The Hampstead Mystery, John R. Watson [best ereader for academics txt] 📗

I'd met in prison, and he was in the cell next to me. How he'd got on my tracks I had no idea, but I seemed to see all my new life falling to pieces now he knew. I'd tried to run straight since I served my sentence, and I knew Sir Horace would stand to me, but he couldn't afford to have any scandal about it, and I knew that if there was any possibility of my past becoming known I should have to leave his employ. And then there was my poor wife and child, and this little business, sir. Nothing was known about my past here. So I determined to go and see this Birchill, sir. The address she had given me was in Westminster, and, as my time was practically my own when Sir Horace wasn't home, I went down that same evening, and when I got up the flight of stairs and knocked at the door it was a woman's voice that said 'Come in,' I thought I recognised the voice. When I opened the door, you can imagine my surprise when I saw the young woman to be Doris Fanning, who had had the quarrel with Sir Horace that night and had brought me the note that morning. Birchill was sitting in a corner of the room, with his feet on another chair, smoking a pipe. 'Come in, No. 21,' he says, with an unpleasant smile, 'come in and see an old friend. Put a chair for him, Doris, and leave the room.'

"The girl did so, and as soon as the door was closed behind her Birchill turned round to me and burst out, 'Hill, that damned employer of yours has served me a nasty trick, but I'm going to get even with him, and you're going to help me!' I was taken back at his words, but I wanted to hear more before I spoke. Then he told me that the young woman I had seen had been brutally treated by Sir Horace. She had been living in a little flat in Westminster on a monthly allowance which Sir Horace made her, but he'd suddenly cut off her allowance and she'd have to be turned out in the street to starve because she couldn't pay her rent. 'A nice thing,' said Birchill fiercely, 'for this high-placed loose liver to carry on like this with a poor innocent girl whose only fault was that she loved him too well. If I could show him up and pull him down, I would. But I've done time, like you, Hill. He was the judge who sentenced me, and if I tried to injure him that way my word would carry no weight; but I'll put up a job on him that'll make him sorry the longest day he lives, and you'll help me. Sir Horace is in Scotland, Hill, and you're in charge of his place. Get rid of the servants, Hill, and we'll burgle his house. We can easily do it between us.'"

At this stage of his narrative, Hill stopped and looked anxiously at his audience as though to gather some idea of their feelings before he proceeded further. But Inspector Chippenfield, with a fierce stare, merely remarked:

"And you consented?"

"I didn't at first," Hill retorted earnestly, "but when I refused he threatened me—threatened that he'd expose me and drag me and my wife and child down to poverty. I pleaded with him, but it was of no use, and at last I had to consent. I had some hope that in doing so I might find an opportunity to warn Sir Horace, but Birchill did not give me a chance. He insisted that the burglary should take place without delay. All I was to do was to give him a plan of the house, explain where to find the most valuable articles that had been left there, and wait for him at the flat while he committed the burglary. His idea in making me wait for him at the flat was to make sure that I didn't play him false—put the double on him, as he called it—and he told the girl not to let me out of her sight till he came back, if anything went wrong I should have to pay for it when he came back.

"In accordance with Sir Horace's instructions, I sent the servants off to his country estate. It had been arranged that Birchill was to wait for me to come over to the flat on the 18th of August, the night fixed for the burglary. But about 7 o'clock, while I was at Riversbrook, I heard the noise of wheels outside, and looking out, I saw to my dismay Sir Horace getting out of a taxi-cab with a suit-case in his hand. My first impulse was to tell him everything—indeed, I think that if I had had a chance I would have—but he came in looking very severe, and without saying a word about why he had returned from Scotland, said very sharply, 'Hill, have the servants been sent down to the country, as I directed?' I told him that they had. 'Very good,' he said, 'then you go away at once, I won't want you any more. I want the house to myself to-night.' 'Sir Horace,' I began, trembling a little, but he stopped me. 'Go immediately,' he said; 'don't stand there,' And he said it in such a tone that I was glad to go. There was something in his look that frightened me that night. I got across to Birchill's place and found him and the girl waiting for me. I told him what had happened, and begged him to give up the idea of the burglary. But he'd been drinking heavily, and was in a nasty mood. First he said I'd been playing him false and had warned Sir Horace, but when I assured him that I hadn't he insisted on going to commit the burglary just the same. With that he pulled out a revolver from his pocket, and swore with an oath that he'd put a bullet through me when he came back if I'd played him false and put Sir Horace on his guard, and that he'd put a bullet in the old scoundrel—meaning Sir Horace—if he interrupted him while he was robbing the house.

"He sat there, cursing and drinking, till he fell asleep with his head on the table, snoring. I sat there not daring to breathe, hoping he'd sleep till morning, but Miss Fanning woke him up about nine, and he staggered to his feet to get out, with his revolver stuck in his coat pocket. He was away over three hours and the girl and I sat there without saying a word, just looking at each other and waiting for a clock on the mantelpiece to chime the quarters. It was a cuckoo clock, and it had just chimed twelve when we heard a quick step coming upstairs to the flat. The girl fixed her big dark eyes inquiringly on me, and then we heard a hoarse whisper through the keyhole telling us to open the door.

"The girl ran to the door and let him in, but she shrieked at the sight of him when she saw him in the light. For he looked ghastly, and there was a spot of blood on his face, and his hands were smeared with it. He was shaking all over, and he went to the whisky bottle and drained the drop of spirit he'd left in it. Then he turned to us and said, 'Sir Horace Fewbanks is dead—murdered!' I suppose he read what he saw in our eyes, for he burst out angrily, 'Don't stand staring at me like a pair of damned fools. You don't think I did it? As God's my judge, I never did it. He was dead and stiff when I got there.'

"Then he told us his story of what had happened. He said that when he got to Riversbrook there was a light in the library and he got over the fence and hid himself in the garden. Then he noticed that there was a light in the hall and that the hall door was open. He thought Sir Horace had left it open by mistake, and he was going to creep into the house and hide himself there till after Sir Horace went to bed. But suddenly the light in the library went out and Birchill again hid behind a tree, for he thought Sir Horace was retiring for the night. Then the light in the hall went out and immediately after Birchill heard the hall door being closed. Then he heard a step on the gravel path and saw a woman walking quickly down the path to the gate. She was a well-dressed woman, and Birchill naturally thought that she was one of Sir Horace's lady friends. But he thought it odd that Sir Horace, who was always a very polite gentleman to the ladies, should not have shown her off the premises. He waited in the garden about half an hour, and as everything in the house seemed quite still, he made his way to a side window and forced it open. He had an electric torch with him, and he used this to find his way about the house. First of all, he wanted to find out in which room Sir Horace was sleeping, and he knew from the plan he'd made me draw for him which was Sir Horace's bedroom, so he went there and opened the door quietly and listened. But he could not hear anyone breathing. Then he tried some of the other rooms and turned on his torch, but could see no one. He thought that perhaps Sir Horace had fallen asleep in a chair in the library, and he went there. He listened at the door but could hear no sound. Then he turned on his torch and by its light he saw a dreadful sight. Sir Horace was lying huddled up near the desk—dead—just dead, he thought, because there were little bubbles of blood on his lips as if they had been blown there when breathing his last. He didn't wait to see any more, but he turned and ran out of the house.

"I didn't believe his story, though Miss Fanning did, but he stuck to it and seemed so frightened that I thought there might be something in it till he brought out that he'd lost his revolver somewhere. Then I remembered the horrid threats he'd used against Sir Horace, and I was convinced that he had committed the murder. But of course I dared not let him think I suspected him, and I pretended to console him. But the feeling that kept running through my head was that both of us would be suspected of the murder.

"I told this to Birchill, and that frightened him still more. 'What are we to do?' he kept saying. 'We shall both be hanged.' Then, after a while, we recovered ourselves a bit and began to look at it from a more common-sense point of view. Nobody knew about Birchill's visit to the house except our two selves and the girl, and there was no reason why anybody should suspect us as long as we kept that knowledge to ourselves. Birchill's idea, after we'd talked this over, was that I should go quietly home to bed, and pay a visit to Riversbrook on Friday as usual, discover Sir Horace Fewbanks's body, and then tell the police. But I didn't like to do that for two reasons. I didn't think that my nerves would be in a fit state to tell the police how I found the body without betraying to them that I knew something about it; and I couldn't bear to think of Sir Horace's body lying neglected all alone in that empty house till the following day—though I kept that reason to myself.

"It was the girl who hit on the idea of sending a letter to the police. She said that it would be the best thing to do, because if they were informed and went to the house and discovered the body it wouldn't be so difficult for me to face them afterwards. I agreed to that, and so did Birchill, who was very frightened in case I might give anything away, and consented on that account. The girl showed us how to write the letter, too—she said she'd often heard of anonymous letters being written that way—and she brought out three different pens and a bottle of ink and a writing pad. After we'd agreed what to write, she showed us how to do it, each one printing a letter on