W. S. B. Mathews - "A Popular History of the Art of Music"

Thomas Carson - "Ranching, Sport and Travel"

George Herbert Betts - "The Mind and Its Education"

Francis Hodgson Burnett - "A Fair Barbarian"

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




"In a seemingly purposeless murder like this, a certain amount of
suspicion gathers round the other members of the household. Human nature
being what it is, one should never take anything for granted, but should
always be on the watch for hidden motives. But in this case the members
of the household, with the exception of Miss Heredith, were downstairs
in the dining-room at the time the murder was committed. Miss Heredith
left the room a few minutes before the shot was heard. You will recall
that she volunteered that statement to us this morning. It occurred to
me at the time that that may have been bluff to put us off the scent.
Clever criminals often do that kind of thing. My suspicions against her
were strengthened by the additional fact that Miss Heredith did not like
her nephew's wife. She masked the fact beneath a well-bred semblance of
grief and horror, but it was plain as a pikestaff to me. But, after
thinking over all the circumstances, I came to the conclusion that she
had nothing whatever to do with it."

"Such a possibility is inconceivable," exclaimed Captain Stanhill. "A
lady like Miss Heredith would never commit murder."

"It was not for that reason that I excluded her from suspicion," replied
Merrington drily. "The points against her were really very damaging. She
was out of the dining-room when the scream was heard, and when the
others rushed out of the dining-room on hearing the shot, the first
thing they saw was Miss Heredith descending the staircase of the wing in
which her nephew's wife had been murdered. Fortunately for Miss
Heredith, she was almost at the bottom of the staircase when she was
seen. The guests streamed out of the dining-room directly the shot was
heard, therefore it is impossible that Miss Heredith could have shot
Violet Heredith and then reached the bottom of the stairs so quickly.
She is able to establish an alibi of time, by, perhaps, half a minute.

"As all the members of the house party were in the dining-room at the
time, it is clear that they had nothing to do with the actual commission
of the crime. The next thing is the servants, and they also can be
excluded from suspicion. When we examined them this morning they were
all able to prove, more or less conclusively, that they were engaged in
their various duties at the time the murder was committed. The point is
that not one of them was upstairs in the left wing of the house when
Mrs. Heredith was shot.

"My original impression that the murder was not committed by a native of
the district has been deepened by our afternoon's investigations. Where,
then, are we to look for the murderer? To answer that question, in part,
let us first consider _how_ the murder was committed, and try and
reconstruct the circumstances in which the murderer must have entered
and left the house.

"Caldew thinks that the murderer entered the house by scaling the
bedroom window, and made his exit by the same means. He bases that view
on Miss Heredith's belief that the window was closed when she was in the
bedroom before dinner. After the murder was committed the window was
found open. But Miss Heredith's statement about the closed window does
not amount to very much. She does not actually know whether the window
was open or shut, because the window curtains were completely drawn at
the time she was in the room. Those curtains are so thick and heavy that
they would keep out the air whether the window was open or shut, and
account for the stuffy atmosphere in a room which had been occupied all
day.

"I do not regard the open window as a clue one way or the other. The one
thing we must not lose sight of is that nobody can say definitely when
it was opened. It may have been opened by Mrs. Heredith herself before
Miss Heredith came into the room, or the murderer may have flung it open
and escaped from the room that way after committing the murder.
Personally, I do not think that he did, but I am not prepared altogether
to exclude the possibility of his having done so. But I am convinced
that he did not enter the bedroom by scaling the outside wall and
getting in through the window. In the first place, there are no marks of
any kind on the window sill or the window catch. There is not very much
one way or another in the absence of marks on the sill or even on the
catch, supposing the window was locked. The murderer might have opened
the catch from outside without leaving a mark--I have known the trick to
be done--and he might have got into the room without leaving any marks
on the sill, particularly if he wore rubber boots. But, what is far more
important, there are no marks on the wall outside, or any disturbance or
displacement of the Virginia creeper which covers a portion of the wall,
to suggest that the murderer climbed up to the room that way. I think it
is certain that if he had done so he would have left his marks on the
one or the other. The wall is of a soft old brickwork which would
scratch and show marks plainly, and the Virginia creeper would break
away. In any case, as I said this morning, it would barely sustain the
weight of a boy, or a very slight girl. Finally, there are no marks of
footsteps approaching the wall in the garden outside.

"The question of entry is naturally of great importance, and that was
why I questioned the butler this morning whether the blinds were drawn
in the dining-room last night. At that time, before I had had an
opportunity of making my subsequent investigations, I deemed it possible
that the murderer might have entered from outside by the window. In that
case he would have had to pass the dining-room windows to reach the
bedroom window, and might have been seen by one of the guests in the
dining-room. It would be dark at the time, but last night was a very
clear one, and his form might have been discerned flitting past the
dining-room windows. But the absence of footprints in the gravel, and
more particularly, in the soft yielding earth beneath the bedroom
window, is conclusive proof to me that he did not get into the room that
way.

"Did he escape by the window? That question is more difficult to answer.
It is quite possible that it might have been done without injury, but it
is a desperate feat to leap from an upstairs window in the dark. The
murderer was in desperate straits, and for that reason we must not rule
out the possibility that he did so. But if the leap was made through the
window, my argument about the absence of footprints in the soft garden
soil underneath the window comes in with additional force. A person
leaping from such a height, even in stocking feet or rubber boots, would
be certain to leave the impress of the drop, in footmarks or heelmarks,
in the soil where he landed.

"Caldew's principal reason for believing that the murderer escaped by
the window was based on the point that there was no other avenue of
escape possible. We can only speculate as to what happened in the
bedroom immediately before the murder was committed, but Caldew's theory
is that Mrs. Heredith saw the murderer approaching her, and screamed for
help. That scream hurried the murderer's movements. The scream was sure
to arouse the household, and it left the murderer with the smallest
possible margin of time in which to shoot Mrs. Heredith and make escape
by the window. An attempt to escape down the front staircase meant
running into the arms of the inmates of the dining-room rushing
upstairs. The only other exit from that wing of the house was the
disused back staircase, and that was found locked when it was searched
after the murder. Therefore, according to Caldew, the murderer escaped
by the window because there was no other way out.

"That theory is plausible enough on the surface, but only on the
surface. For the same reason that establishes Miss Heredith's innocence,
the murderer could not have escaped by running down the staircase,
because there was not sufficient time to get past the people who had
been alarmed by the scream. But if the murderer was a man, it is just
possible that he might have darted out of the bedroom and dropped over
the balusters, before the dining-room door was opened, getting clear
away without being seen by anybody--not even by Miss Heredith. An
examination of the staircase of the left wing has convinced me that this
feat was possible. The staircase has a very sharp turn in the middle,
which has the effect of hiding the top of the staircase from the bottom,
and the bottom from the top. The leap is not so dangerous as the one
from the window, because it is not so high. It is probably six feet
less, allowing for the flooring beneath and the higher window opening
above. The spot by the foot of the staircase where the murderer might
have dropped is well screened, even from the view of anybody near the
bottom of the staircase, by some tall tree shrubs in tubs, and some
armour.

"But there is another and likelier way by which the murderer might have
escaped. I saw the possibility of it as soon as I examined the upstairs
portion of the wing in which the murder had been committed. There are
several places where the murderer could have hidden until chance
afforded the opportunity of escape. He would avoid seeking shelter in
any of the adjoining bedrooms, because he would realize that they would
be searched immediately the murder was discovered, but there are
excellent temporary places of concealment behind the tapestry hangings,
or in the thick folds of the heavy velvet curtains at the entrance to
the corridor, or in the small press or wardrobe which is built right
over the head of the stairs. Suppose that the murderer, after firing the
shot, dashed out into the corridor with the idea of escaping down the
stairs. He hears the guests coming upstairs, and realizes that he is too
late. He instinctively looks round for some place to hide, sees the
curtains, and slips behind them. From their folds he watches the guests
troop along the corridor to the murdered woman's bedroom. He could touch
them as they passed, but they cannot see him. Then, while they are all
congregated round the doorway of Mrs. Heredith's bedroom, he emerges on
the other side of the curtains, slips down the staircase, and gets out
of the house without meeting anybody."

"But all the guests did not go upstairs," observed Captain Stanhill, who
was following his companion's remarks with close attention. "Some stayed
in the dining-room. Tufnell, the butler, made that quite clear when you
were examining him this morning."

"Yes--a few hysterical females cowering and whimpering with fear as far
away from the door as possible," retorted Merrington contemptuously.
"The butler made that clear also."

"But the servants would also have heard the scream and the shot,"
pursued Captain Stanhill earnestly. "Is it not likely that some of them
would have been clustered near the foot of the staircase, wondering what
had happened?"

"No," replied Merrington. "Servants are even more cowardly than they are
curious. They would be too frightened to congregate at the foot of the
staircase, for fear the murderer might come leaping downstairs and
discharge another shot in their midst. It is possible, however, that the
murderer remained hidden upstairs for some time longer--perhaps until
the butler left the house to go to the village for the police, and
Musard took all the male guests downstairs to make another search of the
house. He would then have an exceedingly favourable opportunity of
slipping away unobserved. It is true that the upstairs portion of the
wing was searched before that time arrived, but the search was conducted
by amateurs who knew nothing about such a task, and would probably
overlook such hiding-places as I have indicated."

It appeared to Captain Stanhill that Superintendent Merrington, instead
of always adopting his theory of fitting the crime to the circumstances,
was sometimes in danger of reversing the process.

"From what you say it seems to me that it is very difficult to tell how
the murderer escaped," he remarked.

"It is even more difficult to say how the murderer, after entering the
moat-house, found his way to Mrs. Heredith's bedroom in order to murder
her. The house is a big rambling place, consisting of a main building
and two wings. It would be impossible for you or me or any other
stranger to find our way about it without previous knowledge of the
place, unless we had a plan. How, then, did the murderer accomplish it?
How did he know that Mrs. Heredith slept in the left wing? How did he
know that he would find her alone in that wing while everybody else was
downstairs at the dinner-table?"

Again, it seemed to Captain Stanhill that Merrington's detective methods
had a tendency to multiply difficulties rather than clear them up.

"Perhaps he was provided with a plan of the house," he suggested.

"That answers only one of my points. In my consideration of this aspect
of the case, two possible solutions occurred to me. It is impossible for
any of the guests to have committed the crime, because they were all
downstairs at the time, but it is just possible one of them may have
instigated it."

"It is incredible to me that a guest staying in a gentleman's house
could plot such a crime," said Captain Stanhill.

"Nothing is incredible in crime," replied Merrington. "I've no illusions
about human nature. It is capable of much worse things than that.
Strange things can happen in a big country-house like this, filled with
a large party of young people of both sexes--flirtations, intrigues, and
worse still."

"But not murder, as a general rule," commented Captain Stanhill, with a
trace of sarcasm in his mild tones.

"You cannot lay down general rules about murder. An unbalanced human
being, under the influence of hatred, jealousy, or revenge, is no more
amenable to the rules of society than a tiger. But I do not think that
this crime was instigated by one of the guests, because in that case it
would probably have been arranged to be committed later in the evening,
when the members of the house-party were at the house of the Weynes, and
the moat-house was occupied only by the servants. Still, I do not intend
to lose sight of the hypothesis. Another possibility is that one of the
servants was in league with the murderer. A third possibility is that
Mrs. Heredith may have brought in the murderer herself."

"What do you mean?"

"She may have had a lover, and the lover may have murdered her."

"Oh, impossible!" Captain Stanhill repelled the idea with an instinctive
gesture of disgust. "It is too monstrous to suppose that a happily
married young wife would be carrying on an intrigue three months after
her marriage."

"More monstrous things happen every day--human nature being what it is,"
retorted Merrington coolly. "You must remember that we know practically
nothing about her. The people who knew her in London left the house
before they could be questioned; Miss Heredith and her brother have no
knowledge of her past; and her husband is too ill to tell us anything.
Her marriage was apparently a hasty love match--a love match so far as
young Heredith was concerned. So far, we have only two slender facts to
guide us in our estimate of her, which are contained in the two letters
in which young Heredith announced his marriage to his people. According
to those statements, she was an orphan who was earning her living as a
war clerk in the Government department in which young Heredith held his
appointment. That does not carry us very far. During her brief life at
the moat-house she seems to have been reticent about her earlier life.
Miss Heredith is not the type of woman to have questioned her, and,
apparently, she vouchsafed no information. An examination of her boxes
and her writing-table has brought to light nothing in the way of writing
or correspondence to help us. Such a girl--a bachelor girl in London in
war-time--may have had passages in her past life of which her husband
knew nothing--passages which may have an important bearing on her
murder. Not until we have a thorough knowledge of her antecedents and
her past life can we hope to pierce the hidden motives which have led to
this murder. It is there, in my opinion, that we must seek for the clue
to this strange murder, and it is to that effort I shall devote my
energies as soon as I return to London. Until those facts are brought to
light we are merely groping in the dark."




CHAPTER X


In accordance with Merrington's instructions, Caldew devoted a
considerable portion of the morning seeking information among the
moat-house guests. But few of them showed any inclination to talk about
the murder. Many of the women were too upset to be seen, and the men had
plainly no desire to be mixed up in such a terrible affair by giving
interviews to detectives. Everybody was anxious to get away as speedily
as possible, and Caldew was compelled to pursue his inquiries amongst
groups of hurrying people, flustered servants, and village conveyances
laden with luggage. Most of the departing guests replied to his
questions as briefly as possible, and gave their London addresses with
obvious reluctance; the few who were willing to aid the cause of justice
could throw very little light on the London life of the murdered girl.
Even those who had been acquainted with her before her marriage seemed
to know very little about her.

Caldew finished his inquiries by midday. By that time most of the guests
had departed from the moat-house and were on their way to London.
Superintendent Merrington and Captain Stanhill were in the library
examining the servants. Sergeant Lumbe had gone by train to Tibblestone
to sift the story of the suspicious stranger who had descended on that
remote village during the previous night.

It wanted an hour to lunch-time, and Caldew decided to spend the time by
making a few investigations on his own account before cycling over to
Chidelham in the afternoon to see the Weynes.

Caldew had not been impressed with Merrington's handling of the case.
Subordinates rarely are impressed with the qualities of those placed
over them in authority. They generally imagine they could do better if
they had the same opportunities. Caldew was no exception to that rule.
It seemed to him that Merrington lacked finesse, and was out of touch
with modern methods of criminal investigation. He had been spoilt by too
much success, by too much newspaper flattery, by too many jaunts with
Royalty. No man could act as sheep-dog for Royalty and retain skill as a
detective. That kind of professional work was fatal for the
intelligence. Merrington had a great reputation behind him, and his
knowledge of European criminals was probably unequalled, but his methods
of investigating the moat-house murder suggested that he was no longer
one of the world's greatest detectives, if, indeed, he had ever deserved
recognition in their ranks. Caldew recalled that his fame rested chiefly
on his wide experience rather than on the more subtle deductive methods
of modern criminology. It was said in Scotland Yard that when Merrington
was at the height of his reputation, twenty years before, his knowledge
of London criminals and their methods was so extensive that he could in
most cases identify the criminal by merely looking at his handiwork.

As a modern criminologist, Caldew believed that the less a detective
intruded his own personality into his investigations the better for his
chances of success. He did not think that the loud officialism of
Merrington was likely to solve such a deep, subtle crime as the murder
of Violet Heredith, and, consequently, he had the chance for which he
had waited so long. It now remained for him to prove that he could do
better than Merrington. He had sufficient confidence in his own
abilities to welcome the opportunity, but at the same time he believed
that he was confronted with a crime which would tax all his resources as
a detective to unravel.

Like Merrington, he had been struck by the strangeness of the murder.
All the circumstances were unusual, and quite outside his previous
experience of big crimes. He had also come to the conclusion that the
ease with which the murderer had found his way into the moat-house, and
afterwards escaped, pointed to an intimate knowledge of the place.

It would be too much to say that Caldew and Merrington reached different
conclusions by the same road. Up to a certain point their independent
deductions from the more obvious facts of the case were alike, as was
inevitable. In every crime there are circumstances and events which are
as finger-posts, pointing the one way to the experienced observer. But
their subsequent deductions from the outstanding facts branched widely,
perhaps because the younger detective did not read so much into
circumstances as Merrington. From the same facts they had reached
different theories about the murder. Merrington, by a process of minute
and careful deductions which he had placed before the Chief Constable,
had convinced himself that the key to the murder and the murderer was to
be found in London; Caldew believed that the solution of the mystery lay
near the scene of the events, and perhaps in the house where the murder
was committed.

Caldew was aware that he could have given no satisfactory reason for
holding that belief, apart from the point that the murder had been
committed by somebody who knew the moat-house sufficiently well to get
in and out of the place without being seen. But that point was open to
the explanation that the criminal might have provided himself with a
plan of the house. Nevertheless, the impression had entered his mind so
strongly that he could not have shaken it off if he had tried. But he
did not try. He had sufficient imagination to be aware that intuition,
in crime detection, is sometimes worth more than the most elaborate
deductions.

For the rest, all his speculations about the crime were affected by the
trinket he had found in the bedroom on the night of the murder. But the
discovery and subsequent disappearance of that clue, as he believed it
to be, had not led him very far as yet. He felt himself in the position
of a palaeontologist who is called upon to reproduce the structure of an
extinct prehistoric animal from a footprint in sandstone. The vanished
trinket was a starting-point, and no more. It was a possible hypothesis
that the person who had dropped the stone and entered the death-chamber
in search of it was the murderer, but so far it was incapable of
demonstration or proof. As an isolated fact, it was useless, and brought
him no nearer the solution of the mystery. But, on the other hand, it
was an undoubted fact, and, for that reason, was dependent upon other
facts for its existence. It was his task to find out who had dropped the
trinket in the bedroom and subsequently returned for it during his own
brief absence downstairs. To establish those essential kindred facts
was, he believed, to lay hands on the murderer of Violet Heredith.

Caldew walked thoughtfully from the moat-house down to the village,
intent on commencing his own independent investigations into the crime.
If the solution of the mystery lay near the scene, as he believed, it
was possible that some clue might be picked up among the villagers, to
whom the daily doings of the folk in "the big house" were events of the
first magnitude, and who might, presumably, be supposed to know anything
which was likely to throw light on the obscure motive for the crime. It
was for that reason he directed his footsteps towards the fountain head
of gossip in an English village--the inn. He flattered himself he would
be able to extract more local information from the patrons of the place
than any other detective could hope to do. To begin with, he was a
Sussex man and a native of the village, and since his return, after so
many years' absence, he had spent his evenings at the inn renewing old
associations and talking to the companions of his boyhood.

A week's renewed village life had taught him the ways of the place and
the war-time drinking customs of the inhabitants. Constrained by recent
legislation to compress their convivial intercourse into extremely
limited periods, the village tradesmen, and a fair proportion of the
surrounding farm labourers and shepherds, had fallen into the habit of
assembling at the inn at midday, to discuss the hard times and drink the
sour weak "war beer" forced on patriotic Britons as an exigent war
measure.

Caldew entered a side door which opened into a small snuggery, divided
from the tap-room by a wooden partition. It was here that the regular
cronies and select patrons of the establishment sat in comfortable
seclusion to discuss the crops, the weather, and market prices in the
broad Sussex dialect, which Caldew, from the force of old association,
unconsciously fell into again when he was with them.

The room was nearly full, but his appearance threw a marked restraint on
the group of assembled countrymen. The conversation, which had obviously
been about the murder, ceased instantly as he entered and seated himself
on one of the forms placed against the partition. The innkeeper, who was
standing behind the bar in his shirt sleeves, nodded uneasily in
response to his friendly salutation, but the customers awkwardly avoided
his glance by staring stolidly in front of them. Caldew attempted to
dispel their reserve with a friendly remark, but no reply was
forthcoming. It was obvious that the patrons of the inn wanted neither
his conversation nor company. One after another, they finished their
beer and walked out of the inn with the slow deliberate movements of the
Sussex peasant.

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