not expected that. He had believed that Davis was cunning enough to fake an accident at the river, but he was convinced now of the man’s sincerity.

“Then he would be pleased when the police made the experiments, and thought Hayes might not have been murdered, after all.”

Davis shook his head. “Indeed, for a little, sir, he was fool enough to be pleased. Life’s got more of a hold on us than we think. Yes, that’s very strange altogether. It didn’t last long. He’d have come along one of these days, if you had waited.”

Parfitt was not an emotional man, but he bit his lip now, and stood up to cut the thing short. There was a gun hanging over the chimneypiece, and he was glad that he stood between it and Davis, who had eyed it once or twice in the last minute. As the man lived alone, and there were no children about, it was probably loaded.

“Well, we must be going, Davis,” he said. “I have my combination on the road. I’ll take your arm.”

Davis looked gloomy at that, but he let the Inspector approach and link his arm in his, and they went together out of the cottage and towards the road.

“Open this gate,” said Parfitt, still holding him in a grip that was light, but could tighten in a fraction of a second. “I’m not putting the handcuffs on you, because I believe you’ll come quietly.”

Davis said nothing to that, but opened the gate, and they both went out on to the road.

Suddenly Parfitt drew him a little to one side. A large and fast car was coming up at speed.

The movement was almost fatal to his plans. With extraordinary agility Davis crooked a leg behind his and gave him a shove that sent him reeling into the hedge. Almost simultaneously, he threw himself in the tracks of the car.

But his attempt at self-immolation was not to be. Parfitt’s cycle and sidecar stood at the other side of the road, and the motorist, seeing the narrow road further constricted by the men emerging from the gate, put on his powerful brakes, reinforcing them with a crash and squeal of the hand-brake as he saw Davis plunge forward.

The car slewed round under that furious braking, and thrust her nose almost into the hedge. The motorist swore, red in the face with rage and fright. Parfitt jumped at Davis and put the handcuffs on him. “Sorry, sir,” he said to the motorist, who was breathing out threatenings and slaughter, “I ought to have held him better.”

“Can I give you a hand?” asked the other, glaring at Davis, who gave back a steady glance.

“No, thank you, sir. Just get on, if you please,” said the Inspector. “Now then, Davis, you must get into the sidecar. No more tricks!”

The motorist got his car straight again, and went off grumbling. Davis did as he was bid.

“I’m sorry I pushed you,” he said in a low voice, “but I thought it was my chance. You don’t blame me?”

“No, I blame myself, Davis. I’m afraid I’ll have to tie you in now. I can’t drive with one hand and hold you with the other.”

“I’ll give you my word— I didn’t give it before.”

Parfitt reflected, then nodded. “It’s up to you.”

It was not what he should have done, but he did it, and was justified.

Davis sat quietly in the sidecar until they reached the door of the police-station. There he got out, and Parfitt took him into the Superintendent’s office.

“Got him?” asked the Superintendent, looking hard at Davis. “You had no trouble?”

“None whatever,” said Parfitt. “He’s volunteered to make a statement. We’ll have the sergeant in, sir, shall we?”

“Yes.” The Superintendent kept his eyes fixed on the man. “Anything you’d like, Davis? A cigarette?”

Davis refused politely. “No, thank you, sir. Nothing. I’m past enjoying a smoke now. I’ve lived too long. I ought to have gone when she did.”

Chapter 31

On the Bank

“I CALL IT BEASTLY!” said Joan Powis, sitting back after she had read the first newspaper account of the “Sensational confession in the Cwyll murder case,” as headlines called it. “He’s quite right, too. It isn’t fair that Hayes should have spoiled his life, and have him hanged for it, too.”

Harry Wint quite agreed with her feelings. “In one sense, yes. But there’s no way out of the dilemma. The unwritten law opens the door to every kind of murderous rascality. At any rate, the poor devil is asking for it. He refuses to have counsel, though I know Bow and Mrs. Hayes have made the offer to get Tregaskin, and done all they could. The death of that girl seems to have finished things for him.”

Joan looked at him. “I wonder do we love like that, Harry? It seems rather wonderful, doesn’t it?”

He looked uncomfortable. “It’s hard to say, my dear. It’s odd, but, somehow, uneducated people seem to take it harder than we do. They go in off the deep end rather.”

“And we have trained and educated all the emotion out of us that we can,” she said softly. “Perhaps it’s better. I don’t know. I don’t want to go back to the primitive, but there is something about it we miss.”

Harry said nothing. There was nothing to say. Joan took up the paper and read again the account of Davis’s confession.

“I suspected they were meeting,” said the journal before her. “I didn’t know what to do at first, since she had not encouraged me. But I thought he was going to destroy her, and I made up my mind to stop him. I had a talk with him. That was the time it was put about that he had a row with me over some trouble about the fishing. I told him I would chuck him in the river, but he said he had nothing to do with Blodwen, only got her to tie flies for him.

“I never thought at first of the tunnel, though I knew he was a liar, and one of the girls up at the hotel said he was making up to a lady there, too. I have killed fish and birds all my life, but I never killed a man till then. I did not want to do it, but it came at last to me destroying her, or me him, as I thought then. I did her a wrong in my mind, which has worried me since. I am not sorry for what I did, but I would not have done it if I had known things right.

“One or two nights I managed to let her think indirectly that I was not fishing, but going down to Cwyll to the pictures. I hid below the bridge on the under side, and she came down in the car and met him. It was the second time that I managed to keep close enough to them in the dark to see that they went into the tunnel. I went there next day and saw that they sat there and had an old cushion from the car.

“My mind was on fire after that, though I had not to show it. I had an idea of shooting him, but that meant hanging, and there was no justice in it. It wasn’t any fair exchange, as I said to myself, for whatever I was, I hadn’t been a brute beast like that man. When I worked over it in my mind, I thought of the gaff. You see, there was a lot of gentlemen from the hotel fished there, and some quarrelled with him. I didn’t want it thought that one of them did it. But it had to be done, and the gaff was the only way I could think of that would look like an accident— or at least at first. After, I saw it would be easier to push him in. Then they’d think he’d slipped.

“On our water, if you are fishing after dark, you find a clear pool, and if it’s too light or early, you put your rod and tackle down on the bank, to show it’s yours. I wanted it known or thought that I was on a pool some distance down from where Hayes always fished. I went down there after sunset, and put my things on the bank of the lowest pool. When it was dark I got ready to sneak up, and then I heard the car coming. Blodwen had that man with her, and they went to the tunnel, for I followed them in the dark. She did not stay long.

“That was the last I wanted to make me ready for him. I had my gaff slung on my back, not having taken it off. He left the tunnel with me on his heels, though he didn’t know it. He made a noise as he went, but I didn’t need light to tread there, and he went down and found his rod where he had dropped it in the morning. But he was not on the bank then. Ten feet back was where he was, and I couldn’t throw him in from there, or have a struggle without leaving marks on the bank.

“I was pretty hot by then, having seen that they went into the tunnel to do some love-making, as I took it. I just unslung the gaff and slipped round between him and the river without making a sound. It was old Tysin’s long-handled gaff I had with me, and I meant to hook him with it and have him in, whatever came of it. But just then I hit a stone with the handle, and he came up to see who it was, startled to know someone was near him, I suppose.

“He said nothing. I didn’t give him time. He was a yard from the bank and me when I made the stroke at him. It swung him round and threw him in, and I pulled him a few yards down to where the hole was in the rocks, and gave a shove to the gaff. I held it in the water after, and then I went home. I forgot my tackle on the pool below, and had to go for it before it got light.

“The gaff showed no traces. I’d been quick putting it in and holding it there. I kept it in the spring, that is just behind the cottage, all night, and dried it before I went out again. My old gaff I hid. I had a notion it would be a help later. That was before I heard of what Blodwen had done to herself. I was cut to the heart by that, but I told myself I could live. She had never let me be anything to her, and I had done my best to save her from that man.

“Funny when I think of it now that I said such nonsense. You don’t live when the best part of you is gone— I want you to put this in, Superintendent. I don’t want to whine, but I should like it known that I felt this more than I looked. I killed Hayes, and will abide by it. That is all I can say.”

Joan put down the paper hurriedly. “Will they hang him, Harry?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Mercifully, I think they will. That’s the only way to look at it. It’s one way out for him.”

And that was what the man himself said to Parfitt when the latter saw him for the last time after the trial.

“I heard you praised in court for what you did, Mr. Parfitt,” he said. “And I said ‘Amen’ to it. I’m glad you were so smart and clever. Put me out of my misery, as many a time I’ve done a rabbit. I’ll shake hands with you, if you’ll let me.”

Parfitt held out his hand, silently.

The End

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31