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

professed to have confessed to everything that had happened, but Rolfe thought it possible he might be able to extract something more which might assist in strengthening what Crewe regarded as the weak points in the police case against Birchill. Rolfe had every justification for such a visit, for, though Hill had not been arrested, he had been ordered by Inspector Chippenfield to report himself daily to the Camden Town Police Station, and the police of that district had been instructed to keep a strict eye on his movements. Inspector Chippenfield did not regard his principal witness in the forthcoming murder trial as the sort of man likely to bolt, but if he permitted him for politic reasons to retain his liberty, he took every precaution to ensure that Hill should not abuse his privilege.

Rolfe lived in lodgings at King's Cross, and, as the evening was fine and he was fond of exercise, he decided to walk across to Hill's place.

As he walked along his thoughts revolved round the murder of Sir Horace Fewbanks, and the baffling perplexities which had surrounded its elucidation. Had they got hold of the right man—the real murderer—in Fred Birchill? Rolfe kept asking himself that question again and again. A few hours ago he had not the slightest doubt on the point; he had looked upon the great murder case as satisfactorily solved, and he had thought with increasing satisfaction of his own share in bringing the murderer to justice. He had anticipated newspaper praise on his sharpness: judicial commendation, a favourable official entry in the departmental records of Scotland Yard, with perhaps promotion for the good work he had accomplished in this celebrated case. These rosy visions had been temporarily dissipated by the conversation he had had with Crewe that morning. If Crewe had not succeeded in destroying Rolfe's conviction that the murderer of Sir Horace Fewbanks had been caught, he had pointed out sufficient flaws in the police case to shake Rolfe's previous assurance of the legal conviction of Birchill for the crime. The way in which Crewe had pulled the police case to pieces had shown Rolfe that the conviction of Birchill was by no means a foregone conclusion, and had left him a prey to doubts and anxiety which Inspector Chippenfield's subsequent depreciation of the detective's views had not altogether removed.

The little shop kept by the Hills was empty when Rolfe entered it, but Mrs. Hill appeared from the inner room in answer to his knock. The faded little woman did not recognise the police officer at first, but when he spoke she looked into his face with a start. She timidly said, in reply to his inquiry for her husband, that he had just "stepped out" down the street.

"Then you had better send your little girl after him," said Rolfe, seating himself on the one rickety chair on the outside of the counter. "I want to see him."

Mrs. Hill seemed at a loss to reply for a moment. Then she answered, nervously plucking at her apron the while: "I don't think it'd be much use doing that, sir. You see, Mr. Hill doesn't always tell me where he's going and I don't really know where he is."

"Then why did you tell me that he had just stepped out down the street?" asked Rolfe sharply.

"Because I thought he mightn't be far away."

"Then, as a matter of fact, you don't know where he is or when he'll be back?"

"No, sir."

Her prompt and uncompromising reply indicated that she did not want him to wait for her husband.

"I think I'll wait," said Rolfe, looking at her steadily.

"Yes, sir."

Daphne appeared at the door of the parlour which led into the shop and her mother waved her back angrily.

"Go to bed this instant, miss; it's long past your bedtime," she said.

It was obvious that Mrs. Hill retained a vivid recollection of how disastrous had been Daphne's appearance during Inspector Chippenfield's first visit to the shop.

"Perhaps your little girl knows where her father is," said Rolfe maliciously.

"No, she doesn't," replied Mrs. Hill with some spirit. "You can ask her if you like."

Rolfe was suddenly struck with an idea and he decided to test it.

"I won't wait—I've changed my mind. But if your husband comes in tell him not to go to bed until I've seen him. I'll be back."

"Yes, sir," she replied.

"Do you think he was going to Riversbrook?" he asked.

The woman flushed suddenly and then went pale. She knew as well as Rolfe that her husband was strictly forbidden, pending the trial, to go near the place of his former employment, and that the police had relieved him of his keys and taken possession of the silent house and locked everything up.

"No, sir," she replied, with trembling lips, "Mr. Hill hasn't gone over there."

"How can you be certain, if he didn't tell you where he was going?" asked Rolfe.

"Because it's the last place in the world he'd think of going to," gasped Mrs. Hill. "Such a thought would never enter his head. I do assure you, sir, Mr. Hill would never dream of going over there, sir, you can take my word for it."

Rolfe walked thoughtfully up High Street. Was it possible that Hill had gone to his late master's residence in defiance of the orders of the police? If so, only some very powerful motive, and probably one which affected the crime, could have induced him to risk his liberty by making such a visit after he had been commanded to keep away from the place. And how would he get into the house? Rolfe had himself locked up the house and had locked the gates, and the bunch of keys was at that moment hanging up in Inspector Chippenfield's room in Scotland Yard. But even as he asked that question, Rolfe found himself smiling at himself for his simplicity. Nothing could be easier for a man like Hill—an ex-criminal—to have obtained a duplicate key, before handing over possession of the keys. Rolfe had noticed with surprise when he was locking up the house that the French windows of the morning room were locked from the outside by a small key as well as being bolted from the inside. Hill had explained that the late Sir Horace Fewbanks had generally used this French window for gaining access to his room after a nocturnal excursion.

Rolfe looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. He decided to go to Hampstead and put his suspicions to the test. It was quite possible he was mistaken, but if, on the other hand, Hill was paying a nocturnal visit to Riversbrook and he had the luck to capture him, he might extract from him some valuable evidence for the forthcoming trial that Hill had kept back. And Rolfe was above all things interested at that moment in making the case for the prosecution as strong as possible.

Rolfe walked to the Camden Town Underground station, bought a ticket for Hampstead, and took his seat in the tube in that state of exhilarated excitement which comes to the detective when he feels that he is on the road to a disclosure. The speed of the train seemed all too slow for the police officer, and he looked at his watch at least a dozen times during the short journey from Camden Town to Hampstead.

When Rolfe arrived at Hampstead he set out at a rapid walk for Riversbrook. It was quite dark when he reached Tanton Gardens. He turned into the rustling avenue of chestnut trees, and strode swiftly down till he reached the deserted house of the murdered man.

The gate was locked as he had left it, but Rolfe climbed over it. A late moon was already throwing a refulgent light through the evening mists, silvering the tops of the fir trees in front of the house. Rolfe walked through the plantation, his footsteps falling noiselessly on the pine needles which strewed the path. He quickly reached the other side of the little wood, and the Italian garden lay before him, stretching in silver glory to the dark old house beyond.

Rolfe stood still at the edge of the wood, and glanced across the moonlit garden to the house. It seemed dark, deserted and desolate. There was no sign of a light in any of the windows facing the plantation.

The moon, rising above the fringe of trees in the woodland which skirted the meadows of the east side of the house, cast a sudden ray athwart the upper portion of the house. But the windows of the retreating first story still remained in shadow. Rolfe scrutinised these windows closely. There were three of them—he knew that two of them opened out from the bedroom the dead man used to occupy, and the third one belonged to the library adjoining—the room where the murder had been committed. The moonlight, gradually stealing over the house, revealed the windows of the bedroom closed and the blinds down, but the library was still in shadow, for a large chestnut-tree which grew in front of the house was directly in the line of Rolfe's vision.

Rolfe remained watching the house for some time, but no sign or sound of life could he detect in its silent desolation. "I must have been mistaken," he muttered, with a final glance at the windows of the first story. "There's nobody in the house."

He turned to go, and had taken a few steps through the pinewood when suddenly he started and stood still. His quick ear had caught a faint sound—a kind of rattle—coming from the direction of the house. What was that noise which sounded so strangely familiar to his ears? He had it! It was the fall of a Venetian blind. Instantaneously there came to Rolfe the remembrance that Inspector Chippenfield had ordered the library blind to be left up, so that when the sun was high in the heavens its rays, striking in through the window over the top of the chestnut-tree, might dry up the stain of blood on the floor, which washing had failed to efface. Somebody was in the library and had dropped the blind.

Rolfe hurriedly retraced his steps to the edge of the plantation, and raced across the Italian garden, feeling for his revolver as he ran. Some instinct told him that he would find entrance through the French windows on the west side of the morning room, and thither he directed his steps. He pulled out his electric torch and tried the windows. They were shut, and the first one was locked. The second one yielded to his hand. He pulled it open, and stepped into the room. Making his way by the light of his torch to the stairs, he swiftly but silently crept up them and turned to the library on the left of the first landing. The door was closed but not locked, and a faint light came through the keyhole. Rolfe pushed the door open, and looked into the room. A man was leaning over the dead judge's writing-desk, examining its contents by the light of a candle which he had set down on the desk. He was so engrossed in his occupation that he did not hear the door open.

"What are you doing there?" demanded Rolfe sternly. His voice sounded hollow and menacing as it reverberated through the room.

The man at the desk started up, and turned round. It was Hill. When he saw Rolfe he looked as though he would fall. He made as if to step forward. Then he stood quite still, looking at the officer with ashen face.

"Hill," said Rolfe quietly, "what does this mean?"

The butler had regained his self-composure with wonderful quickness. The mask of reticence dropped over his face again, and it was in the smooth deferential tones of a well-trained servant that he replied:

"Nothing, sir, I just slipped over from the shop to see if everything was all right."

"How did you get into the house?"

"By the French window, sir. I had a duplicate key which Sir Horace had made."

"And I see you also have a duplicate key of the desk. Why didn't you give these keys up with the others to Inspector Chippenfield?"

"I forgot about them at the time, sir. I found them in an old pocket this evening, and I was so uneasy about the house shut up with a lot of valuable things in it and nobody to give an eye to them that I just slipped across to see everything was all right."

"You came here after dark, and let yourself in with a private key after you had been strictly ordered not