CHAPTER III
FIEND’S WORK
Uncle Joseph Krevin had been put in the best sleeping chamber, right over our heads, and though there was a good solid floor between him and us, I glanced at the ceiling, involuntarily, as if afraid that he might overhear his Niece Keziah’s denunciation of him. And Keziah saw my gesture and dropped her tones still lower.
“Never heard word or seen sign of that man since you were born, Ben!” she went on. “And before that never heard a good word of him! He talks about our poor mother, and him being her fav’rite!—Lord save us! He was her fav’rite to this extent that she was the only one that stood by him! He was a bad ’un at all times; sly, deceitful, dishonest; he was in trouble with the coastguardsmen hereabouts, for he was mixed up in smuggling when but a lad—many’s the time I’ve heard my mother talk of it. And his own father turned him out when he came to be a man grown, and after that he’d come back to these parts now and again, and never could one find out how he made his living, nor where he’d been, nor what he did, but I reckon whatever he did was black work, and done in dark places. And ’tis nineteen years, Ben, since I set eyes on him, and now he’s back, and I’d like to know why! No good, I’ll be bound!”
“He said he’d business hereabouts, Keziah,” I remarked. “Business with some old friend of his.”
“Business!” she exclaimed, with one of her characteristic sniffs. “Aye, I’ll warrant him! Devil’s business, if any! And what friends has he about here, I’d like to know? There isn’t a Krevin left alive but him—your mother was the last. I can’t think of a soul hereabouts that ’ud be glad to see him or would have anything to do with him!—Joe Krevin was far too well known all across the countryside in his younger days for them that knew him then to want to have truck with him now. He’s come down here for no good, Ben, and I’ll be truly thankful to see his big back turn out of that gate!”
“You wouldn’t ask him to go away, Keziah?” I suggested.
Keziah smoothed out the folds of the black silk apron which she always wore of an evening, regarding them with her head on one side.
“Well, flesh and blood is flesh and blood, Ben,” she answered, “and, after all, he belongs to our particular blend, doesn’t he? You can’t very well show the door to a man who’s your own mother’s brother, can you, however bad you believe him to be? We’re half Krevins, ourselves—though we’re not bad eggs, such as he is.”
“He seems quiet and civil enough,” said I. “And, in a way, a bit afraid of you, Keziah. He’s very humble and polite to you, anyway.”
Keziah sniffed again.
“I’m afraid of a man like that when he comes extra-polite!” she said. “That’s all put on! When a man of that sort gets soft-sawdery, Ben, you look out for yourself. I’d rather see a burglar with a dark lantern and a pistol in his hand than a man like that, all soft speech and sugary smiles—far rather! Joe Krevin’s here in these parts for no good, and I hope to goodness he’ll take himself off before another sun’s down!”
“You don’t think he’s after the family silver, Keziah?” I suggested. “I suppose he knows about it?”
But for once in her life Keziah looked as if the family silver were a matter too contemptible to be mentioned in connection with Uncle Joseph Krevin. Her sniff deepened into a snort of something like derision.
“Family silver, lad!” she exclaimed. “No, indeed!—it’ll be something more than a mere parcel of spoons and forks that’s brought Joe Krevin hereabouts! But it’s no use speculating, Ben, on what his game is—it’s wearing on to eleven o’clock, and time we were in bed. I’ll lock up.”
She went out into the hall, and after winding up the grandfather’s clock, passed on to the front door, and, as was her invariable custom, opened it and went out into the porch to see what sort of night it was and what signs there were for the morrow. I followed her. It was a very still night; there was scarce a breath of wind, and all the sound we heard was the faint lapping of the waves on the beach. The moon was high above us, over the creek, but there was a great deal of cloud about, and all along the shore and over the sea there was white mist; we could see neither the dark belt of trees about Middlebourne Grange, the headlands at the opposite end of the creek, nor the old gallows at the extremity of the sand-spit. But it was a shifting mist, that—while we watched, it shifted; swirling away above the flats of sea-pink and spear-grass, and curling round the edges of the coppices that here and there ran down between the village and the coast. Once upon a time, looking out of our windows, I had fancied those curling mists to be ghosts—the ghosts of the pirates and smugglers who had been hanged from the old gibbet. … We were turning out of the porch, where the scent of the jasmine hung thick and sweet on the night air, when the clinging silence was broken by a scream. It was a scream such as I had never heard before, have never heard since, and pray God I may never hear again!—the scream of a human being in awful fear—and, unmistakably, the scream of a man. It clove the air with the speed of a bullet; its echo came for a sickening second from the wall of our house, and then there was silence, and Keziah clutching at the pillar of the porch.
“Merciful Heavens, Ben!” she gasped. “What—what’s that? Oh!”
For the scream came again—shorter and more subdued this time; snapped off, as it were, as if some hand had clutched the throat and mouth from which it came, and choked it ere it rose to full strength. And then the silence was deeper than ever. But I heard my own heart beating, and I saw Keziah put her hand to her breast.
“Where was it?” she asked faintly.
“Down there—Gallowstree Point,” I said. “What”
“There!” she exclaimed. “Of all places! Ben!”
“Well?” I answered.
“There’s—there’s something going on down there!” she said. “I—I wonder if its—if its got to do with—with what we were talking about?”
I got an idea of what she meant, and half-turned towards the stair at the side of the hall.
“Shall I call him?” I asked.
“No!” she said. “No! But—we must see. Shut the door and come on!”
I pulled to the door of the house, and we crept down the garden, and out on the bit of coarse grass that lay between it and the sand. Suddenly Keziah gripped my arm and came to a sharp halt.
“Listen, Ben!” she whispered. “What’s that? Oars!”
I, too, pulled myself up, and stood listening. I heard a sound, and at first took it to be no more than that of the tide lapping against the rocks. But presently I decided that she was right in her surmise. Somebody was pulling a boat away from the shore, a little to our left, between Gallowstree Point and Fliman’s End; pulling steadily and swiftly; a single pair of oars, I fancied.
“Yes!” I said. “If only there was more moonlight”
But just then another sort of light appeared. Round the corner of the narrow lane which led from the shore to the village came a blot of yellowy-red light, swinging to and fro, and near it we heard voices.
“Veller!” I exclaimed. “That’s his bull’s eye, Keziah! He’s heard those screams, too, and he’s got somebody with him.”
We edged swiftly across the sand-hills towards Veller and his lantern, and, suddenly emerging into the circle of light which it threw, found ourselves confronting him and Captain Marigold. He, the Captain, it appeared, was on his way home from the house of a friend with whom he had been spending the evening, and foregathering with Veller in the village street, had stopped to talk for a moment or two; their peaceful conversation had been broken in upon by the screams.
“And if those weren’t the cries of a poor mortal in his death agony, ma’am,” declared Captain Marigold, “and being done to death in some devilish manner, then you may write me down a Dutchman, which I’m certainly not! You heard the cries, ma’am?”
“Twice!” answered Keziah. “And just now we heard oars—over there!” We all stopped, on the ridge of a rise of sandy turf, and listened, straining our eyes into the grey mist. But now we heard nothing; the sound of the oars had died away completely. And presently, Veller and his lantern going on in front, we went forward, slowly, and full of a certain fear, in the direction from which we had believed the cries to come.
It was Captain Marigold who first saw the horror on which we were all presently to stare and were never again to forget. Perhaps his eyes were sharper than ours; perhaps from his position at the policeman’s right hand gave him a better vantage point, but anyway, he saw before we did. And he let out a smothered exclamation that had nothing of carnalness or irreverence in it.
“God in Heaven!” he said, and almost fell back on Veller. “Look!”
We were by that time at the edge of the rocks on which the old gibbet was so firmly fixed, and there, right in the middle of the circle of light thrown by the lantern, stood the gibbet itself, black, sinister. And to it was tied up a man—a little, thin rat of a man; tied up by the throat. I saw at once how he had been tied; a coil of rope, new rope, was wound with relentless tightness round his neck and the iron-clamped post behind him; he had been garotted, strangled, anything you like to call it, and it needed but a glance to see that he was as dead as man can be. His head hung downward; his arms and hands fell limp against his sides; his legs dangled aimlessly towards the slimy rock. And when Veller moved to him and lifted his head, I saw that the tongue was sticking out of the mouth and that the eyes bulged horribly and, glazed though they were, were still wide open.
It was Captain Marigold, again, who spoke first. He darted forward by the policeman’s side, and seized the dead man’s right hand. “Warm!” he exclaimed. “Quite warm! The man hasn’t been dead many minutes! And you heard oars?”
He snatched the lantern out of Veller’s hand and swept the water with it in the direction which Keziah and I pointed out to him. But you might as well have tried to lighten midnight with a match—the lantern threw no more than a tiny patch of light on the creaming surf at our feet. We turned again to the gibbet and its awful burden. The two men produced knives and began to cut the cord by which the dead man had been strangled against the post.
“Look you well at this before we take him down, Miss Heckitt!” said Captain Marigold. “And you, too, boy!—your evidence’ll be wanted as to what you’ve actually seen. Get it fixed in your recollection!”
“There’s no need for any special effort to do that, Captain Marigold!” answered my sister in her very quietest tones. “We’ve both got eyes in our heads, and we’ve seen enough already. But—this man?”
Neither Veller nor Captain Marigold had ever seen the dead man before. He was, as I have already said, a little man—a rat of a man, and dead though he was, and horribly murdered, I could not help thinking that he had all the appearance of a thorough bad lot. A mean, sly, ferretty face; a shock of red hair; shark-like teeth between evil lips—all these things I noted. And I noted, too, that across the left cheek, running from the corner of the eye to near the lip, there was a long, livid scar, as if the man had been at some time slashed across the face by a sword cut or had had a dagger thrust.
“You’re certain sure about hearing the sound of oars, Miss Heckitt?” asked Veller, suddenly. “You don’t make no doubt on it? Then this here poor feller must ha’ been brought in from sea by them as done this to him! He ain’t nobody belonging to these parts, and hasn’t been seen about the village, I’ll take my ’davy. I should ha’ heard on him if he’d been about here—looks like a foreigneerin’ feller, to me. Look at them earrings!”
The dead man had gold rings in his ears. And he had a gold chain across his waistcoat, and was carrying a good silver watch at the end of it, and wearing a good blue serge suit, and altogether he looked as if in life he had been in comfortable circumstances. Veller hastily examined some of his pockets and withdrew his hand, looking mystified.
“Money there!” he exclaimed. “Seems plenty o’ money, too. I don’t understand this, captain. He ain’t been robbed!”
“Bah!” said Captain Marigold, impatiently. “Do you think robbery’s the only motive for murder? Something deeper and darker than that in this, my lad! Hadn’t you better get the body up to the village and have a proper examination?”
“There’s folks coming,” answered Veller, nodding at two or three sparks of lights across the beach. “I thought others than us ’ud hear those screams. We’ll have to take him up to the Merry Mariner—that’s how the law stands, I reckon. Inquest’ll have to be there. And what evidence can anybody give, I’d like to know?”
“That remains to be seen,” observed Captain Marigold, drily. “Don’t interfere with his clothing any more now, Veller. Get him up to the inn, and send for a doctor, and get your inspector or sergeant, and then”
Keziah and I went away as the village people came down to Gallowstree Point. One thought was uppermost in the minds of both of us. Had this awful and ghastly murder any connection with the presence at Middlebourne of our relation, Uncle Joseph Krevin? And if so … but beyond that things became vague.
“If he’s asleep—and I suspect he is—I’m going to wake him and tell him what’s just happened, Ben!” exclaimed Keziah, suddenly, as we stumbled across the rough beach. “He’s got to know!”
“Keziah!” I murmured, half afraid of my own voice. “Do—do you think he’d anything to do with—with that?”
“I don’t know, Ben, I don’t know!” she answered. “I wish to God I did know! But—he’s here! And he was out this afternoon, and he was out this evening, after dark. Where? On what business? Whom did he see? And who’s this strange man—murdered by men that row away as quickly as they came? Here’s murder, black, foul, horrible, at our very door, Ben, and he’s there—sleeping in our best bed!”
We went into the house, and Keziah marched straight up the stair. The light in the hall was still burning at full, and it shone broadly on Uncle Joseph Krevin’s door. And in the silence we heard him snoring—a long, steady, deep bass of a snore.
Keziah knocked—once, twice, thrice. The snoring stopped at last, and she knocked again, more loudly. Then we heard movements and creakings, and Uncle Joseph Krevin’s voice, demanding, sleepily, to know who was there?
“I’m here!” answered Keziah, peremptorily. “Come out! There’s news for you!”
We heard more movements and tumblings; then the door opened and Uncle Joseph appeared, wondering and blinking. He wore a suit of gorgeously coloured pyjamas, and in that uncertain light looked twice as big as he really was.
“Anything the matter?” he asked. “Not a fire, I hope, my lass?”
“There’ll be hell fire for somebody over it!” said Keziah, sharply. “No!—Murder! There’s a man been murdered outside here—just now! A strange man! Now, is it anybody you’re acquainted with—anybody you came to meet? I want to know.”
I was watching Uncle Joseph closely, and I saw his big, flabby face grow pale, and a queer look came into his eyes. He stared from Keziah to me, moistening his lips. But before he could speak, I spoke.
“A little dark man, with gold rings in his ears, and a slash right across his left cheek,” I began. “He”
Before I could say a word more, he made a queer, gurgling sound in his throat and straightway collapsed in a heavy heap on the door mat.