Adventures of Martin Hewitt (22 page)

Here the constable appeared with two more men. Each had the usual number
of eyes, but in other respects they were very good copies of Mr. Shanahan.
They were both ragged, and neither bore any violent likeness to a teetotaler.
“Dan Mulcahy and Dennis Grady,” announced the constable.

Mr. Dan Mulcahy’s tale was of a piece with Mr. Larry Shanahan’s, and Mr.
Dennis Grady’s was the same. They had all heard the shot it was plain. What
Dan had said to Dennis and what Dennis had said to Larry mattered little.
Also they were all agreed that the day was Tuesday by token of the fair. But
as to the time of day there arose a disagreement.

“‘Twas nigh soon afther wan o’clock,” said Dan Mulcahy.

“Soon afther wan!” exclaimed Larry Shanahan with scorn. “Soon afther your
grandmother’s pig! ‘Twas half afther two at laste. Ut sthruck twelve nigh
half an hour before we lift Cullanin. Why, yez heard ut!”

“That I did not. Ut sthruck eleven, an’ we wint in foive minutes.”

“What fool-talk ye shpake Dan Mulcahy. ‘Twas twelve sthruck; I counted
ut.”

“Thin ye counted wrong. I counted ut, an’ ‘twas elivin.”

“Yez nayther av yez right,” interposed Dennis Grady. “‘Twas not elivin
when we lift; ‘twas not, be the mother av Moses!”

“I wondher at ye, Dennis Grady; ye must have been dhrunk as a Kerry cow,”
and both Mulcahy and Shanahan turned upon the obstinate Grady, and the
dispute waxed clamorous till Hewitt stopped it.

“Come, come,” he said, “never mind the time then. Settle that between you
after you’ve gone. Does either of you remember—not calculate, you know,
but
remember—
the time you got to Ballyshiel?—the actual
time by a clock—not a guess.”

Not one of the three had looked at a clock at Ballyshiel.

“Do you remember anything about coming home again?”

They did not. They looked furtively at one another and presently broke
into a grin.

“Ah! I see how
that
was,” Hewitt said good-humouredly. “That’s all
now, I think. Come, it’s ten shillings each, I think.” And he handed over the
money. The men touched their forelocks again, stowed away the money and
prepared to depart. As they went Larry Shanahan stepped mysteriously back
again and said in a whisper, “Maybe the jintlemen wud like me to kiss the
book on ut? An’ as to the toime—”

“Oh, no thank you,” Hewitt laughed. “We take your word for it Mr.
Shanahan.” And Mr. Shanahan pulled his forelock again and vanished.

“There’s nothing but confusion to be got from them,” Mr. Bowyer remarked
testily. “It’s a mere waste of time.”

“No, no, not a waste of time,” Hewitt replied, “nor a waste of money. One
thing is made pretty plain. That is that the shot was fired on Tuesday. Mrs.
Hurley never noticed the report, but these three men were close by, and there
is no doubt that they heard it. It’s the only single thing they agree about
at all. They contradict one another over everything else, but they agree
completely in that. Of course I wish we could have got the exact time; but
that can’t be helped. As it is it is rather fortunate that they disagreed so
entirely. Two of them are certainly wrong, and perhaps all three. In any case
it wouldn’t have been safe to trust to mere computation of time by three men
just beginning to get drunk, who had no particular reason for remembering.
But if by any chance they had agreed on the time we might have been led into
a wrong track altogether by taking the thing as fact. But a gunshot is not
such a doubtful thing. When three independent witnesses hear a gunshot
together there can be little doubt that a shot has been fired. Now I think
you’d better sit down. Perhaps you can find something to read. I’m about to
make a very minute examination of this place, and it will probably bore you
if you’ve nothing else to do.”

But Mr. Bowyer would think of nothing but the business in hand. “I don’t
understand that window,” he said, shaking his finger towards it as he spoke.
“Not at all. Why should Main want to get in and out by a window? He wasn’t a
stranger.”

Hewitt began a most careful inspection of the whole surface of floor,
ceiling, walls and furniture of the sitting-room. At the fireplace he stooped
and lifted with great care a few sheets of charred paper from the grate.
These he put on the window-ledge. “Will you just bring over that little
screen,” he asked, “to keep the draught from this burnt paper? Thank you. It
looks like letter paper, and thick letter paper, since the ashes are very
little broken. The weather has been fine, and there has been no fire in that
grate for a long time. These papers have been carefully burned with a match
or a candle.”

“Ah! perhaps the letters poor young Rewse was writing in the morning. But
what can they tell us?”

“Perhaps nothing—perhaps a great deal.” Hewitt was examining the
cinders keenly, holding the surface sideways to the light. “Come,” he said,
“see if I can guess Rewse’s address in London. 17 Mountjoy Gardens,
Hampstead. Is that it?”

“Yes. Is it there? Can you read it? Show me.” Mr. Bowyer hurried across
the room, eager and excited.

“You can sometimes read words on charred paper,” Hewitt replied, “as you
may have noticed. This has curled and crinkled rather too much in the
burning, but it is plainly notepaper with an embossed heading, which stands
out rather clearly. He has evidently brought some notepaper with him from
home in his trunk. See, you can just see the ink lines crossing out the
address; but there’s little else. At the beginning of the letter there is ‘My
d——’ then a gap, and then the last stroke of ‘M’ and the rest of
the word ‘mother.’ ‘My dear Mother,’ or ‘My dearest Mother’ evidently.
Something follows too in the same line, but that is unreadable. ‘My dear
Mother and Sister’ perhaps. After that there is nothing recognisable. The
first letter looks rather like ‘W,’ but even that is indistinct. It seems to
be a longish letter—several sheets, but they are stuck together in the
charring. Perhaps more than one letter.”

“The thing is plain,” Mr. Bowyer said. “The poor lad was writing home, and
perhaps to other places, and Main, after his crime, burned the letters,
because they would have stultified his own with the lying tale about
small-pox.”

Hewitt said nothing, but resumed his general search. He passed his hand
rapidly over every inch of the surface of everything in the room. Then he
entered the bedroom and began an inspection of the same sort there. There
were two beds, one at each end of the room, and each inch of each piece of
bed linen passed rapidly under his sharp eye. After the bedroom he betook
himself to the little bath-room, and then to the scullery. Finally he went
outside and examined every board of a close fence that stood a few feet from
the sitting-room window, and the brick-paved path lying between.

When it was all over he returned to Mr. Bowyer. “Here is a strange thing,”
he said. “The shot passed clean through Rewse’s body, striking no bones, and
meeting no solid resistance. It was a good-sized bullet, as Dr. O’Reilly
testifies, and therefore must have had a large charge of powder behind it in
the cartridge. After emerging from Rewse’s back it
must
have struck
something else in this confined place. Yet on nowhere—ceiling, floor,
wall nor furniture—can I find the mark of a bullet nor the bullet
itself.”

“The bullet itself Main might easily have got rid of.”

“Yes, but not the mark. Indeed, the bullet would scarcely be easy to get
at if it had struck anything I have seen about here; it would have buried
itself. Just look round now. Where could a bullet strike in this place
without leaving its mark?”

Mr. Bowyer looked round. “Well, no,” he said, “nowhere. Unless the window
was open and it went out that way.”

“Then it must have hit the fence or the brick paving between, and there is
no sign of a bullet there,” Hewitt replied. “Push the sash as high as you
please, the shot couldn’t have passed
over
the fence without hitting
the window first. As to the bedroom windows, that’s impossible. Mr. Shanahan
and his friends would not only have heard the shot, they would have seen
it—which they didn’t.”

“Then what’s the meaning of it?”

“The meaning of it is simply this: either Rewse was shot somewhere else
and his body brought here afterwards, or the article, whatever it was, that
the bullet struck must have been taken away.”

“Yes, of course. It’s just another piece of evidence destroyed by Main,
that’s all. Every step we go we see the diabolical completeness of his plans.
But now every piece of evidence missing only tells the more against him. The
body alone condemns him past all redemption.”

Hewitt was gazing about the room thoughtfully. “I think we’ll have Mrs.
Hurley over here,” he said; “she should tell us if anything is missing.
Constable, will you ask Mrs. Hurley to step over here?”

Mrs. Hurley came at once and was brought into the sitting-room. “Just look
about you, Mrs. Hurley,” Hewitt said, “in this room and everywhere else, and
tell me if anything is missing that you can remember was here on the morning
of the day you last saw Mr. Rewse.”

She looked thoughtfully up and down the room. “Sure, sor,” she said, “‘tis
all there as ord’nary.” Her eyes rested on the mantelpiece and she added at
once, “Except the clock, indade.”

“Except the clock?”

“The clock ut is, sure. Ut stud on that same mantelpiece on that mornin’
as ut always did.”

“What sort of clock was it?”

“Just a plain round wan wid a metal case—an American clock they said
ut was. But ut kept nigh as good time as me own.”

“It
did
keep good time, you say?”

“Faith an’ ut did, sor. Mine an’ this ran together for weeks wid nivir a
minute betune thim.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hurley, thank you; that will do,” Hewitt exclaimed, with
something of excitement in his voice. He turned to Mr. Bowyer. “We must find
that clock,” he said. “And there’s the pistol; nothing has been seen of that.
Come, help me search. Look for a loose board.”

“But he’ll have taken them away with him, probably.”

“The pistol perhaps—althought that isn’t likely. The clock, no. It’s
evidence, man, evidence!” Hewitt darted outside and walked hurriedly round
the cottage, looking this way and that about the country adjacent.

Presently he returned. “No,” he said, “I think it’s more likely in the
house.” He stood for a moment and thought. Then he made for the fireplace and
flung the fender across the floor. All round the hearthstone an open crack
extended. “See there!” he exclaimed as he pointed to it. He took the tongs,
and with one leg levered the stone up till he could seize it in his fingers.
Then he dragged it out and pushed it across the linoleum that covered the
floor. In the space beneath lay a large revolver and a common American round
nickel-plated clock. “See here!” he cried, “see here!” and he rose and placed
the articles on the mantel-piece. The glass before the clock-face was smashed
to atoms, and there was a gaping rent in the face itself. For a few seconds
Hewitt regarded it as it stood, and then he turned to Mr. Bowyer. “Mr.
Bowyer,” he said, “we have done Mr. Stanley Main a sad injustice. Poor young
Rewse committed suicide. There is proof undeniable,” and he pointed to the
clock.

“Proof? How? Where? Nonsense, man. Pooh! Ridiculous! If Rewse committed
suicide why should Main go to all that trouble and tell all those lies to
prove that he died of small-pox? More even than that, what has he run away
for?”

“I’ll tell you, Mr. Bowyer, in a moment. But first as to this clock.
Remember, Main set his watch by the Cullanin Town Hall clock, and Mrs.
Hurley’s clock agreed exactly. That we have proved ourselves to-day by my own
watch. Mrs. Hurley’s clock still agrees.
This
clock was always kept in
time with Mrs. Hurley’s. Main returned at two exactly. Look at the time by
that clock—the time when the bullet crashed into and stopped it.”

The time was three minutes to one.

Hewitt took the clock, unscrewed the winder and quickly stripped off the
back, exposing the works. “See,” he said, “the bullet is lodged firmly among
the wheels, and has been torn into snags and strips by the impact. The wheels
themselves are ruined altogether. The central axle which carries the hands is
bent. See there! Neither hand will move in the slightest. That bullet struck
the axle and fixed those hands immovably at the moment of time when Algernon
Rewse died. Look at the mainspring. It is less than half rim out. Proof that
the clock was going when the shot struck it. Main left Rowse alive and well
at half-past nine. He did not return till two—when Rewse had been dead
more than an hour.”

“But then, hang it all! How about the lies, and the false certificate, and
the bolting?”

“Let me tell you the whole tale, Mr. Bowyer, as I conjecture it to have
been. Poor young Rewse was, as you told me, in a bad state of
health—thoroughly run down, I think you said. You said something of his
engagement and the death of the lady. This pointed clearly to a
nervous—a mental upset. Very well. He broods, and so forth. He must go
away and find change of scene and occupation. His intimate friend Main brings
him here. The holiday has its good effect perhaps, at first, but after a
while it gets monotonous, and brooding sets in again. I do not know whether
or not you happen to know it, but it is a fact that four-fifths of all
persons suffering from melancholia have suicidal tendencies. This may never
have been suspected by Main, who otherwise might not have left him so long
alone. At any rate he
is
left alone, and he takes the opportunity. He
writes a note to Main and a long letter to his mother—an awful,
heartbreaking letter, with a terrible picture of the mental agony wherein he
was to die—perhaps with a tincture of religious mania in it, and
prophesying merited hell for himself in the hereafter. This done, he simply
stands up from this table, at which he has been writing, and with his back to
the fire-place shoots himself. There he lies till Main returns an hour later.
Main finds the door shut and nobody answers his knock. He goes round to the
sitting-room window, looks through, and perhaps he sees the body.