Hag's Nook

Chapter 16

"I don't think he's dead," said Rampole, going down on his knees beside the flattened figure of the butler. "Buck up, please! Hold your light down here while I roll him over. Where the devil is what's-his-name-Sir Benjamin?"

Budge was lying on his side, one hand still stretched out. His hat was crushed along one side with an almost rakish effect, and his respectable black coat had burst a button. Tugging at the dead weight, Rampole wrenched him over.

The face was like dough and the eyes were closed, but he was breathing. Since the wound was high along the left breast, blood had begun to soak through.

"Halloa!" Rampole shouted. "Halloa, there! Where are you?"

He lifted his head to glance at the girl. He could not see her distinctly; she was looking away, but the light did not waver much.

There was a crackling in the bushes. Sir Benjamin, his cap crushed down like a gangster in a motion picture, pushed through. His long arms dangled out of his sleeves, and you could see the freckles against the muddy pallor of his face.

"He — he got away," the chief constable said rather hoarsely. "I don't know who he was. I don't even know what happened. Who's this?"

"Look at him," said Rampole. "He must have tried to stop… the other one. Didn't you hear the shot? For God's sake let's get him to your car and down to the village. Take his feet, will you? — I'll get his head. Try not to jolt him."

It was a heavy weight. It had a habit of sagging between them, as when two people try to move a large mattress. Rampole found his chest tight and his muscles aching. They staggered through the scratching arms of bushes, and out across the long slope to where Sir Benjamin's Daimler was parked in the road.

"You'd better stay here on guard," the chief constable said, when they had steadied Budge in the tonneau. "Miss Starberth, will you ride in to Dr. Markley's with me and hold him on the rear seat? Thank you. Steady, now, while I turn round."

The last sight Rampole had was of her holding Budge's head in her lap as the motor churned into life, and the big headlamps swung. When he turned to go back towards the prison, he found he was so weak that he had to lean against the fence. His brain, tired and stupid, moved round like a creaky wheel. So there he was, clinging to the fence in the clear moonlight, and still holding Budge's crushed hat in one hand.

He glanced at it, dully, and let it fall. Herbert Starberth

A light was coming closer. Dr. Fell's bulk waddled above the grey meadow.

"Halloa there!" the doctor called, poking his chins forward. He came up and put his hand on Rampole's shoulder. "Good man," he said after a pause. "Well? What happened? Who was hurt?"

The doctor tried to speak levelly, but his voice grew high. He went on:

"I saw most of it from the balcony. I saw him run, and called out, and then I thought he fired at somebody… "

Rampole put a hand to his head. "That butler fellow — what's his name-Budge. He must have been watching us from the wood. God knows why. I'd just hoisted him — you know, the dead one — over the edge of the well, and I heard you call, and somebody start to run. Budge got in his way, and took it in the chest."

"He isn't-?"

"I don't know," the American answered, despairingly. "He wasn't dead when we put him in the car. They've taken him in to Chatterham."

Both of them stood silent for a while, listening to the crickets. The doctor took a flask from his pocket and held it out. Cherry brandy went down Rampole's throat with a choking bite, and then crawled along his veins in a way that made him shudder.

"You've no idea who the man was?" Dr. Fell asked.

Rampole said, wearily: "Oh, to hell with who it was. I didn't even get a glimpse of him; I just heard him running. I was thinking about what I'd seen down there…. Look here, we'd better get back to the dead one."

"I say, you're shaking. Steady on―"

"Give me a shoulder for a second. Well, it was this way―"

Rampole swallowed again. He felt that his nostrils would never be free of the odour from that well, or from crawling things. Again he saw the rope curling down from the balcony, and felt the stone against his corduroy trousers as he swung himself over the edge.:.

"It was this way," he went on, eagerly. "I didn't have to use the rope very far. About five or six feet down there are stone niches hacked into the side, almost like steps. I'd figured it wouldn't be very far down, because heavy rains might flood out any hiding place Anthony had made. You had to watch yourself, because the niches were slimy; but there was one big stone scraped almost clean. I could see an 'om' and a 'me' cut into a round inscription. The rest was almost obliterated. At first I thought I couldn't move the stone block, but when I braced myself, and tied the rope round my waist, and put the edge of the trench-mattock into the side, I found it was only a thin slab. You could push it in fairly easily, and if you kept it upright there was a hole at one side where you could get in several fingers to pull it back again…. The place was full of water-spiders and rats…."

He shuddered.

"I didn't find a room, or anything elaborate. It was just an opening hollowed out of the flat stones they'd used for the well, and a part of the earth around; and it was half full of water, anyway. Herbert's body had been squeezed into it along the back. The first thing I touched was his hand, and I saw the hole in his head. By the time I had hauled him out I was as wet as he was. He's pretty small, you know, and by keeping the rope tied round my waist to brace me I could hoist him on my shoulder. His clothes were full of some kind of overblown flies, and they crawled on me. As for the rest of it…"

He slapped at himself, and the doctor gripped his arm.

"There wasn't anything else, except — oh yes, I found the handkerchief. It's pretty well rotted, but it belonged to old Timothy; T. S. on the edge, bloody and rolled in one corner. At least, I think it's blood. There were some candle-ends, too, and what looked like burnt matches. But no treasure; not a box, not a scrap. And that's all. It's cold; let me go back and get my coat. There's something inside my collar… "

The doctor gave him another drink of brandy, and they moved on heavy legs towards the Hag's Nook. Herbert Starberth's body lay where Rampole had deposited it beside the well. As they looked down at it under the doctor's light, Rampole kept wiping his hands fiercely up and down the sides of his trousers. Small and doubled, the body had its head twisted on one side, and seemed to be gaping at something it saw along the grass. The cold and damp of the underground niche had acted like an ice-house; though it must have been a week since the bullet had entered his brain, there was no sign of decomposition.

Rampole, feeling as though his brain were full of dull bells, pointed.

"Murder?" he asked.

"Undoubtedly. No weapon, and — you know."

The American spoke words which sounded idiotic even to him in the way he felt. "This has got to stop!" he said, desperately, and clenched his hands. But there was nothing else to say. It expressed everything. He repeated: "This has got to stop, I tell you! Yes, that poor devil of a butler.. or do you suppose he was in on it? I never thought of that."

Dr. Fell shook his head.

"No. No, there is only one man concerned in this. I know who he is."

Leaning against the coping of the well, Rampole groped in his pocket after cigarettes. He lit one with a muddy hand on the match, and even the cigarette smelt of the depths down there. He said:

"Then we're near the end-?"

"We're near the end," said Dr. Fell. "It will come tomorrow, because of a certain telegram." He was silent, meditating, with his light directed away from the body. "It took me a long time to realize it," he added, abruptly.

"There is one man, and only one man, who could have committed these murders. He has killed three men already, and tonight he may have killed a fourth Tomorrow there is an afternoon train arriving from London. We will meet that train. And there will be an end to the murderer."

"Then — the murderer doesn't live here?"

Dr. Fell raised his head. "Don't think about it now, young fellow. Go down to Yew Cottage and get a bath and a change of clothes; you need it. I can watch."

An owl had begun to cry over the Hag's Nook. Rampole moved through the brush, back along the trampled trail where they had carried Budge. He glanced back only once. Dr. Fell had switched off his flashlamp. Against the blue and silver of the moonlight, Dr. Fell was standing motionless, a massive black silhouette with a leonine head, staring down into the well.

Budge was conscious only of dreams and pain. He knew that he was lying on a bed somewhere, with deep pillows under his head. Once he thought he saw a white-lace curtain blowing at a window; he thought that a lamp was reflected in the window-glass, and that somebody was sitting near him, watching.

But he could not be sure. He kept dozing off to sleep, without seeming to be able to move. There were noises like the shiver of beaten gongs. Somebody was arranging a prickly blanket about his neck, though.he felt too hot already. At the touch of the hands he felt terrified, and again he tried to lift his arms without success; the gong-noises and the swing of phantom rooms dissolved in a jerk of pain which ran through him as though it were flowing along his veins. He smelt medicine. He was a boy on a football field, under a dinning of shouts; he was winding clocks and measuring port from a decanter; and then the portrait of old Anthony, from its frame in the gallery at the Hall, leapt out at him. Old Anthony wore a white gardener's glove….

Even as he retreated, he knew that it was not old Anthony. Who was it? Somebody he had seen on the motion picture screen, associated with fighting and gunplay; and a whole genie-bottle of shadowy faces floated past. Nor yet was it any of these, but some person he had known a long time. A familiar face — .

It was bending over him now, in his bed. His scream became a croak.

Impossible that it should be there. He was unhurt, and this was a fancy coloured with the smell of iodoform. The linen of the pillow felt cool and faintly rough to his cheek. A clock struck. Something was shaken and flashing, thin glass in lamplight, and there were tiptoeing footfalls. Distinctly he heard a voice say:

"He'll live."

Budge slept. It was as though some subconscious nerve had been waiting for those words, so that afterwards sleep descended, and wound him rigid as in a soft dark ball of yarn.

When at length he awoke, he did not know at first how weak he was, nor had the morphine quite worn off. But he did know that a low sun was streaming in at the window. Bewildered and a little frightened, he tried to make a move; he knew with ghastly certainty that he had slept into the afternoon, a thing unheard-of at the Hall…. Then he saw that Sir Benjamin Arnold, a smile on his long face, was bending over the bed. Behind him was a person whom he did not at first recognize, a young man….

"Feeling better?" asked Sir Benjamin.

Budge tried to speak, and only croaked. He felt humiliated. A bit of remembrance swirled down into his consciousness, like a rope….

Yes. He remembered now. It swept in such vivid colours that he closed his eyes. The young Yankee, the white gloves, the pistol. What had he done? — it rushed over him that he had been a coward, as he had always felt, and the taste of that thought was like nauseous medicine.

"Don't try to say anything," Sir Benjamin said. "You're at Dr. Markley's; he said you couldn't be moved. So lie still. You got a nasty bullet wound, but you'll pull through. We'll clear out now." Sir Benjamin seemed embarrassed. He fingered the iron post at the foot of the bed. "As to what you did, Budge," he added, "well, I don't mind telling you-well, it was damned sporting, you know."

Moistening his lips, Budge at last achieved speech.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Thank you, sir."

His half-closed eyes opened in wonder and some anger when he saw that the young American had almost laughed….

"No offense, Budge," Rampole hastily put in. "It was just that you rushed his gun like an Irish cop, and now you act as if somebody had just offered you a glass of beer… I don't suppose you recognized him, did you?"

(Some struggle in the brain; a half-face, cut into whorls like water over sand. Budge felt dizzy, and there was something hurting inside his chest. The water washed out the face.)

"Yes, sir," he said, with an effort. "I shall remember it — soon. Just now I can't think…"Of course," Rampole interposed, hurriedly. somebody in white beckoning them from the doorway. "Well, good luck, Budge. You've got plenty of nerve."

At the smiles of the others, Budge felt a responsive smile drawing at his own lips like a nervous twitch. He felt drowsy again, and his head sang, but he was floating pleasantly away now. He was not sure what had happened; but I warm satisfaction lulled him for the first time in his life — What a story! If only those housemaids wouldn't leave windows open….

His eyes closed.

"Thank you, sir," said Budge. "Please tell Miss Dorothy that I shall be back at the Hall tomorrow."

Rampole closed the door of the bedroom behind them, and turned to face Sir Benjamin in the dim upper hallway of Dr. Markley's house. He could see the white skirt of a nurse descending the stairs ahead.

"He saw whoever it was," the chief constable said, grimly. "Yes, and he'll remember. What the devil, though, was he doing up there, to begin with?

"Just curiosity, I suppose. And now what?"

Sir Benjamin opened the case of a big gold watch, glanced at it rather nervously, and shut it up again.

"It's Fell's show. I'm dashed if I know." His voice grew querulous. "He's gone over my head completely-mine! I mean to say, he has quite a stand-in with Sir William Rossiter, the High Commissioner at the Yard; he seems to be on intimate terms with everybody in England. And he's been pulling wires…. All I know is that we're to meet the five-four train from London, and nab somebody who gets off it. Well, I hope everybody's waiting. Come along."

Dr. Markley was still on his afternoon round, and they did not linger. As they went down into the High Street, Rampole was rather more nervous than the chief constable.

Neither last night nor today could he elicit anything more from Dr. Fell.

"What's more," the chief constable grumbled, in the same tone, "I will not go to Southampton to meet the rector's uncle. I don't care if he is an old friend; the rector is going instead. I have business in Manchester — that's Thursday-and I've got to be away a week at the least. Dash it! Something always comes up. I can't find Payne, either; he has some papers I must take to Manchester along with me. Dash it! Here I've wasted all this time with the blasted case, when I could easily turn it over to the proper people, and Fell takes the whole thing out of my hands…

He was talking rather desperately, Rampole sensed, talking away at anything that came into his head, so that he would not be forced to think. And the American agreed with him.

Sir Benjamin's grey Daimler was waiting in the elm-shadowed street. It was tea-time, and few people were abroad. Rampole wondered whether the news of Herbert's death had yet filtered into Chatterham; the body had been conveyed to the Hall late last night, and the servants warned with awesome threats to say nothing until they were given permission, but that was no guarantee at all. Last night, to keep away the horrors, Dorothy had stayed with Mrs. Fell. Until almost daybreak Rampole had heard them talking in the room next to his. Exhausted, and yet unable to sleep, he had sat at the window, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and staring with smarting eyelids at the whitening dawn….

Now the grey Daimler swept through Chatterham, and the wind stroked his face with cool fragrance. In the sky the fiery streaks had paled; there were white, and violet, and a smokiness of shadow creeping up from the lowlands. There were a few dark clouds, like slow sheep. He remembered the first evening he had walked into Chatterham with Dorothy Starberth, through this mysterious hour of the gold-darkened sky and the faint jangling bells; when a wind ran across the green corn, and the smell of hawthorn grew stronger with dusk. Remembering it, he did not believe that it had been only ten days ago.

"Tomorrow there is an afternoon train from London," he could hear Dr. Fell speaking in the Hag's Nook. "We will meet that train."

The words had finality….

Sir Benjamin said nothing. The Daimler roared against the whipping breeze. Dorothy in New York. Dorothy as his wife. Lord! but it had a funny sound! — every time he thought of that, he thought of himself sitting in a class last year and thinking that if he flunked economics (which, like all intelligent people, he detested), it would be the end of the world. Possessing a wife, he would become suddenly a citizen, with a telephone number and a cocktail-shaker and everything; and his mother would have hysterics; and his father, up twenty-five floors in a law-office at Number One West Forty-Second Street, would drowsily lift an eyebrow and say, "Well, how much do you need?"

The Daimler stopped with a slur of tires in the road. They would have to wait for this respectable citizenship; they would have to wait for a murderer.

In the darkening lane which led to Yew Cottage several figures were awaiting them. Dr. Fell's voice boomed out:

"How is he? Getting better? — I thought so. Well, we're ready." He made a gesture with one cane. "Everybody who was on the scene the night Martin was murdered, everybody who can give evidence, is going to be in at the death now. Miss Starberth didn't want to come, and neither did the rector. But they're both here. I think there will be others waiting for us at the railway station." He added, testily, "Well, climb in, climb in!"

The rector's huge figure loomed out of the lane. He almost stumbled as he assisted Dorothy into the car.

"I'm quite willing, of course," he said. ` `But I don't understand what you said about needing me―"

They had come out of the lane's shadow now. Dr. Fell struck his stick in the dust. He said:

"That's the point. That's the whole point. I want you to identify somebody. There's something you can tell us, and I doubt whether you know it yourself. And, unless you all do exactly as I tell you, we shall never know. Do you hear?"

He glared at all of them. Sir Benjamin was racing his motor, keeping his stiff face turned away. He suggested in a cold voice that they be on their way. In the tonneau the rector was trying to arrange his large plump face along pleasant lines. Dorothy sat with her hands folded in her lap, looking straight ahead….

Rampole had not been to the railway station since he had arrived in that other age ten days ago. The Daimler fled along the curves of the road, its siren crying ahead. Chatterham prison fell away behind; they seemed more in touch with reality now. Up over the waves of corn rose the small brick station, and the rails were shimmering against a low, dull, yellow-gleaming sunset. The lamps along the platform had not yet been lighted, but there was a green-shaded light in the ticket window of the station. Dogs were barking, just as on that first night….

As Sir Benjamin stopped the car they heard, far down the tracks, the thin whistle of the train.

Rampole started. Stumbling on his canes, Dr. Fell had lurched out of the car. He wore his old black slouch-hat and box-pleated cape, which made him seem like a fat bandit; and a breeze waved the black ribbon on his eyeglasses.

"Now, listen," he said. "Stay with me. The only instructions I have are for you." He looked fiercely at Sir Benjamin. "I warn you that you may have a temptation. But, whatever you see or hear, for God's sake don't speak! Do you understand?" He was glaring now.

"As chief constable of this county―" Sir Benjamin was beginning, snapping the words out, when the doctor cut him short.

"Here comes the train. Walk up to the platform with me."

They could hear the thin, faint, clicking roar. It was rushing through Rampole's nerves now. He felt as though he were one of a herd of chickens being shooed into a pen by Dr. Fell. The headlight of the locomotive winked around a curve among the trees; the rails were shimmering, and they had begun to hum…. '

A stationmaster pulled open the door of the baggage-room with a long screech, emitting light on the boards of the platform. Rampole glanced in that direction. Against the eeriness of the dim yellow sky he saw a motionless figure standing near the station. Then, with a shock, he saw that there were several of these motionless figures in corners about the platform. All of them had their hands in the side pockets of their coats.

He turned sharply. Dorothy Starberth was at his side, staring up the tracks. The rector, his blue eyes pinched up, was swabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief, and seemed about to speak. Sir Benjamin looked sourly at the ticket window.

Swaying in a gush of cinders, the small train ground in to a stop, its headlight enormous now. There was a heavy sigh from the engine, and it panted in puffs of steam. A white lamp winked on over the entrance to the station. Past the yellow, grimed windows of the train there were flickers as of people moving out. The only noise was a subdued clanking, above the rumble of the baggage truck.

"There…" said Dr. Fell.

One passenger was alighting now. Rampole could not see his face because of the conflicting lights and the heavy backwash of steam. Then the passenger moved under the white station light, and the American stared…

He had never seen this man before. At the same time, he was conscious that one of the motionless men about the platform, his hand still in his pocket, had moved closer. But he was looking at this curious person from the train: a tall man, with an old-fashioned square derby and a grey moustache clipped sharp about a strong brown chin. The stranger hesitated, swinging a large valise from his right hand to his left….

"There," repeated Dr. Fell. He seized the rector's arm. "You see him? Who is he?"

The rector turned a puzzled face. He said: "You must be mad! I never saw him before. What on earth-?"

"Ah," said Dr. Fell. His voice suddenly grew louder. It seemed to boom and echo along the platform. "You don't recognize him. But you should, Mr. Saunders; you should.

He's your uncle."

During an enormous silence one of the motionless men came up behind and put his hand on the rector's shoulder.

He said: "Thomas Saunders, I arrest you for the murder of Martin Starberth. I have to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you."

He had taken his other hand out of his pocket, and it held a revolver. Rampole, even while his wits were whirling, saw that the motionless men were closing in, silently, from all corners of the platform.