E. A. Wallis Budge - "Legends Of The Gods"

P. G. Wodehouse - "Death At The Excelsior"

Alexandre Dumas - "Histoire d'un casse noisette"

Charles Kingsley - "True Words for Brave Men"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Hand in the Dark

A >> Arthur J. Rees >> The Hand in the Dark




The three men set out for the moat-house. At the butler's request
Sergeant Lumbe went ahead to summon the doctor, who lived on the other
side of the village green, and while he was gone Caldew drew the details
of the crime from his companion. Lumbe rejoined them at the footbridge
which led across the meadows into the Heredith estate, and they
proceeded on their way in silence. Sergeant Lumbe's brain--such as it
was--was in too much of a whirl to permit him to talk coherently;
Tufnell, habitually a taciturn individual, had been rendered more so
than usual by the events of the night; and Caldew was plunged into such
a reverie of pleasurable expectation, regarding the outcome of his
investigations of the moat-house murder, that the stages of his
promotion through the grades of detective, sub-superintendent, and
superintendent, flashed through his mind as rapidly as telegraph poles
flit past a traveller in a railway carriage. The crime which had struck
down one human being in the dawn of youth and beauty, turned another
into a murderer, and plunged an old English family into horror and
misery, afforded Detective Caldew's optimistic temperament such extreme
gratification that he could scarcely forbear from whistling aloud. But
that is human nature.

They passed through the wood, and crossed the moat bridge. The mist was
creeping out of the darkness on both sides of the moat-house, casting a
film across the faint light which gleamed from one or two of the heavily
shuttered windows. Caldew, pausing midway on the bridge to glance at the
mist-spirals stealing up like a troop of ghosts, asked his
brother-in-law if the moat was still kept full of water. He received an
affirmative reply, and walked on again.

A maidservant answered Tufnell's ring at the front door, and informed
him in a whisper that Sir Philip and Miss Heredith were in the
drawing-room. Thither they bent their steps, and found Musard awaiting
them near the door. He nodded to Sergeant Lumbe, whom he knew, and
glanced interrogatively at Caldew. Lumbe announced the latter's
identity.

"You had better come in here first," said Musard, opening the door of
the drawing-room and revealing the baronet and Miss Heredith sitting
within. Brother and sister glanced at the group entering the room.

"This is Detective Caldew, of Scotland Yard," Musard explained to them,
indicating the young man. "He is staying with Lumbe, who thought it
advisable to bring him."

"Have you told them everything?" Miss Heredith spoke to Tufnell. Her dry
lips formed the words rather than uttered them, but the old retainer
understood her, and bowed without speaking. "What do you wish to do
first, Detective Caldew?" she added, turning to him, and speaking with
more composure. She was quick to realize that he would take the lead in
the police investigations. A glance at Sergeant Lumbe's flustered face
revealed only too clearly that the position in which he found himself
was beyond his official capabilities.

Caldew stepped briskly forward. He was in no way embarrassed by his
unaccustomed surroundings or by the commanding appearance of the great
lady who was addressing him. He was a man who believed in himself, and
such men are too much in earnest to be diffident.

"I should like to ask a few questions first, madam," he said. "So far, I
have heard only your butler's version of what happened." Without waiting
for a reply he launched a number of questions, and made a note of the
replies in a pocket-book.

Musard, who assisted Miss Heredith to answer the questions, was rather
impressed by the quick intelligence the detective displayed in eliciting
all the known facts of the murder, but Sergeant Lumbe, who remained
standing near the door, was shocked to hear Caldew cross-questioning the
great folk of the moat-house with such little ceremony. He thought his
brother-in-law a very forward young fellow, and hoped that Miss Heredith
would not hold him responsible for his free-and-easy manner.

"Now I should like to commence my investigations," said Caldew,
replacing his pocket-book. "There has been too much time lost already. I
will start with examining the room where the body is, if you please."

"Certainly." Miss Heredith rose from her seat as she uttered the word.

"My dear Alethea!"--Musard's tone was expostulatory--"I will take the
detective upstairs. There is no need for you to come."

"I prefer to do so." Miss Heredith's tone admitted of no further
argument. She was about to lead the way from the room when she paused
and glanced at Tufnell. "When will Dr. Holmes be here?" she asked.

"Almost immediately, ma'am."

"You had better stay here and receive him, Philip." Miss Heredith placed
her hand affectionately on her brother's shoulder. He had not spoken
during the time the police were in the room, but had sat quietly on his
chair, with bent head and clasped hands, looking very old and frail. "It
will be as well for him to see Phil before going upstairs," she added.

Sir Philip looked up at the mention of his son's name. "Poor Phil," he
muttered dully.

"I think the doctor should examine Phil the moment he comes," continued
Miss Heredith, aside, to Musard. "His look alarms me. I fear the shock
has affected his brain. Tufnell, be sure and show Dr. Holmes to Mr.
Philip's room directly Sir Philip has received him."

"You can rely upon me to do so, ma'am," said Tufnell earnestly.

"Very well. We will now go upstairs."

She left the drawing-room and proceeded towards the broad oak staircase,
with Musard close behind her. Detective Caldew followed more slowly,
noting his surroundings. When they reached the head of the staircase
Miss Heredith switched on the electric current, and the bedroom corridor
sprang into light. Detective Caldew was surprised at its length.

"Where does this passage lead to?" he asked abruptly.

"To the south side of the moat-house," replied Musard.

"Has it any outlet?"

"Yes; a door at the end communicates with a narrow staircase, leading to
another door at the bottom. The second door was a former back
entrance--it opens somewhere near the servants' quarters, I think?" He
glanced inquiringly at Miss Heredith.

"Those stairs are never used now," she replied. "The entrance door at
the bottom of the staircase is kept locked."

"There are such things as skeleton keys," commented the detective.

Musard opened the door of the death-chamber and switched on the light.
Caldew walked at once to the bedside. He drew away the covering which
had been placed over the face of the young wife, and stood looking at
her.

Death had invested her with pathos, but not with dignity. On the pallor
of the death mask the tinted lips, the spots of rouge, the pencilled
eyebrows of the dead face, were as clearly revealed as print on a white
page. The lips were parted; the small white teeth were showing beneath
the upper lip. The little nose rose in the sharp outline of death;
between the half-closed eyelids the darkened blue eyes looked out
vacantly. The thick, fair hair, spotted with blood, flowed in disordered
waves over the white pillow; the numerous rings on the dead hands blazed
and glittered with hard brilliance in the electric light.

It was these costly jewels on the murdered girl's hands which prompted
the question which sprang to the detective's lips:

"Did the murderer take anything?" he asked. "Has anything been missed?"

"No," said Miss Heredith. "Nothing has been taken."

"Mrs. Heredith had more jewellery than this, I suppose?" pursued the
detective. "Brooches and necklaces, and that kind of thing. Where were
they kept?"

"Mrs. Heredith's jewel-case is downstairs, in the safe in the library,"
replied Miss Heredith. She did not feel called upon to add the
additional information that she had taken it there herself, and locked
it up, not half an hour before.

Detective Caldew made a mental note of the fact that the motive for the
crime was not robbery, unless, indeed, the murderer had become flurried,
and fled. His eye, glancing round the room, was attracted by the window
curtains, which were stirring faintly. He flung them back, and saw the
open window.

"How long has this window been open?" he asked.

Miss Heredith gave her reasons for believing that the window was closed
when she left Violet to go downstairs to the dining-room. Caldew
listened thoughtfully, and nodded his head in quick comprehension when
she added the information that the bedroom window was nearly twenty feet
from the ground.

"You think the murderer did not jump out of the window," he said. "The
more important point is, did he get in that way? It is not a difficult
matter to scale a wall to reach a window if there is any sort of a
foothold. It is a point I will look into afterwards."

He tried the window catch, and then walked about the room, examining it
closely. His quick, eager eyes, looking about in every direction, were
caught by something glittering on the carpet, close to the bed. He
glanced at his companions. As a detective, he had long learnt the wisdom
of caution in the presence of friends and relatives.

"I should like to be left alone in the room in order to examine it more
thoroughly," he briefly announced.

When Miss Heredith and Musard had left the room he locked the door
behind them, and, kneeling down by the bedside, disentangled a small
shining object almost concealed in the thick green texture of the
carpet. It was a trinket like a bar brooch, with gold clasps. The bar
was of transparent stone, clear as glass, with a faint sea-green tinge,
and speckled in the interior with small black spots. Caldew had never
seen a stone like it. The frail gold of the setting suggested that it
was not of much intrinsic value, but it was a pretty little trinket,
such as ladies sometimes wear as a mascot. Caldew reflected that if it
were a mascot it was by no means certain that the owner was a woman.
Many young officers took mascots to the front for luck.

As he turned it over in his hand he observed some lettering on the
underside. He examined it curiously, and saw that an inscription had
been scratched into the stone in round, irregular handwriting--obviously
an unskilled, almost childish effort. Holding the brooch closer to the
light, he was able to decipher the inscription. It consisted of two
words--"Semper Fidelis."

It seemed to Caldew that the inscription rather weakened the correctness
of his first impression that the trinket had been worn as a feminine
mascot. He doubted very much whether any modern woman would cherish a
mid-Victorian sentiment like "Always Faithful." On the other hand, many
men might. His experience as a detective had led him to the belief that
men were more prone to such sentiments than the other sex, though their
conduct rarely accorded with their protestations and temporary
intentions.

Struck by a sudden thought, he dropped the trinket back on the carpet.
It was just visible in the thick pile.

"A good idea!" he murmured, as he rose to his feet. "I'll watch this
room to-night."

As he stood there, speculating on the possibility of the owner of the
trinket returning to the room to search for it, he was interrupted by a
low tap at the door. He walked across and opened it. Tufnell stood
outside, grave and composed.

"Mr. Musard would like to see you in the library," he said.

His tone was even and almost deferential, but the detective's watchful
eyes intercepted a fleeting glance cast by the butler over his shoulder
in the direction of the still figure on the bed.

"Very well, I will see him," said the detective.

"I will take you to him, if you will come with me." The butler preceded
him along the passage with noiseless step, and Caldew followed him, deep
in thought.

The butler escorted him to the library, and entered after him. Musard
was in the room alone, standing by the fireplace, smoking a cigar. He
looked up as Caldew entered.

"I have just learnt something which I think you ought to know," he said.
"The information comes from Tufnell. He tells me that while he was going
around the house this afternoon he found the outside door of the back
staircase unlocked."

"Do you mean the door at the bottom of the staircase in the left wing?"
asked Caldew.

"Precisely."

"I understood from Miss Heredith that this door was always kept locked."

"So it is, as a rule. It was only by chance that the butler discovered
this evening that it had been unlocked. You had better explain to the
detective, Tufnell, how you came to find it unfastened."

"I was going round by the back of the house this evening," said the
butler, coming forward. "As I passed the door I tried the handle. To my
surprise it yielded. I opened the door, and found that the key was in
the keyhole, on the other side. I locked the door, and took the key
away."

"What time was this?" inquired Caldew.

"A little before six--perhaps a quarter of an hour."

"Is it your custom to try this door every night?"

"Oh, no, it is not necessary. The door is always kept locked, and the
key hangs with a bunch of other unused keys in a small room near the
housekeeper's apartments, where a number of odds and ends are kept."

"When was the last time you tried the door?"

The butler considered for a moment.

"I cannot rightly say," he said at length. "The door is never used, and
I rarely think of it."

"Then, for all you know to the contrary, the key may have been in the
door for days, or weeks past."

"Why, yes, it is possible, now that you come to mention it," said the
butler, with an air of surprise, as though he had not previously
considered such a contingency.

"The key had been taken off the bunch?"

"Yes."

"Do the servants know where the key is kept?"

"Some of the maidservants do. The back staircase is occasionally opened
for ventilation and dusting, and the maid who does this work gets the
key from the housekeeper."

"Who has charge of the room where the keys are kept?"

"Nobody in particular. It is really a sort of a lumber-room. The
housekeeper has charge of the keys."

"Thank you; that is all I wish to know."

The butler left the room, and Caldew looked up, to encounter Musard's
eyes regarding him.

"Do you think this has anything to do with the murder?" Musard asked.

Caldew hesitated for a moment. It was on the tip of his tongue to reply
that he attached no importance to the butler's statement, but
professional habits of caution checked his natural impulsiveness.

"I want to know more about the circumstances before advancing an
opinion," he replied. "Tufnell's story was rather vague."

"In what respect?"

"In regard to time. The door may have been left unlocked for days."

"Who would unlock it?" replied Musard. "The inference, in view of what
has happened, seems rather that the door was unlocked to-day, and
Tufnell stumbled upon the fact by a lucky chance--by Fate, if you like.
At least it looks like that to me."

"And the murderer entered by the door?"

"Yes."

"I think that is assuming too much," said Caldew. He had no intention of
pointing out to his companion that such an assumption overlooked the
fact that Tufnell's discovery, and the locking of the door, had not
prevented the crime and the subsequent escape of the murderer.

He turned to leave the room, but Musard was in a talkative mood. He
offered the detective a cigar, and kept him for a while, chatting
discursively. Caldew was in no humour to listen. His mind was full of
the problems of this strange case, and he was anxious to return
upstairs. He took the first opportunity of terminating the conversation
and leaving the room.

It was his intention to conceal himself in one of the wardrobes of the
bedroom in the hope that the owner of the trinket he had found would
return in search of it. As he reached the landing he was surprised to
see that the door of the murdered woman's bedroom was wide open,
although he remembered distinctly that he had closed it when he left the
room to accompany the butler downstairs. With a quickly beating heart he
hurried across the room to the spot where he had left the trinket. But
it was gone.




CHAPTER VII


It was the morning after the murder, and five men were seated in the
moat-house library. One of them attracted instant attention by reason of
his overpowering personality. He was a giant in stature and build, with
a massive head, a large red face from which a pair of little bloodshot
eyes stared out truculently, and a bull neck which was several shades
deeper in colour than his face. He was Superintendent Merrington, a
noted executive officer of New Scotland Yard, whose handling of the most
important spy case tried in London during the war had brought forth from
a gracious sovereign the inevitable Order of the British Empire.
Merrington was known as a detective in every capital in Europe, and
because of his wide knowledge of European criminals had more than once
acted as the bodyguard of Royalty on continental tours, and had received
from Royal hands the diamond pin which now adorned the spotted silk tie
encircling his fat purple neck.

The famous detective's outlook on life was cynical and coarse. The
cynicism was the natural outcome of his profession; the coarseness was
his heritage by birth, as his sensual mouth, blubber lips, thick nose,
and bull-neck attested. It was a strange freak of Fate which had made
him the guardian of the morals of society and the upholder of law and
order in a modern civilized community. By temperament and disposition he
belonged to the full-blooded type of humanity which found its best
exemplars in the early Muscovite Czars, and, if Fate had so willed it,
would have revelled in similar pursuits of vice, oppression, and
torture. As Fate had ironically made a police official of him, he had to
content himself with letting off the superfluous steam of his tremendous
temperament by oppressing the criminal classes, and he had performed
that duty so thoroughly that before he became the travelling companion
of kings his name had been a terror to the underworld of London, who
feared and detested his ferocity, his unscrupulous methods of dealing
with them, and his wide knowledge of their class.

He was a recognized hero of the British public, which on one occasion
had presented him with a testimonial for his capture of a desperado who
had been terrorizing the East End of London. But Merrington disdained
such tokens of popular approval. He regarded the public, which he was
paid to protect, as a pack of fools. For him, there were only two
classes of humanity--fools and rogues. The respectable portion of the
population constituted the former, and criminals the latter. He had the
lowest possible opinion of humanity as a whole, and his favourite
expression, in professional conversation, was: "human nature being what
it is...." He was still a mighty force in Scotland Yard, although he had
passed his usefulness and reached the ornamental stage of his career,
rarely condescending to investigate a case personally.

His present visit to the moat-house was one of those rare occasions, and
was due to the action of Captain Stanhill, the Chief Constable of
Sussex, who was seated near him. Captain Stanhill was a short stout man,
with a round, fresh-coloured face, and short sturdy legs and arms. He
wore a tweed coat of the kind known to tailors as "a sporting lounge,"
and his little legs were encased in knickerbockers and leather gaiters,
which were spattered with mud, as though he had ridden some distance
that morning. He was a very different type from Superintendent
Merrington--a gentleman by birth and education, a churchman, and a
county magnate. He never did anything so dangerous as to think, but
accepted the traditions and rules of his race and class as his safe
guide through life. Like most Englishmen of his station of life, he was
endowed with just sufficient intelligence to permit him to slide along
his little groove of life with some measure of satisfaction to himself
and pleasure to his neighbours. He was a sound judge of cattle and
horses, but of human nature he knew nothing whatever, and his first act,
on being informed of the murder at the moat-house, was to ring up
Scotland Yard and request it to send down one of its most trusted
officials to investigate the circumstances. In reply to this call for
assistance, Superintendent Merrington, not unmindful of the county
standing and influence of the Herediths, had decided to investigate the
case himself, and had brought with him two satellites--a finger-print
expert who was at that moment paring his own finger-nails with a
pocket-knife as he stared vacantly out of the library window, and an
official photographer, who was upstairs taking photographs in the death
chamber.

Seated near the finger-print expert was a police official of middle-age,
Inspector Weyling, of the Sussex County Police. He was a saturnine sort
of man, with a hooked nose, a skin like parchment, and a perfectly bald
sugar-loaf head, surmounted at the top by a wen as large as a duck-egg.
His deferential attitude and obsequious tone whenever Superintendent
Merrington chose to address a remark to him indicated that he had a
proper official respect for the rank and standing of that gentleman.
Inspector Weyling was merely a police official. He had no personal
characteristics whatever, unless a hobby for breeding Belgian rabbits,
and a profound belief that Mr. Lloyd George was the greatest statesman
the world had ever seen, could be said to constitute a temperament.

The fifth man was Detective Caldew, who had just completed a narrative
of the events of the previous night for the benefit of his colleagues,
but more especially for Superintendent Merrington, in whose hands lay
the power of directing the investigations of the crime. It was by no
wish of Detective Caldew that Superintendent Merrington had been brought
into the case. Caldew thought when the county inspector arrived and
found a Scotland Yard man at work he would be only too glad to allow him
to go on with the case, and he anticipated no difficulty in obtaining
the consent of his official superiors at Scotland Yard to continuing the
investigations he had commenced. But Inspector Weyling, when notified of
the crime by Sergeant Lumbe, had telephoned to the Chief Constable for
instructions. The latter, distrustful of the ability of the county
police to bring such an atrocious murderer to Justice, had begged the
help of Scotland Yard, with the result that Superintendent Merrington
and his assistants appeared at the moat-house in the early morning
before the astonished eyes of Caldew, who was taking a walk in the
moat-house garden after a night of fruitless investigations.

In the arrival of Merrington, Caldew saw all his fine hopes of promotion
dashed to the ground. He was by no means confident that Merrington would
permit him to take any further share in the investigations, but he was
quite certain that if he did, and the murderer was captured through
their joint efforts, very little of the credit would fall to his share
when such a famous detective as Merrington was connected with the case.
Merrington would see to that.

Caldew, in his narration of the facts of the murder, laid emphasis on
the mysterious nature of the crime, in the hope that Merrington might
deem it wiser to return to London and leave him in charge of the case,
rather than risk a failure which would greatly damage his own
reputation. Merrington listened to him gloomily. He fully realized the
difficult task ahead of the police, and his temper was not improved in
consequence.

"Apparently the murderer has got clean away without leaving a trace
behind him?" he said.

"Yes."

"No sign of any weapon?"

"No."

"Anything taken?"

"No. Miss Heredith says nothing was taken from the room, and nothing is
missing from the house."

"The motive was not robbery then," remarked Captain Stanhill.

"It may have been," responded Merrington. "Caldew says the first
intimation of the crime was the murdered woman screaming. The scream was
followed in a few seconds by the revolver shot. If she screamed when she
saw the murderer enter her room, he may well have feared interruption
and capture, and bolted without stealing anything."

"Why did he murder her, then, in that case?" asked Captain Stanhill.

"To prevent subsequent identification. Many burglars proceed to murder
for that reason. I know plenty of old hands who would commit half a
dozen murders rather than face the prospect of five years' imprisonment.
I do not say that burglary was the motive in this case, but we must not
lose sight of the possibility."

"It seems a strange case," murmured Inspector Weyling absently. He was
thinking, as he spoke, of his rabbits, and wondering whether his wife
would remember to give the lop-eared doe with the litter a little milk
in the course of the morning.

"It's a very sad case," said Captain Stanhill. "Poor young thing!" The
Chief Constable was a human being before he was a police official, and
his face showed plainly that he was stricken with horror by the story of
the crime.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.