The Shrieking Pit

A >> Arthur J. Rees >> The Shrieking Pit

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

"If you think it a little strange that Penreath should have jumped to
this conclusion about the woman he loved, you must remember the
circumstances were unusual. Peggy had surrounded herself with mystery;
she refused to tell her lover where she lived, she would not even tell
him her name. When he looked into the room he did not even know she was
in the house, because she had kept out of his way during the previous
evening, waiting for an opportunity to see him alone. Consequently he
experienced a great shock at the sight of her, and the mystery with
which she had always veiled her identity and movements recurred to him
with a terrible and sinister significance as he saw her again under such
damning conditions, standing by the bedside of the dead man with a knife
in her hand.

"Penreath's subsequent actions--his destruction of the letter he had
written to Miss Willoughby, his hurried departure from the inn, and his
silence in the face of accusation--are all explained by the fact that he
saw the girl Peggy in the next room, and believed that she had committed
this terrible crime.

"I now come to the clues which point directly to Benson's complicity in
the murder. I have already told you of his alarm at my chance remark
about his height and the smashed gas globe. You also know that he was in
need of money. The next point is rather a curious one. When Benson was
telling us his story the day after the murder I observed that he kept
smoothing his long hair down on his forehead. There was something in the
action that suggested more than a mannerism. The night after I
discovered the door in the wall, I left it open in order to watch the
next room. During the night Benson entered and searched the dead man's
chamber. I do not know what he was looking for--he did not find it,
whatever it was--but during the search he grew hot, and threw back his
hair from his forehead, revealing a freshly healed scar on his temple.
The reason he had worn his hair low was explained: he wanted to hide
from us the fact that it was he who had smashed the gas-globe in Mr.
Glenthorpe's room, and had cut his head by the accident.

"But his visit to the dead man's room revealed more than the scar on his
forehead. How did Benson get into the room? The room had been kept
locked since the murder. That night I had taken the key from a hook on
the kitchen dresser in order to examine the room when the inmates of the
place had retired. Benson, therefore, had let himself in with another
key. This was our first knowledge of another key. Hitherto we had
believed that the only key was the one found in the outside of the door
the morning after the murder. The police theory is partly based on that
supposition. Benson's possession of a second key, and his silence
concerning it, point strongly to his complicity in the crime. He knew
that Mr. Glenthorpe was accustomed to lock his door and carry the key
about with him, so he obtained another key in order to have access to
the room whenever he desired. There would have been nothing in this if
he had told his household about it. A second key would have been useful
to the servant when she wanted to arrange Mr. Glenthorpe's room. But
Benson kept the existence of the second key a close secret. He said
nothing about it when we questioned him concerning the key in the door.
An innocent man would have immediately informed us that there was a
second key to the room. Benson kept silence because he had something to
hide.

"I now come to the events of the next morning. My investigation of the
rise and the pit during the afternoon had led to a discovery which
subsequently suggested to my mind that the missing money had been hidden
in the pit. I determined to try and descend it. I arose before daybreak,
as I did not wish any of the inmates of the inn to see me. Before going
to the pit I got out of the window and into the window of the next room,
as Penreath is supposed to have done. That experiment brought to light
another small point in Penreath's favour. The drop from the first window
is an awkward one--more than eight feet--and my heels made a deep
indentation in the soft red clay underneath the window. If Penreath had
dropped from the window, even in his stocking feet, the marks of his
heels ought to have been visible. There was not enough rain after the
murder was committed to obliterate them entirely. There were no such
marks under his window when we examined the ground the morning after
the murder.

"I next proceeded to the rise and lowered myself down the pit by the
creepers inside. About ten feet down the vegetable growth ceased, and
the further descent was impossible without ropes. But at the limit of
the distance to which a man can climb down unaided, I saw a peg sticking
into the side of the pit, with a fishing line suspended from it. I drew
up the line, and found attached to it the murdered man's pocket-book
containing the L300 he had drawn out of the bank at Heathfield the day
he was murdered.

"Let me now try to reconstruct the crime in the light of the fresh
information we have gained. Benson was in desperate straits for money,
and he knew that Mr. Glenthorpe had drawn L300 from the bank that
morning, all in small notes, which could not be traced. The fact that he
obtained a second key to the room suggests that he had been meditating
the act for some time past. It will be found, I think, when all the
facts are brought to light, that he obtained the second key when he
learnt that Mr. Glenthorpe intended to take a large sum of money out of
the bank. Penreath's chance arrival at the inn on the day that the money
was drawn out, probably set him thinking of the possibility of murdering
and robbing Mr. Glenthorpe in circumstances that would divert suspicion
to the stranger. Penreath unconsciously helped him by leaving his
match-box in the room where he had dined with Mr. Glenthorpe. Benson
found the match-box on looking into the room to see that everything was
all right when his guests had retired, and determined to commit the
murder that night, and leave it by the murdered man's bedside, as a clue
to direct attention to Penreath. His next idea, to murder Mr.
Glenthorpe with the knife which Penreath had used at dinner, probably
occurred to him as he considered the possibilities of the match-box.

"It is difficult to decide why Benson chose to enter the room from the
window instead of by the door when he had a second key of the room. He
may have attempted to open the door with the key, and found that Mr.
Glenthorpe had locked the door and left the key on the inside. Or he may
have thought that as Penreath was sleeping in the next room, he ran too
great a risk of discovery by entering from the door, and so decided to
enter by the window. We must presume that Benson subsequently found Mr.
Glenthorpe's key, either inside the door or under his pillow, and kept
it. He entered the window, stabbed Mr. Glenthorpe, and placed the
match-box and the knife at the side of the bed. His next act would be to
search for the money. Finding it difficult to search by the light of the
tallow candle, he decided to go downstairs and turn on the gas.

"During his absence Peggy entered the room, saw the dead body, and
picked up the knife and the match-box. Then she picked up the
candlestick by the bed, and fled in terror. Benson, after turning on the
gas at the meter, returned to find the room in darkness. Thinking that
the wind had blown out the candle, he walked to the gas with the
intention of lighting it. In doing so he knocked his head against the
globe, cutting his forehead, and smashing the incandescent burner.

"Benson, when he found that the candlestick had disappeared must, in his
fright, have rushed downstairs for another. He could not light the gas,
because he had smashed the burner. In no other way can I account for the
second lot of candle-grease that I found in the room underneath the
gas-light, which made me believe at first that the room had been
visited by two persons on the night of the murder. There _were_ two
persons, Benson and his daughter, but Peggy did not bring a candlestick
into the room. It looks to me as though Benson, on returning with the
second candle, attempted to light the gas with it and failed. That
action would account for the gas tap being turned on, and the spilt
grease directly underneath. He then searched the room till he found the
pocket-book containing the money.

"The subsequent removal of the body to the pit strikes me as an
afterthought. The complete plan was too diabolically ingenious and
complete to have formed in the murderer's mind at the outset. The man
who put the match-box and knife by the bedside of the murdered man in
order to divert suspicion to Penreath had no thought, at that stage, of
removing the body. That idea came afterwards, probably when he went
upstairs the second time with the lighted candle, and saw Penreath's
boots outside the door. I cannot help thinking that the clue of the
footprints, which was such a damning point in the case against Penreath,
was quite an accidental one so far as the murderer was concerned. The
thought that the boots would leave footprints which would subsequently
be identified as Penreath's was altogether too subtle to have occurred
to a man like Benson. That is the touch of a master criminal--of a much
higher order of criminal brain than Benson's.

"It is my belief that he originally intended to leave the murdered man
in his room, thinking that the match-box and knife would point suspicion
to Penreath. But after killing Mr. Glenthorpe he was overcome with the
fear that his guilt would be discovered, in spite of his precautions to
throw suspicions on another man, and he decided to throw the body into
the pit in the hope that the crime would never be found out. The fact
that he had entered the room in his stocking feet supports this theory,
because he would be well aware that he would not be able to carry the
body over several hundred yards of rough ground in his bare feet. He
took Penreath's boots, which were close at hand, in preference to the
danger and delay which he would have incurred in going to his own room,
some distance away, for his own boots. Having put on the boots, he took
the body on his shoulders and conveyed it to the pit.

"There are two or three points in this case which I am unable to clear
up to my complete satisfaction. Why did Benson leave the key in the
outside of the door? Was it merely one of those mistakes--those
oversights--which all murderers are liable to commit, or did he do it
deliberately, in the hope of conveying the impression that Mr.
Glenthorpe had gone out and left the key in the outside of the door. In
the next place, I cannot account for the mark of the box underneath the
window. There is a third point--the direction of the wound in the
murdered man's body, which gave me some ideas at the time that I am now
compelled to dismiss as erroneous. But these are points that I hope will
be cleared up by Benson's arrest, and confession, for I am convinced, by
my observation of the man, that he will confess.

"There are one or two more points. Benson is an ardent fisherman, who
spends all his spare time fishing on the marshes. The stolen pocket-book
was suspended in the pit by a piece of fishing line. But I attach more
importance to the second point, which is that since the murder has been
committed the nightly conversation at the inn tap-room has centred
around a local ghost, known as the White Lady of the Shrieking Pit, who
is supposed from time immemorial to have haunted the pit where the body
was thrown, and to bring death to anybody who encounters her at night.
This spectre, which is profoundly believed in by the villagers, had not
been seen for at least two years before the murder, but she made a
reappearance a night or two after the crime, and is supposed to have
been seen frequently ever since. It looks to me as though Benson set the
story going again in order to keep the credulous villagers away from the
pit where the money was concealed.

"This morning, in company with Mr. Oakham, I saw Penreath in the gaol,
and by a ruse induced him to break his stubborn silence. His story,
which it is not necessary for me to give you in detail, testifies to his
innocence, and supports my own theory of the crime. He did not see the
murder committed, but he saw the girl go into the room, and subsequently
he saw her father enter and remove the body. It was the latter spectacle
that robbed him of any lingering doubts he may have had of the girl's
guilt, and forced him to the conclusion that she and her father were
accomplices in the crime. But he loved her so much that he determined to
keep silence and shield her."

CHAPTER XXVI

"This is a remarkable story, Mr. Colwyn," said the chief constable,
breaking the rather lengthy silence which followed the conclusion of the
detective's reconstruction of the crime. "It has been quite entrancing
to listen to your syllogistical skill. You would have made an excellent
Crown Prosecutor." The chief constable's official mind could conceive no
higher compliment. "Your statements seem almost too incredible for
belief, but undoubtedly you have made out a case for the further
investigation of this crime. What do you think, Galloway?"

"The question, to my mind, is what Mr. Colwyn's discoveries really
represent," replied Galloway. "He has built up a very ingenious and
plausible reconstruction, but let us discard mere theory, and stick to
the facts. What do they amount to? Apart from Penreath's statement in
the gaol that he saw the body carried down stairs----"

"You can leave that out of the question," said the detective curtly. "My
reconstruction of the crime is independent of Penreath's testimony,
which is open to the objection that it should have been made before."

"Exactly what I was going to point out," rejoined Galloway bluntly.
"Well, then, let us examine the fresh facts. There are five as I see
them. The recovery of Penreath's match-box, the discovery of the door
between the two rooms, the wound on the innkeeper's forehead, the
additional key, and the finding of the pocket-book in the pit. Exclude
the idea of conspiracy, and the recovery of the match-box becomes an
additional point against Penreath, because it strikes me as guess work
to assume that he had no other matches in his possession except that
particular box and the loose one he found in his vest pocket. Smokers
frequently carry two or three boxes of matches. The discovery of the
hidden door is interesting, but has no direct bearing on the crime. The
wound on the innkeeper's head looks suspicious, but there is no proof
that it was caused by his knocking his head against the gas globe in the
murdered man's room on the night of the murder. As Mr. Colwyn himself
has pointed out, there is not much in Benson having a second key of
Glenthorpe's room. Many hotel-keepers and innkeepers keep duplicate keys
of bedrooms. The significance of this discovery is that Benson kept
silence about the existence of this key. Undoubtedly he should have told
us about it, but I am not prepared to accept, offhand, that his silence
was the silence of a guilty man. He may have kept silence regarding it
through a foolish fear of directing suspicion to himself. That theory
seems to me quite as probable as Mr. Colwyn's theory. There remains the
recovery of the money in the pit. In considering that point I find it
impossible to overlook that Penreath returned to the wood after making
his escape. That suggests, to my mind, that he hid the money in the pit
himself, and took the risk of returning in order to regain possession of
it."

"You are worthier of the chief constable's compliment than I, my dear
Galloway," said Colwyn genially. "Your gift of overcoming points which
tell against you by ignoring them, and your careful avoidance of
tell-tale inferences, would make you an ideal Crown Prosecutor."

"I don't believe in inferences in crime," replied Galloway, flushing
under the detective's sarcasm. "I am a plain man, and I like to stick to
facts."

"What was the whole of your case against Penreath but a series of
inferences?" retorted Colwyn. "Circumstantial evidence, and the
circumstances on which you depended in this case, were never fully
established. Furthermore, your facts were not consistent with your
original hypothesis, and had to be altered when the case went to trial.
Now that I have discovered other facts and inferences which are
consistent with another hypothesis, you strive to shut your eyes to
them, or draw wrong conclusions from them. Your suggestion that Penreath
must have hidden the money in the pit because he was arrested near it is
a choice example of false deduction based on the wrong premise that
Penreath hid the money there on the night of the murder. He could not
have done so because he had no rope, and how was he, a stranger to the
place, to know that the inside of the pit was covered with creeping
plants of sufficient strength to bear a man's weight? The choice of the
pit as a hiding place for the money argues an intimate local knowledge."

"You have not yet told us how you came to deduce that the money was in
the pit," said Mr. Cromering, who had been examining the pocket-book and
money.

"While I was examining the mouth of the pit the previous afternoon I
found this piece of paper at the brink, trodden into the clay. Later on
I recognised the peculiar watermark of waving lines as the Government
watermark in the first issue of Treasury war notes. From that I deduced
that the money was hidden in the pit. It was all in Treasury notes, as
you see."

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you now," said the chief constable,
with a puzzled glance at the piece of dirty paper in his hand. "This
piece of paper is not a Treasury note."

"Not now, perhaps, but it was once," said the detective with a smile.
"It puzzled me at first. I could not account for the Treasury watermark,
designed to prevent forgery of the notes, appearing on a piece of blank
paper. Then it came to me. The first issue of Treasury notes were very
badly printed. Ordinary black ink was used, which would disappear if the
note was immersed in water. It was an official at Somerset House who
told me this. He informed me that they had several cases of munition
workers who, after being paid in Treasury notes, had put them into the
pockets of their overalls, and forgotten about them until the overalls
came back from the wash with every vestige of printing washed out from
the notes, leaving nothing but the watermarks. It occurred to me that
the same thing had happened in this case. The murderer, when about to
descend to the pit to conceal the money, had accidentally dropped a note
and trodden it underfoot, and it had lain out in the open exposed to
heavy rains and dew until every scrap of printing was obliterated."

"By Jove, that's very clever, very clever indeed!" exclaimed Galloway.
He picked up a magnifying glass which was lying on the table, and
closely examined the dirty piece of white paper which Colwyn had found
at the mouth of the pit. "It was once a Treasury note, sure enough--the
watermark is unmistakable. You've scored a point there that I couldn't
have made, and I'm man enough to own up to it. You see more deeply into
things than I do, Mr. Colwyn. And I'm willing to admit that you've made
some new and interesting discoveries about this case, though in my
opinion you are inclined to read too much into them. But I certainly
think they ought to be investigated further. If Penreath's statement to
you this morning is true, Benson is the murderer, and there has been a
miscarriage of justice. But what makes me doubt the truth of it is
Penreath's refusal to speak before. I mistrust confessions made out at
the last moment. And his explanation that he kept silence to save the
girl strikes me as rather thin. It is too quixotic."

"There is more than that in it," replied Colwyn. "He had a double
motive. Penreath heard Sir Henry Durwood depose at the trial that he
believed him to be suffering from epilepsy."

"How does that constitute a second motive?"

"In this way. Penreath has a highly-strung, introspective temperament.
He went to the front from a high sense of duty, but he was
temperamentally unfit for the ghastly work of modern warfare, and broke
down under the strain. Men like Penreath feel it keenly when they are
discharged through shell-shock. They feel that the carefully hidden
weaknesses of their temperaments have been dragged out into the light of
day, and imagine they have been branded as cowards in the eyes of their
fellow men. I suspect that the real reason why Penreath left London and
sought refuge in Norfolk under another name was because he had been
discharged from the Army through shell-shock. He wanted to get away from
London and hide himself from those who knew him. To his wounded spirit
the condolences of his friends would be akin to taunts and sneers. When
Sir Henry Durwood questioned him he was careful to conceal the fact that
he had been a victim of shell-shock. As a matter of fact, Penreath's
behaviour in the breakfast room that morning was nothing more than the
effects of the air raid on his disordered nerves, but he would sooner
have died than admit that to strangers. After listening to the evidence
for the defence at the trial, he came to the conclusion that he was an
epileptic as well as a neurasthenic. He might well believe that life
held little for him in these circumstances, and that conviction would
strengthen him in his determination to sacrifice his life as a thing of
little value for the girl he loved."

"If that is true he must be a very manly young fellow," said the chief
constable.

"Supposing it is true, what is to be done?" asked Galloway, earnestly.
"Penreath has been tried and convicted for the murder."

"The conviction will be upset on appeal," replied the detective
decisively.

"But I do not see that carries us much further forward as regards
Benson," persisted Galloway. "If he is the murderer, as you say, he will
clear out as soon as he hears that Penreath is appealing."

"He will not be able to clear out if you arrest him."

"On what grounds? I cannot arrest him for a murder for which another man
has been sentenced to death."

"True. But you can arrest him as accessory after the fact, on the ground
that he carried the body downstairs and threw it into the pit."

"And suppose he denies having done so? Look here, Mr. Colwyn, I want to
help you all I can, but if I have made one mistake, I do not want to
make a second one. Frankly, I do not know what to think of your story.
It may be true, or it may not. But speaking from a police point of view,
we have mighty little to go on if we arrest Benson. If he likes to bluff
us we may find ourselves in an awkward position. Nobody saw him commit
the murder."

"I realise the truth of what you say because I thought it all over
before coming to see you," replied Colwyn. "If Benson denies the truth
of the points I have discovered against him, or gives them a different
interpretation, it may be difficult to prove them. But he will not--he
will confess all he knows."

"What makes you think so?"

"Because his nerve has gone. If I had confronted him that night when I
saw him in the room I would have got the whole truth from him."

"Why did you not do so?"

"Because I had not the power to detain him. I am merely a private
detective, and can neither arrest a man nor threaten him with arrest.
That is why I have come to you. You, with the powers of the law behind
you, can frighten Benson into a confession much more effectually than I
could."

"I don't half like it," grumbled Galloway. "There's a risk about it----"

"It's a risk that must be taken, nevertheless." It was Mr. Cromering who
intervened in the discussion between the two, and he spoke with unusual
decision. "I agree with Mr. Colwyn that this is the best course to
pursue. I will go with you and take full responsibility, Galloway."

"There is no need for that," said Galloway quickly. "I am quite willing
to go."

"I will accompany you and Mr. Colwyn. It has been a remarkable case
throughout, and I want to see the end--if this is the end. I feel keenly
interested in this young man's fate."

"I should like to go also, but an engagement prevents me," said Mr.
Oakham. "I am quite content to leave Penreath's interests in Mr.
Colwyn's capable hands." He rose as he spoke, and held out his hand to
the detective. "We have all been in error, but you have saved us from
having an irreparable wrong on our consciences. I cannot forgive myself
for my blindness. Perhaps you will acquaint me with the result of your
visit when you return. I shall be anxious to know."

"I will not fail to do so," replied Colwyn, grasping the solicitor's
hand. "We had better catch the five o'clock train to Heathfield and walk
across to Flegne," he added, turning to the others. "It will be as quick
as motoring across, and the sound of the car might put Benson on his
guard. We want to take him unawares."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22